counter, he’d see if she were still on the road.
“She’s trying to get above that blindness,” he said. “She walked all the way down here last week, at night yet.”
“Clement can’t be wild about that.”
“I don’t think that would stop her.”
“Nice-looking woman. Pity she lost her sight.”
“She is, but pity is the last thing she wants.” Lauchlin didn’t care to discuss her with Malcolm—she was his to muse over. “I guess you’re not driving with your sore foot, Malk?”
“You can have the lend of my car anytime you like.”
“For a date, you mean? Thanks, Dad.”
“And it doesn’t need any gas either, by the way.”
“Keep that to yourself for now, if you would. We’ve got one of those public relations problems here.”
“People are terrible particular about what goes into their automobiles.”
“More than they are about what comes out the other end.” Lauchlin glanced at the cockeyed clock out of habit. “That damn diesel is mixed in with the gas dregs, we can’t pump it out separately.”
“Aw, it’ll give the diesel a little kick. You see those heavyweights on TV last weekend? Forget it. Waltzed around like a couple of walruses. Big lugs can’t box worth a shit, the most of them.”
“I don’t watch much TV,” Lauchlin said absently, staring out at the road. “We listened to fights on an old battery radio, me and my Uncle Lion when he lived up above us. I liked that, watching them in my mind. We rooted for Walcott when he fought Joe Louis the first time. Lion thought he won.”
“Best to agree with Fraser Lion, if I’m remembering him right. He was prickly.”
“Not much with me he wasn’t.” Lauchlin’s first boxing lessons had been under the crouching figure of Uncle Lion, a lanky, angular man, a gruesome marionette if he’d been drinking, every limb seemed to come into play, but Lauchlin had never feared him.
He watched Shane swirl a paper towel over Effie’s windshield while she pointed out the bug splats. Shane wasn’t tall but he had a good middleweight build and Lauchlin had heard he could handle himself. Some men were just good with their fists, it was in them, reflexes, instincts, leverage, and they didn’t have to be big men either. Standing out in a dance brawl, however, was no test for the ring. He’d known more than one kid with a wild temper who’d thought it was. He’d told Shane that fist fighting wasn’t boxing, but if you were good at that, you might be good at boxing too—if you had the patience and discipline it demanded. When Lauchlin was in grade school, Uncle Lion had taken him to a match in the Sydney Forum and he’d seen live for the first time what he’d heard on the radio, in the thick of a profane crowd shouting enthusiastically, colourful opinions, advice, admonishment, disgust, reproach, encouragement. For the first time he heard the true sound of blows, gloves thudding into flesh, bone, grunts, the heavy breathing, the yelling, grousing cornermen, and he wanted to be up there, the focus of all this raw energy. “It’s hard to get a kid near a ring now,” he said. “They don’t want that hard road anymore. Not the interest there was in my day. Succeeding in the ring meant something here, just to be a good fighter, even a dance fighter. You tell people now that you fought for twelve bucks a fight and they laugh. We all had full-time jobs. Blair Richardson got some good purses for the times, peanuts today. Nobody here was in it for money.”
“There’s money out there, Lauchlin, millions. Get on TV, go to the States.”
“Nobody good enough anymore.”
“Who was the last? Art Hafey, but he was from up the mainland. We had lots of fighters right here and bouts every damn week, but there wasn’t any money. For the love of the sport, eh?”
“Something like that. Some free equipment from the merchants. That kind of thing.” Lauchlin turned away from the window. “Thelast fight they promoted here, they had