by Jack Tunney
The bell rang for the fourth and I came out blazing. I backed Barker into a corner straight away, banging body shots into him until he bent at the middle like a little wilting flower. Sucker.
I brought out my uppercut to lift his chin, but that wasn’t where the damage came from. The damage came in my follow up right cross to the now wide open chin. As many times as I’d practiced the move in sparring, it came as second nature to me.
His chin rose like it was praying to the Virgin Mary, and from there it came easy. His head snapped to the side, his jaw knocking out of place and staying there. I knew he was headed for the floor, but I couldn’t resist one last shot.
Out on his feet, his hands dropped and I laid one straight shot to his face, pulled it a little left and ran my laces across his eyebrow. The skin split open like a pair of lips gasping for air and the blood ran into his eyes before he hit the mat.
The ref pushed me back and started to count, but I didn’t stick around to listen. I went back to my corner where Sal waited for me with a big grin. I heard the bell. Fight over. My record came even at ten and ten.
Over Sal’s shoulder was Lola, my girl. She came to every fight even though I always told her not to. A lot of guys like to bring their gals to the fights, but I thought it was no place for a lady. Most of them ended up bored, filing their nails and waiting for the bloodshed to be over so they can get home. Still they come, content with their role as arm candy for the big shots as long as it keeps them in mink.
Of course the crowd at the Excelsior was more a squirrel-masquerading-as-mink than a real fur and diamonds crowd.
And Lola was my diamond. She smiled at me, I smiled back. My face wasn’t even bruised up that night. No cold steak over a black eye for me. A night out with my winnings, treating Lola the way she deserved. A double in her highball and desert after the meal.
Two more fights to go that night and she knew the drill. I’d meet her out front. She couldn’t make it to the locker rooms and there was no reason for her to hang around inside to see a bunch of sluggers she didn’t know.
After my three seconds of glory standing center ring with my fist in the air, Sal took me down to the locker rooms.
“Real good, kid. Real good,” he said. “You read him like a book.”
Easy for Sal to say. He couldn’t read no more than I could do Chinese algebra. That part of his head was punched away a long time ago.
We went through our usual post-bout rubdown and there was not much to talk about since the fight went so well. We didn’t talk about what to work on for next time. Mostly because there was no next time scheduled.
“What do we got lined up, Sal? I gotta eat, y’know.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Jimmy.” Sal kept on rubbing, squeezing a little hard like his mind was somewhere else. “You and me both. None of my boys have been getting much play lately...”
He trailed off, thinking about hard times and empty cupboards. Yeah, things were lean for all of us. Sal past his prime and me and his other sluggers at the peak of ours. Sheesh, that was a sad state of affairs. His hands dug into my back, taking out their frustration without him realizing it.
“Hey, lay off there, Sal. I won. No need for punishment.”
“Sorry, kid.” He took his hands off me, rubbed them together to get rid of the liniment oil. “I been meaning to talk to you . . .” He trailed off again. Not unusual for Sal. He sometimes dropped thoughts like the act of letting them out of his mouth made the whole idea he was trying to communicate slip away.
“Just let me know when we got the next one set, okay, Sal? Maybe after tonight I can get something a little further up the card, y’know?”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe, Jimmy.”
I hopped off the table and started dressing. “It’s just, well, you know how it is, Sal. How I feel about Lola. You know I been wanting to ask her to marry me. I can’t do it without two nickels to rub together. Got my eye on a ring, you know. Real diamond and everything.”
“Yeah, Jimmy. It’s tough times all around.”
Just like Sal to make me feel guilty about wanting the best for Lola. Sal had it rough. Not a dime left from his fight days, and when I went on a three-fight losing streak it made it hard to secure any kind of purse. And him taking a percentage of what I thought wasn’t enough to live on? Man, I was a heel for not thinking about him first.
“I’m sorry, Sal. I know I ain’t been exactly making it easy for you.” Neither had any of his other pugs, but I didn’t want to remind him. Rubbing salt in the wound, y’know?
