by T.R. Healy

Almost a dozen men stood huddled together on the arrow-shaped corner across the street from the old brick armory building, slapping their hands together to keep warm in the cold night air. The corner was known as the "corral" because for as long as any of the men could remember it was where scalpers congregated to sell tickets. Anyone caught selling a ticket outside the corral was subject to a stiff fine and up to a year in jail.

Two friends from work were unable to make the Golden Gloves tournament tonight so Seth Burgess had a couple of spare tickets. One of his friends was his supervisor, and if he had not asked him to sell the tickets, Seth would have left them in the glove compartment of his car or given them away. But he knew better than to disappoint his supervisor, well aware that when he made a suggestion he expected it to be executed. Indeed, Seth knew if he did not sell the tickets, he would have to pretend that he did and compensate his supervisor out of his own pocket.

He had not stood on the corner in years, not since he accompanied Merle to a Globetrotters game at the armory. And it was about the last place he wanted to be right now, hawking tickets like his late stepfather. "Tickets up front! Right near ringside!" he could still hear Merle hollering at the throngs of people making their way to the main entrance of the armory until he realized it was some guy behind him who was shouting in his ear. He smiled faintly, amazed that he could have confused Merle's voice with anyone else's even for a second. It was almost like a child's it was so thin and high, evoking a strange sweetness that adroitly concealed the fierce determination of his stepfather. Some people resemble their voices, certainly the other men on the corner did, but not Merle. He was a large man, with broad shoulders and a huge boulder of a head, and the voice of a choirboy.

"Fight night! Fight night!" someone next to him suddenly blurted, waving a handful of tickets. "Nobody wants to miss the fights!"

Another guy, dressed in baggy khaki shorts despite the frigid weather, screamed, "Need tickets, folks? Step right over here! I've got them!"

"Good tickets! Right where you want to be!" a scraggy man shouted incessantly. "But they're going like hotcakes!"

"Get your tickets! Get your ringside tickets!"

"Right up front! See every punch! Every bruise!"

Seth was quiet and waited for somebody to approach him for his tickets.  Just as he had done when he used to stand on the corner with his stepfather many years ago. Let the others make all the commotion, he figured, he would attract as much notice as any of them because everyone knew if you stood here you had tickets to sell.

* * *

Not every night, but often enough for a couple of years, Seth was out on the corner with his stepfather. Six days a week, Merle sold ladies shoes at a large department store downtown but some nights he earned almost as much money scalping tickets outside the armory and other venues. It was something he had done for years, long before he married Seth's mother, an avocation his father and uncles had introduced him to as a youngster not much older than Seth when he began taking him to the corner. "Give me a crayon and a piece of paper and I'll never go hungry," he used to boast, confident he could sell tickets over face value. And more often than not he did, but the few occasions when he didn't he would become furious, his eyes turning almost as block as the ticket smudges on his fingertips, and all the way home he would complain about the bottomed out market that evening.

At first, Seth thought his stepfather brought him along because he enjoyed his company and wanted to have someone to talk with when he was not making a sale. Fondly he recalled the times they used to play catch with an old scuffed tennis ball before the crowds started filing toward the armory, his stepfather throwing the ball straight up as high as he could sometimes and challenging him to catch it. "Nickel a catch!" he would shout, laughing, in a voice as seductive as the one he used to sell tickets. Seth dropped as many as he caught, but his stepfather always made sure he left the corner with plenty of nickels in his pocket.

"You are as dear to me as my own blood," Merle told him once during a game of catch. "You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"I would do anything I could for you."

"I know."

"I mean that, Seth. You know I wouldn't say something if I didn't mean it."

Gradually he came to realize that his stepfather wanted him along to help sell tickets because he was young and spry and appealing, not unlike a monkey on the shoulder of an organ grinder. Often they would be among the first to arrive at the armory and would plant themselves near the parking lot and beg for tickets. Merle, his thin voice suddenly smooth as butterscotch, would claim he wanted to take Seth to see his first hockey game or demolition derby or circus or motorcross or basketball game or whatever was going on that night at the armory. Then they would stand on the corner and sell the tickets for sometimes quite a bit more than they paid. Whenever his stepfather told him he wished he would never grow up, he suspected that was because he didn't want to lose his services as a figure of sympathy.

