The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  I knew what to do alright. If you had a full house, and a man wasn’t dangerous, you let him stay and win twenty silver dollars. Because the crowd would file out and pay again for the next show. So I whipped a light right high to Red’s head to get up his guard, then shot a jab low on his belt—very light—just low enough to get the crowd to hating me. Then he hit me a solid punch and began carrying the fight to me. Red wasn’t simply trying to stay—and he had a good right. But his left was just good enough to fill his coat sleeve.

  Toward the end of the third round I began throwing wild rights, like I was desperate to knock him out so as to save twenty dollars. I made sure I missed every one. To make it look even better I went down on one knee as if he’d hit me really solid. Even Red thought he’d hurt me.

  When the bell rang ending the third round the crowd was screaming, “Kill him, Red! Kill him! He’s no good!”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!”—The manager came out—“The Penobscot Strongboy admits your man is a very good man, and that he would rather fight somebody else. But our man is a sport, he is going to give your man another chance. We will now pay your man twenty silver dollars—But”—pause—“if he is as good a sport as our man, he will let the twenty ride and this show will now pay him fifty silver dollars if he stays the second three rounds! If he fails to stay the show owes him nothing.”

  The crowd, of course, was all for it. So was Red. Those two hundred and fifty fools rushed out and bought tickets and were back in the tent in no time at all. The ticket agent had to stop selling because we couldn’t get any more into the tent.

  I felt sorry for Red but it couldn’t be helped. When he rushed out at the bell I slid along the ropes, threw a terrific right to his gut that doubled him over, shifted for leverage and threw a left hook that had everything I owned behind it. Red rolled under the bottom rope onto the edge of the ring. He was out almost two minutes.

  I still remember that manager ballying the crowd as they filed out, one by one and not one saying a word—“Don’t be afraid, folks, he’s only a little man and his hands are gloved!”

  And the Rainbow Garden in Little Rock and the Garden Palace in Passaic and the Armory A.C. in Wilkes-Barre and the Fenwick Club in Cincinnati and Antler’s Auditorium in Lorain, Ohio. I went back to Detroit and remembered the Grand River Gym and the old Tuxedo A.C. on Monroe Avenue.

  Just before I fell asleep I knew those were the names of the places where I’d used up my hostility.

  It was getting light across that Gulf Road land between the Gulf Road towns when I woke up. I’d made this scene before. The land looked to me the way beds do in cheap hotels where you don’t get clean sheets unless you pay a week in advance.

  Bed after bed.

  I got a room like that in Galveston. Then I went to look for a corner man. I had to fight somebody calls hisself Indian Mickey Walker.

  It isn’t always easy to find somebody to work your corner in these east Texas towns. Sometimes you can find an out-of-work fruit-picker to carry your bucket. If you’re lucky you’ll find an old-timey fighter, fight-manager, or fight-follower to handle you. Them kind are the ones who don’t take money off you. Yes, I’ve carried my own bucket. Into rings where the ropes were unpadded.

  At the Ocean Athletic Club I found a skinny little hustler from New Jersey, calls hisself Dominoes because he’s been hustling domino parlors in the Rio Grande Valley. He’d kept one hand in his pocket so long one shoulder was higher than the other. I bought him a meal. Then I took him back to my room and emptied my little green-and-white Ozark Air bag on the bed: cotton swabs, surgical scissors, carpenter’s wax, liquid adrenalin, smelling salts, Spirits of Ammonia, iodine, Monsel’s Solution, Vaseline, adrenalin chloride, and half a pint of brandy. I showed him what everything was for except the brandy. Dominoes already knew what brandy was for.

  I asked him did he know anything about some clown calls hisself Indian Mickey Walker.

  “Strictly an opponent,” Dominoes told me, “I seen him fight a prelim at the Garden when he come up from the bushes; but he come up too fast. Went down even faster.”

  “All the same he done better than I done,” I had to admit. “Closest I’ve got to the Garden was McArthur Stadium in Brooklyn.”

  “Never been there.”

