A Place Called Freedom (1995)

Mack danced back out of reach. Preece shook himself like a dog, then lowered his head and charged, punching wildly. Mack ducked and sidestepped and kicked Preece’s legs with a hard bare foot, but somehow Preece managed to crowd him and land several mighty punches. Then Mack hit him hard on the side of the head again, and once more Preece was stopped in his tracks.

The same dance was repeated, and Lizzie heard the Irishman yell: “In for the kill, Mack, don’t give him time to get over it!” She realized that after hitting a stopping punch Mack always backed off and let the other man recover. Preece, by contrast, always followed one punch with another and another until Mack fought him off.

After ten awful minutes someone rang a bell and the fighters took a rest Lizzie felt as grateful as if she had been in the ring herself. The two boxers were given beer as they sat on crude stools on opposite sides of the ring. One of the seconds took an ordinary household needle and thread and began to stitch a rip in Preece’s ear. Lizzie winced and looked away.

She tried to forget the damage being done to Mack’s splendid body and think of the fight as a mere contest. Mack was more nimble and had the more powerful punch, but he did not possess the mindless savagery, the killer instinct that made one man want to destroy another. He needed to get angry.

When they began again both were moving more slowly, but the combat followed the same pattern: Preece chased the dancing Mack, crowded him, got in close, landed two or three solid blows, then was stopped by Mack’s tremendous right-hand punch.

Soon Preece had one eye closed and was limping from Mack’s repeated kicks, but Mack was bleeding from his mouth and from a cut over one eye. As the fight slowed down it became more brutal. Lacking the energy to dodge nimbly, the men seemed to accept the blows in mute suffering. How long could they stand there pounding one another into dead meat? Lizzie wondered why she cared so much about McAsh’s body, and told herself that she would have felt the same about anyone.

There was another break. The Irishman knelt beside Mack’s stool and spoke urgently to him, emphasizing his words with vigorous gestures of his fist. Lizzie guessed he was telling Mack to go in for the kill. Even she could see that in a crude trial of strength and stamina Preece would win, simply because he was bigger and more hardened to punishment. Could Mack not see that for himself?

It began again. As she watched them hammering at one another, Lizzie remembered Malachi McAsh as a six-year-old boy, playing on the lawn at High Glen House. She had been his opponent then, she remembered: she had pulled his hair and made him cry. The memory brought tears to her eyes. How sad that the little boy had come to this.

There was a flurry of activity in the ring. Mack hit Preece once, twice, and a third time, then kicked his thigh, making him stagger. Lizzie was seized by the hope that Preece would collapse and the fight would end. But then Mack backed off, waiting for his opponent to fall. The shouted advice of his seconds and the bloodthirsty cries of the crowd urged him to finish Preece off, but he took no notice.

To Lizzie’s dismay Preece recovered yet again, rather suddenly, and hit Mack with a low punch in the pit of the belly. Mack involuntarily bent forward and gasped—and then, unexpectedly, Preece butted him, putting all the force of his broad back into it. Their heads met with a sickening crack. Everyone in the crowd drew breath.

Mack staggered, falling, and Preece kicked him in the side of the head. Mack’s legs gave way and he fell to the ground. Preece kicked him in the head again as he lay prone. Mack did not move. Lizzie heard herself screaming: “Leave him alone!” Preece kicked Mack again and again, until the seconds from both sides jumped into the ring and pulled him away.

Preece looked dazed, as if he could not understand why the people who had been egging him on and screaming for blood now wanted him to stop; then he regained his senses and raised his hands in a gesture of victory, looking like a dog that has pleased its master.

Lizzie was afraid Mack might be dead. She pushed through the crowd and stepped into the ring. Mack’s second knelt beside his prone body. Lizzie bent over Mack, her heart in her mouth. His eyes were closed, but she saw that he was breathing. “Thank God he’s alive,” she said.

The Irishman glanced briefly at her but did not speak. Lizzie prayed Mack was not permanently damaged In the last half hour he had taken more heavy blows to the head than most people suffered in a lifetime. She was terrified that when he returned to consciousness he would be a drooling idiot.

He opened his eyes.

“How do you feel?” Lizzie said urgently.

He closed his eyes again without responding.

The Irishman stared at her and said: “Who are you, the boy soprano?” She realized she had forgotten to put on a man’s voice.