Rope Burns - [SSC]

by F. X. Toole

  “You watch your mouth, old man. I have the power to throw you outta here!”

  “Yeah?, well, this old man will shoot you in the face eighteen times!, so you figure what kind of nine-millimeter I’m packin, you cocksucker, and we’ll see who’s got the fuckin power here!”

  The ref turned away, wishing to God he hadn’t taken the money. His mouth was still slack as the bell for the twelfth rang. Con was glad the ref hadn’t called him on the gun, because he’d been selling wolf tickets on the nine-millimeter from the git. He grinned at Odell, who grinned back and shook his head.

  “You a baaad man, Flute.”

  Con shrugged. “I could always hit him with the water bucket.”

  Mookie fought like a tommy gun, his shots coming from all angles. The ref flat kept out of it. Mookie busted up the African’s lips and cut both eyes. The African fought back with all his might, connecting several times big-time, and once nearly knocked Mookie through the ropes. The Ugandans exploded. But by far Mookie landed the most clean punches in eleven and twelve, and Con was positive Mookie had won. The Ugandan’s chant was swallowed up in the rest of the crowd’s “USA! USA! USA!” The bell rang, and both Mookie and the African raised their hands in victory. Usually fighters embrace after the bell, smile like kids playing in water. But not this time.

  The rest was a formality, both corners removing gloves and cutting off the wraps. Both wiped their boys down. Both crossed to the opposite corner or met in the middle of the ring and shook hands.

  “You’re a good trainer,” Con said to the African’s chief second, a former light-heavyweight contender. “And that boy of yours can bang.”

  “I appreciate that. And that Bodeen, he somethin else.”

  The African shook Con’s hand, smiled down at him. “Very elusive, your fightah.”

  “I didn’t like you much during the fight,” Con said. “But I like you fine now.”

  “Thank you, suh.”

  The announcer read the results from the scorecards. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a unanimous decision. I’ll read the totals. All three judges had it the same, 118 to 110, all for the still—”

  The Ugandans went manic, howling and waving their flags and prancing like they’d just driven another tribe into Lake Victoria. Con, Mookie’s managers, Odell, and Mookie stared at one other in disbelief, as did members of the crowd, black, Puerto Rican, and white.

  “Judges be smokin hunna-dolla’ bills,” said Odell.

  Con hung his head. The TV announcers climbed into the ring as Mookie and Odell tried to climb out. The crowd was yelling and shouting. “Fix! Fix!”

  The commissioner and the promoter jumped into the ring. Both rushed to Odell. “Bodeen can fight in Philly anytime, anytime!”

  “Bodeen don’t want to fight in Philly,” said Odell, turning away and leaving the ring with Mookie.

  “What’s wrong with Philly?” the commissioner asked Con.

  “What’s wrong is that 118 to 110 means with the round they took that we only won two rounds,” said Con. “And you know what that means?

  “What?”

  “It means that for judges you brought in the Three fuckin Stooges.”

  Con slipped through the ropes and grabbed his bucket and gear bag, but he was unable to follow behind Odell and Mookie because the Ugandans were dancing and chanting up the aisle. Several looked at Con and grinned smugly, and the leader in his African outfit danced up into Con’s face.

  “Uganda was victorious!”

  They looked into each other’s eyes, the Ugandan’s black, Con’s green. Neither blinked. One face was the face of the slaves that were captured from East Africa and taken to the Muslim market. The other face was the face of the Irish warriors of the British Empire that once ruled the world, including Uganda. The Ugandans crowded in close, twenty to one, daring Con to push them aside. Con set his stuff on the floor. It was time to teach.

  “Understand that I admire your fighter and I admire you.” He extended his hand to the leader. “Your Joshua is a great warrior, a lion.”

  The Ugandans went silent; their grins faded and their eyes slid to each other. From the back came a voice that chided the others.

  “He is a sportsmahn.”

  The leader shook Con’s hand. “Suh,” he said.

  Then all of them offered their hands in the soft, African manner, and Con shook each one. As he picked up his stuff and walked alone toward the dressing room, he heard the same voice he heard before.

  “He is a sportsmahn.”

  Racket from the departing fight fans was banging off the walls of the dressing room. The TV crew was hauling cables and packing its gear in silence. Members of Mookie’s faction were quiet, but down deep inside they were loud. A guard at the door kept the crowd out, but some got through and stood silently in disgust. Some yelled through the door that Mookie got jobbed, that what happened wasn’t supposed to happen in Philly. Others hollered for a formal hearing before the Commission, but the faction knew if they filed a complaint, that nothing would come of it.

  Outside, the Ugandans were chanting. One had wrapped himself in the multistriped black, yellow, and red of their homeland, a flag that had some kind of bird against a white circle in the middle of it. The smell of reefer edged itself into the dressing room. Mookie’s managers stood looking at nothing. Odell sat next to Mookie, who slumped in his chair holding an ice bag to his lumping face, and adjusting the ice cubes Con had stuffed down his cup. Sweat continued to pour from Mookie, and Con kept after him with a towel that was stained with dark red blotches. Con mixed equal parts of water with a small can of pineapple-orange-banana juice and gave it to Mookie to replenish the potassium he’d lost sweating. Blood no longer flowed. The ring doctor came in to check Mookie: his ribs, kidneys, his liver, his nuts, his eyes, his mouth. He shrugged when he looked up Mookie’s nose and told him to see a doctor once he got back to L.A.

