Black Ajax (30 page)

Pad gave his little smile, looking sideways. “Ain't that just what I've been saying, Mr Egan?” says he.

So there you have the philosophy of Paddington Jones, my dear sir, and you must make of it what you will. I've told you all I can of Molineaux, for as I said, I never saw him again after Banbury, and heard only snatches from time to time, few of them pleasant. Exhibitions, sparring matches in the provinces, a mill in some godforsaken spot now and then, a brawl or two, but always, alas, a downward course. My stars, what a waste that was! What folly! There never was a pugilist with greater gifts, or one who squandered them so foolishly. He could have risen to the heights … why, for a moment he did. But there were two fighters he never could beat. One was Tom Cribb, and t'other was Tom Molineaux.

I ain't proud o' what I did to Tom after the fight at Thistleton Gap. I mean leaving him, and the ca. sa., and having him spunged up, and making the Carter match, and all o' that. But I ain't wearing mourning for it, neither, and I guess I'd do it again, given the time over. I was crazy mad, and hated him something vicious for what he'd done. Not for the money we owed Tom Belcher, that was nothing, just an excuse to do him spite. No, I hated him for the pain and disappointment, for all the hopes he'd spoiled, for the way he'd had the prize in his grasp and threw it away. He could ha' been the Champion, the
black
Champion of England! He threw it clear away.

I used to dream 'bout that Championship, long ago, when I was a young miller, and thought myself a prime chicken. But I soon saw 'twould never be, for me, and time passed – and then came Tom, and when Buck Flashman and Pad Jones showed me what was in him, oh, ten times what there ever was in me, or any other fighter I ever saw, black or white … then I dreamed again, and knew such a burning ambition as I'd never felt for myself – to see him cock o' the Fancy, Champion of England, and pay back all those years and sneers and see their pride humbled and their insults thrown back in their teeth, and a black man, not a
half-human
like me, but a
real
black man take their precious jewel away from them! Their Championship, their game that they set such store by! Mister, I could ha' died happy then, knowing they'd had to eat the crow I'd etten all my life, and bowed and smiled and looked real civil while I et it, damn them all!

Guess you think the Championship of England ain't worth that much hate? Mister, you don't know the English. Guess you think I must be dicked in the nob to feel the bitterness I feel? Mister, you ain't a nigger … and you never been a slave.

Tom could ha' done it. If he'd had half my will, half o' the fire that was in my guts, sure, he could ha' done it! But he did not. Well, you
know why, by now, and what's the use to talk o' that? Maybe you think I was wrong to feel such spite at him. See here, mister, if he'd done his best, if he'd worked, if he'd trained, if he'd tried a lick, godammit! – d'ye think I'd ha'
blamed
him for getting beat by that son-of-a-bitch Cribb? No, sir! I'd ha' given him the shirt off o' my back! I'd ha' stood by him, and loved him like a son! But when he got beat as should never ha' got beat, but for his own jackass cussedness – and then turns and blames
me
… well, then, I'd ha' seen Tom Molineaux in Hell! I get the shakes and the fury just to think on it, even now.

I made the Carter match to pay him out, sure. I hoped Carter'd whip him, maybe learn him sense – maybe even hoped Tom might still come again 'gainst Cribb, I don't know. Well, I was paid out myself for my spite, worse'n I could have 'magined. I hoped to see him beat, but I took no pleasure to see him
shamed
– to see a black man shamed. That was the awfullest thing, to see him blubber and whine and run white-livered from a man that wasn't fit to tie his laces. Pad Jones figures he did it a-purpose. I don't see that, but I don't know, and I don't dam' well care. I was sickened, and cursed the day I ever saw him, wanted to forget all 'bout him.

But 'twas not to be. I was down in Scotland next year; there was some good mills there in '14, and there was a boy, Fred Fuller, had been a pupil of mine, I'd brought him forward at the Fives Court, taken him on tour to Yorkshire, good heavy man – well, he was in Scotland then, and when I heard he had a match, I thought to go to see it. Mister, when I learned his adversary was Tom, I dropped the notion. I had no wish to see
him
– and yet, all that day of the mill, which was at Paisley, no distance from Glasgow, where I was, I found my thoughts turning to it, I knew not why. The talk was of nothing else; every amateur in Scotland had gone, the Paisley road was a-throng with folk at first light, and they say there was a hundred carriages about the ring. “No, I'll not go!” I said. “Likely 'twill be another such disgrace as his fight with Carter.” So I stayed in the town, and thought: “Damnation, I wish I was there!”

