A Piece of Steak

by Jack London

With the last small piece of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean and chewed the final mouthful in a slow and thoughtful way. When he got up from the table, he was still hungry. Yet only he had eaten. The two children in the other room had been sent to bed early, so they might forget they hadn’t had supper. His wife had touched nothing and had sat silently and watched him with worried eyes. She was a thin, worn woman of the working-class, though signs of an earlier prettiness were there in her face. She had borrowed the money for the meagre dinner from the neighbour across the hall. The last two half-pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a chair that groaned under him and, mechanically, he put his pipe in his mouth and his hand into the side pocket of his coat for his tobacco. There wasn’t any and so, scowling, he put the pipe away. His movements were slow, as if from the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solid-looking man. His rough clothes were so old that they could no longer be repaired.

But it was Tom King's face that advertised who he was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of someone who had been long years in the ring and developed all the marks of the fighting animal. The lips were shapeless and his mouth was like a cut in his face. The jaw was aggressive and brutal. The eyes were almost expressionless under the heavy eyebrows. They were sleepy, lion-like, the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead moved quickly back to the hair, which was cut very short and showed every bump of a criminal-looking head. A nose, twice broken by countless punches, and a permanently swollen ear, twice its original size, completed his appearance, while the beard, though he was clean-shaven, gave the face a blue-black stain.

Altogether, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a lonely place. And yet Tom King was not a criminal, nor had he ever done anything criminal. Outside of brawls, usual in his walk of life, he had harmed no-one. Nor had he ever started an argument. He was a professional and all the fighting in him was saved for his professional appearances. Outside the ring he was easy-going and, in his younger days, when money came in fast, too open-handed. He had very few enemies. Fighting was a business with him. In the ring he hit to hurt, hit to destroy, but there was no spite in it. It was his business. Audiences paid to see men knocking each other out. The winner took the bigger part of the prize money.

When Tom King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years before, he knew it was only four months since Gouger's jaw was broken in a Newcastle fight. And he had aimed for that jaw and broken it again in the ninth round, not because he disliked Gouger, but because that was the surest way to win. Gouger had not hated him for it either. It was the game and both knew it and played it.

Tom King had never been a talker and he sat by the window, silent, staring at his hands. The veins on the backs were large and swollen and the knuckles smashed. He knew the meaning of those big veins. His heart had pumped too much blood through them at top pressure. They no longer did the work. He tired easily now. He could no longer do twenty rounds very fast, fight, fight, fight, from bell to bell, and fighting fiercest and fastest of all in that last, twentieth round, with the audience on its feet and yelling, himself rushing, striking, raining showers of punches and receiving showers of punches in return, and all the time the heart pumping the blood through the healthy veins.

The veins, swollen at the time, had always shrunk again, though each time, unnoticeably at first, remaining just a little larger than before. He stared at them and at his smashed knuckles and, for the moment, remembered those hands when he was young, before the first knuckle had been smashed on the head of Benny Jones.

The feeling of hunger came back.

"I could eat a piece of steak!" he muttered aloud.

"I tried both Burke's and Sawley's," his wife said apologetically.

"And they wouldn't?" he demanded.

"Not a halfpenny. Burke said..." She stopped.

"Go on! What did he say?"

"He thought Sandel would win tonight and we already owe him a lot of money."

Tom King didn’t reply. He was busy thinking of the dog he’d kept in his younger days to which he’d fed steaks without end. Burke would have given him credit for a thousand steaks – then. But times had changed. Tom King was getting old, and old men fighting in second-rate clubs couldn't expect credit.

He had got up in the morning wanting steak and the feeling had not gone away. He’d not had much training for this fight. It was a drought year in Australia, times were hard and even the most irregular work was difficult to find. He had no sparring partner and he hadn’t had the best food or even, sometimes, enough of it.

He had done a few days' manual work when he could get it and he had run in the early mornings to get his legs in shape. But it was hard, training without a partner and with a wife and two kids that must be fed. The secretary of the club had advanced him three pounds – the loser's end of the prize money – but no more. Now and then, he had managed to borrow a bit from old friends, who would have lent more but it was a drought year and they were hard-pressed themselves. No, his training had not been satisfactory. He should have had better food and no worries. Besides, when a man is forty, it is harder to get fit than when he is twenty.

"What time is it, Lizzie?" he asked.

His wife went across the hall to ask and came back.

"Quarter to eight."

