i.m. Emile Griffith (1938–2013), Benny “Kid” Peret (1937–1962)
And a man who has found prowess in boxing, grant him favor and joy. . . .
—Pindar
1.
“Whoever controls the breathing in the ring
controls the fight,” my father says. Smell of sweat,
Vaseline and bleach, sting of ammonia. “The art
of self-defense is crucial.” The gym is damp
and the speed bag singing his beliefs. Elsewhere,
a husky boy from the Virgin Islands quietly
designs hats in a Bronx shop, his chest bare
as he hefts storeroom cartons. His boss says,
“Boy’s got a boxer’s body,” and that begins it.
Emile is bewildered, with no desire for the sweet
science of footwork and fist, no assassin’s
eye. When a backyard bully named Jeffrey
lures me to his ring of jeering rednecks,
I clear a path with my ball bat, rush home
to mother, because I’m skinny, afraid. Later,
seeing me teary on the mat at a Scout outing
and pawing feebly at Jimmy Kizner, my father
resolves to plunge me into the discipline.
“To win, you control the breathing,” he insists.
Morning roadwork, shadowboxing, mitts.
On his bike, the old man swears as I sweat,
“Your target’s never where his goddamn head
is, but where it’s going next.” Willowy, skittish,
without finesse, I never overcome my fear.
Griffith is a better fit—welterweight, bobcat
quick, graceful as ballet. Coach Gil Clancy
taunts him: “Don’t you get that matador strut.”
Deft and canny through the fifties, his gold tooth
gleaming and bombshell blondes clenching
his biceps at ringside, the shutterbug’s flash
catching the velvet dandy in action,
pearls on his cuffs, satin cravat. Dark mouse
on my brow, I bus back across town
from the gym to mother’s tears,
tonic and gin, a dead cigarette. “My other
half ought to know better,” she spits.
He travels, sleuthing out insurance fraud,
arson while slick-dealing firehouse
poker. She twists her opal ring, exhales
blue breath. I don’t want to be prissy,
hope to show I’ve got moxie, like a pro,
like that March night when ring pundits
all agree: Peret opened inspired.
Whoever controls the breathing. . . .
Jab and tuck, shoot the right high, hook
to the ribs, drive him to the turnbuckle,
the ropes, the canvas. Griffith has to be
schooled in fury: “It’s red sport, boy,”
and rumor has it the insiders suspect
he’s keeping a secret, the private life
of linen suits, the pink Lincoln crucial
to his macho disguise. Still, no one
will say “pansy.” Control the breathing,
control a rival’s will and snuff his soul.
“Wind and feet win it. You have to show
an iron intent”: in the garage my father
pops me. “Love taps,” he says. “You’ve
got to learn to shrug it off. Forget thinking.
Make me miss, slugger. Everybody
has a plan, but it’s gone to smoke soon
as you get hit. Duck now. Control your
breath, counterpunch, get mad. Murder
me, creampuff. Make me suffer.” Years
later, his career over, Emile jokes,
“I like girls and men pretty much equal.
You reckon that make me bilingual?”
He’d known Peret since boyhood, but never
heard those venomed syllables: maricón.
I hammered into the heavy bag mummied
in duct tape, pounded that son of a bitch.
“Punish the sap. Maul him up. Make
him miss.” Still, my father’s snarl. . . .
I skip the rope as it hums, side step,
hop and cross-over, wrists whipping,
weaving, sparring my shadow—left, left
right uppercut. At the weigh-in Peret
keeps whispering what Griffith can’t
bear to catch. He guesses the word’s
out and starts lurching and whirling,
breathless, shamed. Kid has crossed
the line. Maricón, maricón, slur worse
than tu mamá—“You faggot!” Mild Emile
bides his time. It’s sixty-two, my bouts all
history, scuffed gloves and lace-up boots
in a footlocker . . . one local trophy—runner-up.
3.
March 24, Saturday night: Gillette’s parrot
cawks about razors—“Feel sharp, be sharp.”
The male world seethes: Muriel cigars,
Edie Adams’s racy ringside purr: “Why
don’t you pick one up and smoke it
sometime?” Her sexy sigh and vixen eyes.
The Garden’s a riot of hazed bloodlust,
our Philco’s volume high. Mother
flips Life in the kitchen with her
sisters, filter tips, a gray kitten. Ruby
Goldstein scolds: “No head butts, boys,
no low blows or rabbits. Protect
yourself, break clean.” The pair already
glisten, sponged wet for combat,
breathing easy, both believing, mouth
guards pouting their lips, as if to kiss
and make nice. All a question of mettle
and skill. No one present thinks, “Death.”
Bell after bell, circling, sizing up, an even
match for the gaudy belt, the world
sport-smitten, trance-tense, breathless.
A clinic: dole-it-out and roll-with-punches,
clenches, weave, dance, until Emile
finds his moment: no one later can say
how the energy shifts. Rationed breath,
second wind, willpower, a dark gift.
Revived, Emile goes ballistic in the twelfth.
Benny is rubber-kneed, reeling, Emile a man
on fire, windmilling such fury the analysts
go quiet. Some will later say it was only
chance; a few, that a word kept him angry
and whipping in frenzy, making history—
sixteen blows in eight seconds. Others
count it different, but Benny the Kid was
Cuban: “Them Castro boys would possum,”
is the common wisdom, while Griffith’s
one rumored weakness is “can’t finish.”
4.
Sugar Ray claimed Emile was frantic to lay
the rumor in its grave, sew every smirk
shut. I never skipped or bobbed fast enough,
but could hit quick for a white boy—gut
punch, cross, straight shot to the kisser,
a southpaw. I got whipped over and over.
Why did nobody throw in the towel?
Crowd-crazed, Griffith was a tornado,
a blur, oblivious. “I just kept hitting,”
he’d tell a ringside guru still sporting
his blood-spattered tux. “Kid, he didn’t
gone down. I kept hitting.” Even after,
the specialists said, “a fighter, a soldier,
he’ll recover.” My father hit the OFF
knob, declaring, “That boy won’t fight
again. Neither of them. Animals.” For ten
days, Emile paced and prayed. The hacks
wrote, “Benny is a warrior.” The coma
ended in a wake and blame—referee,
Emile, even the corner crew who never
lofted the rolled towel into the melee
to ask for mercy. Was it two full years
afterwards with no prizefights on TV?
For decades I never heard the story
behind that word. Years later, leaving
a dance bar called Hombre, Griffith was
ambushed by a dozen and barely breathing
when the siren arrived. A bystander said
they taunted him with: “Maricón.
Rise up, boy, show us how it’s done
back there in the nigger islands.”
Emile had a silk voice, shy eyes, a smile
to lure songbirds from their perches.
He danced with every step he took.
Kid’s weeping mother slapped him
in the hospital lobby, spat the word
in his eyes—maricón. In his sleep
he saw Benny perdito, bleeding from
every mirror and never unleashed again
that stormy combination. History
has nearly erased his name like cheroot
smoke and Edie, Gene Fulmer, Dick Tiger,
Hurricane and Archer. It surely lurks for
everyone, a burning word, forbidden, worse
than split eyelids, bruised kidneys. Is it
yearning for mercy that drives us to misery?
In a world of desperate skirmish and work,
the teardrop bag still hangs in my attic,
and I will not whip it. Does that win me
a measure of grace? My old man was
nearly right: to beat fear I have to feed anger,
I pray there’s some better purpose for fury
than knocking another man into the dark.
from Prairie Schooner