by Chad Dundas
“Evening time,” he said.
She scrunched her face into a pout. “I wish you’d let me be there,” she said. “I want to see you whip Jack Sherry like a stagecoach horse.”
He snorted, flicking some water out of the tub to show his patience was running out. “We talked about this,” he said. “I can’t afford to have my attentions divided, not right now.”
“But when you wrestle Strangler Lesko?” she said. “When you win the world’s heavyweight championship?”
He tried to smile. “They’d have to lock me up again to keep me from taking you to that one.”
He held his breath and plunged his head under the water, a frozen rush across his cheeks and over his scalp, the cold buzzing against the base of his skull. It hurt, but he stayed under as long as he could, a school of bubbles slowly trickling from his nose and mouth. He reminded himself to tell Carol Jean about the schoolboys, betting she would get a kick out of it; but when he came up for air, she was already gone.
The mill manager took a cash draw of twenty-five dollars from the safe in his office and sent them out of New Vermillion on a pump trolley hauling a skiff of freshly cut boards. Their pilots were two sour-smelling men in the wide, soft hats of hill people who spat at each other in some coarse language Moira didn’t know. There were no seats on the pump trolley, so she and Pepper hunkered down on the floor of the car, trying to keep out of the wind and sun and rain until the men let them off at a lonely station in the middle of the forest. The first train to arrive was headed south to Portland, so they bought tickets from the conductor and fell instantly to sleep in the deserted passenger car, waking only to change trains for a daylong trip in the opposite direction to Bellingham, Washington. They arrived at dusk, Pepper telephoned Fritz Mundt from the station and he showed up five minutes later to collect them, making little effort to hide a self-satisfied smile.
“Sakes alive,” Fritz said, fanning himself with his hat. “You smell like a carload of railroad tramps.”
It curdled her guts to see him again. He was thicker around the middle than the young man she remembered knowing in Chicago, and with his hat in his hand she noticed he’d gone bald on top of his head. He was probably barely into his thirties, but the years had put deep creases in his forehead and turned his mouth into a hard little line. When he clapped Pepper on the back and offered to carry their trunk, she felt a twinge of guilt for hating him so much.
As they left the train yard, Pepper remarked he was anxious to meet Garfield Taft, but Fritz said Taft wouldn’t arrive until the following day, just a few hours before his match against Alaskan Jack Sherry.
“Wait until you lay eyes on him,” he said to Pepper, the two of them walking along like grammar school friends who’d never shared an unfriendly word. “I have no doubt you’ll see exactly what I see.”
“A meal ticket?” Moira asked, and they both looked at her.
“Quite possibly the most naturally skilled mat man I’ve ever seen,” Fritz said. “And if you don’t mind my saying, Moira, the only meal ticket I know of in this scenario is me.”
“I’m sorry to be the fly in your soup, Freddy,” she sneered back at him. “My feelings are just a little tender at the moment.”
Fritz put them up at a hotel downtown, small but nice. The only thing Moira wanted to do was have a bath, and when a crusty old railroad worker at first refused to give up the tub at the end of the hall, she sent Pepper down there to run him off. Afterward, she locked the bathroom door and sat in the water until it turned ice-cold, ignoring a series of knocks at the door as she scrubbed and soaked. It felt like rubbing off an extra layer of skin. They sent their clothes down to be laundered and found them already delivered the following day, hanging on hooks outside their door.
They’d slept through breakfast service, but it felt like a great luxury to put on clean clothes and wander around the corner to a diner for lunch. She ate bacon, lettuce and tomato while Pepper ordered two entrées: a cheeseburger and a baked ham and Swiss sandwich on rye bread. His smile was alive with mischief at the idea he could eat whatever he wanted without worrying about his weight. She felt a little sorry for him, sitting there with his face still swollen and discolored from losing his fight to the huge mill worker. But his mood had lifted so much—even pointing out a couple of amusing entries from the local paper’s police blotter—that for the moment she kept her feelings about seeing Fritz Mundt to herself. They both drank cups of strong coffee and her sandwich really was pretty good.
