The Gamble (Bareknuckle) Read online

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Patrick, 1961–

  The gamble / by Patrick Jones.

  pages cm. — (Bareknuckle)

  Summary: In nineteenth-century New York City, teenaged Leung promises not to compete in bareknuckle boxing matches until he fixes his sloppy technique, but when his uncle’s gambling debts get out of control, Leung must enter the ring to save him.

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1462–4 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–2410–4 (eBook)

  [1. Boxing—Fiction. 2. Immigrants—Fiction. 3. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 4. Orphans—Fiction. 5. Uncles—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—History—1865–1898—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J7242Gam 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013027522

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 12/31/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-2410-4 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-4008-1 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-4007-4 (mobi)

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Center yourself!” Uncle Tso slapped Leung’s legs with a bamboo rod to make the point. Leung said nothing as the thick stick snapped against his hamstrings.

  Uncle Tso raised himself from the wooden stool he’d brought into the alley. Leung and his uncle were training behind the crowded Mott Street tenement that they now called home.

  Tso placed his right hand on Leung’s shoulders and whispered, “Be like bamboo: firm yet flexible. Centered but supple.”

  Tso spoke the words in Chinese. He had refused to learn English since they crossed the country five years back, from California to New York, riding the rails their family had helped to build.

  Leung drew in a deep breath and vowed to find the perfect balance within himself. Late-spring dew hung heavy in the air, but it would soon surrender to the smells of a lower Manhattan morning. From each of the Five Points—from the Italians, the Irish, and now the Chinese—came scents of breakfasts cooked and beverages brewed.

  “If balanced, you can both attack and defend. Balance is the essence of Wing Chun,” Uncle Tso explained. Leung stared at his foe: a wooden dummy. Tso had mastered wooden dummy combat, yet he rarely did so well against human foes. Unlike Leung’s father. His father had won every battle from California to Utah and back again. And unlike the burly bareknuckle boxers Leung had spied battling at the Woodrat Club, Leung’s father had fought for pride, not for pennies.

  “Leung, keep a high narrow stance. Hold your elbows close,” his uncle explained, his voice strong yet soft. “Your arms protect your body.”

  With his elbows tucked tight, Leung threw hard strikes with his hands and then his feet. The first rule of fighting was to protect your-self—Leung’s father had once said this. The man had lived that way; he had died that way too.

  Leung corrected his stance and threw faster, more accurate punches against the dummy. “Your form must be perfect,” Uncle Tso said. “Leave nothing to chance.”

  Biting on his bottom lip, Leung held back a chuckle. Chance? Uncle Tso’s life revolved around games of chance. To Leung’s knowledge, Tso had yet to venture into white gambling dens, but he was well known in the parlors of Chinatown, often disappearing for days.

  “Is something funny?” Uncle Tso snapped the rod near Leung’s bare feet.

  Leung shook his head. Sweat dripped down his bare chest. “I want to fight, not just practice forms,” he muttered.

  “You have no challengers here,” Tso replied. “Few here know Wing Chun, and none are better.”

  “Then across Mott Street. There are fights at the Woodrat, and I—”

  Uncle Tso ended Leung’s sentence with a smack of the stick across his face. “No.”

  Leung ran his hands over his shaved head. A long, black strand of hair hung behind him, as was custom for young Chinese men. Traces of blood from his hands turned his sweat crimson.

  Uncle Tso resumed his instructions: “Center yourself. Breathe in. Relax. Punch with your body, not your arms. Don’t punch straight, but up. Punch up and—”

  “Your foe goes down,” Leung said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Do it again, Leung,” Uncle Nang snapped in Chinese. When Uncle Nang taught the older students, he spoke English. Except when he was angry.

  Leung reasoned through the math problem again. He believed that when the chance came, he could defeat any man in a fight, but the abacus was an unbeatable foe.

  Leung’s Uncle Tso and his father had taught him the art of Wing Chun. But Uncle Nang, his father’s oldest brother, taught him everything else. It was Uncle Nang who left Guangdong, their province by the South China Sea, for America in 1850.

  Although Nang never found gold in California, he believed he’d found a place of more opportunities than he had ever known in China. Leung, his father, other uncles, and nephews arrived five years later. Most of the woman stayed behind, although Leung’s mother joined them on the journey. She had died while on the trip.

  “Let me see your hands!” Uncle Nang said. Leung complied. The knuckles were scraped, cut, and bruised, just the way Leung liked them. Uncle Nang shook his head.

  “Why does Tso continue to waste your time?” Nang continued.

  “He wants me to be the fighter he never was,” Leung said, replying to Nang in their native tongue.

  “English!” Uncle Nang shouted at the class, and maybe to remind himself of his own rules. The other students—twenty in total, ranging in age from seven to Leung’s seventeen—whispered and giggled. “If we are to succeed, we must learn their language. We must learn and obey their rules.”

  “They don’t obey their own rules,” Leung said. “That is why my father is dead.”

