Champion of the World

by Chad Dundas

  As a boy, when Taft first became interested in physical culture, he’d tried to attend a few of the black sports clubs on the outskirts of Madisonville but found them too rough. Because he was already big for his age, the older men and boys there were always keen to try him in a fight. When he started coming home with black eyes and bloody noses, his parents, the kind of deeply religious folks other people rolled their eyes at behind their backs, forbade him to go back. Instead, his father pinched together as much money as he could and paid for him to join one of the downtown white clubs.

  It wasn’t easy, because blacks were barred from all of Cincinnati’s better sporting associations. But the owner of the Chancery Athletic Club, an elderly white man named Adolph Fell, must have been intrigued after listening to Taft’s father beg and plead and brag on the prowess of his son, because he demanded to see the boy in the flesh. So on a Saturday morning his father loaded him on a streetcar and shuttled him downtown to the club, as big and impressive a place as he had ever seen at that time, and ordered him through a series of jumps, sprints and weight-lifting feats for this strange old white man. Fell stood back the whole while against one of the gym’s sweat-stained walls with his arms folded over a bare chest of scraggly gray hairs. It was unsettling, the first time in his life Taft felt like a show animal, paraded around, poked and jostled while Fell nodded and made small humming sounds as if cataloging every move in his mind.

  Whatever Taft accomplished that day, the old man must have been impressed, because with his father’s money pocketed he said the boy could come in and do his work after hours, after the white members had gone home for the day. Taft was delighted. For him it was the perfect arrangement, as it allowed him to do his workouts in private, without having to worry about other guys testing him. Soon Adolph Fell himself began to take an interest in his progress, designing routines he said would maximize his unique physical gifts and helping him perfect the movements of each exercise.

  It didn’t dawn on Taft until much later that Fell was a homosexual. At the time he just thought of him as a peculiar old man. He never presented himself to Taft in any inappropriate way. There were no secret gropings or come-ons like you sometimes heard about in seedier gyms. Still, years later, when he finally realized what Fell was, it bothered him. Was the old man secretly lusting after him during those private sessions? Was that the reason Fell let him join the gym in the first place? Taft loved women, and as he grew older it was obvious that women loved him back, but he often wondered now if that early relationship with Adolph Fell had opened some tiny door inside him, one that made him consider possibilities that might otherwise have been unthinkable to him. He guessed now he would never know. He had been with all kinds of women, of course, but the two he’d pledged major parts of his life to were both white. He wondered now if Fell was somehow responsible for that, too.

  His admittance into the Chancery Athletic Club was also the first time in his life he realized the rules didn’t apply to him. He went places black men weren’t supposed to go, did things they weren’t supposed to do. He stayed in the best hotels, made extravagant requests of waiters and bandleaders, shot his mouth off to white men and did things with white women that would’ve gotten any other black man lynched. For him, though, it was allowed. At least for a while. And why not? He was special, wasn’t he? He was, in his own opinion, the greatest natural wrestler who had ever lived. He had never been beaten and, had he not been arrested, he would’ve gone to Chicago and beat Joe Stecher for the world’s heavyweight title. It would have been easy. Stecher was good, but he was no Frank Gotch. He was no Garfield Taft.

  He had to laugh at himself a little bit, thinking this way. Spilled milk, his mother would have said, flashing the broad-minded but exasperated look she used when she thought her son was being ridiculous. Yet here he was, thinking that maybe he could still be champion.

  I’m still ridiculous, Mama, he thought. I’m the most ridiculous man alive.

  It had been a shock to him, once he was arrested, tried and sentenced to actual prison, to learn that he was not bigger than the rules after all. All of the special treatment he’d gotten as a famous wrestler had just been an illusion. In the only way that really counted, he was still just a black man, and if the whites decided they wanted to lock him up somewhere, they would. Simple as that. Even after the trial, in the days leading up to his sentencing, he half expected to be set free. As he lay awake at night in his holding cell in the county courthouse, he imagined he would be out and driving his race cars and eating at his favorite restaurants before he knew it. Sleeping in his big house with Carol Jean or Judith or whoever else he wanted. Thinking back on it, he wasn’t sure what he thought might happen. Did he think old Adolph Fell was going to come around wearing one of his outlandish outfits and explain to the judge and jury that, no, no, this particular Negro had too much potential, was just too pretty to be treated like the rest? Did a lifetime spent being told nothing but yes, yes, yes make him believe his own specialness would trump it all? Maybe it did.

