by Jack Tunney
ROUND 7
One moment Tom was standing slumped with defeat, guard completely down and seemingly more concerned about pain and fatigue than the fight on his hands. Then, with an explosion of speed and force difficult for the eyes to follow, and taking everyone by surprise, he sprang forward to meet Gallegos, stooping so low his knees almost scraped the canvas.
His low leap angled him to the left of Gallegos’s charge. As they passed, Tom drove a right into Gallegos’s stomach with such force, I half expected his glove to drive right through Gallegos’s body, taking the vertebrae with it.
Gallegos changed colors and folded at the middle, crying out like a bull being gelded.
After passing him, Tom pivoted to face him again. He was still obviously hurt, looking as though it took monumental effort just to lift his gloves as high as his belt.
“Finish him!” Kolodzei screamed.
Tom lurched forward, and Gallegos sank to one knee.
The referee stepped in between and began his count over Gallegos. When he reached five, the bell rang.
Kolodzei didn’t say much. His hands were full trying to stop the bleeding. The doctor stepped inside the ring and took a look at the ugly laceration, then had a quick, quiet conference with the referee. The ref came over and stooped down to say, “That’s a bad cut. I can give you one more round, then I’ve got to stop it.”
“What are you doing out there?” Kolodzei snapped at the ref. “Daydreaming? I guess elbows and low blows are legal in this bout. Maybe we should throw some too, since the crowd seems to like ‘em.”
The referee had no answer to this. He visited Gallegos’s corner, where he warned him to keep it clean.
Both men were still hurt, but answered the bell. Gallegos seemed to be recovering faster. Tom waited for Gallegos to move in, then backpedaled behind the jab. Inside the first minute Gallegos grew tired of the dance and jumped forward to pin Tom’s lead foot forward with his own again. Gallegos loaded up for a punch that might very well shake the earth.
Before he was hit, Tom doubled over at the waist, swinging his torso down and in from the side, bringing him underneath the first swing. Then from his hunched position, he unleashed whistling hooks and uppercuts to Gallegos’s body, grunting with the effort of each blow.
Still softened up from the gut punch in the previous round, Gallegos shuddered and stepped back off Tom’s foot. Then, as Tom raised and straightened, the top of his head clipped the underside of Gallegos’s jaw.
Now staggering off-balance, Gallegos’s retreat gained speed. Tom poked him with the jab and feinted an overhand right. Gallegos flinched. His back hit the ropes.
I can’t claim to know exactly what went through Gallegos’s mind during the next split second. I suspect he thought he could bounce off the ropes as before and land inside to turn the tables.
He did rebound off the ropes and spring forward. Right into a straight right Tom had cocked ever since the previous feint.
Everyone at ringside heard the crunching sound.
Gallegos went down as if pole-axed.
The Milwaukee crowd’s bellowing dropped to a low murmur, then stunned silence.
Tom trudged back to his corner and the count began.
Too tough for his own good, Gallegos stirred by the count of seven. He rolled onto his belly and pushed at the canvas. At the count of nine, his shoe lost traction and his leg slipped out from under him. He flopped forward and his blubber made a smacking sound against the canvas as the count reached ten.
Kolodzei wasted no time climbing through the ropes, pulling the stool through with him and easing Tom down to a sitting position. He sponged water all over Tom’s head and shoulders until the doctor arrived and began working on Tom’s cheek. Tom couldn’t pull himself to the center of the ring for the official announcement after Gallegos had been revived. The announcer lifted one of Tom’s fists while he sat in the corner to proclaim him the victor by knockout.
***
I visited the dressing room afterwards.
“Might have to get a rain check on that coffee, Mr. Schwartz,” Tom said, through swollen lips. His teeth were streaked with dried blood.
“I’m gonna take him to the hospital,” Kolodzei said. “Get him looked over.”
“That’s fine, fellahs. But I just want to congratulate you, Tom. You fought like hell.”
