The next morning Eddie and Memphis and I walked up the driveway with Polo and Schaeffer to see them off on the 9:25 bus. After a day and a half of rain the world was washed clean. The sky was a spotless blue, but there was a cool, steady breeze blowing out of the northwest to mean that, at least by noon, we would be getting those high-piled banks of swift white clouds.
To anyone seeing us and not knowing us we would have appeared a curious group. Polo, worrying about missing the bus, led us, carrying his suitcase. Eddie walked with his hands in his pants pockets, his jacket zipped to the neck. Memphis, walking behind Eddie and me, carried the smaller of Schaeffer’s two suitcases, and Schaeffer trailed us carrying the big one loaded with his gear.
“Maybe we missed it,” Polo said.
“No,” Eddie said, looking at his wrist watch. “They run like trains. They’re late, but they’re never early.”
We had crossed the road, and stood in the lee of the hillside and in the sun.
“Here it come now,” Memphis said.
We saw it coming, blue in the sunlight, down the rise of the road to the north.
“So good luck,” Eddie said, shaking Schaeffer’s hand. “You can lick that guy.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” Schaeffer said.
“He better lick him,” Polo said. “The money it cost me up here.”
“Good luck, Paul,” I said, shaking his hand, and then Memphis shook his hand and I could see that Schaeffer was pleased that we had walked up to see him off but that he was trying to cover his embarrassment like a big child. Then we all shook hands with Polo and he remembered to wish Eddie luck, and that was the way we bundled them off, with the little guy in the almost threadbare topcoat and old brown fedora and the big one in a new gray tweed topcoat and bareheaded following him down the aisle of the half-filled bus, the two of them lugging their bags and lurching together as the bus started off.
“Well, that’s that,” Eddie said as we watched the rear of the bus going away, the blue-gray exhaust swirling back from the flatulent bursts.
“That’s that,” Memphis said. “You’re right.”
We walked back down the driveway and I noticed then for the first time that the seed pods of the swamp maples had put out their dark red dollhouse chandeliers and that the forsythia along the driveway was chartreuse, ready to break out into yellow. Beyond and above the roof line of the hotel the long, thin, crowded branches of the top of the big willow by the lake hung in yellow fronds so that the whole, moving in the breeze and the bright sun, seemed a golden fountain.
“You just lost two customers,” Eddie said to Girot when we got to the porch.
I had seen Girot come out onto the porch and then just stand there, his arms folded across the front of his butcher’s apron, and watch us ambling down the driveway toward him.
“Yes,” he said. “Some customers.”
“What’s the matter with them,” Eddie said.
“What’s the matter with them?” Girot said. “When it comes time to pay the bill this morning, that Polo he says: ‘I am sorry, but I don’t have the money now. I will pay you after my fighter fights on Thursday.’”
“So he’ll pay you,” Eddie said.
“So he’ll pay me. Now when my meat man comes today I suppose I am to tell him: ‘Don’t worry. I will pay you after Schaeffer fights someplace on Thursday.’”
“In Holyoke,” Eddie said.
“Yes. My meat man would be happy to hear that. Holyoke.”
“Ah, Girot,” I said. “You are indeed one of the world’s privileged minority.”
“I am privileged?”
“Certainly. You are one of that small but all-powerful group of holders who control the destinies of the rest of us. By exacting the privilege of extending credit to Polo you will on Thursday, without lacing on a glove or throwing a punch or selling a ticket, become a party to the profits of a prize fight. Schaeffer will now be fighting for you, too, and it’s in exactly that fashion that all of the world’s great fortunes have been amassed.”
“Sure,” Girot said, disgusted.
“From Schaeffer you may branch out into railroads or munitions or whatever. You’ve got to decide what you’re going to do with all your money.”
“That’s right, bon ami,” Eddie said. “What will you do with all your money?”
“Money? You think I make any money on that Schaeffer?”
“Sure,” Eddie said. “Why not?”
“The way he eats? Who can make money?”
“Now you’re trying deception,” I said. “You know you’re flattered.”
“I am flattered?”
“Absolutely. Every time you see Schaeffer eat you know he is paying his most sincere compliments to the wonders of your wife’s cooking.”
“Compliments. With him that’s no compliment. Schaeffer would eat anything.”
“Let’s go around and sit in the sun,” Eddie said.
“Fine,” I said. “Memphis?”
“Thank you,” Memphis said. “I’d like that.”
“I would like it, too,” Girot said, “but I have to work.”
“But remember you’re holding,” I said. “We’re not.”
