Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales

by Budd Schulberg

  That was the first time it happened. I wish I could say, for Shirley’s sake, that it was the last. But Billy had a big year that year, knocking off the three leading contenders and after every spectacular win he could be found at a front table at the Waikiki Club, an expensive trap his new managers owned a piece of. Those two grifters also saw to it that he became acquainted with the ladies of the chorus. I guess it was just a case of too much happening all at once. Overnight a smalltown punk was the Big Town’s hero. His paynight for the last closed circuit was a million six. You need something special to take seven-figure money in stride.

  The third time it happened I sat it out with Shirley. “Why don’t you divorce the bum?” I said. “You’ve got too much on the ball to let this little son-of-a-bitch kick you around like this.”

  But Shirley shook her head just the way I had seen before, in West Liberty, Oklahoma City and points east. “No, Windy, that’s not what I want,” she said. “I’ve got to stay with Billy.”

  Well, there’s only been one fighter who could hit the late spots and keep on winning, and Kid Bonnard was good but he wasn’t Harry Greb. His fourth time out after winning the title he ran into a tartar in the person of José Ribera, a young, tough Mexican who had been doing his training on Fourteenth Street while Billy was doing his in the discos. The Kid had never taken my advice to master the finer points of the manly art and up till this night youth and speed and strength and a murderous left hook had carried him through. But some of Billy’s zip had obviously been left behind in the Waikiki. By the end of the third round Ribera was giving The Kid the same kind of treatment Monk Wilson had handed him back in O.C. Only this time Billy had nothing left for an emergency. Somehow he managed to go the distance but he was out on his feet at the final bell.

  No matter how many marks I had against him, it was kind of tough to have to watch The Kid slide off the stool onto the canvas after the ref raised Ribera’s hand. There was so much pride in him, so much cockiness and bounce that it just didn’t seem right to see him lying there while Ribera’s handlers carried the new champion around the ring on their shoulders. Billy’s left foot was shaking a little bit. I always hated that.

  I went back to the dressing room to see if there was anything I could do. The Kid had one eye shut tight and an egg-shaped swelling over the other one. He was sitting on the rubbing table with his head bent low, a trainer pressing ice against the egg. Moran and Fay were telling him what a bum he was. They had nothing to worry about because the way they had it rigged, they would own a piece of Ribera if he won the title.

  The Kid was in no mood for the Waikiki that night. “Where you wanna go?” I said. “Where d’ya think?” he said. “Back to Shirley’s.” When she took him into her arms, The Kid began to cry. She put him to bed and put cold compresses on his head to reduce the swelling. When I dropped around the next night to see how everything was getting along, The Kid was still in bed and Shirley was clucking around him like a contented hen. “Windy,” The Kid said, “Shirley wants me to go back with you again. How about getting me a rematch with Ribera? I want to win my title back.”

  Well, The Kid had run out on me twice, but if that’s what Shirley wanted, I figured I’d give it one more shot. So I lined up a couple of tune-ups with tomato-cans Billy could knock over without working up a sweat, even a Billy who had lost a step or two. I saw how those bums could drop a right hand on The Kid because he wasn’t moving his head to the right when he jabbed. And when I yelled at him what he was doing wrong, instead of learning, all he did was get mad. But the last thing to go is the punch, and Billy had a left hook in a class with Raging Bull Jake LaMotta’s, if you go back that far. That, and instinctively knowing how to finish opponents once he had them hurt, put KO’s in his record that made up for the lack of finesse. A banger from the old school is what he was. A dancing master, a Sugar Ray Leonard, forget it.

  Anyway, I finally signed the Ribera rematch, for a bundle. Big press conference at the Trump Plaza and all the honchos from HBO talking about the ratings and somehow Don King is in the picture too, calling it The Battle of the Little Giants. I don’t let on, but I’m a little excited too, because in all the years I knocked around this dirty business, I never had a champion before. A couple of hopefuls looked as if I might be able to build them into contenders, into the elusive come-and-go of the top ten. But I never got them up to the level every manager dreams of—managing a champion of the world.

  And now that I had the tiger I had been looking for all my life, I had him by the tail, or he had me. This fight with José (Little Marvelous) Ribera was the most important in his life. So did that mean he was in the gym every day working his heart out with the best Ribera-like sparring partners I could find for him at a hundred bucks a day? Half the time Billy didn’t show up, and when he was late and I chewed him out, he’d say, “What’s the big deal? I’ll make the weight easy. That Ribera’s a bum. Last time he ran like a thief and stole the fight. This time I’ll cut the ring off, bull him into a corner and beat his brains out.”

  “Vegas has it almost three to one for Ribera, and the writers at your workouts are saying you look like you’re in slo-mo.”

  “Fuck the writers. I beat Ribera the first time. I was robbed.”

  “Well, this is next time, Billy. And this Ribera is working like a son-of-a-bitch. Like his life depends on it. Which it does.”

  “Go over to Gallagher’s, have yourself a T-bone and three or four belts, then a nice relaxing blow-job, stop worrying about Ribera, relax a little.”

  “In other words train like you’ve been training,” I said.

