The Black Boxer Tales

by H. E. Bates

  ‘The greatest array of real fighters any generation ever saw in any one show at any time! I’m telling you. I ain’t asking you if these men look like fighters. Look at ’em! You know what a boxer looks like. You don’t want me to tell you that these men ain’t milk-sops! You’re sportsmen! You come here because you’re sportsmen. Now take a look at that young feller in the blue dressing-gown. Take a look at him! Dan O’Brien—nine stone ten—nineteen years old—and he’ll fight a six-round exhibition bout with any jack-man in this crowd, any jack-man two stone above his own weight. Any jack-man you like to name!’

  Sullivan seized a pair of boxing gloves and flourished them before the crowd and searched it fiercely. A hand went up among the white faces and Sullivan tossed the gloves among the crowd.

  ‘There’s a sportsman!’ he yelled. ‘Now another? Where’s another? Any man like a six-round exhibition bout with Sandy Hack, from Dunkirk, twenty-three years old, eleven stone six? Hack will fight any man in the fourteen stone class! Thank you!’

  Sullivan leapt nimbly across the platform and stood before a huge, sardonic-faced heavy-weight, dark and glowering as a Russian, and yelled:

  ‘Dado Flowers! Twelve stone ten! Flowers has fought in America, and it would be an honour for any boy to beat him in a six-round bout! An honour! What will he give away? He’ll fight an elephant!’

  Someone at the back of the crowd threw up his hand and Sullivan tossed the gloves away and clapped his hands. ‘And now gentlemen.’ He leaned forward confidentially and spread out his hands in caricature of a Jew, and spoke in a harsh deliberate whisper.

  ‘Half a crown. See!’

  There was a flash of silver in his dirty fingers, he smiled, and the coin vanished. He stepped across the platform and twisted the ear of the huge sardonic heavy-weight and the coin dropped neatly into his hands from the boxer’s nose. He tossed the coin in the air and caught it again and washed his hands of it. It reappeared in Hack’s red hair. Sullivan made a joke about the Scottish people. It was an old joke. The spectators laughed, and then Sullivan pointed his fingers at them and whispered dramatically: ‘Wait!’ The crowd, fascinated, watched him without a murmur as he crossed the platform and stood by the huge, impassive figure of the negro.

  There was a moment’s pause. Suddenly the negro opened his mouth and the coin flashed bright against his black skin and seemed to disappear between his red lips. When his mouth closed again he stood immobile again, staring over the crowd without a change in his expression of superb dignity, as though nothing had happened.

  Dramatically Sullivan waved his arms and sent his fingers rippling through the negro’s thick black hair and disentangled the coin. He grinned cleverly at the crowd and shouted hoarsely:

  ‘Zeke Pinto! The coloured man! The American coloured boxer! Pinto will fight a special ten-round bout for a purse of ten pound with Dan Harrison, your own man!’

  The faded red curtains behind the boxers parted and Harrison himself, not yet stripped for boxing, slouched forward on the platform for the crowd to applaud him. His thick, loose body, his half-crouching walk and the heavy-browed, glowering expression of his blond, small-eyed face contrasted strangely with the perfect repose, the superb pride and the blackness of the negro. While Sullivan continued to shout hoarsely the details of the contest between them, they stood side by side without moving or looking at each other, incongruous and indifferent to one another to the point of contempt.

  The crowd were beginning to throng towards the pay-boxes and vanish through the openings in the red curtains on either side of the booth. Sullivan seized the megaphone and began to yell a frenzy of speech over the crowd, cajoling and demanding vociferously like some desperate orator. Between his more impassioned speeches O’Brien clanged arresting notes on the copper bell. The big Russian-looking heavy-weight began working on the punch-ball hanging up outside the curtains, fisting it grimly with light fascinating punches and watching it perpetually with a sardonic, half-smiling grin. Harrison slouched through the curtains and disappeared.

  The negro did not change his expression of impassive dignity, and suddenly, as though incensed by it, Sullivan took the megaphone from his lips and whispered to him in a voice of sneering impatience:

  ‘For Christ’s sake wake up. Do something. Get round to the van and get Dutchy to give you a rub-down. You look as if you’re having a bad dream.’

