Rope Burns - [SSC]

by F. X. Toole

  What it is that me and Pats don’t see is the referee have came across the ring. He waving his hands to signal the fight over, that Dashiki quit in the corner and Reggie the winner. Me and Pats jump up like Reggie, all of us be shouting like kids at the day care. Harvey be lookin up at the lights like he the one with the concussion. Dashiki face all busted up, but they got the blood from the eye to stop. Dashiki a man and come over to say good fight to Reggie and me and Pats.

  Pats say, “You’re a good fighter, Dashiki, don’t let this stop you.”

  Dashiki say, “I be back. Got some shit to learn.”

  With Reggie, we go to Dashiki corner to shake the trainers’ hands. Back in the dressing room, Pats wash Reggie down with alcohol and we pack our gear and we ready to go. Harvey payday man come in with Reggie’s check. He a little old Jewish dude, got that round thing on his head, nice little dude. He got laughing eyes and a voice like candy. He explain the deductions and have Reggie sign a paper say he understand. He say Reggie some kind of warrior, say he fight like he be from the ancient time. He give us roast chestnuts from a little brown bag. Reggie want to take him home. Little dude tell us Jewish jokes and leave us laughing.

  Reporters next, and then Harvey come in smiling like he on top of the world. He go on about how pretty Reggie fight, how he slick and smooth, how he can box and how he can punch.

  “Listen, you guys,” he say. “I know you think this payday is chump change, and that you’re pissed about the deductions.”

  Reggie cut him off. He say, “You owe me fifteen dollars and ninety cent, plus tax.”

  Harvey say, “For what?”

  Reggie say, “For two times at the buffet.”

  Harvey say, “Oh, hell, no big thing.” He smile big, pull a twenty-dollar bill from a roll in his pocket and give it Reggie. “Keep it.”

  Reggie take the twenty, pull four ones and ten pennies from his pocket, and he give them to Harvey. Reggie say, “I pay the tax. Here you change.”

  Harvey say, “No hard feelings about the chow, okay? Just don’t forget that I’m the guy who gave you the opportunity to show the world you’re not washed-up, right? Because of my faith in you, you’re going to take on Babaloo. I got him signed for you already.”

  Now Harvey Silvershade love Reggie Love because he thinking to promote the Babaloo USBA fight. It funny. Harvey have sign Babaloo for Dashiki, and now he trying to make it look like he do it for Reggie. Reggie eyes be getting cold again.

  Harvey say, “So this payday wasn’t that much, okay?, but I figure after tonight you’ll kayo Babaloo. Once we get the USBA, I say we defend it twice in Vegas for fifty thousand a fight. Then we go for the IBF title and a real chunk of change. I say you got another six big fights in you, Reggie. With the right opponents I get you, we’re talking maybe a couple of million or more per fight. How does that sound?”

  Reggie say, “It depend what my manager say.”

  Harvey say, “You’re right, I’m not supposed to talk money if he’s not here. So why don’t we drop it for now?, and you and your guys come up to the penthouse. I’ve got some friends I think you’d like to meet, you know, like the card girls’ll be there, and I’ve got some steaks ordered and some champagne on ice.”

  Reggie know the party was suppose to be for Dashiki. Reggie say, “Don’t like no steak, don’t drink no liquor, and don’t slip around.”

  Harvey say, “Not a problem. I’ll order up some ribs.”

  Reggie say, “Don’t eat no swine.”

  Harvey say, “Yeah, well, whaddaya like?”

  Reggie say, “Chicken and fish.”

  Harvey say, “I’ll order both. How long’ll it take you to get up there?”

  Reggie say, “Firs’, we got to get our stuff back to the other place up the street through the snow.”

  Harvey say, “Yeah, too bad about the snow. Hey! I can have my guys schlepp your gear over there for you. You can come upstairs right now. View of the boardwalk’s pretty as a bitch at night.”

  Pats say, “We got the shit over here, we’ll get it back, Jackie. We do our job.” He still thinking about his lost teeth and want to put Harvey on his ass.

  I see Harvey not happy. He say, “Fine, that’s what you want. But I’ll go ahead and order up the chicken and fish. When can I expect you?”

  Reggie say, “Can’t expec’. We goin celebrate wit our friends up the caféteria.”

  Harvey go all pink in the face like he been caught playing with his dick. He say, “Okay, whatever. Maybe next time, whaddaya say?”

  Reggie say, “Who know?”

  Promoter back out the door smiling, but his eyes be sick. Now what go down here between Reggie and Harvey don’t mean that Valentine Reggie Love won’t work with Harvey Silvershade Promotions if the money be right. Reggie just want the white Jew to know he be dealing with a black Jew.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Million $$$ Baby

  B

  oxing is an unnatural act,” whispered the voice. “Understand me on this, kid. Everything in boxing is backwards to life. You want to move to the left, you don’t step left, you push on the right toe, like this. To move right, you use the left toe, see?” The old white man didn’t look into your eyes, he looked clear through your eyes, and straight to the inside of the back of your head. “Instead of runnin from pain, which is the natural thing in life, in boxing you step to it, get me? So now, once you’ve made the decision to be a fighter, now you gotta know how to fight, because no matter how tough you are, my friend, these dudes with the big dicks will knock you out.”

