The Harder They Fall

by Budd Schulberg

  The huge floodlight system over the stadium dimmed out and the ring became an intense white square cameoed in the vast darkness. The announcer requested one minute of silence for ‘Old Gus, a real champion who went down fighting, with the Great Referee counting over him the Fatal Ten.’

  The stadium went black as the impatient fans stood up in a touching demonstration of bogus bereavement, while the bell tolled ten with sound-effect impressiveness.

  As the lights over the ring came on again, and the announcer had finally introduced all the famous fighters and identified the contestants with needlessly elaborate formality, the mass tension surged, and a barbaric roar rose from 80,000 throats. The referee gave them final instructions and sent them back to their corners to await the opening bell. As their handlers drew their robes from their shoulders at last, the contrast in their sizes brought an excited gasp from the crowd. Toro, almost six feet eight, weighing nearly two hundred and eighty pounds, looking a little fleshy around the waist, crossed himself and waited for the bell in a kind of docile bewilderment. Stein, an even six feet, with a hard, lithe, rippling body, weighing one-ninety-six, shuffled his feet back and forth with restless impatience and worked his shoulders from side to side as if he were already in there flailing away at his mammoth adversary.

  ‘Kill ’im, Buddy,’ the blonde in the third row begged in a shrill, unpleasant voice.

  The bell brought Stein streaking across the ring to face Toro moving slowly out of his corner. Toro held his left out in the mechanical defence Danny had taught him. Stein felt him out carefully, showing considerable respect for Toro’s advantages in weight and reach. He flicked stinging jabs into Toro’s face, feinted with his right and held his famous left as if he were going to let it go, but he wasn’t taking any chances yet. Toro was boxing rigidly, pushing his long left toward Stein’s head and keeping the smaller man at a distance. Toro had finally learnt the rudiments of boxing, but his execution was clumsy and had no zing. His footwork was slow but correct, and once he followed up a left jab with a right cross that managed to reach Stein’s ribs. Stein smiled and snapped Toro’s head back with a sharp jab. Stein’s jab looked harder than Toro’s best punches. Buddy pressed his lips together and a sneer came over his face as he shot another jab in. The pain aroused Toro slightly and he tried a one-two with elementary timing. The left reached Stein’s face, but the right, the two, lobbed harmlessly into the air as Stein slipped it neatly and drew Toro into a clinch. Nothing much seemed to be happening in the clinch, but when the referee came between them Toro’s eye was reddened and blinking. It looked like a thumb job. Stein had been around; he was very cute. As they separated, Stein held out his gloves in a broad gesture of sportsmanship. Toro, momentarily blinded, failed to reciprocate and touch gloves. The crowd booed his ungentlemanly conduct. In tonight’s drama they had cast him for the villain.

  Some of the bleacherites began to clap their hands rhythmically to show their impatience. ‘Quit stalling,’ they yelled. Stein, with the sensitivity of the vain, moved in to satisfy them. He started a right to Toro’s body, and when he saw the big arms go down, he suddenly pivoted and let the left hand go for the first time. It caught Toro hard on the side of the jaw. Toro sagged. I was sitting close enough to see how his eyes turned in. Stein danced back to his corner at the bell, hamming it up a little with his chest out. Toro walked back to his stool slowly and sat down like a man with a bellyful of beer.

  Stein was waiting for him as soon as he got up again. He was speeding up his tempo now. Toro tried to box him again, but Stein feinted, exactly as he had done before, sucked Toro out of position and crashed his left into Toro’s reddened eye. A lump was swelling over it with abnormal rapidity. At that moment I wanted to be away from this, away from what could only be the relentless tormenting of a helpless freak. But something gripped me with terrible fascination, just as did all 80,000 of us, waiting in a kind of death-watch for what already seemed inevitable.

  It had ceased to be a contest; it was a bullfight, a thrilling demonstration of man’s superiority over the beast, the giant, the great shapeless fear. The voices of the onlookers were growing tight with excitement. ‘Work on that eye!’ ‘Get that eye!’ ‘Close that right eye for him!’

