Free The Killings of Stanley Ketchel by James Carlos Blake

wasn’t interested in an exhibition of pugilistic finesse, it wanted action, a slugging match, blood. It jeered Thompson and demanded that he stand and fight, but he continued to hit and run, consistently scoring with the jab. In the last round Ketchel grabbed at him in sheer frustration, trying to seize him and hold him still for one good punch. The spectators roared their approval, but Thompson broke free, and the referee warned Ketchel against such alleyway style. Thompson easily won the decision.
    When they got back to the dressing room Ketchel accused him of dancing rather than fighting, of deliberately trying to make him look foolish.
    “You didn’t look foolish,” Thompson said, “you looked like a guy who don’t know how to box. I wouldn’t stand a chance slugging it out with you, but like I said, a slugger can’t beat a boxer except with a lucky punch. I’ll teach you to box.”
    Ketchel said it would be a frozen day in hell before he would teach him anything. Thompson reminded him they’d had a deal. Ketchel said the deal depended on a fight and Thompson had refused to fight.
    Thompson shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. I’m not the one who might have what it takes be a champ.”
    The remark stuck with him. For the next few days he thought things over. Then went to Thompson’s gym and asked him if he really thought he had what it took to be champion.
    “I said you might have,” Thompson told him. “You got a lot to learn. But as I recall, you have to wait for a certain weather change in hell before I can start teaching it to you.”
    Ketchel said he guessed Thompson hadn’t heard the latest news, about the devil buying himself a pair of ice skates.
     
    A ND SO HE began going to the gym every day and training under Mickey Ashburn, who worked for Thompson and helped him to coach his fighters. Ketchel didn’t care for the boredom of calisthenics and skipping rope, for the monotony of hitting the heavy and light bags, for any of the exercises Ashburn insisted upon before letting him spar. Sparring was the only aspect of training he enjoyed, even though he was constantly being admonished to jab, jab, keep moving, box, box. He heard over and over that a missed punch used more energy than one that landed, that in a twenty-round bout it was stamina that usually decided things and wild punching was a waste of strength. But he had no doubt about his strength, no doubt he could punch all day and night if he had to.
    In June he was matched against one Jimmy Quinn. For the first minute of the bout he tried to fight as Thompson and Mickey Ashburn had been coaching him. He stayed on the move, jabbing, searching for an opening before throwing a big punch. Thompson and Mickey hollered their approval from the corner. Then Quinn connected with a hard cross that set Ketchel back a few steps and jolted him into a fury. He attacked Quinn as if the man were on fire and he meant to beat out the flames with his fists. He drove him across the ring and against the ropes, hammering aside Quinn’s arms to get at his head, punching so furiously he missed as often as he landed and at one point lost his balance and nearlyplunged through the ropes. He kept punching even as Quinn sagged down to his haunches, head jerking under the blows. Not until the seat of Quinn’s trunks touched the canvas did the ref finally push between them, permitting Quinn to keel over and be counted out. Ketchel circled the ring with his hands above his head, reveling in the crowd’s acclaim.
    Thompson ran both hands through his hair and shook his head. “Yeah,” Mickey Ashburn said. “Like leading a horse to water.”
    It was Jimmy Quinn’s first and last professional fight. When he regained consciousness he was permanently blind in one eye.
     
    H E HAD CONTINUED to write his mother regularly, but now for the first time risked a return address, though he was no more specific than “general delivery.” He told her of his name change and