The gray, weathered dock reached about fifteen feet out into the water, and moored to the end of it was an old, heavy-planked, flat-bottomed rowboat that had been freshly painted in Girot’s hotel colors, white with dark red trim. At the land end of the dock there was an unpainted single-plank bench, and we sat there, sheltered from the wind by the hotel and warm in the sun.
“Holyoke,” Eddie said. “I fought there four times.”
“How many times did you fight there, Memphis?” I said.
“Oh, seven-eight times, I guess. I don’t rightly remember.”
Along our shore the water was calm, but the rest of the lake was alive with small, sun-dappled waves.
“How many fights have you had, anyway?” Eddie said.
“Oh, maybe a hundred fifty-sixty. I had a lot that’s not in the book. I fought a lot in the bootleg amateurs and a lot of fights in Australia, more than it shows in the book. I never did figure it out exactly how many I got.”
“How come you went to Australia?”
“I couldn’t get no fights around here so my manager at that time booked me a couple of fights in California—in San Francisco, California—and, after I knocked those two boys out, there wasn’t anybody would fight me around there either. Then I figured I had just enough money left from my purses to get back to New York, so I sent that money to my wife and I found me a job as a mess boy on a freighter ship and I went to Australia.”
“Who managed you there?”
“I manage myself. There was this gentleman work on the ship, ’way down in that engine room, and he was a fight fan and he been to Australia before so when we got to Melbourne he took me to the gym, where he’d been to visit before, and I found me the promoter there and I told him I was a fighter. He said to me: ‘Just comin’ off that ship can you fight six rounds the day after tomorrow?’ I said: ‘Mister, I can fight six rounds right now.’
“So I told my friend from the ship, I said: ‘How about you gettin’ one of them other gentlemen from that engine room and you two be my seconds?’ So he said: ‘Me? I just like to watch fights. I don’t know what you supposed to do in the corner.’ I said: ‘You just get another gentleman and I’ll tell you what to do. It’s easy.’
“Then the night of the fight there must have come, I guess, more than a dozen gentlemen from the ship that come to the club. When it come about time to go down to the ring my friend he was scared. He had this other gentleman from the ship with him and they’re in the dressin’ room with me and I said: ‘What make you worried? There’s nothing to be scared.’ So he said: ‘But we don’t know what we’re supposed to do.’ I said: ‘I’ll tell you what to do. You gentlemen just follow me down to the ring, carryin’ that pail there with that bottle in it and with the sponge and my mouthpiece and my towel. Then I’ll tell you what to do.’ Then he said: ‘But supposin’ you get cut? I don’t know what to do.’ I said: ‘Get cut? Gentlemen, I never been cut in my whole life. I ain’t gonna get cut tonight. You got nothin’ to worry about that.’ That was the truth, too.”
“How was the fight?” Eddie said. “What happened?”
“They had me fightin’ some red-headed boy that I guess he didn’t have more than ten or twelve, maybe, fights. By now I only been in Australia a couple of days, but I kinda like it—the people they seem nice to me—so I have it in my mind that I might like to stay here a while. Then I figure that, if I’m gonna stay here and get work, I better be careful in this fight. I mean that this better look like it’s a good fight—you know what I mean—and that I better not hurt this red-headed boy too much because he was just like a child, almost, when you come to think about it.”
“So what did you do?” Eddie said.
“So I make it a real good fight. This red-headed boy he was a professional fighter there, but he was like what we call an amateur here.”
“Can you imagine?” Eddie said to me. “Memphis in with an amateur?”
“I wish I’d seen it,” I said. “What about the fight, Memphis?”
“Well, that boy was game. When the bell ring he come out punchin’ and lookin’ to knock me out. The people, they like that right from the start. They was hollerin’, and I figure that if they like this, I go along with it, too. I let him come to me, but you know how you do it. You make it look like a war, but those punches he was throwin’ they only look good to the people because yourself you’re catchin’ most of them on the arms or with a part of the glove, and once in a while I would let one through to me to see how much this boy could punch. You know how you do it.”
“I know,” Eddie said, grinning. “Nobody could do it like you, Memphis.”
“The people, they love it, but when I come back to my corner each round I like to laugh. I would take my mouthpiece out myself and just sit there and hold it in my glove until it time to put it back in and my friend from the engine room would say: ‘But what do we do now? What are we supposed to do now?’ So I would say: ‘Now one of you gentlemen give me the bottle to wrench out my mouth, and then the other sponge my face a little, if you don’t mind.’ Then I remember my friend lookin’ at me scared and he said: ‘But are you all right? Don’t get hurt now, will you? That other fella’s tough.’