  “It’s not the first time, right?”

  “I get it fix when I hang ‘em up.”

  A reporter wanted an interview, but Mookie waved him off with a water bottle. Slipping in with the reporter was a raggedy little brother wearing a dusty black cowboy hat with a long feather. He began to move and throw punches. He had scar tissue for eyebrows and wine for breath. His pants were too big and too long, but he continued to stick and move, to slip imaginary punches. He was five-four and had probably been a bantamweight, but now he weighed 160. Mookie closed his eyes and leaned forward, his face deep in the ice bag.

  The little dude hiked up his pants and continued to punch.

  “You like me, bro’, you like me,” he called to Mookie, who kept his face in the ice. “Dig,” the little guy said, bobbing and weaving and throwing combinations. “Bip, bip, bang! Can you dig it? Slip an’ then you stick, stick, roll to the lef side and hook, whip! to the body, man, whip! to the headl Bang, bang, stick and move, bip, bip, bang! See dat shit?, see what I’m sayin, can you dig it? Bap, bap, bap, and bang!, and bing!, and boom!” He raised his hands in victory and then pranced around the room like a rooster who’d just set a record with the hens. “Yeah, you like me, baby, you like me!”

  Odell took him by the back of his pants and gently eased him out of the room. A moment later he stuck his head through the door. “Any y’all got twenty-five cent?” The guard threw him out.

  Odell said, “Mookie got a fan.”

  Despite themselves they all smiled, and Mookie was able to dress after Con sponged him down with alcohol, and he stopped sweating. But the ride back to the hotel was awful.

  “You want to go for pizza?” the driver asked.

  Mookie shook his head and put a towel over his face.

  In the hotel he came out of the shower holding his ribs and all stooped over. “I be hurtin ... be pissin red, too.”

  Con iced the kid’s face and his ribs and kidneys. Mookie was too sore for a massage, so Con gave him a codeine pill that would allow him to sleep.

  “Your flight’s at eight-thirty,�
�� said one of the managers. “They’ll pick you up at seven downstairs.” The managers went down to the bar. The white manager had Chivas on the rocks. The black had Hennessey and Coke.

  “What time is it now?” asked Mookie.

  “Fifteen pass one,” said Odell.

  The codeine kicked in and Mookie was able to pack. “I can’t believe they did that to me, all the years I been fightin.”

  “Money,” said Odell.

  Mookie sat down in disgust.

  “In time,” Con said, “you’ll be prouder of this fight than all your other fights put together.”

  Con finished packing at two-thirty. He felt old when he fell into bed and knew he’d be tired for days. But his mind kept sifting through what happened, what should have been.

  “Lord,” he prayed, “we won but we didn’t win. We drank from your cup, Lord, but I want you to know that I’m mad at you. I know I was ready to stab the judges and that I jumped on that crook referee, forgive me, Lord, but I figure someone’s gonna shoot the boy he don’t ref right, so maybe I did the puke a favor. Help us all through this night, Lord, ‘specially Mookie, help him on the plane and help him with his face so his mama won’t feel so bad. Lord, I’m not mad at you anymore.”

  Most of the swelling in Mookie’s face had gone down, but he kept it in ice in the hotel room before they left. He wore dark glasses in the airport and on the plane. He was spitting and pissing clear, but he was still stooped over from pain in his ribs, and the white in his left eye was scarlet from a broken blood vessel.

  “Africa hurtin’, too,” said Odell.

  Con gave him more codeine, and the kid slept most of the way to Los Angeles, Mookie next to the window, Odell in the middle, and Con on the aisle. Odell slept, too. Odell always slept in the air. Con never did, though this was a soft ride. The pilot’s voice came over the snapping and popping loudspeaker from time to time, and somewhere over Arizona it woke Mookie, who stared out the window. As they came across the low desert of California, the pilot spoke again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in Los Angeles in a few minutes. Over on our left is the famous resort city of Palm Springs. In a moment, on our right, high in the mountains, you will see Big Bear Lake.”

  Mookie thought about the champions that trained in Big Bear. Despite his will, his eyes began to leak. The announcement woke Odell, who always sat up smiling after a sleep. “All right,” he said.

  Mookie kept looking out at the scorched desert below. He put a hand over his bruised mouth to muffle the sounds coming from him, but he couldn’t control the spasms in his gut. Odell looked at Con, who signaled for Odell to talk to Mookie.

  “What this business?” Odell said to the kid.

  Mookie couldn’t look at him, ashamed of the water coming down from his dark glasses. “You know.”

  “You lose a eye, you go blind?”

  “My mama don’t get no house,” said Mookie, turning to Odell.

  “You quittin?”

  “Hell no!”

