by Kluge, P. F.
After dark, though, it was different and maybe a little dangerous. Trucks were more menacing, ditto truck drivers. By day, they tolerated automobiles. At night the roads—and rest stop— belonged to them. What families came along emptied furtively out of their cars, and parted reluctantly, mothers with daughters, fathers with sons, as they headed towards restrooms and an unknown fate. The old man and I headed toward a picnic table at the back of the rest stop, near a fence that separated the interstate from farmland. We sat down next to each other, on the same side of the table, facing out toward the Interstate. And after a quiet time, listening to the roar of trucks, the story telling mood returned to my old man.
III.
WHEN YOU MEET SOMEONE MORE IMPORTANT than you, someone like Max Schmeling or Joe Jacobs, you say, well, this was special. I’ll always remember. What you mean is, he’ll forget. Because he’s more important. He’s up there and I’m down here. He moves on, I stay. His life is something that happens in front of crowds, that you read about in newspapers. So I’ll remember him and there’s no way he remembers me. I’m not so sure about that, son. Schmeling, to this day, I’ll bet he remembers horseshoes, even if he never played the game again. And zwiebelkuchen at our table, I’ll bet he recalls that as clearly as the tea he took with Hitler at Berchtesgaden a few months later. We had better company at our table and better food, Hitler being a vegetarian. He conquered Europe and never ate meat. Go ask about that down at the health food store.
Anyway, Joe Jacobs never forgot. A week later there comes a ticket to Schmeling vs. Louis, ringside at Yankee Stadium. Better than ringside. Press. He put me down as a correspondent for a German newspaper I never heard of, the Volkische Something-or-Other. So I was there, the only time in my life I was at what they called a historical occasion. But ten-to-one! It felt like an invitation to an execution. I had nothing against Joe Louis, then or ever. But him I didn’t know. I didn’t want to see Max get beat up. And this was a fight he couldn’t win. So the night of the fight I stayed home and watched it rain. The rain matched my mood, I guessed. It also cancelled the fight. So the weather gave me a chance to change my mind. The weather and the newspaper. Max had gotten a short reprieve, that was all, they claimed. Louis was still a big favorite, 8 to 1 to win, 4 to 1 by knockout, even money it would happen before the fifth round. And then this smart aleck N.Y. Times writer, John Kiernan, puts a poem in the sports section the morning after the fight got rained out.
Oh the farmer in the dell
Now the watering is done
On the crops he tills and sells
Craves a siege of sizzling sun.
But Herr Schmeling if he’s sane
And he knows how Louis fights
Must be praying hard for rain
Lasting forty days and forty nights.
That did it. On June 19, 1936, I went to Yankee Stadium to pay my respects.
George, it was some night. The whole thing gave me goose bumps. It still does. Max came into the ring, cool and polite, nodding towards people at ringside. He saw me among the press and nodded, I swear he did, nice of him, considering the pain that was minutes away, that was already waiting across the ring in Joe Louis, who didn’t dance or wave or do much of anything, just stood there, no particular expression, like he was standing in line for a movie instead of about to star in one.
Here’s something else. Before the fight, the ring is crowded with people. The fighters are the ones wearing robes—that’s easy—but who are all those others? Then, bit by bit, it starts to empty. They introduce former and current champions … Dempsey, Braddock, Tunney, Canzoneri … and up-and-comers who walk across the ring, corner to corner, wishing best of luck, and slip out through the ropes of the ring because this isn’t their night. Tonight, they’re part of the crowd, just like me. Next to go are the well-wishers, the entourage, the hangers-on, my brother among them. The boxing commission officials. Then, after they meet with the referee in the center of the ring, managers, trainers, cut men. Finally, after all the layers of business and friendship have been peeled away, it’s only three men, Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, and Arthur Donovan, the referee. The bell rings and the referee you hardly notice. Now, it’s two men.