“They were so scared, I like to laugh. I said: ‘Now don’t you worry. I be all right.’ So at the end of the fourth round I figure I better do somethin’. By now I make that red-headed boy look so good that, to win, I got to knock him out, but I got to be careful how I do that if I’m gonna stay here in Australia. I mean you can’t offend the people, can you?”
“No, Memphis,” I said. “You can’t.”
“That’s right, and also I don’t want to hurt that red-headed boy none. I mean he seem like a nice boy, so I start pressin’ him a little more in the fifth round, and the people are goin’ crazy and stampin’ their feet and then I stepped inside him and I hit him a right hand in the body as hard, real solid, as I could. Well, his hands they come down and he just start to fold forward and then, for the people, I hit him a hook on the chin, but not hard because the body punch already done for him, and he went down on his face and the referee he just count him out.”
“How did it go over?”
“It go over fine. I mean the fight it was so close in the eyes of the people that they like it even if their boy don’t win. In Australia they’re nice people, and now they’re all standin’ and cheerin’ me.”
“How about your friends from the ship?”
“They was shakin’ hands with one another in the corner and jumpin’ up and down, they was so happy. After the fight I guess there was a dozen of them gentlemen from the ship that come to the fight and I guess they bet on me because they all took me out and we went to a restaurant and they bought me a dinner and they had a time. They wanted me I should stay with the ship and they had it figured that every time we’d go to some port I’d get me a fight and they’d all go to it and second me and bet on me like they did that night. They really wanted me to do that.”
“I’ll bet they did,” I said. “They had it figured that, in time, they could sack every seaport in the free world.”
“They were even gonna speak to the captain. They were gonna find me a place to train on the ship. They figured that even the captain he’d like that, too, and I sure was sorry, when they treated me like that, to have to disappoint those gentlemen on that ship.”
“You told them you wouldn’t do it?” Eddie said.
“I explained to those gentlemen that I couldn’t train on no ship, and that I was really a fighter. I just had to stay someplace and fight, and I was gonna stay, I made up my mind, in Australia.”
“I guess I was there almost two years. The people they were real nice to me.”
“And how many fights did you have there?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I guess about two dozen maybe.”
“Did you play ping-pong with all of them, like with the red-haired kid?”
“No, sir. I did for most of them. I made them real good fights, right up until I knocked out the middleweight champion of Australia. Then I fought the light heavyweight champion and I outpointed him. Then I had to fight the heavyweight champion. He wasn’t a boy knew too much about fightin’ but he was big. He had more than twenty-five pounds on me, and he kept hittin’ me on the arms until I couldn’t lift ’em, just blockin’ his punches, and he got the decision in fifteen rounds. Then I come home, because I wanted to see my wife and my daughter, and there wasn’t nobody else for me to fight down there neither.”
“How long have you been married, Memphis?” I said.
“Oh, fifteen years. My wife she works in a laundry.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“She’s twelve years old now already. In the school they say she’s smart, too.”
“What’s she going to do when she gets out of school?”
“She says she’s gonna be a nurse. I like that.”
“I like it, too. That’s fine.”
“Would you excuse me now?”
“Sure, Memphis.”
“Speakin’ of the laundry, I gotta get my own.”
Memphis left us then, and I asked Eddie what he meant about the laundry.
“He does his own laundry every day up here. You know?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Well, the only clothes he brought, besides what he wears on the road mornings, is the gray suit he’s got and that sweater he has on today. Then he’s got a change of shorts and socks and two T-shirts, and I guess, some handkerchiefs. Every day after the workout he washes out his shorts and socks and T-shirt and a handkerchief. He hangs them out in the furnace room off the kitchen and then, every day after he takes his shower, he has clean clothes to put on.”
“He’s a wonderful guy.”
“He should have been champion and made some money.”
“I know, and one of the most amazing things to me about him and his type is that they never seem to resent us whites. We’re the ones who did it to him, you know.”
“I suppose.”
“Sure we are.”
“I noticed today he looks something like that Louie Armstrong.”
“And if he could have played a trumpet like he used to fight he’d have been another Louie Armstrong.”
“That’s right.”
I wanted to ask Eddie how, believing as he did about Memphis, he felt in using him as a sparring partner and banging him around. I could not find the right way to express it, however, and then he stood up and I put it away.
“Doc got him a six-rounder on the card,” he said. “Memphis will make himself four hundred plus what he’s getting up here. At least it’s something.”
“Yes, it is.”
