by Paul Bishop
Split Decision Round 1
Kansas City, Ks. 1953
I knew I had Barker when he started to fight dirty. Most fighters start out on the up and up, only turning to the cheap shots when things weren’t going their way. Round three though, the son of a gun tried to lace me.
Barker pivoted around so his back was to the referee, then came at me high with a left jab. He made like he was aiming for my right eye, then he let his glove drift wide. The idea was to get the laces on the inside wrist of your glove to rub alongside your opponent’s face like a cheese grater. As soon as he threw the punch, we both knew the stunt.
So, fine. Barker wanted to play it that way, okay.
It felt good to be winning. I’d dropped my last three, putting me below .500. Not a good record for a kid supposedly on the rise. A rise to the middle. To the punch drunk league with all the stumblebums out there taking licks for nothing more than cab fare home.
My form was on, I wasn’t out of breath yet. Hard work had paid off and no way this joker was going to take this match out from under me with some cheap shots.
I laid three in Barker’s gut and had him on the retreat again when the bell rang, signaling the end of the third round. All I wanted to do was keep on punching until he hit face down on the canvas, but that would have to wait another ninety seconds.
In the corner, my manager, Sal, put down the stool and tipped a bottle of water into my mouth. I swished and spat into the bucket.
“Did you see that? He tried to lace me,” I said.
“What’s that?” Sal turned his good ear to me.
“He tried to lace me,” I repeated.
“Aw, he’s scared, that’s all.” Sal had been there and back and seen it all along the way. A salty old-veteran of every fight hall from here to Buffalo, Sal had punched himself silly years ago, then kept it up for another ten years after that. His nose had been broken so many times he’d lost count. Matching cauliflower ears hung like lamps from each side of his head, and he moved with a hitching limp that had finally brought his days in the ring to an end. Why he’d picked up a go-nowhere prospect like me, I’ll never know. I was his only middleweight, and I felt the tag was plenty appropriate. My talent was in the middle. The highest I could ever get in the fight game was somewhere between the title fight and the gutter. He knew it and I knew it, like the palooka across the ring and I both knew he threw those laces at me.
Still, Sal treated me like a contender. He may have been punched dumb, but he was no fool. Treat your boys right, and they’ll treat you right. Guess he always reminded me of Father Tim in that way. That was enough for me to hitch my wagon to Sal for keeps.
The bell rang for the fourth, and I came out blazing. I backed Barker into a corner straight away, banging body shots into him until he bent at the middle like a little wilting flower. Sucker.
I brought out my uppercut to lift his chin, but that wasn’t where the damage came from. The damage came in my follow-up right cross to the now wide-open chin. As many times as I’d practiced the move in sparring, it came as second nature to me.
His chin rose like it was praying to the Virgin Mary, and from there, it came easy. His head snapped to the side, his jaw knocked out of place and staying there. I knew he was headed for the floor, but I couldn’t resist one last shot.
Out on his feet, his hands dropped and I laid one straight shot to his face, pulled it a little left, and ran my laces across his eyebrow. The skin split open like a pair of lips gasping for air, and the blood ran into his eyes before he hit the mat.
The ref pushed me back and started to count, but I didn’t stick around to listen. I went back to my corner, where Sal waited for me with a big grin. I heard the bell. Fight over. My record came even at ten and ten.
Over Sal’s shoulder was Lola, my girl. She comes to every fight, even though I always tell her not to. A lot of guys like to bring their gals to the fights, but I thought it was no place for a lady. Most of them ended up bored, filing their nails and waiting for the bloodshed to be over so they can get home. Still they come, content with their role as arm candy for the big shots as long as it keeps them in mink.
Of course, the crowd at the Excelsior was more a squirrel-masquerading-as-mink than a real fur-and-diamonds crowd.
And Lola was my diamond. She smiled at me, I smiled back. My face wasn’t even bruised up that night. No cold steak over a black eye for me. A night out with my winnings, treating Lola the way she deserved. A double in her highball, and dessert after the meal.
Two more fights to go that night and she knew the drill. I’d meet her out front. She couldn’t make it to the locker rooms, and there was no reason for her to hang around inside to see a bunch of sluggers she didn’t know.
After my three seconds of glory standing center ring with my fist in the air, Sal took me down to the locker rooms.
“Real good, kid. Real good,” he said. “You read him like a book.”
Easy for Sal to say. He couldn’t read any more than I could do Chinese algebra. That part of his head had been punched away a long time ago.
We went through our usual post-bout rubdown, and there was not much to talk about since the fight had gone so well. We didn’t talk about what to work on for next time. Mostly because there was no next time scheduled.
“What do we got lined up, Sal? I gotta eat, y’know.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Jimmy.” Sal kept on rubbing, squeezing a little hard like his mind was somewhere else. “You and me both. None of my boys have been getting much play lately...”
He trailed off, thinking about hard times and empty cupboards. Yeah, things were lean for all of us. Sal past his prime, and me and his other sluggers at the peak of ours. Sheesh, that was a sad state of affairs. His hands dug into my back, taking out their frustration without him realizing it.
