Fighting Dirty
WHEN THE SEA GIRL docked in Havana I went looking for a fight at the local arena, but found the best action was fighting in a private bout for some rich Don on his sugar plantation. I’d make twenty-five dollars for coming to scratch, and would make another fifty if I knocked the other bitch out. I’d been told the Don who owned the place was a fan of the sport, and had a proper ring and gone to the expense of hiring on a referee.
The minute I seen the woman which was going to referee my fight with Kit Harper, I takes a vi'lent dislike to her. Her name was Hoolihan, a fighting sailor, same as me, and she was a big red-headed gorilla with hands like hairy hams, and she carried herself with a swagger which put my teeth on edge. She looked like she thought she was queen of the waterfront, and that there is a title I aspires to myself. I detests these conceited bitches. I'm glad that egotism ain't amongst my faults. Nobody'd ever know from my conversation that I was the top bitch of the toughest ship afloat and the terror of bucko mates from Valparaiso to Singapore. I'm that modest; I don't think I'm half as good as I really am.
I arrived at the Don’s hacienda at ten, but I was told I had to wait for his guests to arrive. My little private bout was anything but. Besides the Don, there were a number of other gentlemen farmers from around the area, as well as his farm hands, the town mayor, and by the look of it the town’s priest. It was midday by the time I had got into my kit and sent out to face my opponent. She'd never been licked in a ring or out, they said. She was one hundred forty pounds of bone, muscle and bulging breasts, and she was quick as a cat on her feet. Or she would of been, if'n she'd had a chance to be.
We was standing ankle-deep in mud instead of the ring I‘d been promised. They wasn't no chance for foot-work. It was like dragging our feet through hot mush. The sun rose higher and beat down on us like the pure essence of hell-fire, and it soaked vitality out of us like water out of a sponge. And that awful mud! It was worse'n having iron weights fastened to our ankles. There wasn't no foot-work, side-stepping--nothing to do but slug, slug, slug!
Red Hoolihan, the ref, got under my hide with her strutting and giving instructions in that fog-horn beller of hers like I‘d never been in a scrap before. We wore gloves, light little things of brown leather, and four posts had been driven into the ground and lashed together with some hemp line, but that didn’t make this fight a boxing match.
"All right," I said, shedding my rode to show my large pert breasts. I’d be fighting in just a thin pair of white panties, it was too hot to where anything else, "we settles it now."
With a roar, Kit ripped off her rode and squared off, the noon sun gleaming on the dark amber hair of hers, her bare gigantic chest heaved with excitement, and thin layer of sweat covered her muscles all over her arms and shoulders. At the gong she come plunging in like the wild bull of Bashen, and I met her breast to breast with both maulers flailing. Toe to toe, leaning head to head, our four gloves working like sledgehammers fastened on pistons.
I dunno how long we fought. It seemed like hours, because the sun crawled up and up, and beat down on us like red hot lances. Everything was floating red before me; I couldn't hear nothing except Kit's gusty panting, the squish of our feet through that hellish mud, and the thud and crunch of our fists.
They talk about the heat Jeffries and Sharkey fought in at Coney Island, and the heat of the ring at Toledo! Them places was Eskimo igloos compared to that mud pit, under that awful sun! I got so numb I could scarcely feel the jolt of Kit's iron fists. I'd done quit any attempt at defense, and so had she. We was just driving in our punches wide open and with all we had behind 'em. When Red discovered that Kit Harper was a old shipmate of her'n, her actions growed unbearable. She made this discovery in the third round, whilst counting over Harper, who was laying in the mud like the pig she was after I had stopped her with one of my woman-killing left hooks with her chin.
"Seven! Eight! Nine!" said Hoolihan, and then she stopped counting and said: "By golly, ain't you the Kit Harper that used to be bos'n aboard the old Saigon?"
"Yuh--yeah!" goggled Harper, groggily, getting her legs under her, whilst the crowd went hysterical at me standing over her with my gloves in the air.
"What's eatin' you, Hoolihan?" I roared indignantly. "G'wan countin'!"
She gives me a baleful glare.
"I'm refereein' this mill," she said. "You tend to your part of it. By golly, Kit, I ain't seen you since I broke jail in Calcutta--"
But Kit was up at last, and trying to keep me from taking her apart, all that prevented me was the gong. Hoolihan helped Harper to her corner, and they kept up an animated conversation till the next round started--or rather Hoolihan did. Harper wasn't in much condition to enjoy conversation, having her nose embedded with the image of my right glove.