  Well, that was all gone now, wasn’t it?

  He set the dumbbells down and went to the wrestling mat and did a series of push-ups and then, because he was still feeling good, some deep knee bends, hearing his joints creak and whimper under his weight. When that was over he did an exaggerated duck walk around the edge of the canvas, lunging forward with his front leg and trying to keep his torso as straight up and down as he could. Sweat dripped on the mat but he kept going, feeling the rush of it now after so much time off, so much doing nothing. He might not be special anymore, but he was still quick and strong. Carol Jean would come around, he told himself; she would sober up and see how stupid she had been to throw the ashtray at him and say those hurtful things. She would realize how silly it was to think he would have betrayed her with the Van Dean woman.

  With his legs tiring, he stood up straight at the middle of the mat and was struck suddenly with a wave of dizziness that dropped him to one knee. The dirt floor spun around his head, the weight rack catapulting along with it, the whole garage twisting. He closed his eyes, feeling a tingling in the tips of his fingers. Shaking them out, he heard a strange fluttering sound whistling in his ears and he willed it to stop. He tried to concentrate on the physical things around him, the rough texture of the weight rack when he rested his hands there for balance, the coolness of the canvas under him, the smell of dirt and the faint tang of old motor oil.

  He stayed down until he felt his balance come back to him and then stood slowly. Just as he got to his feet, a fit of coughing seized him and something came up in the back of his throat, a coppery taste, and he swallowed it down. His mouth was dry and he wished he’d thought to bring a bucket of water up from the pump. He’d have to go back to fetch one after a while. Maybe try again to talk some sense into Carol Jean.

  He padded down to the far end of the wrestling mat, where he could see out the open doors. Pulling off his boots, he gathered his blanket around him, holding the pillow on his lap, still breathing a little heavy from the exercise. Being still now with just the view, the isolation of this place struck him all over again. He looked around the garage, knowing what he would do next was lie down on the wrestling mat and hope for sleep. Like a hobo curling up in a doorway. Like an animal looking for a place to die.

  After two nights on a train, Fritz booked them adjoining rooms at the Blackstone, high enough up that Pepper could stand at his window staring down on Lake Michigan, the water looking like a sheet of metal in the chill. Chicago was battening down the hatches for winter, and everywhere they went people talked gloomily of snow and wind. They hoped things wouldn’t be as bad as last year. The day of their appointment with Billy Stettler and Strangler Lesko, they ate a greasy hotel breakfast and then Fritz spent the rest of the morning locked in the bathroom. He emerged just in time to change for the meeting, looking green from nerves and breathing hard from the effort of squeezing into his good shirt. The big guy
had been on edge the whole trip, and as he stood in front of the mirror patting his head and face with a bathroom towel, Pepper hoped he didn’t pop an artery from the stress. They took a cab across the river, and as soon as it dropped them in front of Scott’s River North tailor shop near the intersection of Chicago and State, Pepper understood what Fritz was nervous about. He hadn’t counted on meeting Dion O’Shea again.

  It was a tombstone of a building: a simple two-story brick structure with shuttered windows, its green-and-white-striped awning pulled out against looming rain clouds. He felt the itchy sensation of being watched as they approached the front door, wondering if it was just the hulking Catholic church that sat catty-corner from the store. Inside, they breathed the dusty smell of old cloth as they loitered in the showroom, waiting while the girl behind the counter helped a young man pick out a wedding suit. It turned out to be a process. When the man finally left and the bell above the door announced that Fritz and Pepper were alone in the store, the girl mumbled a few words into a wall-mounted telephone. She listened a moment and then hung up.

  “You can go on up,” she said. “Boots off.”