  Stein obliged. Measuring Toro coolly, he smashed the swollen eye. Toro’s heavy lips parted in pain, revealing the ugly orange mouthpiece. Staring balefully at his attacker with his one good eye he had suddenly become a grotesque and incredible throwback to Cyclops. Stein was working him over with methodical viciousness now. The short, savage blows pounded Toro with sickening monotony. When the bell ended his punishment for sixty seconds, Toro hesitated foolishly for a moment, trying to decide in which direction his corner lay. The referee guided him back to his stool.

  Doc’s fingers digging into Toro’s limp neck, the water George poured over Toro’s head and the smelling salts Vince held to his nose gave the giant a semblance of recuperation with which to face the next round. But Stein was stabbing him with animal fury now. His lips were drawn tight over his mouthpiece and his eyes had a homicidal intensity. You could almost feel the pressure of the accumulating cruelty of the crowd closing in on the ring. ‘Get him! Get him!’ ‘Knock him out!’ ‘Kill ’im!’ the cries mounted in hysteria. The lump over Toro’s right eye had risen to the size of an egg. Stein drove Toro back with another straight left that was beginning to split Toro’s mouth. Then, with all his might, he jabbed at the lump, smashing it as if it really were an egg, but an egg full of blood. Instantly the right side of Toro’s face was a crimson splotch.

  ‘That’s the way, Buddy. Kill ’im!’ the blonde in the third row screamed.

  I looked over at Nick, who was sitting with Ruby in the front row, directly across the ring from me. He was just sitting there, pulling calmly on a long cigar and watching the proceedings with a kind of bored attentiveness I had seen on his face hundreds of times at the training camps. Ruby was wearing a spectacular black felt hat with a band of spangles around the crown, framing a powder-white face with fierce dark eyes and a deep red mouth. From where I sat, she seemed to be enjoying herself.

  Another savage shriek was torn from the throat of the crowd and people all around me jumped up to see Stein catch Toro in a corner, where he rained rights and lefts at his head until Toro began sliding down the ringpost to squat ludicrously on the floor. Some people laughed. The referee pointed Stein to a neutral corner, where he bounced crazily, waiting to get at Toro again. ‘Stay down, Toro, stay down,’ I shouted. But for some inexplicable reason of that dogged, semi-conscious brain, Toro pulled himself up and tottered heavily toward Stein. The bell postponed the slaughter for another minute.

  In his corner, Toro lay back against the ropes drooling blood from his torn mouth and gasping for breath, exhausted from the terrible punishment he was absorbing. His one half-open eye closed in an agony of weariness. Doc’s fingers did their best. With all their strength they pressed together the lips of the cut over the right eye to try to stem the bleeding. Then Doc patted collodion over the wound and it seemed momentarily to congeal. Meanwhile George tried to rub some life into the huge, muscle-bound, all-but-useless legs, and Vince shouted profane instructions into his swollen ears.

  After all this preparation, Stein tore across the ring at the bell and knocked Toro down again with the first punch. All of Doc’s work had come undone and the cut above the eye dripped blood into the dirty canvas. There was no point, no honour in continuing this demonstration of a big man’s hopeless inability to compete in coordinated viciousness with a smaller man of proved superiority. When Toro got up again I don’t think he even intended to try. His face was a gory mess and he stumbled forward to receive more blows, a broken and battered hull of a man foundering on a sea of pain, relentlessly buffeted by the angry waves of blows, and borne up only by some unknown fund of pointless endurance.

  The crowd was screaming for a knockout now, begging for it, pleading for it, a wild-eyed cheering section of bettors who were ri
ding on a Stein knockout, of fans inspired with an angry sense of misplaced justice who resented Toro for his fraud-fattened record and mistook this beating for the revenge of integrity, and finally the vast audience of the frustrated and the browbeaten who could not help taking a deep vicarious pleasure in being in on the final transformation of an overpowering giant into a pitiful wreck of human flesh.

  Somehow Toro weathered that round, dragged himself back for first aid and staggered out glassy-eyed to offer himself up to Stein once more. Why didn’t they stop it? Why didn’t Doc stop it? Doc must have been under orders from Nick to let it run. What about the referee? Well, for one thing they don’t like to stop a heavyweight fight too soon because the big boys are supposed to be able to take it. And then I remembered another thing. Vince had said something about laying eight Gs to five that Toro would still be there for the eighth. Vince and the referee, Marty Small, had done business before. Marty didn’t have to do anything crooked, just let Toro keep going as long as he could. Vince would take care of the rest.

