Million Dollar Baby (18 page)

“It’s not the first time, right?”

“I get it fix when I hang ’em up.”

A reporter wanted an interview, but Mookie waved him off with a water bottle. Slipping in with the reporter was a raggedy little brother wearing a dusty black cowboy hat with a long feather. He began to move and throw punches. He had scar tissue for eyebrows and wine for breath. His pants were too big and too long, but he continued to stick and move, to slip imaginary punches. He was five-four and had probably been a bantamweight, but now he weighed 160. Mookie closed his eyes and leaned forward, his face deep in the ice bag.

The little dude hiked up his pants and continued to punch.

“You like me, bro’, you like me,” he called to Mookie, who kept his face in the ice. “Dig,” the little guy said, bobbing and weaving and throwing combinations. “Bip, bip,
bang! Can
you dig it? Slip an’ then you stick, stick, roll to the lef side and hook,
whip!
to the body, man,
whip!
to the head! Bang, bang, stick and move, bip, bip,
bang!
See dat shit?, see what I’m sayin, can you dig it? Bap, bap, bap, and
bang!,
and
bing!,
and
boom!”
He raised his hands in victory and then pranced around the room like a rooster who’d just set a record with the hens. “Yeah, you like me, baby, you like
me!”

Odell took him by the back of his pants and gently eased him out of the room. A moment later he stuck his head through the door. “Any y’all got twenty-five cent?” The guard threw him out.

Odell said, “Mookie got a fan.”

Despite themselves they all smiled, and Mookie was able to dress after Con sponged him down with alcohol, and he stopped sweating. But the ride back to the hotel was awful.

“You want to go for pizza?” the driver asked.

Mookie shook his head and put a towel over his face.

In the hotel he came out of the shower holding his ribs and all stooped over. “I be hurtin … be pissin red, too.”

Con iced the kid’s face and his ribs and kidneys. Mookie was too sore for a massage, so Con gave him a codeine pill that would allow him to sleep.

“Your flight’s at eight-thirty,” said one of the managers. “They’ll pick you up at seven downstairs.” The managers went down to the bar. The white manager had Chivas on the rocks. The black had Hennessey and Coke.

“What time is it now?” asked Mookie.

“Fifteen pass one,” said Odell.

The codeine kicked in and Mookie was able to pack. “I can’t believe they did that to me, all the years I been fightin.”

“Money,” said Odell.

Mookie sat down in disgust.

“In time,” Con said, “you’ll be prouder of this fight than all your other fights put together.”

Con finished packing at two-thirty. He felt old when he fell into bed and knew he’d be tired for days. But his mind kept sifting through what happened, what should have been.

“Lord,” he prayed, “we won but we didn’t win. We drank from your cup, Lord, but I want you to know that I’m mad at you. I know I was ready to stab the judges and that I jumped on that crook referee, forgive me, Lord, but I figure someone’s gonna shoot the boy he don’t ref right, so maybe I did the puke a favor. Help us all through this night, Lord, ’specially Mookie, help him on the plane and help him with his face so his mama won’t feel so bad. Lord, I’m not mad at you anymore.”

Most of the swelling in Mookie’s face had gone down, but he kept it in ice in the hotel room before they left. He wore dark glasses in the airport and on the plane. He was spitting and pissing clear, but he was still stooped over from pain in his ribs, and the white in his left eye was scarlet from a broken blood vessel.

“Africa hurtin’, too,” said Odell.

Con gave him more codeine, and the kid slept most of the way to Los Angeles, Mookie next to the window, Odell in the middle, and Con on the aisle. Odell slept, too. Odell always slept in the air. Con never did, though this was a soft ride. The pilot’s voice came over the snapping and popping loudspeaker from time to time, and somewhere over Arizona it woke Mookie, who stared out the window. As they came across the low desert of California, the pilot spoke again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in Los Angeles in a few minutes. Over on our left is the famous resort city of Palm Springs. In a moment, on our right, high in the mountains, you will see Big Bear Lake.”

Mookie thought about the champions that trained in Big Bear. Despite his will, his eyes began to leak. The announcement woke Odell, who always sat up smiling after a sleep. “All right,” he said.

Mookie kept looking out at the scorched desert below. He put a hand over his bruised mouth to muffle the sounds coming from him, but he couldn’t control the spasms in his gut. Odell looked at Con, who signaled for Odell to talk to Mookie.

