Good Hope Road: A Novel (8 page)

Ain’t nobody seem to pay me much mind – things different here in Europe. Maybe these Frenchmen just more polite, or better at hidin’ what they really think. Maybe it just the magic of the City of Light – it bein’ one of those soft-smellin’, slow-movin’ summer afternoons, everythin’ all bee-stung and honey-swollen. Anyhow, there ain’t been one person starin’ or mutterin’ somethin’ unholy as I pass; one or two men even nod and tip their hat to me. By and by, I get over the novelty of this, and begin to tip mine right back. I come across a powerful comely cher, all chocolate eyes and swellin’ curves, and I sweep my hat off my head and bow low. She look over at me, and her eyes, they twinkle as she smiles.

I laugh from the pleasure of it, and walk on, a bounce in my step. I start to hear it, the secret music of the city, its hummin’bird chords in the gardens, slip-slappin’ note by note through the Seine.

La Ville-Lumière
, they call Paris, but this ain’t so much a city of light but a city of music. A man might sit at any one of the café tables in the Rue de la Paix and what music might burst from his fingers! Treble and bass clefs, and the sax baritone. Beat patterns in every corner – in a bridge that curve just so, in all the carvings of the Notre Dame, through all of these old, old stones. And colour, so much colour – blue, green, and the chocolate of a woman’s eyes, all of it comin’ together like notes in a chord.

I see the music in my head, can feel the keys of the piano start to dip inside of me, and before I know what’s what, I’m whistlin’ a tune out loud. Grinnin’ like a fool and holdin’ on to my precious ticket, hummin’ the music of Paris right across town.

I get to my room and hide the ticket behind the one picture frame that sits on the wall. I wink at the old dame frownin’ down at me. ‘Jack Johnson, doll,’ I tell her. ‘I’m gonna watch him in the ring tomorrow, and don’t you wish you could walk right outta that frame and come along.’

Jack Johnson. I’m talkin’ ’bout
Jack Johnson
. The Galveston Giant. Four-time defendin’ world heavyweight champion, twenty-one time defendin’ world coloured heavyweight champion. He’s been champion since 1908, with eyes turned now to ‘White Hope’ Frank Moran to see if he can take the title away from the Giant. The papers on both sides of the Atlantic been full of the upcomin’ match and I be goin’ over each article so many times, I can repeat the words with my eyes closed.

Moran got age on his side – just twenty-seven – while Jack a long- in-the-tooth thirty-six. Moran been in serious trainin’ all the weeks leadin’ up to the fight, hell-bent on droppin’ fifteen pounds before he step in that ring. I hear tell that on top of his runnin’ and jumpin’ rope, he be gettin’ his sparrin’ partner to sock him hard in the jaw. Hard as he can stand – it toughen the bone to pain. There’s that right- hand punch of his too: Moran calls it Mary Ann – on account of it bein’ such a knock-out and all.

Jack on the other hand, just be Jack. Motorin’ around Paris in fancy cars, eatin’ hard and liquorin’ harder, gold teeth flashin’ as he crack jokes ’bout his consumptive condition.

Even still, there ain’t the littlest doubt in my mind over who goin’ to win. Moran, he been on a good run – sixty-nine professional fights, thirty-nine wins, thirty-one knock outs, sixteen losses and fourteen no-decisions, but he ain’t never been up against ‘Giant’ Jack Johnson before.

See, I grown up somethin’ like Jack done, on dockyards and such. Ain’t nothin’ like sluggin’ it out every mornin’ on the docks just for the right of showin’ up and doin’ your job, that toughen a boy up right quick and proper. After you been in a few Battle Royals, where you and a bunch of other kids been blindfolded, and you gotta slug it out among yourselves till only one of you is left standin’ – well, a boy learn to move mighty quick after that, and he sure learn to hit hard.

Moran might be tough, but he ain’t never met nobody like the Giant before.

Soon as the fight was announced back in March, I been of a mind to watchin’ it. I made my way to Philly and steady hung ’bout the docks, and by and by, got myself a gig on a four-masted vessel headed for France. We docked at Le Havre earlier this week and soon as I could, I hightailed it to Paris. The skipper, he told us just where to room in the 12th, the landlady bein’ an old acquaintance of his and all, and here I am, with a ticket to the ‘Fight of the Century’, as the papers been callin’ it.