That night I heard the sheriff had stopped the mill in the fourth round. Hoping to learn more, I hung on a group of swells in a sporting ken on the High Street, and their talk was all of the science on both
sides, and how Tom had fibbed well at the head with his left, until Fuller had planted him a desperate ribber, at which Joe Ward, who was seconding Fuller, had called out in fun that if he hit so hard the fight would be over too soon. “Then the damned sheriff and his damned constables broke the ring!” says the swell. “So the mill was o'er sooner than Ward thought, and a damned shame!”

“How did Molineaux shape?” asks one.

“Oh, quite famously, but too stout by stones, and short o' puff !”

“But not of conceit!” cries another. “Why, the black villain swaggers up to the sheriff, bold as brass, and told him if he had known they were to be interrupted, he'd have finished off Fuller in quick time! Well, the mill's to go forward on Tuesday, so we shall see if he makes good his boast!”

Mister, I could ha' laughed aloud. There was no good reason why I should 'bate my enmity to Tom one bit – but when I heard that, I could just see him, full o' bounce and sass, fronting that sheriff, and crying something like: “Why, m'lawd, ifn yo' lawdship had jes'
told
me you was a-comin', Ah'd ha' had this white pug laid out all cold! Say, m'lawd, cain't we have jes' one mo' round? Ah's five to four fav'rite – you cud git yo'self some o' that Molineaux money, why don't ye?” Aye, something like that. I'd heard it before.

I was there on Tuesday, and I'm right glad I was. Oh, Tom was in worse shape, even, than against Carter, and Fuller was no milling fool. I thought to speak to him 'forehand, but kept back after all, for when I saw Tom I still had no mind to be noticed by
him
, as would have happened if I'd spoke to Fuller.

So I just watched, and wished Pad Jones could ha' been at my side. Tom was full o' flesh and gasping to be heard in London, he was ever so slow on his pins, and when he struck I knew his power was gone, his guard was clumsy and he took hits that he'd ha' stopped or slipped with his eyes shut three years back. But, mister, one thing had not gone, and that was his spirit. Anyone thought Tom Molineaux lacked game and bottom was proved wrong that day; he was too weak to put Fuller down, and Fuller, hard and fast and clever as he was, with a grave-digger right, could not knock Tom off his legs. There never was a set-to like it, for it lasted above an hour
with but one half-minute's rest in all that time
! It's the truth – they fought but
two rounds
, the
first of twenty-eight minutes, the second of
forty
, such a thing as was never known in a prize-fight, and the two men hammer and tongs all through.

It was a cruel, bloody affair, for Fuller had a gift for the heavy nobbing return, and Tom played at the head as always. Oh, if Pad had only been there! For just now and then, and only for a moment, that big black hulk with his belly flopping o'er his britches, bleeding like a slaughtered ox and winded fit to die – just now and then, he'd lift on to his toes, and that left hand would go like a bolt o' lightning, smack-smack-smack and Fuller's head rocking on his shoulders! He was a game chicken, too, with his nose busted and one eye closed, and back he'd come for more. They rallied, retreated, closed, fought at half-arm and distance, and every second I thought Tom must go down dead beat, but still he milled away, until Fuller levelled him with a right upper-cut that should ha' killed him, but there he was again, at the call o' “Time!”, laughing out of a phiz that was dripping claret, telling Fuller his time was come.

That was the first round, and in the second – forty minutes, mind! – Fuller was bellows to mend and failing. Tom was done, but the slower pace was nuts to him, and the science that was still in him began to show as he shifted his body but not his weary feet, ducking and slipping like Jackson on the handkerchief, until Fuller was at a standstill.

Then Tom went for him. God knows, mister, where he found the strength, but he milled that man to death, left hand going like a repeater, hitting him away every time, 'til he had him cornered and ripe for the down-cut that would ha' finished him – and damme if that snake Joe Ward, stooped by the post, didn't clip Fuller's ankle and down he went. It saved Fuller, no error 'bout that, and Tom's second, an Irish
galoot
, yells “Foul!” I reckon Ward, who was up to every dodge, figured the Scotch people wouldn't know that one, when a second pulls down his man to save him from being laid away for keeps. But the umpire did, and gave the fight to Tom on a foul.