“Well, you see, Jimmy . . .”
This time he was cut off by a knock at the door. Odd. Not many people made it down the long hall to the locker rooms. Fewer had the politeness to knock.
I looked up, my pants on but unbuttoned and my chest still bare. Through the door came a small man in a fancy suit. Two much bigger men were with him but they stayed outside, bookending the door and looking like they were waiting for something to happen.
“Sal!” the man said. Sal looked down at the concrete floor and sheepishly extended a hand to the well-dressed man.
“Mr. Cardone, good to see you again.”
Cardone shook Sal’s hand but looked past him to me standing by my locker, half dressed.
“This is the guy, huh? Jimmy Wyler, right?” He pointed a finger at me and despite the smile on his face it felt like an accusation. “A hell of a bout out there. You really showed that joker what for.”
He brushed past Sal and held out a hand for me to take. I turned and shook with him. The top of Cardone’s head came to my shoulder. It wasn’t until he was right up on me that I noticed exactly how short he was. He carried himself like a much taller man.
He aimed that wagging finger at me again. “I came here tonight with an eye on you. Sal here has told me a lot about you.”
“That right?” I couldn’t figure this guy. He didn’t smell like a promoter. Too much aftershave, not enough sweat. The suit, the vest, the tie clip, pocket watch chain and mirror-shined shoes all said money. But what kind of money?
“Been trying to get Sal to let me near one of his boys for a long time. And you,” he looked me up and down. “You’re just the ticket.”
I looked at Sal but he kept his eyes down, away from me.
“Mr. Cardone has a proposition for you, Jimmy,” Sal said to the floor. What was with all the “mister” stuff?
“I got a fight for you,” Cardone said. “Next week if you want it.”
“Sure. I want it.” It was what I’d just been on Sal about, so I couldn’t turn down an offer just because the guy offering it gave me the creeps. “You a promoter? I never seen you around.”
“I’m a promoter of sorts. I put things together. Fights, other things. Entertainments.” He lowered his chin, looked up at me from under the brim of his expensive hat. “I arrange things.”
He dropped the hints and I caught them.
“How’d you like another one in the win column?” Cardone said with a smile. I caught him sliding an eye down across my bare chest.
“Always.”
“I think I can,” he winked at me, “arrange that for us.”
I turned to Sal, who continued staring at the floor. “Is this a fix up?” I asked. Why not get it out there? I was not much for speaking in codes.
“It’s a chance for you to win another one and make a little scratch while you do it.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
For the first time the smile slipped off Cardone’s face. He turned to Sal. “Sal, are we gonna have a problem here?”
Sal didn’t react. Staring at his shoes, I figured Sal just didn’t hear him.
“Sal?” he said louder.
Sal finally looked up. “No, no, Mr. Cardone. No problem. We’ll take the fight. No problem.”
The idea of a fix didn’t sit well with me. Even if I came out on the winning side. Plus, I was upset with Sal not telling me beforehand, but I realized he was trying to when Cardone came in
. Still made me wonder how long he’d been planning it.
Cardone turned back to me. “So, kid, we have a deal?”
Sal spoke with a mixture of pleading and guilt. “It’s a good deal for us both, Jimmy. Real good.” I pictured Sal’s empty gym, his failing health, the string of young fighters under his belt who spent more time face down on the canvas than they did sleeping in their own beds. Good for him, sure. Then I thought of that ring I had in mind for Lola. The money I’d already put down on layaway. Good for me, too. Maybe.
I looked again at the expensive suit Cardone wore. How much money does a man have to have that makes him carry himself a foot taller than he really is? Must be a lot.
“Did I mention it pays five hundred bucks?” he said.
I felt like I took a glove to the temple. My knees went a little soft. I didn’t think he noticed. I learned something about myself right then. I learned I had a price.
