The Killings of Stanley Ketchel (19 page)

Johnson shrugged and left for his dressing room.

And then, enrobed and about to depart the ring, James Jeffries said: “Six years ago it might’ve been another story, but I sure didn’t have it today.”

And then, stripped naked and shuffling toward the shower room, James Jeffries said: “Christ, I couldn’t hit him. I couldn’t
have hit him in a thousand years. I couldn’t have beat the bastard on my best day. How I let myself get talked into this jackpot I’ll never know. Damn the money and God save me from my friends. Now maybe everyone will leave me the hell alone.”

In the
San Francisco Chronicle
Jack London would write:

Headlines around the country wailing of Johnson’s victory would be followed by headlines of racial violence in more than a dozen cities, the worst of the rioting incited by the motion picture of the fight.

H
e went to Jeffries’ dressing room and pushed through the clamoring pack of reporters to get up close to him. He leaned down to Jeffries’ raw ear so he would not be overheard and told him he’d fought bravely and had not a damn thing to apologize for to anybody. Jeffries nodded but said nothing.

Ketchel then went to see Johnson. The police guards at the dressing room door recognized him and let him pass.

Johnson was knotting his tie in a mirror. His cornermen, one white and two Negroes, were there too.

“Well now, lookee here,” Johnson said, smiling at Ketchel in the mirror. “My, my, what a splendiferous surprise to see you, Mr. Stanley. Say, now, that’s a fine-looking set of teeth.”

“Came to say congratulations.”

“Well thank you, sir. Some of them reporters was here a minute ago but I don’t recollect anybody telling me no congratulations. Just want to know do I
respect
Mr. Jeffries. Do I believe I coulda beat him when he was champ. Ask me would I give him a
re
match. I say that be fine with me but I ain’t so sure about Mr. Jeff. He big but he not dumb. I say, ‘Do he
look
like he want a rematch?’”

The seconds chuckled.

“He’s not the man he used to be,” Ketchel said.

Johnson finished with the knot and carefully attached a gold stick pin to the tie. Then cut his eyes at Ketchel in the mirror and said, “Ain’t nobody is.”

He turned and gestured at the seconds. “This here’s my crew. The buckra’s Eddie Joe and them two shiftless coons’re Red and Pogo. I guess you boys know who this fella is.”

The cornermen and Ketchel exchanged nods.

Ketchel asked about George Little, and Johnson said he’d fired him for trying to steal his woman. “He musta figured since they both white she just naturally gonna drop me for him. Man don’t know diddly about women, specially about Etta.”

“I thought her name was Sheila,” Ketchel said.

“Oh man, Sheila long gone. This one Etta.
Fine
woman. High society. She ingesticates tea. Like this.” He demonstrated Etta’s tea-drinking technique, pinky finger high.

“Where’s she at?”

“Waiting on me in Frisco. But look here what she did.” He indicated a vase of geraniums on a table. “Sent a wire to the hotel and had them deliver these while I was entertaining with Mister Jeff. Didn’t want me to see them till the fight all done.” He broke off a flower and inserted it in his lapel, then checked himself in the mirror. “Say now, ain’t that fine.”

There was not a mark on him but for a slight cut on his lower lip. He noted Ketchel’s glance at it. “Got that in training a coupla days ago. Mr. Jeff accidentally bumped it with his head or he wouldn’ta got no blood from me noways.”

“He couldn’t hit you, that’s for sure.”

“Man didn’t stand no chance, did he?”

“Didn’t look like it to me.”

“You know, I believe
you
mighta taken Mr. Jeffries today. What you think?”

Ketchel did believe that. “I don’t know. All I know is he couldn’t hit you.”

“Not many can. But you did, huh?”

“Not hard enough.”

“And you like to try it again. That’s why you here.” Johnson turned to his seconds. “I believe this little man wanna ask for a
re
match, what yall think?”

Ketchel was the only one in the room not smiling. He had not expected Johnson to beat him to the point. “That’s right,” he said.

“Do tell,” Johnson said. “Well now, I must say you got some sizable testicular baggage, Mr. Stanley, seeing how we had us an arrangement and you tried to sucker me. Now here you is, wanting Papa Jack to do you a good turn.”

“But I didn’t sucker you, did I?”

“Not cause you didn’t try.” Johnson’s grin widened, Ketchel’s smile small and wry, his ears warm.

“I want another go, Johnson.”

“Man, another fight with you wouldn’t draw flies, not after how I done you already.”

“To hell with the gate.”

