The morning after Jay arrived, Eddie did his first roadwork. When I was younger and working for the paper and covering fight camps I would sometimes go out on the road with the fighters. I don’t mean that I would keep up with them and run all the way with them, but at least, now and then, I would get up when they did and go maybe a mile or two. Then I would turn around and start walking back until they would pick me up, and I would try to stay with them coming back into camp.
It used to make me feel as if somebody had taken my insides apart and put them together again all wrong, but I was always glad when I did it, because it was a way of getting with the fighters. They would get to kidding me about it, and it would become the joke of the camp and sometimes it would last right up to the fight.
“Wake me when you wake Eddie, will you, Jay?” I said the night before.
“What for?”
“I want to get up when he does.”
“Heck, I’m getting up at six-thirty,” Eddie said.
We had been watching TV and now it was ten o’clock. Eddie was standing and stretching, and Jay was still sitting in one of the old overstuffed chairs and watching the commercial for an electric mixer and I could not conceive of him ever baking a cake.
“What do you want to get up for?” Jay said, standing up when the commercial had finished. “Relax. Get a good rest while you’re up here. Just sleep and eat and breathe this air. Make the most of it.”
“I haven’t anything else to do. I just want to get up when Eddie does and watch him go out and be around when he comes back. That’s all.”
“Okay, I’ll wake you. I wouldn’t get up, though, if it was me.”
“I understand, Frank,” Eddie said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
When Jay banged on my door I got up and got dressed and went into their room where Jay was walking around, busy looking for something on the tops of the two bureaus and on the card table where he had his boxes of gauze bandage and tape and a couple of small bottles. Eddie was sitting on his bed, seemingly removed from it all. He had on long underwear and Army khaki trousers, and he was pulling on a pair of heavy work shoes, and he looked sleepy.
“Now I bet you wish you didn’t get up,” Jay said, seeing me.
“I’ll feel fine later. How are you, Eddie?”
“I’ll let you know later, too.”
“C’mon, let’s get a move on,” Jay said. He seemed to have found whatever he was looking for, and he was watching Eddie lacing the shoes. He was wearing old, chocolate brown trousers, worn shiny, and a brown-and-orange-striped Basque shirt and, over that, an old, dark blue Navy zippered jacket with the knitted collar and cuffs showing the wear. On his head he had a blue baseball cap with a white B on the front.
“Where’d you get the Brooklyn cap?” I said.
“This?” he said, taking it off and looking at it. “One of them sports writers knows the Dodgers got it for me. I was born in Brooklyn. Since the Dodgers win the pennant last year I wear it for luck.”
“Go on,” Eddie said. “You wear it to keep your bald head from showing.”
“Sure, sure. Let’s get goin’.”
It was a fine, clean morning. The sun was just starting up over the hills across the lake, and it was the kind of morning that, they always say, makes you wish you would get up early more often. The lake was still in the shadows, but our shore was becoming sunlighted now and, when we got outside and I breathed in the clear, still, night-chilled air it made me think of a drink of mountain spring water.
As we walked up the driveway Eddie was pulling on an old gray sweater over his heavy khaki shirt, and we could see Barnum and Booker Boyd and Cardone and Penna waiting by the road. Barnum was saying something to Boyd and Penna was scaling rocks into the hillside across the road and Cardone was just standing, muffled up and with his hands in his trouser pockets.
“I’m ready,” Eddie said. “Who’s gonna lead?”
“I’ll lead,” Penna said. “I’ll lead us to a nice soft spot where we can all lay down.”
“You lead,” Barnum said to Eddie.
“Not today. This is my first day.”
“You lead,” Barnum said to Boyd.
Booker Boyd said nothing, but he walked across the road, with Eddie and Penna and Cardone following him, and that was the way they started out. They ran in a line at an easy trot—Booker Boyd and Eddie and Penna and then Cardone—on the gravel at the edge of the blacktop, running north and to face any cars that might come down the road, running in step and their arms all moving and their bodies all swaying together. We watched them moving like that up the first rise, growing smaller until they reached the top and then disappeared over it.
