Free Cinderella Man by Marc Cerasini

said, then, for a long minute, he waited. But Mae didn’t say a word, and she refused to look at him. Jim sighed. His left hand still worked, didn’t it? So he took a deep breath, reached down, and used it to lift her small, pointed chin. He forced himself to see the fear reflected in his wife’s eyes, forced his wife to see the truth in his own.
    â€œWe still haven’t seen anything we can’t face down,” he reminded her. Tonight, people had told Jim that hewas through as a boxer, but he’d be damned if he let anyone tell him he was done fighting.
    Finally, Mae saw it, right there in her husband’s eyes—Jim’s resolve as a man to never give up, never let himself be beaten, and her hard doubts began to soften. The world fell away then. Nothing existed, not Mae’s bills or Jim’s bruises, not the anger or the dread—nothing but Jim and Mae and the one look between them that held their new vow to each other. A vow to stay steady, a pledge to hold fast.
    â€œI’ll cut the hem out of your coat sleeve. Fabric will help cover it,” Mae finally said, turning her attention to the black shoe polish. She opened the tin and began to spread it over the white.
    Jim kissed her head, and she nearly found a laugh.
    â€œAll we need now is a nice piece of steak for your face, Jim Braddock, fix you right up.”
    â€œThat’s a good idea.” Jim pounded the table with his good hand. “Steak. Get me a steak out of the ice box. Porterhouse!”
    Peeking around the hanging blanket’s threadbare fabric, a curious pair of eyes widened. While her older brothers Jay and Howard remained asleep on the kids’ shared mattress, six-year-old Rose Marie watched her parents with inquisitive interest.
    Jim winked at his spying daughter, then touched his wife’s cheek, deciding, not for the first time, that having Mae Theresa Fox as his wife made him about the luckiest man there ever was.
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    Elevated on a landfill, the road Jim walked to the Newark docks before dawn every morning took astraight course through a congested industrial area. Along the route were some of the city’s poorer residential districts. Running parallel were the freight tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and on both sides of the road was an old dumping ground that destitute families had taken over.
    Homemade huts, built of materials salvaged from junk piles, served as shelters for men, women, and children. Neatly tended garden patches sat beside them. In summer, the huts were brightly decorated with flowers, flags, and latticework. With the cold mist of fall came oil drum fires and a dependence on breadlines and root vegetables.
    Jim moved through the salvage-yard neighborhood and toward the once desolate marsh that had become the complex of warehouses and docks called Port Newark. A chilly wind whipped across the murky water of Newark Bay and Jim braced himself against it as he strode across the gravel lot toward the familiar locked gate.
    Doctors had pronounced his right hand useless for many months, and he had no illusions what the fate of his family would be if he got no work today. Keeping the blackened cast low and slightly behind his back, Jim approached the huddling group of sleepy, stone-faced men with rock-hard resolve.
    This morning’s dawn seemed brighter than days’ past. As rays of red-stained gold broke through the horizon’s low clouds, Jake, the gaunt-faced, middle-aged foreman, approached the gate from the other side. Jim shoved his shattered hand farther behind him and pushed forward, holding onto hope.
    â€œOne, two, three…”
    Jake walked along the group, looking over the men, moving his finger one way then another. Half steps and half inches, thought Jim, just like the ring, nerve and chance determining life-changing outcomes.
    â€œâ€¦five, six, seven…”
    Jim straightened his boxer’s built-up shoulders, focused on Jake with a