Those first rounds, I was just hoping Max would get through okay. Every minute he didn’t get hurt, that was gravy, but I wasn’t thinking he’d win, only he might be standing at the end. No way they’d give him a decision but everyone would know he’d gone the full fifteen with Louis, which neither of the former champs, Carnera or Baer, had done. That’s what I was hoping for and sometimes I think that’s all that Max was hoping for. Then it happened. They say Max saw it first in the films. “I zee something,” he said. Sounds like an evil u-boat captain sighting through a periscope at a fat convoy. Well, what Max saw was some flaws. When Joe Louis threw a jab he held his arm out a while—meaning a split second—too long. You could counter off his jab. And something else. When Louis came at you, looking to throw a right, he held his left low, his whole body listed left. If you stepped to the right, you could land a right of your own. I sound like I know more than I did. I was surprised as anyone when, in the fourth round, Max threw a right and Joe Louis went down.
It wasn’t a knockout, not even close. Joe got up at the count of two. I was afraid he would get up mad, that he’d come roaring after Max, like Dempsey after Firpo. That wasn’t our kind of fight. What happened, though, was strange and brave and heartbreaking. It lasted another eight rounds. There were dozens, I want to say, hundreds of rights from Max. Louis was still dangerous. He hurt Max in the seventh, I recall. But it was one right after another. And there was nothing Louis could do. It was as though, after the first knockdown, he knew what he was in for and was ready enough for it, ready enough not to fall down. Otherwise, he could do nothing. Joe started getting puffy and clumsy. It got bad.
Now, the twelfth round. Louis had been stumbling around and Joe Jacobs was worried he might butt Max, accidental or on purpose. He urged Max to do what didn’t come natural. To end it. Early in the twelfth, Louis fouled him. Joe Jacobs was right to be worried. Then Max scores with a right that jars Louis and then another right. The crowd is begging for it. They’ve been on his side since the fourth. And Louis is ready, too, wandering around, shaky, drunk-looking. Max goes after him, “like a panther,” the paper later says. More rights. He steps back and waits for Louis to fall but he’s standing right there. Standing is all he’s doing. His face is swollen, his hands are at his sides, he’s not even looking much at Max. His eyes are open but they’re off somewhere. Max steps in one more time. No need for a jab or a left, a bob or a weave, it’s one more right, direct hit on the unmoving target. At last, Louis collapses, down on his knees, in a praying position. Donovan waves that it’s over, the seconds rush in, Joe rolls over on his back, later they carry him to the corner. At the same time—this I’ll never forget—there’s Max and he’s jumping in the air. Oh, hell, how can I say this? He’s not jumping up like a cheerleader. He’s jumping forward and upward, like towards something, with his hands at his sides and a huge grin on his face. It’s the way people look in paintings when you see them going up into heaven, not flying themselves, wings flapping, but being drawn upwards. But it wasn’t God that Max was headed towards. It was his Jewish manager, Joe Jacobs. The invincible had been vinced.
“What time is it, George?” I ask. I’m wrung out. Every time I think about that night, I relive it.
“Ten o’clock,” he says.
“God, I’m thirsty.”
“We can find a beer back in Strasburg. Or go down the road some more.“
“I’m not done yet,” I say. “And I don’t want to leave here until I am.”
“Stay here,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.” I expect to see him driving out and heading down the interstate to the next exit, looking for a convenience store. Out and back, that should be half an hour. A lot of fuss to go through for a beer. But I appreciate it. I’ll finish the story and then I’ll be all out of
history. Until Florida, at least.
“Here you go,” he says, back in no time. He holds out half a six pack, the cans held together by the plastic webbing that’ll be around when Jesus comes back to earth. There were some kids parked at the edge of the rest stop, it turns out. Smoking funny cigarettes, listening to loud music, drinking beer and just generally preparing America for the next century of global competition. They were so pleased George wasn’t a cop, they gave him the beer for nothing. Old Milwaukee. Free beer. Beer soda.
“Pop,” he says. “Earth to Pop?”
“Yes?”
“Finish the story.”
“Well, son,” I say. “It goes downhill. From the moment Max Schmeling jumps—flies—into Joe Jacobs’ arms, it goes downhill. And far. Not just to the bottom of the hill, but into the ground, into the deepest hole that ever got dug, that swallowed millions.”