  “Look, Windy, don’t be a pain in the ass. Did you see the look on Ribera the first time I gave him that shot to the body?” He threw a furious left hook that stopped just half an inch away from my belt.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” I said. “And I saw the second shot, and the third one. So what happens? Ribera gets smart, keeps circling away from the left and cops the decision.”

  “Robbed,” Billy said. “Maybe fixed.”

  “Well, they won’t have to fix this one,” I said. “You’re doing a pretty good job fixing yourself.”

  It was even worse than I thought. That night Shirley called me and said it was almost midnight and Billy wasn’t home yet. Would I mind tracking him down for her?

  Some tracking down. I cabbed right over to the Waikiki and there was our boy, living it up with a couple of hookers and the free-loaders for whom fighters like Billy have a fatal attraction, and vice versa.

  “Come on, Billy, you’re comin’ home to Momma.”

  “In a pig’s ass,” said Billy.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Billy, I thought you only tied one on after the fight—when you won.”

  I tried to pull him away from the table. One side of me wanted to leave him there and try to spring Shirley from this little son-of-a-bitch, but the other side was a manager who saw his championship slipping away.

  I grabbed him and pulled him harder. His new pals were getting up. Waiters were coming over. A mess.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Windy. Go get a blow-job like I told you. Ribera is nothing. Bums I knocked out in O.C. could lick Ribera.”

  “Goddamn it, Billy, you’re my one shot at a title, all my life the first shot and you’re blowing it, baby, you’re blowing it!”

  I pulled him to his feet and he pulled back, then before I knew it I slapped him and he went crazy and threw a punch for real, only I know a little boxing and I slipped it, just like I tried to teach him, and he hit a pillar behind him, and I could see the pain go from his knuckles up his arm to his shoulder.

  Next morning the left hand, the one I lovingly called “Jakey” for Jake LaMotta, is so swollen it looks like a sixteen-ouncer for the amateurs.

  I go to the boxing mavens of HBO and plead my case, and try to get help from Don King, who drowns me in words of four and five syllables which all add up to “No way.” It’s not like the old days when an injury is
an injury and you get the postponement. This is show business, showbiz with blood, but still show business. There have been promos for weeks on TV across the country, and it’s in TV Guide, and there are advertisers to worry about, it’s like a big TV special, only it’s a live fight.

  So there I was, going down the aisle to the ring in Convention Hall, which should have been one of the highlights of my career, and now it felt more like I was escorting myself to my own execution. And what hurt the most was here I was with the first world champion I ever had, and also the first kid I handled in all my years I ever had to fight physically, and then sucker him into breaking the hand he may have been able to stop Ribera with, even if he has trained with all the dedication of a Harry Greb or a Maxie Baer.

  Comes round one, Ribera is doing a number on The Kid, until twenty seconds before the bell, when the Mexican flash gets careless, and Billy lets the left go, whack! I can feel the pain shooting all the way up Billy’s arm, to his shoulder and into his brain. But Ribera feels the pain too, he’s down on all fours, with a silly grin on his face. He’s up at nine, barely, and has enough ring-smarts left to grab Billy and tie him up, and the ref is pushing his way between them when the bell gives Ribera a minute’s rest.

  That’s all he needs, because Billy only had that one shot with his left, he’s resting it against his chest in round two, helpless now, like going into battle without a gun. He’s got a nasty cut over his left eye and his left hand is like a dead cat lying there on his knee and he’s already out of gas from not enough road work and too much Waikiki.

  “I’m stopping the fight,” I told him. “Say you broke your hand on his head in round one. Save a little face.”

  “You stop this fight, I’ll finish what I started in that joint.” I could barely make out what Billy was saying. I used all of Angelo Dundee’s tricks and a few of my own to close the cut, and it felt like thirty seconds instead of a full minute when the bell sent Billy back to the slaughter. Ribera knew about the left hand now, and he could see how The Kid was trying to breathe through his nose. He caught him in a five-six-seven combination, and Billy’s mouthpiece went flying, and then Ribera was all over him, and there was The Kid knocked cold for the first time in his life. The referee counted to ten, a number I never bet, on horses or casinos, and when we lifted Billy up he didn’t know the fight was over and tore after Ribera, who tried to give him the winner’s consolation hug and almost got kneed in the balls for his troubles.

  In the dressing room I brought him back to his lovable self with smelling salts, and then the doc sewed up the gashes over both eyes. What a mess. His jaw was swollen and his ego was shrunk.

  “Well, Kid,” I couldn’t resist saying because I really wanted to kill him, “maybe we’ll hit the Waikiki, cheer you up a little.”

  The Kid made a face when they sewed him up, and a little moan went out of him when the doc barely touched the swollen left hand. When he heard what I said he didn’t think it was funny. “I go home to Shirley.”

  The Kid was over the peak now and going down fast. I got him the best bone doctor for his hand, and three months’ rest, but he broke it again the first time he threw it for real. Looks like I had really fixed him, or he fixed himself, that last night in the Waikiki. But the Kid found another doctor, and tried again. He couldn’t believe it was over. They never do. He took some awful pastings while we tried to convince him that it was time to rack up. But every time he got beat he’d go right home to Shirley and she’d patch him up, make him comfortable, fuss over him and nurse him back to health.