  “McArthur Stadium or Brooklyn?”

  “Neither,” he told me, “but I’ll tell you what I think. I think you need a manager.”

  “What for?” I asked the man, “I never needed somebody to tell me the best hand to hit an opponent with is the one closest to his jaw. I never needed somebody to teach me that when you clobber someone it’s a shrewd idea to duck. What can a manager do for me beside robbing me blind?”

  ‘‘He might get you in at the Garden,” Dominoes decided—“or wouldn’t you like that?”

  “There’s people in hell would like ice water,” I told him, “but that don’t mean anyone’s bringing the pitcher.”

  Indian Walker was a shoeshine fighter. Stands in the middle of the ring with his head down and flails both arms like he’s shining shoes. Built like a weight lifter. More hair on his chest than I got on my head. Some Indian.

  The ref was one of them Elks Club athletes who’d refereed so many fights he’d gotten punchy. He likes to show who’s the boss by sticking his head between us and hollering “Break!” so you could hear him in the back of the hall.

  He stuck his head in there once too often. The stupid Indian nails him and down goes the ref onto one knee. The whole house began counting him out. He made it up at eight. After that he stayed out from between us. But every time we clinched somebody would holler “Break!”

  Indian Walker won seven of the eight rounds. One was about even. The ref give me the fight on points. I got the winner’s end, a hundred dollars, for not knocking the referee down.

  I hung around home a week or so. Then I got a call from Minneapolis.

  Some businessmen up there had “discovered” a six-foot-five schoolboy and had bought him half a dozen fast knockouts. They offered me five hundred and expenses to fight him. The reason they wanted me, I guessed, was because nobody has ever had me off my feet in a ring. It would be a boost for the Schoolboy Giant if he should be the first. I told the men to send me a hundred for expenses in front, that I’d want the other five before I got in any ring with a Real Live Giant. Then I phoned Dominoes to meet me in St. Paul.

  “It ought to be worth fifteen hundred,” I told Dominoes. He understood what I meant. So did Beth. They had to want a tank job. Beth didn’t say anything. She wanted that diner in Carriers Mills.

  I took a look at the Schoolboy Giant working out. Some giant. It didn’t seem possible that they were going to let me go after him. He was all schoolboy.

  Yet nobody rapped my hotel door. Nobody stopped me on the street. Nobody phoned me for a meet. “Something funny is going on,” I told Dominoes. “Something funny isn’t going on,” Dominoes corrected me.

  The weighing-in was in a downtown newspaper office. The room was full of bush sports writers. The Giant was undressing in a corner. I began undressing too. I let him walk toward the scales first. He was about to step on the scale but I hollered right in his ear “Get off that scale!” and shoved him so hard he almost toppled. I pointed my finger right up at his nose—“Don’t ever let me catch you trying to get on a scale in front of me! Do you hear?”

  After I’d weighed in I stepped down.

  “You can weigh yourself now,” I told him.

  He weighed 232. I weighed 172. They billed me at 180.

  It wasn’t till after the instructions, waiting in my corner for the bell, that Dominoes whispered, “They’re dropping him.”

  The Giant’s people were betting against him.

  Well, all right. So was I.

  He came out into the middle of the ring, put his left foot into one bucket and his right foot into another, extended his left hand and poised his right exactly as he had been told to do. I walked right up on his big flat feet,
worked the ball of my wrist into his right eye; then held. I stepped back at the break, missed deliberately with my right in order to catch his other eye with my elbow; then held.

  He put both gloves across his eyes; so I walked up on his feet again and butted him in the mouth. He half-turned toward the referee and said, “He’s walking on my feet,” and I reached over and knocked him into a spin. He caught himself going down by his forearms.

  I didn’t go in on him. I waited till the ref got out from between us. The Giant put both arms around me and held me till the bell. I went back to my corner wobbling from his hug.

  Sometimes you can feint a man into position for an uppercut. You can feint him with your hands, your head, your shoulders, your eyes or your feet. I was always best at feinting with my feet. I let the Giant work me into my own corner and feinted him into the ropes. Then I let him work me into his corner and feinted him the same way—this time he went sprawling.

