The Harder They Fall

  ‘No ordinary spar-boy (I worked my plant into the leading Denver sports column), Blount has stood up to some of the outstanding heavyweights in the country, including Gus Lennert, who won a close, split decision over the Harlem Panther. So in an unprecedented act of insubordination for a sparring partner, George challenged the Giant of the Andes to go into a room with him, lock the doors and have at it in a regular old-fashioned knock-down drag-out. The Molina board of strategy frowned on this impromptu (and unprofitable) rivalry, however, and so tomorrow night Denver fight fans will be treated to the privilege of sitting in on the first grudge match in the Argentine Behemoth’s spectacular American career of seven straight knockouts over such formidable opposition as Cowboy Coombs, Dynamite Jones and Chief Thunderbird, undisputed champion of the South-West until the Man Mountain stopped him in Las Vegas recently in three torrid rounds.’

  At the weigh-in, the day of the fight, George, doing his best to play his little part for the Latka Repertory Theatre, wouldn’t shake hands with Toro.

  We had told Toro that George had quit his job with us because he really thought he could beat him, but even so Toro could not comprehend George’s discourtesy. ‘Why he no shake hands?’ he asked. ‘George my friend, no?’

  It takes real talent to lose as convincingly as George did that night. Nobody Toro had fought had shown him off to such good advantage. From the way Toro moved his shoulders and set his feet, George could tell just when Toro’s punches were going to start. All he had to do was move in toward the blows instead of going away from them, as he would have ordinarily. The force of his body smashing against Toro’s fist made a sound that could be heard all over the arena. Nobody hearing that impact could doubt Toro’s prowess as a puncher. And when George fought back, he was careful to avoid that big glass jaw that was such an open and tempting target.

  In the fourth round George exposed his belly to a particularly resounding wallop from Toro and permitted himself to be counted out. Magnanimously forgiving in victory, Toro insisted on helping George back to his corner, where, in a gesture right down the fans’ cornball alley, he offered him his hand. There was something almost mystical about Toro’s ability to perform just the right gesture without realising how well it fitted into our act. It was an old plot, but the fans, going for the grudge match with their mass talent for self-hypnosis, bought the happy ending just as if it were Saturday night at the Double Feature.

  Relieved to see that George had recovered so quickly, Toro waved to the cheering crowd and jumped down from the ring. George followed him, moving with his familiar, deliberate ease, an ambiguous smile on his massive face.

  When we pulled out of Denver, George was left behind to make it look kosher. A couple of days later he caught up with us in KC, where we were getting ready to knock off another tanker.

  ‘George, how did Toro feel to you in that fight?’ I asked.

  George smiled with his mouth, but his eyes kept their seriousness. ‘He just can’t bang,’ he said. ‘And when a heavyweight can be reached and he can’t bang …’ George shook his head. ‘You better watch the big fella, Eddie. Watch him close, man, before something real bad happens.’

  But the only thing that happened in KC, in Cleveland where we filled the Municipal Stadium, and in Chicago where we did close to $80,000 with Red Donovan, was to add three more to our string of knockouts and sign the papers for the big fight with Lennert in the Garden.

  Toro’s cut for the eighteen minutes of alleged fighting must have been around $20,000. But all he had been seeing of it were the 50s and C-notes that Vince came up with whenever Toro put the zing on him. After the Chicago fight, though, Toro smelt money. ‘You give now, I send my papa for build big house,’ he told Vince. Vince reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad and peeled off five hundred-dollar bills. ‘Any time you need dough, just ask me,’ he said with unusual affability.

  Next morning when Toro and I were walking down Michigan Boulevard, we passed the Lake Shore National Bank.

  ‘El banco grande!’ Toro said.

  ‘One of the biggest,’ I said.

  ‘I go in,’ Toro said.

  ‘What are you going to do, put your five in the bank?’

  ‘I come back pronto,’ Toro answered.

  When he came out he had a fistful of Argentine bills. Over two thousand pesos. ‘Look how much money,’ he held it up to me happily: ‘This feel like real money.’