  The voice of Frankie Dunn pierced. In the same sentence it could climb high and harsh or loop sweet as a peach, like Benny Goodman playing “Body and Soul,” or go on down deep as a grizzly’s grunt. It could move sideways on you and then curl back on itself, but always the voice pierced the mind with images that stuck, because the sound out of the old man painted pictures that became part of you, made you hear his voice when he wasn’t even there. When Frankie Dunn told a fighter how to move and why, the fighter could see it through Frankie’s eyes, and feel it slip on into his own flesh and down into his bones, and he’d flush with the magic of understanding and the feeling of power. Some called the old man Doc, some called him Uncle Frank. Old-time black fighters and trainers called him Frankie Dunn Frankie Dunn, repeating his name with a nod or a smile. Frankie loved warriors.

  It was close to one hundred degrees in the Hit Pit, a gym located down a flight of twenty crumbly brick steps on Fifth near Maple—smack in the middle of the Nickel, Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. It was summertime and steamy, packed with fighters of every color, some of them eight and ten years old, some of them thirty and more, vets who’d fought anyone anywhere.

  Two of the fighters sparring, one black and one Chicano, had title fights coming up in different weight divisions. It was nothing for fighters to sweat off six pounds in a workout, often more. Nearly all of the fighters were men, but there were three who were women as well.

  Trainers, swaying like cobras, worked with their fighters, isolated in the noise and the heat and the steam. Some hunched close to whisper, others yelled out loud. Sweat poured off of everyone, even the dozen or so onlookers who sat in the short stretch of low bleachers facing the two rings. Boom boxes blared different music from four corners and along the walls, making the place sound like a cell block.

  Frankie toweled off a promising 130-pounder, a sixteen-year-old Chicano kid from Boyle Heights. The way he was going, the boy looked like he had a shot on the Olympic team. The next boy scheduled to work with Frankie was a black professional, a ten-round heavyweight with a record of 19, 1 and 1, with 17 kayos. Despite Frankie’s age, he hung with his fighters on the punch mitts, regardless of their size. Frankie had slopey shoulders, and the veins in his forearms stuck out purple and dark against his fair skin. His brows were thick with waxy scar tissue. He was blind in his left eye, and the eyelid drooped. When he slept, it stayed open. He’d been a frec
kle-face as a kid, had curly black hair. Now his nose was a lump and his face was weathered, a pink map against his full head of wavy white hair. Except for the white girl sitting in the stands, he was the only Caucasian in the gym. But race had never mattered to Frankie, and since he wasn’t afraid of color, never had been, he was respected by everyone in the gym, including the Muslim trainers and fighters. Africans especially delighted in him.

  Moving pictures play in the heads of old people that young people don’t know about. Sometimes a whole day from fifty years ago will play between two winks. For no reason, Frankie remembered when retired fighter Houston “Stone” Stokes came through the gym one day. He had his two youngest children—a six- and a seven-year-old, a boy and a girl. Frankie had trained Houston, and they’d made money together, traveled all over. But Houston couldn’t get the kids to stay out of the rings, so he hollered out to scare them.

  “Any y’all wanta buy these two? Sell ‘em bof cheap!”

  That got the kids’ attention, especially when Frankie said, “I might buy ‘em, Stone. Will they work?”

  “Hell, yeah, dey’ll work!”

  “But will they pick cotton?”

  At the checkers table, old Earl McClure, tubercular and looking like a mummy, slapped his thigh and liked to fell out of his chair laughing. Earl was gone to God now, and was in Frankie’s prayers. But in a lick, the kids crawled up their daddy’s leg and Stone winked at Frankie and whispered, “Man, you still da bes’ in da game.”

  Frankie was old enough to have such memories, and often they tugged at his sleeve. But he had some goals as well, dreams that still thumped through him. His heavyweight might just be the one—on a two-million-dollar purse, two hundred thousand would go to Frankie. As he stood thinking how he’d split the money with his children, someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind and said, “Sir?”

  Frankie turned to see the white girl from the stands.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yessir, your name’s Frankie Dunn, ain’t that rat?”

  The way she said it, it was more a statement than a question, and she spoke with a hillbilly accent. Two thick braids of deep auburn hair hung down behind each ear, framing a freckled face and a pair of agate eyes, like Frankie’s daughter’s. She was maybe five feet nine and weighed a fit 140. She was relaxed and stood gracefully, her weight balanced on both feet, and despite a broken nose, she was a looker. Frankie had seen her hanging around the gym for a week or so, had seen other trainers buzz her. He had the feeling he’d seen her someplace before.

  “Frankie Dunn’s the name,” he said, expecting the worst. “What, I owe you money?”