"They'll be starting the first bout in a few minutes," he said. "I don't come on for over an hour."

At the end of another silent ten minutes, he got up.

"The truth is, Lizzie, I ain't had proper training."

He reached for his hat and started for the door. He did not offer to kiss her – he never did when he was going out – but tonight she dared to kiss him, throwing her arms around him and forcing him to bend down to her face. She looked quite small against the huge size of the man.

"Good luck, Tom," she said. "You’ve got to do him."

"Ay, I’ve got to do him," he repeated. "That's all there is to it. I’ve just got to do him."

He laughed, trying to be cheerful, while she pressed more closely against him. Over her shoulders he looked around the bare room. It was all he had in the world, with the rent overdue, and her and the kids. And he was leaving it to go out into the night to get meat for his wife and kids – not like a modern working man going to his machine, but in the old, animal way, by fighting for it.

"I’ve got to do him," he repeated, this time with desperation in his voice. "If it's a win, it's thirty pounds – and I can pay all that's owing, with a lot of money left over. If I lose, I get nothing – not even a penny for me to ride home on the bus. The secretary's given me all that's coming from the loser's end. Good-bye, old woman. I'll come straight home if it's a win."

"And I'll be waiting," she called to him along the hall.

It was two miles to the club and as he walked along he remembered how he had once been the heavyweight champion of New South Wales and he would have got a cab to the fight, and how, most likely, some supporter would have paid for it. But he was walking! And, as any man knew, two miles’ walk was not the best start to a fight. He was an old one, and the world didn’t go well with old ones. He was good for nothing now except manual work, and his broken nose and swollen ear were against him even in that.

He found himself wishing that he had learnt a trade. It would have been better in the long run. But no-one had told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have listened if they had. It had been so easy. Big money, great fights, periods of rest and in between, handshakes, everyone glad to buy him a drink for five minutes' talk – and the yelling audiences, the lightning finish, the referee's "Tom King wins!" and his name in the sporting newspapers next day.

Those had been times! But he realized now, in his slow, thoughtful way, that it was the old ones he had been fighting. He was Youth, rising; and they were Age, vanishing.

It was no surprise it had been easy – with their swollen veins and smashed knuckles from the long fights they had already had. He remembered the time he beat old Stowsher Bill in the eighteenth round and how old Bill had cried afterwards in the dressing-room like a baby.

Perhaps old Bill's rent had been overdue. Perhaps he'd had a wife and a couple of kids at home. And perhaps Bill, the day of the fight, had not had the piece of steak he wanted. Bill had fought well and taken incredible punishment. He could see now, after he had gone through that life himself, Stowsher Bill had fought for more that night twenty years ago than young Tom King, who had fought for easy money. No wonder Stowsher Bill had cried afterwards in the dressing-room.

Well, a man had only so many fights in him, to begin with. It was the iron law of the game. One man might have a hundred hard fights in him, another man only twenty; and, when he had fought them, he was done. Yes, he’d had more fights in him than most of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard fights – the kind that took the elastic out of the veins, that wore out stamina and made bones tired from too much effort. Yes, he’d done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old lot. He’d seen them all finished and he’d had a hand in finishing some.

They had tried him out against the old ones and, one after another, he’d put them away – laughing when, like old Stowsher Bill, they cried in the dressing-room. And now he was an old one and they tried out the youngsters on him. Like this one, Sandel. He’d come over from New Zealand. But nobody in Australia knew anything about him, so they put him up against old Tom King. If Sandel made a good show, he would be given better men to fight, with bigger prizes to win; so it was sure he would put up a fierce battle. He had everything to win by it – money and fame and career; and Tom King was there to stop him getting on the road to fame and fortune. And he had nothing to win except thirty pounds, to pay the landlord and the tradesmen.

As he arrived at the club, a crowd of young lads were hanging around outside the door but made way for him, and he heard one say to another: "That's him! That's Tom King!"

Inside, on the way to his dressing-room, he met the secretary, a clever young man, who shook his hand.

"How are you feeling, Tom?" he asked.

"Great," King answered, though he knew that he lied, and that if he had a pound, he would give it right there for a good piece of steak.

When he left the dressing-room and came down to the ring, applause went up from the waiting crowd. He waved right and left, though he did not know many of the faces. Most of them were the faces of kids unborn when he was winning his first fights. He sat down in a corner of the ring. Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook his hand. Ball was a broken-down fighter who for over ten years had not entered the ring as a wrestler. King was glad that he had him for referee. They were both old ones.