  The day we got to New York, Toro achieved immortality – at least for one week. He made the cover of Life. And if this wasn’t honour enough, he was urged to come up on the floor and take a bow when Joe E. Lewis spotted him at a ringside table at the Copa with Vince and me. My job was a breeze now. I didn’t have to scrounge any more. Reporters came looking for us. Even when Runyon devoted a full column to ridiculing the whole Man-Mountain build-up, ending by describing Toro as the Ghastly Gawk of the Andes, the undisputed Side-Show Champion of America, it didn’t really put the whammy on us. In America a knock is just a plug that lets itself in the back door. Nick had guessed right, as usual. Toro’s freakish size, plus the knockout record we were compiling for him, was tapping the public’s incredible credulity.

  Just before he was ready to leave for Pompton Lakes with Vince, Danny, Doc and George to start training for the Lennert fight, a white special-body Lincoln phaeton appeared at the hotel entrance. The afternoon before, when he was supposed to be resting, Toro had sneaked off and ordered this little number at a mere five Gs. Apparently he wasn’t such a meatball that he couldn’t find a way to get around Vince’s reluctance to declare a dividend. It wasn’t in his nature to learn how to throw a left hook without telegraphing it, but it hadn’t taken him long to find out how to join the great American fraternity whose password is ‘charge it’.

  When he heard what the grunt for this white job was, Vince wanted to send it right back to the floor. Toro pouted and protested, ‘My car, my car, I buy!’

  ‘Let him have it,’ I told Vince. ‘Why get the guy sore over a lousy five thousand bucks when the real dough’s starting to roll in? Leo can take it off the income tax, for transportation. And meanwhile a white Lincoln is publicity.’

  So Toro drove off to Pompton Lakes with his portable radio, his entourage, and Benny Mannix at the wheel of the Lincoln phaeton. As I stood on the kerb in front of our hotel watching them lose themselves in the morning traffic, a phrase popped into my head, the last line of that Wolcott Gibbs’ profile on Luce in Timestyle, ‘Where it will end, knows God!’

  I had been back in town two days already without seeing Beth. Her excuses seemed to be on the level, and yet they were the sort she would have found some way to finesse in the days when we were clicking together.

  With all that time behind us, I hadn’t thought I could slip back so quickly into the old role of hopeful suitor. I even found myself sending her flowers all over again.

  On the morning of the third day I called Beth and said, ‘Look, I’m going nuts. When am I going to see you?’

  Something in my voice must have reached her, for she said, almost too calmly to please me, ‘How about right now? Come on over and have breakfast, if you like.’

  On my way over I picked up a box of candy. It was a silly thing to do. What seemed more sensible was to stop at a bar on Sixth Avenue for a courage-cup.

  Beth opened the door and said, ‘Hi, Eddie,’ in her direct and friendly way. Her attitude seemed crisp rather than cool. But she had never been demonstrative until the moment of demonstration itself. Like most women, she had a way of setting her own emotional climate.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable, Eddie. I’ve got to rush back and save my toast. I still burn it!’

  She was wearing smartly tailored beige lounging pyjamas that made her figure look stylishly, rather than merely, thin. I followed her through the book-lined room with the familiar modern furniture, past the combination radio-phonograph whose illuminated dial had been the only glow of light in the darkness of our first night. Alone with Beth
again after all those uncertain months, I could feel growing in me the desire to break down her reserve, to force her back to the spontaneous response I had drawn from her before. But even surrounded by these erotic landmarks, the radio, the studio couch, the thick yellow rug, I had the strange sensation that I was feeling all this for the first time. I felt the same excitement, the same longing, the same curiosity about her as in the beginning.

  She served breakfast on a little table by the window in the kitchenette, with eggs boiled just three minutes the way she knew I liked them, crisp bacon and the buttered toast that she always had to scrape. As we sat there together I wished more than ever before that this could be every day. Something – I still couldn’t give it a name – had blocked my setting this up on a permanent basis when it was still in my hands. What had stopped me? At this moment marrying Beth seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I am going to count slowly up to ten and then I’m going to make the first sober proposal of my life, I thought.