  For three more minutes, with the roar of the crowd pitched to a manic fury, Stein cut the crippled giant down. Toro tumbled over and writhed to a kneeling position and when he rose with his knees shaking, Stein knocked him down again. He rolled over onto his knees with his battered head pressed against the canvas. Then with a perverse and useless courage, he struggled to his feet again. With one hand on the ropes, he kept himself from falling. His other arm hung limply at his side. Blood poured from both eyes, and a new stream of blood gushed from his mouth. Swaying back and forth, in blind and helpless bewilderment, he waited for the little man to attack him again. Stein leapt in with a powerful right to the body that made Toro bend over. Then he straightened him up with a paralysing left to the jaw. Toro toppled over. He fell so awkwardly that his ankle twisted under him. With horrible concentration, he lifted himself to his knees. He crawled forward on his knees, slipping in his own blood, like a dying beast. His mouth was open and the lower part of his jaw hung hideously loose. ‘Jaw’s busted,’ I heard someone say. The big orange mouthpiece flopped out of his mouth and rolled a few feet ahead of him. For some reason he did not understand, he crawled painfully toward it and tried to stuff it back into his mouth in a slow-motion gesture of futility. He was still fumbling with his mouthpiece when the referee finished his count and raised Stein’s hand. Buddy danced around happily, mitting his gloves over his head to acknowledge the ovation of the crowd. Toro was still trying to stuff the mouthpiece back into his mouth when Vince, Doc and George dragged him back to his corner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Satisfied and quiet now, the crowd was filtering slowly toward the exits. Going up the aisle I met Nick and Ruby, the Killer with one of his girls, Mr and Mrs Quinn and Barney Winch.

  ‘Did you ever see a worse bum?’ Nick said.

  ‘We should swap him to Harry Miniff for an old jock strap,’ Quinn laughed.

  ‘Nice talk in front of the girls,’ Nick said, taking Ruby’s arm.

  ‘But there goes your meal ticket,’ I said.

  Nick drew me closer. ‘Don’t worry, kid. I made a deal with Kewpie Harris. We’ve got a piece of Stein.’

  ‘Come on over to the Bolero, Eddie boy,’ Quinn said. ‘Just ask for my table.’

  ‘I don’t feel like it tonight,’ I said.

  ‘I can get you fixed up with something nice in the show,’ the Killer said.

  ‘I’m not in the mood tonight,’ I said.

  I went back to the dressing room. Toro was sitting on the rubbing table with a bloody towel over his head. Doc was still trying to check the flow of blood from his nose and mouth. Toro’s smashed and swollen face hung limply on his chest. He was trembling. The reporters pressed around him, oblivious of his condition in their eagerness to round out their stories.

  ‘When was the first time he hurt you, Toro?’

  Toro muttered through his torn mouth. ‘Jesus Christo …’

  ‘What punch was it that gave you the most trouble?’

  ‘Jesus Christo …’ Toro said.

  ‘Like to have a return match?’

  ‘Jesus Christo …’

  ‘Where the hell is Grandini?’ Doc said. ‘George, go down the hall and see if you can find Dr Grandini. He better have a look at this jaw.’

  Toro’s head shook slightly from side to side like a man with palsy. The lumpy, sliced flesh over his eyes was turning purple and the broken jaw hung open.

  ‘Lie down,’ Doc said. ‘Better lie down.’

  Toro just sat there in blind agony, shaking his head slowly. ‘Jesus Christo …’ he whispered.

  They took him up to Roosevelt Hospital, and set his jaw for him. I went over to see him in the morning. His upper and lower jaws had been wired together; his cuts had been stitched; he was taking liquids through a glass straw. The lumpy discoloured bruises on his face made him look more like a huge gargoyle than ever.

  There was something he was trying to say to me. He tried to mutter through his wired teeth and his swollen, lacerated lips, but no sound came. Finally I caught some of the words forced from his throat. ‘I go home now. My money … money …’

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ I said.

  On the way out I passed Vince in the hall.

