John D. MacDonald
Too Early to Tell
It goes back to Christmas Eve, 1948, to the night when Brownell, drowning some of his grief over the way the champ had spoiled Brownell’s boy, Keno Morris, wandered into a Third Avenue gin mill and found Junior Franklin. That’s when it started, Christmas Eve. And it ended last night. Or maybe it began last night. It is maybe a funny quirk that it should start on Christmas Eve and end in St. Nick’s Arena, and on a million TV screens.
It’s a good class. You have to give it that. Bob the Fitz fought in it. So did Tunney and Grek and Siki. So did Slapsey Max, and rough, willing Lesnevich. Keno Morris ran right up through the class until he hit the top man. And got spoiled. It happens that way. That last punch that leaves a bruise on the face, but also makes a deep hole in some hidden part of a man’s spirit — and the juices run out.
Brownell saw it happen to his boy, saw it happen to Keno. Everybody saw it. Keno could have gotten up again. That squat chunky body wanted to get up. But the champ, chest heaving, lounged in the neutral corner, the lips spread around the guard in a superior and confident smile. Micky Brownell still thinks that it was partly that grin that kept Keno’s pants pasted to the canvas until the ten count, and the boos. Those boos weren’t exactly fair, because right up until that thirty-fourth second of the ninth round Keno had carried the whole fight to the champ.
Micky says he pushed the door open and went into the steamy little gin mill shaking the big wet flakes off the collar of his top coat and swinging his hat to get the snow off that too. If you’ve ever met Micky, you know that he is not a one to be noticed at any time. He looks as if the hot summer of 1908 dried him up and no wind has ever gotten around to blowing him away. The hundred and sixty he pays for suits doesn’t seem to help.
He smells the trouble the minute he is in there. It is at the far end of the bar, a kid maybe eighteen. For several generations Micky has been sizing up man-meat on the hoof. He saw the sloping shoulders of the power-hitter plus the lean-flanked grace of the speed boy. Then he looked at the face. One of those rich kid faces, Micky says. Brush cut, lean-cheeked, sneery-mouthed.
Loaded, the kid was. Swaying drunk. Pig drunk. He is making himself popular by telling Danny’s regular patrons that they are a bunch of cattle because they’ve never read Sartre, have never heard of Bergson and his theories of aesthetics. Danny is wiping a glass and five of the lads, full of Christmas spirits, are moving in on the big-mouth kid.
Micky says the kid was so irritating that even though he’d only caught about fifty seconds of the spiel, he was almost willing to take a hand.
The kid finally gets the idea, shuts his mouth and turns his back to the bar. He slips one Sunday punch, blocks another, chops out with his own right and there are only four left. The fifth, suddenly in need of dental work, has slid under a table on his back. They move in on him, the four, and they mark him up, but he doesn’t go down. By then Micky is watching with what he calls extreme interest. The kid renders another citizen hors de combat and by then Danny is getting weary of waiting. So from behind the bar he lays the sap delicately behind the kid’s ear and he falls among the spittoons. The remaining three congratulate each other, each rest one foot on the kid and use him for a bar rail until Micky gets a cab and has Danny help him load the unconscious kid into it.
Mickey finds me on Christmas afternoon. I sit across from him in the booth and I note the glazed look in his eyes. He recounts the events of the proceeding evening and then he says, “Get this, Lew. The kid’s name is Harkness Willoughby Franklin, the Third. Three of them yet. Here is the pitch. When he is just small fry, his folks split up. The old man is killed in the war about seven years ago. Now the old lady is married again to somebody else and she has a flock of young kids. They live out in California and they seem to consider the kid a bad apple. They have him boxed up in this private school in Massachusetts. He wants to go out to California for the Christmas vacation. They say no and send him a check and tell him to have fun. He gets drunk right in the private school and gets tossed out the day before vacation starts. He is a bright kid and he is sore on the world.”
“Adopt him,” I said, a bit sourly.
“Wake up, Lew,” he tells me. “The kid is a natural. A hundred seventy-one pounds. Natural coordination. I’ve been talking to him. He wants to fight.”
I did a lot of talking, both to Junior Franklin and to Micky. It didn’t do any good. He was one sour kid, believe me. Sour on the world and on himself. You know what he wanted? A million bucks. He had this picture in the back of his mind. They didn’t want him in California. So he’s going to drive up to their house in a convertible the size of a locomotive. The back end is going to be full of presents for the half-brothers and sisters. And he’s going to spit in the step-father’s eye.
Dempsey wanted a million too. He wanted it because he came off the tracks, out of the road camps, sick of stew cooked in a tomato can. But this Junior Franklin didn’t want it any less badly than Dempsey wanted it.
I guess the old lady and the step-father got conscience qualms. A month later they show up at the Clarry. Mickey has gotten the kid a room next to mine. The kid and I have spent a long tough day at Wattermeyer’s Gym. I say this for the kid, there was never any trouble about making him work out. You tell him to work on the heavy bag and you can go away and come back an hour later and hear that chunk, chunk, chunk.
The kid and I are talking over the day in his room, talking about the match Micky has made for him over in Jersey that’s coming up in three days, when there is a knock on the door. The kid opens it.
As soon as they come busting in, the woman, hugging him, squealing, “Harky, Oh Harky, darling,” the plump guy standing over to one side fiddling with his hat, I try to eel by and leave them alone. But Junior grabs my shoulder and says, “Stay here, Lew.”
I went over into the corner by the windows. It is tough to believe that the lady is old enough to have a kid as big as Junior. She is quite a dish and she carries herself as though she is pretty well convinced it is true. She had a spoiled twist to her mouth that doesn’t go away when she starts to cry and plead, as she does immediately.
To everything the kid says no, and the situation gets pretty grim. The kid and the step-father are soon yelling at each other and the lady’s tears are turned off like a faucet.
“If that’s your decision...” she says coldly.
“It is,” Junior says.
“Tom will send you your usual check every month, of course.”
Though this Tom was standing right there, Junior says, “Tell him not to strain himself.”
They leave in a hurry and I could see how they felt and somehow I hoped the kid couldn’t see it. They put up a fuss, but in their eyes you could see that they were damn glad to have the kid off their hands. But I could see that probably Junior sensed it too. He sat on the bed, his face right on the verge of getting all screwed up like a little kid with a skinned knee.
“Damn both of them,” he said in a husky whisper. It put a chill on the back of my neck because he didn’t say it like a guy cussing. He sort of chanted it.
“Let’s go eat!” I said, trying to sound cheery.
“I’ll knock on your door in ten minutes,” he said. I left him sitting there. The kid was really loused up inside. He was growing up too fast, I guess. It was nearer twenty minutes before he knocked. I could tell as soon as I looked at him that something had changed. In twenty minutes something had changed inside of him. He still had the rich-kid face, but all warmth had drained out of his eyes, leaving them older and colder than granite. I could smell the shape of it. This big yen about being a boxer had been a wild kid stunt. Underneath he wanted to be taken back into the fold. But then they showed him how it was. Now it was for real. Not a game any longer.