Champion of the World (14 page)

Taft set his glass on the table and turned it just so. “I've had a lot of trainers like you,” he said, “coming in with big ideas about how to change my routine. Thinking they've got all the answers. None of them found me to be the receptive type.”

“Fritz warned me that might be the case,” Pepper said. “There's one thing about it I can't figure, though. If I were a fellow with as much baggage as you, I think I'd recognize my last good chance to make something of myself when it was staring me in the face. Makes me wonder if you're not just allergic to hard work.”

“A month from now no one will even remember you were here,” Taft said, pleasant as could be.

“Baggage,” Carol Jean said, like it was a dirty word. It was the first time she'd spoken to the group since they'd taken their seats. “I'll have you know those newspaper stories were dead wrong. Garfield had nothing to do with all that ugliness in Cincinnati. Not like they wrote he did.”

She looked like she would go on, but Taft silenced her with a raised hand.

“If I were
you
, sir,” he said to Pepper. “I'd be happy I wasn't working a tandem saw in the woods somewhere.”

A couple of times as they had sat drinking in the parlor room, Moira caught James Eddy staring at her in a way that sent a frightened tickle down the back of her neck. Now she watched as his eyes darted back and forth across the table like a spectator at a tennis match.

Fritz planted his hands on the table. “Enough of this kind of talk,” he said. “Let's not ruin our first night together by quarreling.”

“No,” Pepper said. “I want to know what kind of man I'm working with. Is Mrs. Taft saying the police, the papers, the judges and all those lawyers were mistaken when they threw you in prison those years ago?”

“I have nothing to explain to you,” Taft said. “Even if my wife speaks the gospel truth, I doubt I could convince any of you. Not if I sat here all night swearing up and down.”

“You might,” Pepper said. “But somebody told me recently that nobody wants to hear a guy's excuses. If there's a different story to why you got locked up than the one we all read about, I'd insist on hearing it straight.”

Taft showed an evil grin. “Maybe it was something I said,” he deadpanned. “Maybe a bunch of white folks got together and decided I was too big for my britches. Maybe I refused to lie down for Joe Stecher and it aggravated the wrong men. Maybe those cops and judges and lawyers you talked about were just angry they couldn't get Jack Johnson, so they got me instead.”

“I doubt that very much,” Pepper said.

Moira remembered reading newspaper stories about Johnson, the black boxer, being released from prison a few months earlier. “They did get Mr. Johnson,” she said to the table. “Eventually.”

Taft nodded slowly. “Now old Jack's ruined,” he said. “He's just a tired vaudeville act. Dempsey will never fight him. Nobody of any merit will fight him. I promise you I won't wind up like that.”

Eddy made a clucking sound with his tongue. “I thought the
Negro was supposed to stick together these days,” he said. “Universal improvement and all that.”

“Garfield's not political,” Carol Jean said. “Are you, honey?”

“I hope the best for my people and nothing else,” he said. “But trying to go raise civilization out of the dirt somewhere across the sea? No, I'm not interested in that.”

“What
are
you interested in?” Moira asked, very aware of her own voice in the enormous room.

“I just want what they took from me,” Taft said. “I want to be rich again and the chance to be champion. What else?”

“That's quite a dream,” Pepper said, “considering you don't want to work for it.”

Taft smirked into the tablecloth, a round divot there where his bowl had been. “I do believe we'll say good night now,” he said. “But not before we thank you all for a lovely evening.”

The two of them got up from the table and breezed from the room like people who were used to being asked to leave. When Pepper told Taft he was looking forward to seeing him in the morning, the big man didn't respond.

“Now you see what I've been trying to tell you,” Fritz said when they were gone. “Taft is a man who doesn't know his place.”

Pepper seemed to weigh it in his mind for a moment. “I've met friendlier,” he said, “but there are worse things to be in our line of work. Give me an asshole over an ass-kisser any day. You think Lesko and Stettler will really agree to meet him in the ring? It's hard to believe.”

“Desperate times,” said Prichard, shrugging, and Pepper looked at him like nobody had asked him.

Fritz sat back, chair groaning under his weight. “I do hope the two of you can come to an arrangement,” he said. “I'm starting to think you might be our last hope. Until now, we've tried to do things his way. Trainers who wouldn't push him too hard, wouldn't
offend his delicate sensibilities.” There were a few guffaws around the table at that. “As a result, I'm afraid we're nowhere near where we should be.”

“Why do you think I'll be any different?” Pepper said.