It’s funny how folks who came over here from other countries looked for a piece of America that resembled what they left behind. You ever notice that, I ask George? I don’t just mean neighborhoods, like Germans in Yorkville and Italians in Little Italy and Chinese in Chinatown. I’m talking about outside of cities. You used to have those Greeks in Tarpon Springs and Basque sheepherders in Utah and even today, Vietnamese down in Louisiana, fishing in the Gulf of Mexico like it’s the South China Sea. In South Jersey, even, there were Russian places with onion-steeple churches. I guess those pine barrens and birches and cedar lined rivers reminded them of home.
Well, Germans have a thing about forests. You know that. It shows up in our houses, all that wood paneling, and our gardens, dotted with elves, in our loden jackets and deer heads and cuckoo clocks, our fairy tales and our food. We head for the woods whenever we can. That’s what pulled me to New Jersey in the first place. And that’s what got me and Mom and my brother Heinz in a car, headed up into the northwest corner of the state, out in the mountains toward Port Jervis. Some of my brother’s pals had a “sport camp” there and they were having a picnic.
I hadn’t seen much of Heinz in the months since the Schmeling-Louis fight. At first, I figured he was too busy celebrating to worry about his dull old married brother living out in the sticks. Maybe he’d taken a trip or found new friends: I would have welcomed that. It was time he took off on his own, found a wife and a new life, outside of Yorkville. There was more. Whenever we talked, it was all about us going to Florida. “Florida-on-the-brain,” Mom called it. It was as if the house I’d built and the garden I put in didn’t exist. You should have seen the look on Mom’s face, when she heard that talk. It got unpleasant, kind of. Heinz might be the life of the party, the dancer and athlete and charmer, but he needed me more than I needed him and what he needed I couldn’t give. We were drifting apart. Sometimes, when we spoke, he got sarcastic. He called me “brüderchen” in a mocking way, same as when he asked about “the brand new home, the lovely wife, the well kept garden,” and when he called me “Amerikaner.” I could hear the pain. Life in New Jersey was steady as she goes, working and saving, a step at a time. Like raking leaves. Heinz needed a place that was an adventure, the gamble, the inside track, the getting in on the ground floor. The next big, bright idea. And, while I stayed in New Jersey, New York City was getting uncomfortable. In New Jersey, I stayed out of politics. We all did. We voted Democrat, paid our union dues, and kept our mouths shut. But in Yorkville there were people out on the streets, looking for a fight.
So there we were, George, an outing into the woods and God, it was beautiful up there in those days, farms here and there and shaky one-pump gas stations and hicks who looked like they’d never been to New York or cared to go. It was a bigger country. It’s shrunk, since then. The woods were hemlocks mixed with beech and maples, with sycamores down near the rivers we crossed on rickety one-lane bridges and at the end of it, a turn we nearly missed onto a dirt road that curled downhill, a road shaded by trees that met overhead. It was through the woods to grandmother’s house, it was a Grimm fairy tale. There could have been trolls under the bridge, elves peeking out from among the ferns. But those weren’t elves that we met down there. We drove to an entrance, with a banner strung over the gate: CAMP DEUTSCHLAND, it said. I think that’s what it said. My attention went to the men who were standing there, checking the cars that arrived. They wore dark trousers and tan shirts with sleeves rolled up and, just above their elbows, armbands with swastikas on them. They nodded and waved us in, once they saw Heinz.
I could feel Mom freeze up and Heinz tensed too. He waved his hands and said something like “those guys,” in a tone of boys-will-be-boys, we shouldn’t worry about it. What I did— or didn’t do—next was the biggest mistake of my life. I should have made a u-turn, right then and there, and gone back up the road and not stopped until I had my wife back in Berkeley Heights and my brother on the road to Florida.
