Rope Burns - [SSC]

by F. X. Toole

  “‘Cause with you, I know I can make money.”

  “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said. But most of the girls don’t make money. Yeah, right now they’re makin double a round in the prelims what the preliminary boys are makin, but girls’re only fighting two-minute rounds, so we’re back to the freak show again. And what’s this crap about some of the girls gettin title shots after only six or eight fights, maybe less? The titles ain’t real, see? No big gates. That’s why it’s a long way off before girls get big dough, understand?”

  “I’d fight three-minute rounds if they’d let me.”

  “But they won’t. See?, it ain’t the same.”

  “Look at me, Mr. Frankie Dunn. Let’s say you’re right about girl fighters. But I’m thirty-two, and if I can’t slop my trough boxin, where in hail is this ol’ hillbilly gal gonna?”

  “Let’s say you get hurt.”

  “It’s on my shoulders, not yours. You won’t regret it, boss, I promise.”

  “No deal.”

  She hung her head, then looked up at him and left the gym.

  “Good,” said Frankie.

  ~ * ~

  She was born and raised in southwestern Missouri, in the hills outside the scratch-ass Ozark town of Theodosia. Many of the towns strung along two-lane Highway 160 were little more than a gas station and a post office set into the cedars and the oak trees somewhere between nowhere and good-bye. She was trailer trash, like so many of the people in the region, and grew up being looked down on. Before her daddy died, things had been different.

  Her oldest sister, Mardell, ran off when she was fifteen. Her brother Eustace was in jail. The other one, J.D., was a corporal in the army. J.D. had four kids and a pregnant wife and was collecting welfare just to get by. Her other sister still lived with her mother, both of them weighing over three hundred pounds. Welfare and food stamps got them month to month. Aside from fried catfish or fried chicken, they lived on biscuits and gravy, Oreos, and Always Save cola.

  She got to the gym every day before Frankie. She wore shorts, two T-shirts, and a sweatshirt cut off at the elbows. She wrapped her hands and worked nonstop, mostly jumping rope and belting away at the big bag, the body bag. She didn’t know how to work it properly, and knew it, so when she finished one day she went straight to Frankie, who was pulling gear from his bag.

  “Sorry to pester, but I ain’t got it right, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Gotta be a trick to it.”

  He spat in the ring bucket. “Okay, I’ll show you, but just this once.”

  He went to the big bag and gave it a shove. Then he began to move with it, maintaining the same distance as he slid toward it or back, whether he pivoted to the side or moved around it.

  “Stalk, don’t walk,” he said. “You gonna work the big bag, first you got to think of it as a man, not a bag. Once you understand that, you don’t start punchin until the bag swings away from you.” He demonstrated as he spoke. “It’s dead weight, see? So if you hit it when it swings toward you, it knocks you back, smothers your punches, takes your balance—it don’t allow you full extension on your shots, no follow-through. Joe Louis said you don’t punch your opponent, you punch through your opponent.”

  She did as Frankie had instructed. She was awkward at first, but once she found her balance, she began to move as Frankie had, rotating first one shoulder forward, then the other, which kept her head moving without her having to think about it.

  “That’s it, rotate. That way your head’s always movin and you always have one shoulder back ready to fire a power shot-—so you don’t have to do somethin before you do somethin, say if you got a openin. Don’t stop, move with the bag, circle it,” he said, giving it a shove. “It will tell you when to punch, just like an opponent.”

  Frankie walked away and forgot about her as he focused on his boys.

  “Dang thing does tell you when to punch,” she muttered, a world of angles and planes opening up to her. She stayed with it until well after Frankie left the gym. By the time he got there the next day, she had it down, was throwing punches to the body and to the head-—hooks off the jab, uppercuts, stinging jabs, and right-hand leads followed by double hooks, and moving off to the side behind double and triple jabs.

  “How’s ‘at?”

  “Not bad, but you’re throwin arm punches still. They’re good shots, because you’re strong, but you got to work too hard. First, you got to line up at a forty-five-degree angle, understand? And then you got to turn your waist as you punch. When you throw a right-hand, you got to step out to the left six inches as you move half a step in with both feet. That frees your right hip and leg and foot, like this, so you can snap your ass into your shots. I mean your backside.”

  “You got it the first time. Got one on me like a forty-dollar mule.”

  Do you ever, Frankie thought, and long legs with calves like a ballerina. Long arms and a short body, perfect for a fighter. Because of her sweatshirt and T-shirts, he couldn’t be sure about her bust-line, but she didn’t seem to be top-heavy, which was good for a girl fighter.

  Next day she was still throwing arm punches. The next as well, and the next—no knockouts that way. Frankie watched her while he worked his fighters, watched as other trainers tried to hook up with her. She smiled politely, sometimes nodded, but mostly shook her head.