  The negro turned and vanished through the curtains without a word. He elbowed his way through the waiting crowd inside the booth and walked out of the booth across the grass between the show-vans towards the boxers’ dressing-van. He hated Sullivan. He had hated him bitterly since morning for his meanness, his bad temper, his sneers, the insult of the word nigger. He had ached to knock Sullivan senseless. He had hated so much the craftiness in his sudden question ‘How old are you, Zeke?’ that it had given him a curious sense of pleasure to tell him that he was only thirty-four. But the pleasure had quickly vanished again. During the hot afternoon, sitting gambling with Dutchy in the shade of one of Peterson’s vans, he had often reminded himself that he was older than Sullivan dreamed. He was past forty. At forty a boxer was an old man. Until lately it had been easy to deceive Sullivan; but lately he had begun to feel slower in the ring and had lost fights which he ought to have won. When he lost the money went out of the show, so that Sullivan also lost. That was bad business. He saw the significance of Sullivan’s question: he was growing old and he was bad business. There were younger boxers. He knew already what to expect if he lost the fight with Harrison.

  He walked across the dark grass and up the steps of the dressing-van slowly, realizing for one moment what it all meant to him. He opened the door of the van. A paraffin-lamp was burning, there was a powerful smell of liniment, and he saw Dutchy sitting on a box, smoking a cigarette and reading a pink comic-newspaper. He stepped into the van and shut the door with his back. It seemed every moment more than ever imperative that he should win the fight with Harrison.

  At the sound of the door Dutchy dropped the pink newspaper as though startled and jumped to his feet.

  ‘All right?’ he said quickly.

  ‘Sullivan sent me to you for a rub-down.’

  ‘You don’t want a rub-down before you fight do you?’

  The negro sat down on the box.

  ‘In this show you do what Sullivan tells you,’

  Dutchy spat a shred of tobacco from his mouth with a sound of disgust and took a penny from his pocket and spun it in the air. He caught it deftly on the back of his left hand and covered it with his right. He had a passion for gambling. The smoke of his cigarette burned straight upward into his eyes, so that his face was wrinkled and squinting as he turned it to the negro.

  ‘Heads,’ said Pinto.

  Dutchy looked at the coin and put it back into his pocket.

  ‘Again,’ said the negro. ‘What I lose I’ll square up later.’

  Dutchy tossed the coin and the negro called ‘Heads’ again, wrongly. Too lazy to take the cigarette from his mouth Dutchy blew away the ash with a snort of his nose. The negro, dreamily watching the grey ash float in the air and settle again, seemed oblivious for a moment of Dutchy and the toss of the coin. He murmured ‘Heads’ again.

  ‘Your luck’s out,’ said Dutchy.

  They went on alternately tossing and calling the coin for what seemed to the negro a long time. The repeated spin of the coin became like the everlasting revolution of the thought that he must win the fight with Harrison. He felt himself filled by an oppressive gloomy determination to win.

  Dutchy was in the act of tossing the coin when footsteps ran up the ladder of the van and Sullivan burst in. He immediately began to speak to the negro.

  ‘I want you to win this fight, Zeke,’ he said. ‘And I want you to win it fair—straight—no monkey business. See that?’

  ‘What sort of a house?’ drawled Dutchy.

  ‘Packed. D’ye hear me, Zeke?’

  The negro was staring at the photographs
of boxers pinned everywhere on the walls of the van.

  ‘D’ye hear me, Zeke? I want you to win this fight—and clean. This boy can box. But you beat him clean and it’ll be a credit to you. Box him and beat him clean. You hear me?’

  ‘Don’t I always fight clean?’ said the negro.

  ‘I know, I know you do. Don’t get your rag out. I want you to win, that’s all. I’ll treat you square. Trust me. I’ll get back now and watch Dado finishing, and you can come over and show yourself in a minute or two. I’ll treat you square.’

  He left the van quickly, but before Dutchy or the negro could move the door opened again and Sullivan thrust in his head. He delivered an urgent last whisper:

  ‘Box him and beat him clean, that’s all. That’s all. I’ll treat you square. Trust me.’

  He vanished.