“Hey, lay off there, Sal. I won. No need for punishment.”
“Sorry, kid.” He took his hands off me, rubbed them together to get rid of the liniment oil. “I been meaning to talk to you...” He trailed off again. Not unusual for Sal. He sometimes dropped thoughts like the act of letting them out of his mouth made the whole idea he was trying to communicate slip away.
“Just let me know when we got the next one set, okay, Sal? Maybe after tonight, I can get something a little further up the card, y’know?”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe, Jimmy.”
I hopped off the table and started dressing. “It’s just, well, you know how it is, Sal. How I feel about Lola. You know I been wanting to ask her to marry me. I can’t do it without two nickels to rub together. Got my eye on a ring, you know. Real diamond and everything.”
“Yeah, Jimmy. It’s tough times all around.”
Just like Sal to make me feel guilty about wanting the best for Lola. Sal had it rough. Not a dime left from his fight days, and when I went on a three-fight losing streak, it made it hard to secure any kind of purse. And him taking a percentage of what I thought wasn’t enough to live on? Man, I was a heel for not thinking about him first.
“I’m sorry, Sal. I know I ain’t been exactly making it easy for you.” Neither had any of his other pugs, but I didn’t want to remind him. Rubbing salt in the wound, y’know?
“Well, you see, Jimmy...”
This time he was cut off by a knock at the door. Odd. Not many people made it down the long hall to the locker rooms. Fewer had the politeness to knock.
I looked up, my pants on but unbuttoned and my chest still bare. Through the door came a small man in a fancy suit. Two much bigger men were with him but they stayed outside, bookending the door and looking like they were waiting for something to happen.
“Sal!” the man said. Sal looked down at the concrete floor and sheepishly extended a hand to the well-dressed man.
“Mr. Cardone, good to see you again.”
Cardone shook Sal’s hand but looked past him to me standing by my locker, half-dressed.
“This is the guy, huh? Jimmy Wyler, right?” He p
ointed a finger at me, and despite the smile on his face, it felt like an accusation. “A hell of a bout out there. You really showed that joker what for.”
He brushed past Sal and held out a hand for me to take. I turned and shook with him. The top of Cardone’s head came to my shoulder. It wasn’t until he was right up on me that I noticed exactly how short he was. He carried himself like a much taller man.
He aimed that wagging finger at me again. “I came here tonight with an eye on you. Sal here has told me a lot about you.”
“That right?” I couldn’t figure this guy. He didn’t smell like a promoter. Too much aftershave, not enough sweat. The suit, the vest, the tie clip, the pocket-watch chain, and the mirror-shined shoes all said money. But what kind of money?
“Been trying to get Sal to let me near one of his boys for a long time. And you?” He looked me up and down. “You’re just the ticket.”
I looked at Sal, but he kept his eyes down, away from me.
“Mr. Cardone has a proposition for you, Jimmy,” Sal said to the floor. What was with all the “mister” stuff?
“I got a fight for you,” Cardone said. “Next week if you want it.”
“Sure. I want it.” It was what I’d just been on Sal about, so I couldn’t turn down an offer just because the guy offering it gave me the creeps. “You a promoter? I never seen you around.”
“I’m a promoter of sorts. I put things together. Fights, other things. Entertainments.” He lowered his chin and looked up at me from under the brim of his expensive hat. “I arrange things.”
He dropped the hints and I caught them.
“How’d you like another one in the win column?” Cardone asked with a smile. I caught him sliding an eye down across my bare chest.
“Always.”
“I think I can,” he winked at me, “arrange that for us.”
I turned to Sal, who continued staring at the floor. “Is this a fix-up?” I asked. Why not get it out there? I was not much for speaking in codes.
“It’s a chance for you to win another one and make a little scratch while you do it.”
“So that’s a yes?”
For the first time, the smile slipped off Cardone’s face. He turned to Sal. “Sal, are we gonna have a problem here?”
Sal didn’t react, just stared at his shoes. I figured Sal just didn’t hear him.
“Sal?” he said louder.
Sal finally looked up. “No, no, Mr. Cardone. No problem. We’ll take the fight. No problem.”
The idea of a fix didn’t sit well with me, even if I came out on the winning side. Plus, I was upset with Sal not telling me beforehand, but I realized he had been trying to when Cardone came in. Still made me wonder how long he’d been planning it.
Cardone turned back to me. “So, kid, we have a deal?”
Sal spoke with a mixture of pleading and guilt. “It’s a good deal for us both, Jimmy. Real good.” I pictured Sal’s empty gym, his failing health, the string of young fighters under his belt who spent more time face-down on the canvas than they did sleeping in their own beds. Good for him, sure. Then I thought of that ring I had in mind for Lola. The money I’d already put down on layaway. Good for me, too. Maybe.
I looked again at the expensive suit Cardone wore. How much money does a man have to have that makes him carry himself a foot taller than he really is? Must be a lot.
“Did I mention it pays five hundred bucks?” he said.
I felt like I took a glove to the temple. My knees went a little soft. I didn’t think he noticed. I learned something about myself right then. I learned I had a price.