He flashed me a blood-streaked grin.
“Flabby little Spic is a tough bastard,” Kolodzei said.
They let me use the room’s enclosed toilet stall before I got out of their way. I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been through the fight, watching all the punishment Tom was taking. It did a number on my stomach.
The low rumble of the two men’s voices bounced around the dressing room while I sat there with nothing better to do than think.
Where was my objectivity? I was thinking of the kid like he was my fighter or something. I probably would have got depressed and went on a drunk had Gallegos prevailed.
Sports journalists are not supposed to have loyalties. Truth be told, no journalists should, but sports writers are just about the only ones who don’t.
I was jarred out of my thoughts when I heard the dressing room door bang open and a third voice—a nasal tenor—took the conversation in a new direction.
“Fantastic fight, kid. What a donnybrook!”
“Thanks, Mr. Thalberg,” Tom said.
“That dirty little butterball got what was coming to him with that head butt. And way to finish him!”
“He fights dirty,” Tom said
“That referee was blind!” Kolodzei complained.
“He was blind to your butt, too, fortunately,” Thalberg said. “What matters is you found a way to win, kid. We can talk more when you get cleaned up, but I think I can help you.”
“He’s a contender now,” Kolodzei said. “We should get some nice purses from here on out.”
“We’ll see,” Thalberg said, his tone a little less warm. “I’ll start with getting you a good cut man.”
“Good,” Kolodzei said. “We sure could use one.”
“And a manager, kid. No offense to your old Army buddy, here.”
“What?” Tom cried. “Sarge is who got me this far.”
“You need a pro, son. You learned tonight you can’t push everybody around. Sometimes you got to jump on your bicycle. You almost got your block knocked off tonight because nobody taught you that.”
“Sarge is the one who saw I needed to backpedal. He told me to do it.”
“But he didn’t train you to do it.”
“It’s a mistake I won’t make again,” Kolodzei said. “Okay?”
“Look, kid,” Thalberg said. “I can get you some good fights. And purses bigger than just about any welterweight can touch. But the sentimental journey ends now.”
Tom’s voice was flat as he said, “I’m keeping Sarge in my corner whether you promote me or not, Mr. Thalberg.”
There was a heavy sigh and some cursing in Yiddish.
“I must have a soft spot for stupid pugs,” Thalberg said. “You can keep the Pollack in your corner, but you’re gonna train with a professional manager from now on.”
“Thanks, Mr. Thalberg!” Tom said, his voice up a couple octaves.
“Thank me by taking your feet back to school. Footwork like I saw tonight is inexcusable. If your head wasn’t made of cement, you’d be in a coffin right now.”
The door slammed again.
“I’da’ hate to seen you blow your shot with him for bein’ stubborn,” Kolodzei said. “I’ll work for free if I have to.”
“You don’t have to, Sarge. You’re the best coach I’ve ever had when it comes to figuring out a fight. You’re like Knute Rockne and General MacArthur, all rolled into one.”
“I just pay attention, that’s all.”
“Without you, I couldn’t have won tonight,” Tom insisted. “I would’ve given up. I didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s ‘cau
se I didn’t have you trained for this kind of bout. Thalberg is right.”
I flushed the toilet.
After washing up, I made sure to shake their hands again. Tom’s hands were still taped, and he flinched when I squeezed.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Sorry, Mr. Schwartz. My hand is pretty sore.”
“You mighta broke it on that meathead’s face,” Kolodzei said. “Get your shower and we’ll visit the hospital. Maybe they’ll have some good lookin’ nurses.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “A woman came looking for you, Tom. Mrs. Judith Kress. You know her?”
Tom frowned, his gaze dropping to the floor. Kolodzei flashed him a curious glance.
“Yeah. I know her.”
“Should I give her your number?” I asked. “Or would you like hers?”
After a painful-looking bout with indecision, Tom held out his hand and said, so quietly I could barely hear it, “I guess you should give me hers.”
