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cut away the glove with a razor blade. The leather peeled back from the edge of the razor. “That punch may’ve ruined your hand for good.”
    Toussaint put his left arm across his face.
    “The ring doctor will be here in a minute. Is it hurting bad?” Archie said.
    “It’s numb now.”
    “I don’t see how you did it.”
    “I didn’t think about it. I saw him coming and it was over.”
    “You got a rough shake. Maybe I didn’t have your hand taped tight enough.”
    “The tape was all right. When I hit him he pulledhis head in and I caught him with the back of my fist.”
    Toussaint’s manager came into the locker room. He wore his hair in a crew cut and dressed in a dark business suit and silk tie with a jeweled tie clasp, and there was a Mason’s ring on his finger. His face was ruddy and there was hair on the back of his hands.
    “What happened?” he said.
    “He busted his hand.”
    “Let’s see it.”
    Toussaint held it up.
    “Where’s the ring doctor?” Ruth said.
    “He’s coming,” Archie said.
    “We’ll get an X ray at the hospital and see how bad it is,” Ruth said.
    “It’s a compound fracture,” Archie said. “He’s bleeding under the skin.”
    “I’m sorry, Toussaint. I had it arranged with the promoters for you next month.”
    “He’ll get another chance. The money boys are watching him.”
    “They thought you’d make a good drawing card to fight an out-of-town boy.”
    “How’s Pepponi?” Toussaint said.
    “He was all right after he got up. You just took the wind out of him,” Ruth answered.
    Archie cleaned the blood out of Toussaint’s eye with a piece of cotton.
    “Here’s what I owe you for the fight,” Ruth said.
    “There’s a little bit extra to hold you over. Tell the doctor to send his bill to me.”
    “I ain’t asking for no handout, Mr. Ruth.”
    “I know you’re not. I always give a boy something extra when he gets hurt and has to lay off a while.”
    Ruth tucked the money in Toussaint’s robe pocket.
    “When your hand is all right come down to the arena and we’ll see what we can do,” he said.
    Ruth left the room. The ring doctor came in and put Toussaint’s hand in a temporary sling. He cleaned the cut over his eye and closed it with twelve stitches. Toussaint dressed without showering, and he and Archie drove to the hospital for an X ray. The intern said that he had broken several bones in the back of his hand and it would take a long time to mend. The intern set the hand in an aluminum brace that was shaped to the curve of the palm and fingers and didn’t allow any movement of the fractured bones. Archie drove Toussaint to his flat.
    “Ruth meant it about you coming back to the arena when your hand is well,” he said.
    “The doctor told me I got to wait six months before I fight again.”
    “What about your job on the docks?”
    “They ain’t hiring one-arm men to handle freight.”
    Toussaint lived in a tenement building a few blocks from the warehouse district. He went up the narrow stairway through the darkened corridor to his room. The room was poorly furnished, and dingy like the rest of the building, with a tattered yellow shade on the window, a single bed with a brass bedstead, a wall mirror and a scarred chest of drawers by an old sofa that was faded colorless; the wallpaper was streaked brown by the water that seeped through the cracks every time it rained. He turned on the single bulb light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. He took off his sling to undress, and rinsed his face in the washbasin. He looked in the mirror at the row of black stiches across his eye; one side of his face was swollen into a hard knot. He showered, turned out the light, and went to bed.
    Outside in the alley he heard drunken voices and the rattling of garbage cans. He looked up through the darkness and thought of his home in Barataria, south of New Orleans. He wondered if he would ever go back. A woman yelled for the drunks to be quiet.