A Book of American Martyrs(209)

Dunphy nodded grimly. “There’s hotel rooms, and meals, and all kinds of—‘supplies.’ There’s a ‘medical kit.’”

“But you don’t receive a fixed sum? You don’t remember what this fixed sum is?”

Dunphy shook her head no.

“You’ve signed a contract? Yes?”

Warily Dunphy shook her head yes.

“Did you have a lawyer look over the contract before you signed it?”

“L-Lawyer? No . . .” Dunphy frowned, trying to think. “Maybe yah. Maybe I did.”

“A lawyer in Dayton? Your lawyer?”

Dunphy made a vague grunting noise of discomfort. Naomi relented.

“Do you send money home to your family?”

More emphatically, Dunphy nodded yes.

“That’s very generous of you. You are a good daughter.”

(Was this going too far? Would Dunphy register the flattery here, just barely masking contempt? She did not seem to.)

Naomi continued, with convincing concern: “I was reading online that most women boxers are helping to support their families. Some of them have young children . . . Pryde Elka, for instance. Do you know much about her background?”

Dunphy shrugged irritably. As if to say Why the hell would I care about Pryde Elka!

“I think you are still working? At a Target store in Dayton? That must be difficult . . .working at the same time that you’re training as a boxer, and traveling to fights . . .”

Dunphy said, with the air of recalling something both pleasurable and painful, “There was going to be a ‘community sponsor’—sports store—in Dayton—but that fell through. Though—it might happen yet . . . There’s champions that have to work. Can’t live off their boxing.” She paused ruefully. “Women boxers, I mean. Not men.”

“The men make more money?”

Dunphy sneered as if the interviewer had said something meant to be funny. “Yah. The men make more.”

“It seems surprising that a ‘champion’ has to work . . . whether male or female. That would be surprising to many boxing fans.”

The line of questioning was making Dunphy uneasy and irritable. Naomi had never interviewed anyone in her life and was coming to comprehend the subtle but unmistakable adversarial challenge, a kind of bullfighting, with very sharp blades. Whoever wielded the questions wielded the blades.

“How many hours a week do you work, Dawn?”

Dawn. The name came naturally. Dunphy did not react.

“How many hours? I don’t know . . . At Target if you’re not full-time they call you when they need you. It could be different every week. Especially if you work in the stockroom or unloading. Mr. Cassidy worked out a schedule for me at Target where he knows the store manager. There’s a special arrangement for when I need to train before a fight and when I’m away for a fight.”

“That’s ‘Cass Cassidy’—your manager?”

Dunphy nodded yes. Clearly it gave her a measure of pride, that it could be said of her that she had a manager.

“And Ernie Beecher is your trainer? Mr. Beecher has an excellent reputation, I’ve learned.”

Dunphy smiled, hesitantly. Clearly she was proud of Ernie Beecher her trainer.

“Is it strange to work with a man? To be so close, physically close, to a man like Ernie Beecher?”

Dunphy considered this. She did not feel comfortable with the words physically close, Naomi could see.

“And also, Mr. Beecher is a black man. That must be—just a little—given your background—strange . . .”

Dunphy shrugged as if embarrassed. It was clear that she had not given the strangeness much thought until now.

“What does your family think?”

“What does my family think?”

“About your boxing career. Working so closely with Ernie Beecher, for instance.”

Dunphy rubbed her swollen eyelids. Her skin was sallow and doughy. Naomi could see small white scars at her hairline, like miniature gems. It was a revelation that a winning boxer, a young woman who had never lost a fight, could yet wear the signs of rough usage on her face. Half-consciously too, as she labored to answer Naomi’s questions, Dunphy was rubbing the nape of her neck and upper spine as if she were in pain.

Naomi said, sympathetically: “But of course there are no women trainers. Especially no white women trainers. If you want to train to box you have to train with someone like Ernie Beecher. In fact you are very lucky to be working with Ernie Beecher.”

“Yah. I am lucky.”

“I guess—from what I’ve read—boxing has become a mostly black sport? Black and Hispanic? ‘Persons of color’ dominate—like Angel Hernandez, who’s in your weight class? Will you fight her—Angel Hernandez?”

Dunphy shivered, shuddered. A look in her doughy face of sudden excitement, yet dread.

“Yah. Guess so.”

“The only boxer you haven’t beaten conclusively has been a black girl—‘Jamala’. . .”

Naomi had researched D.D. Dunphy on the Internet. She’d made a list of the boxers Dunphy had fought. She saw how the name “Jamala” was startling to Dunphy who stared at her now with an inscrutable expression..

“‘Jamala’ . . .yah. She the best.”