Max Baer and the Star of David (24 page)

“Please.”

“Like Anna and David, I never knew who my father was, though my mother had many friends who stayed with us—men I called ‘uncle’—and when I would ask about them, for they were a motley bunch for the most part, and I could not understand why she tolerated them and was kind to them—she would say to me, in French, and I translate loosely, ‘So much pleasure for them, and so little pain for me, don’t you see, my darling?’”

I said nothing.

“
Do
you see, Horace?”

“Possibly,” I said.

“
Possibly
?” she said.

“Didn’t you once assure me that it is good to know that we live in the land of possibility and not the land of probability?” I said.

“I’m glad Hawkins is gone, and I thank you,” she said. “Joleen will be glad to hear the news too, I am certain, if she has not already received it.”

“She has,” I said.

She went to the door and locked it, then returned and kissed me again, more fully, with her lips and her fingers, and I chose not to resist. What surprised me, especially given my age—I would be forty-nine years old within a few months—was that the more I knew her, the more inflamed was my passion for her. Although I delighted in her in the way, as in The Song of Solomon, the young lovers delighted in one another’s flesh, I believed that my desire for her was becoming infinitely more intense than a young person could imagine.

“As for us,” she said, “the way I see things, we should forgive ourselves—always, always—for acts, for thoughts, and for feelings that have the potential to make us feel ashamed, or guilty, or do us harm. But we should
never
forgive others for harmful things they do to us. Do you agree?”

“Perhaps.”

When she kissed me the next time, I searched out the small scar on her lower lip, tugged on it with my teeth.

“Do you agree now?” she asked.

“More than I did a minute ago.”

“I am not one to theorize about love,” she said, “or about much else—but I do believe that this—what I have just said—is at the heart of what can strengthen friendship and love between two people.”

“To forgive ourselves—always always—but never to forgive others?”

“Ah, you are my very best student, Mister Littlejohn,” she said. “I was right in having seen your potential and in having encouraged it. As Miss Duncan might put it, you do
see
what I mean, don’t you.”

“Possibly,” I said.

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. (4:16)

On the day Max Baer died, November 21, 1959, he and I were staying at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, near studios where Max was scheduled to film several television commercials. Two days earlier, after Max had refereed a boxing match in Phoenix, Arizona, we had driven to Garden Grove, California, so that he could keep a promise he had made thirteen years earlier to Tommy Owen, the son of Max’s prime sparring partner, Jerry “Curly” Owen (a man who possessed total recall of the Bible, and would become self-appointed chaplain to every boxer and wrestler in America), that when the boy turned eighteen he would give him a car for a birthday present. And so Max had kept his promise and had had a gorgeous mint green MGA 1500 Sports Coupé delivered to the boy’s home while we visited with him to celebrate his coming of age. I had made the arrangements.

Several months before this, on June 3, 1959, Max had sat beside me and Joleen at Horace Jr.’s graduation from the University of California at Berkeley, just as, two days before that, Joleen and I had sat beside him, Mary Ellen, and their family, at Max Jr.’s graduation from Santa Clara University. Max and I were as proud on these occasions as any two fathers could be, for the years between Max’s retirement from professional boxing and the college graduations of our sons had for the most part been kind to us. And nothing in this life, he would often tell me—not the championship, his carousing, or his affairs—could compare with the pleasure he took from seeing his boy grow into a man. Nor, at the graduations, and the celebrations at the home in Sacramento that followed—and this was before Max’s final appearance at the YMCA, and the fateful events of that day—did Max, true gentleman that he could often be, ever indicate in any way, either to me or to Horace Jr., whether in jest or by innuendo, that Horace Jr. might be the son of any other man but me.

By this time, although the boys were, as they as had been at the ranch and were again at the home in Sacramento, inseparable—and although they would often spend time with one another during school vacations and summers—they had, in their interests, and in the careers that would follow from these interests, diverged.

Max Baer Jr., who had majored in business administration and minored in philosophy, began, through an introduction from one of Max’s friends, an acting career in London, where, at the Blackpool Pavillion several months after his graduation, he starred in a production of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
After this his life was consumed, primarily, with acting, and his early success as Jethro Bodine in
The Beverly Hillbillies
, though providing him with the kind of visibility most actors yearn for, also typecast him in a way that did not allow him the diversity of roles he wished for. Putting his business acumen to work, however, he began producing films that became great financial successes, beginning with
Macon County Line
, in which he also starred, and which film was, for a quarter of a century, the highest grossing movie per dollar ever made. Though a man large in body and spirit, Max Baer Jr. was also, like his father, a man with a surprisingly gentle disposition.

As for Horace Jr., his love of the Bible, and, more, his passion to learn how it had come into being, was there from his earliest years—an obsession that knew no rivals. At the same time, he had a mind that, when not consumed with wanting to know
everything
about anything that was of interest to him, was also playful in ways that continually astonished.

Thus, for example, while enrolled in a course at the University of California in Bible history, he chose to write a paper on the origins of the story of Abraham and Isaac—the famous Akedah, wherein Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, to God—he produced an essay which so impressed his professor, himself a renowned biblical scholar, that the professor encouraged Horace to submit the essay to a prestigious scholarly journal. Horace did what the professor said, and the essay was accepted for publication—this when Horace was but nineteen years old—and was already in page proofs when Horace Jr. alerted his professor to the fact that he had invented virtually all the alleged Hebraic and Egyptian sources he had cited. When the professor asked Horace what in the world could have possessed him to have done such a thing, Horace said he thought it would be something Isaac’s son, Jacob—the original “trickster” of Jewish lore—might have wanted him to do.

