The Sixth Street Sandman, Chapter 7

Within a couple days word found its way to Pond that Allie had also asked Alan Vorstad about him. It was remarkable that Pond ever heard anything, given how rarely anyone spoke to him, but he was good at overhearing things. Gutshall indeed completed the card for the following Friday's Fright Night, and he took out a quarter-page ad in the Record & Courier to advertise the best main event he'd had in months. Allie spent some time in her office that Monday morning, looking intently at the ad with a mysterious smile on her lips. Tickets for the event were $30 each—even more than Gutshall had speculated—and the ad claimed that they would sell out fast. The main event was a heavyweight bout pitting a good Buffalo fighter, “The Worldbeater” Shane Yance, 12-1-1 with 7 knockouts thus far in his career, against “The Sixth Street Sandman” Olin Pond, presently 17-0 with 17 knockouts. Fight Night began at 7:00 PM with the first of the three undercard bouts, followed at approximately 9:00 PM by the main event.

Just looking at Pond's record was proof enough even to Allie's limited understanding that he was too good for that level of competition. Vorstad had mentioned that Pond's 17 KO record was tremendously impressive given that most of the club fights were set for only five rounds, sometimes only three.

Allie knew people were whispering about her by now—she didn't expect Val to stay totally silent, friend or no—but she didn't care. She'd had plenty of time to dedicate to the best-looking guys around, and had her fill. It was basic to Allie Caldwell's personality that she was fascinated by the unusual, and it didn't get much more unusual than Olin Pond. Taking an opportunity to hang around his desk for a few minutes on Wednesday morning, two days before the fight, she brought the topic up. “So you're a fighter?”

Pond, who had very quickly taken care of her pretext for being there, looked back up from his screen. “Yes,” he said in a disinterested tone.

“What makes you want to fight?” she asked, as pleasantly as ever. She wasn't going away easily.

“I enjoy beating people up,” said Pond, demonstrating all the natural charm that had made him so popular around the office. There was no irony in his voice; there never was.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Allie. “A lot of them deserve it.”

Pond glared at her quietly for a moment. “You have no idea.”

“You must be making a good bit of money from fighting, at thirty bucks a ticket,” Allie said, changing course before he cut off the conversation.

“I fight for free,” said Pond.

At this Allie was stunned. Maybe Val was right; maybe he really was crazy. “You fight for free?”

“I already told you. I do it for the pleasure of making people bleed.”

Allie paused for a moment or two, leaning lightly on his desk. “You sure do act mean,” she said.

Pond didn't say anything.”

“But you're not,” she said, and walked away.

Shane Yance would probably have disagreed with that. Pond worked the full day on Friday and left the office at his usual time, about a quarter to five. Allie only worked the morning and left around lunchtime, without taking time to talk with anybody on her way out.

Pond arrived at the gym at 8:15. On fight nights, he had no interest in the previous fights or in taking any more time than absolutely necessary to get himself prepared for his own fight. At times he was known to arrive late enough to delay his fight a few minutes while he got ready. He took the back way into the downstairs dressing rooms, also as per his normal routine; he could hear the noise from the shouting spectators as one of the fights was going on. The last undercard fight was a six round lightweight boud that had probably jus gotten started. At three minutes per round and a minute in between rounds, it would be over at about 8:45, and the main event would commence at 9:00 as advertised.

Already, Pond had noted as he walked past with his head down, a small crowd was gathering at the main door to the gym. The biggest room in the gym, which Gutshall had three years past had constructed particularly for the Fight Nights, could comfortably hold about a thousand people in its bleachers, and at 8:15 maybe six hundred were present; on the plurality of Fight Nights that didn't feature a Pond fight, attendance was typically around five hundred. But tonight, hundreds more were willing to pay the $30 only to see the headline fight, and Gutshall expected that by the time it began he would have 1,200 people crammed into the gym, the maximum the fire code would allow. Between ticket sales and the few concession stands, Gutshall expected to take in about $40,000. The undercard fighters would be paid about $1,000 each. Pond spoke the truth; he didn't take a dime for his fights, and Yance was being paid an astonishing, for even a good club fighter, total of $7,500 plus expenses to come in from Buffalo and fight Broxton's star, plus Pond's personal promise of another $7,500 if Yance could beat him. Word about Pond had spread abroad through club boxing circles, and it took this much money to bring in a good opponent these days. Pond and Yance were both arguably good enough to go pro, and Yance, at least, was expected to do so in the near future. This would be one of the best club fights to be found anywhere in the country.