  Nang nodded and walked away. After the riot in California that took his brother’s life, Nang had moved the family to New York. It wasn’t the paradise he had imagined. Instead, he and the others were cold, hungry, and jammed together in small spaces.

  The Five Points offered few places for the children to play and no place but the alley for Leung to practice Wing Chun. None of the residents of the neighborhood practiced the form, which made no sense to Leung. Didn’t they know what had happened in California? Why didn’t they learn how to protect their families? For Tso, safety came by avoiding contact with the white world; for Leung, the best protection was to show everyone that he was a fighting master.

  “You have nothing to say, Uncle Nang?” Leung asked. Nang never spoke of his brother’s death.

  Uncle Nang said nothing in Chinese or in English. Leung tensed his arms, holding back the urge to strike out. Finally, Uncle Nang spoke. “America is a
hard land.”

  Leung turned his attention back to the abacus. His uncle began to work with younger students. Because Nang spoke some English, he’d been a valuable man not just to his family but to all the other Chinese working on the railroad. Valuable, but not strong or brave enough to save his brother’s life.

  As other students chattered on, Leung again heard Uncle Nang say something about obeying the rules. But those rules had done nothing to protect their family five years ago, when the rioters came. Leung had just started to learn Wing Chun then, so he could do nothing as he watched his father murdered, his house burned, and his family robbed. Leung wasn’t a fortune teller like those that Uncle Tso visited in the gambling parlors, but he knew the path that lay before him: vengeance.

  Yet, when he felt the heat of hatred rise within him, Leung knew to stay centered. He closed his eyes and dreamed of achieving perfect form and balance.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Where are you going so fast?” Uncle Tso asked Leung.

  Leung knew he couldn’t lie to his uncle, so he pretended not to hear him.

  “Leung!”

  Uncle Tso reached out and grabbed Leung’s arm with this right hand, but Leung escaped his uncle’s grasp. “I have to go,” was all Leung said before he ran toward Mott Street.

  The tiny street overflowed with other Chinese immigrants. As Leung walked down the crowded street, he passed the sidewalk vendors selling candy and cigars. Chinatown was its own world, but Leung longed for more.

  From his back pocket, he removed the folded-up scrap of paper that he’d come across the night before, when he’d ventured into the Five Points. Like Leung’s neighborhood, the Five Points was filled with old buildings jammed with people new to the city. Leung suspected that as bad as things were in the Five Points, everyone had come there to escape something worse. Before Leung took the step across Mott toward Mulberry, he put on a large straw hat to hide his features.

  He walked head down, clutching the paper. It showed a drawing of two men posing with their elbows bent. Leung didn’t need to read English to know what it meant: a bareknuckle fight at the Woodrat.

  The club was to the east, in the Bowery. It wasn’t Leung’s first time sneaking out to peek in on a fight there, but it was his first time at night. He’d overheard men say the fights at night were better, although Leung wondered how that could be. The fights he’d seen before had been bloody affairs. Men lost teeth, and in one case, a man had his eye knocked out of its socket. Brutal affairs, long on brawn but short on brains. Fighters without fear or form.

  To Leung’s disappointment, a crowd of drunks stood in front of the tiny window he’d peered through before. Leung knew better than to try to go inside.

  Leung walked past the crowd, through the garbage-packed ally. Men began shouting and clapping from inside the club as if the fight were about to begin. Leung piled wooden crates on top of other crates to form a makeshift ladder. Using all his strength, he pulled himself through the window of an abandoned room above the club. As he’d hoped, a crack in the floor gave him a glimpse of the battles below.

  Unsure of his footing, Leung crawled on his hands and his knees toward the best seat in the house. He gazed down in amazement as two men fought—or boxed, as men in the Bowery called it. One fighter was a young man with thick, black hair. The other was a little older, with hair the color of a carrot.

  The two men punched each other until both were bleeding. Men from the crowd called out for more. Yet over all the noise, Leung heard something else, something behind him. He turned and saw a boy about his age and size, except with red hair.

  “Tell me something, fella,” the boy said to Leung. “Is my dad winning?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “You speak English?” the kid asked as he sat on the floor next to Leung.

  Leung said nothing, but the kid kept talking. Leung struggled to understand without losing track of the fight below.

  “He’s undefeated, but that’s ’cos it’s his first fight,” the kid continued.

  Leung studied the form of each fighter. Neither man demonstrated balance; both men threw clumsy blows.

  The boy’s dad punched hard, knocking the wind out of his opponent. The other man had beaten the count so far, but Leung knew from watching his father that fighters often realize who the winner is before a fight ends.

  “So, you like to watch fights?” the kid asked.

  Leung shrugged.

  “Me too, I want to be fighter like my dad. You fight?”

  Leung shrugged again as the boy leaned in next to him.

  “Is your dad teaching you? My dad’s teaching me. He’s a great teacher.”

  Leung froze but still said nothing.

