Million Dollar Baby (22 page)

Malik had a smart mouth on him by Cannonball’s standards, all the time talking about how bad he was. Gave himself the name Chilly because he said he was so cold when he dispensed justice to any muhfuh who messed with him. Cannonball enjoyed seeing him get a boxing lesson, knowing it was better to get a spanking in the gym than an ass whipping under the lights. But he also understood that most gangster fighters didn’t want to work hard, which is why they were gangsters in the first place, and why most quit the game early on. Cannonball had his doubts about Malik, who had been confident that he’d give Puddin a boxing lesson, Puddin being young, lighter in weight, and an amateur. But as Malik grew more exasperated, he also got tired, and it was Puddin who took Malik to school.

Cannonball chided him from outside the ropes. “You don’t do you roadwork, you better believe you can’t fight.”

Mac had learned a ton from Cannonball through the years, often training fighters at the Not Long Gym after Cannonball bought it with money he made off a Filipino fighter he’d taken to the title in ’72.

“Yeah, my baby flip boy done okay by me. Little guy still call me from Manila, say he got a whole gang of young pussy waiting for me over there, say he pay my plane. Heh!, what I’ma do wit young pussy?” Cannonball mused a moment, thinking back down the long tunnel of time he’d passed through. “He the boy give me Lena, my old Colt .45. Say Lena come off a dead Jap in the jungle.” Cannonball smiled. “Lena tear
up
you ass, I’m
tellin
ya. Bes’ of all, she ain’t register, some boy mess wit the old man.”

Mac made Cannonball for at least eighty. His eyes and speech were clear after 120 fights, maybe more, since Cannonball couldn’t remember them all. He was still his fighting weight, but he had diabetes and three of his toes on one foot had been amputated.

Cannonball’s deep black skin was wrinkled but soft like leather upholstery, and he had craggy hands and big forearms. His wrists were surprisingly thin, but Cannonball could crack, which is why he got his fearsome nickname, one that came from knocking opponents clean out of the ring. He always wore a frayed, snap-brim dark wool cap that he kept clean and brushed. Tough as he still was, frailty had come on him in the last few years, the cords showing in his neck, and sometimes he sat staring at his hands, or tracing broken knuckles with a bent finger.

He’d fought all over the world, knocking out nearly two thirds of his opponents, but he could never get a title shot—his dreaded power was such that managers of then-champs refused to fight him. He forgot where, but he’d begun to fight as a pro at sixteen somewhere back around 1928. He fought through the Great Depression, sometimes for food only. Being a Negro fighter back in those days, a deep-black one, one who could knock you out with either hand, hurt rather than helped his career. He had a lump the size of a peach pit sticking out under his right arm from an untreated broken rib, a few scars around his eyes, and not much of a nose. But he had no bitterness, and often laughed when he told stories about riding the rails from town to town in search of fights, and about fighting for his life in hobo jungles, where they wanted to make him a slave.

The Not Long was located at Sixty-eighth and Normandie Avenue. It was between Gage and Florence in South Central L.A., a few miles from Puddin’s house—a gym like Hymn Gym, where heavier fighters worked out. Not Long was originally called the Normandie Gym. When Cannonball bought it, he named it Not Long, which he took from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in Montgomery, Alabama, the one he gave after the long walk from Selma in ’65. King repeated
Not long.
Some of that speech, Cannonball never forgot.

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.

How long? Not long. Because the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

How long? Not long, because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.

Cannonball and Mac had often worked together, though they never were official partners, and sometimes they worked with other corners when the call came. The South was still de facto Jim Crow territory in the late sixties when Mac and Cannonball traveled to places like Houston or even D.C. Whites would put up a stink sometimes, but they’d shut up once they knew they were messing with members of the fancy. Many would even settle down to praise Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong, and Sugar Ray, for whom they had great respect and of whom they were genuine fans. Once in New Orleans a young black hipster with Dizzy Gillespie lip whiskers confronted Mac.

“You one them gray boys wish he a spade, a ofay boy lookin a get soul.”

“Say what?” said Mac, affecting a high-pitched black accent. “Sheeuh, man, I got enough problems jus’ bein white.”