The audience applauded again as Sandel himself sat down in his corner. Tom King looked across the ring at him curiously, for in a few minutes they would be locked together in the fight, each trying with all the force in him to knock the other into unconsciousness. His face was handsome, crowned with yellow hair, while his thick, muscular neck suggested great strength.

King glanced over to the press box and nodded to Morgan of 'The Sportsman' and Corbett of 'The Referee'. Then he put on his gloves and tied them tight. Sandel's trousers were pulled off, and, as he stood up, his sweater was taken off over his head. And Tom King, looking, saw Youth, big-chested with muscles under white satin skin.

The two men advanced to meet each other, and, as the bell sounded, they shook hands. And Sandel was in and out and in again immediately, landing a left punch to his eyes, a right to the ribs, dancing lightly away and back again. He was quick and clever. The house shouted its high opinion of him. But King was not amazed. He had fought too many fights and too many youngsters. He knew the hits for what they were – too quick to be dangerous. Clearly Sandel was going to rush things from the start. It was expected. It was the way of Youth.

Sandel was in and out, here, there, and everywhere, light-footed, a living wonder of muscle on the attack, aimed at the destruction of Tom King, who stood between him and fortune. And Tom King patiently waited. He knew his business, and he knew Youth now that Youth was no longer his. There was nothing to do till the other lost some of his energy and he smiled to himself as he deliberately ducked so as to receive a heavy blow on the top of his head.

It was an evil thing to do, yet fair according to the rules of boxing. A man was supposed to take care of his own knuckles, and, if he insisted on hitting an opponent on the top of the head, he did so at his own risk. King could have ducked lower and let the blow go harmlessly past, but he remembered his own early fights and how he smashed his first knuckle on an old fighter’s head. He was only playing the game. That duck had damaged one of Sandel's knuckles. Not that Sandel would notice it now. He would go on, hitting as hard as ever throughout the fight. But later on, when the long battles had begun to tell, he would regret that knuckle and look back and remember how he smashed it on Tom King's head.

The first round was all Sandel's. He beat King with an avalanche of punches and King did nothing. He never hit once, happy to cover up, blocking and ducking to avoid punishment. He occasionally shook his head when the weight of a punch landed and moved about, but never jumping or wasting his strength. King's slow-moving eyes gave him the appearance of being half asleep. Yet they were eyes that saw everything, that had been trained to see everything through all his twenty years and more in the ring. They were eyes that coolly measured distance.

Seated in his corner for the minute's rest at the end of the round, he lay back, his arms resting on the ropes, his chest gulped down the air. He listened with closed eyes to the voices of the audience, "Why don't you fight, Tom?" many were crying. "You ain't afraid of him, are you?"

"Too much muscle," he heard a man on a front seat comment. "He can't move quicker."

The bell sounded and the two men advanced from their corners. Sandel came forward fully three-quarters of the distance, ready to begin again. King had not trained well and he hadn’t had enough to eat and every step counted. Besides, he had already walked two miles to the club. It was a repetition of the first round, with Sandel attacking and the audience asking why King did not fight. Sandel wanted to make the fight faster, while King refused. To the majority of the audience, it seemed like King was hopelessly outclassed. But there were a few clever ones who knew King in the old days.

The third round began as usual, one-sided, with Sandel giving all the punishment. A half-minute had passed when Sandel, over-confident, left an opening. King's eyes and right arm flashed in the same moment. It was his first real blow, his whole body behind it. It was like a sleepy lion suddenly pushing out a lightning paw. Sandel, caught on the side of the jaw, fell like a bull. The audience gasped. The man could hit like a hammer.

Sandel was shocked. He was on one knee, ready to rise, and waited, while the referee stood over him, counting the seconds loudly in his ear. At the ninth second, he rose in fighting attitude, and Tom King, facing him, was sorry that the blow had not been a little nearer the jaw. That would have been a knockout, and he could have carried the thirty pounds home to the wife and kids.

The round continued to the end of its three minutes, Sandel for the first time respecting his opponent and King slow and sleepy-eyed as ever. As the round neared the end, King worked the fight around to his own corner. And when the bell sounded, he sat down immediately on the waiting stool, while Sandel had to walk all the way to his own corner.