  There was a moment of silence. The negro slowly unloosened his dressing-gown and stood on the box on which he had been sitting. Dutchy spat out his cigarette in disgust. ‘Trust me,’ he sneered softly. ‘Trust a bloody snake.’

  With quick light fingers he began loosening the negro’s muscles, first on the calves, then the thighs, and finally on the body. The black skin was supple and fine as satin in his fingers. The air was sultry and little yellow balls of sweat stood on his face before he had finished.

  ‘You’ll win,’ he kept saying to the negro between little panting noises. ‘Any money. Easy.’

  The negro stood utterly immobile, not speaking, staring at the rows of boxing photographs with something sceptical and philosophical in his eyes. Dutchy worked over the muscles just above the belt-line, kneading them gently. The muscles yielded, flabbier than the rest of his body.

  ‘You’ll win,’ said Dutchy. ‘Keep him off your guts, that’s all.’

  The negro nodded. Presently he knotted up his dressing-gown and they walked together out of the van and across the grass among the show-vans and entered the boxing-booth. The tent, brilliantly lighted, was thronged with spectators surging backwards and forwards about the ropes of the ring like a flock of sheep penned between the ropes and the red canvas. There was a low, continuous murmur of voices. The white light of electric lamps poured down on Flowers and a bony young boxer in red drawers, sparring out their last round. Flowers was ambling carelessly about the ring, flickering and tapping his man with sardonic friendliness. Sometimes the young boxer would aim fierce unhappy blows at Flowers, making the loose boards creak under his clumsy feet, and the crowd would break into laughter. Flowers was smiling and there was a smear of blood across the young boxer’s mouth as the round ended and the crowd applauded the men.

  The negro elbowed his way through the crowd and the ring had been empty a second or two when he climbed over the ropes and sat down in the corner. Almost at the same moment Harrison climbed into the ring too, and sat in the corner opposite him. The crowd cat-called and applauded, and broke into a hum of conversation at the sight of Harrison, who sat staring across the ring from under his blond surly brows. The negro looked at the crowd calmly. It was a big house. Two of Sullivan’s men climbed a ladder and rolled back a sheet of the canvas roof and let in a current of fresh air. Dutchy climbed into the ring and began to put on the negro’s gloves.

  ‘Keep him off your guts,’ he whispered, ‘Let him wear hisself out. He’s a mad-head. Let him gallop for three rounds and you’ll have him taped.’

  Without speaking or even nodding in answer the negro leaned back his head and let it rest against the ropes. Staring upward he could see through the gap in the roof a sprinkle of stars shining against the darkness of the summer sky.

  Dutchy was putting on his second glove when Sullivan crawled into the ring under the bottom rope. Standing in the centre of the ring he held up his hand and called for order. The negro did not look at him and he heard only vaguely the speech he began to bawl at the crowd. He felt tired and he did not want to fight.

  Sullivan was repeating the old formula. ‘You come to this show to see a fight! You come to see fair play! And you shall have ’em! If you have any remarks to pass I ask you to pass them afterwards—not while the rounds are in progress. Be fair to these boys and they will give you a good fight. A good, honest fight! That’s straight, ain’t it? No love-tapping! You know what I mean by no love-tapping! The boys are out to win. I tell you on my oath, my solid oath, and God strike me dead if I tell a lie—there never has been a squared fight in this show—and never will be!’

  His voice rose to a shout and the crowd applauded vigorously.

  ‘Now I shall present a ten-round contest between Dan Harrison—’

  Harrison stood up and the crowd began to cheer for him.

  ‘Dan Harrison, of your own town, and Zeke Pinto, the American coloured boxer. A ten-round fight for a purse of ten pounds!’ The negro stood up and nodded his head, and Sullivan appealed to the spectators:

  ‘Give the coloured man a clap. A man’s a man and a boxer’s a boxer, whether he’s coloured or not. Pinto will fight fair and clean, and if he wins I hope you will acknowledge him like the sportsmen I know you are. Give the coloured man a clap, gentlemen, give the coloured man a clap.’

