I sat and drank rye and beat on my head with my fist. When there was an inch of rye left in the bottom of the bottle, I had one stinking little inspiration. I fumbled my way into the bedroom and fell across the bed into dreamland, giving the old subconscious a chance to work out on the problem.
In the morning I called Dicky and told him that I’d take on the job he had mentioned to me. He was delighted.
Then I went to work. Being on a local sheet as long as I have, you make a lot of friends and a lot of enemies. Good and bad of both kinds. I went to work on them. I begged and pleaded and threatened and swore. I ignored them when they said they’d have me thrown out of their offices. I signed my name until my hand was sore — signing away my life, signing away my future. Whenever I stopped to think of what I was doing, it scared me to death. A dozen times I wanted to quit, and each time I remembered the two of them standing in the doorway of the little apartment. I remembered that I hadn’t been born with two strikes against me, and the third pitch, a hard-breaking curve halfway to the plate. I remembered a lot of things, and I kept signing my name.
When I had enough I went to see Rocky LaPorte. He is Dicky Wing’s only competition in Tyler City, but they get along pretty well. Sometimes I handle the police beat, and on one of those times I was able to do Rocky a very large and juicy favor. He is inclined to remember it.
He is a stocky man with a white-toothed grin a yard wide. He is the lavender shirt and dollar cigar type, but at heart a nice guy — so they keep telling me. He owns a construction company that knocks off all city contracts, a brewery that uses emphatic sales methods, several meat markets, two gas stations, a roller skating rink, a third rate football team, several redheads and the rest of the crooked politicians that Dicky doesn’t own.
I found him late at night in a poker game in a suite at the Craylor. The other monkeys in the game seem disturbed to see me, but Rocky gives me the big hello and we lock ourselves in the bathroom while the game goes on without him.
I outlined the deal and what I wanted him to do. When I was through he flicked cigar ashes into the tub and said, “Stevey boy, I got to protect you from yourself. You’ve gone nuts. This newspaper work is killing you. Suppose you come to work for me, hey? I’ll make you an offer. I can use a little fat guy like you with big ideas. But not the kind of ideas you just give me.”
I reminded him of all I had done for him and told him of the chances I might get in the future. At last he sighed and agreed to help me.
“That’s great, Rocky,” I said, “I certainly appreciate it. Now I like to do things in business like way, and even though I trust you further than I would my own grey haired mother, I want you should let me pick you up tomorrow and go and see my legal eagle, at which time some money will change hands. Then you can sit tight and I’ll tell you when to move in.”
It all went as planned, with Tom Hennessey, my lawyer, looking at me strangely during the little conference. The paper was drawn up and Rocky and I signed it, with Hennessey and his girl for witnesses. It was as tight as a drum...
We sat in the kitchen again and Big John had a sad droopy look on his face like a lonesome bloodhound. “I’ll do anything you say, Mister Cooley, but it sure looks like I’m going to be fighting a long, long time.”
“John, you got to trust me. I’ll tell you more later. Look, your business is being taken care of, isn’t it?”
“Sure is, but that man didn’t act like he wanted to do it too bad.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s a friend of mine. You just remember what I told you to do. Tomorrow you’re going up to Wing’s camp to start training. When it gets too cold he’ll bring you down to the gym in town. All you got to do is remember not to use that right. You can’t punch with it any more. You can paw with it a little, but no punch.”
“I get that okay.”
“And if I don’t get a chance to talk to you or relay a message to you through Jeanie before this first tank job fight that Dicky has lined up, remember that you got to look very bad in there. Very bad. The two or three guys he lines up will dive for you as soon as you land a good punch. You drag it out. Move around as slow as you can.”
Big John grinned whitely. “I’ll sure be slow in there, Mister Cooley.”
I convinced them both that it was going to work out okay, even though my fingers ached from keeping them crossed. I knew that if it didn’t work out, the three of us were hitting the skids together. Big John seemed to cheer up. As I was leaving he instinctively put his hand on my arm, and then yanked it off as though I was red hot. There wasn’t anything I could say to him. You can’t tear out five generations of fear with a few words. I liked the big homely lug and he knew it. So there wasn’t much need for words.
I got up to the lake three times before the first fight. Dicky had Benny Baum and Kid Williams working on Big John. They melted twenty pounds off him, bringing him down to two fifteen, but they didn’t take any more off for fear of weakening him.
I hung around and I could see that they were discouraged. Big John moved slowly around the ring with the leather face guard hiding his expression. Baum could hit him at will. Big John would paw with the right. The second time I was up there, he knocked Baum through the ropes with a left hook to the gut. That made Baum and Williams very happy.
I filled the local sheet with all kinds of guff about Big John. I built up the incident of his knocking Baum through the ropes with one punch. I hauled a pal of mine, Doc Wescott, up with me and had him look Big John over. He let me print his opinion that Big John had the reaction time, the reflexes and the speed of a kid of eighteen. That went over well, and Tyler City began to wake up and take notice.
Wing’s idea of keeping out other sportswriters worked pretty well. They were all sore, expecially a couple that came up from New York. They made cracks about secret training, but it only increased the interest in Big John. Wing walked around looking like a little kid who had found a nickel in his pocket that he didn’t know he had.
I got down to the first fight in Youngstown, Ohio. Wing had Big John matched with a Polish boy they called Mick Doyle. Big John almost overdid it. I was at ringside and I could see that Doyle was worried that he wouldn’t get a good chance to fold up and collect his diving money. Big John, chocolate and impassive, plodded around the ring, pawing at Doyle. Doyle peppered him at will but pulled his punches while the crowd jeered and sneered. It was terrible.
Finally in the seventh, Big John pawed Doyle with a slow right. Doyle wavered and dropped his arms. John pawed him again and Doyle fell heavily onto his face, turning his head just in time to keep from flattening his nose. It was a classic and beautiful dive.
The papers tried to give Big John a ride, but after all he had knocked out his man, and who could prove it was fixed? I did a long piece about deceptive punches, about slow punches having terrific battering power and so on.
I missed the second bout in Scranton, because I didn’t want Wing to think I was being too eager. Every Saturday I went to the bar at the Craylor and the bartender would slip me a plain envelope with five beautiful tens in it. That part I liked.
The second bout was the same as the first, only the diving champ was named Young Weeks instead of Doyle. He finally located his chance to dive in the sixth. The crowd booed and the ref lifted Big John’s hand in disgust. But it was another knockout and it gave me a chance to blow off steam in my column and in the story of the fight. Wing was as happy as a turtle in a goldfish bowl. I fed them some more about those deceptive punches.
There were still three weeks to go before the Henderson fight. Big John was training in town and staying in a room over the gym. As I had figured, they wouldn’t let him come home. All I could do was wait. I had horrible visions of Cooley with a tin cup on the corner, Cooley in a line of guys in grey behind bars, Cooley with the soles off his shoes, bumming dimes for coffee. It was too damn late to turn back and I couldn’t keep myself from thinking how awful it was going to be if things didn’t work out.