  “Then wipe you face, boy. We got no dog in us.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Frozen Water

  N

  obody know how Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch first come around Hope Street Gym, but for maybe two years the boy show up every month for two weeks at a stretch and then he be gone for two weeks. Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch, that be the fightin name he give hissef, but he never have a fight, except one, if that what you call it. Around the gym they cut his name down to Deedee, or Flippy or Orbit. But Danger always talk about hissef the long way, by his fightin name.

  “My name’s Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch outta Polk County, Missouri,” he say, squinting one eye, “an’ my dream is to fight the Motor City Cobra Thomas Hit Man Hearns for the WBA Welterweight Championship of the whole world.”

  I done some fighting back before TV, lightweight, course I weigh more now. I wasn’t a contender, nothing like that, but I was a scrapper and I put on a good show every time I lace them up in the local arenas around L.A.—Wrigley Field, Ocean Park, Wilmington, Jeffries’ Barn, and sometimes up in Stockton or Frisco, and down Tijuana Old Mexico. I fight at Hollywood Legion, too, right there off Sunset and Vine, but I had to say I was a Ayrab because they don’t fight coloreds in Hollywood Legion in those days. Prince Hakim the Sheik. I fight there ten times as a Ayrab because I had light skin and could fool the Hollywood movie crowd, main events some of them I fight when I filled the joint up! Promoter know, so the sportswriters know, they don’t care about colored, neither do the white boys I fight—it be a game. Posters other places say Willie “Scrap Iron” DuPree. Friends call me Scrap.

  I never get a title shot, but I make me some money in my fifty-five fights, and that’s when times be tough and you got to fight hard, but I never got busted-up bad or nothing. Nose be broke enough so I don’t hardly have a nose, and one eye droop because of cuts and the dead nerve in the lid, but nothing serious, not like some of the boys end up stuttering and talking through they nose. I never did business or bet on the other boy, only on mysef, money I made be straight money. And because I give it my best, I always have a place to stay once I hang them up, have a room in the back of a gym for keeping it clean, for dumping the spit, buckets and keeping the blood mopped up, and for keeping the place smelling good, things like that. And keeping my nose clean and my eyes peeled the wrong element start hanging around. And once I get old and stop training my own fighters, I handle the stool and ice bucket for a few dollars if some out-of-town faction be short a corner guy. They want a cut mem, I charge more. Rubdown? Rubdown cost two dollars, heavyweight cost three. I know a fighter body better than they girlfriends.

  These days, the old gyms be gone, like Main Street and Hope Street, but now I’m out at Hymns Gym 108th and Broadway, run by boy I used to train, Curtis “Hymn” Odom. Call him Hymn he fight so pretty and always serious as a shroud, Curtis Odom, I teach him, teach him to crack. Curtis a contender in his prime. He hit so hard you start lookin for a tittie to suck. But he got a eye detach and can’t see right and that be it, but good God how the boy could punch, he slip outside on you and hook to body yop, hook to the head bing! and put you raggedy ass to sleep. Nice man, too, he decent, people respect Hymn, wouldn’t say shit he have a mouthful, why people from around the world come to Hymn Gym for Curtis to train they boys and he make a gang a money, that and with what the boys he train and manage hissef make for him.

  But Hope Street, where Hope Street Gym used to be, it wasn’t but a block long where it runs from Eighteenth and the freeway off-ramp down to Washington and Trade Tech College. The orange brick building be a old Masonic Hall some kind, have six floors and go back to 1910. Most of it wasn’t used except for storage, but the gym be up two and a half flights of stairs and be built inside the ballroom part of the hall that have high ceilings and windows and lots of air, not that you leave the windows open. Building tore down to make even more parking, but before that it sit across the parking lot behind the Olympic Auditorium where they have the fights in L.A.’s 1932 Olympics.

  They a few contenders outta Hope, but no champs. There be amateurs and a lot of Latino boys come through for fights at the Olympic and the nickel-dime gym bums looking to hustle a two-dollar loan. Gym be in a neighborhood where you car ain’t safe. South of Washington and east of Figueroa be mostly black. West of Fig all directions was Latino. Any white boy come through better look like he can fight.

  Dillard didn’t have no trouble with anyone, never did, not even ones who couldn’t talk American. He tell anybody listen he a Missouri hillbilly, tell people he go to Kansas City one time and the Missouri River be too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Last time he leave Hope Street he don’t come back.

  Danger a farmer white boy with pale hair and eyes and skin, and when he work out he turn red as a burnt finger. Hymn train the boy free of charge knowing Danger couldn’t fight a lick and never would. Danger
try so hard and mess up so bad you laugh at first. Then you watch awhile, see his set jaw, and you think on that dream of his and you end up in the boy’s corner same way Hymn did.

  Hymn work with anybody tap him on the shoulder. They young enough, you work with them for free, even the fatties because you never know what’s inside a boy until the boy get hit. Joe Frazier a fat boy. Well, Hymn know from the git Danger never go nowhere, know that even if he could learn a few moves, he never pass the noodle exam to get licensed. Still, he never turn his back on the boy, never charge him a dime.

  “My name’s Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch outta Polk County, Missouri!” Danger yell out between rounds, try to be like Muhammad Ali, “and I challenge the Motor City Cobra Thomas Hit Man Hearns to fight me for the WBA Welterweight Championship of the whole world!”