“Easy for you to say, little mister, kinda jack you make. Not so easy for us niggerboys got to hustle to make a dime.”

“Goddamnit, you’re the greatest fighter I ever saw. What you did today—”

“And you wants to be the greatest fighter you ever saw. Therefore and henceforth, you gots to beat
me
. You can’t never do it but you got to try on account of it eating you up, ain’t it, Mr. Stanley? Ain’t that the lowdown truth?”

Ketchel’s ears burned. “Look you…I don’t give a damn what you think, all I want’s—”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, man. I
know
what all you want. Think I don’t know how it is?”

“Goddamnit, give me a rematch.”

Johnson cocked his head and smirked. “I sure hope you ain’t gonna demeanify yourself and say pretty please.”

The seconds sniggered.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Johnson and his seconds whooped.
“That’s
-a-way, Mr. Stanley!” he said. “Don’t be taking no shit.”

“Come on, man, give me a—”

“No,”
Johnson said, pointing a finger at him.

“…rematch,” Ketchel said. And smiled.

Johnson sighed and looked at his seconds. “I believe somebody gonna have to shoot this fucker to make him quit.”

“Woooooo,
” the Pogo one said, “it getting too damn
in
-tense round here. We heading on, Jack.”

“Awright. I see you boys in Frisco and I don’t wanta hafta bail nobody out, yall hear?”

Jostling each other as they made for the door, the seconds waved so long and left.

Johnson consulted his pocket watch. Then gave Ketchel a look he couldn’t read. Then said: “Look here, little man, I been told there’s a niggertown down the road got a place with pretty good barbecue and a loud piano and some fine high yella gals. Calls itself a roadhouse but it’s a cathouse with a kitchen, what it is. What say we go have us a mess of ribs and a drink or two, do some high-kicking with them yellas?”

“Niggertown?”

“What’s the matter, Stanbo? Never heard of the place?”

The idea of sporting in a Negro whorehouse struck Ketchel’s fancy. He’d never had a colored girl but had always wanted to.

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “But I’m supposed to meet a fella back at the hotel, so I better stop by and—”

“Who that?”

“Man named London. Jack London.”

“The writer fella? I know him. Met him in Australia after I put down Tommy Burns. Man looked about to cry, he was so sorry to see a nigger champ. Tell you what, ask him to come along. Dollar to a doughnut he says no. He’s scared of niggers.”

J
OHNSON DROVE A
yellow Packard touring model with the convertible top down. He and his crew had come from San Francisco by train, but on his first night in Reno he’d finagled his way into a crap game in a back room of the Hotel Golden and won the car from the lieutenant governor of Oklahoma or Arkansas or Kansas, he couldn’t remember which.

“Man was down to his last dollar after I made about seven passes in a row,” Johnson told Ketchel, “so he wagers this here car against five hundred dollars. And damn if I don’t roll a seven. Real sore loser, that fella, the sorta man shouldn’t never gamble, know the
kind I mean? Couldn’t stop cussing me. Said after Jeffries got done beating the shit outta me there wouldn’t be nothing left but my gold teeth. I ask you, that any way for a lieutenant governor to talk? Say, what the hell a
lieutenant
governor do, anyhow?”

Because the car was known to almost everyone in Reno, he thought it wise to approach the hotel by way of backstreets. “Some drunk peckerwoods spot this car, they’re like to be all over it like flies on a picnic basket,” Johnson said. “I might have to bust me some heads and maybe get all sweaty, muss up my new clothes. Ruther stay neat and allurifying for them gals.” He waited in the alley with the motor running while Ketchel went in to see London.

He found him at the far end of the bar and told him of Johnson’s invitation.

“Niggertown?” London said.

“He said you won’t come. Says you’re scared of niggers.”

“He did, did he?” London tossed off the rest of his drink. “Let’s go.”

Ketchel gestured to the bartender, who brought him his revolver wrapped in newspaper. Ketchel held the package down low and slipped the gun out of the paper and under his coat.

“Good idea,” London said. “A safeguard for the white-race contingent.”

Johnson grinned when London came out with Ketchel. “Why, Mr. Jack, I’m jubilated to beat the band you’re joining us. I have heard you got a liking for the colored girls.”

London got in the back seat. “My favorite color in women is the same as yours, Johnson.”

“What color’s that, Mr. Jack?”

“Pretty.”