“She talked to me a little bit,” I said, handing him her note.
Tom looked alarmed. “You’re not gonna write about us in the paper, are you?”
“Write what about you?”
His swollen lips moved but no sound came out for a while. “W-what did she tell you?”
I shrugged. “That you walked out on her after the Braxton fight. She acts like she’s still sweet on you.”
Kolodzei showed me one of those polite-but-assertive smiles. “If you don’t mind, Schwartz, Tom’s had a pretty long night.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, turning to leave. “I hope I can collect that rain check soon. You had one whale of a fight tonight, kid. Take a few days off—you deserve it.”
ROUND 8
The story of the Garrick-Gallegos fight was reduced to a choppy sentence and buried at the bottom of a piece covering the Joey Maxim main event. Such was the fate of so many undercard bouts, no matter how spectacular.
Both Tom and Felix Gallegos wound up spending some time at the hospital. That last punch had not only broken Tom’s hand, but Gallegos’s nose. He also suffered a concussion the doctors were worried about for a while.
With his right hand in a cast, Tom’s training went on hold and I was able to catch up with him at a little diner by the train station a few days after the fight.
“How are you, kid?” I asked, sliding onto the stool next to him.
“My whole body feels like one big, raw wound,” he replied.
I ordered coffee for both of us. “You want a sandwich?” I offered.
“No, thanks, Mr. Schwartz. My teeth are still kinda loose.”
“I’ll get you some soup, then. Where’s the Pollack?”
“Hung over,” Tom said, grinning. “He used the time off to look up an old lady friend. They both like to tilt the bottle, but even more so when they’re together.”
A dopey-looking kid in a stained white apron and hat slid our meals to us across the greasy counter. Tom slurped at his soup while I tore into the pastrami-on-rye.
I asked Tom about his hand. He said the doctor predicted it would be a few months before he could hit with it again. This really seemed to depress him—not only because he and Kolodzei needed to eat in the meantime, but he feared the momentum he’d built during the comeback would be lost.
“What’s your new promoter saying?” I asked.
“Not much. He’s got quite a few fighters and I guess I’m not much interest to him until I’m ready to fight again.”
“Any word on who that fight might be with?”
He shrugged. “A contender, I hope.”
“Got a present for you, kid,” I said, and pulled a rolled-up glossy out of my inner jacket pocket. I unrolled it and laid the latest issue of Ring Magazine on the counter next to his plate.
“How’d you get this?” he asked. “It’s not even on the stand yet.”
“It’ll be on the stands tonight,” I said. “But anyway, turn to page forty-two.”
He thumbed through the pages until he found the article. He scanned the rankings, blankly, then his eyes lit up. “They’ve got me as the Number Eight welterweight in the world!”
I couldn’t help grinning at his wonder. “The Pollack is right, kid: you’re a contender.”
He stared at the page for some time.
I finally broke the silence. “I’m kind of curious about Billy Day. How did you two get along?”
Aroused from his trance, Tom slurped some more soup before answering. “We got along pretty good at first.”
“Then what happened?”
He shrugged. “I think he decided I wasn’t a very good fighter.”
That sure sounded like the Billy Day I talked to. Why were so many ready to write the kid off? He certainly wasn’t the only pug to ever have a bad showing. Even Joe Louis had some lousy fights on his record…before retiring the first time. What a tragedy for boxing it would have been if everyone had written him off because of that.
“When you walked away,” I asked, “was it his idea, or yours?”
Tom thought about this for a moment. “He didn’t exactly tell me we were through, but he’d been saying that boxing wasn’t for me. That I was just gonna get myself hurt if I stuck with it.”
“Did you believe that?”
“After a while I did. And I figured Braxton proved he was right.”
“Why are you coming back if you believe that?”
“I didn’t say I believe it now. I think I was wrong then. Billy was wrong. At least I hope so.”
