Rory Calhoun and Mushy
Callahan accept his speechless invitation. Mushy's nose is albino
strawberrys slumped by sunlight.
Rory immediately starts needling Mike,
asking how he got his cauliflower ear. Mike has told the story so often
that the record scratches, but he is greatful to have an ear worth
mentioning. 
"There's little blood cells in there," he
says.
"You keep hitting the ear and the blood cells bust and expand. If you
get it right away, while the blood is still hot, you can drain it. Then
you put an ice pack to it and it'll be all right. But then you go back
and fight the next night, you get hit, it'll come up again. So every
time you have it drained, or you wait two or three days, it forms a
cartilage and hardens. But one time I had an ear way out like this."
Mike cups an invisible softball over the left side of his head.
Mike cocks his head so his cauliflowered
side leads, and he says that for a long time he used to walk like this.
"It was a trademark, but 
you know,
it's a funny thing--I was vain enough to think that if I didn't have an
ear, maybe I'd make it big in the picture business. So I had a fake ear
made. I thought it could get me lover parts like Rory's." Mike squeezes
Calhoun's perfect ear. "It looked like the real McCoy, but everybody
said I couldn't be a leading man. Who? Me with a raspy voice? Let me
tell you though--they'd give talking parts to collies before they'd screen
test a wrestler."
