I asked Earl about the other boxers he’d trained. He told me a story or two about some of his favorites, but then he grew somber.
“Gonna tell you ’bout my first student, Beaver,” he said, and I knew from the look on his face that it would be a hard story to tell. “Beaver had an older friend named Ernest. They grew up together, lived in the same neighborhood ’round Clark Street. When I first started training him, Beaver was in seventh grade and Ernest was in ninth. Beaver always felt he could never beat Ernest because Ernest was bigger. But after a few years of training Beaver, I told Ernest, ‘I’ve trained Beaver. You can’t beat him anymore.’
“But Ernest wouldn’t take my word. He was gonna try Beaver anyway. Well, you know what happened. Beaver beat him up on the street. When I heard about it, I told Beaver, ‘Why don’t you leave Ernest alone? Stay away from him. You know he ain’t no good.’ I told him to stay off Clark Street, which was full of all kinds of mess. Kids makin’ trouble.”
Earl shook his head. “Next afternoon, I went out looking for Beaver to pick him up for practice. I saw a young man laying in the street, and I figured it was some man who got drunk and was laying out. Then I looked at his feet. Those are Beaver’s tennis shoes. I jumped out my car.
“Ernest had shot him, and my baby’s laying in the street, dying. I heard one of the kids say, ‘Here come Earl,’ but then I saw Ernest spinnin’ tires, gettin’ away, and I hopped in my car and went after Ernest, driving all over Henderson. He ran to the police station, but I think I should have stayed there and held my baby. Sometimes I think Beaver must’ve heard somebody say, ‘Here come Earl,’ and he probably thought everything was going to be all right. But I ran off after Ernest, and he died alone there in the street.”
Tears collected in the corners of Earl’s eyes.
“That’s my regret. I just told him the day before, stay off of Clark Street. I told him, ‘You know Ernest no damn good. Leave Ernest alone.’ He was only eighteen. I had ’im hardly five years. My first student, my first baby.”
Hearing Earl’s pain, about his students, about the lives he’d lost along the way, made me want to work harder, to become someone great. I wanted to be part of a good story for him to tell.