Chapter 25

When his six-month appointment at VA ended, Bud took a series of part-time jobs including some construction work but finally decided that he could not succeed at school if he was working at night. He went home.

"Paw," he said to his father after his first supper at home, "I've got a problem."

His father nodded without looking up from his diligent pipe cleaning.

"I have to give Jeanne and the kids at least a hundred a month, and I want to go to school so I can get a better job."

"I'd say that's a problem," said Sam Williams, scraping the bowl of his ancient pipe with a small aluminum tool that looked like a truncated ten-penny nail.

"You got any suggestions?"

His father sniffed and glanced at him. "Go talk to your wife. I don't know how she feeds those kids on twenty-five a week, not the way prices are now; even milk's gotten awful dear. Her folks must be helping, but when she comes here on a Sunday, everybody looks clean and healthy. Go talk to her. Tell her you've changed."

"I can't, Paw. Not the way things are." Bud hung his head. "Can you lend me some money?"

Sam Williams sucked on his pipe and made a sour face. "I suppose."

"I'm looking for work. I'm going to make my schedule just Monday-Wednesday-Friday at school. I had to drop one course."

Sam nodded and stuffed coarse tobacco into his old pipe.

"So I'm going to start looking for work. Buster told me Congressional Country Club was hiring assistant greenskeepers."

"I'll talk to your mother. She might pay you to take care of her rentals on the weekends, doing repairs and such. The man she's got now ain't worth," he paused and smiled, "nothing, ain't worth nothing."

For the next six months Bud worked for his mother, cutting lawns, trimming trees, fixing broken windows, hauling trash and doing general maintenance on the five homes she was renting and checking on the two farms she and Sam still owned farther out in the County. In return his folks gave him $120 a month for his wife and children and ten dollars a week for himself. His mother went back to fixing him lunches to take to Montgomery Junior College three days a week, and Bud's class work improved greatly, he even passed the first semester of Spanish, a course he had failed once and withdrawn from on the second try.

Bud joined the college track team in the spring, learned to throw the discus as well as putting the shot and then the coach talked him into taking part in the school's annual boxing tournament. Bud weighed about 180 so he was classified as a heavyweight. He practiced in his gym class for a month, learning to throw a left jab and cover the side of his face with his right hand while he moved his feet, and then one night in May he had his first bout. His opponent was a dark young man who weighed about 220 and had a roll of fat about his middle. Bud had never met him until they touched gloves.

They grappled, shuffled around and punched at each other's shoulders and then Bud landed a straight left to his opponent's good-sized nose. Blood poured out and the referee quickly stopped the bout. Bud had won in forty-nine seconds.

He had not even begun to sweat so he stayed and watched the second heavyweight bout since he would have to fight the winner of that match. The two young men who came into the ring were both veterans and one had "USMC" tattooed on his shoulder. Their fight lasted all three one-minute rounds and the winner had a swelling mouse under his right eye.

The next Saturday, Bud got dressed for his fight after having cut one lawn and cleaned up about an acre of brush on one of his mother's dairy farms. The young man he fought was five years older and ten pounds heavier than he was, but Bud lasted the three one-minute rounds and did not tell anyone about the silver glove he won for second place in the tournament. He had done a pretty good job of protecting his face, but it took him a couple of weeks before he could laugh or cough without some pain.

He got an A in PE that semester, his first college A.