  When Billy finally hung up the gloves, back in O.C., after some new black kid out of the amateurs left him for dead, they decided to settle down there. The Kid must be crowding thirty now but he still rides that motorcycle. Actually, if you ask me, he’s living off Shirley, but to hear her tell it he’s developing a couple of comers who are about to make them a million bucks. Well, maybe so. When you’ve got that much faith and heart, I guess anything can happen. But talking to Billy, I could see his speech was a little funny. Made you wonder how he’ll be five years down the road.

  The other day I dropped over to the restaurant where she’s a waitress again. “Hi, Shirley,” I said. “How’s every little thing?”

  She wasn’t a trim featherweight anymore, closer to super-lightweight, but I still had the hots for her.

  “Just fine, Windy,” she said. “You ought to come up and have dinner with Billy and me some night. We just moved into the cutest little apartment.”

  I knew what that meant. They had dropped down a peg to a one-room flat with kitchenette. I’ve got two or three pretty good prospects, including an honest-to-God white heavyweight, which as you know is an endangered species. A white contender could put me back in the chips again, like I was with Billy the Kid. So if Shirley had stuck with me she’d have somebody looking out for her, instead of having to hustle for tips and handle the come-ons, living on lean street with a burned-out Billy Bonnard.

  But the funny part of the whole deal is, even if I figure she’s winding up with a loser, who can only get worse as the years roll by, and the brain damage really getting to him by age forty—in my daydreams I see her pushing him in a wheelchair and he’s still giving her a hard time—but she’ll never see it that way. The funny part is, she’s happy.

  THE HOWLING

  DOGS OF

  TAXCO

  Worn out by story conferences in which he was invariably overruled by an overbearing producer he feared and needed, fed up with wrangling about money in his separation settlement with his second wife, Rhoda, weary of Hollywood Christmas parties, the inevitable New Year’s Day hangover and even the Rose Bowl game (and the Rose Bowl traffic), Howie Steiner thought there must be a more imaginative, a purer way of celebrating the endless quest for peace on earth and a better tomorrow.

  So, on the advice of Rhoda, who was proud of her modest collection of pre-Columbian art, he went down to Taxco, in the state of Guerrero, in the heart of Old Mexico, to a small hotel that opened on a garden near the plaza. This is more like it, he was thinking, as a waiter brought him a complimentary margarita in the patio. Away from the rat race. For Steiner it was love at first sight: the steep and narrow cobblestone streets, the tiny silver shops, the faded pastel stucco houses, the copper-skinned natives who made the gringo tourists look even pastier than they were, the small but ornate tree-lined plaza that separated Paco’s Bar from the other landmark, the Santa Prisca Cathedral.

  Sunset drew Steiner to the balcony of Paco’s, to watch the light of the sun subtly changing against the rococo facade of the pink cathedral that seemed to sit in benign judgment on the town. Every night there was a pasada, a procession of candle-bearing singers who would call on their neighbors, singing a traditional Christmas hymn until admitted for a festive serving of tropical fruit, Oaxaca cheese, fresh bread and wine before going on to the next little house. Although Steiner was not a Christian, he had always been moved by the ceremony of Christmas. Now watching the pasada slowly ascend the ancient cobblestone steps, with its haunting Mexican carols and its candles flickering in the soft evening air, he felt he had discovered the heart of the true Christmas season.

  One evening in the plaza Steiner was reading on a park bench when an urchin came up to him—maybe ten years old, ragged, barefoot, his skin the dark, unpolished bronze of the true Guerrero Indian. His eyes were deep brown, intense, so beautiful they seemed to have been painted by Diego Rivera. In his hand was a crude stone object, a caricature of a face with an intimidating nose and, in place of hair, what looked like corncobs rising from the top of its head.

  “Meester,” the boy said, “very old. I find in cave. Only five dollar.”

  Steiner turned the stone head around in his hands. He had been interested in archaeology ever since taking Archy I and II at N.Y.U. Especially Mexican archaeology. He had even flirted with the idea of going into archaeology, but an early marriage, a flair for writing and a chance opening through a friend from the N.Y.
U. film school had brought him to Hollywood.

  “Five dollars!” Steiner said, “Chico, you’re a little thief.” He had almost memorized his small Terry’s Guide dictionary.

  “Ladrón!”

  “Hokay,” the barefoot salesman said with a practiced smile, “two dollar.”

  “It’s not worth twenty-five cents. No vale nada.”

  The boy pleaded with his almost irresistible dark eyes, then finally with a shrug moved on to another gringo prospect. Steiner went back to his book—he was reading Mexico South by the painter-illustrator and self-taught archaeologist Miguel Covarrubias. The book drew Steiner into the vivid, visionary world of the jaguar and the serpent, of the enlightened god Quetzalcoatl, at once white and human, and the feathered serpent; and his ferocious rival from the north, the bloodthirsty invader Quitzilopoctli.