  “No, sir,” she said, serious as a pregnant girlfriend, “but we got us a problem bigger’n a tranny in a Peterbilt.”

  “We, did you say? We do?”

  “D’I stutter?”

  Frankie said, “What’s this great big problem we’re supposed to have?”

  “Problem’s about me gittin you to start trainin me.”

  He laughed out loud. “Tranny in a Peterbilt’s right! See, I don’t train girls.”

  “You don’t remember me? Couple a winters ago, up Kansas City? My first fight?”

  Frankie’s eyes wandered off, then squinted as they swung back into focus. “Now I do.”

  “Got my nose broke good, ‘member? Almost knocked down, too, but went ahead on and won anyway. In the dressin room everyone was whoopin like it was Jack Daniels night at the auction, but you kept out of it. ‘Member that?”

  “I was in K.C. with my heavyweight for a eight-rounder. Yeah, saw your fight on the monitor in the dressing room.”

  “‘Member what you said?”

  “Well, didn’t you ask me?”

  “You said, ‘Girlie, tough ain’t enough.’”

  “I did,” said Frankie.

  “And then you said, ‘This game’s about money, not tough.’ Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, sir, that’s why I come to L.A.”

  “Wait, now, no way did I say I’d train you,” said Frankie.

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Problem’s still the same,” she said. “Me gittin you to train me, boss.”

  “I ain’t your boss.”

  “If I don’t call you boss, will you train me?”

  “No.”

  “Then I might jus’ well call you boss, right?”

  “Wrong,” he said. “Come on over here.”

  Frankie led her to the weight room, where the only noise was grunts and clanging weights. On the way, he thought of all the reasons against training a female fighter. Most important, he simply didn’t like seeing women getting hit. Regardless, there were now girls in the amateurs, and soon they’d be going to the Olympics. There would be more and more of them, so they would get better and better. That meant they’d be better than the ones currently fighting, and people said that would be good for the game. He didn’t care how good they got. Girls getting busted up went against everything he believed in.

  Okay, he thought, times have changed. Dames are doing what guys is doing, but that don’t make it right. And then there were the practical reasons. Scheduling fights around periods. And bruised tits. And what if one was pregnant and had a miscarriage because of a fight? That, and he couldn’t cuss. Not that he cussed that much. But sometimes cussing was the best way to say what you had to say. Like, Keep your fookin hands up!

  “Yeah,” he said to her, continuing his thoughts aloud, “and half of them are degenerates wearing purple jockey shorts and talking feminist bullshit, know what I mean? And when you train broads, you can’t cuss because you get sued.”

  “Not by me, boss, I’m from the Ozarks.”

  “And then there are the ones who swagger in braggin about what their tongues had been up to the night before at the Puss ‘n’ Boots or the Yellow Brick Road.”

  “I ain’t no lezzie, if that’s what’s you’re sayin,” she said. “I can lay a little pipe with the best of ‘em.”

  “That’s none of my business either way, and that’s the point. . . whatever the hell you are, leave it outside the gym.”

  “So does that mean you’re gonna train me?”

  “No, damn it.” Then he softened. “It’s nothin personal, see? But I’d have to change too much. And I only got so much gas in my tank, see? Besides, you’re too old, too.”

  “I’m only thirty-two.”

  “See what I mean? Guys start young, you have to, because this stuff takes time, like ballet. You wouldn’t start ballet thinkin you could get to the top at your age, but people seem to think they can come to this game late as they want. It takes four years to make a fighter, like college. And that’s besides the time it takes to get and win fights, forget about the setbacks.”

  “I been at it almost three. And it ain’t as if I ain’t been a athlete.”

  “A ton of gals come from karate, which is another thing entirely, startin with balance. The women also come from softball, or basketball, or volleyball, or soccer. Which one is you?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Or they’re out to make some kind of social statement in a game that’s about kickin the shit outta the other guy for money. I tried to train a couple of gals, I know what I’m talkin about. One old bull come in wearin a deerstalker with her BILLY BLUEs for Chri’sakes. Besides, women poundin on women, that just don’t make no sense to me, not when so many of them are pushed into the ring before they know anything. Sure, there are some who can fight. And when you have two in there who can, you get a good show and usually nobody gets hurt. But a lot of the time you get girls in there who can’t fight, or one is so overmatched it’s a cryin shame.”

  “Ain’t it up to the fighters to do what they want, no matter their sex?”

  “To a degree, sure it is, but what about fights that are freak shows?, more like dog fights? I saw two little hunred-ten-pounders, and all they did was stand toe-to-toe and
wing punches like they were out behind a liquor store fightin on broken glass. Got their eyes all tore up. One got a broken jaw, and the winner went to the hospital with a ruptured spleen. What the hell is that? And then, what if a gal up and dies on you? Nah, get one of the other guys.”

  “I don’t wont one’a them.” She smiled, and it almost broke his heart.

  “Why are you so set on me?”