Pond went downstairs and changed into his trunks and boxing shoes, and then his corner man, a sixty-something boxing aficionado named Charlie Houser, began taping up his hands. Normally Cane Halama, who had been working for Gutshall for five years now and was the best trainer at Sixth Street, would work the corner of Pond's opponents, but Yance was bringing his own trainer with him. After finishing with the tape, Charlie then laced up Pond's gloves, told him he'd be waiting just outside, and left the room. This too was normal. After Charlie left, Pond sat tense on his stool, his head down and his eyes closed, for ten minutes. All the while, his body began to quake with increasing intensity as his muscles tensed to maximum strain, and the expression on his face turned from serene to agitated to determined to enraged to hateful and finally to venomous and almost evil. Finally he jumped up from the bench as though someone had shot him, stormed over into the corner where a dummy was set up, and with a scream that could be heard even in the noisy gym, hit the dummy with a right hook so hard that it almost toppled over. With another scream he slammed his left fist into it. Then he walked to the door and stood there, breathing very hard, perspiration trickling down his face.

There, behind the door, Pond stood for five minutes. Finally, Charlie opened it and nodded to him. “It's time.”

The gym exploded with noise as Pond emerged from the dressing room and began to walk down the narrow aisle—only about four feet across—between Gutshall's bleachers that led to the ring. It was only a walk of perhaps forty yards to the ring, but the entire gym was filled with people, all shouting as Olin Pond slowly marched to the ring. Pond seemed distracted, like a man whose mind was focused on something other than what was presently happening around him. Methodically he walked to the ring, where Trent Gutshall stood holding a microphone and, just behind him in the far corner, as though sizing Pond up from this safe distance, Shane Yance.

Pond entered the ring with nary a flinch or a flutter of the eyelids. He stood with his back only an inch away from the corner, his body still tense as a spring and quivering, rage burning in his eyes. Everyone who worked with him was used to his being surly, but none of them had ever seen the violence that burned beneath his eyes just now. It was enough to make most any man run for his life.

Allie Caldwell, from her seat in the third row up the bleachers very near the ring, saw it. With a light frown she watched Pond enter the ring and stand in his corner. She had asked Val to go with her to the fight, but Val would have nothing to do with it. She didn't especially want Alan Vorstad to know she was there, so she did her best to avoid notice.

With the fighters now in the ring, Gutshall held up the microphone. The gym fell dead silent as soon as he began speaking. “Ladies and gentlemen”—the crowd had to be 95 percent male, Allie had noticed—“we thank you again for coming out to Fight Night this evening at the Sixth Street Gym. This is the main event of the evening. This heavyweight bout is set for eight rounds!” Eight rounds was the maximum at the gym, very rarely seen, but Pond had insisted on it, or there would be no fight. For a five round fight Yance probably would have come for much less money.

Gutshall waited for the cheers to die down and then proceeded. “Introducing first, to my left, wearing black trunks, from Buffalo, New York, six feet, three inches tall, weighing two hundred and nine pounds, with a record of twelve wins, one loss, one draw, with seven knockouts. Ladies and gentlemen, the Worldbeater, Shane Yance!” The crowed cheered lustily as Gutshall gestured to Yance's corner and Yance raised his arms in self-recognition. He was, Allie had to admit, amazingly put together. He pumped his fists a few times, working out the tics as he waited the last few seconds before the fight would begin.

The crowd fell silent again. Gutshall continued. “And to my right, wearing blue trunks and gloves, from right here in Broxton, Ohio, six feet tall, weighing two hundred twenty-one pounds. Undefeated in seventeen career fights, all seventeen wins by knockout!” Gutshall paused, as the noise from the crowd was now growing. “The Sixth Street Sandman, Olin Pond!”

As the crowd erupted with a crescendo of cheers, Pond simply slowered his head an inch or two and looked round himself from side to side. Dark clouds passed through his eyes. He made no acknowledgment of the crowd. Seeing him for the first time without his immaculate suit, Pond was impressive, with massive, broad shoulders, thick through and through, and arms like oak trunks.