BONUS PREVIEW
FIGHT CARD: COUNTERPUNCH
JACK TUNNEY
ROUND ONE
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
1954
I blocked three pawing jabs and then ducked a right cross, dancing away, moving out to the center of the ring. The intense expression on Big Hank Clemson's dark, sweat-shiny face never changed as he plodded doggedly after me.
It was my first fight ever—at the professional level, that is—without Packy Newsome in my corner. I'd given a lot of thought on whether or not I wanted to climb back into the ring at all after Packy passed away so unexpectedly only eight short days ago. But, in the end, the commitment I felt to the card that had been put together and promoted, and the encouragement I got from the handful of people who mattered to me—including Packy's wife and daughter—had convinced that going ahead with the fight was the right thing for me to do.
I mean, it wasn't like anybody saw me as the next Marciano or anything. I was never on that level, not even in my prime. What I was, at thirty-three, was a regional fighter, a solid mid-card heavyweight with a respectable 35-8 win-loss record. Fight fans in and around the Milwaukee area knew Danny "The Duke" Dugronski well enough, but you didn't have to travel very far away from Beer City for the name to draw nothing more than a blank look or some "dumb Polack" crack.
But that was okay. I'd always had my head screwed on pretty straight … well, after Father Tim and the nuns at St. Vincent's Asylum for Boys got done with me, that is. So I accepted what I was and, more importantly (as both Father Tim and Packy would be quick to remind me), what I wasn't. I might not be heavyweight champion material, but that didn't mean I wasn't still somebody to be reckoned with in the regional ranks, and that was good enough for me.
The way Packy and I had it figured was that I'd stick with the fight game another year or two, maybe a half dozen more fights, eight tops. As long as I was able to make a good showing and there were decent purses being offered. Then we'd both hang it up.
Packy was twice my age and had been in the fight game since back before Dempsey started knocking blocks off. He'd managed and trained many fighters over the years, some of them serious contenders. For a while he had a whole string of guys. At the end, though, it was just me. Like I said, we'd planned on checking out of the game together … until the big ref Upstairs did the ten count on ol' Pack and called him away to manage in a better gym.
That's the way it goes sometimes. I'd learned that lesson early on when my mom and dad died in a ballroom inferno celebrating New Year's Eve when I was barely three years old. And then several more times when I was an island-hopping Marine driving back Hirohito's swarms and I saw lots of my fellow leathernecks check out ahead of their plans, too.
Over the years I'd ground plenty of mental gears pondering the Why of these kinds of things, sometimes on bended knee. I never reached any totally satisfactory conclusions during such times, but I generally managed to chew things down fine enough to where I was able to hack them out of my craw and move on.
I thought that was where I'd gotten with Packy's death—able to move on.
Right at the moment, going toe-to-toe in the middle of the ring with a banger like Big Hank, I sure couldn't afford to be carrying around the distraction of grief or sadness. But whether it was that or something else, the fact remained I was looking anything but sharp as we neared the bell to end the seventh round. I was way behind in points and so far hadn't had much luck turning things around. Clemson's greater reach was allowing him to pepper me with jabs almost at will, holding me at bay, not letting me get in close the way I like to work. A lot of the jabs didn't land all that hard, but they still took a toll. Most of all, they racked up points against me.
Just in case my own assessment of how things stood might have been too bleak, when the bell finally sounded and I went back to my corner, the tongue-lashing I had waiting for me there from Art LaBree left little doubt he was in complete agreement, and then some.
"What the hell's wrong with you, Danny? You're stumbling around out there like you're half asleep. You gotta go after this guy! You gotta fight the bum hard! If you don't, he's gonna go head hunting and then he will put you to sleep."
Art was another grizzled old-timer who'd been around the fight game a long time. Not as long as Packy, but close. From the waist up he moved with quick, jerky movements, hands gesturing excitedly all the time. Other than when he was working the corner of a fight, he'd have a badly chewed, unlit cigar poking out one corner of his mouth. Tonight, in place of the cigar, there was a styptic pencil bobbing around crazily when he talked.