It was a little thing, but it was the sum of little things that counted. Sandel was forced to walk that many more steps, to give up that much energy and to lose a part of the precious minute of rest. At the beginning of every round King walked slowly out of his corner, forcing his opponent to advance the greater distance. The end of every round found the fight manoeuvred by King into his own corner so that he could immediately sit down.

Two more rounds went by, in which King made little effort and Sandel a lot. His attempt to force a fast pace made King uncomfortable, for a fair percentage of the blows landed. Yet King continued in his slowness, despite the shouting of the young hot-heads for him to go in and fight. Again, in the sixth round, Sandel was careless, again Tom King's huge right fist flashed out to the jaw, and again Sandel took the nine-second count.

By the seventh round Sandel settled down to what he knew was going to be the hardest fight in his experience. Tom King was an old one, but a better old one than he had ever met – an old one who never lost his head, who was extremely clever at defending himself, whose blows hit like a hammer and who had a knockout punch in both hands. Nevertheless, Tom King dared not hit often. He never forgot his smashed knuckles and knew that every hit must count if the knuckles were to last the fight.

As he sat in his corner, glancing across at his opponent, the thought came to him that his wisdom and Sandel's youth would make a world champion heavyweight. But that was the trouble. Sandel would never become a world champion. He lacked the wisdom, and the only way for him to get it was to buy it with Youth; and when wisdom was his, he would have spent his Youth buying it.

King took every advantage he knew. He never missed an opportunity to rest his shoulder against his opponent and drove it stiffly into the other's ribs. A shoulder did as much damage as a punch and took much less effort. Also, King rested his weight on his opponent and hated to let go. This forced the referee to pull them apart, always helped by Sandel, who had not yet learnt to rest.

Sandel developed a fierce right punch to the body, which made it appear that King was taking enormous punishment, but in the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King's right fist twisted to Sandel’s jaw and three times Sandel's body, heavy as it was, fell to the floor. Each time he took the nine seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken but still strong. He had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. King's chief advantage was experience. As his vitality had left him, he replaced it with cunning. He had learnt how to seduce an opponent into throwing his strength away. King rested, but he never allowed Sandel to rest. It was the strategy of Age.

Early in the tenth round King began stopping the other's rushes with straight lefts to the face and Sandel, now wary, responded by ducking them and delivering his right in a huge punch to the side of the head. It was too high to be effective, but when first it landed, King knew the black veil of unconsciousness. For a moment, he stopped. It was as if he had slept for a time and just opened his eyes again, and yet the interval of unconsciousness was so microscopically short that there had been no time for him to fall. The audience saw him totter and then recover.

Several times Sandel repeated the blow, keeping King half dazed, and then he worked out his defence. Pretending to hit with his left he took a half-step backward, at the same time punching upwards with the whole strength of his right. It was timed so accurately that Sandel was lifted in the air and hit the mat on his head and shoulders. Twice King did this, then hammered his opponent to the ropes. He gave Sandel no chance to rest, but smashed blow upon blow till the house stood on its feet and the air was filled with unbroken applause. But Sandel's strength was superb and he continued to stay on his feet. A knockout seemed certain, and the referee tried to stop the fight. The bell sounded for the end of the round and Sandel staggered to his corner, promising the referee he was still strong.

Tom King, back in his corner and breathing hard, was disappointed. If the fight had been stopped, the prize money would have been his. Unlike Sandel, he was not fighting for career, but for thirty pounds. And now Sandel would recover in the minute of rest.

Tonight Youth sat in the opposite corner. As for himself, he had been fighting for half an hour now, and he was an old man. If he had fought like Sandel, he wouldn’t have lasted fifteen minutes. But the point was that he did not recover. Those veins and that heart wouldn’t let him regain his strength in the intervals between the rounds. And he hadn’t had enough strength to begin with. His legs were heavy. He shouldn’t have walked those two miles to the fight. And there was the steak he had wanted that morning. A terrible hatred rose in him for the butchers who refused him credit. It was hard for an old man to go into a fight without enough to eat. And a piece of steak was such a little thing, a few pennies at best; yet it meant thirty pounds to him.

With the bell that opened the eleventh round, Sandel rushed, making a show of freshness which he did not really feel. King knew it for what it was – a bluff as old as the game itself. King waited, then pretended to hit with his left, saw the answering duck, made the half-step backwards, and made the upwards punch full to the face. Sandel fell to the floor again. After that he never let him rest, receiving punishment himself, but giving far more, smashing Sandel to the ropes and even when Sandel would have fallen, catching him with one hand and with the other immediately smashing him into the ropes where he could not fall.

