Some Faces in the Crowd (9 page)

In the center ring Ceferino Garcia, the Pride of the Islands, was throwing punches at the air, ducking and weaving as he crowded an imaginary opponent to the ropes.

Young Pancho Villa the Third held his megaphone high and shouted, “Een-tro-ducing, ot one hon-dred and seexty pounds, that tareefic boy from the Phil-ha-peens …”

He spread his legs and bellowed. He was the greatest announcer in the world. Only nobody could understand him. The accent and a speech motor sputtering along on half its cylinders produced a kind of guttural doubletalk. Eddie Gibbs, the bald, irritable little guy who ran the gym, went over to Pancho and said, “What do you think
you’re
doing?”

“Me announce,” Pancho said. “Me announce very fine. Work here in gym every day.”

“Go on,” Gibbs said. “What the hell is there to announce around here? You’re punchy.”

That was a fighting word and Pancho felt the blood rush to his head. Anger brought his thick lips to a childish pout. “Ponchy. Who ponchy? Me no ponchy. Those boms over there, maybe they ponchy. Me have job. Me announcer.”

Jerry La Pan, who had the best string of boys in town, stopped to listen on his way in. Jerry was a great ribber and he worked at it all the time. He flipped Pancho four bits and said, “That’s for the commercial. I wanna buy the next fifteen minutes.”

Pancho raised his megaphone solemnly. “Een-tro-duc-ing, Jerry La Pon, thot great mon-ager of thot coming heavyweight chom-peen …”

All the boys got a bang out of that, so Gibbs let Pancho hang around for laughs. After the third day it didn’t seem so funny any more, not even to Jerry La Pan, but Pancho went right on announcing. He couldn’t have been more conscientious about it if Gibbs had put him on the payroll. Every day Pancho would check in at noon, announce until two, take half an hour off for lunch and go back to his megaphone again until the last tired fighter hit the showers at six.

He was something of a genius in his own way. He could keep up a steady stream of announcements for six hours and succeed in saying nothing that anybody could understand. He kept it up so long that after a while the sound of his voice seemed to blend into the other sounds that made the rhythm of the place—the slapping of the small bag, the thudding of the big, the clicking of the jump ropes, and the rumbling of the canvas-covered boards under the weight of the boxers’ dancing feet.

The first few days, all the boys thought the announcing was the funniest thing they ever saw. Then, when they were running low on wisecracks, they began to pretend he wasn’t there. And finally they didn’t have to pretend any more. Pancho and his white suit and megaphone were on the job all day long and no one even bothered to look around.

No one, that is, but Soldier Conlon. The Soldier was one of those characters who used to do a little boxing and has nothing to show for it but a couple of cauliflower ears and a cauliflower brain. After hanging up his gloves, he worked the corners for a couple of years, but one of the fights he worked looked so wrong that the commission had to take somebody’s license away to save its face, and, of course, the Soldier was their man.

So now the Soldier just hung around, as the boys say, making himself useless. If he got hold of a couple of bucks he picked up a hand in one of the poker games in the back room. If things got so bad that he had to go to work, he’d promote himself a little dough, finding tankers for some new bum they were trying to build up. The Soldier was never what the boys call a vicious character. He didn’t have the guts or the brains to kill somebody or rob a bank. The Soldier was strictly alley-fighting and two-bit larceny.

Soldier Conlon would have been just another Grand Street hanger-onner, if it hadn’t been for one thing. His sense of humor. Especially where Young Pancho Villa the Third was concerned. For instance it didn’t take him any time at all to find out what a nut Pancho was on the subject of keeping his white outfit spotless. So every time Soldier Conlon would come into the gym he’d stick his hand out and say, “Hiya, Pancho, how’s the kid today?” And when he drew his hand back there would be a big black smudge on Pancho’s sleeve where the Soldier had drawn the end of a burnt match across it with the other hand.

And when Pancho finally got wise to the hand-shaking gag, the Soldier would come by and say, “Glad to see ya puttin’ your best foot forward, Pancho, old boy,” and he’d stamp on Pancho’s white imitation-buck shoes, leaving a dirty smear across the toe.

