The Harder They Fall

by Budd Schulberg

  The atmosphere of this world is intense, determined, dedicated. The place swarms with athletes, young men with hard, lithe, quick bodies under white, yellow, brown and blackish skins and serious, concentrated faces, for this is serious business, not just for blood, but for money.

  I was sitting in the third row of the spectators’ seats, waiting for Toro to come out. Danny McKeogh was going to have him work a couple of rounds with George Blount, the old Harlem trial-horse. George spent most of his career in the ring as one of those fellows who’s good enough to be worth beating, but just not good enough to be up with the contenders. Tough but not too tough, soft but not too soft – that’s a trial-horse. Old George wasn’t a trial-horse any more, just a sparring partner, putting his big, shiny-black porpoise body and his battered, good-natured face up there to be battered some more for five dollars a round. There were sparring partners you could get for less, but George was what Danny called an honest workman; he could take a good stiff belt without quitting. To the best of his ringwise but limited ability he obliged the managers with whatever style of fighting they asked for. He went in; he lay back; he boxed from an orthodox stand-up stance, keeping his man at distance with his left; he fought from out of a crouch and shuffled into a clinch, tying his man up with his club-like arms and giving him a busy time with the in-fighting. Good Old George, with the gold teeth, the easy smile and the old-time politeness, calling everybody mister, black and white alike, humming his slow blues as he climbed through the ropes, letting himself get beaten to his knees, climbing out through the ropes again and picking up the song right where he had left it on the apron of the ring. That was George, a kind of Old Man River of the ring, a John Henry with scar tissue, a human punching bag, who accepted his role with philosophical detachment.

  In front of me, sparring in the rings and behind the rings, limbering up, were the fighters, and behind me, the non-belligerent echelons, the managers, trainers, matchmakers, gamblers, minor mobsters, kibitzers, with here and there a sports writer or a shameless tub-thumper like myself. Some of us fall into the trap of generalising about races: the Jews are this, the Negroes are that, the Irish something else again. But in this place the only true division seemed to be between the flat-bellied, slender-waisted, lively-muscled young men and the men with the paunches, bad postures, fleshy faces and knavish dispositions who fed on the young men, promoted them, matched them, bought and sold them, used them and discarded them. The boxers were of all races, all nationalities, all faiths, though predominantly Negro, Italian, Jewish, Latin-American, Irish. So were the managers. Only those with a bigot’s astigmatism would claim that it was typical for the Irish to fight and Jews to run the business, or vice versa, for each fighting group had its parasitic counterpart. Boxers and managers, those are the two predominant races of Stillman’s world.

  I have an old-fashioned theory about fighters. I think they should get paid enough to hang up their gloves before they begin talking to themselves. I wouldn’t even give the managers the 33⅓ per cent allowed by the New York Boxing Commission. A fighter only has about six good years and one career. A manager, in terms of the boys he can handle in a lifetime, has several hundred careers. Very few fighters get the consideration of racehorses which are put out to pasture when they haven’t got it any more, to grow old in dignity and comfort like Man o’ War. Managers, in the words of my favourite sports writer, ‘have been known to cheat blinded fighters at cards, robbing them out of the money they lost their eyesight to get.’

  I still remember what a jolt it was to walk into a foul-smelling men’s room in a crummy little late spot back in Los Angeles and slowly recognise the blind attendant who handed me the towel as Speedy Sencio, the little Filipino who fought his way to the top of the bantamweights in the late twenties. Speedy Sencio, with the beautiful footwork who went fifteen rounds without slowing down, an artist who could make a fight look like a ballet, dancing in and out, side to side, weaving, feinting, drawing opponents out of position and shooting short, fast punches that never looked hard, but suddenly stretched them on the canvas, surprised and pale and beyond power to rise. Little Speedy in those beautiful double-breasted suits and the cocky, jaunty but dignified way he skipped from one corner to the other to shake hands with the participants in a fight to decide his next victim.