  “Who do you think is going to win? My dad said everyone is betting on the other guy—I guess he’s from England—but let me tell you, an Irishman can beat a Brit any day of the week and twice on Sunday after church. See what I mean?”

  Once again, the black-haired man below was flat on his back, except this time his eyes were closed, swelling shut. Someone threw in a white towel from the corner.

  The red hair kid clapped in delight. “Ain’t nobody tougher than an Irishman. Nobody on God’s green earth—”

  “Nobody except a Chinaman,” Leung said.

  The Irish kid stood up and gave Leung the once-over, as if Leung were a piece of meat in the market.

  “So, you do speak. You don’t speak the truth, but you speak. My name is Sean.”

  The kid stuck in hand out. Puzzled, Leung bowed instead.

  “What, you too good to shake my hand? Or maybe you think something’s wrong with me?” Sean said. “Some people don’t care much for Chinamen, but I got no problem with ya.”

  Leung rose and centered himself, just in case. He held out his right hand but let relaxation flow through his left arm in case he needed to strike. Although his feet were planted like roots, he could swing them into action if needed.

  Sean smiled as he took Leung’s hand and squeezed it. “What’s your name?”

  Leung answered, and that made the Sean kid smile even more. Leung laughed.

  “So who is tougher? An Irishman or a Chinaman?” Sean squeezed harder.

  Leung squeezed back, then quickly let go. He pushed off his hat and assumed a fighting position. Cranelike, Leung stood prepared to strike.

  Sean laughed. “Only a fool fights for free, with nobody watching. Are you a fool?”

  Leung shook his head. Sean grabbed Leung’s hat from the ground and handed it back to him.

  “You got some crazy hair there, fella, and a strange way of holdin’ yourself,” Sean said. “It looks like—”

  “It’s called Wing Chun.”

  Sean scratched his red haired head. Leung explained the art as best he could. Mixing both English and Chinese, he shared the legend with Sean. The story of a young woman, Yim Wing-Chun, and the Buddhist nun who taught her a new way of fighting. Yim Wing-Chun used her knowledge to defeat a powerful warlord who wanted to make her his bride.

  As Leung told the story, Sean laughed.

  “So, you fight like a girl?” Sean asked.

  “I am balanced. Graceful like the crane and dangerous like the snake.” Leung didn’t laugh or crack a smile as he spoke. “But I always fight like a man.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “No, you’re not ready,” Uncle Tso scolded Leung. This session, Leung faced his uncle, not the wooden dummy. Unlike the dummy, Leung’s uncle fought back.

  As Leung picked himself off the pebble-filled ally, he felt pain shoot through his body. While Uncle Tso lacked striking power, he could still take Leung down with ease. Tso’s perfect form allowed him to maintain his balance and throw Leung seemingly at will.

  “I’m ready. I’ll show you,” Leung said. He threw a punch with his right hand, which his uncle blocked. Jab, kick, or throw, Leung couldn’t move his uncle. In all their times sparring, Leung had never seen his uncle so balanced. Maybe Uncle Tso was right; maybe L
eung wasn’t ready. When would he know?

  A side kick surprised Leung, but he deflected it. More arm strikes from his uncle followed, but Leung was fast enough to block each one. Leung sensed that even though they’d been sparring for just a short time, Uncle Tso was getting tired. The first fight he’d watched at the Woodrat Club had seemed to last from noon until twilight. Leung had never seen a fight of his father’s last longer than the time it took to eat lunch. Did that mean boxing was better than Wing Chun? Or was it the other way around?

  As Leung tried to strike back, his uncle moved in closer. Up close was where the true masters of Wing Chun were best. Although shorter than Tso, Leung was stronger. As they sparred, Leung felt he was gaining power, almost taking it from his uncle.

  Uncle Tso tried a throat strike with his right hand, but Leung slipped into position behind him. Tso tried to throw Leung off, and that’s when Leung felt it. His uncle’s body tensed up like a board Leung could break rather than bamboo that would bend. Leung drove furious strikes to the body like his father had done to his foes, like the other workers did to the railroad spikes, until his uncle gasped and crumbled to the ground.

  Leung backed off. They’d never sparred this hard before.

  “How can you say I am not ready?” Leung asked.

  Uncle Tso picked pebbles off his knees. He was bloody, but unbowed. He dug a finger into Leung’s chest. “I say when.”

  “When is that?”

  Breathing heavily, Uncle Tso answered. “When your form is perfect.”

  “But—”

  “You must be graceful as the crane, but as dangerous as the snake,” Tso said. “Right now you are neither!”

  “Then what I am?”

  “A boy who thinks he’s a man.”

  Leung slapped his uncle’s finger away. “I don’t need your permission.”

  “Yes, you do. I made a promise to your father, that I’d teach you to fight, I’d teach you to be a man. Unlike a board or a bone, a promise, once broken, can never be repaired. You don’t need permission; you need patience.”