The fight started at 3:43 that afternoon.
In all, 4,341 paying customers watched it. An additional one hundred policemen, army personnel from a nearby fort, and Mesquakie Indians from a reservation witnessed the bout.
In faces were pipes, cigarettes, cigars, and turdy lumps of chewing tobacco; in hands were soda pop, spafizzes, lemonade, and beer; on tongues were cheers for Sovich, curses for the colored man, and boos whenever the referee had the audacity to remind Sovich that there were, after all, rules to this contest.
It was ninety-four degrees when the fight started, and there was no wind. The latrines, filled with piss and feces, were rancid enough to spoil some people’s enjoyment of the boxing match. The people in the confection tents worried that they would not have enough soda pop and beer to last the fight, particularly if the colored man surprised everybody and managed to stay upright for any length of time.
Occasional female faces dotted the crowd. These women generally fit into two classes—the girlfriends (as opposed to brides) of men who wanted to feel their girls were good sports, and the odd woman who had developed a genuine taste for the blood game. The former tended to squeal and bury their faces in a manly shoulder when things got nasty in the ring. The latter showed a silence and fascination stonier even than the men’s.
The first round surprised everybody. Rooney did not do so badly. He did not do all that well, true, but he managed to avoid several uppercuts and to dance away from two hard right crosses Sovich tried to inflict on him. Once Rooney even managed to duck a bolo punch he saw only peripherally. Even the meanest of white men had to pay him begrudging respect for that one. If nothing else, Rooney’s first-round performance implied that this might be, for a time anyway, something resembling a real boxing match rather than a carnival sideshow.
The second round immediately put the fight back in the sideshow category. Sovich threw three left hooks, each one of which caught Rooney square on the jaw. The second time he dipped to one knee and shook his wide, ugly head to clear it of cobwebs. With this, he brought the white crowd alive. They started yelling “Nigger,” and when whites yelled “Nigger,” the fight was only starting.
The third round was more even. Rooney landed two fair punches on Sovich’s shoulders and one on Sovich’s head. These blows did not seem to hurt Sovich especially, but they did infuriate him. Sovich had been hoping that the colored boy would have been set down for good by now. He rallied, of course, pasting Rooney with several powerful body shots, one of which lifted Rooney half an inch off the canvas.
By this time the temperature had risen to ninety-seven degrees. In the fourth round, Sovich took complete command again. Two ringing shots to the head and three quick kidney punches once more brought Rooney to one knee. For the first time the referee began seriously evaluating Rooney’s demeanor and behavior. He paid special attention to Rooney’s eyes.
In the fifth round, Rooney shocked everyone, most especially himself, by slamming a roundhouse right to Sovich’s forehead and pushing him back into the ropes, where he followed up with some solid but not spectacular body blows.
Sovich got out of the round, but barely.
“What the hell’s going on in there, Victor?” John T. Stoddard asked in the corner while they waited for the next round to begin.
Sovich’s entire torso was heaving. “Must be the heat.”
“Do I need to remind you how much we’ve got riding on this?”
“You think he’s going to beat me?” Sovich managed a smile that did not quite convince either himself or Stoddard of his skills at the moment.
“Forget about giving them a show. Just put him to the canvas. You understand?”
The bell rang.
“You understand?” Stoddard shouted into Sovich’s ear.
“Yes,” Victor Sovich said, spitting a mouthful of saliva and blood next to Stoddard’s shoe. “Yes, you son of a bitch. I understand.”
He rushed back to the center of the ring, determined to get the fight over with and soon.
Sovich felt angiy. He liked it when he felt angry. Such a feeling always proved good for him and most unfortunate for his opponent. Especially if the opponent was colored.
At the top of the sixth, Sovich landed two smashing rights to Rooney’s stomach. Rooney dropped backward to the canvas, landing on his bottom.
The white crowd shouted, screamed, cheered, and stamped its feet. They wanted to see one hell of a lot more of this kind of action.
The temperature was now ninety-eight degrees.
The fight continued.