Johnson laughed and gunned the motor and they roared away. He wore a driving duster and goggles and gauntlets, his cap visor
pulled low. He had long fancied himself a driver of professional racing talent, and whenever he got behind the wheel he drove as though bent for a finish line. He often bragged that he’d gotten more speeding tickets than any man in America, even though he more often outran the police than not.

Yelling to be heard over the rumble of the motor and the rush of air, he said the Packard was fun, but couldn’t compare to any of his racing cars, especially his ninety-horsepower Thomas Flyer, which he was going to race against the one and only Barney Oldfield at Sheepshead Bay, New York, in late October.

“Man said didn’t want to race against no
Ethiopian.
So I bet him five thousand dollars and he quick say it’s a deal. Ain’t no paint in the world as white as money.”

They sped over a winding, uneven road, the Packard pitching and yawing, raising great clouds of dust behind them. Ketchel with a tight grip on the door as they slued through curves. Johnson shouted a complaint about the lack of a sufficiently long straightway where he could get the car up to its top speed. He hollered that he wished driving fast didn’t make him so happy. “My teeth gets all muddy!” He let out a wolf howl with such gusto that Ketchel joined in, even as he held to the door for dear life. In the back seat, London covered his head with his coat and sipped from his flask and coughed in the swirl of dust.

T
HE
N
EGRO QUARTER
was a small settlement east of town between the river and the railroad tracks. Raul’s Riverfront Drink and Dance Emporium was the largest building in the hamlet and the only one of two stories. The sun had set and the rolled-down shade of every upstairs window was yellow with interior light against the twilit evening.

Johnson parked the Packard between two horse wagons almost directly in front of the building. From its confines came the clamor of ragtime piano, raucous laughter, loud voices. They alit from the car and Johnson took off his driving outfit and brushed the dust from his bowler and set it at a rakish angle on his head, then checked the lay of his boutonnière and took up his walking stick and they went inside.

The crowded room was cast in a dim amber light. The laughter and loud talk fell off and the two couples on the floor stopped dancing. Every eye fixed on the three of them. The skinny piano man continued playing but not as loudly nor as fast.

None of the patrons had ever before seen Johnson in the flesh, but most of them recognized him on sight and in low voices informed those who did not. Some were obviously thrilled by his presence but some were as clearly displeased by the company he’d brought with him. Ketchel and London were the only whites in the room, and there were mutterings and glowers. Even through the pall of smoke and the odors of whiskey and sweat and the reek of urine from the piss trough behind the wooden partition at the rear of the room, Ketchel detected another smell, too, one he had come upon many times before in many other places. A smell of rank carnal pleasures and blood in high heat.

A large man in a red-and-black pinstriped suit rose from a table and hurried over to them. His complexion as pale as Ketchel’s but his features distinctly Negroid. He introduced himself as Raul, the owner and manager. He congratulated Johnson on his victory that afternoon and said he was honored to have him in his establishment.

“Well I don’t see nothing to be so goddamned
honored
about,” said a tall man at the bar. He wore a pink shirt with black garters and had a white scar on his chin. “You in the wrong place, Little
Arthur.” It was a nickname that had trailed Johnson all the way from Galveston. “Ain’t no whitemeat chicken here.”

“You hush your head, Louis,” Raul said.

“That’s all right, Mr. Raul, the man just flapping his big African lips,” Johnson said, prompting sniggers through the room. He pointed his walking stick at the Louis fellow. “Not that it’s any your damn business, Sambo, but I come here to get me a rest from all that whitemeat chicken chasing after me. It ain’t the kinda problem
you
ever gonna have.”

Hoots and cackles. The Louis fellow glared but held mute.

“Reason I come
here,”
Johnson said, “is I was told this place got the prettiest gals in Nevada.” He made a show of slowly scanning the room, then smiled big and rolled his eyes. “And I’ll tell yall one damn thing. They wasn’t lying.”

Laughter and a cry of
“That’s
right!” Flirty smiles and winks from the girls.

“You welcome here, man,” somebody called out, “but what you doing with them ofays?”

“They
my
guests, huckleberry, and this my party. If I’m welcome, they welcome.”

“That fella there’s Stanley Ketchel, ain’t it?” somebody else said. “He the hunky boy knock you on your black ass!”

A hum of impressed remarking rippled through the room. Ketchel heard a woman say,
“That
the boy knock Jack down?”

“This the very fella,” Johnson said. “Stan the Man. Anybody fight good as him, least I can do is buy him a drink and a barbecue rib. Howsomever, looks like some yall don’t like it he’s here. Well, tell you what…any you mammyjammers wanta throw his white ass out, you welcome to try.”