We walked around between the cascade of the willow, moving in the wind, and the south end of the hotel and started across the parking space to the front porch. A new light-blue, two-door Ford had apparently just pulled in, and a small, thin young woman got out and shut the door and walked toward us.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but can you tell me where I can find Eddie Brown?”
“I’m Eddie Brown.”
“Oh, fine. I’m Ethel Morse from the Bunny Williams show.”
“The what?” Eddie said, shaking hands with her.
“The Bunny Williams show on television. Don’t you know about it?”
“Oh, yes. Doc spoke to me. This is Frank Hughes, Miss—”
“Ethel Morse. I’m glad to know you, Frank.”
“Thank you.”
“I trust you’ll be with us on Monday,” she said to Eddie, “so I thought I’d just run up and ask you a few questions about your background and—”
“Well,” Eddie said, “I don’t know.”
“But as I understand it, you’re going to be in town on Monday, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sure. We have to go in for the preliminary examination, but I don’t know about the show. You’ve got to talk to Doc about that.”
“Doc? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with Doc.”
“He’s my manager,” Eddie said, smiling, “and he’s against television.”
“He’s against television?”
She was a very plain thing, about thirty, with not enough chin and a little too much nose and black-rimmed eyeglasses, and the way she looked right then you would have thought that Eddie had said that Doc was against God.
“You’re not serious?”
“Well, you better talk to Doc. I don’t know anything about television. Frank, here, is a magazine writer, so probably he knows more about it than Doc or I do.”
“I pass.”
“Frank Hughes?” she said. “You write for magazines?”
“I confess.”
“I know your name. I’m sure I’ve seen your articles.”
“Thank you.”
She could be playing a hand, I thought, but for some reason I’m always inclined to believe them when they’re plain or homely. Why, I was wondering, do I always believe this kind and suspect the lookers?
“Why don’t we go in,” Eddie said, “and find Doc?”
“Fine,” she said, “although I must confess I’m a little nervous about meeting this ogre.”
“Oh, no,” Eddie said. “Doc’s all right. He’s a wonderful guy.”
“Lead on,” she said.
She had on a dark green tweed suit that came off Fifth Avenue and not Fourteenth Street and a pair of flat-heeled, brown suède sports shoes with fringed, flap-over tongues for her day in the country. Over one shoulder she was lugging a large saddle-leather bag and she walked with a real stride for such a small woman.
When we had ushered her into the lobby Eddie went upstairs to find Doc and I took her into the dining room and sat her down at one of the tables by a window. She refused a drink and asked me a couple of questions about the camp and who ran it, and then Doc came in, peering at her, and Eddie introduced them and we all sat down.
“Now what do you want me to buy?” Doc said.
“Really!” she said, looking at Eddie and me. “Now I am frightened.”
“Easy, Doc,” I said.
“I hate television,” Doc said.
“So I’ve been told,” she said, “although I can’t say I really believe it.”
“You can believe anything I tell you, lady.”
“But, really, you can’t hate television. What’s there to hate? What did it ever do to you?”
“Everything, to both questions. Your business eats mine. Four years after your business started televising my business, forty-three small fight clubs in this country had folded because even a sucker won’t pay for something that somebody else is giving away for free. Why do I hate it?”
“But I can’t see what earthly difference that makes to you. After all, Eddie Brown doesn’t box in these small clubs you’re speaking of.”
“But where do you think he learned how to fight? Do you know that you may be sitting at this table right now with the last of the real professional fighters, because my business isn’t like your business where they tear a piece of bark off a tree and the first thing that crawls out they make into a—what do you call it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“A television personality,” I said.
“That’s right,” Doc said. “A television personality. The first thing that crawls out they make into a television personality. Look at me.”
“I am,” she said.
“You’re looking at a guy who’s got a fighter and the sports pages and that’s all I’ve ever had for over forty years. I’m not married because I never wanted to be, and for the last fifteen years I’ve been living in the same hotel. I know every cabbie that works that stand there, day or night. I know how many kids they’ve got and what troubles they got with their wives. So one night when your business was just starting to catch on I came out and got in a cab. You listening?”
“I most certainly am.”
She was, too, because she couldn’t figure Doc at all.