  Speedy had Danny McKeogh in his corner in those days. Danny looked after his boys. He knew when Speedy’s timing was beginning to falter, when he began running out of gas around the eighth, and when the legs began to go, especially the legs. He was almost thirty, time to go home for a fighting man. One night the best he could get was a draw with a tough young slugger who had no business in the ring with him when Speedy was right. Speedy got back to his corner, just, and oozed down on his stool. Danny had to give him smelling salts to get him out of the ring. Speedy was the only real moneymaker in Danny’s stable, but Danny said no to all offers. As far as he was concerned, Speedy had had it. Speedy was on Danny all the time, pressing for a fight. Speedy even promised to give up the white girl he was so proud of if Danny would take him back. With Danny it was strike three, you’re out, no arguments. Danny really loved Speedy. As a term of endearment, he called him ‘that little yellow son-of-a-bitch’. Danny had an old fighter’s respect for a good boy and although it would make him a little nauseous to use a word like dignity, I think that is what he had on his mind when he told Speedy to quit. There are not many things as undignified as seeing an old master chased around the ring, easy to hit, caught flat-footed, old wounds opened, finally belted out. The terrible plunge from dignity is what happened to Speedy Sencio when Danny McKeogh tore up the contract and the jackals and hyenas nosed in to feed on the still-warm corpse.

  Strangely enough, it was Vince Vanneman who managed Speedy out of the top ten into the men’s can. Vince had him fighting three and four times a month around the small clubs from San Diego to Bangor, any place where ‘former bantamweight champion’ still sold tickets. Vince chased a dollar with implacable single-mindedness. I caught up with him and Speedy one night several years ago in Newark, when Speedy was fighting a fast little southpaw who knew how to use both hands. He had Speedy’s left eye by the third round and an egg over his right that opened in the fifth. The southpaw was a sharpshooter and he went for those eyes. He knocked Speedy’s mouthpiece out in the seventh and cut the inside of his mouth with a hard right before he could get it back in place. When the bell ended the round Speedy was going down and Vince and a second had to drag him back to his corner. I was sitting near Speedy’s corner, and though I knew what to expect from Vince I felt I had to make a pitch in the right direction. So I leant over and said, ‘For Christ sake, Vince, what do you want to have, a murder? Throw in the towel and stop the slaughter, for Christ’s sweet sake.’

  Vince looked down from the ring where he was trying to help the trainer close the cuts over the eyes. ‘Siddown and min’ your own friggin’ business,’ he said while working frantically over Speedy to get him ready to answer the bell.

  In the next round Speedy couldn’t see because of the blood and he caught an overhand right on the temple and went down and rolled over, reaching desperately for the lowest strand of the rope. Slowly he pulled himself up at eight, standing with his feet wide apart and shaking his head to clear the blood out of his eyes and his brain. All the southpaw had to do was measure him and he was down again, flat on his back, but making a convulsive struggle to rise to his feet. That’s when Vince cupped his beefy hands to his big mouth and shouted through the ropes, ‘Get up. Get up, you son-of-a-bitch.’ And he didn’t mean it like Danny McKeogh. For some reason known only to men with hearts like Speedy Sencio’s, he did get up. He got up and clinched and held on and drew on every memory of defence and trickery he had learnt in more than three hundred fights. Somehow, four knockdowns and six interminable minutes later, he was still on his feet at the final bell, making a grotesque effort to smile through his broken mouth as he slumped into the arms of his victorious opponent in the
traditional embrace.

  Half an hour later I was having a hamburger across the street, when Vince came in and squeezed his broad buttocks into the opposite booth. He ordered a steak sandwich and a bottle of beer. He was with another guy, and they were both feeling all right. From what Vince said I gathered he had put up five hundred to win two-fifty that Speedy would stay the limit.

  When I paid my cheque I turned to Vince’s booth because I felt I had to protest against the violation of the dignity of Speedy Sencio. I said, ‘Vince, in my book you are a chintzy, turd-eating butcher!’