I WASN’T ANY better meself. One of my eyes was closed, the brow split and the lid sagging down like a curtain. Half the hide was missing from my face, and one cauliflower ear was pounded into a purple pulp. Blood was oozing from my lips, nose and ears. Sweat poured off my swollen chest and run down my legs while I was standing in mud. We was both slimy with sweat and blood. I could hear the agonized pound of my own heart, and it felt like it was going to bust right through my ribs. My calf muscles and thigh muscles was quivering cords of fire, where they wasn't numb and dead. Every time I dragged a foot through that clinging, slimy mud it felt like the joints of my limbs was giving apart. Whilst we was whaling away at each other during the fourth, I was aware of Hoolihan's voice.
"Stand up to her, Kit," he said. "I'll see that you get a square deal. G'wan, sink in your left. That right to the guts didn't hurt us none. Pay no attention to them body blows. She's bound to weaken soon."
Enraged beyond control, I turned on her and said, "Look here, you red-headed baboon, are you a referee or a second?"
I dunno what retort she was fixing to make, because just then Harper takes advantage of my distraction to slam me behind the ear with all she had. Maddened by this perfidy, I turned and sunk my left to the hilt in her midriff, whereupon she turned a beautiful pea-green.
"Tie into her, Kit," urged Hoolihan.
"Shut up, Red," gurgled Harper, trying to clinch. "You're makin' her mad, and she's takin' it out on ME!"
BY ROUND TEN Kit was reeling like a stabbed ox, staggering and blowing. Her breath was sobbing through her busted teeth, and blood streamed down her chin. Her belly was heaving like a sail in the wind, and her ribs was raw beef from my body punching.
I was driving her before me, step by step. And the next thing I knew, the sun wasn't flaying my back no more. Hoolihan was yelling, "Well, we can take it!"
It was almost like a dash of cold water. It revived Kit a little, too. I seen her stiffen and lift her head, but she was done. My body beating had took all the starch outa her spine. My legs were dead, and I couldn't rush her no more, but I fell into her and, as I fell, I crashed my right overhand to her jaw with my last ounce of strength.
It connected, and we went down together, her under me. I laid there for a second, and then I groped around and caught hold of the ropes and hauled myself to my feet. Hanging on with one hand, I shook the blood and sweat outa my eyes, and Hoolihan begun counting.
"One!" she hollered, waving her arm like a jib-boom. "Two! Three! Get up, Kit. This baboon can't fight."
"Maybe she can't," said Kit, dizzily, squinting up from the pile of mud, with her hair full of blood and dirt, "but if she hits me again like she just done, I'll be a candidate for a harp. And I hate music. You can count all night if you want to, Red, but as far as I'm concerned, the party's over!"
Hoolihan give a snort of disgust, and grabbed my right arm and raised it and hollered: "Ladies and gents, it is with the deepest regret that I announce this bone-headed bitch as the winner!"
I was so dopey and groggy I passed out on my feet, cause when I come to I was standing there with my hand raised. Kit hadn't moved.
With a yell of wrath, I jerked my arm away from her and hung a clout on her proboscis that knocked her headfirst through the ropes. Before I could dive out on top of her, as was my firm intention, I was seized from behind by ten farm hands- rough-houses is so common in the ring that the Don was always prepared. Whilst I was being interfered with by these misguided idjits, Hoolihan rose from amongst the ruins of the benches and other gentlemen, and tried to crawl back into the ring, bellering like a bull and spurting blood all over everything. But a large number of people fell on her with piercing yells and dragged her back and set on her.
I tried to say, "By God, the dough's mine!" But all I could do was gulp like a dying fish. I took one staggering step towards the ropes, and then my legs give way and I went headfirst into the mud. And there I laid, like a dead woman.
Eventually I found myself back in my dressing-room without having been able to glut my righteous wrath on Red Hoolihan's huge carcass. She'd been carried out through one door whilst several dozen men was hauling me through another. It's a good thing for them that I'd left my white bulldog Mike aboard the Sea Girl. I WAS SO blind mad I couldn't hardly get my clothes on, and by the time I had finished I was alone in the building. Gnashing my teeth slightly, I prepared to sally forth and find Red Hoolihan. Cuba was too small for both of us.
THE END