After a while it got so every time Pancho saw Conlon coming he’d run for the high stool near the entrance and draw up his feet and wrap his arms around himself and pull in his head like a turtle. “Stay ’way, stay ’way now,” Pancho would plead. And the Soldier’s answer would be a grin, showing wide orange gums and a mouth full of cheap store teeth. “Whatsa matter, Pancho? We pals, ain’t we, Pancho o’ kid, o’ kid?” Then he’d turn around and wink at whoever happened to be standing around, to make sure they were getting the joke.

One day Eddie Gibbs decided to put on an amateur boxing show. As soon as Pancho heard about it he got all excited and ran up to Gibbs office. “Missa Geebs,” he said. “You put on beeg show, you need a-numma-one announcer.”

Well, at first Gibbs told Pancho what to do with his megaphone. But Pancho kept hollering until finally Gibbs began to see the possibilities of it. Young Pancho Villa the Third, the greatest doubletalk announcer in the world. The louder he talked, the less you understood. They could throw him in once in a while just for laughs. So Gibbs said, “Sure, Pancho. You’re in. I’ll even put your name in the program.”

There was no holding Pancho after that. He strutted around the gym like a bantam rooster. He was announcing everything that went on in a very impressive and inarticulate way. The boys said he even announced when Eddie Gibbs took a leak.

But the day before the amateur show, the boxers had to struggle along without their announcing. “How about givin’ out with some of them announcements, Pancho?” Soupy Jones, the colored lightweight, laughed.

“Is better to save voice for beeg show tomorrow night,” Pancho explained.

The next afternoon Pancho didn’t show up at the gym at all. He was lying down in his room resting for his personal appearance. He left a call at the desk for seven o’clock.

“Get up yourself, you bum,” said the manager. Pancho was three weeks behind in his rent.

At seven o’clock, Pancho rose, tested his megaphone, and went down to the end of the hall to wash his hands so he wouldn’t leave any dirty fingerprints on his clothes.

He had washed and ironed his white shirt, chalked his shoes, and had given the Chinaman down the street a buck to clean and press the suit and block his Panama hat.

He went over to the gym half an hour early. He felt good inside, the way he used to feel when he was walking down the aisle to the ring and the
compañeros
in the peanut gallery were yelling
Viva, Pancho Villa!
He went around glad-handing everybody outside, wanting to make sure all the boys saw him. In the gym the seats were full, and a lot of the boys were standing around the ring making bets and talking it over. Pancho wandered among them, careful not to brush his white linen against anybody’s dirty suit. Someone let a stream of tobacco juice go and it narrowly missed Pancho’s feet. “Hey, you look where you spitting,” Pancho scolded.

He went over to the ring and picked up a program. He read through it eagerly, running his finger along the lines, until he found his name. It made him tingle all over when he saw it: “Special Announcer: Young Pancho Villa III.” Eddie Gibbs was leaning against the ring with a pencil over his ear, going over the line-up for the evening with the referee. Pancho walked toward him briskly. He had better check over the program with Eddie and make sure just when he was to go on, he thought to himself. He went over to Gibbs with self-conscious importance.

Suddenly he stopped. Soldier Conlon was looking over Gibbs’ shoulder. Pancho didn’t think Conlon had seen him. He turned and tried to lose himself in the crowd. He edged behind two bigger men and started working his way around the ring. Then he heard the voice behind him, “Hey, Pancho. Hey, big shot.”

There had never been anything in the ring that frightened him like the sound of the Soldier’s voice. Everything cramped inside him when he heard it. He must keep his suit clean tonight, he thought, he must keep his shoes white. And though he did not know the words, the fear of them throbbed in him: he must not be
violated
tonight. He must not be
sullied.

The Soldier watched this fear come into Pancho’s face, and Pancho saw the orange grin with the false teeth. The Soldier took a step toward him. Pancho backed away.

“Hey, big shot. C’mere. I wanna talk to ya.”

Pancho ducked behind the seats. The Soldier moved after him, laughing as he went. Pancho walked faster. He could feel the sweat prickling under his collar. He broke into a trot. So did the Soldier. Pancho ran around the seats, and when he saw the Soldier still coming, he hurried up the stairs to the gallery. So did the Soldier. They were running now. They ran all the way around the balcony. Pancho’s legs were short and the tight white suit checked his stride. The Soldier grinned as he ran. He was having a great time and he was gaining. “Hey, big shot,” he kept calling. “Hey, big shot.”

