The Japanese Girl (29 page)

One day in the early ' nineties one of these Cornishmen, called by the name of Sil Polglaze, he came to Jacka and told him that there was this middleweight boxer come to town, just fresh come from New Zealand but a true Cornishman as ever was; and he was fighting a man called Abe Congle in the Park next Saturday afternoon and how about them going along? Jacka hesitated about this, wondering if there might be sin in it, but it did not seem so, so he said all right, he'd go. Thus he took his first look at Bob Fitzsimmons.

It was a motley crowd that day, no mistake, and nearly all of them shouting for Congle; but Fitzsimmons stunned Congle unconscious in the second round. So it was that all the patriotism in Jacka, lying underneath and scarce acknowledged, came bubbling out like an adit from a mine, and afterwards he pushed his way sore-throated through the crowd and spoke to the Cornish boxer and his wife.

Now Fitzsimmons at this time was twenty-eight, and no figure of a boxer at all. You could laugh, and many did, for already he had a bald patch and had long arms and legs like thin poles quite out of proportion to his great chest and stomach. He weighed scarcely more than 150 lbs, and he had a round red face and his teeth were large and bright like wet tombstones and had stood all the unkindness of the ring. He would have done proud as a comic turn in a circus but it would be foolishness to take him seriously as a boxer. Only Congle did that. Only Congle, still being doused with water like a babe at a christening.

Soon Fitzsimmons was telling Jacka that he too had been born in Helston – in Helston of all places! – and asking all manner of questions about it and whether old so-and-so was still alive, and if the Hal-an-Tow was still danced. I reckon Jacka became his slave for life at that first meeting, and sure enough he was there at the second fight when Fitzsimmons laid low a hard tough negro called Black Pearl. This time it took him two more rounds, but the outcome was just the same. He went in soaking up the punishment which would have stopped any ordinary man and then let fly with his long incredible fists and presently there was a black heap on the ground, and Fitzsimmons was standing there, Jacka said, with his long arms dangling and his white teeth glinting like a bone in his raw red face.

Afterwards, after Fitz left San Francisco, Jacka tried to keep track of him by reading the newspapers, but it wasn't that easy. Fitz went all over the States, but his news value was not high and sometimes the San Francisco papers did not bother to mention when he had been in a fight. Only the big ones were reported, and every now and then through the years that followed Jacka would find an item saying that Fitzsimmons had beaten Peter Maker, or Joe Godfrey or Millard Zenda.

Now although Jacka was a rare one for all things Cornish, he'd made no boast about it, living in such a mixed community, and he was content to be called a Limey when talk of nationalities came up. But Fitz's appearance on the scene had fired his local loyalties with a hot new fire, and while he was not the sort of man to make a show of himself in front of others, he was never above a mention of the wonderful prowess of his friend and fellow townsman Bob Fitzsimmons, and to let it be known what great fighting men Cousin Jacks were when their blood was up. So he became much more vocally Cornish, so to say, and so he found himself sometimes at odds with the Americans and the Swedes and the Irish. Just because he had so much to say for Fitzsimmons they derided Fitzsimmons the more. And so hard words and hard thoughts grew up, half jesting, half serious, and they centred around the name and the figure and the prestige of the scrawny, ungainly, ageing boxer.

When someone brought in the word that Fitzsimmons had put in his challenge for the heavyweight championship of the world everyone except Jacka fairly died with laughter. The great James J. Corbett, Gentleman Jim, six feet one inch in height and 190 lbs in weight, with not an ounce of spare flesh upon him, the best boxer of his age and the idol of the United States, was too superior in every way to be matched with this shambling creature. The challenge was of course refused, and all Jacka's mates told him that this refusal had saved Fitz's life. Quick to defend his idol, out on a limb on his behalf, Jacka shouted that Corbett was afraid and that Ruby Bob was being cheated of the title.

How they laughed! How they lay about and laughed till the tears ran into the bricks and mortar. From then on it was the recognized thing to have Jacka on about it. Any time anyone craved for a quick laugh they had only to mention this challenge and Jacka would be upon his feet and arguing for his friend. I think my grandfather was a good-tempered sort of Christian most of his life, but he often-times lost his temper over this. It changed him a little, made him morose. He never fought anyone because fighting wasn't his way; but he came near to it more than once.