  She sat down beside Frankie on a low blue bench. “Keep on tryin, but I just ain’t gittin it. How come?”

  “No balance,” said Frankie. “Don’t know how to switch your weight.”

  “How’m I gonna learn, boss?”

  “Any of these trainers can teach you.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Why not?”

  “‘Cause even I can see that most a their fighters got the same problem I got.”

  He smiled. “You know how to hit the speed bag?”

  “Arm punches, like they do in the movies.” She smiled, confessing her ignorance. “It’s all I know.”

  “Where’s your speed bag?”

  “Ain’t got one.”

  “Christ.”

  Frankie reached for his speed bag, pumped it firm with a bicycle pump, and screwed the swivel into an adjustable round platform overhead that was the right height for both of them.

  “In the movies,” he said, “you’re right, all flash and no ass.” He caught himself. “I mean no backside. But there’s more to it than that. There’s rhythm and hand-eye coordination. But most of all it’s balance. Remember that word, balance. I’m talkin about bein able to switch it from one foot to the other quick as you can blink.”

  “I thought it was about hittin the dang thing hard.”

  “You don’t hit hard in boxing, you hit right. Watch,” Frankie said. “And count with me, one, two, three, four. I drive my left fist straight through on the count of one. As I do, my weight is on my right foot. Then I rock over and put my weight on my left foot and leave it there while on two I punch the bag with the butt of my left fist like I was stickin it with an ice pick from the side, like this. While my weight is still on my left foot, I drive through the bag on three with my right. Now I drop my weight back over to my right foot again, and on four I do the ice-pick move with my right.”

  Frankie sped up slightly, and she could see how the bag moved in a figure eight. Frankie said, “Watch my hips turn as I go from foot to foot. Ass is where the power comes from, understand? Sorry about ass, but I don’t know what else to call it.”

  Frankie shifted into high gear, banging the bag in a steady one, two, three, four count that had the bag smacking the platform three times for every time Frankie punched the bag—bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip. His waist turned with every punch, and because it did, the punches were delivered effortlessly. Tickled by the show, Maggie watched as the old man also moved his feet in a half circle beneath the platform and then back again— balance, leverage, speed, power. He continued until the bell rang, the bag a blur. Breathing easily
, he stepped back for her to try

  “Wait,” she said. “You did something with your breathing, too.”

  “You noticed.”

  “How’m I supposed to breathe?”

  “We’ll get to that when”—he caught himself. “No, we won’t. I don’t have time, honey, honest.”

  “I told you we had a problem,” she said.

  “Go on,” he said. “Show me how good you are.”

  “I can’t do all that. I know I can’t.”

  “You want balance, you will,” he said, taking his bag down and walking away.

  “Dang!” she said.

  ~ * ~

  The next day she bought a speed bag just like Frankie’s. She’d be on short rations for a few days, but she didn’t care. She waited until Frankie left late in the afternoon, and then she went after the speed bag, in absolute slow motion at first, and then, as her switch in balance became fluid, she was able to speed up. She worked until the gym closed at eight, Bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip, bip-bip-bip.

  She was ready for him in a week and was so good he had to grin.

  “Okay,” he said, “now show me what you can do on the big bag.”

  She tore it up, moved, bobbed, and weaved, rotated her shoulders and fired her shots without having to do something before she did something. Stepped to her left and in when she threw her right, and drove with her ass, her balance on her front knee.

  “Not bad, macushla. Keep movin that behind.”

  “You won’t regret trainin me,” she said. “I promise.”

  “No, I said.”

  ~ * ~

  She worked on both bags, getting better each day, her punches so quick and sure that fighters and trainers stopped to watch her bang. On the following Monday she was ready for Frankie again. She handed him a dated document, handprinted on lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook.

  To who it may concern Mr. Frankie Dunn has my OK. to use any word he sees fit. That means all 3 letter words and 4 letter words and 5 letter words and 6 letter words and 7 letter words and 8 letter words and even 10 and 12 letter words too and any other words he sees fit. I am in sound mind and body and these are my true wishes that come from my heart and my mind and my soul.

  Signed,

  Her signature was a scrawl he could not decipher. He stared at her, and she stared right back.

  He said, “Who trained you for the fight in K.C.?”

  “Me.”

  “You got a manager?”

  “You.”

  “You got a job?” He didn’t want somebody looking for a Santa Claus.

  She said, “Waitressin breakfast six to noon on out by the beach.”

  He said, “What’s your record?”

  “Nine and three, but only one knockout.”

  “You never had a trainer?”

  “I tried workin with some at first, but what they wanted was to bed me, men and women both. Hail, I wanted to learn how to fight, not the dirty leg.”

  He said, “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Margaret Mary.”

  “Margairet Mary what?”

  “Margeiret Mary Fitzgerald. But my daddy called me Maggie.”