Round 2
“Took you long enough.” Lola stood on the sidewalk in front of the Excelsior fight hall. A woman like her didn’t belong on a dirty sidewalk dodging drunks and salesmen all hopped up on the fights and brimming with fake manhood. Every night she came out to the fights, she must have got a hundred propositions from men offering to take her away from all this.
Lucky for me, she never went with any of them. She waited for me. I couldn’t figure why.
I ran out and wrapped her up, twirled her, and set her down before kissing her.
“Jimmy Wyler, you settle down,” she said, pulling away from my clinch. “It was a good win, but you didn’t take the title or anything.” She smiled. Oh, that smile. Something about that grin made me want to punch out the teeth of ten men. I couldn’t explain it. It was how a palooka thinks.
“Lola, honey, I’m taking you out.”
“Where to? Coffee and a donut? Maybe a hamburger?” She had my number. One sure bet—she wasn’t with me for my money.
“Steak and all the trimmings. Ice cream sundae. Whatever you want.”
“Sheesh, Jimmy, maybe that was the title fight and I just didn’t know it.”
“Anything for you, baby.” I kissed her again.
“I changed my mind. You got knocked loopy. Maybe I wasn’t watching that part.”
“The only thing I’m loopy for is you, doll.”
“Well, then take me out quick, before you come to your senses.”
I had thirty-five dollars in my pocket from that night’s bout. She didn’t need to know the size of my meager roll. What mattered was I had five hundred coming to me. She didn’t need to know that either. Let alone how I was planning on earning it.
In the restaurant, we sat next to each other in a red-leather booth.
“See?” I said. “We’re a match.” I liked my steak bloody, and so did Lola.
I forked another hunk of good old Kansas beef into my mouth and smiled as I chewed.
“We’re a pair all right,” Lola said.
“I’m telling you, things are looking up. Won’t be long now, and I’ll have a big question for you.”
Lola said playfully, “I heard that one before.”
“No, I’m serious,” I called the waiter over and ordered another beer. “And dessert for the lady. Anything she wants.”
“We have a nice cheesecake tonight,” the waiter said in a fake French accent.
“Jimmy, are you sure you can afford this?” Lola whispered to me.
“Bring it,” I commanded the waiter. “With strawberries on top.”
“Very good, sir,” the waiter said, rushing away. Felt good to have someone call me sir. Still, I felt kind of bad since with dessert and another beer, I’d pretty much spent all of my thirty-five bucks and he wasn’t going to get much of a tip.
On the doorstep of her rooming house, Lola kissed me goodnight. She still tasted like strawberries. I wanted like hell to go up to her room, but the all capital letters of the NO MEN ALLOWED sign above the entrance gave me the brushoff. I could feel the stink eye of Mrs. Lovell peeping through her blinds. For a woman who loathed any kind of lovemaking, she sure was keen on being an eyewitness to any that went on around her front stoop.
“I love you,” I said, trying to sound serious and sincere. I probably sounded like a school kid trying to do Shakespeare. You could memorize the words but never get the feeling.
Lola laughed. “Love you too, Jimmy.”
I did a skip up the steps and planted one last kiss on her. “I love you more.”
“I swear, you’ve got the gooiest center underneath the hardest shell of anyone I ever met.” Like I said, she had my number.
“It’s what you love about me, right?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess it is.” She’d wrapped her arms around my neck, speaking in that wistful way she liked to do. Thinking about the future. A future with me. I still didn’t know how I rated a gal like her, but I wasn’t about to let her go.
“Oh, Jimmy. How long until we get our own place, have a couple of kids, settle down?”
“Soon, Lola. Soon.” A lot sooner with five hundred bucks in my pocket. ‘Course with that ring I had on layaway, that five hundred would be out of my pocket and onto her finger in a jiffy.
“Jimmy, you remind me of my dad. Have I told you that?”
“No.”
“He was a dreamer too. He worked with his hands. In a way, I guess you do too.”
“Not forever, baby.”
“The thing is, my dad made me a dreamer too. Two dreamers like you and me, Jimmy—you think that’s a good thing?”
“I can’t think of anything better.”
Lola. A good Midwestern girl. Going to make a good Midwestern wife. I knew she wouldn’t wait forever, though. The count had started. I needed to make something happen before it got to ten.
She kissed me on the forehead. “Sweet dreams.”
“When they’re of you, they’re always sweet.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” she scoffed. “Where do you get this stuff? A greeting card?”
She sure didn’t love me for my way with words. Best not to question it, best to get on with making her my bride.
I blew her a kiss, did a little Gene Kelly down the street, noticing the lace curtains in Mrs. Lovell’s apartment window slip back into place.
I was so keyed up that night I couldn’t sleep. Five hundred bucks. Man. Y’know the way some guys can go snow-blind in the Arctic? I’d gone money-blind. It was only after an hour of lying in bed staring at the ceiling that I started to really think about what that money meant.
Dirty money. Crooked dough. The end of my legit career.
So be it. I was never gonna fight for the title. If this let me get out of the racket before I was punch-drunk, better for me. If it let me put a ring on Lola’s finger, I’d do just about anything.