“So I sit back and the cabbie says: ‘Say, Doc, how about that Wally Johns?’ I say to myself that he’s not a fighter. ‘Willie Jones?’ I said. ‘Ballplayer?’ He starts to laugh. For the first time in my life a cabbie laughs at me. He says: ‘Doc, are you kidding?’ I said: ‘No. Who is he?’ He says: ‘Who is Wally Johns? He’s famous. He’s the guy announces the wrestling on television. He’s great.’ I said: ‘Stop the cab.’ He says: ‘Why? We’re not there yet.’ I said: ‘Yes, we are. We just passed it.’ I got out and slammed the door and walked six blocks in the rain. Television? What do you want from me?”
“Well, we want Eddie Brown on the Bunny Williams show on Monday. Eddie has confirmed what they informed us at Madison Square Garden—that he has to be in New York on Monday anyway.”
“We shouldn’t even be going in for the examination,” Doc said turning to me. “I told them: ‘Send that doctor out here.’ So they said: ‘We want Eddie and the other guy together for the photographers. If you both come to town we can start the fire under the fight.’ Now we should go on television, too.”
“It was Madison Square Garden that suggested it,” she said. “They called us and said they’d spoken with you.”
“Why don’t you get the other guy? The other guy is the great champion. Since when is television interested in the second man?”
“Well, the people at Madison Square Garden suggested Eddie. The gentleman there who handles the publicity explained that Eddie is intelligent and makes a good appearance, and now that I’ve met him I’m convinced that he’s just what we want.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said.
“Ah, come on now. Level with me,” Doc said.
“What?”
“You know you don’t want the other guy because he’s colored. Admit it.”
“That’s not so. We’ve had Negroes on the show.”
“Who?”
“We’ve had Negro musicians.”
“What kind of a show is this, anyway?”
“Well, it’s a half-hour show from two to two-thirty, Monday through Friday. Bunny is a grand person and she does a wonderful job. It’s basically an interview show and we have two guests each week. We may have someone who’s just written a book or is appearing in a new show or we may have someone who’s in the news. We’ve had baseball players. That Mr. Farrell of the Yankees has been very nice about sending us a player when the team isn’t playing that day.”
“But it’s for women, isn’t it?”
“Yes, basically, but you’d be surprised at the number of women who have become interested in what used to be just men’s things. Since boxing has been on television you’d be surprised at the number of women who enjoy it now.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised at anything,” Doc said. “What time does Eddie have to be there?”
“Well, we’d like him there at one-thirty, to meet Bunny and to see the setup and get a picture of what we’ll want him to do. All he’ll have to do will be to walk in and sit down and Bunny will chat with him about his career. We’re honestly excited about having a prominent boxer.”
“All right,” Doc said. “We’ll be there.”
“Well, thank you. You had me scared, but you’re not so bad after all.”
“I’m worse.”
“Are you married?” she said to Eddie.
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Say, there’s a thought. Could we get your wife on with you?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie said.
“I know,” Doc said. “No.”
“Really? It would help the show. Why not?”
“Because he’s a fighter in training.”
“I don’t understand.”
No, I thought, looking at her, I can believe that. I’m sure you don’t.
“You don’t?” Doc said. “Well, let’s just put it this way. He doesn’t look at his wife from now until after the fight. All right?”
“Yes, if that’s your rule.”
“My rule? It isn’t only my rule.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” she said to Eddie, “if I might.”
“Sure,” Eddie said. “Go right ahead.”
She reached into the shoulder bag and brought out a pack of cigarettes and took one and I lighted it for her. Then she came out with a stenographer’s notebook and flipped it open professionally and sat forward with a small gold pencil poised.
“First of all, how old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“How many prize fights have you had?”
“Ninety.”
“How many have you won?”
“Eighty-seven.”
“How did you start to be a fighter?”
Eddie told her about the boy’s club and the amateurs and how Doc discovered him. She was asking Doc about this when we heard the shout and turned.
“Hey! Where’s the next champion of the world!”
“Hey, Louie!” Eddie said, his face breaking into a big grin, and then he stood up. “Come over here!”
It was a little guy, dark-haired, in a dark blue suit, with the open collar of his white sports shirt folded down outside the collar of his jacket. Behind him were four others, all in their late twenties or early thirties and all of them grinning, and they stood there while Louie came over.
“This was my first manager,” Eddie said, after he and Louie shook hands. “Louie is the one I was telling you about, had me in the amateurs. All these guys are from the old neighborhood.”
Louie shook hands with Doc, and then Eddie introduced him formally to Miss Morse and to me.
“Look,” Eddie said to him. “I’m busy for a few minutes, so take the guys into the bar. Take Frank with you, too. Tell him about the old neighborhood. I’ll be in.”
“Sure,” Louie said, grinning at Eddie. “Sure.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m glad to have met you, Miss Morse.”