  ‘Well, this is the last place I ever expected to see you,’ I told him.

  ‘Aah, what’s-a-matter with you, you think you’re the only white man in the outfit? You think you got an exclusive on seeing the guy?’

  ‘What’s your angle, Vince? Don’t tell me you’re just coming in to cheer him up. That’s not my Vince.’

  ‘I just thought maybe I could help the guy,’ Vince said.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew that word,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a lotta things you don’t know, chum,’ Vince said and went in.

  Well, it was a funny racket, I thought. I’ve seen boys beat each other so that neither would ever be as good again and then throw their arms around each other in an embrace of genuine affection. I’ve seen a father sit tight-lipped in a corner and let his son bleed like a pig for ten rounds and then, when it was all over, take his boy’s disfigured face in his hands and burst out crying. They were unpredictable, the toughest of them, whimsically and inconsistently tender. Maybe that was Vince. Maybe somewhere in that fat, coarse face, in that fat, lewd brain, was a hidden core of humanity I had missed, or that had never been tapped before.

  I went up to the office to see about the money for Toro. Nick was home sleeping off a late night, the Killer said. ‘That’s where I shoulda stayed,’ he complained. ‘Christ what a night! Didja ever have a Chinese acrobatic dancer, Eddie? I thought I seen everything, but …’

  ‘Killer,’ I said, ‘how can I get Toro’s dough for him?’

  The Killer looked disappointed. ‘Talk to Leo,’ he said. ‘He’s in this morning.’

  I went down the hall to see Nick’s bookkeeper. He was working over a ledger. He looked small, pale and devoted, the way bookkeepers are supposed to look, except for his eyes, which were put there to warn you.

  ‘Busy, Leo?’

  ‘Well, I’m breaking down the take on the fight,’ he said.

  ‘What was the exact gross?’

  ‘One million, three hundred and fifty-six thousand, eight hundred ninety-three and fifty cents.’

  ‘I promised Toro I’d pick up his money for him,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll have to look it up in the file,’ Leo said.

  He thumbed through his file professionally, LATKA, LEWIS, MANN, MOLINA … ‘Here it is.’ He licked his forefinger and removed several sheets from the file. He studied them carefully.

  ‘There’s a small balance,’ he said.

  ‘A small balance? Are you kidding?’

  ‘It’s all down here in black and white,’ Leo said.

  I reached for the sheets and stared at the rows of figures, all neatly typed and itemised. My eye ran down a column of astronomical figures. There was $10,450 for training expens
es, $14,075 for living expenses and $17,225 for publicity and entertainment. There were items, all beautifully padded, for equipment, sparring partners, transportation, personal amusement, phone calls, telegrams and good old miscellaneous. There was a little matter of $63,500 in cash, alleged to have been advanced to Toro by Vanneman. And, finally, there were the managerial commissions, the Federal and State taxes and ‘personal gratuities for favours rendered’. By the time all this had been duly subtracted from purses which totalled almost a million dollars, there was a small balance, all right. Exactly forty-nine dollars and seven cents.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘This is highway robbery. Vince never advanced Toro any sixty-three thousand. You must mean six thousand.’

  ‘That’s the way I got it from Vince,’ Leo said. ‘He gave me all the tabs.’

  ‘So Toro winds up with forty-nine dollars and seven cents,’ I said. ‘What are you guys so generous for? What do you leave him the five sawbucks for?’

  ‘You can add it up yourself if you want to,’ Leo said.

  ‘I know you can add, Leo. I’ve seen you add for Nick before. I’ve seen you subtract too.’

  ‘Everything is in order,’ Leo said. ‘I can show these books to anybody.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You’ve got those numbers trained, Leo. You got those numbers jumping through hoops for you.’

  ‘If you have any beefs, talk to the boss,’ Leo said. ‘But you can’t find no bugs in my books. I’ll show my books to anybody, any time.’

  I jumped into a cab and hurried over to Nick’s apartment on East 53rd. It was around noon. Nick was having his breakfast, alone in the dining room in a silk midnight-blue bathrobe with a large N.L. embroidered over the breast pocket in Spencerian script.

  ‘Nick,’ I began, ‘I’ve just been talking to Leo.’