I ain’t got much left on me after payin’ for the ticket, but there one thin’ I got to buy prior. If you seen any pictures at all of Jack outside of the ring, then you know that along with a likin’ for white women, Jack, he got a thing for black top hats. I’m hankerin’ for one just like his, to wear to the fight tomorrow night. I stop a few men on the street and ask where I might find a hat fine as theirs. The wonder of this city – ain’t nobody seem to find my request outta hand. They all point the same way, towards Chappelerie E. Motsch on Avenue George V.

The shop, it real frou-frou, like everythin’ else on that street. Big gold letterin’, glass and marble everywhere, and nothin’ like I ever shopped in before. I pass it twice, first on this side of the street, then that, before I feel up to walkin’ inside. That hidden music I hear, well in this part of the city, it ain’t jazz no more but full-on opera, the kind you feel like you be needin’ a monocle and a moustache to understand. I don’t feel much better once I get up the nerve to enter – there’s marble as far as I can see, and everyone speakin’ in low, Sunday church sort of voices as they bend over the hats. I fiddle and fidget and feel like a fool, wonderin’ just what I’m doin’ in this rich man joint. My nerve starts to fail me proper and I nearabout turn and jump out that door, when a salesgirl asks if she can help me.

I tell her, bashful like, and she warms some when she hear the French fallin’ from my tongue. She say they mostly do custom fittings, and I tell her I ain’t got that much cash or so much time, but I gotta have a hat just like the Giant’s for the fight tomorrow.

‘
Ah, la boxe
!’ She shakes her head. ‘Why are you Americans so crazy about this boxing match?’

‘Boxin’ match? This ain’t just no boxin’ match!’ I say hotly, settin’ her straight. Forgettin’ all ’bout bein’ bashful, I tell her ’bout 1910, when the Giant fought Jeffries in Reno. I’d have been right there watchin’, ’cept I been in this bit of trouble with the law at the time. I followed that fight all the same, round by round. It was telegraphed live, and all around the world and every corner – Times Square in New York, bar-rooms in Washington and Tennessee, outside the Tribune offices – that Sunday evenin’, everywhere you looked, there were crowds around a telegrapher. We even gotten a pool runnin’ in County Cook prison, with the wardens arrangin’ to have one of the inmates operate the telegraph keys. Ten to six and a half, the odds were, Jeffries to Jackson, and I wagered everythin’ I got on the Giant.

Fifteen rounds they went, and when they announced the Giant’s name at the end of it, man you should have seen the way the city went wild. Well, our parts of the city anyhow. It was a Fourth of July too, and I heard tell after that the fireworks that gone off that evenin’ were somethin’ to see alright.

There been ugliness, sure, in some parts of the country, broken bones and worse for some of our kind, but that only made the rest of us all the more loud. The champ,
our
champ was champ of the world once more, and we gone boo coo crazy happy, figurin’ the fight that evenin’ gonna shut those folks up for good.

I’m talkin’ ’bout the folks burnin’ bad over the fact that a coloured hold the world championship title. Even if Jack been holdin’ on to that title for six years now, since 1908.

He first won it from Tommy Burns, and I’d have given everythin’ I owned to watch that match, ’cept it was held in Sydney and what I owned at that time, it weren’t hardly enough to get me even as far as New York. Jack, he won the title fair and square, but the papers said all kinds of things – that the match been fixed, that Burns been in decline anyhow. Them folks, they gone and badgered Jeffries outta retirement – someone got to teach this cotton pickin’ blackbird a lesson, they said – until finally he agreed to the match in Reno.

Jack beat him proper, smilin’ the whole time; the papers said the next mornin’ that his win been so effortless,
obvious
it was fixed.

Ever since, them folks been out there, trawlin’ the coal mines, farms and dockyards, huntin’ for someone tough enough to beat the Giant. The Great White Hope they been callin’ it, the hope that a white man gonna bring back the championship to their side of the colour line, where by their account, it rightfully belongs. Well, Jack, he believe no such thing and for the past twenty-five matches, he been reignin’ king. They hate his guts and his hard drinkin’, his proud, unashamed ways, and when he take a white woman for a wife, they slap a case of immorality against him. Jack, he got no choice but to leave America, makin’ his way to London and now Paris.

