Martin relives his fight with Cheese-Face

Martin relives his long rivalry with Cheese-Face at a moment when repeated literary rejection has left him nearly unable to continue. The memory carries him from childhood fights to their decisive battle on Eighth Street Bridge, then collapses past and present when he faints in his room. Its outcome becomes a measure of endurance: Martin turns the remembered victory into a promise to keep challenging editors.

The Present Crisis and the Return of the Past

Ten days after declaring that one battle was finished and more would follow, Martin looks at the room around him and the returned manuscripts he cannot afford to send out again. The envelopes have accumulated in a corner for a week; more are due, and he has no stamps. He is also a month behind on payments for his typewriter, with barely enough money for the coming week’s board and employment-office fees. The material limits on his writing make the phrase battle more than a figure of speech: the means to continue submitting work are running out.

At the table, Martin notices ink stains and realizes he is fond of it. He lowers his head onto his arms, and his thoughts turn to an early childhood fight. That transition opens a sustained recollection rather than a brief comparison. The accumulated manuscripts remain in the room, but for a time the history of his contest with Cheese-Face takes over his awareness.

A Childhood Rivalry Built on Repetition

Martin’s first remembered fight took place when he was six. An older boy beat him, and Martin wept as he kept punching until exhaustion overcame him. Six months later, Cheese-Face defeated him again, although Martin managed to blacken his opponent’s eye. The important distinction in Martin’s memory is not that he won, but that he did not run away. He takes strength from having stayed in fights even when he was beaten.

The rivalry becomes a daily routine when both boys carry the Enquirer. At eleven, Martin and thirteen-year-old Cheese-Face wait for the papers in an alley beside the pressroom. Their fight ends unfinished when the door opens and the newsboys crowd in to fold the first edition. Cheese-Face promises another fight the next day, and Martin agrees. He then remembers hurrying from school to the alley day after day, while the repeated fighting leaves him stiff and sore and interferes with both play and study. The boys are themselves exhausted by the cycle, but the watching gang makes pride difficult to set aside. The recollection presents persistence not as effortless courage but as a painful habit reinforced by an audience.

One afternoon, after a prolonged struggle, Cheese-Face offers to stop. Martin remembers refusing to quit, even though Cheese-Face is free to give in. The fights continue on subsequent days, neither boy finding rest until one has beaten the other or been beaten. Then, one afternoon, Cheese-Face does not appear. The boys congratulate Martin and tell him he has won, but he rejects that conclusion: neither boy has defeated the other, so their contest remains unresolved. Only later do they learn that Cheese-Face’s father died that day. The interruption is not a victory or reconciliation; the rivalry is simply left without its expected next round.

The Bridge Fight

Years later, at seventeen and newly returned from the sea, Martin encounters Cheese-Face during a disturbance at the Auditorium. The old opponent challenges him, and their gangs agree on Eighth Street Bridge as the place to fight. The bridge crosses an arm of San Antonio Estuary and has lights at its middle and both ends. The arrangement gives the groups a way to watch for police and escape if they appear. Lookouts take positions, while a member of Martin’s gang holds his clothes and cap ready for a quick retreat.

Before the fight, Martin sets its terms: there will be no handshake or surrender, and the grudge is to be settled decisively. Cheese-Face hesitates but accepts, unwilling to back down in front of the two gangs. Their contest unfolds before those onlookers, whose support and attention echo the childhood audience that had made pride so difficult to relinquish. The narration presents the fighters as driven back toward brute aggression, a stark contrast with the culture and refinement Martin has acquired in the years since.

The fight continues after neither side has gained a clear advantage. When Martin notices that a red-haired member of Cheese-Face’s gang has passed him a concealed weapon, he disarms him and throws it into the water. He warns against any further interference, and Cheese-Face surrenders the weapon. The battle nevertheless continues beyond ordinary exhaustion. Although others in the crowd recognize that it has become dangerous, no one stops it. Martin’s right arm is broken, and he carries on with his left until Cheese-Face finally falls. The people around them then lay hands on Martin and try to help him put on his coat; soon afterward, he loses consciousness.

Reliving the Victory in the Present

In his room, Martin has undergone the fight so completely in memory that he faints as he did on the bridge years before. A tin alarm-clock continues ticking while he lies with his face on his arms, unaware of it. After about a minute, he springs upright, sweating and disoriented, and announces that he has finally beaten Cheese-Face. He understands the victory in terms of the time it took: the rivalry began when he was a child and reached its end eleven years later.

For a moment, he does not know where he is. The manuscript pile brings him back to the present, along with the books, ambitions, and love that belong to his life now. The juxtaposition measures the distance he has traveled from the repeated fights of his youth, while also revealing how firmly the old contest remains available to him as a model. His victory does not remove the returned manuscripts or solve his lack of money. Instead, he turns the memory toward that unfinished struggle, telling himself that he will keep going and confront the editors as he confronted his old rival.

Narrative Significance

The episode is structured as a memory that repeatedly advances through time: the first childhood beating, the newsboys’ recurring fights, the disappearance that leaves the contest unresolved, and the bridge battle. Only after Martin faints does the remembered past give way to the present room. That movement makes the recollection more than background about his boyhood; it shows how he interprets his current literary setback through a former contest whose outcome eventually became decisive.

The parallel has limits. Cheese-Face was a single opponent, and the bridge fight had a clear ending; Martin’s editorial struggle has no such immediate resolution. His manuscripts remain unsent, his finances remain precarious, and publication is still uncertain. Yet he treats the remembered refusal to quit as evidence that he can endure another round. The scene thus closes on renewed resolve, not on proof that the editors will accept his work.