“In Africa, some tribes believe that wearing a freshly decapitated vulture head can give a person the ability to see into the future.”
Roy was sitting on a bench against a wall in Henry Armstrong’s second floor boxing gym in Miami listening to Derondo Simmons, a former middleweight once ranked number five in the world by Ring magazine. Derondo was forty-two years old and worked as a sparring partner for up-and-comers. Mostly he hung around Henry’s and talked to whoever would listen. He was a great storyteller and a voracious reader, especially in the areas of ancient history and anthropology. Roy, who was nine, was a willing audience for Derondo’s lectures, and Derondo appreciated it.
“You’re a great listener, Roy,” he said. “It will pay off for you in the future.”
“Pay off how?”
“If you listen carefully, you can figure out how a person’s mind works, how they think, then you know what you’ve got to do to get them to pay you.”
Roy’s father often dropped him off at the gym when he had business to do downtown. He’d make a contribution to Armstrong’s Retired Fighters Fund and press something into Derondo’s hand and know they would keep a close eye on his son until he returned.
“Did you ever have a vulture head?” Roy asked Derondo.
“Only seen ’em in pictures and the movies.”
“There’s vultures in the Everglades.”
“Don’t take to snakes and gators, Roy, and I don’t want snakes or gators takin’ to me. I don’t go into the ’glades because I can’t figure how those creatures think, or even if they do think. Did you know that in ancient Rome soldiers rode two horses at a time, standing up?”
Henry signaled to Derondo and he got up and went over to the larger of the two rings where Henry was talking to a small, well-dressed man wearing a Panama hat. Standing above them leaning down over the top rope was a lean young guy with boxing gloves on. Roy pegged him as a welterweight in the making, a few pounds shy, sixteen or seventeen years old. Derondo nodded his head while Henry spoke to him, and when Henry stopped talking Derondo walked around to the other side of the ring, slipped a sleeveless sweatshirt over his T-shirt, let one of the ring boys grease his face then wrap his hands before fitting on the gloves and fastening his headgear. The kid in the ring began bouncing around, shadowboxing, getting warm. Derondo climbed through the ropes, did a few deep knee bends, practiced a couple of combinations and uppercuts then motioned to the kid.
Roy went over to ringside and stood near Henry and the man wearing the Panama. Derondo outweighed the boy by twenty-five pounds, so Roy knew he would not throw any hard leather. For the kid’s part, it was not unexpected that he would be faster both with his hands and feet. Neither Henry nor the man in the hat, who Roy figured was the boy’s manager, said a word for the first minute, then Panama shouted, “No baile! Pégale!”
Roy understood that Panama wanted his boy to prance less and punch more. The kid could not get inside on Derondo, who took whatever the boy offered on his arms and shoulders and did not himself do more than feint and tap. Printed in cursive in gold letters on both sides of the boy’s black trunks were the words El Zopo. Suddenly, Derondo threw a left hook off a jab that landed flush on the kid’s right temple. The little welter tilted onto his left leg and froze for a moment like a crane or heron in the shallows before toppling over and landing on his left ear. Henry jumped into the ring and he and Derondo bent over him. Panama stayed put while Henry and Derondo helped the boy to his feet.
Roy looked over at Panama and examined his face. He had a thin, dyed black mustache, almond eyes with pale flecks in them and no chin. Roy thought the man resembled a small monkey, a marmoset. When Panama walked around to where Henry and the ring boy were talking to the kid, Roy went back to the bench and leaned against the wall.
A few minutes later, Derondo came and sat down next to him. He had removed the headgear, gloves and sweatshirt and sat still, staring straight ahead for several seconds before saying, “I tell you, Roy, if I’d had a decapitated vulture head I could have told you that kid has no future as a fighter.”
Roy’s father picked him up an hour later. When they reached the bottom of the forty-seven steps Roy asked him what el zopo means in English.
“Deformed. A deformed person, like in a sideshow. Why?”
“A boxer had it written on his trunks.”
“Did he look weird?”
“No, he looked okay. He was just a kid. He was sparring with Derondo Simmons and Derondo knocked him down. I don’t think he meant to.”
Roy felt safe walking on the street with his father. There were always a few stumblebums on 7th Street outside Henry’s; people who had lost their way, his dad called them.
“All fighters get deformed sooner or later, son. You don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that.”
“Or a vulture head,” said Roy.