“They’ll be back in forty-five minutes, maybe an hour,” Jay said.
“More like an hour,” Barnum said, “the way they run and walk and run.”
“It’s like I said,” Jay said. “In the old days we used to think nothin’ of runnin’ ten miles. I was tellin’ Hughes, here, that.”
“They run far enough,” Barnum said, “if they run. That Penna, he don’t like to run. He like to walk and talk.”
“Eddie’ll make ’em run,” Jay said. “In a few days Eddie’ll get his legs under him and they’ll have to run to keep up with him.”
“Eddie’s a good boy,” Barnum said.
“People think a fight is won in the ring,” Jay said to me. “You know where a fight is won? Right here. Right here on the road and in the gym.”
“I know.”
“No use talkin’ about it,” Barnum said.
“Hey!” Jay said, stopping and pointing. “What’s that?”
We had started down the driveway and we stopped. Where Jay was pointing a small olive-green bird with white-marked brownish wings had fluttered to a halt on the red twig end of a small, scrubby swamp maple. It was about thirty feet from us, the bird riding up and down on the swaying twig.
“It might be a goldfinch,” I said, “but it isn’t.”
“It looks like a canary,” Jay said. “Ain’t it a canary?”
“You see that reddish cap? It’s probably a ruby-crowned kinglet.”
“Yeah?” Jay said.
As soon as I said it, the bird was gone. It had taken off among some pines, the yellow-green of its belly showing when it spread its wings in flight.
“It was a ruby-crowned kinglet. The reason its head was red is that it’s either making a show for a dame or it’s got an argument going with another male.”
“You know about birds?” Jay said. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t really know about birds. I just get it out of a book by John Kieran.”
“John Kieran? You mean the guy used to be a sports writer?”
“That’s right. He used to write the sports column in the Times.”
“I remember the guy. I know him very good. Used to come around the fight camps years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“He used to be on that radio program. You know that program?”
“Information Please.”
“That’s right. They asked them guys questions, and he used to answer.”
“Sure.”
“Was he as smart as they made him out?”
“Certainly. Nobody made him out. He’s smart.”
“He’s that smart? I mean, he used to answer all them questions.”
“Sure. Nobody goes around, Jay, fixing radio or television quiz programs.”
“And he knows about birds, too, hey? I remember the guy.”
“Here come Schaeffer now,” Barnum said.
Schaeffer and Polo were coming out of the hotel. Schaeffer had on a gray flannel sweatsuit, the pants legs drawn tight around the tops of his shoes. He had a towel around his neck, tucked into the top of the sweatsuit, and Polo seemed small beside him.
“Where’s everybody?” Schaeffer said, when he got up to us.
“Gone,” Jay said. “They must be gone five minutes. Where you been?”
“Where’s he been?” Polo said, looking disgusted. “In the sack. I woke him quarter after six. I woke him six-thirty. Five minutes later I come back out of the bathroom and he’s asleep again.”
“I slept good.”
“You always sleep good,” Polo said.
“If you hurry you might even catch them guys,” Jay said. “Eddie ain’t gonna take it too hard his first day.”
“Can’t you see him catchin’ them?” Polo said.
“I won’t run today, hey, Polo? I’ll work twice as hard in the gym and run harder tomorrow.”
“Nothin’ doin’. You run today.”
“I wanted to run with the other guys. I don’t wanna run alone.”
“C’mon. You run. Maybe tomorrow you get up when I tell you.”
They walked up the driveway. We stood there and watched them for a moment, the big heavyweight, depressed now, and the little manager, disgusted.
“You see what fighters are like today?” Jay said.
“That ain’t no fighter,” Barnum said.
“He says he’s a fighter, don’t he?” Jay said. “I mean he fights. He gets paid. He makes out he’s a fighter. Don’t he?”