I didn't go to him. After all there was between us, I thought best not. I heard one man say it was a real “Molineaux mill”, on account of ending in dispute and ill-will, but another said that for his money the Scotch people had been lucky to see such a prime specimen of
English prize-fighting. He was right there, and I left the ground with a heavy heart, to think o' that mighty miller that I'd helped to make, me and Pad, that should ha' been Champion, but gone to ruin now.

For he had fallen in with Abner Gray, that Tom Belcher and I had employed to spar wi' Tom years before, after Pad quit us. He was a no-account person, but convenient at that time, and lately had been around the provinces with exhibitions and piddly little matches at fairs, third-run things where they put in old beat pugs wi' a bellyful o' beer to get hammered by the local chawbacons. Abner was a scut and a leech, and Tom must ha' been a godsend to him, with his name and fame still sticking to him along wi' three extra stones o' fat, but I was sick to think o' him in such company. I heard of him now and then, in Scotland and the north country, but nothing of consequence, and I guessed he had given up the game.

About a year after the Fuller mill I was down to Scotland again, on behalf of George Cooper, who conducted a boxing school in Edinburgh. You mayn't know of him, but he was a pupil of Pad Jones's, and I'd had a hand in bringing him on a couple of years before when he'd been a novice. It was after I'd taken leave of Tom, and you might say 'twas “off wi' the old love, on wi' the new”, but that's the way o' the Fancy: one chicken goes to roost, so you find another. From the first Cooper had been as pretty a natural miller as ever you saw, another Mendoza for footwork, five foot ten, twelve stone, clever as a monkey, and fibbed hard two-handed; only one thing lacked, and that was strength o' body. He had no constitution. 'Twas the damnedest shame, but no amount o' work could better it; as Barclay used to say, he was one o' those who “trained off” 'stead of “on”. But he was
so
quick and full o' style that we must give him a run, for as Pad said: “He hits like a hammer, and is too fast to be hit his self.” So it proved in mills with Harry Lancaster and Bill Jay, but George went down to Tom Oliver, boxing him blind for six rounds and growing careless, when Tom nailed him. Now George was in Edinburgh, as I said, and when he wrote asking me to hold the ring in a match his gentry pupils were making for him, off I went north, for old times' sake. It was older times than I'd bargained for; his opponent was Tom Molineaux.

There was no backing down, even had I wished – and tell you the
truth, mister, I did not know whether I wished or not. I'd thought nothing but ill o' Tom until his fight wi' Fuller, but that day, when he'd showed so game, and just now and then like his old self, I'd felt my feelings change somehow. I could never put from my mind all the misery and pain he'd caused me, but it was not in me to bear grudge, neither, not now, when 'twas all by and done with. I can't put words to it, 'xactly, but I guess if you've been concerned in some one, and tried to make him into something, then even if evil comes 'twixt you … well, hang it, you don't forget the good times, and could wish the bad had never been, and even if you can't forgive in your heart, why, the grudges don't seem worth having. Not to show, leastways.

The mill was at some little place in Lanarkshire, March 10, 1815 – I recall the date 'cos it was the day we heard Bonaparte had 'scaped from Elba and was back in France, you know, 'fore Waterloo. There wasn't a drag or a prad to be had in Edinburgh at breakfast, and thousands had been on the road to the fight 'fore daybreak – say, and other thousands had gotten the wrong office and arrived some place else! But it might ha' been Moulsey or Tothill Fields, so great was the crowd and the carriages, and as I made the ring, I thought, yes sir, they still come to see the Black Ajax.

It took me flat aback, tho', when I laid eyes on Tom, coming to the field wi' Joe Ward at his elbow. He was twice the size of a year ago, the fat hanging on him in dewlaps, his phiz all broke and scarred, and white sprinkled in his hair like powder. I was talking to George Cooper by the ring when the roar went up, and I looked round, and thought hardly to recognise Tom, he was so beat up, and old somehow.

He looked across the ring and saw me, and said something to Ward, and then sat himself down wi' his back to the post as though to rest. Back of Ward there was a couple o' flash coves who'd come wi' them, and two or three mollishers all decked and painted, laughing and preening, and I thought, brother, you sure been training the way you know best. Abner Gray was there, and handed down Tom a bottle looked like stout, and Tom drained it right off. He must ha' seen me watching, for he looked 'round at the doxies and then at the bottle, and then grinned at me with a little nod. 'Twas so unlooked for I didn't know what to think. Oh, confound it all, said I, and went over to him.