Packy and Art had been friendly rivals over the years, often pitting their respective fighters against one another but all the while maintaining their own friendship and mutual respect. That was why, after Packy died and I decided to go ahead with this fight, the first (and only, really) person I thought of contacting to see if he'd help me through it, was Art. He'd agreed without hesitation.
And now here I was, on the verge of letting both of us down—and Packy, too, since I knew he was looking on—if I didn't get focused and start doing my job when it came to Big Hank.
I sloshed around a mouthful of water and spit it into the bucket. "I been wearing him down," I said lamely. "When I go back out there, I'll be ready to make my move."
"Yeah. Right," Art growled as he continued to towel me off. "Well, you'd better do something. You're so far down in points I don't see anything short of a KO pulling this one out of the dumper."
My other corner man, furnished by Art, was a younger guy named Wally, a tow-headed kid barely into his twenties, who seemed to know a lot about my fight history. Right from the get-go he'd shown a kind of hero worship toward me that I appreciated, but at the same found a little embarrassing. The talking he did between rounds was in sharp contrast to Art's gruff manner.
"You can do it, Danny," he said now, jamming a fresh mouthpiece between my teeth. "You're The Duke—go out there and remind everybody who you are. Pole-axe that big, awkward oaf and let's get this over with."
Funny how different things can give you a mental kick in the pants when you need one. Sometimes it takes a good chewing out; other times a few simple words of encouragement can do the trick. I took the chewing from Art because I knew I deserved it. But at the same time I also knew that it wasn't doing much to stoke the fire flickering only half-heartedly in my belly—a fire that should have been roaring inside of me in a big fight. And then, with just a handful of words that included a couple goofy terms from my past, Wally had found a way to fan those flames. You're The Duke—go out there and remind who you are …Pole-axe that big, awkward oaf …
When I first settled in Milwaukee and started fighting, I was living, as I still do, on Dukes Avenue in the heart of the city's predominantly Polish south side. Right from the first, the ring announcer started introducing me as "Danny Dugronski from Dukes Avenue on the south side." It didn't take long for some of the regular fight attendees at the Lakepoint Armory, where practically all of my fights were held, to begin hollering "Duke! Duke!" w
henever the tide of a fight was turning in my favor. So, pretty soon, I was Danny "The Duke" Dugronski.
A little while later, as I was putting together a nice string of knockout victories, one of the sports reporters wrote that my opponent "went down like he was pole-axed" A pole axe, I learned, was a nasty medieval weapon resembling a spear with an axe blade and also a hammer attached near its tip. When you got whacked with one of those babies, you went down hard and stayed down.
Anyway, after the reporter wrote that, the shouts of "Duke! Duke!" from the crowd were often mixed with calls for me to "Pole-axe the bum!"
Packy got a real kick out of that one. Because I was a Pole, he said, it was a clever play on words. He even used it himself once in a while during some of those earlier fights, times when I was having a tough go of it and he was trying to fire me up with between-rounds chatter. "Go out there and pole-axe that bum and lets go home!" he'd say.
After a couple years, "The Duke" part stuck but the pole axe thing sort of died off. Tonight was the first time I'd heard it in a long time. And when I did—in Wally's eager tone, his words echoing Packy's almost exactly and accompanied by that wide-eyed way he had of looking at me—damned if it didn't stir something in me that I badly needed at that point.
When the bell rang for the eighth round, I was on my feet and out to the center of the canvas finally feeling some real determination. By God, I was Duke Dugronski and I was ready to do some pole-axing!
It would be nice to say that, suddenly jazzed with so much rip-snorting resolve, I charged out with a dazzling flurry of punches and in no time flat clobbered Big Hank into submission. You know, like in the movies or something. I could even say afterwards that I felt Packy guiding my punches.
Yeah, it would've been nice to say that … But it wasn't quite so easy.
Oh, for the first minute or so of that eighth round I had things pretty much my way. Clemson was so surprised by my sudden show of aggression that he was caught off guard and had to do a lot of backpedaling in order to keep away from me while he tried to re-assess things.