  I was just trying him out. Feinting isn’t enough. The idea of feinting isn’t to send a man sprawling. The idea of it is to get him just enough off balance so that when you hit him a shot at the same second you feint him, he goes down. If he feints you right back you go down. In the middle of the second round he spread those big flat feet again.

  I walked right up on them and butted him in the mouth. He turned his head to the ref to complain and I hit him on the jaw again. This time he went to both knees. He got up on one with one eye shut, the other cut and his mouth bleeding. Yet he got up at nine and still seemed to be in his right mind. So I followed him and he smashed my nose in with a big right hand.

  I grabbed his middle and held; just held. I’d never been hit that hard before in my life. And all the while he was weaving from side to side it was me weaving from side to side trying to keep the ref from getting me off him. I didn’t let go until I was sure I wouldn’t hit the floor.

  Then I came up fast and skulled him in his bloody mouth and he skulled me back so hard I had to hold again. The Schoolboy Giant was catching on.

  I felt Dominoes pressing my skull with his fingers as hard as he could. Then he used the liquid adrenalin. “It’s a bad cut,” I heard him tell me, “real bad.”

  A right uppercut is a sucker punch. If you don’t time it exactly you leave yourself open to your opponent’s cross or jab. You have to think ahead to land it, anticipate your man’s moves. It’s a good punch to throw at an opponent who fights a little lower than you. But if you’re fighting one a full head higher, you have to bring him down to you. I went for the Schoolboy Giant’s body. A right to the heart, a left to the solar plexus. He lowered his head, his arms crossed level with his heart; with my right glove almost touching the floor I pivoted on the ball of my left foot. And brought it up. He pitched face forward as if he’d been mugged with a crowbar.

  I watched his legs while the ref counted him out. The doctor was working on him a full half-minute before his calves twitched. The last I saw of the Schoolboy Giant two handlers were dragging him to his corner with his toes scraping the canvas.

  Dominoes gave me interference to the locker room. Some kid threw a handful of popcorn in my face on the way.

  “Lock the door,” I told Dominoes as soon as we got inside. I didn’t get up on the rubbing table. I didn’t take off my robe. I just looked at Dominoes a long time.

  “Mister,” I finally told him, “never tell me I got a bad cut. Never tell anybody he got a bad cut. Tell him it’s nothing. Only a scratch.” Then I began throwing up.

  A postcard from Shawneetown was waiting for me at Boise. All it said was Everyone Here Fine Don’t Get Hurt.

  I read it sitting on a locker-room bench. After I’d read it I put it with Beth’s other cards telling me Don’t Get Hurt. Then I put on my trunks and went upstairs to the gym.

  There was a poster next to the door. It said Cowboy Goldie Williams vs. Roger Holly. I began throwing my left into the heavy bag.

  A good many people don’t remember I began fighting as a left-hander. A good many people don’t even remember I began fighting.

  A lanky young fellow in blue jeans and Spanish boots stopped to watch me. I paid him no heed.

  “You left-handed?” he finally asked me.

  “No,” I told him, “right-handed.”

  “Then hit it right-handed,” he told me.

  “I’m developing my left,” I explained.

  “Developing?” He looked like he couldn’t believe his ears—“at your age you’re developing something? Hell, you’re old enough to be Cow-boy’s old man.”

  “Reckon I could be his old man,” I admitted, “if I’d married when I was fourteen.”

  “Nobody gets married that young,” he decided.

  “But it don’t make no difference,” he filled me in—“Cowboy Williams is going to beat you silly. He’s going to gouge you ‘n’ bust your eardrums, too. He’s going to pound your kidneys. He’s going to crack your ribs. He’s going to bust your jaw. He’ll give you con-cussions!”

  “What do we do following that?” I asked him, “Play unnatural games?” and went back to the bag. I wondered who had sent him.

  When I climbed into the ring that night I found out who’d sent him. The fellow who came down the aisle in a white satin robe was the same fellow. Cowboy Williams had sent hisself.