Maybe you never heard of the German-American Bund. It was their camp. They were a pro-Nazi group that came out of Yorkville, led by a man named Fritz Kuhn, who later got deported. They had parades, staged a rally in Madison Square Garden and they scared a lot of people. Sometimes what they said was a little reasonable: they were putting out the story that the press wasn’t getting, they were organizing just like all foreign groups organized, to lobby for the folks “on the other side.” Still you couldn’t wear a swastika in New York and expect a reasonable conversation. They scared me, that day. Sure, later on we found out they were pathetic. They were just-off-the-boaters, with no deep roots in America, watched, covered, penetrated every move they made and they were so out to lunch they even embarrassed the German diplomats in Washington. Still, it gave me the willies, getting out of my car that day. Mom put her hand on my arm as soon as I opened the door for her. She was shaking.
Heinz led the way and we followed, wondering about the cost of every step we took. Germans had all kinds of groups. Hiking clubs—those were the Nature Friends. Turner-verein— that was athletes, soccer players and gymnasts. Choral societies—the sängerbund. Heinz acted like this was like that, just another club. He was at his most happy-go-lucky, a hello here, a wave there. The day’s program hadn’t started yet, although there was a little wooden stage set up for speeches. Right now, it was innocent: little blond-haired kids marching around playing soldier, no different from the Boy Scouts. Other youngsters waded at the edge of a pond, their mothers watching out for them. Beer kegs and picnic tables and oom-pah music on the nicest day of the year, and the woods all around us, just like Germany.
Heinz escorted us from table to table, presenting us by name. With one exception they were all strangers to us, from Fritz Kuhn—a puffed up, unimpressive man—on down. But when people saw us there was something uncomfortable that passed between us, a nod, a recognition, as if we were on their side, we’d already joined up. The next thing, I saw Mom walk towards the pond. I started to follow her but Heinz steered me in the direction of horseshoes. He knew my weakness. I looked again for Mom. She was at the edge of the pond, on a walking path that went all around, so you could see people on the far side, sitting on grassy banks where trees hung over the water. She would be okay, I thought. She’d keep. Well, once I played, I got into it. One of our opponents was the only man I recognized, Karl Lobel, a bicycle repairman, lived in Scotch Plains, lost his boy on Okinawa. I met him dozens of times over the years, shopping in Plainfield and we never said a word about that day.
Well, after I won horseshoes, I looked around and I couldn’t see your mother. I stared across the lake, I walked from table to table. They were preparing for ceremonies, kids getting ready to march and sing, Kuhn ready to speak and your Mom was nowhere. Heinz sat at a table, the Mayor of Yorkville spinning a yarn. No point in disturbing him. I kept walking around and then I saw her, sitting in the car with the door open.
“How long have you been in here?” I asked. She shrugged. “You want to go?”
She didn’t have to answer. She was sitting in the car! Did that mean she was having a wonderful time, she want
ed to stay?
“I’ll get Heinz,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Leave him.”
And I left him. I left him. That simple. I didn’t even argue. I did what she told me to do. I left my brother. On the way home, after a few miles, we talked, but not about Heinz. We scared each other to death. We wondered how many G-men had been out in those lovely woods taking pictures, and whether that yokel fence-mender at the top of the road was writing down our license plate. We worried that we’d wind up on a list, that we’d get in trouble, lose everything. What I’m saying, George, is we weren’t so brave, that day. It wasn’t about walking out on a hate group, voting for the American way. It was about holding onto what we had. Maybe that was the American way. It was the right choice, no doubt about it, but it felt wrong, it felt cowardly and all the rest of my life, to this day, I thought I should have gone back in there for my brother. I should have saved him.
A few months later, Max Schmeling was back in America. In a world that was trading boxing gloves for more serious weapons, Max had one last fight: a rematch against Joe Louis. I didn’t go, not to the fight, not to the training camp, which anyway was up in the Catskills. I’d have loved to say hello to Max again—I hoped he didn’t think I was turning my back, caving in to all the people who wrote him up as a Nazi gladiator. No matter how many times he said it was a boxing match nobody believed him, and I’m not so sure he believed it himself anymore, because Goebbels told him different, he was fighting for Germany and the night of the fight, they say he was in the dressing room, sweating and trembling. Well, Louis was at his peak and Max was past it. I listened on the radio and not very long. It lasted two minutes and four seconds. Max got knocked down three times, one punch so hard they say you could hear him scream in pain. All he threw was two weak rights that made no difference at all.