  They passed a glance but did as they were told, clomping up a short flight of stairs before stooping to unlace their shoes in the thick shag of the landing. They stood wiggling their toes while a million locks sprang open on the other side of a door and then a wide-shouldered goon with a hairline that swooped dangerously close to his eyebrows came out to pat them down. Pepper couldn’t resist a grin, telling the guy all he was packing was five extra pounds of eggs, bacon, and flapjacks. The goon didn’t react, just slid his hands around their bodies until he was satisfied and stood back to let them into the office with a bored stare that said they could stand out in the hallway all day for all he cared.

  Compared to the cramped downstairs showroom, the office was airy and cool, dimly lit, the walls papered in a silver fleur-de-lis pattern. The goon who’d frisked them folded his hands over his crotch and stood to one side of the door. Another leaned against a sideboard while a pair of guys in shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters loomed behind where O’Shea sat in a high-backed chair. The gangster looked just as Pepper remembered, sitting with his legs crossed, his waxy, full moon face unchanged except for the roll of double chin that bubbled up from his collar. His gaze floated lazily from Pepper to Fritz and back again, his expression reminding Pepper of a trophy animal, something that had been stuffed and put up on the wall. He didn’t get up but offered them both a shake with a small, soft hand.

  “The gang’s nearly all here,” he said in a voice too lively for his death-warmed-over face. He made a show of checking his wristwatch, a new one, army issue. Pepper felt something twisting inside him at seeing him again. He and Fritz sat, and when O’Shea offered them drinks, Fritz nodded his head like a man dying of thirst. Pepper didn’t respond but took a glass when one of the goons handed it to him. Everybody lit cigarettes and Pepper dug out his pouch of chewing tobacco. O’Shea watched them out of hooded eyes. “So,” he asked Pepper, sounding wholly unconcerned about getting a response. “How’s the leg?”

  Some guys just can’t help themselves.

  “The others,” Fritz said. “They’re coming?”

  Annoyance trembled on O’Shea’s face. “I just said that, didn’t I?” Then, as if scolding himself for showing emotion, his face went slack again and he said: “What about our other project?”

  “‘Other project’?” Pepper said.

  Fritz cleared his throat. “I had a telegram from Eddy this morning at the hotel,” he said. “He tells me everything arrived as scheduled.”

  O’Shea held up a hand to stop Fritz from saying anything else and then pointed a finger at Pepper, a light playing in his eyes. “He doesn’t know?” he said.

  “Of course not,” Fritz said. “You said tell no one.”

  “I always say tell no one,” O’Shea said, “and yet everyone always seems to know my business.”

  Pepper was again about to ask what business, what other project, when it dawned on him that he was sitting in the private office of a bootlegger, drinking a bootlegger’s booze, surrounded by a bootlegger’s goons. He heard Moira’s voice in his head, chiding him for being so slow on the uptake. “Hey,” he said to O’Shea, “you’re the one who brought it up. Why do that if I’m not supposed to know?”

  O’Shea’s jaw seemed to retreat into his face, as if he wasn’t used to having his mistakes pointed out to him. They heard heavy footfalls on the stairs and a moment later they twisted in their chairs as Billy Stettler and Stanislaw “Strangler” Lesko came into the room.

  Stettler was a few years older than Pepper. He was as tall as Fritz and had the build of a body sculptor, with a thick shock of dyed black hair and the energy of a much smaller man. He wore a navy-blue suit and a peacock-blue shirt with a gleaming silk tie that split the difference.

  “Our noble savages,” he exclaimed. “Just in from the wild frontier and looking none the worse for wear. Well, not much worse.”

  He slapped Fritz on the shoulder, and Fritz dropped back into his chair as if it were a knockout blow. Pepper’s eyes had already drifted behind Stettler, where the world’s heavyweight champion was standing in his stocking feet.

  He knew at once they couldn’t beat him.