Still them folks been searchin’ and finally now in 1914, they gone and found themselves a new Hope in golden-haired Frank Moran. Tomorrow’s fight ain’t just some boxin’ match, I tell that salesgirl, it much bigger than that. The Giant, he stand for more than just being a champion fighter, he . . . he . . . I struggle to explain what Jack Johnson come to mean to men like me.

‘He’s a
champ
,’ I say finally, ‘he
my
champion.’

The salesgirl look at me funny and I think at first she laughin’ at me. But she tell me to wait, and damned if she don’t go into the backroom and come out some minutes later with a hat fine as can be. There a slight fade to the brim, one you can’t hardly see, but on account of which the price is only a bit of what it would have been otherwise.

I stand there, turnin’ the hat this way and that under the lights. I tell you, it been one of the most beautiful things I ever held in my hands, chers included, and there been a fair number of them through the years.

The salesgirl ask what I plan to wear with the hat. ‘These,’ I reply, pointin’ at the clothes I got on.

She shake her head. ‘
Incroyable
.’ She quickly write on a piece of paper and hand it to me. ‘Go here. They are costumiers for the opera. Tell Yvette that Celine sent you.’

I hardly know how to thank her, and she grin when I try. ‘Ah, it’s okay. Maybe you come by later and tell me about
le boxe
, yes?’

I tuck the hatbox under my arm and bendin’ low, kiss that angel’s hand. ‘I promise, Mademoiselle.’

So it is that on the evenin’ of 27 June 1914, Obadaiah Nelson, who never had no pair of shoes till he was well past ten years of age find hisself standin’ outside the Velodrome d’Hiver, a song in his heart, ticket in his hand, and lookin’ swell, dandy fine.

The stovepipe top hat sit real jaunty on my head. A thing of such beauty, the brushed beaver fur dark black in the settlin’ light. Its silk linin’ stamped with the crest of the shop, the words ‘E. Motsch’ over a shield, with two lions balanced on what looks to me like a ship. This last I ’specially like, given that it was a ship that brought me here to France. The rest of me look pretty fine too, in full evenin’ clothes, borrowed from the good Yvette. A walkin’ cane in my hand, shiny – and somewhat tight – black shoes on my feet and even a silk scarf around my neck.

I preen somethin’ fierce in those borrowed feathers as I hand over my ticket and enter the Vel’ d’Hiver. The din inside is somethin’ else. By all accounts there were twenty thousand people at that fight in Reno back in 1910, and I reckon there at least as many here tonight, if not more. Many are women. Not the kind I seen at fights back home, hangin’ around cellars and back rooms so smoke-filled you can’t hardly see nothin’, just the one naked bulb hangin’ from the rafters. These are women of class, in expensive gowns; the jewels in their hair twinkle like stars.

It unsettle me some at first to find them lookin’ at me, a few from the corners of their eyes, others more open as they turn my way and look me up and down. Then it hit me – the Giant, he a big man, ’bout six foot two, and I’m pretty high standin’ myself. With this hat on, one just like his, and these clothes – why, those women must think the Giant and I are kin! I hold myself even taller at the thought, so proud and struttin’ that tail feathers near start to grow from my rear. I hear a few American accents as I make my way to my seat. I cheerfully tip my hat to them, as if we grown up in the same sort of homes, gold-painted halls, marble floors and all.

I take my seat just as they announce the names, and boy, when I see the Giant, I forget ’bout preenin’, I forget ’bout everythin’ else, I just sweep the hat from my head and cheer like surely nobody never cheered before. He climbs cat-like into the ring. I whoop and holler, drinkin’ in every detail, his hands hangin’ easily at his sides, his jestin’ and jollyin’ with his minders, the way he shrug off his robe and saunter over to the centre of the ring.

The ring ’bout sixteen feet long and covered by a canopy strung with so many electric tubes that under their light he look almost grey. The light do funny things to blond Moran as well, turnin’ his skin green, like copper left out in the rain. As relaxed as the Giant looks, standin’ there with his hands on his hips, Moran seem tense, sort of bunched into hisself. I don’t blame him one bit.