Cannonball laughed so hard that the hipster also had to laugh, since everyone nearby was laughing, too. He shook hands with Mac.

“You cool, daddy, you be cool.”

Malik got serious about fighting dirty shortly before the bell sounded to end the second round. Mac and Puddin first took the head butts and low blows as unintentional. But when Malik came out trying to crack Puddin’s face with his elbows and drilling him with hooks to the kidney, Puddin looked over to Mac.

Mac said, “Stay loose, keep working your same seventy-five, eighty percent.” He spread his hands. “And do what you gotta do.”

“Yop,” Cannonball said, nodding once.

Instead of going to Malik’s ass, or kidneys, or to his eye with a thumb, Puddin began with right-hand leads to the head and hooks to the liver, punching and moving to the left, turning Malik to the point where he could see him telegraphing his low blows. Puddin began to taunt the pro.

“You thought you the wolf. You the dog, man. Lemme hear you whine.”

“Punk, I tear you a new asshole!”

Cannonball watched carefully, winked to Mac across the ring. He liked to see some mean in a fighter, but now he was watching for whether Malik would lose his temper, a bad sign in the fight game, because fights are won with the mind, not raw fury. Cannonball or Mac could always call time before the sparring session ever got too far out of control, so neither was worried. Since that hadn’t happened yet, Mac wanted to see if Puddin could handle pressure from a big pro fighting outside the Queensberry Rules. Puddin was doing fine by Mac, the only marks on him were the horizontal red streaks across his back, rope burns that Puddin got from slipping along the ropes out of Malik’s reach. Some Nupercainal ointment would take out the sting.

Between rounds, Mac said, “Why you not rippin his nose with your laces?, or coming up under his chin with your head?, crack him in the nuts and then you say you’re sorry? Pop him in the ass?”

“I’m scheming on the brother,” said Puddin, “tellin him lies. See how he reach when he try to counter off my jab?, how he head go back when he try to get off wit the right hand?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You watch what you baby boy do this nex round.”

Malik continued to try to bully Puddin, grabbing him and holding, saying he was going to tear him up.

Puddin taunted him back, then bent his elbows backward. “You the one goin down, sucker. I whup you like a stepchild.”

“You mama.”

“You ain’t got a mama, you got a strawberry,” countered Puddin. A strawberry was what you picked off the street, a crack whore, one of the street girls and women who gave head for a poke on a stained glass pipe.

“This over, I’ma cut you ass, boy.”

“Onyest thing you cut be you ugly face when you shave.”

Malik’s two families continued to cheer him, which only made things worse for his pride.

He stopped punching in the middle of the round, turned to Cannonball in his frustration, “I ain’t jivin, man, I’ma cut this boy, you hear what I’m sayin?”

“You be sellin woof tickets, sheeuh,” said Cannonball. “You so chilly, why you don’t go on back and whup the boy?”

Malik plowed forward, throwing haymakers. Puddin pivoted and threw three jabs—two quick and one slow. As Malik turned, he saw the lazy third left as his chance to catch Puddin with his power right-hand. He hauled off to throw it, his chin going up as he reached. Puddin was waiting for him. He stepped to his left, evading Malik’s right glove, then dropped his own right at half power straight into Malik’s Adam’s apple.

Malik’s mouthpiece shot from his mouth as he tried to clutch his closed throat. He thought he was a dead man as he twitched and jerked to the canvas, and his popping eyes did his begging for him because his mouth couldn’t talk.

Mac and Cannonball jumped into the ring. Cannonball held Malik’s shoulders down as Mac inserted his thumbs along the inner rim of Malik’s nostrils, spreading them wide. He spoke slowly and softly.

“Breathe through your nose, not your mouth, through your nose.” Mac repeated it twice.

Malik overcame his panic because of Mac’s quiet voice, and did what Mac instructed, the air getting into his lungs and oxygen on up to his fading brain. After several gulps of air, he began to cough and wheeze, pink spit drooling down his chin and neck. Cannonball got Malik’s gloves and headgear off and untied the laces of his shoes. Soon Malik’s throat relaxed enough for him to croak out a few words of admiration.

“You a bitch, man,” Malik said, congratulating Puddin as he got to his feet. “I’ma try you shit on some fool stick up he chin like me.”