“No use talkin’ about him,” Barnum said.
I went in and took a shower and shaved. About forty minutes after the fighters had started out I looked for Jay and found him in the kitchen, talking to Girot’s wife, who was busy working and only half listening. We walked back up the driveway, where Barnum was waiting by the road. After a while we saw Booker Boyd come trotting down the hill on our side of the road. Eddie was about a hundred yards behind him with Cardone right behind Eddie. By the time Eddie and Cardone reached us, Penna was just coming into sight over the top of the hill.
“You took it too hard your first day,” Jay said. “You’ll be stiff.”
“Not bad,” Eddie said, breathing and sweating. “God, Jay, I fought less than a month ago. I’m in pretty good shape already.”
“I bet you took it too hard. You wanna bet?”
In their room Jay helped Eddie out of his sweater and threw him a towel. While Eddie sat on his bed, wiping his face and neck, Jay knelt down and took Eddie’s heavy shoes off and then Eddie swung his legs up and lay back on the pillow.
“Now you just take it easy and cool out,” Jay said.
“I know, Jay,” Eddie said.
“Well, it don’t hurt to tell you.”
“Who put this here?” Eddie said.
There was a small white plastic radio on the gray-painted lamp table between the two beds.
“Girot lent it to you,” Jay said. “His wife give it to me this morning. She says Girot wants you to have it while you’re here.”
“Hey, that’s nice,” Eddie said, motioning for me to see the radio. “I was thinking of getting one before I came up, and then I got all fouled up with things the last couple of days.”
“So Girot likes you,” Jay said.
“He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” Eddie said, turning on the radio. “I’ll have to thank him. He’s all right.”
“You’re all right with him, too,” Jay said. “You don’t give him no trouble. He wants you to win this fight.”
“Don’t we all,” Eddie said.
As the radio warmed up, Eddie tuned it in. An announcer was finishing the news, and then a disk jockey came on with some records. While Eddie lay there listening and perspiring, Jay went downstairs and in about five minutes he came back, carrying a cup of steaming hot tea with lemon in it. Eddie sipped that, slowly, and then he waited about ten minutes before he got out of his road clothes and took a shower.
“How often do you shave in camp?” I said when he came back.
“Every other day,” he said. “Then I always shave at night before I go to bed. I mean, when I shave.”
“So his face won’t be sore if he boxes that next day,” Jay said. “You see, in camp you got to do everything with a reason. You just don’t do things. You got to have a reason.”
“Sure, Jay,” I said.
We went down to the dining room, where the fighters and Polo and Barnum were having breakfast at the long table. The room was bright now with the sun coming in the windows facing the lake and with the white tablecloths.
“I see Paul made it,” Eddie said, looking at Schaeffer and winking at Polo.
“You surprised?” Polo said. “He makes all the meals.”
“What?” Schaeffer said, spooning in his soft-boiled eggs.
“Nothing,” Penna said. “Don’t let nothin’ bother you. Just eat.”
“Pass me that sugar bowl, will you, Al?” Eddie said.
After his double orange juice, Eddie had a bowl of dry cereal with half a banana and cream on it. Then he had two soft-boiled eggs with toast and a cup of tea. When he had finished we walked out through the bar into the lobby where Girot was standing behind the high hotel desk, leaning on it and reading a morning tabloid.
“Girot,” Eddie said.
“Yes, Eddie?”
“I want to thank you, bon ami, for the loan of that radio.”
“That’s all right.”
“I appreciate it.”
“For you I’d do it. Those other fighters I wouldn’t give anything for.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“I mean it, Eddie,” Girot said, and then he shrugged his shoulders and you could see that he was embarrassed. “I have here the morning papers, if you want to read them.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said. “I was going to drive down into town for them.”
That afternoon Eddie went into the gym. With Jay hovering around him with a towel over his shoulder and talking at him, Eddie exercised on the mat and skipped rope and shadowboxed a couple of rounds.