  ‘Well, how was your trip, Eddie? Was it fun, was it interesting?’

  You mind-reading, subject-changing vixen, I thought, jabbing me off balance just when I’m getting set to throw my best Sunday punch.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘Same old squirrel cage.’

  ‘But you love it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you admit it instead of acting as if you were too good for it, as if you were just slumming?’

  ‘For Christ sake, Beth, let’s not start that again.’

  ‘Okay, I’m just getting awfully tired of all these people knocking what they’re doing but keeping right at it year after year.’

  ‘This is a goddam serious way to begin a day.’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ she said, smiling to take the curse off it, ‘I’m always more serious before I’ve had my first cup of coffee.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  She looked at me sympathetically. She had never looked at me that way before and I resented it. What if I just got up and grabbed her the way I used to do? Some atavistic conviction that male force could prevail where everything else had failed must have driven me on.

  ‘Eddie, what are you doing?’

  Almost from the moment it began, it ceased to be instinctive. It had already become a self-conscious effort, but somehow it couldn’t be stopped. It seemed as if I had to bull it through, even though I already felt the terrible futility of this approach.

  ‘Eddie! For God’s sake!’

  ‘Beth – darling – please …’

  ‘Stop it, Eddie! Stop!’

  She was pushing me away. The strength in her mind and in her body was holding me off. My own body felt heavy and slothful in defeat. I felt limp and spent, the body hunger gone as completely as if it had been appeased instead of rudely frustrated.

  ‘The coffee,’ Beth said. ‘The coffee’s boiling over.’

  She brought two cups back to the table. I felt her accidentally brushing against my shoulder as she set mine down and I edged away.

  ‘This is the moment I hate,’ Beth said as she sat down. ‘The messy time.’

  I didn’t say anything. I felt terribly angry with her. And yet I was conscious of being unreasonable. After all, she wasn’t one of Shirley’s girls.

  It was typical of Beth to pitch the conversation to its true level, to say exactly what she meant about exactly what had happened.

  ‘Eddie, I’ve had plenty of time to think it over. Nights when I missed you – I’m terribly used to you, in lots of ways – almost afraid to start over again with somebody else – and yet there were days when – I might as well tell you this, I’ve been straight with you on everything else – days when it was a relief to have you out of my life – it wasn’t getting anywhere.’

  ‘When I called you from Las Vegas,’ I said, ‘I wanted to marry you. I’ve always wanted to marry you, Beth.’

  ‘Yes, I think you have, Eddie. But not ever enough to do it. I always had the feeling if it were going to happen I’d have to sit down, pick the day and make you go down for the licence. Marriage is an old-fashioned thing, Eddie. I guess even a gal like me, who’s been on her own for years, wants someone to come along and just carry her off.’

  The coffee had a sour taste. I always used to kid Beth about her coffee. ‘So this is the … blow-off?’

  ‘Eddie, you know I – hate those words. Not the words themselves, but what they stand for. Why are you afraid of being soft – ashamed to show what you really feel for people – afraid to try anything better than you’re doing – for fear you’ll be a flop? The play, for instance …’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that play. I’ve got some of the scenes worked out in my head, I …’

  ‘Eddie, I hate to say this – it probably sounds so smug – but you’re never going to do that play. You’ve been telling me scenes from that play from the first night we met. You’ve been talking it right out of existence. You won’t finish that play any more than you’ll quit the fight business. You just haven’t the courage to do it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘What is this, tell-off day?’

  ‘I guess it did come out a lot clearer than I expected,’ Beth said, apologetically. ‘I’ve been mulling it over so long. But I wish we could have worked it out, Eddie. I wish we could have. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘This is how the story ends, can’t we be friends. It’s been set to music.’

  I wanted to call the wisecrack back, wanted to show her I was bigger than that, wished I could think of something to say that would send me out of there a generous, understanding citizen. But I didn’t seem to have it in me. I went out with the smallest, meanest, foul ball of a parting shot I could think of. ‘Well, I suppose Herbert Ageton is a better bet at that. After all, he’s had a hit on Broadway.’