Gutshall, who also held a referee's license and officiated his own fights, gestured to the fighters, and they came out of their corners with their corner men behind. They stopped one foot from one another, with Gutshall just beside and between them. As the trainers inserted the fighters' mouthpieces, Gutshall loudly ran down the rules. “All right, gentlemen. Olin, you know the rules; Shane, they're the same as you're used to. Absolutely no low blows. No head butts. Watch the kidney punches. I'll warn you if there's no much grabbing, and I mean it. These folks didn't come here to watch you grab each other. If there's a knockdown, go straight to your corner and stay there until I say to come out. You understand?”

Pond, who was staring into Yance's eyes with a murderous countenance, dipped his head very slightly in affirmation. Yance nodded twice, forcing himself to stay focused on Pond's half-crazy eyes.

“All right, gentlemen, let's have a good clean fight,” said Gutshall. “Touch gloves and come out boxing.” And may God have mercy on your soul, he thought silently as he stepped back; the sentiment was aimed in Yance's general direction.

Pond raised his gloves to waist level for Yance to touch. Yance hit them with some force. Pond crashed his gloves down very hard through Yance's. “You're dead,” he said in a low, steely voice, and punctuated it by pounding his own gloves together with a grimace. With that he turned to stalk back to his corner. Yance, stretching his neck and shoulders, returned to his, acting as though nothing were amiss.

Pond paused just a step from his corner. Something to his right had caught his eye. He turned his head and looked straight at Allie for a second. He recognized her instantly, sitting at the end of the third row of bleachers, wearing jeans and a modest sweatshirt. She stared straight back at him with a blank face. The dark fire burning in his eyes seemed only to grow hotter. Etching a face of disgust, he punched the turnbuckle, hard, and turned to face his opponent.

The bell rang. Yance came out of his corner with vitality, hopping around, moving toward Pond. Pond walked slowly out of his. He didn't hop, didn't bounce, just walked, with his hands down, flagrantly violating the first rule of boxing: Protect yourself at all times.

Yance moved in and popped Pond with a jab, which Pond slipped with an almost casual twitch of his neck, and followed it with a quick right hook to the body, which Pond absorbed and stepped away to Yance's left. He stalked around as Yance jumped in and out, going after Pond's exposed body, several times. Yance was fighting Pond the way most of Pond's opponents tried to fight him: By trying to weave in and out, land punches, and win rounds, while trying to avoid getting too close to the crazy man.

This went on for about a minute before Yance finally went right after Pond, pouncing on him with Pond's back to the corner and unleashing a flurry of punches. Pond took that for a few seconds and then popped Yance with a solid right—the first real punch he'd thrown at him, a good 1:15 into the fight—and slipped away. He pulled his gloves up as he backed away from Yance, as though sizing him up. His jaw tightened.

Yance, seeing this, decided his best choice was to go back to trying to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, jumping in and out and peppering Pond with jabs while Pond did little in response. The crowd began to complain loudly for Pond to do something, go get the guy, hit him, hit him! Just short of the two-minute mark in the round, as Yance was coming in for another quick jab-hook combo, Pond suddenly fired a right hook into Yance's ribs. Yance felt that; he grunted in pain and barely avoided the left hook Pond aimed at his chin with deadly quickness. Pond advanced at his enemy now while Yance backed and circled, trying to hold him off with jabs in the face. He landed two, and Pond walked right through them and unloaded two hard, fast left jabs of his own. Yance then hit him with a very hard hook, right in the cheek, and Pond stumbled backward. Yance surged forward and hit him with a right cross; Pond lurched back against the ropes.

“Now!” Charlie Houser shouted from the corner. “Give it to him, Sandman!”

As Yance moved in and fired an uppercut to try to knock him down, Pond gritted his teeth and screamed through them. He cut off Yance's uppercut and aimed a straight right at Yance's body, and when Yance moved left, Pond swung a left cross to make him back up and then with frightening quickness backed him into the corner.