That evening Fritz came to collect them for the match and the three of them walked down to the water, where she could see the town curling around the bay like the jaws of a serpent. A mist hung over the breaks, so thick she couldn’t make out the ends of the long docks that thrust out from the shore. They had visited so many towns during their time with the carnival that it was difficult for Moira to tell how any of them were special, but as night came on she could feel Bellingham pulsing with the raw energy of the west. These were places built on rushes for gold, timber and coal, and even as they grew from tent camps into brick-and-mortar cities, they never lost their wildness. There was a time when a place like this would’ve made her feel homesick for the sweaty, electric buzz of a steamboat cardroom. Now the only thing it stirred in her was a kind of thirst. This town itself had once been just a gamble. She liked to think the men who built it were of her feather.
As they turned in to the center of town, she listened to Pepper and Fritz going on about Garfield Taft. It was a name she’d heard a great deal during the past forty-eight hours, but she didn’t recall if she’d ever met the man during Pepper’s wrestling days. On the pump trolley out of New Vermillion, he had told her that Taft was once the most famous black grappler in the world. A heavyweight, an undefeated one, and after he’d beaten the rest of the best black wrestlers in the country he’d campaigned in the press for a shot at the world’s championship. Frank Gotch had retired by the time Taft came into his own, but new champion Joe Stecher was holding firm to wrestling’s color bar. Taft publicly called him a coward for it, even following Stecher on a tour of Australia during the summer of 1916. He sat in the front row of all the champion’s matches and openly mocked him as Stecher easily defeated a string of lesser talent.
The papers murdered Taft for his insolence, writing that he was an affront to the sport, yet another sign of our unraveling culture. Still, they gleefully printed all of his taunts about the champion, writing that the audacity of the modern Negro was without limit. By the following fall, Stecher’s resolve never to grant a black man a chance at his title might’ve been crumbling. He told his friends and training partners that, if the money was right, he might not mind giving Taft the whipping he deserved. Before the two could arrange a match, however, Taft was arrested and sent to prison for operating a whorehouse out of a property he owned in Cincinnati. Nobody had heard from him since.
At the top of a small hill they made a right and approached a stone building with the bulbous flared corners and narrow vaulted windows of a castle. The Bellingham National Guard Armory loomed dark and sturdy over the intersection, where a bored-looking traffic cop stood waiting for traffic. His eyes tracked them as they crossed the street. She smiled and the cop looked away, waving a lonely Studebaker through on a left-hand turn. Inside the armory an old woman sat at a table with her waxy purple hands folded on top of a metal cashbox. The woman nodded at Fritz, looking impressed with herself for remembering him, and allowed them to push through the double doors behind her without paying the cover charge.
Moira was surprised to find the armory’s gymnasium less than half full. Most of the audience sat in rows of folding chairs set up on the floor, while the bleachers that had been pulled out from the walls stood all but empty. The majority of the men were white and looked like slightly more citified versions of the loggers and mill workers they’d encountered in New Vermillion, in sagging overalls and sweat-ringed caps. Th
ere were a few blacks clustered around the back row of chairs and she saw one group of Indians, whose braids hung past the shoulders of their denim shirts. Fritz led them up an aisle and picked out seats in the center of the bleachers. She estimated there couldn’t be more than two hundred people in all.
When Pepper had told her they were going to a wrestling match, she imagined it would be held in the town’s best theater—men in suits and silk hats, girls going around serving refreshments—but the armory gym was dusty and dank. Threadbare tapestries hung from the walls, boasting of the achievements of the local National Guard reserves and the young officer training corps. The closest thing to a concession stand was an old man in short sleeves selling popcorn from a pushcart.
“This is a paltry affair,” she said as they settled into their places.
“It’s a decent little crowd for a bout like this,” Fritz said. “Between you and me, we were lucky to find a recognizable opponent for Taft in this area. Alaskan Jack was already out in Reno to face Chris Sorensen when we contacted him.”
