We sat there on the porch. Hogan was inside at the office.
“What do you think about the shape I’m in?” Jack asked me.
“Well, you can’t tell,” I said. “You got a week to get around into form.”
“Don’t stall me.”
“Well,” I said, “you’re not right.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Jack said.
“You’ll be all right in a couple of days.”
“No,” says Jack, “I got the insomnia.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I miss the wife.”
“Have her come out.”
“No. I’m too old for that.”
“We’ll take a long walk before you turn in and get you good and tired.”
“Tired!” Jack says. “I’m tired all the time.”
He was that way all week. He wouldn’t sleep at night and he’d get up in the morning feeling that way, you know, when you can’t shut your hands. “He’s stale as poorhouse cake,” Hogan said. “He’s nothing.”
“I never seen Walcott,” I said.
“He’ll kill him,” said Hogan. “He’ll tear him in two.”
“Well,” I said, “everybody’s got to get it sometime.”
“Not like this, though,” Hogan said. “They’ll think he never trained. It gives the farm a black eye.”
“You hear what the reporters said about him?”
“Didn’t I! They said he was awful. They said they oughtn’t to let him fight.”
“Well,” I said, “they’re always wrong, ain’t they?”
“Yes,” said Hogan. “But this time they’re right.”
“What the hell do they know about whether a man’s right or not?”
“Well,” said Hogan, “they’re not such fools.”
“All they did was pick Willard at Toledo. This Lardner,