Once it was over, as things usually were in the ring, it was all over, and Malik and Puddin shook hands, would be friendly rivals down the way now that the line of respect had been drawn.

In the dressing room Malik gingerly rubbed his neck. “I can’t believe the way that little boy got on me. I mean he big and all, but you know what I’m sayin?, he still a boy.”

“That little boy a man,” said Cannonball.

“Amen t’dat.”

Cannonball left Malik to check his gym equipment. Along the way, he reassured Malik’s wives that their husband was all right. Mac had toweled Puddin down and was packing his gear bag. After sparring, he usually had Puddin finish with four rounds on the punch mitts, four on the speed bag, four on the rope, and four sets of thirty-rep sit-ups, each exercise working a different part of his eight-pack abs. Because of what happened with Malik, Mac cut the workout short.

Mac said, “How’s your boy’s throat?”

“He fine,” Cannonball said. “Scared more’n hurt.”

“Puddin could have hurt him.”

“Don’t I know it?” said Cannonball. “Malik, he start that shit, but I could see you boy take some off when he go to the neck. That Puddin, he somethin else, man, he make you a million dollars that boy, and I ain’t talkin shit.”

“You might be right.”

Cannonball said, “Shit yeah, I’m right, and he not even white. Let’s just hope he don’t have to fuck everthang that walk, crawl, or stand at attention.”

“Huh!” Mac said. “Not the way I tell him stories, like about L. C. Poiter. And not with his mama getting him in bed by nine-thirty, and then up with him at five-thirty to run.”

“It good you got hep wit the boy.”

Mac realized that Cannonball was asking for work. He knew he’d soon need a backup man he could depend on, in the gym and in the corner, someone who knew the mysteries of the game and would be there when blood was flowing. He’d thought of Cannonball as his first choice anyway, had already talked about him to Puddin.

Mac said, “Puddin’s turning pro after the Games, whatever happens. You think you might have time to work with us?”

“Hell yeah.”

“We’ll make Not Long our home base, you want.”

“Damn straight. I can get heavies in to work wit ’im for you, and Puddin be my draw. Before a fight, I can charge peoples fifty cent to watch him work.”

Mac knew Cannonball mentioned the fifty cents because he wanted Mac to talk money. “Tell you what,” said Mac. “Work with us in the gym and in the corner, you get ten percent off the top of my trainer’s ten percent, which is ten percent off the top of what Puddin’ll make.”

“You make a million, what I get?”

“A hundred thousand.”

Cannonball wanted to be sure. “Big bills or small?”

“Whatever blows your skirts up.”

Cannonball nodded several times while looking at the hardwood floor. In little more than a whisper, he said, “No way I’ma die now.”

It was 5:45 on Monday, April 27, 1992. Malik wanted some git-back, so they agreed to meet on Wednesday the 29th at four o’clock for more sparring. The next day, Tuesday, Puddin would work the mitts with Mac. He’d get a bus west on Vernon to Normandie. Mac would wait for him there, and drive him down Normandie to Not Long. Puddin would later take the bus home from Normandie and Vernon, but if it was raining, or if time was a problem, Mac would drive him to the señora’s, where they’d both eat.

Either way, Mac would double back down Normandie past Not Long to Florence to avoid traffic. He’d head east from there to the nearby on-ramp, where he’d pick up the Harbor Freeway to Gardena, the poker town he lived in just south of L.A. This day, he would pass through the Normandie and Florence intersection at 6:45. From there it was another forty-five minutes before he got home. He liked Gardena because of its Japanese, Chinese and Korean restaurants.

It would be at Florence and Normandie, forty-nine hours and one minute later—6:46 P.M. on April 29, 1992—that white truck driver Reginald Denny would have his skull fractured in ninety-one places by Damian “Football” Williams, among others, bits of Denny’s skull piercing his honky brain.

As Cannonball and Mac shook hands on their deal, a black woman built like a defensive back strutted through the door and began handing out leaflets to Malik’s wives and other spectators as well—many of them old men who sat around all day telling lies and playing checkers on boards so old the red and black squares were difficult to make out. The woman glared at people as she handed them the white sheets. “Do you know who you are?” she demanded. “
Do you really know?”