John D. MacDonald
Big John Fights Again
It all started on a crisp autumn Thursday while a biting wind was scudding the brown leaves around the corners of the houses, and doing odd things to the skirts of the gals crossing Main Street. I had turned in my column of football predictions and I was standing by the hall window with Bus Henry watching the Walgreen corner where a nice updraft was flustering the females as they scuttled by, when the copy girl came out and said, “Cooley. Tear yourself away from your obscene amusements and answer the phone.” That’s the trouble with getting copy girls from college journalism courses; they’re too flip.
I picked up the phone and a deep voice said, “Mister Cooley? This is Big John Washington. You remember me?”
He wondered if I remembered him! Tyler City’s one claim to fame in fistic circles. A big solid Negro with dancer’s legs, a happy grin, a jaw like iron and sudden death in either hand. Did I remember him!
Before the war I had followed on down to watch him fight in Philly, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, Jersey City and points North, South, East and West. I saw him in there battering down a lot of good boys and I knew that all he was getting out of it was peanuts, because Dicky Wing was dragging down eighty-five percent of Big John’s share.
Big John was just edging into the big time when the draft got him, back in October of forty, six years ago. I hadn’t heard of him since, even though I had thought of him a few times.
“I certainly do remember you, John boy,” I said. “What can I do?”
“Mister Cooley, I always figured you were in my corner all the way and I remember some good advice you used to give me and I need some help. I need help bad. Could you come out and see me?”
“Sure. Where?”
“Idle Vista Apartments. Out beyond the armory in the flats. Bunch of red brick buildings. I’m in number nine. I wouldn’t ask you to come out except...”
“Hell, that’s okay. Say half an hour.”
I pulled my black coupe off the asphalt and went up the walk toward the long low red brick buildings. It was sort of a housing development. The wind was stiff and clothes stood out almost straight on the lines. A little brown kid in a blue snow suit riding a bright red three wheeler pedaled out to me and gave me a shy smile. I winked at him and walked along the front of the place until I found nine. I stuck my thumb on the bell.
A very familiar looking gal with a green cotton dress and wide beautiful eyes opened the door and smiled. “Mister Cooley?”
Big John loomed up behind her and said, “Come on in. Come on in,” before I could answer. The apartment was small, bright and cheerful. A blond cocker puppy threw himself against my leg, wriggling from the shoulders down in an ecstacy of puppy welcome.
“Down, Keep, down!” Big John said. “Mister Cooley, you maybe remember my wife, Jeanie. She used to sing at the KitKat before we got married.”
I said, “I sure do.” Her smile got bigger. “I remember her arrangement of ‘Lazy Day.’ You shouldn’t have let her stop singing.”
“She stopped singing and I stopped fighting. It’s better this way.”
We walked into the living room. I could see into the sparkling kitchen. Big John said to Jeanie. “Go fix us up some coffee, Honey, and bring it in.”
“Let’s all go into the kitchen,” I suggested. “I’m an old kitchen sitter from way back.”
Jeanie put the coffee on and Big John and I sat at the white porcelain table. When the smile went off his face, he looked much older than I had remembered.
“What’s new with you, John. How did the war go?”
“Old Uncle Sugar, he got me and he stuck me in the Engineers. And then my regiment went on over to Burma and we built that Ledo Road. More mud and dust than I ever see before. It was okay, I guess. Leastwise, I only got shot at once, when I was runnin’ a cat.”
“Do any fighting in the army?”
“Little bit. I roughed up a couple boys on the boat goin’ over. That’s all.”
“Johnny got to be a Master Sergeant,” Jeanie interrupted proudly.
“That don’t buy no groceries nowadays,” he said, firmly.
“What are you doing?”
He stuck out his big chest and the grin came back. “I got me three trucks. Got drivers for ’em. Got two big hauling contracts and I’m doing good. Saving money.” The smile faded. “Anyway, I was.”
Jeanie said, “We got a lot of trouble, Mr. Cooley.”
I didn’t ask any questions. I wanted them to tell me in their own way and their own time. I watched the cloud drift over their faces, watched them look at each other helplessly. “You tell him, honey,” Jeanie said.
“It’s like this, Mister Cooley. I still got this contract with Dicky Wing which says he’s my manager when I’m fighting. Mr. Wing, he wants me to start fighting again. I was twenty-five when they drafted me and I’m thirty-one now. I was quick so they didn’t mark me up much but even twenty-five is pretty old for a fighter. My legs were about to give out, and you know what that means. Now I know my legs are bad. I’m about thirty pounds heavier and I can’t move around. I go in there and the kids are going to punch my head off for me. I can’t do no good any more, and anyway, if I do fight, I don’t get hardly anything out of it. Wing takes eighty-five percent of my share of the gate and he nicks me for a bunch of phoney expenses besides.”
“He can make more with this trucking and we can be happy besides,” Jeanie said, as she put the coffee in front of me.
“Yeah, we got this place here and Jimmy is three years old now. Damn it, Mr. Cooley, I fight again and she has to go back to singing so we can keep living here, and I have to sell the trucks and they punch me around until I’m talking to myself.”
“But why fight, John, if you don’t want to?”
He gave me a very wry grin. “I tell Dicky Wing that I don’t fight for him. Then maybe some loads in the trucks get smashed. Maybe somebody talks to the people I got contracts with and they don’t want contracts with me any more. Maybe they find some way to get me out of here. Suppose I get stubborn. Maybe somebody catches Jeanie on a dark street and tosses a little acid in her face. Just a little bit.”
“That’s nonsense, John. People don’t do that.”
“Maybe they don’t do that to white folks, Mister Cooley. You’re about the only white man in this town never treated me like I was some kind of big animal that fights for a living. I swear to you, Mister Cooley, they’ll ruin everything if I don’t fight.”
“Why are they so anxious?”
“Folks remember Big John Washington,” Jeanie said. “He always gave a good show. They remember that he was practically in the big time. That’s where they’ll start him again after a few setups. Wing won’t give a damn if Johnny gets killed. He’ll get one or two big gates that’ll make fifty thousand for him. Then John’ll be through.”
“Why can’t you string along with him for a year and then pick up your trucking business again?”
“You ever talk to a doc about how fighters get punchy? One more year on top of the fifty bouts I had and I walk on my heels, talking to myself. I can’t take it. When it was over, I’d be too slow to get into a rough business like this here trucking.”
“Are you sure the contract with Wing is still good?”
“Lawyer says so.”
They both looked at me helplessly as I drank the coffee. They were two very damn nice people and the world had suddenly backed them into a corner. Somehow I couldn’t tell them that I didn’t see any way out. They had come to me in trouble and it was up to me to do something. Anything. Big John sat with shoulders like a brewery horse, a neck like the trunk of an oak tree, and the eyes of a frightened child. Jeanie stood by him, her hand on his massive shoulder — her eyes mirroring the look in his. They could feel their world slipping and I happened to be the straw they clutched at. It made me feel inadequate and insufficient.