Fritz said they needed a hard man for this job, as well as someone who could give Taft a crash course in the catch-as-catch-can wrestling style that Lesko would bring to their bout. Taft was a solid all-around wrestler, but he knew little about the concession holds and chokes that Lesko would insist on being allowed. On top of that, they needed someone who could improve Taft's wind, really make him work, a trainer skilled enough to compete with him on the mat and bullheaded enough to put up with him off of it.

“When we talked about it,” Fritz said, “we thought it sounded like you all over.”

“I understand,” Pepper said, and Moira could see he was pleased.

“Besides,” Eddy said, “it's not like you can quit. You've got nowhere else to go.”

Fritz, Eddy and the two wrestlers all laughed at that.

“When Stettler and Lesko come calling, I want you to go to Chicago with me to meet with them,” Fritz told Pepper. “They'll respect a former world's champion's opinion over mine. If you think Taft can sell tickets and make a good opponent for Lesko, it'll mean more coming from a guy who used to wear the gold.”

“Will we get a cut of the promoter's fees, then?” Moira said. “If this match actually does take place?”

Fritz scoffed. “You're fortunate just to have the coaching job,” he said.

“It sounds like we're here for more than just coaching,” she said. “Which frankly isn't surprising—that you'd change the deal on us now that we've arrived.”

The swinging door at one end of the dining room banged open
and the hired girl came through hauling a tray. “Bread pudding,” she said, “with confectioners' sugar.”

She came around with another round of little glass bowls, Prichard and Fitch offering to take the extras she'd made up for the Tafts. Fritz looked like there was more he wanted to say to Moira, but he let it pass. They drank more drinks and the evening went late. They all got a little drunker than they intended. Eventually Fitch and Prichard excused themselves, saying they wanted to get some sleep before their first day training with the new boss. As they stood by the coatracks, shrugging into their jackets, Pepper went and shook Prichard's hand one more time.

“Fifty-two and one as a professional,” he said. “How's that for an excuse?”

“I'm sorry?” Prichard said.

“Earlier,” he said. “What you said in the car.”

Prichard looked befuddled for a moment. “Well,” he said, “it sounded like a hell of a match, was all I was trying to say.”

Moira put her hand on Pepper's arm and announced that she, too, was bushed. Pepper conferred a moment with Fritz, who was sitting with Eddy, both of them still working on half-full drinks.

“Give her some time to get used to the situation,” Moira heard him say. “You know she can't help herself.”

She felt her face flush and her hands make sweaty fists at her side. As they walked across the lawn and down the hill to their tiny cabin Pepper tried to take her hand, but she drifted out of his reach. They undressed just inside the door and fell into bed. In minutes he was snoring softly while she stared up into the blackness of the ceiling.

“Who can't help herself?” she said finally.

He didn't stir. Just his breathing in the dark. She elbowed him.

“Wake up,” she said. “
Who
can't help herself? And who is James Eddy?”

When he answered, his voice was thick with sleep. “Who?”

“That man Eddy,” she said again. “He's up to something. Everybody in this godforsaken place is up to something. Who is he?”

“Nobody,” Pepper said, turning over to put his face in the pillow. “He's just some gangster, that's all.”

T
aft had to guard his swollen eye with one hand as he pressed his ear to the keyhole of the bedroom door. From what he could tell, it sounded like a pretty good party broke out after he and Carol Jean had gone up. A few minutes earlier he'd watched through the window as the Van Deans left the lodge and headed for the cabins, the two of them weaving on uncertain legs as they made their way down the hill. Fritz Mundt and James Eddy were still downstairs, pouring one last drink and talking in voices too low to make out. Behind him on the bed, Carol Jean was pretending to read her book.

“What do you suppose they're talking about down there?” he said.

“What do you think?”

He nodded, touching his forehead to the cool brass of the doorknob. “How'd you like Van Dean trying to tell me how it's going to be?” he said. “Like he's the boss of anybody.”

“It's the wife we ought to worry about,” Carol Jean said. “She's a meddler if I ever saw one.”

Taft said nothing to that. He half remembered Van Dean from the old days, though he'd lost the lightweight title and disappeared from the sport before Taft really came into his own. There had been whispers his match against Whip Windham had been fixed, but
Taft didn't put much thought into it. Now he reckoned Van Dean was about what he'd expected. A tough little guy, cocky and reckless the way small men were. Taft had enjoyed sparring with him over dinner and seeing the look on Van Dean's face when he realized Taft wasn't just going to kneel down and kiss his ring. Taft had already done his part, going out to the coast to wear Sherry around the ring like a hat. Now it was Fritz Mundt's turn to prove there was more going on here than just promises. Until that happened, Taft felt disinclined to give anyone the satisfaction.