  Fightin Maggie Fitzgerald, thought Frankie, turning away. “Ah, Jaysus.”

  ~ * ~

  “Here’s my deal,” said Frankie. “You do what I say. I don’t do what you say.”

  “I do.”

  “I show you moves and you can’t do them, that’s okay. But I give you moves you can do but don’t want to do, that ain’t okay.”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t like workin with me, quit me at any time, no hard feelins,” he went on. “I don’t like workin with you, I quit you anytime, no hard feelins.”

  “I do.”

  So it began, Frankie stripping her down to the bare wood. She worked so hard he wished his boys worked the same way. He tested her power and stamina by taking her round after round on the punch mitts. He went with her to make sure she ran right. He taught her the correct stance, how to keep her legs under her the width of her shoulders, instead of spread wide and dug in.

  “Why?”

  “Balance—with balance you’re free, and because your reach is longer when your legs are under you than spread wide apart.” He proved it to her.

  He showed her how to move in and out, and side to side. He taught her how to fight backing up. For her legs, he randomly tossed the punch mitts to the canvas one at a time and had her scramble to pick them up. She lasted a minute before her legs gave out the first day. In two weeks she was going three 3-minute rounds and learned how to use her thighs, glutes, and leg biceps the way fighters use them.

  He taught her how to stay on the balls of her feet, how to generate momentum off her right toe; how to keep her weight over her left knee, to flex on it when she fired her jab; how to double up and triple the jab, which would keep the opponent backing up on her heels. He taught her how to cut off the ring, how to slip punches and counter off lefts and rights. No matter how hard he drove her, she was always ready for more. His heart went out to her, macushla—mo cuishle in Gaelic: darling, my blood.

  “You got a bad habit of dropping your left hand, like so,” he told her. “Joe Louis had that problem, even though he had won twenty-seven fights in a row, twenty-three by knockouts. That was before Max Schmeling came over the top of Louis’s lazy left and knocked Joe out.”

  “Louis beat him the second fight.”

  “Yeah, but they’re one and one in the record book,” Frankie said. “It’s okay if you’re baitin someone, gettin her to throw a lead right so you can slip or counter—it’s okay because you’re ready for the froggy to jump. Sugar Ray Robinson would do it, then he’d take a short step back and yop!, fire a good-night hook. But you ain’t there yet.”

  “Protect myself at all times.”

  “It’s a rule.”

  He had her spar with the other girls in the gym. As he suspected, she held her breath under pressure and got tired. So he taught her how to breathe. Breathing correctly allowed her to shoot quicker shots at will, and she whacked the punch mitts relentlessly. When he had her spar with the girls again, she ran them out of the ring.

  “How’m I doin, boss?”

  “Better.”

  “I’m down to one-thirty.”

  Just right, Frankie thought, tall and rangy for her weight, with reach and power. He smiled to himself as he turned away—and she’s getting so slick she can fight in the rain and not get wet.

  When Frankie couldn’t get sparring for her with the girls, he put her in with boys to toughen her up, to get her system used to shock. The boys weighed the same and had the same experience, and usually she’d take a pounding. But sometimes it went the other way, and one day she knocked a boy down with an uppercut off a jab, followed by a straight right-hand, picture-book stuff. A gym rat called up to the boy. “Hey, man! You gonna let a girl beat you?”

  Frankie said, “That ain’t a girl, that’s a fighter.”

  The rat put his hands up and backed away.

  In the beginning, given Maggie’s mediocre record and apparent lack of power, it was easy to get her fights, especially since promoters were eager to put on fights with girls—club fights in Reseda and Sacramento, casinos on remote Indian reservations. Maggie was to fight four 2-minute rounds at two hundred dollars a round. Frankie dressed her in traditional kelly-green, a big gold shamrock on the back of her robe beneath MAGGIE in white, and she kicked ass. Four fights and four kayos, two coming in the first minute of the first round.

  A week after her last fight, with her record now at 13 and 3 with 5 kayos, Maggie was offered a shot in the 130-pound Junior Lightweight Division in Hamburg against Billy Astrakhov, “the Blue Bear,” for twenty thousand dollars. Frankie turned it down, though he had to cash in some savings bonds.

  Maggie asked, “Why, boss? I coulda bought a car.”

  “We ain’t ready.”

  In her last fight, Maggie had dropped h
er left hand and got a black eye off a lead right-hand.

  “You got Irish skin. What I say about keepin your mitts up?”

  “I didn’t even feel it,” she said.

  “Wait till you start playin with the big kids,” Frankie said. “Tell me when you’re ready for six rounds.”

  “Yesterdee.”

  Going up in class, Maggie won her first and second six-rounders by decision but knocked out her next three opponents, all in the third, sending one of them to the hospital with a broken eardrum and a concussion.