145th Street Read Online Free PDF

he’d finished high school, but he really hadn’t.
    And now that she had made such a big deal of it, he couldn’t tell her. School. Billy remembered standing in the back of the room at Junior High School 271, not being allowed to sit down until he had brought his mother in to see the teacher.
    “What are you wasting your time for?” the guidance counselor had asked him. “You think it’s going to be easy out there?”
    That was the last day Billy had gone to school. Not that his mother wouldn’t have taken the day off from the button factory where she worked to come down, but because it seemed true, that he was wasting his time. Learning for him had always been hard, like catching water in his bare hands, it would all slip through, all be so near and yet somehow not useful to him. If only they’d talked about things that he knew something about.
    “The rounds are even,” Manny said. “Start fast.”

    Vegas hadn’t been expecting it and was momentarily stunned when Billy threw a high right to his head.
    Billy followed it with a left hook, leaving his feet for a moment, seeing the force of the blow contort Vegas’s face. Vegas slumped to the floor. The referee was counting over him.
    “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . .” Vegas was on one knee at six and on his feet at eight. Billy moved in fast. Vegas moved away, slid along the ropes, picked off a wild left that Billy threw, and missed a jab himself. He tried to clinch and Billy pushed him away with one hand and swung for his head with the other. He missed and Vegas threw a right hand that caught Billy just in front of the ear.
    His vision doubled. He was in trouble. From every angle there seemed to be someone throwing punches. Billy’s mouthpiece had fallen to the canvas and the referee kicked it toward his corner. He tried desperately to keep his hands up. Pride would keep him in the fight.
    In the appliance store, when the clerk had asked if he was interested in the nineteen-inch screen Billy had said no, he wanted the thirty-two-inch screen.
    “That’s a good choice,” the clerk had said. “It’s a good buy at seven hundred dollars.”
    Later he would have to tell Johnnie Mae that he had changed his mind, that the thirty-two-inch set was too big for their small living room, but for the moment, in the store, he couldn’t back out of the game.
    Billy couldn’t tell for sure where Vegas was, only that he himself was being hit. Barely conscious, he spread his hands, knowing he was going down. Still Vegas smashed his fists into his face. He heard the cheering of the crowd as he fell. Above him a brilliant confusion of lights glared down. There in the middle of the arena, in the middle of the ring, in the middle of the light, the referee standing over him, he felt like he always knew he would feel, alone.
    Then, somehow, he was up, and Manny was forcing the acrid smelling salts under his nose, forcing him back to reality. He knew he must have been knocked out. Manny asked him something and he felt that he had slurred the answer, but Manny seemed satisfied.
    Vegas was lifting his arm, saying that he had fought a good fight. The special policemen were coming into the ring for the next fight. They told Manny to have Billy leave from the corner without stairs and he had to jump from the ring.
    Billy didn’t stop to pack his gear neatly, just crammed it into his bag. He showered slowly, surprised to find out how sore he was in the body. Later there would be blood in his urine. Later there would be the headaches that kept him up in the early mornings. He had been knocked out before. He knew what he would feel like in the morning and told himself that it didn’t matter.
    He got the money from Manny.
    “Billy, give me a call in a month or so.” Manny looked away from him. “When you get yourself together.”
    At the gate he had to wait until a special policeman opened it so he could leave the arena. Behind him