  Lesko was not so much tall or wide as all-around massive. His chest was thick and flat and his head was like a heavy piece of granite, gray-brown hair razored flush to the sides. His face was kind and large-featured, with soft, almond-shaped eyes and a prominent nose. A thick scar cut a furrow through one eyebrow, but otherwise he looked like he’d never been in a fight in his life. He made a show of looking them over, uncurious, before sliding his hands into the pockets of his brown slacks. It was a simple, unpretentious move, but every dimension of the room seemed to have changed with him in it. This was a man, Pepper thought, and had to check the urge to stand up and shake his hand.

  He only had a second to study Lesko before Stettler was in his face, buzzing forward as if he might hug him or punch him. He did neither, drawing back at the last moment, talking a mile a minute. “Long time no see, kid,” he said. “I heard you became a sideshow freak. It made me sad when I heard that. You should’ve called me when Blomfeld cut you loose. I could’ve found a spot for you in my stable. Not for nothing, but when it came to scientific wrestling, you were just about the best I ever saw—present company excluded, of course. Too bad you weren’t a hundred pounds heavier, am I right?” This time he did lean forward to punch him on the arm.

  Pepper felt his whole body stiffen, a grimace screwing itself tightly to his face. “I did call you, Billy,” he said, straining to keep his voice level.

  “You did?” Stettler said, though of course he’d known that all along. “Oh.”

  There had once been a time when Pepper, Fritz and Stettler had all been at the same place in life, just some of the boys, knocking around trying to eke out a living. Pepper had been the best of them on the mat and had risen the highest. Now, though, only one of them owned a busy gym on Michigan Avenue. Only one of them managed the world’s heavyweight champion. Pepper thought he saw a ripple of satisfaction pass through Stettler’s body as he hummed across the room to shake hands with O’Shea, as if he’d already assessed them and judged them small-time.

  He prodded the tobacco in his lip with the tip of his tongue. Something was making him feel light-headed, dizzy, but he couldn’t tell if it was the chew or the company. Lesko lowered himself onto the edge of a filing cabinet and stared out a side window. He looked as if he were the only person in the room.

  “Billy,” Fritz said again, his voice shrill with anticipation. “You called us here. We’re here.”

  Stettler settled into an armchair at O’Shea’s elbow. “Indeed,” he said, folding his hands across his knee. “I’ve had word out of Bellingham. Sounds like Alaskan Jack Sherry was no match for your man.”
/>   “Taft was impressive,” Fritz said, nodding.

  “He looked like shit,” Pepper said, “but we’ll have him ticking like a clock before we let him anywhere near Strangler Lesko, you can rest assured of that.”

  Lesko turned his face halfway from the window at the sound of his name. “I told Billy,” he said like he was tired of repeating himself. “I won’t wrestle a colored.”

  Fritz’s voice sailed up another note. “Taft was considered the top contender for Joe Stecher’s title a few years ago,” he said. “Undefeated through twenty-five professional bouts. We all know Stecher was on the verge of agreeing to meet him in the ring when Taft was jailed. We believe this gives us cause to request a match with Lesko.”

  Stettler held a hand up, pleading for calm. “As you know,” he said, “I was once of a similar mind as Stan. I don’t relish the idea of going down in history as the first man to give a shot at the world’s heavyweight wrestling title to a black.”

  “Billy’s been talking to Jack Kearns about a fight with Dempsey,” Lesko said.

  This time Pepper laughed out loud. “Dempsey?” he said. “As in Jack?”

  “We’ve been back and forth in the press,” Stettler said. “I’ve offered to put up five thousand dollars of my own cash if Kearns will match it and agree to a mixed-rules fight. Dempsey doesn’t even have to win to collect, he just has to last more than forty minutes in the ring with Stan.”

  “I’d like to lick that cornpone cocksucker,” Lesko said. “The way he runs his yap.”

  His voice was bland Nebraska farm boy, deep and steady. Quiet, Pepper noted. The best wrestler in the world was quiet. Some said Lesko was a better mat man than even Gotch. Though he was retired by the time Lesko won the title, there had been fleeting hopes for a bout between the two champions in 1916, before Gotch broke his ankle training for a comeback. A year later he was dead from blood poisoning.