What followed was described by all who saw it as murderous. Yance couldn't get out of the corner; he tried twice to grab Pond and force a break to escape, but Pond was too strong. He threw Yance off himself and back into the corner and resumed the assault. Yance couldn't move fast enough to evade the cascade of missiles streaking in. Once, twice, three times he was crushed in the midsection by hands that felt like cement; once, twice a blurry, blue brick exploded in his face. He couldn't see anything. Twenty seconds before he was comfortably winning the first round, and now he was struggling like a cornered animal to escape, to survive, to somehow survive, to make it to the impossibly distant bell that waited 25 seconds in the distance. Yance staggered out of the corner, but Pond moved in perfect step with him, like a dancing partner, and hit him under the chin with a huge left uppercut. Yance rocked back into the ropes and fell on his face near his own corner. The crowd shrieked and hollered.

Amazingly, Yance recovered quickly enough to beat Gutshall's count, getting to his feet on eight. Gutshall was minded to stop the fight, but Yance correctly identified the three fingers he was holding up and insisted, to Gutshall's satisfaction, that he could continue. Gutshall let him continue, partly because the bell to end the first round rang before Pond could get to him again.

Yance sank onto the stool his trainer quickly set up in his corner. Pond had hopped around like a madman in his own corner while Yance was down, shrieking at him to get up. Now, again, he screamed at the top of his voice as he stomped back into his corner. He looked for all the world like he had totally lost his mind. Insane rage smoldered in his eyes, and he sat on his bench glaring at Yance with a contorted face and waiting for the buzzer that indicated ten seconds to the start of the second round.

There are many who cannot understand the mind of a fighter, who simply can't comprehend what would drive a man to get up and go back into the ring even when only disaster surely awaited; there are many who could never understand why Shane Yance would answer the bell for the second round. Many of those packed into the Sixth Street Gym that night had seen Olin Pond fight before, and knew Yance would be marching to his execution if he got up off the stool. Between her many fleeting thoughts as she watched Pond demolish this big, powerful fighter, the thought skittered across Allie's mind that Yance really shouldn't go in for the second, but she knew that he would. Yance himself probably knew that he'd be best advised to call it a night, but no fighter ever quites so long as he's able to stand, and Shane Yance was a fighter.

At the sound of the buzzer, Yance rose from the stool as steadily as he could muster. At the ring of the bell, he advanced toward the center of the ring on slightly wobbly legs, with his gloves up. Pond, gritting his teeth through his mouthpiece as he so often did, roared out after him in a fury. Yance, fighting for his life now, went right after Pond and began hitting him with quick combinations, one-two, one-two, one-two, to the face and body. Pond grunted—whether in pain or merely irritation, who could tell?—and drilled Yance with a right cross that sent him staggering backwards, and then Pond launched a hurricane of punches, forcing Yance back into the ropes. It was only ten seconds until Pond landed a demolishing right hook square on Yance's jaw, and Yance fell to the met like a dropped sack of potatoes.

Gutshall counted Yance out as he lay motionless; only on seven did he even begin to regain consciousness and move. The fight was over. The crowd erupted. Pond, who still seemed agitated about something even with his opponent vanquished, went back to his corner with his head down and leaned back against the turnbuckes. His shoulders rose and fell visibly as he breathed.

Gutshall had the microphone again, while the ring doctor was tending to the bloody mass that hopefully, with the proper medical attention, would soon once again be Shane Yance. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Gutshall shouted into the microphone, “scoring the win by knockout at fifty-one seconds of the second round, the winner, the Sixth Street Sandman, Olin Pond!” The crowd had gotten what it paid for. So, for that matter, had Pond.

When the newsroom workers of the Record & Courier arrived at work first thing Monday morning, Pond was at his desk as usual, acting as though nothing at all unordinary had taken place since Friday. Nobody from the Record & Courier except Vorstad and Allie had attended the fight, and only Parrella knew anything about its result, having gotten the scoop from Vorstad. Allie, who knew Pond had seen her there and didn't see any point in pretending she wasn't, arrived at the office early and went to Pond's desk.

“Do you pound everyone into unconsciousness inside of three rounds?” she asked when he finally looked up.

“Yes,” said Pond. “All but two guys that made it into the fourth.”

“I heard you fought down there at Sixth Street,” she ventured, “and I've always been intersted in boxing, so I figured I'd go to watch.”

“That's nice.”

A moment of silence ensured. “Yeah, you're right,” Allie said. “That's a sad explanation.”

Pond remained silent.

“Really,” she said, “what makes you so mad in there?”

He looked her in the eyes and held his gaze there for three seconds, a very hard gaze, and then left off. He didn't answer. She walked off and went to work.