One slow evening on the corner, while waiting for people to make their way to the turnstiles, Merle noticed some bottle caps scattered across the sidewalk and, remembering something a friend of his saw once in New Orleans, he scooped up some of the caps and told Seth to take off his tennis shoes. Then he found a couple of thumbtacks on the ground, turned the shoes over, and stuck a cap to the sole of each shoe. Handing them back to his puzzled stepson, he told Seth to put them on and move around as if he were on a dance floor.

"I can't dance," the boy protested, lacing up his shoes.

"You don't have to, son. All you have to do is shuffle around and let your shoes make some racket and folks will think you are."

And so he did, wishing, as he stared at his clickety-clacking shoes, that they belonged to someone else because he felt so ridiculous. It was almost as if he were moving to the strains of an organ grinder. And, just as his stepfather expected, his crude dancing drew the attention of numerous people heading toward the armory, and when they paused to watch him Merle would make his sales pitch. 

"Mother, Mother, I am sick," one of the scalpers began to chant, bluntly clapping his hands in time with Seth. "Call for the doctor, quick, quick, quick!"

"You got to smoke, kid! You got to make some sparks! Round and round like a merry-go-round!"

"In came the doctor, in came the nurse," the lanky scalper continued. "In came the lady with the alligator purse!"

"Faster, kid! Faster!"

"You ain't no Astaire, but you sure can make a hell of a lot of noise," an older guy chimed in, his leathery face creased in a slight grin. "And that's what your old man wants---the louder the better."

Merle smiled, playfully plugging his fingers in his ears.

"Dance for your bread!"

"Get some elevation, boyo! Kick up your heels and climb the golden ladder!"

Suddenly Seth was seized from behind, fingers sharp as thorns digging into his waist, and hoisted in the air like a bag of groceries. He screamed, his shoes silently scissoring through the air. Then he was passed around from one person to another, all of them squawking with laughter as they pretended to lose their grip and let him fall. Within seconds, his stepfather intervened and set him back on his feet, holding him protectively against his side. The others, still laughing, complained that it wasn't fair he had a helper and they didn't. He ignored their taunts and urged Seth to resume dancing, but the youngster could not wait to remove the bottle caps from his shoes and declined. Merle did not insist but cautioned him not to lose the caps. Seth threw them away, however, determined never to dance on the corner again. He suspected the others were right, he was no more than a prop, like a cardboard sign designed to induce people to stop and purchase tickets from his stepfather. Just as he suspected Merle would have joined in passing him around if he did not think it would benefit the other ticket men

* * *

"Tonight's fights have been sold out for over a week," the scalper in baggy shorts observed to no one in particular on the corner. "You'd think there'd be a real demand for tickets, but it's as slow tonight as I've seen it in weeks."

"Seems like everyone who wants to go already has a ticket," Seth replied, staring at the passing thongs of fight fans.

Another scalper, overhearing him, disagreed. "Someone always needs a ticket. And I bet some guys are over at the parking lot doing their selling."

"Could be, but it's not worth the risk. There are undercover cops all around here on fight nights."

"It's either that, or we're going to have to eat a lot of tickets tonight."

"Folks walk right past us like we're not even here," a guy in a purple watch cap groaned, his breath condensing in the frigid air. "I can't believe it." He then picked up a hubcap lying in the street and desperately began banging on it with a broom handle he also found on the ground in an effort to attract the notice of people on their way to the armory. 

Startled, Seth looked away in embarrassment, reminded of the time his stepfather encouraged him to dance in order to attract business. Merle was a desperate man, willing to do almost anything to prevail, but Seth had never disliked him more than he did that night when he realized he was just someone else for him to exploit. Not any different than the people he sold tickets to night after night outside the armory. And a year and a half later, when his stepfather was arrested for embezzling nearly four hundred dollars from the bowling league he played in, he was neither surprised or disappointed, figuring Merle needed the money to buy more tickets to pay off his many gambling debts.

The guy continued to bang on the hubcap, shouting as loudly as he could, but Seth ignored him and moved to the opposite side of the corner, staring silently at the passing people. He preferred to swallow his spare tickets rather than make a fool of himself again.

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