The timekeeper tolled the bell to quiet the crowd. The ring announcer, a man with a shaggy beard and an ill-fitting blazer, held up a paper megaphone emblazoned with the blue and gray logo of the Washington State Normal School and reminded the crowd that the evening’s main bout would be one fall to a finish.
“Only one fall?” Pepper said.
“It’s all we could get Sherry to do,” Fritz said. “I wager he thinks he can walk out of here with a fluke win.”
Alaskan Jack Sherry was announced as weighing 210 pounds and wrestling out of the central fire station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He appeared to little fanfare, coming out of one of the locker rooms on the far side of the gymnasium. He was a weather-beaten man with jet-black whiskers and a thick crop of hair that hung almost to his ears. He wore a pair of knee-length wrestling tights; short socks rolled down to the tops of his black boots; and a towel that may once have been white slung over his shoulder. He kept his eyes on his feet as he strolled to the ring, not acknowledging the smattering of applause, his jaw fixed, his expression flat. Steadfast, Moira decided was the word for him.
“If no white man will wrestle Taft,” she said to Pepper as Alaskan Jack ducked through the ropes and into the ring, “then why is Sherry game?”
“Sherry’s a half-breed,” Fritz said, leaning around to look at her, “and he’d like to earn a shot at Strangler Lesko himself. A win here lifts either man’s standing.”
“Theoretically,” Pepper said.
When Garfield Taft stepped out of his locker room and into the light, it felt as though every man in the room stopped talking at once. Even Fritz forgot what he’d been saying, trailing off in mid-sentence. Taft wore a crimson robe with a towel rolled underneath the collar. He was tall, his bald head nearly reaching the top of the locker room doorway, and his body lacked the stocky bulk carried by some heavyweights. Instead he was built straight up and down, with impossibly broad shoulders, long limbs and calves thick with muscle. He was announced at 240 pounds and hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio. As he walked to the ring he surveyed the crowd, a small smile on his round face. He paused to wipe the soles of his boots on the ring apron before stepping over the ropes and into a corner opposite Sherry. The audience sat transfixed as he shrugged out of his robe and began to loosen up, swinging his arms lazily over his head and across his chest. A natural showman, Moira thought. She’d seen very few men who could hold a room by just standing in the ring. Pepper was one. Frank Gotch was another, the one time she’d seen him wrestle in front of a packed arena in Indianapolis.
The crowd came out of its spell when Taft stepped forward to shake Sherry’s hand, and a man in the front row who held a pair of spectacles in a tight fist yelled: “Kill that nigger!”
Taft’s smile only gleamed wider in response. He wore a black singlet, the trunks tied with a sash matching the color of his robe. When he turned to hand his towel to a ring attendant, Moira caught sight of a scattering of pockmarked scars bubbling pink across his back.
Pepper saw them, too. “What’s that about?”
Fritz shrugged. “Negroes have scars,” he said. “All the boys have scars.”
The referee gave them their final instructions, and Moira noticed one of Pepper’s legs was jittering. She put her hand on his knee to stop it. Men in the front rows were cupping their hands around their mouths to shout things at Taft, but their voices were lost to the din in the room. A scuffle broke out, two Indians clawing at each other’s faces as they tumbled to the floor, knocking over a row of chairs. Their friends pulled them apart, both men coming up bloody and winded, and Moira noticed for the first time that there wasn’t any security here. The men just went back to their seats still grumbling and glaring at each other.
The referee stood in the center of the ring clapping his hands to begin the match, and Sherry came out of his corner in a low crouch. Taft strolled around the edge of the ring, casually trailing a hand along the top rope. Sherry’s face remained blank as he followed him with his eyes, but neither man was in a rush to engage with the other.
“Get on with it!” a man shouted from the front row before a full minute had passed.
It was loud enough that Taft stopped to glare down at him, and Sherry took that as his cue, gliding forward to shoot in for a tackle. Taft turned as if noticing Sherry for the first time and, putting one hand on the back of his neck, pushed him down onto the mat face-first. Stepping out of his grasp, Taft walked away, giving his opponent a full view of his back as he crossed the ring. The arrogance of it rankled the crowd even more, and a man moved the ringside barrier a foot forward as he sprang out of his seat to jeer at him.