  That’s a terrible way to talk and I apologise to anybody who might have been in that short-order house and overheard me. The only thing I can say in my defence is that if you are talking to an Eskimo it is no good to speak Arabic. But what I said didn’t even make Vince lose a beat in the rhythmical chewing of his steak.

  ‘Aaah, don’t be an old lady,’ Vince said. ‘Speedy’s never been kayoed, so why should I spoil his record?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘don’t spoil his record. Just spoil his face, spoil his head, spoil his life for good.’

  ‘Go away,’ Vince said, laughing. ‘You’ll break my frigging heart.’

  The bell brought me back from Newark, from Speedy Sencio with his lousy job in that crapper and, I thought, from Vince Vanneman. Then I saw Vince himself coming in. I realised this must have been one of those times when the mind seems to sense someone before the image strikes the eye so that it appears a coincidence when the very man you’re thinking about comes in the door. He was wearing a yellow linen sports shirt, open at the neck, worn outside his pants. He came up behind Solly Prinz, the matchmaker, and gave him the finger. Solly seemed to rise up off the ground and let out an excited, girlish scream. Everybody knew Solly was very goosey. It got a good laugh from the circle Solly was standing with. With the rest of his fingers bent toward his palm, Vince held the assaultive middle finger lewdly. ‘See that, girls?’ he said. ‘That’s what a Chicago fag means when he says he’ll put the finger on you.’ That got a laugh too. Vince was a funny guy, a great guy for laughs, just a big fun-loving kid who never grew up.

  Vince came over and ran his hand over my hair.

  ‘Hello, lover,’ he said.

  ‘Balls,’ I said.

  ‘Aw, Edsie,’ Vince pouted, ‘don’t be that way. You’ve got it for me, baby.’ He threw his head back in an effeminate gesture, flouncing his fat body with grotesque coyness.

  It was another Vanneman routine, always good for laughs. Humour was intended to lie in the margin of contrast between the fag act and Vince’s obvious virility. I used to wonder about it.

  ‘Seen him box yet?’ Vince said.

  ‘He’ll be out in a minute,’ I said. ‘Danny’s having Doc look him over.’

  ‘When you gonna break somethin’ in the papers about him?’

  ‘When Nick and I figure it’s time,’ I said.

  ‘Get him, get him!’ Vince said. ‘What are ya, a goddam primmer-donner? Damon Runyon or something? I got a right to ask. I’m a partner, ain’t I?’

  Edwin Dexter Lewis, I mused, born in Harrisburg, Pa., of respectable churchgoing Episcopalians, nearly two years in the Halls of Nassau with First Group in English and a flunk in Greek, the occasional companion, intellectual and otherwise, of a Smith graduate and Life Magazine researcher, an imminent playwright, clearly a man of breeding and distinction – if not of honour. At what point in what I smilingly refer to as my career was it decided that I was to become a business associate of Vincent Vanneman, two hundred and fifteen pounds of Eighth Avenue flotsam, graduate of Blackwell’s Island, egger-onner of beaten fighters, contemporary humorist and practical joker.

  ‘This isn’t a partnership,’ I said. ‘It’s a stock company. Just because we both have a couple of shares of the same stock doesn’t make us brothers.’

  ‘Whats’a matter, Eddie, can’t you take a rib any more?’ Vince grinned, wanting to be friends. ‘I just thought maybe when you put something in the paper you c’n drop in a line about me, you know, how it was me discovered the big guy.’

  ‘You mean how you muscled in on Acosta?’

  ‘I don’t like them words,’ Vince said.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you were so sensitive.’

  ‘What the hell you got on me?’ Vince wanted to know. ‘Why you always try to give me the business?’

  ‘Take it easy, Vince,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a nice big write-up some day. All you’ve got to do is drop dead.’

  Vince looked at me, spat on the floor, leant back on his fat rump and opened his Mirror to the double-page spread on the Latin thrush who beat up the band-leader’s wife when she surprised them in a West-Side hotel.

  Behind me a familiar voice was saying, ‘I wouldn’t kid ya, Paul, I’ve got a bum what’ll give yer customers plenty of action. Never made a bad fight in his life.’

