James “The Sultan” Word died last week. I read his obituary in the local newspaper, one of the paid obits, not a byline in the sports section, which he deserved. The Sultan was a terrific prize fighter for fifteen years, a guy nobody liked to fight, a counterpuncher who made opponents come to him. If he got in with a hard charger who tried to wrap him up, Word would wade in quickly and catch him by surprise. According to the paper, James was one month shy of his fiftieth birthday when he died; no reason for his demise was given.
I remembered that he worked for the sanitation department as a garbage collector back in his boxing days because his income from matches was erratic. The Sultan was a sweet character, a soft-spoken, tan-complexioned, good-looking welterweight with a Ray Robinson mustache and permanent smile. He was given his nickname by Aroundel X, a Black Muslim friend of Word’s, who told James that he resembled a Mohammedan Sultan and was put on earth to dominate any Turks who dared to defy him. I don’t know that James bought into Aroundel X’s concept, but the nickname stuck.
The Sultan and I played chess together on Saturday mornings at Yardbird’s Gym when it was on Magazine Street while my sons worked out on the bags and sparred in the ring. One-eyed Eddie, James’s trainer, let him rest Saturdays and tutored my boys while we played on a card table off to one side. The Sultan played chess the way he fought, shyly, staying away until I made an improvident move, depending on an opponent’s impatience to provide him an opening so that he could sneak in a shot. Win or lose, The Sultan never stopped smiling.
I went to his funeral. It was on a Friday and the weather was awful, raining hard with thunder and lightning and even a little hail. I was one of three or four white men among about thirty or forty black people. After it was over I walked away alone and as I did I noticed a stocky young man with big ears who reminded me of a kid I once knew named Ernie Nederland. I first met Nederland when we were both in sixth grade. We went to different schools, so we ran into each other occasionally, at parties or hanging out at parks around town. Ernie was a good-looking guy, girls liked him even though his ears stuck out, and at twelve or thirteen years old he already had the reputation of being a tough kid. He and I got along well whenever we encountered one another; he never seemed particularly aggressive but it was clear that he thought highly of himself. Nederland’s rep stemmed from his family being connected to The Outfit; his uncle was a federal judge who supposedly was in their pocket, and Ernie’s old man was a big deal in the city sanitation department, which was famously controlled by organized crime.
A few years after I moved away, an old friend of mine from high school told me that Ernie Nederland had become a button man. Ernie owned a gas station on the West Side but he made his real bread by shooting people at the behest of The Outfit. According to my friend, as long as Ernie’s victims were known or suspected criminals, his uncle the judge protected him; even if Nederland was arrested, he was never prosecuted.
I don’t know what became of Ernie. When I was in my car driving away from The Sultan’s funeral, I recalled watching Ernie Nederland in a fistfight on a school playground when we were about fifteen. Nederland kept a grin on his face while he fought, and like James Word he let his opponent come to him, taking punches on his arms and elbows without letting the other guy get a clean shot at his face. I’m sure Ernie lost a fight now and again but the time I’m talking about he slipped every roundhouse right and rabbit-punched the kid hard with his left hand, which he used like a hammer. That fight ended after Nederland dropped the other boy, then picked up a two-foot length of lead pipe he’d brought along and cracked the kid’s skull with it. Ernie never stopped smiling the whole time.
The Sultan didn’t, either. I watched him spar numerous times and fight a half dozen and he was always smiling, even when he got hit. I figured he did this to unnerve his opponent, to not let him know he was hurt, a common enough ploy. I thought it a little bit interesting that both The Sultan and Ernie Nederland’s dad were in the sanitation business. As far as I know, Ernie never hoisted a garbage can so long as he could handle a lead pipe or a gun.
Nederland did tell me a story once, a year or so before I saw him pipe that kid. We were at a party and he noticed that I was watching one girl dance with more than casual interest. She had a ponytail and was wearing a yellow sweater. She was dancing with another girl.
“You know her?” Ernie asked me.
“No,” I said. “Do you?”
“I know about her.”
“What do you know?”
“She’s dyin’.”
I looked at him. “How do you know?” I looked back at her. “She doesn’t look sick.”
“She had a heart operation, got a thick scar on her chest from where the doctors opened her up.”
“She showed you?”
Ernie shook his head. “An older guy I know, Al Phillips, done it with her a few times. He’s seen it.”
It was uncommon for kids in those days, especially girls, to have sex before the age of sixteen or seventeen, but I believed Nederland.
“How do you know for sure that she’s dying?”
Ernie pulled a pack of Camels from a pocket, shook one out, lit it and inhaled.
“Want one?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” I said.
Nederland blew a couple of smoke rings.
“Al Phillips told me,” he said. “Doctors told her folks after she got out of the hospital a year ago, when she was twelve and a half, that she should enjoy herself for the time she had left. They didn’t say how long that might be. It’s probably why she started doin’ it so young. Her name’s Daisy Green.”
I watched Daisy Green dance. She moved better than most of the other girls.
“Real slinky, ain’t she?” said Nederland. “Al says she’ll do anything.”
He rapidly exhaled a trio of smoke rings and went to talk to somebody on the other side of the room.
The record that had been playing ended and “Good Golly, Miss Molly” came on. Daisy Green and the other girl continued dancing together. I thought about cutting in but I didn’t. It felt strange knowing that she would be dead soon and that she was more sexually experienced than I.
A week after The Sultan’s funeral there was a small article in the newspaper stating that police had arrested a man suspected of having murdered James Word during an attempted street robbery. The suspect, Tyrus Chatmon, had shot James twice in the chest. There were photographs of Chatmon and Word; only The Sultan was smiling.