Mundt had been making grand plans for almost a year now, ever since the freezing day a couple weeks before the previous Christmas when Taft had gone to Chicago looking for Abe Blomfeld. He and Carol Jean had been staying in a little kitchenette apartment on the crumbling edge of Cincinnati, and Taft had to scrounge up money for bus fare in order to make the trip. The man who owned the kitchenette had once been a bartender at Taft's favorite nightclub. He'd made a lot of money betting on Taft's matches and so he qualified as one of the only people left in the world who felt like he owed the wrestler a favor. Taft had sold the Rolls in order to put down the deposit, make rent and have enough money to live on for a few months. Just as that money was about to run out, the bartender turned landlord showed up to announce his sister was moving up from Birmingham—that she would need a place to live when she arrived and that Taft and Carol Jean would have to clear out.

Blomfeld's gym was situated above a fancy butcher shop on the north side of town. That day Taft lingered a moment under the bright lights of the place, the white tile floor polished so recently he could see his faint reflection as he stooped to inspect a tray of ground sausage that had been sculpted into the shape of a hog's head. There were bins full of pre-marinated chicken breasts, neat rows of steaks stacked on strips of wax paper, pork chops stuffed fat with apples and bread crumbs. He stopped in front of a case of rib chops
soaking in red-orange mesquite barbecue sauce, the raw smell of the shop an insult to his empty stomach. He'd just begun to wonder how much of this stuff they would end up throwing out when a man in a spattered apron approached to ask, not necessarily in a nice way, if he could help him. Taft had taken off his hat and flapped it silently in the direction of the back steps. After a long moment of thinking, the man let him go.

Upstairs, the gym was empty and dark, and the loneliness of it gave him pause as the door clicked shut behind him. The last time he'd been here, the wrestling room was full of the rumbling of men and he remembered now that even downstairs you used to be able to hear the faint bumps and bangs of their training. A moment ago Taft had been so distracted by hunger that he hadn't noticed how quiet it was. It was the first time since prison that he'd been inside a real gym. The feeling of it put a tingle in his fingertips. He'd wandered all the way across the mats and was eyeing a high pull-up bar when he noticed Fritz Mundt leaning in the lighted doorway to Blomfeld's office.

“Where is everybody?” Taft said—the first words to pass between them.

Mundt had a thumb looped into the small pocket of his vest. “If you are who I think you are,” he said, “you've got an awful lot of nerve.”

The tone of his voice implied that wasn't the worst thing in the world. Mundt stepped forward to introduce himself—Taft striving to remember him—and they went into the office to talk. He asked again about the gym and Mundt laughed it off, saying it was early in the day yet. But Taft had seen cobwebs along the ceiling and a fine layer of dust collecting on the rubdown table. When Mundt explained that Blomfeld had passed, Taft stood up to leave, shaking his head at another dead end. He was thanking Mundt for his time, his hand reaching for the door, when the man showed him a friendly
grin and said he was just about to send out for meat loaf sandwiches from a little diner around the corner. Wouldn't Mr. Taft like to stay?

Forty-five minutes later, Mundt's desk was cluttered with grease-spotted wrapping paper and wadded napkins. Taft had drunk a bottle of Coca-Cola while he told Mundt his story and what he wanted. He half expected Mundt to laugh in his face, but when he was finished the man merely balanced his own soda on a stack of papers and asked how many promoters he had already been to see.

“Every one that would take my call,” Taft said, and they shared small, rueful smiles. “Given my particular brand of notoriety, they agreed to a man that nobody would draw more money opposite Stanislaw Lesko than I would. Then they all shook my hand and sent me on my way.”

“I can't blame them,” Mundt said. “A Negro getting a chance at the world's heavyweight title? Who would want to put their name on
that?
”

The office was papered with old wrestling flyers and Taft reached out to inspect one of them. He let his eyes drift over Mundt's head, taking in the rest of the dilapidated, musty little room, hoping to give his next words more gravity. “I suppose I'll have to find someone who needs a lucky break as badly as I do.”

Mundt had a cigarette burning on the lip of a blown-glass ashtray. He picked it up and examined it, knocking off the ashes. “I understand what this looks like,” he said. “The gym empty, things practically boarded up. But I assure you it's not as bad as all that. You didn't waste your time coming here today.”