  A fighter so keyed up as to play trick-or-treat before a fight is likely to start fast, I guessed.

  I guessed just right. He came tearing across the ring and I caught him coming.

  All I had to do was step aside to let him fall.

  I kept an eye out for kids holding popcorn bags on the way to the locker.

  While I was dressing the promoter came in and sat down on the bench.

  “I can get you on at the Tulane Club,” he told me, “five hundred and expenses.”

  “I’ll take it,” I told the man, “who do I have to kill?”

  “Your worry will be how to keep from getting killed. You’re fighting The Pride of New Orleans.”

  “Who’s New Orleans proud of now?”

  “Jesus St. Janies. Stay in shape.”

  “I don’t have to stay in shape to beat somebody named St. James,” I told the man.

  I stay in shape all the time. I don’t drink or cat after women. If you stay out late on Monday you still feel it Friday in this trade.

  I didn’t find out till we got to New Orleans that Mr. James was unbeaten. Twenty-two professional fights, fourteen wins by kayo, six by decision, one no-decision and one draw. Mr. James could hit, it looked by the record.

  He didn’t look like he could hit in his corner. A college boy, no more than twenty, six foot high and not a mark on him. Carrying his left like he was just walking down the street. I’d have to watch that hand for certain. He also looked like he could move around. I didn’t need anyone to tell me I wouldn’t last ten rounds against this athlete. I went out and bought a pair of Sammy Frager five-ounce gloves, of which three ounces is in the wrists. I thought that just maybe I might get away with them. At the weigh-in I gave them to the referee. He looked like a doctor.

  “Do me a small favor,” I asked him, “let me use these tonight.”

  We were standing right next to a scale but he didn’t put them on it.

  “Beautiful gloves,” he told me. “How much do we owe you?”

  “Not a dime,” I told him, “they’re on the house.”

  He came into the dressing room that night and handed me the gloves and then left me and Dominoes alone. No deputy. Nobody. I’d never had anything like it happen to me before.

  Dominoes pulled on white tape tight as I could stand it without stopping the circulation. Then he put black tape over the white. Then he put white tape over the black. I was loaded.

  We’d hardly finished taping when someone knocked. Dominoes stepped out to see who. He stepped back in and shut the door behind him.

  “There’s a fellow out here wants to know if you’ll take five hundred to let St. James go the distance,” Domino
es told me.

  “We take it,” I told Dominoes. So out he steps again and steps back in and shuts the door and hands me five c-notes.

  “I don’t have pockets in my trunks,” I told him, “you hold it.”

  All I did the first two minutes of the first round was to test myself to see how I felt. I felt kind of limber. So I go in and hit Mr. James with a left hook and he starts to go down. I grab him and we’re still falling. We’re both falling all around the ring, me trying to make it look like it’s me that’s out on his feet. I leaned him against the ropes with my weight against him so he wouldn’t slide onto the floor. And all the while the crowd hollering for him to finish me! I leaned on him till the referee pried me off. By that time the athlete had come around.

  All I did the next two rounds was miss punches by the yard, dance Mr. James up and down, duck, bob, weave, clinch, and complain to the ref to keep this stinker going. The crowd didn’t care for it.

  “If you don’t start fighting you’re not getting paid,” the ref told me at the end of the fourth.

  “I got to get rid of this kid,” I told Dominoes in the corner, “he’s going to faint on me.”

  “Better not,” Dominoes reminded me, touching the five bills in his shirt pocket.

  The crowd had its blood up. They’d paid to see a fight. I hit the Pride of New Orleans with another left hook and he went out cold. Flat on his back and arms stiff at his sides.

  Dominoes picked up the stool with its legs sticking out and ran interference again back to the dressing room. As soon as he’d locked the door someone began pounding on it.

  “Coming under the door,” I hollered; and slipped the five bills underneath it.

  I’d beaten three unbeatables in a row all by kayo. So a magazine did a story on bush league fighters without managers and said I was the best of a bad lot.