“What this business?” Odell said to the kid.

Mookie couldn’t look at him, ashamed of the water coming down from his dark glasses. “You know.”

“You lose a eye, you go blind?”

“My mama don’t get no house,” said Mookie, turning to Odell.

“You quittin?”

“Hell no!”

“Then wipe you face, boy. We got no dog in us.”

N
OBODY KNOW HOW DANGEROUS
Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch first come around Hope Street Gym, but for maybe two years the boy show up every month for two weeks at a stretch and then he be gone for two weeks. Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch, that be the fightin name he give hissef, but he never have a fight, except one, if that what you call it. Around the gym they cut his name down to Deedee, or Flippy or Orbit. But Danger always talk about hissef the long way, by his fightin name.

“My name’s Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch outta Polk County, Missouri,” he say, squinting one eye, “an’ my dream is to fight the Motor City Cobra Thomas Hit Man Hearns for the WBA Welterweight Championship of the whole world.”

I done some fighting back before TV, lightweight, course I weigh more now. I wasn’t a contender, nothing like that, but I was a scrapper and I put on a good show every time I lace them up in the local arenas around L.A.—Wrigley Field, Ocean Park, Wilmington, Jeffries’ Barn, and sometimes up in Stockton or Frisco, and down Tijuana Old Mexico. I fight at Hollywood Legion, too, right there off Sunset and Vine, but I had to say I was a Ayrab because they don’t fight coloreds in Hollywood Legion in those days. Prince Hakim the Sheik. I fight there ten times as a Ayrab because I had light skin and could fool the Hollywood movie crowd, main events some of them I fight when I filled the joint
up!
Promoter know, so the sportswriters know, they don’t care about colored, neither do the white boys I fight—it be a game. Posters other places say Willie “Scrap Iron” DuPree. Friends call me Scrap.

I never get a title shot, but I make me some money in my fifty-five fights, and that’s when times be tough and you got to fight hard, but I never got busted-up bad or nothing. Nose be broke enough so I don’t hardly have a nose, and one eye droop because of cuts and the dead nerve in the lid, but nothing serious, not like some of the boys end up stuttering and talking through they nose. I never did business or bet on the other boy, only on mysef, money I made be straight money. And because I give it my best, I always have a place to stay once I hang them up, have a room in the back of a gym for keeping it clean, for dumping the spit buckets and keeping the blood mopped up, and for keeping the place smelling good, things like that. And keeping my nose clean and my eyes peeled the wrong element start hanging around. And once I get old and stop training my own fighters, I handle the stool and ice bucket for a few dollars if some out-of-town faction be short a corner guy. They want a cut man, I charge more. Rub down? Rubdown cost two dollars, heavyweight cost three. I know a fighter body better than they girlfriends.

These days, the old gyms be gone, like Main Street and Hope Street, but now I’m out at Hymns Gym 108th and Broadway, run by boy I used to train, Curtis “Hymn” Odom. Call him Hymn he fight so pretty and always serious as a shroud, Curtis Odom, I teach him, teach him to crack. Curtis a contender in his prime. He hit so hard you start lookin for a tittie to suck. But he got a eye detach and can’t see right and that be it, but good God how the boy could punch, he slip outside on you and hook to body yop, hook to the head
bing! and
put you raggedy ass to sleep. Nice man, too, he decent, people respect Hymn, wouldn’t say shit he have a mouthful, why people from around the world come to Hymn Gym for Curtis to train they boys and he make a gang a money, that and with what the boys he train and manage hissef make for him.

But Hope Street, where Hope Street Gym used to be, it wasn’t but a block long where it runs from Eighteenth and the freeway off-ramp down to Washington and Trade Tech College. The orange brick building be a old Masonic Hall some kind, have six floors and go back to 1910. Most of it wasn’t used except for storage, but the gym be up two and a half flights of stairs and be built inside the ballroom part of the hall that have high ceilings and windows and lots of air, not that you leave the windows open. Building tore down to make even more parking, but before that it sit across the parking lot behind the Olympic Auditorium where they have the fights in L.A.’s 1932 Olympics.

They a few contenders outta Hope, but no champs. There be amateurs and a lot of Latino boys come through for fights at the Olympic and the nickel-dime gym bums looking to hustle a two-dollar loan. Gym be in a neighborhood where you car ain’t safe. South of Washington and east of Figueroa be mostly black. West of Fig all directions was Latino. Any white boy come through better look like he can fight.