The house by this time had gone mad and it was his house, yelling: "Go to it, Tom!" "Get him!” "You've got him, Tom! You've got him!" It was to be a lightning finish and that was what an audience paid to see.

And Tom King, who for half an hour had saved his strength, now used it in the one great effort he knew he had in him. It was his one chance – now or not at all. His strength was going fast and his hope was that before the last of it left him he would have beaten his opponent down for the count. And as he continued to hit, coolly estimating the damage done, he realized how hard a man Sandel was to knock out. Sandel was certainly going to have a future.

Sandel was staggering, but Tom King's legs were aching. Yet he forced himself to make the fierce blows, although every one killed his painful hands. Though now he was giving almost no punishment, he was weakening as fast as the other. His blows landed, but there was no longer the strength behind them. Sandel's supporters began calling encouragement to their man.

King was pushed to a burst of effort. He gave two blows one after the other – a left, a little too high, and a right to the jaw. They were not heavy blows, yet so weak and dazed was Sandel that he fell down. The referee stood over him, shouting the count of the fatal seconds in his ear. If before the tenth second was called, he did not rise, the fight was lost. The house stood in silence. King rested on shaking legs. Yet he looked on the fight as his. It was impossible that a man who had been punished so much could rise.

Sandel rose. At the fourth second he rolled over on his face and moved blindly for the ropes. By the seventh second he had pulled himself to his knee, where he rested. As the referee cried, "Nine!" Sandel stood up, his left arm around his face, his right around his stomach.

At the same moment Sandel rose, King was at him, but the two blows he gave hit the boy’s arms. The next moment Sandel was holding on desperately while the referee tried to pull the two men apart. King helped to force himself free. He knew the speed with which Youth recovered, and he knew that Sandel was his if he could prevent that recovery. One hard hit would do it. Sandel was his, definitely his. He had out-fought him. One good blow would push him over and down and out. And Tom King, in a flash of bitterness, remembered the piece of steak and wished that he had it then behind that necessary punch he must deliver.

He nerved himself for the blow, but it was not heavy enough nor swift enough. Sandel did not fall, staggering back to the ropes and holding on. King staggered after him, and delivered another blow. But his body had left him. All that was left of him was a fighting intelligence, clouded from exhaustion. The blow that was aimed for the jaw struck no higher than the shoulder. He had wanted the blow higher, but the tired muscles had not been able to. And, from the impact of the blow, Tom King nearly fell. Once again he tried. This time his punch missed altogether, and, from absolute weakness, he fell against Sandel and held on to him to stop himself from falling to the floor.

King did not try to free himself. He was gone. He could feel Sandel growing stronger against him. When the referee pulled them apart, there, before his eyes, he saw Youth recover. From moment to moment, Sandel grew stronger. His punches, weak at first, became hard and accurate.

Tom King's unclear eyes saw the fist driving at his jaw. He saw the danger, wanted to block it; but the arm was too heavy. It would not lift. Then the fist landed home.

When he opened his eyes again he was in his corner and he heard the yelling of the audience. A wet towel was pressed against the bottom of his brain, and cold water was being thrown over his face and chest. His gloves had already been removed, and Sandel was shaking his hand. He had no bad feeling towards the man who had put him out and he returned the handshake with a strength that made his knuckles hurt. Then Sandel stepped to the centre of the ring. King looked on apathetically, dried his face and prepared to leave the ring.

He remembered the moment when he had Sandel so near defeat. Ah, that piece of steak would have done it! It was all because of the piece of steak. People were half-supporting him and helped him through the ropes. He pulled free from them and jumped heavily to the floor.

Leaving the dressing-room for the street, some young man spoke to him.

"Why didn't you go in and get him when you had him?" he asked.

"Aw, go to hell!" said Tom King, and passed down the steps.

He had not a penny in his pocket, and the two-mile walk home seemed very long. He was certainly getting old. He sat down suddenly, made unhappy by the thought of his wife sitting up for him, waiting to learn the result of the fight. That was harder than any knockout, and it seemed almost impossible to face.

He felt weak and the pain of his smashed knuckles warned him that, even if he could find a job at manual work, it would be a week before he could hold a spade. He covered his face with his hands, and, as he cried, he remembered Stowsher Bill that night long ago. Poor old Stowsher Bill! He could understand now why he had cried in the dressing-room.