“They don’t seem to mind that Sherry attacked him while he wasn’t looking,” Moira said. “Do they?”
Pepper and Fritz were transfixed by the show in the ring. They didn’t answer her as Taft walked back to his corner and leaned against it, looking at Sherry like he’d just told a very old joke. Sherry got up from his knees and shook his arms out, working his neck back and forth a few times before coming forward again. This time Taft met him in the center, using one long arm to brace against Sherry’s forehead while the other dipped low and plucked his nearest ankle off the mat. The ease of it was startling, and as Sherry toppled over onto his backside, Moira saw Pepper look over at Fritz with his mouth in a silent Oh.
Sherry tried to scoot away, but Taft held firm, keeping him cradled on his side by pressing his weight down on top of him. For a moment it appeared they were both stuck. As long as Sherry didn’t move, Taft couldn’t pin him, and Taft couldn’t risk letting go long enough to improve his own position.
“He should be trying to snatch that arm,” Pepper said. “Sherry’s practically giving it away.”
The two wrestlers stayed like that, neither looking like he knew what to do, until Sherry began to writhe and stretch, eventually jiggling one of his legs free. When Taft moved to try to recapture it, Sherry sprang backward, coming to his feet as the crowd crowed its approval. Taft was slow getting up, and when he did, Moira saw he was slick with sweat, the smile gone from his face. Suddenly Sherry seemed to be the fresher man. He started to muscle Taft around the ring in a collar-and-elbow tie-up.
Fritz shifted in his seat, the bleacher muttering under his weight. Pepper leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. Moira realized she was holding her breath and inhaled deeply as Sherry backed Taft into a corner. It was clear that Taft’s size was giving him trouble. Try as he might, Sherry couldn’t get enough leverage to trip the big man and couldn’t get close enough to his body to grab for another tackle. The frustration and exhaustion were plain in both their faces. They might fight to a draw, Moira thought, just before Sherry reared back and thumbed Taft in the eye.
It was a quick, stabbing blow, but still simple enough to make out from their seats in the bleachers. Taft grunted and turned his head to the side, a
trickle of blood and a welt already appearing beneath his eyebrow. When the crowd saw him in pain, it only cheered louder.
The referee did nothing, pretending he hadn’t seen, and anger rose in Taft’s face. A curtain dropped behind his eyes. With one quick step, he ducked out of the corner and got behind Sherry, sweeping his legs out from under him with a vicious kick. Sherry fell onto his belly and Taft followed him down. Locking his grip tight around the other man’s waist, Taft laid his head in the middle of Sherry’s back and rolled. Throwing his hips over to the side, he bridged, forcing Sherry’s shoulders to the mat while his legs flailed impotently in the air. The referee went to his knees, pressing his cheek to the canvas to check the pin, and then slapped the mat with an open palm.
Moira thought a riot might break out. As Taft came to one knee, a hailstorm of crumpled programs and popcorn boxes roared down around him. An old man near the front had taken his false teeth out and was trying to decide whether to throw them. Taft used the top rope to pull himself to his feet and prodded at the swelling around his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He gave no indication at all that he noticed the bedlam in the stands. After ducking through the ropes and descending to the floor, his gaze locked on the place where Fritz, Pepper and Moira were sitting, and for a moment she felt glued to her spot. In an instant he looked right through her without seeming to see and then turned to stride down the aisle to the locker room. Not giving anyone in the crowd another glance.
It took close to fifteen minutes for the audience to filter out of the armory into the street, many of them still jostling and shoving each other in a way that made Moira feel sorry for the town’s speakeasies. By the time she, Pepper, and Fritz were able to work their way down off the bleachers and to the locker room door, a man sweeping the floor in a pair of coveralls told them Taft had already left.
“Left?” Fritz said, like it might be a put-on.