“What went wrong against Braxton?” I asked. “What makes you think you can win if you fight him again?”
“I’ve been working on my endurance,” he said, not looking me in the eye. “I been okay in the later rounds.”
His tone sounded a bit defensive. I decided not to press him right then.
“Sarge says I’m a good fighter. He says the Braxton fight was a fluke. He says I can give him all kinds of trouble.”
I nodded, but had the feeling I believed that more than he did. “Did you call Mrs. Kress?”
Tom sighed heavily. “Yeah. I told her not to bother you anymore.”
“She wasn’t bothering me.”
“I told her to forget about me,” he said.
“Why, kid? What did she do?”
He shook his head, sadly. “Nothing. She was never anything but good to me. But I went on a drunk after the Braxton fight and was a real heel to her. Then I just walked out. It was a crummy thing to do.”
“Maybe so, but she acts like she wants to forgive you.”
“I don’t deserve her forgiveness,” he muttered.
I exhaled, heavily. “I don’t get you, kid. Why did you take it all out on her, anyway?”
“I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“What is this, the third degree?”
“Not at all. Just trying to understand. I mean, she didn’t do you wrong. It wasn’t her fault you lost the fight. Why treat her that way? Why were you ashamed?”
“Why’s it any of your business?” His face hardened and his tone turned ugly. “You planning on putting this in one of your stories?”
“I’m just trying to—“
“You’re trying to lure me off guard with those other questions,” he accused, interrupting. “Then you can scoop those other newspaper vultures with a story about what a crummy joke I am, with juicy details about my private life.”
Nobody in the diner was watching us, but I still felt heat in my face.
“Look, Tom, I didn’t mean to—“
“Thanks for the soup, newspaper man. But that’s the end of your exclusive.” Trembling somewhat, he dropped a tip on the counter and stood quickly to make a bee-line for the door.
ROUND 9
I replayed the end of that conversation over and over in my mind, remembering what Billy Day had said about the kid throwing tantrums. All in the space of about a minute, Tom Garrick turned from what I thought was a reasonable adult into
some emotionally haywire oversized brat.
For the next few weeks, I did stories on the Lions’ chances to make it three-in-a-row next season, and the rumors about Milwaukee Braves players wanting to return to Boston. But I couldn’t completely abandon my interest in the story of Long Tom Garrick. One afternoon, I found myself at the restaurant where Judith Kress worked.
She did an understated double-take when she noticed me, but made sure to check on every other patron, plus duck into the kitchen, before she came by. When she did, she took my order as if I was a total stranger.
The other patrons finished, paid, and straggled out. As I was sucking the last mouthful of smog out of my post-meal cigarette, Judith came back and slid into the seat opposite me.
“Can you spare one of those?” she asked.
I gave her one and lit it for her. She took a deep lungful.
“How are you?” I asked.
She ignored my question, asking, “Why are you here? Still trying to find an angle on your story?”
There was a caustic bite to her tone which stung me a little.
I shrugged. “I just…kind of wondered how you were doing.”
“I’m alive,” she said. “I guess that’s enough for me.”
“I passed on your message to Tom.”
She blew smoke in the air. “I know. He called me.”
This raised my eyebrows.
“He told me to leave him alone,” she said. “He doesn’t want to put me through any more trouble. He’s not ready to be with somebody yet, blah blah blah.”
She pulled a clipping out of her apron and slapped it on the table. It was from the Daily News and had a photo of a pretty young lounge singer on the arm of a young, hopeful welterweight contender.
“‘Tomato Can Garrick has become quite the ladies’ man about the Motor City,’” I read aloud.
“I figure that means he’s been seen with others besides her,” Judith said.
Judith was a tough dame. I don’t just mean her hands, either. Life hadn’t given her many good breaks, but she wasn’t one to fall apart.
“Maybe he’s not ready for you,” I said. “Seems like he’s got some growing up to do.”