Read Online The Chief by Robert Lipsyte - Free Book Online Page A

name?”
    â€œDave Reynolds.”
    â€œDave the Fave?”
    â€œYou know him?”
    â€œYeah, he trains at the same gym Sonny does when he’s in New York.”
    â€œSo what do you think?”
    â€œSure, but Sonny’s manager’s in New York. Alfred Brooks. He should be here.”
    Richie nodded. “The champ likes you boys a lot. We can get the hotel to comp some more rooms, but you’ll have to cover the plane flights. We can front the dough off your purse.”
    I fell back in the car, letting the coffee slop on my pants. Just like that, I’d made Sonny’s big-time match. His breakthrough.
    Â 
    That morning John L. zigged when he should have zagged, and Sonny smacked him in the face. It wasn’t a hard shot, a slow right cross, and John L. shook it off, but from the look on Richie’s face you’d have thought Sonny dropped a lead pipe on John L.’s head. Something must really be wrong with Solomon.
    John L. invited us to dinner again that night, but this time it was just the four of us. Sonny brought him the medicine pillow. You could see how pleased John L. was by the gift; he kept touching it.
    He was very relaxed that night, talkative. “Tomahawk Kid—I like that. When I was startingout, I had a manager, dead now, called me the Maccabee Kid. You ever hear about the Maccabees?”
    We didn’t even get a chance to shake our heads.
    â€œTough Jews, the Maccabees. They whipped the Syrians—they were some kind of fighters.” He was squeezing the pillow in his big freckly hands. “When Papa Maccabee died, the oldest boy, Judah, took over, and when he got killed, his brother Jonathan took over, and then Simon. I loved that story. I never had brothers. Would’ve liked that, a kid brother. A son.” He was looking at Sonny. “I might have a son someday.
    â€œYou always hear about Jews being People of the Book, but we’ve always been fighters, had to be to survive. Like Indians. I mean, what’s a ghetto, just an Italian word for reservation, right? Jewish kids grow up, they hear about the Holocaust, about getting knocked around, they should also hear about Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, all the great Jewish boxing champs….”
    â€œRelax, champ,” said Richie, “don’t get all…”
    â€œWhatcha got if you don’t got history, right, Sonny?”
    Sonny surprised me. “Moscondaga once had a secret society of warriors, the Running Braves. They stood up to the government when it tried to wipe out our language, our culture….”
    â€œSame story. The Maccabees rose up when the Syrians wanted us to worship Greek gods.” John L.’s face was bright red.
    â€œYou ought to call yourself something like that,” said Richie. “Running Brave or Chief…”
    â€œThat’s sacred stuff,” said John L. “Be like me calling myself the Fighting Rabbi.”
    Richie rolled his eyes at me, but Sonny and John L. exchanged glances; they were really getting to understand each other. I felt good for Sonny, but a little cut out.
    Â 
    Richie arranged for us to borrow one of the white double-stretch limos the hotel used to pick up their big gamblers. It had a bar, a phone, a fax and a TV with a VCR. Sonny and I waited in the back while the driver met Jake and Alfred in the terminal. Their eyes bugged when they saw the limo. Sonny and I were laughing so hard we didn’t see Robinuntil she climbed in.
    â€œYou?” I sputtered like a geek.
    She gave me the eyebrows. “Hey, you wouldn’t be here in the first place if I hadn’t come up with the idea.”

15
    A T SIX O’CLOCK IN the evening it was still so hot in the parking lot outside the Oasis that it hurt to breathe. In the ring, under the TV lights and the canvas top, it must have been more than a hundred degrees. Richie knew what he was doing, making Sonny run in the heat. I hoped it would cool