Pancho raced past the door to the fire escape, wheeled and darted out. He tried to hold the door from the outside, but the Soldier was too strong and the door pulled away from him. The orange gums and the false teeth and the crazy laugh were right behind him now. Pancho looked down the dizzying descent of fire escape that fell away to the narrow alley behind the gym. A feverish prayer beat in his mind. … Then his small, neat feet broke into a Bill Robinson tap dance down the metal steps.

Still laughing, the Soldier reached down and grabbed the edge of Pancho’s coat. For a moment Pancho dangled there in the Soldier’s firm grip. With his hands swinging wildly into the air and his short legs pumping up and down in a futile effort to tear himself from the Soldier’s grasp, he looked like a mechanical doll.

Then suddenly his left fist shot out, the old left hook. All his body was behind that fist, and all his life. The force of it spun him around, toward the Soldier. It caught the Soldier full in the mouth, smashing the laugh. The Soldier let go of Pancho’s coat and snapped instinctively to the fighter’s stance, the left arm straight out for the jab, the right cocked under the lowered jaw.

The Soldier’s left drove like a piston at Pancho’s face. Pancho reeled backward. For a moment he was looking up at the sky above the roof of the gym, then at the narrowing darkness of the alley below, as he struggled to break his fall. He grabbed for the railing twice and it wasn’t there, but the third time it was. He hung on desperately with his right hand. The Soldier was coming at him again. Pancho squeezed his left fist tighter and crouched.

He was in the ring now, crowded into a corner, holding the top rung of the rope with his right hand to steady himself, lashing out with his left. The old hook, the wild left hook. The Soldier’s face came down to meet the punch and his head snapped back. All that Pancho remembered was the look of surprise on the Soldier’s face before he tumbled gracelessly down the metal steps to melt into the darkness below.

Young Pancho Villa the Third brushed himself off and walked back into the gym again. He was saved. That was all he could think about. He was saved from Soldier Conlon. There was nobody now to stop him from climbing into that ring under the glare of the overhead lights and raising his megaphone to his lips.

Swinging his megaphone proudly, Pancho went down the aisle to the ring. Old-timers smiled to see this little brown man in the snappy white suit strutting by them like a pouter pigeon. Their voices followed him down the aisle in good-natured banter, “Hiya, Pancho, geev it to heem!—Well look who’s here, our favorite announcer …” Pancho acknowledged his fans with an important little nod and kept on going toward the ring.

Eddie Gibbs was in the ring, introducing a couple of old champs. After the champs had lumbered into the ring, mitted the crowd and lumbered out again, Gibbs grinned down at Pancho and announced, “Introducing next that distinguished personage of the boxing game, the Joe Humphreys of the West Coast, Young Pancho Villa the Third!”

It got a laugh from the crowd. Some of the boys stuck out their tongues and gave it the razzberry. Others cupped their hands to their mouths and yelled witty remarks. But this isn’t what Pancho heard. Young Pancho Villa the Third, standing under the arc light with the big megaphone in his hand, heard acclaim. He was up there at last where he had always wanted to be, a white suit, a megaphone and everybody listening.

He was shining. His oily black hair was shining. His eyes were black and oily and shining too. His smiling face shone in the glow of the overhead lights.

He bowed to his audience, just a little half-bow it was, performed with dignity, lifted the end of the megaphone high in the air, and let his words roll through it louder than they ever had before: “Lay-deez and gen-tle-men, it geeves me grrreat pleasure to be here weeth you tonight …”

Someone yelled, “But how much pleasure does it give us?” and the room rocked with laughter again. But Pancho went right on. He heard nothing but the sound of his own voice. He saw nothing but the metal-rimmed mouth of his megaphone, into which he was pouring his life. He no longer saw the faces laughing at him. Or the two men in dark-blue uniforms who had just entered quietly and stood waiting against the door in the rear. He still didn’t know anything was wrong when Eddie Gibbs reached up to him through the ropes and handed him a folded piece of paper. He simply opened it with an official gesture, raised his megaphone again and made a formal announcement: “Your atten-shun, pleece: Pancho—the cops are waiteeng for you at the entrance in co-neck-shun weeth the killeeng of Soldier Con-lon.”

The crowd had already begun to laugh, but it caught itself, and a hush fell over the place. The absence of sound made Pancho stop and gulp for breath as if sound had taken the place of oxygen in his world. He read the message again, this time to himself. Then he climbed through the ropes and went slowly up the aisle toward the officers, swinging his megaphone as he walked.