Million Dollar Baby

by F. X. Toole

  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 freckle-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 BILLYBLUEs 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?”

  “’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 wat
ched 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.”