So more years passed. Jacka was growing grey at the temples and heavier in the girth of neck and stomach. His eldest son was 25, his youngest daughter 14, and he was a grandfather four times over. He had not saved so much money in the last seven years as in the first seven, for he had come to live a little cosier himself, to value a good meal and a glass of beer and a pipe of tobacco at the day's end. But he had saved all the same. In another ten years he reckoned he would have enough to go home, to buy a smallholding somewhere around the Helford River and live out the rest of his life in quietness and peace. By then all his children would have flown; but some of them with luck would not have flown so far, and he and Essie would be able to play with the grandchildren. It was an ambition as yet too far away to look forward to, but there it stood as a reward for a long life of toil. And patient Essie would be there waiting for him still.

Fitzsimmons too had gone on his way, putting all manner of boxers down and out, growing older too and scrawnier but still not quite finished. He was too hard for the young ones – yet. They just had to bide their time, while age and hard knocks crept up on him. So one day the distinguished Corbett found he could no longer ignore this middleweight that no other middleweight could endure the course with. A match was made, arranged, actually fixed for March 17 next, the contest to be for the heavyweight championship of the world, in Carson City, Nevada, the winner to receive a purse of twelve thousand dollars.

And everyone knew for certain who that would be. In vain Jacka defended his idol. They jeered at Jacka, and the good nature had gone out of it on both sides. One big Irish brick-layer called O'Brien was stronger even than most for Corbett – who was half Irish – and offered five to one in any amount and currency Jacka cared to name – if he dared to back his fancy. Jacka refused. In the years in California he had attended chapel whenever he could, and, although his sternest convictions had worn a little away, he still knew gambling to be sinful and he had never indulged in it.

In the weeks before the fight, however, O'Brien continued to goad him; and at last, hemmed into a corner where refusal spelt cowardice, he bet O'Brien fifty dollars at seven to one that Ruby Robert would win. The money was paid over to the foreman, a big Swede called Lindquist, who was known to be a straight and honest man.

Carson City is only just in the state of Nevada on the other side of Lake Tahoe, and so little more than 160 miles from San Francisco. It was only just off the main railway east, and it was told that the Virginia and Truckee Railroad were laying special tracks so that rich spectators could go all the way on special sleeping coaches, travel overnight and be ready fresh for the contest in the morning. The poorer folk by leaving before it was light could arrive in another special train just the same. Tickets for the fight were $5, and early Jacka bought one. Some of his mates would not pay the money but said they would be able to get in cheaper on the day.

Sitting over his pipe in the evening talking to Sil Polglaze and others of his cronies, Jacka thought much, he said, of the money he had wagered. He stood to lose fifty dollars – but to gain three hundred and fifty. The odds were not excessive, for eight and nine to one were being offered in some quarters. Jacka had the courage of his convictions and so trusted Fitz to win. So
he
stood to win. So he stood to win a considerable sum. It was a sin to gamble; but was this exactly gambling, properly to be so described? He did not feel sinful now he had risked the money. He did not think he would feel sinful if he took O'Brien‘s stake. He did not think he would feel sinful if he even added to the money at risk.

He would never have done it but for the burning conviction within him that a good Cornishman was better than a good Irish-American. The patriotic resentment he felt towards his mates was as passionate as if he had been called to declare his Faith. And his passion, equally, was not based either on judgment or on knowledge. He had not seen Fitzsimmons for six years. He had never seen Corbett in his life. But he was called on to testify. And the only way he could testify was by risking his money. His hard-earned, laboriously hoarded money. Some of it. Not much, but some. Altogether in the world, if he counted every silver and gold coin he owned and every bank chit, he could muster about $5,600. It was some tidy little nest-egg. How much of it could be put at risk? $300 perhaps? He stood the chance of converting it into $2000. Such a small investment – less than 6 months' saving – to gain so much.