  I looked around to see Harry Miniff talking to Paul Frank, matchmaker for the Coney Island Club. Harry’s hat was pushed back on his head as usual and a dead cigar hung between his lips as he talked.

  ‘You don’t mean that dog Cowboy Coombs, for Chrisake?’ Paul said.

  Miniff wiped the perspiration from his lip in a nervous gesture. ‘Whaddya mean, dog? I’ll bet ya fifty right now Coombs c’n lick that Patsy Kline who’s supposed to be such a draw out at Coney.’

  ‘I need somebody for Kline a week from Monday,’ Paul admitted. ‘But Patsy figures to murder an old man like Coombs.’

  ‘Whaddya mean, old?’ Miniff demanded. ‘Thirty-two! You call that old? That ain’t old. Fer a heavyweight that ain’t old.’

  ‘For Coombs it’s old,’ Paul said. ‘When you been punched around fifteen years, it’s old.’

  ‘I tell ya, Coombs is in shape, Paul,’ Miniff insisted, but the desperate way he said it made it sound more like a plea than a statement of fact. ‘And win or lose, he’s a crowd-pleaser. Ya know that, Paul. Kline’ll know he’s been in a fight.’

  ‘What about that last one up in Worcester?’ Frank said.

  ‘T’row that one out,’ Miniff dismissed it, reaching quickly into his coat pocket and coming up with a handful of worn newspaper clippings. ‘Sure, sure, in the record book it’s a TKO for La Grange. But read what they said about us in the Worcester papers. Coombs woulda gone for a win if he hadn’a busted his hand on the other bum’s head. Here you c’n read about it right here!’

  He held the clippings up in front of Paul’s face, but the matchmaker waved them away.

  ‘How’s the hand now?’ Paul said.

  ‘Good’s new, good’s new,’ Miniff assured him. ‘You don’t think I’d send one of my boys in with a bum duke, do ya?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul said.

  Miniff wasn’t hurt. There was too much at stake to be hurt: five hundred dollars if he talked Paul Frank into using the Cowboy with Patsy Kline. One sixty-six for Miniff’s end. And he could improve that a little if he held out a few bucks on Coombs’ share of the purse. Miniff could use that kind of money. The Forrest Hotel, on 49th Street, had put up with Miniff’s explanations for six or seven months.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Paul,’ Miniff said. ‘If you want to be absolutely sure that your customers get their money’s worth before Kline puts the crusher on Coombs …’ He paused and looked around with a conspirator’s discretion. ‘Come on out’n the sidewalk,’ he said, ‘where we can talk private.’

  ‘Awright,’ Paul agreed, unenthusiastically. ‘But cut it off short.’

  Relaxed and poker-faced, Paul moved toward the wide doorway with the undersized, overanxious director of the destiny of Cowboy Coombs hanging onto his arm and talking up into his face, sweating to make a buck.

  Toro had to duck his head to fit through the doorway from the locker room. Usually the boys were so absorbed in their own workouts that they hardly looked up. I’ve seen the biggest draws in the business working shoulder to shoulder with some fifty-buck preliminary boy and n
obody seeming to know the difference. But when Toro came in, everything seemed to stop for a second. He was dressed in black – long black tights and a black gym shirt which would have reached the ankles of the average Stillman boxer. In his clothes, which had been at best haphazardly fit, he had loomed to elephantine proportions. One felt overawed by a shapeless mass. But stripped down to gym clothes, the mass became moulded into an immense but well-proportioned form. The shoulders, growing out of the long, muscular neck, were a yard wide but tapered sharply to a lean, firm waist. The legs were massive, with tremendously developed calves, and biceps the size of cantaloupes stood out in his arms. The short-legged Acosta, Danny, and Doc Zigman, the hunchbacked trainer, coming out of the locker room with Toro, looked like stubby tugs escorting a giant steamer. Danny, the tallest of the three, a man of average height, only reached his shoulder.