Dillard didn’t have no trouble with anyone, never did, not even ones who couldn’t talk American. He tell anybody listen he a Missouri hillbilly, tell people he go to Kansas City one time and the Missouri River be too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Last time he leave Hope Street he don’t come back.

Danger a farmer white boy with pale hair and eyes and skin, and when he work out he turn red as a burnt finger. Hymn train the boy free of charge knowing Danger couldn’t fight a lick and never would. Danger try so hard and mess up so bad you laugh at first.

Then you watch awhile, see his set jaw, and you think on that dream of his and you end up in the boy’s corner same way Hymn did.

Hymn work with anybody tap him on the shoulder. They young enough, you work with them for free, even the fatties because you never know what’s inside a boy until the boy get hit. Joe Frazier a fat boy. Well, Hymn know from the git Danger never go nowhere, know that even if he could learn a few moves, he never pass the noodle exam to get licensed. Still, he never turn his back on the boy, never charge him a dime.

“My name’s Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-Bam Barch outta Polk County, Missouri!” Danger yell out between rounds, try to be like Muhammad Ali, “and I challenge the Motor City Cobra Thomas Hit Man Hearns to fight me for the WBA Welterweight Championship of the whole world!”

“But you ain’t ranked, Deedee,” Shawrelle would tease. “Champs gotta fight someone in the top ten, man.”

“I’ll fight him anyway, anytime, anyplace!”

“But then it wouldn’t be a title fight, and if you won, you wouldn’t be champ,” say Shawrelle, walk away say this be one dumb white boy. Shawrelle a amateur and be stone black.

Danger don’t understand rankings, but when he show up for two weeks in the gym he be there working out twice a day, sixteen 3-minute rounds at noon when the pros train, and another sixteen in the evening with the amateurs, and that ain’t counting his five miles every morning at six at the Trade Tech track. It be pitiful to watch, but he keep on, and after a while the boy get strong.

“Say, Orbit, why don’t you go a few rounds wif me?” say Shawrelle.

I say, “Don’t be talkin that mess.”

Danger say, “I’ll do it, Mist Scrap, do it right now.”

I say, “No, you ain’t go in wif Shawrelle, forgit it.”

“You scared, right Flippy?, you a little white rabbit?”

“I ain’t scared a no man!”

“Scrap he be scared,” say Shawrelle. “Scrap got the blood of the slave master in him, see that skin? Scrap talk like a brother, but Scrap be runnin a game.”

“Cut that shit, Shawrelle,” I say.

Shawrelle say, “You still be lickin the boot of the oppressor, old man.”

I tap the pocket where I keep my shit, say, “Till you know how it was when it was, watch you mouf.”

Shawrelle walk away grinning like a shit-eating dog, like he be jokin, Shawrelle don’t joke, Shawrelle ain’t smart enough to be funny Think he be tough. Tough ain’t enough.

Danger loosen up with leg exercises and stretches like a fighter do. And he shadowbox four rounds and Hymn treat him like a contender, never tease or laugh at him, and always find time to work four rounds with him on the punch mitts, not that Danger can punch worth a damn. Danger don’t know how to breathe like a fighter and can hardly stand up after four on the mitts, but he go on to work in his own way on the big bag for four rounds, slap at the speed bag for four, stumble around with the jump rope four more, and then do 120 sit-ups—four different sets of thirty reps each. He be so red you think he cut, but he got no quit in him and Hymn never lose patience when Danger can’t remember things Hymn told him two minutes before, or a thousand times before that. Danger call Curtis Mist Hymn, picked “Mist” up from the brothers. Call me Mist Scrap.

Curtis Odom, see, he find his church early on and peoples respect him because he never run a game on nobody and because when he a contender he knock out top fighters all over the country, and in France and Japan, and in South Africa. Take me with him every fight he have except South Africa because there was no ticket but one. Joburg what he call Johannesburg, what the South Africans call it. Fought there twice and won both times and was treated white because he was a fighter. Said if he couldn’t live in America he’d choose South Africa. Said he take me there next time, make sure they be two tickets. No next time. Still good-looking, Hymn, too bad about his dead eye, but his weight still same as his fighting weight, 160 pounds. Hymn be bad.