Things as They Are by Guy Vanderhaeghe

(not quite kidney punches but close) which Kurt kept stubbornly pinned to his ribs the way Hiller had taught him. Every blow he absorbed screwed Meinecke’s mouth a little more crooked, drew his eyes into tighter slits. He was paying a price.
    Kurt’s performance was not going down well with thecrowd. Their mood was changing, the chant of “Master! Master!” died away as disappointment seized them. Someone yelled “Fight!” and someone else, “Chickenshit!” When Dooey clanged on the pie plate to end the round, Kurt Meinecke’s return to the corner was greeted, here and there, with boos.
    Norman was all over him as soon as his ass dropped on the chair. “Goddamn it,” he hissed, “you aren’t Cool Handing him. Laugh at the fucker! Tease him! Tell him he hits like a homo! You’re forgetting what I said. What’d I say? ‘Ninety per cent of boxing is mental.’ You’re overlooking the mental. Laugh at him!”
    “You can laugh at him,” said Kurt, probing his rib cage with the thumb of his glove. “You got no idea how hard he hits.”
    Norman slapped the glove away. “Stop that!” he said. “He’s watching you.” It was true. Scutter was pointing in our direction and making smirking asides to his brother.
    “Look at him,” Kurt said, brooding. “Acts as if I’m nothing. Thinks he’s so smart.”
    Dooey beat the pie plate. Norman caught Meinecke by the hairs on the nape of his neck as he was rising. “Remember,” he said, tugging them for emphasis, “Cool Hand Luke him. And no hitting back! I’m warning you, Meinecke, no hitting!”
    For the next three rounds Kurt did exactly as he was told. There was plenty of hitting and none of it was done by him. When Scutter did his ham-handed Ali imitations, dancing circles around Meinecke, inviting attack, parading and flaunting his jaw within easy range of the Master of Disaster who inexplicably declined to strike, this incited the bloodthirsty mob into more taunts and jeers, the cue for Scutter to stop dead in his tracks and pepper Meinecke with a storm of punches.
    Each time Kurt came back to the corner, he added another injury to the catalogue, a mouse swelling under the left eye, a cut inside the mouth that kept him drooling pink saliva intothe plastic bucket, a raw lace scrape on the side of the neck, knots and eggs popping up all over his head.
    It was the humiliation that worked the change in him. He began to beg, really beg Hiller to let him hit back. Kurt had always been so mild, nice was maybe the word for him, that I would never have guessed he had the stuff in him to hate. But the look on his face told me he’d found it, or, rather, Hiller had found it for him. He was like one of those neglected dogs tied in a backyard which you know has taken one kick too many and wants to sink its teeth into somebody. Kurt wanted a bite, too, but Hiller wouldn’t give it to him. He kept telling him to do what he was told, stick to the plan, and Meinecke kept asking when, when, when do I get to hit him?
    By the end of the seventh round Meinecke was in bad shape, blood leaking out of both nostrils, an eye swollen shut, a split lip. I put my mouth to his ear and said, “Get it over, Kurt. Next time he hits you – drop. Fuck this noise.”
    “I got to get my chance. All of them laughing at me. It isn’t that I don’t
want
to hit him. If Norman would just let me hit him. When Norman says – then look out.” He was staring across the ring at Scutter.
    Norman shoved me roughly to one side. “How many fucking times I got to say it!” he shouted at Meinecke. “You’re supposed to be lipping him and you stand there like a goddamn dummy! Yap at him! Tell him he’s a pussy! Do something!”
    “I can’t. I get mixed up. It’s the noise. I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say,” Meinecke said, on the verge of tears. “Just let me hit him, Norman.”
    “You got to earn the right to hit him,” said Hiller. “I want you to be professional. You