A Book of American Martyrs(177)

Their skins that were both hot and clammy-feeling skidded together, slick with sweat. From a great distance the cries from the arena echoed around their heads like thunder.

The opponent’s mouth was swollen, Lorina could not speak. D.D. heard herself cry in a wild wail of a voice—“God bless you—Jesus loves you, too—thank you.”

Hurriedly then they were made by their handlers to leave the ring. The next boxers, (male) middleweights, buoyed by fresh waves of applause, were already at ringside.


“D.D. DUNPHY’S first fight.”

Blurred photos were posted on the front wall at the gym. A newspaper clipping of the fight night in Cleveland on which, in the final, brief paragraph, crucial lines were highlighted in yellow.

In the gym, spontaneous applause when D.D. appeared the following week.

Now the eyes were on her, just slightly differently. Not derisive—(not so that she could see)—but subtly envious, admiring.


FOR THE first fight she was given, in an envelope, $900 in crisp new-smelling bills.

She had not known how much money she would receive—she’d been reluctant to ask. For she had signed a contract and would be expected to know such details; and yet, she’d had difficulty reading the contract which contained words she had not ever seen before in print. And so she’d put her copy of the contract carefully away for safekeeping in a manila folder in a small cardboard box kept beneath the bed of her rented room. She did not want to be embarrassed in front of her trainer. She did not want to be embarrassed before Mr. Cassidy who seemed both mildly amused by D.D. Dunphy and somewhat perplexed by her, if not disdainful of her as a female boxer. (She’d overheard Cassidy speaking of her as our girl-ox—which was meant to be affectionate, she thought; recalling how for a brief while, at the high school, when she’d been a player on the girls’ basketball team, such remarks were made of Dawn Dunphy, and not meanly.)

She was thrilled by the sight of so much money. Hundred-dollar bills—nine of them! Her first impulse was to call Luke, to tell him. For some reason she was thinking of her brother. See? What did I tell you? Asshole.

But no: she felt generous, magnanimous. She loved her brother—she loved them all.

Though she had not heard from Edna Mae since sending her five hundred dollars some months ago she would send Edna Mae, again in cash, in an envelope addressed to EDNA MAE DUNPHY c/o MARY KAY MACK on Depot Street, Mad River Junction, five hundred of the nine hundred dollars contained inside a plain sheet of paper folded neatly.

Dear Momma, this is for you.

Hope you & Anita & Noah are doing OK.

Please say Hello to Luke & to Mary Kay for me.

I “won” my first fight in Cleveland. They are saying that I am “on my way.” I did not get on TV this time but maybe next time.

Hope that your nurse-work is going real well.

Love

Your Daughter Dawn

“D.D. Dunphy”—“Hammer of Jesus”


“WHEN YOU WIN, lots of people want to be your friend. When you lose, your own damn family don’t want to see you.”

But Mickey Burd was joking, mostly. Mickey had a high nervous laugh that felt to D.D. like somebody tickling her ribs.

Somehow it had happened, after the triumph of the first fight, Mickey Burd was her friend. Mickey showed up at the gym one afternoon to watch D.D. Dunphy train, and that was the beginning—she’d rushed at D.D. to embrace her in a tight hug, congratulating her on her win over her first opponent, daring to brush her lips against D.D.’s sweaty cheek. “Damn girl, you are on your way!”

D.D. had been so taken by surprise she’d let her gloves fall to her sides. Ernie frowned seeing his ex-girl-boxer hugging his new girl-boxer but did not speak harshly to her.

Between Mickey and D.D. it was Mickey who did 90 percent of the talking which was a relief to D.D. also because Mickey had such a wild sense of humor, D.D. would laugh until her stomach hurt.

Most of the time, and always when she was alone, D.D. never laughed. What was so funny? Her mind just naturally lapsed into sadness when she was alone. Or when she was shelving merchandise at Target which was almost the same as being alone. She would try to think of how she’d won her first boxing match and how she was already signed up for a second boxing match and how proud her father would be of her, except her father was not living to know, and anyway when she thought honestly about it, she was not so sure that Luther Dunphy would approve of a girl boxer. She would put it to Jesus for an opinion but He stood a way off if the issue was something trivial for He did not like D.D. to be “brooding” and “sad.” The admonition is to make a joyful noise unto the Lord as she’d been told as a child in the St. Paul Missionary Church. And so she could never think of a single thing funny but Mickey Burd always could.

Mickey took D.D. Dunphy to her favorite pizzeria, to celebrate her victory over Lorina Starr. “Some ‘cougar’! That bitch is lucky you didn’t break her jaw and it’d have to be wired.”

On her fingers Mickey counted off things that D.D. should do for herself now that she had a little money.

“Number one, you can do something with your hair. Right now it’s like you don’t do anything with it, except wash it once in a while, but if you’re in the public eye which is what boxing is, especially women’s boxing, you should stand out, like, in some way special to you. Like, I used to bleach my hair all kinds of colors until it got dried out and brittle like shit so now I’m letting it go back to just brown. But I’ll have blond streaks in it. What you should do, and I can help you, is have streaks put in your hair—like blond, or red—even purple, orange, green—and have the hair cut like a Mohawk, y’know what that is? So you look real butch, but in a fun way.”