against.
By the time Pop Agnew broke us I remembered I was supposed to be boxing so I went back to that, but Perel-man was going faster and I spent most of the rest of the round trying to keep his left out of my face.
“Hurt you?” Loney asked when I was back in my
corner.
“Not yet,” I said, “but he can hit.”
In the fourth I stopped another right cross with my eye and a lot of lefts with other parts of my face and the fifth round was still tougher. For one thing, the eye he had hit me in was almost shut by that time and for another thing I guess he had me pretty well figured out. He went around and around me, not letting me get set.
“How do you feel?” Loney asked when he and Dick were working on me after that round. His voice was funny, like he had a cold.
I said, “All right.” It was hard to talk much because my lips were puffed out.
“Cover up more,” Loney said.
I shook my head up and down to say I would.
“And don’t pay any attention to those mugs out front.”
I had been too busy with Sailor Perelman to pay much attention to anybody else but when we came out for the sixth round I could hear people hollering things like, “Go in and fight him, Kid,” and, “Come on, Kid, go to work on this guy,” and, “What are you waiting for, Kid?” so I guessed they had been hollering like that all along. Maybe that had something to do with it or maybe I just wanted to show Loney that I was still all right so he would not worry about me. Anyway, along toward the last part of the round, when Perelman jarred me with another one of those right crosses that I was having so much trouble with, I got down low and went in after him. He hit me some but not enough to keep me away and, even if he did take care of most of my punches, I got in a couple of good ones and I could tell that he felt them. And when he tied me up in a
clinch I knew he could do it because he was smarter than
me and not because he was stronger.
“What’s the matter with you?” he growled in my ear. “Are you gone nuts?” I never liked to talk in the ring so I just grinned to myself without saying anything and kept trying to get a hand loose.
Loney scowled at me when I sat down after that round. “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you to box him?” He was awful pale and his voice was hoarse.
I said, “All right, I will.”
Dick Cohen began to curse over on the side I could not see out of. He did not seem to be cursing anybody or anything, just cursing in a low voice until Loney told him to shut up.
– I wanted to ask Loney what I ought to do about that right cross but, with my mouth the way it was, talking was a lot of work and, besides, my nose was stopped up and I had to use my mouth for breathing, so I kept quiet. Loney and Dick worked harder on me than they had between any of the other rounds. When Loney crawled out of the ring just before the gong he slapped me on the shoulder and said in a sharp voice, “Now box.”
I went out and boxed. Perelman must have got to my face thirty times that round; anyway it felt like he did, but I kept on trying to box him. It seemed like a long
round.
I went back to my corner not feeling exactly sick but like I might be going to get sick, and that was funny because I could not remember being hit in the stomach to
amount to anything. Mostly Perelman had been working on my head. Loney looked a lot sicker than I felt. He looked so sick I tried not to look at him and I felt kind of| ashamed of making a bum out of him by letting this Perel-man make a monkey out of me like he was doing.