Where most of the bets were laid was in the pool rooms, and these were places which for long years Jacka had avoided as haunts of the devil. But this last four years he had taken to going into Scherz's Rooms with Silvester Polglaze for a quiet game of pool and a glass of beer. No wagers, mind. Just the play. They played for the pleasure and the relaxation. But this was where the wagers for the fight were placed, and the odds were put up on a blackboard, and Jacka licked his lips and saw them shortening, then lengthening again after Corbett gave an interview, then shortening as the time of the fight drew near. Scherz was a Swiss, a tough, hard, cold man but he'd never cheat you. A lot of working men left their money with him because they trusted him before the banks. So this was the place to risk your money if you wanted to risk your money, where it would be safe if you won. Jacka put on $ 200 at 8 to 1, $100 at 6 to 1, another $100 at 4 to 1; then when the odds stretched out again, he put on a further $ 300 at 7 to 1.

It was strange, Jacka said, that after he had put the money on, handed over the counter in gold dollars, he felt first a terrible hard nasty sinking sensation of depression, and then after an hour or so a sudden upsurge of hope. No twinges of conscience, that was strange, no feeling that he shouldn't have done it, only an urge to do more. It was like a drug; but it wasn't like the ordinary gambler's drug, when the wins and the losses, the sudden ups and downs of fortune carry a man fluctuating till he loses his stability altogether. There were no losses in this – nor as yet no wins: there was nothing to elate Jacka and nothing to depress him, only a burning conviction that somehow his ungainly hero would come through. A week before the fight he went with two Swedes into the California Athletic Club, and encouraged by them, put on another $500 at 20 to 3. Then at work he took a bet with a man called Sullivan for $ 200. On the Wednesday before the fight, Jacka went like a thief to one of his banks – the one he trusted least – and withdrew $800. From there, with no one to accompany him and no one to egg him on, he went out and laid his bets.

The last days were an age in passing. Jacka lived in a daze feverishly thumbing through the papers, talking scarcely to no one, refusing even the dangling bait of argument; only stopping in at one bank and then another to draw more money out. Before the fight more than half his total savings had been placed upon Fitzsimmons to win.

On the day all those who were going to the fight had to be up at four a.m. to catch the early morning train. All those leaving off work for the day lost a day's wages and a good conduct mark, but the absenteeism was so great that a whole mass of workers could not be penalized.

It was a long train drawing out of Oakland Station, and a slow one as it wound its way puffing up through the foothills of the Nevadas. Jacka sat with Sil Polglaze and a man called Mark Lothar; Jacka sat in a corner of the hard wooden carriage and spoke to no one. Only his eyes gleamed like one who has seen the light. The train was crowded, and men standing in the compartments shuffled and swayed against each other for four hours until at last it came to rest in the specially built sidings in Carson City.

Here everyone fell out in a swarm: it was as if the train could not have held so many men: they poured from every door and flooded off into the town. The sun was just rising on a brilliant day.

Carson City, the capital city of the State of Nevada, lies in a bowl of the Sierra Nevada at an altitude, so I am told, of nearly 5000 feet, and is surrounded by mountains. It was then a flourishing township, Jacka said, with a population of about 2000 people and had several handsome buildings, including the capitol, a mint and an orphan's home, and a good sprinkling of pool rooms. This morning the mountains were glimmering with snow, and an icy breeze loitered through the town. Dust whorls rose in the streets, and the wooden sidewalks were packed five abreast with men strolling through or looking for food or drifting slowly towards the arena to be sure of gaining good seats. In the gutter mendicants and others stood begging alms or selling favours and crying out for attention. Pretty many of the men who had come to see the fight already wore four-leafed clovers in honour of St Patrick's Day and to show they supported Corbett. Some of the badges were six inches across, and some men wore green shirts and green hats and green ribbons on their sleeves. Women were very absent from the scene.

Food was a big problem, for the eating houses and tents were soon full, and long jostling angry queues formed outside them; but Jacka and his friends had brought meat and potato pasties that Jacka had cooked the night before, and so after a brief walk around the town they tramped off to the arena and got seats. Jacka was much concerned as to which corner the boxers were occupying; Corbett, they found, had been given the south-east corner, so they took seats as near to the northwest corner as they could get. It was a great amphitheatre of a place with the white peaks of the snow-covered mountains all round. You could see the ring from almost anywhere; but although the fight was supposed to start at ten it was scarce dotted with people when they arrived, and they squatted on the grass to break their fasts. After they had eaten they went off in turn, and Jacka, passing a betting booth which had the guarantee of the local bank to support it, could not refrain from slipping in and putting on another $200 as a final token – though here he found the odds had shortened to five to two.