236
PARTISAN REVIEW
triangles. Add them backward and get more. Those tricks are
in
the blood.
Then you believe it's all in the way you manage. Manage
right and be a big-shot. Manage right and never die. Fight him
back with a stick; blow back in his face. It's in your hands to do
it and in your power.
Walk on the edge without falling.
If
you fall, grunt, give
yourself a punch when nobody watches. That's it, you see, the
verge, the edge, the crumb of a minute before when any one of
twelve, fifty, eight, thirty seven comes out. The last minute without
air, without breath, without end. Though the keenness falls off
when it's day in day out and the long shots break like well-con–
trolled pitches and you win cagily, nervelessly. Like getting a pay
envelope.
But lose, too.
Too
more often than not. That's how it turns
out. Money owing, rent postponed, hole in your glove, one egg,
cheap tobacco. Then you hear the swishing in the heart like a deck
riffled, and the stains grow under the arm.
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