A Book of American Martyrs(208)

The tabletop was very plain, and looked to be made of some cheap material like cork. Presumably, white linen tablecloths would be draped over such a table on the occasion of a banquet.

“Well, ‘D.D.’! That was a terrific fight last night—an excellent performance. All three judges . . .”

Dunphy appeared to be listening. But she did not smile.

“Are you—not happy with the fight? You won.”

Dunphy shrugged. A look of faint embarrassment crossed her face, as if she were enduring gas pains.

“Nah. It was OK. Ernie says, I got work to do.”

“‘Ernie’—your trainer?”

But Dunphy had fallen silent. Marika had left for her a bottle of spring water, from which she now drank, thirstily, somewhat clumsily with her swollen mouth. Naomi saw that the young woman’s nose was mottled with fine, broken capillaries. Her teeth were uneven, the color of weak tea. It was unsettling when she lifted her eyes, for a moment, and Naomi saw how bloodshot the whites of the eyes were, nearly hidden by the swollen and discolored eyelids.

The coarse hair, cut short and razor-cut at the sides and at the nape of the neck, had been matted flat, in need of washing. The streaks of color were the more incongruous, clownish, in the bleak light of day.

“You have been examined by a doctor, I hope?”

Dunphy murmured what sounded like Yah.

“Is it more than a cursory exam? Does a—an actual—doctor examine you? X-rays, a brain scan?”

Dunphy murmured again, this time irritably. Roughly she wiped her running nose with the edge of her hand.

Naomi was recalling the intense, exacting physical examinations of her childhood. Bloodwork was essential: you could not avoid the needle drawing blood out of a delicate vein. A badly bruised and aching rib would have to be X-rayed—of course. Insect-bite infections and infections caused by childhood accidents were to be treated with antibiotics immediately. There was no taking a chance with Lyme disease. To grow up in the household of a doctor is to become aware of the slovenly-wide range of what is called “medical care” by the world. Gus Voorhees was egalitarian in every respect except medically: either a doctor was good, or a doctor was not-good.

You avoided the not-good. Unfortunately, the not-good were everywhere except at principal medical centers and medical schools.

“Well, ‘D.D.’! Or—is your name ‘Dawn’? Someone said . . .”

Dunphy shifted in her chair. The sound of her name was unexpected and startling to her but she did not deny it. Rather, she smiled just slightly, glancing up abashed at her interviewer.

Naomi thought—She has been found out. There is nowhere for her to hide.

“Just tell me, Dawn. In your own words. What gave you the idea of—becoming a boxer . . .”

Naomi smiled encouragingly at Dunphy. She did not hate Dunphy—really. It was Dunphy’s existence that maddened her as, for years, it had been the existence of Luther Dunphy after her father had died, that had maddened her.

Still, Naomi would impersonate a sincere interviewer. In a way, so far as anyone could know, she was that sincere interviewer. Through the night she’d been sleepless with excitement at the possibility of making a documentary film about women boxers, including both D.D. Dunphy and Pryde Elka. Yael Ravel’s words came to her—When you encounter your true subject you will know it.

Was this Naomi’s true subject? She had waited so long.

Dunphy continued to speak in her slow groping way of caution and dread. She was a poor interview subject—surely Pryde Elka would be more interesting.

“The average person has a fear of being hit—a dread of being hit. But you have no fear, it seems.”

Was this a question? Dunphy gnawed at her lower lip, and made no reply.

“You’re not afraid of being hurt?—I mean, seriously hurt?”

Vigorously Dunphy shook her head no.

“And why is that?”

“‘Why?’—” Dunphy looked at the interviewer as if the interviewer had asked a very stupid question, or had to be joking. “ ’Cause I’m too good.”

“You are—‘too good’?”

“My training is to avoid being hurt. Even if I am hit, it doesn’t hurt like it would somebody else.” A slight sneer to somebody else.

Naomi perceived that Dunphy was repeating words told to her. I’m too good. Even if I am hit . . .

“You’ve never been defeated in any fight. That’s very impressive.”

Dunphy shrugged. Very slightly, the swollen lips smiled.

“I did some checking and it’s surprising—some of the champion boxers have lost fights. But you have not.” Naomi paused, waiting for Dunphy to murmur yet.

How expected it was, in such a situation, that the young athlete would murmur yet.

After a moment Naomi continued, in her friendly, frank way:

“Do you make a good living as a boxer? Could you tell us—for instance—how much you’d made on last night’s fight?”—Naomi smiled to soften the rudeness of such a question; but Dunphy did not seem to register an effrontery. Rapidly her swollen eyes were blinking as if she were trying to recall a figure, a sum.

“I guess—I don’t know . . . There’s ‘expenses’ . . .”

“Expenses come out of the boxer’s earnings? I guess that’s the tradition . . . I suppose there are considerable expenses?”