“Let me be clear that what I demand is an on-the-level match,” Taft said. “No funny business.” Mundt scowled at the word
demand
but didn't protest, and Taft went on: “I expect you know the story about me and Joe Stecher.”

Mundt said he'd heard the rumors, but they both knew what rumors were worth in the wrestling business. So Taft told him the
whole truth: that after chasing Stecher all over the world for more than a year, the champion had finally sent word that he would agree to a match. At first Taft thought things were finally starting to break his way. Then a man he had never seen before showed up at his hotel room to let him know exactly what would be asked of him.

The champion just needed a couple hours of good work in the ring, the man said, his meaning as plain as if it sat there in the room with them. There was more money in it for Taft if he went along without making a fuss, maybe even save himself an ass kicking, the guy said, setting a brown paper envelope on the hotel room's small table. The envelope was the size of a stack of bills. Taft told the man if he didn't put the envelope back in his pocket and leave the room that instant, the wrestler would pin him down on the carpet and break each one of his fingers. That hadn't gone over well, but the man had done as he was told. After he was gone, Taft assumed the promoters would call off the match, but that wasn't what happened at all.

“I wouldn't do business for Stecher,” Taft said, “but if they meant to show me the error of my ways, I'm afraid they came up short. A fair match for an honest wage is all I'll accept. Nothing less.”

Mundt shrugged with just one shoulder. “Stanislaw Lesko isn't Joe Stecher,” he said. “His manager and I go back. Maybe I could make it happen.”

Mundt had a round face and thin, bloodless lips, but when Taft looked into his eyes he saw hopelessness lurking behind all the big talk. It made him want to laugh and tell the man he knew the feeling. Instead he let the silence spread out between them. There was no reason for Taft to think he could trust this man except that he was out of money and down to his last bus trip. He was at the end of his patience for going to see white men with his hat in his hand. The thing Taft was asking for, it was not a small thing, but Mundt seemed
sincere in his belief that he could deliver. Maybe it was only because Taft couldn't stomach the thought of the alternative, but in that moment he decided he believed the things Mundt said.

“I'll need a place to live,” Taft said. “My wife and I. I'm sorry to say, Cincinnati is plumb wrung out for us.”

Mundt said that was fine, he could accommodate that as well. They shook hands and then Mundt stood up, unclasping his cuffs and pulling at his tie. Taft, who was still in his chair, asked him what he was doing, and Mundt grinned down at him, the desperation suddenly gone from his face.

“I don't see anyone else here, do you?” he said. “How else am I supposed to find out what I just bought?”

T
aft chuckled now to think of it. Behind him, the bedsprings groaned as Carol Jean put her book on the nightstand and got up. It was strange, staying in this big, empty place. The lodge was so large you'd think it would swallow up every sound, but instead it seemed to magnify them in its vast, hollow space. In the day, floorboards creaked and croaked like the deck of a swaying ship. Chairs scraped on tiles. Oven and furnace doors slammed shut like gunshots. Now he heard every step as she padded over and stood behind his chair.

“You shouldn't have shushed me during dinner,” she said. “We should tell them the truth.”

“Tell who what?” he said.

“You might not mind being the Great Ape Man,” she said, “but it hurts me to read all the vile things they write about you.”

“I got news for you, Carol Jean,” he said. “Strangler Lesko isn't thinking about giving me a shot at the title because I'm a credit to my
race. Right now the fact that a hundred million white people want to see me lynched is one of the few things we've got going for us.”

“I just wish they knew who you were really,” she said.

She bent forward, her hands parting his bathrobe and sliding down his chest. When she got to the waist of his pajama pants, he took her hands in his and stood up. “Baby,” he said, “I'm still licked from Jack Sherry.”

“You're impossible,” she said. “If you can't do it before a big match and you can't after, then when can you?”

He tried to be easy with her. These days he had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't all about his pride anymore. “Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “You remember that time we took the Rolls all the way out to Atlantic City? Remember that?”

“It rained,” she said to his shoulder, sounding pitiful, but he could tell she was smiling.

“You're goddamned right it did,” he said. “They stared at us like we were a couple of wet dogs dripping all over the lobby of the Traymore.”

She pulled her head back and gave him her eyes. Now he had her. “They were staring at us because you were the only black man in the Traymore not carrying someone's bag,” she said.

“That too,” he said. “But they let us stay, didn't they? Let us have the biggest suite in the east tower.”

“They did,” she said. “And we wore that room out.”

“Our time's coming again, Carol Jean,” he said. “We've just got to hold the line until it does.”