At this point the professor ordered Horace to depart from his presence and never again to wave a red flag in his face, yet when Horace started walking away, the professor summoned him back, and the two of them, according to Horace, laughed uproariously while the professor told Horace that this proved his instinct correct: Horace had everything a true scholar needed to succeed—splendid research skills, an admirable work ethic, a passion for his subject, a felicitous prose style, and—above all—what was lacking in most biblical scholars—imagination.

Less than an hour after we had risen from bed on the morning of November 21, Max came into our sitting room from the bathroom, where he had been shaving, and complained of pains in his chest. Did I recall his having fallen in the last few days? Could the pain be the result of the light bare-knuckled sparring we had engaged in before sleep in our Phoenix hotel room three nights before? Despite the high life Max favored, I knew of no man who kept himself in such splendid physical shape. Although he had given up professional boxing nearly two decades before, he still weighed the same as he had weighed when he defeated Carnera for the heavyweight championship, and he still had the thirty-two-inch waist and Adonis-like physique that had been the envy of other men, and the ideal my young boxers aspired to.

I was concerned, of course, and suggested we have a doctor summoned to our room. To my surprise, not only did Max not resist my suggestion but, wiping shaving cream from his face with a towel, he took the phone from my hand, and asked for a doctor. The desk clerk said he would send a house doctor up right away.

“A
house
doctor?” Max said. “No, dummy—I need a
people
doctor.”

Max walked into the bedroom, lay down, and closed his eyes. I took his hand in mine, and felt his pulse, which, though strong, was much slower than usual.

“I been thinking about Joe Louis,” Max said, “and of the licking I took from him, and what I been thinking is that no matter what anyone says, the truth is I was licked by a better man.”

“But Max,” I began, “when you were in your prime…”

“Nah,” he said. “You’re just trying to make me feel good, Horace, and hey, I’d do the same if you were lying here like me and had all these bozos hammering on your chest the way they’re banging on mine. The truth is, see, Louis was a better man. Pound for pound, there weren’t nobody I ever fought against or seen as good as him. I hear he’s been having his troubles, though—that they locked him up in a loony bin for a while, so you wish him well for me next time you see him, okay?”

And saying this, he sat up and announced that he was feeling better. “Hey—glad to get that off my chest, right?”

He laughed at his joke, then went to the door to let in a man who, black bag in hand, introduced himself as Doctor Edward S. Koziol.

Max sat on the side of the bed, and the doctor listened to his chest with a stethoscope, said that he was concerned about what he was hearing, and gave Max several pills. I poured a glass of water for Max, who swallowed the pills. A moment later, the glass fell from his hand, he grabbed at the doctor’s arms, and said the pains—and the pressure, as if soldiers were marching across his chest—were getting worse.

“It’s really killing me, Doc,” he said, bent over but forcing a smile. “Know what I mean?”

Max lay down again, his eyes shut tight, his brow furrowed, then sat halfway up and tried to suck in large quantities of air. A fire department rescue squad, having been summoned by the desk clerk, arrived a few minutes later, and began administering oxygen. As soon as Max was breathing more easily, he stood, and once again declared that he was feeling better.

“Hey, Doc,” he said while circling the room, first one way and then the other. “Did you hear the one about the husband who comes home and finds his wife in bed with her doctor? ‘It’s not what you think,’ the doctor says. ‘I was taking your wife’s temperature.’ ‘Oh yeah?’ the husband replies. ‘Well let me tell you this, Doc—when you pull that thing out, it better have numbers on it!’”

The doctor did not laugh, and neither did I. Max shrugged, after which all color drained from his face. “Oh God, here I go,” he said and, his face a sudden, ghostly shade of blue, he fell onto the bed, and was gone.

Max was buried in a garden crypt in St Mary’s Lawn Cemetery in Sacramento. Along with Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Max Baer Jr., Buddy, and Augie, I was honored to be one of the pallbearers. Several thousand people attended the funeral, and in recognition of Max’s World War Two service, an American Legion rifle squad ended the ceremony by firing three dry volleys into the air. Max was fifty years old.

Only on the second morning following his burial did I notice that Joleen had carved a small Star of David into the headboard of our bed, a bed she and I have slept in ever since, even to the day upon which she has been setting down these words.

JAY NEUGEBOREN is the author of 21 previous books, including award-winning novels (
The Stolen Jew, Before My Life Began, Poli: A Mexican Boy in Early Texas, 1940
. and
The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company
), non-fiction (
Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness
), and four collections of prize-winning stories. His essays and stories have appeared in many publications, including
The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, Psychiatric Services, Black Clock, Ploughshares, Commonweal, Moment, Hadassah
, and
The New York Times
, and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including
Best American Short Stories
and
O. Henry Prize Stories.
The recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he was Professor and Writer-in-Residence for many years at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has also taught at Stanford, Columbia, and the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He now lives and writes in New York City, where he is on the faculty of the Writing Program of the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University.