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they’d grown roots below the canvas. Above his beefy shoulders, sweat shone on his round face. Beads trickled down his pulpy ears, his short, fleshy neck, his puffy bottom lip, and the cleft in his chin.
    Dorothy had met Ernie during one of her father’s scouting expeditions at that dreadful gym in Hoboken, the place he’d take her when trying to prove that boxing was the result of discipline and endurance. The athletes did work hard, but that didn’t prove anything. Most were lummoxes—their brains were as dense as their physiques—and every one of them was a pawn in her father’s operation. Ernie was no exception, but he was sweet and decent. And she knew he was smitten because she’d caught him stealing glances at her in between rounds on the brown leather dummy bag. She’d imagined feeling him inside of her, smothering her with muscle, sweat, and pleasure. It was her greatest sin, her weakness of the flesh, and she’d struggled for all of her twenty years to keep it under control. Father Jennings, the pastor at Saint Anthony’s of Padua, had told her months ago that he smelled this weakness on her, and she couldn’t deny it. It oozed out of her every pore. Still, when Ernie hit that dummy bag, walloping it with his gloved fists and peering around the side of it, she felt a tingle stirring beneath her corseted waist as her sin grew deep within her loins and clamored to be set free.
    On the day Ernie signed to fight Higgins, she’d sat with the fighter on a bench outside the trainer’s room, intoxicated by the spicy smell of his liniment. Had her father seen them, he’d surely have lit into Ernie. He didn’t abuse Negroes the way his cronies did, but that didn’t mean he had any use for Ernie other than as a stepping-stone for Higgins. And he certainly didn’t want Dorothy gumming up the works. She knew him well enough to know he’d have probably yelled about miscegenation, as if he didn’t create his own laws whenever he needed them. He’d have been so busy barking at her, she might have missed hearing Ernie say that he considered himself more than a rented dunderhead.
    â€œI’m not going to lose for nobody, not if I can help it,” Ernie said. “I won’t sell my pride. And I’m not gonna give up the prize money, neither.”
    It made sense that the twenty dollars meant more to Ernie than the title did; he couldn’t be making more than ten cents an hour sweeping streets in Hoboken.
    Now he stood in the ring, lumbering in a small circle, punching the fetid air in front of him.
    â€œHiggins will be out soon,” Dorothy’s father said, his blue eyes contrasting a mane of white hair that was combed back off his forehead, each strand plastered into place. His face was so clean-shaven it looked as if it were made of clay.
    â€œWait’ll you see him, honey. He’s a born winner.”
    Her father owned 40 percent of Higgins. He’d bought his way into the fighter’s syndicate with a thousand dollars—more than twice what Aunt Ellen made teaching third grade all year in Baltimore.
    â€œLet’s hope this leads to the big paydays,” her father said. He squeezed her hand and she fought the urge to yank it back.
    He couldn’t possibly be nervous, could he? Dorothy knew little of what her father was up to, but the round-robin must have been weighted in Higgins’s favor. The only reason Ernie was given a chance to take on a white fighter was that he had the finesse of a wild boar.
    The last time Dorothy had seen Ernie he was standing on the scale at the weigh-in. She’d looked him in the eye and wished him luck. He’d nodded back while inflating his muscles and lifting both arms over his head as his trainer, Willie Brooks, wrapped a cloth tape measure around his chest. Now she prayed that all his hard work would give him a fighting chance.
    Her father leaned toward her ear.