As he waited for the judges to compile their scores, Kid Dynamite chided himself for not pushing it harder when in fact he had given his all. The referee announced a split decision in Kid Dynamite’s favor. Juan barely had time to pick him up and swing him around before the ring doctor jumped into Kid Dynamite’s corner and pressed a gauze bandage under his eye. In the excitement of the fight, Kid Dynamite hadn’t felt the cut, hadn’t been bothered by it after the first round. But now the doctor shook his head, and said, “You won the fight but your tournament is over. That’s a seven-stitch cut.” Louis Reine came over and slapped Kid Dynamite’s glove. “Good fight. I’ll see you next year.”

Kid Dynamite felt an overwhelming affection for Reine. “Thanks,” he said. Reine, who had turned away, looked back and said, “Next time I’ll get you.”

The only other fighter from the Steelworkers’ Hall to win that night was Eloise Greene, the club’s middleweight. Greene, the cigarette smoker, caught fire and waltzed through the finals, winning the open title. For this he received a trophy, a powder blue silk jacket, and his own headline on the Beacon’s sports page.

Kid Dynamite did not go in with the other fighters to watch the subsequent bouts. He did not even go back to the Steelworkers’ Hall to clean out his gym locker. Boxing was finally over and the real world, which had seemed so very far away all these years, was upon him.

The Roadrunner

THE EAGLE WOULD​ fly on Friday and except for the assorted shitbirds, and certain vital N.C.O.s, Captain Barnes issued First Recon ninety-six hours of liberty. Until that it had been nothing but humping the boonies. All we knew was the field. Six months of that shit, and nerves were strung tight. Now we were awaiting orders to ship out for Da Nang. Since Captain Barnes didn’t want us to start a brawl in Oceanside, he gave us ninety-six hours and told us to take all that tension south of the border. “Go fuck your brains out in T-Town, that is an order!”

No sooner than we collected our pay we were packed into L.D. Pfieffer’s ’51 Chevy, a car that needed three quarts of oil at every fill-up. We chain-smoked Camels and split a quart of gin on the trip down Highway 101.

We crossed the border and hit a strip club on Tijuana’s main drag. A stripper with a gold tooth had just whipped off her G-string and shimmied her cooch into a sailor’s face. Half the crowd was cheering this swabbie on, like, “Go for it—eat her out.” Others “pretended” they would never do such a thing but it was like, “So go to a Rotary Club Meeting, and get lost, motherfuckers!” First Recon wanted nothing short of Mexican Caligula.