The Bruiser by Jim Tully

Author:Jim Tully
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

XIV

A girl looked at him as he staggered into a night club.

“Good-looking, isn’t he?” she asked the man with her.

He turned. “Yes, if you like ’em rough.”

She went to Shane’s table, and said, “Gee, I’ve always wanted to meet you— I knew you when I was a little kid.”

“That so? Who’s the fellow with you?”

“Just a friend,” she answered.

“He’s liable to come over and beat up on me.” He laughed deliriously.

The girl smiled. “I’d like to see anybody beat up on you.”

He called a waiter. “Give us a drink.”

She shook her head. “I’m not drinkin’ on you— I’ve got a live one over there.” She nodded.

“You wouldn’t kid me, would you?” Shane reached for the drink smiling.

“I’m not the kidding kind,” she answered. “I could of cried when you lost. Hot and Cold Daily told me something was wrong.”

Shane looked at her earnestly.

“I’m not what you think.” Her tone was whimsical and mocking. She nodded toward her companion. “I keep men like him under control.”

Shane looked at his glass.

“Are you sure you don’t need me?” she asked.

“Not me, Kid.”

“I work here. Don’t get me wrong.”

“You’re all alike.”

“Your manager’s been telling you things—I’ve heard about him.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere—he’s better know than the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“And just as safe,” returned Shane.

“And as blind—a bridge can’t tell sick people from well—it carries them all the same.”

His eyes became glazed.

She called a waiter.

“Get a cab. He’s sick.”

She returned to her companion. “See you later.” To the waiter, “Look after him.”

She entered the cab with Shane. “Imperial—Central Park West.”

Shane was mumbling, “Come on, stumble bum—it’s the last round—let’s throw some leather—you couldn’t knock me out if you had the moon in your glove—eh— Tim—see that little girl over there—that’s Lyndal Lund—she lives in Grainville, that’s North Dakota—you know her—ho! ho! ho!—the glory road—the glory road— ‘I’se goin’ to push leather down the glory road.’”

“Drive through the park a while,” the girl said, while Shane continued to mumble.

The girl was pensive. The past hurried by.

She had heard of him all her life. When his name began to creep into the newspapers, she sent a letter to him in care of a Chicago sports editor. “Tell me,” she wrote, “if you’re my Shane Rory.” She mentioned what her father had told about him. The letter was never answered.

His name became fixed in her mind. If his fight were too unimportant to warrant a paragraph in a New York newspaper, she turned to the section—”Fights Last Night.” She often found Shane Rory’s name—and after it, “Won” or “draw”—and the number of rounds. It was more than the career of a fighter to her. It made the young road of her days glow as if the morning sun were upon it. He came out of the same neighborhood.

He was always “the little Rory kid” to her father. He would read of him and say, “The boy has nerve— his father was a slash of a man. It’s the great blood in his veins—the Roarin’ Shane Rory—eh—that fellow Daily can name them—his father could roar a cyclone down.

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