  The negro half rose to his feet again, making a slight bow. He was conscious vaguely of the noise of applause, the quivering of many white pairs of hands under the bright lights, and of Harrison arching back his thick neck, drinking something from a dark wine bottle and spitting it over the side of the ring again.

  A moment later Sullivan, who was to referee the fight himself, took off his jacket and called the two boxers to the centre of the ring and spoke with them. Conscious merely of the harsh voice repeating the old formula again, the negro did not listen. By turns there would come over him the strange feeling that he did not want to fight, and the gloomy oppressive thought that he must fight and win. ‘And keep your tempers,’ said Sullivan. ‘Like good boys. That’s all.’

  The negro returned to his corner. He took off his dressing-gown and putting his hands on the ropes, worked his body to and fro, loosening his muscles. Against his bright yellow drawers his naked skin gleamed very black, the fine lights suffused with rose, as though the blackness had been smeared with a soft pink oil. He took one long deep breath; Dutchy whispered something to him; and he heard the stroke of the gong.

  He stood upright, turned about, walked towards the centre of the ring and touched gloves with Harrison. His pose was quiet, unstooping and unexaggerated. His huge black form was splendid and intimidating in its dignity. His face was marvellously calm. Harrison came forward with a low crouch of his shoulders, his surly blond head thrust forward aggressively, his guard very close. They worked away and round each other for a second or two, watchfully. The crowd was silent.

  Suddenly Harrison made a lead with his left to the negro’s face and followed up swiftly. The negro took the punches on his gloves. Harrison led again, and the negro fought back, grazing Harrison’s face. They closed with each other, and Harrison began peppering the negro’s body with short jabs which fell on his ribs and the soft flesh just above the belt. The negro tried to cover himself and step away but the blows were unexpected and quick and he took the punishment of them unguarded. When he finally broke away he was panting and there was a dull throbbing in his body where the punches had fallen. As he stepped away Harrison forced him to the ropes and attacked him viciously, hooking his right. The negro saw the blow coming and waited for what seemed a complete second, and then side-stepped swiftly. It was a beautiful movement. He heard the crowd murmur in admiration. Experiencing a moment of satisfaction and feeling fresh and cool again he worked away from the corner before Harrison could recover. Harrison followed and they began fighting close in again, and again a shower of quick jabbing blows fell on the negro’s body. The punches were short, stinging and powerful. The negro felt shaken and winded. He covered his body with his arms and ducked his head, taking the blows on his arms and shoulders until he had recovered his breath. Harrison came to a clinch at last and Sullivan broke them away. A
little excited, Harrison left his hands loose after the clinch had been broken and the negro stepped across and found his jaw with a quick hook of his right. Harrison went down, panting and resting on his elbow while Sullivan counted to nine, bawling the counts in order to make himself heard above the babble of the crowd. At nine Harrison was on his feet again. He rushed straight for the negro, his head low and aggressive. They closed, and they were chest to chest, struggling for an opening, as the gong rang.

  In the interval the negro sat with his arms limp on the ropes, his head back and his eyes closed. The fanning of the towel sent waves of cooler air on his face. He nodded when Dutchy gave him the old advice: ‘Keep him off your guts,’ and sometimes he felt the muscles of his body flutter just above the belt, where Harrison had jabbed him. He knew that Harrison had found his weakness.

  The second round began as though Harrison had conceived a violent hatred for the negro. He was younger than the negro by twenty years. He had a fast, powerful fearless style, and he was warm with resentment at having taken a count of nine. He led quickly for the negro’s face but Pinto stepped aside and struck his left ear with the heel of the glove. It was as though the punch had released a whirlwind: the short jabbing blows began to rain on the negro’s body before he could cover up again. Crooking his arms and lowering his head, he staggered against Harrison and tried to fend him off, but the punches had sickened him. He had backed away to the ropes, and this time when Harrison attacked again he was too slow to duck away. He took a fresh onslaught of body blows that sickened him from his knees upward. He felt strange and stunned and the shouts of the crowd were like a great drumming in his head. The crowd was shouting for Harrison. He staggered drunkenly and recovered and then crouched and staggered against Harrison, keeping his head low. For the rest of the round he did nothing but try desperately to keep out of Harrison’s reach and he was lying on the boards when the gong rang.