  ‘Oh, damn you, Eddie, damn you!’ Beth cried out, and her eyes were suddenly full of angry tears. ‘You’re such a heel! What makes you such a heel? Eddie, you of all people! You make me so goddam mad sometimes.’

  I felt exhausted, I felt exhausted with the effort of having all these years tried to keep my marriage to Beth in suspension. I never wanted to let go of it and I never wanted to face the consequences of holding on. But finally, now, when I was forced to let go, where did that leave me? Maybe I was lucky to be rid of her, always harping at me, trying to reform me, make me quit the fight game. I wanted to get out of town. I didn’t want to stay in the same town with her, even a real big town like NY. Real big. I knew better than to say ‘real big’. I knew better than a lot of things. But it was easier. Danny and Vince and Doc and George, they all said ‘real big’. Why should I be any different, why should I be any better, what was so special about me that I should look down on those guys? But I did look down on them, and why shouldn’t I? I knew more, I understood more, I felt more. Who else in this crowd of bums, lushes and grifters worried about Toro, wondered what he was feeling, saw him in any real perspective? Who noticed when he was lonely, bothered to walk around town with him, tried to give him some guidance? And yet Beth called me a heel! She had the nerve to call me a heel!

  I took a train out to the camp. I felt better as soon as I got off. I was back in my own world, or at least in a world I felt equal to.

  Benny Mannix met me at the station. His venal, unattractive puss made me feel at home. ‘How’s everything going, Benny?’

  ‘Tings ain’t so bad, kid. We got a nice set-up here.’

  ‘How’s Danny behaving himself?’

  ‘Danny, he’s kinda tapering off. Oney had a pint so far today.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s almost on the wagon. And how’s my boy getting along? Toro.’

  Benny shrugged. ‘Da bum tries, you gotta give ’im dat. He didn’t look too bad wit’ Chick Gussman dis afternoon. That’s this new light-heavy we got in from Detroit who fights kinda on the style of Lennert.’

  It was just after dinner when I got there, and Danny was sitting out on the porch with Doc and some of the other s
parring partners. Danny was reading the Morning Telegraph. He looked almost sober.

  ‘Still trying to beat ’em, Danny?’

  Danny grinned. ‘I gave that up a long time ago, laddie. I’m just along for the ride. But this Shasta Rose’ – he tapped the racing form – ‘if she don’t run away with the Maryland at Laurel tomorrow I’m gonna …’

  ‘Turn in your chips and quit,’ I interrupted.

  Danny shook his head and smiled. ‘… throw these lousy form sheets away and play my own hunches.’

  ‘He couldn’t do any worse if he picked ’em blindfold,’ Doc said. ‘He’s the bookie’s friend, Danny is.’

  Everybody laughed at Danny. At a training camp it seems as if everybody is waiting to laugh at everybody else. There was a dice game starting in the parlour and Doc, Gussman and the other boys on the porch joined it.

  ‘That Gussman, he knows how to handle himself for a kid.’ Danny said as the new light-heavy went in. ‘Kinda reminds me of Jimmy Slattery, when he was gettin’ started, a regular Fancy Dan, not quite as fast as Jimmy maybe, but he’s got natural ring sense. If I could take him in hand ’n teach him to sharpen up his punching a little …’

  Danny sighed and looked off into the gathering dusk. ‘Boy, to come into New York with a real fighter again, to walk down 49th Street and have all the guys come up and say, “Saw your boy take that guy last night, Danny. You really got yourself something there …”’

  ‘Why don’t you sign this Gussman?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you bring him along?’

  ‘What’s the percentage, laddie?’ Danny said, dead-voiced again. ‘If the guy’s too brittle and he don’t work out, I’ve wasted a lot of time. And if he looks good, Nick moves in and takes over, and pretty soon the kid has to throw one or he wins one he don’t deserve. The hell with that. Nick’s got me by the short hairs, laddie. Sure it’s my own fault, but when did that ever make a guy like it any better?’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’m glad to see you looking so sharp.’