HARD ROAD (FIGHT CARD)

by Jack Tunney

  Boyle smiled. “You’re a cool one, huh?”

  “Cool like Elvis,” I said.

  Michael Boyle stared across the table at me. He leaned forward on his elbows and pressed his fingers together. Then he turned to Tommy Domino.

  “Do whatever it takes to make this fight work,” he said.

  ROUND NINE

  Ginny’s office was in a ten story building around the corner from the restaurant, right off Walnut Street. The uniformed elevator operator nodded politely when I stepped in and told him where I was going, but kept his eyes straight ahead until he stopped on her floor.

  The office was filled with the same kind of guys who had been in the restaurant, smoking cigarettes and putting down two or three Scotch and waters over lunch. Now they moved past the doorway, carrying files and papers and focused on whatever it was that they did at their desks.

  When I told her I was there to see Ginny, the receptionist gave me a polite smile and pointed towards one of the seats in the waiting area. I’d been up to meet Ginny once or twice before and she never seemed to mind, but this time was different. She kept me waiting almost half an hour until she came out. She greeted me with a hard stare and barely offered a cheek to kiss.

  When I told her the contracts for the fight had been signed, her mood darkened even more.

  She had been carrying an armful of folders and files and she squeezed them tight against her blouse.

  “I cannot believe you took this fight,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “We talked about this,” I said. “Told you what I was going to do.”

  “And I told you how I felt.”

  The receptionist glanced up from her desk. I took Ginny by the elbow and steered her towards a corner of the room.

  “It’s a good opportunity,” I said. “Michael Boyle’s a ranked contender. It’s a good fight. A good payday. And a chance to take a big step.

  “It’s a big deal,” I added. “We talked about this.”

  “I can’t talk about this right now,” Ginny said. “I have to get back to work.”

  I nodded and offered a smile. “Okay. I get it. No big deal.”

  “My boss doesn’t like any of the girls to have visitors. And they watch the clock all the time,” she said. “I only get a fifteen minute break and I already took mine earlier this afternoon.”

  “I just wanted to share this with you.”

  Ginny stared at me. “You should have called. That would have been better.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  “We can talk about it tonight,” she said. “But I can’t have you waiting around here and I really have to get back to work.”

  She smiled but there wasn’t much to it.

  I watched her walk back towards the inner office, smiling curtly at the receptionist before turning the corner and disappearing out of sight. I stared after her then started towards the elevators.

  “Have a nice day,” I said to the receptionist.

  “You’re the boxer, aren’t you?” she asked. “The one Virginia’s been seeing.”

  I nodded.

  “How’s that going for you?”

  I smiled. “It’s going fine,” I said. “Things are looking up.”

  She gave me a perky smile and said, “Well that’s so nice. Good for you!”

  I only wished Ginny felt that same way.

  ROUND TEN

  When I first broke into prize fighting, the old timers told me boxing was the only sport where you sit around doing nothing until something happened.

  But by then you had run out of time.

  Once the contract to fight Michael Boyle was signed the clock started ticking. The fight still had to be approved and sanctioned by the National Boxing Association, but Tommy Domino told us not to worry about that. It seems he had that angle covered and approval was just a formality. Nothing was going to stand in our way.

  The fight was the main event of the undercard – the number two bout on the fight card that night; right before the bout between Willie Pastrano and Nino Valdez. That was the heavyweight battle people had been talking about for months and the promoters were expecting crowds from as far away as Boston and as for south as DC. Maybe even some of the A-listers playing at the 500 Club and Babette’s, like Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, and Joey Bishop would stop by. Maybe a chance that Frank Sinatra would show up.

  I was fighting in the Big Room at the Traymore Hotel.

  It was the big time.

  We only had ten days before the weigh-in and there was no time to spare and no time to waste. It felt like only yesterday that I had been in the ring against Big Jake Krupa. Normally, I would have needed a couple of days to recover. Time for the aches and pains to disappear. Time for the cuts to heal and the bruises to fade. Now there was no time for that. No time to rest.

  I was heading to Atlantic City on a Trailways Bus to take on Michael Boyle.

  I felt like I could take on the world.

  “It’s not even two weeks,” I said. “Be home by Monday afternoon at the latest.”

  Mr. Barbetto adjusted the cape around my shoulders and smoothed out the wrinkles before spinning around my chair so I faced the mirror.

  It was mid-week and the barbershop was quiet. Only an old neighborhood guy asleep in a corner chair with a magazine clutched in his hand and Pete, the Negro teenager who swept the floors and emptied the trash. Mr. Barbetto was a skinny little guy with slicked back hair, squinty eyes, and the fastest hands that ever worked a comb and scissors.

  He ran a comb through my pompadour and pointed at my reflection with his scissors.

  “How you want it cut?” he asked.

  “Just like Eddie Cochran,” I said.

  He gave me the same look I got every time I said that. By now I would have thought he would have known what I meant.

  I smiled and said, “The usual. Short on the sides. Long on top and in the back.”

  He went to work, clipping and combing. “I seen Nino Valdez beat Hurricane Jackson a couple years back. Knocked him down three times in the second round,” he said. “Big Nino is one tough cookie.

  “After that fight Rocky Marciano wanted no part of him,” he added. “Took a couple of bouts against Ezzard Charles instead, rather than face Nino.”

  He worked his way around my ears with the scissors. “This is a big fight for you, huh?”

  I nodded but he placed a hand on the back of my neck to stop me from moving. “Kind of fight that can make my career,’ I said. “It’s a big deal.”

  Mr. Barbetto kept working with the scissors, gliding them effortlessly over my head. Finally he stopped and said, “People around here see how hard you work. Always training. Never giving up.

  “You make the neighborhood proud,” he said.

  “It’s only for two weeks.” I told my landlady.

  Mrs. Esposito stood in the hallway wiping her hands on her pink apron. She was a heavyset woman with hair piled high in a beehive of curlers and bobby pins. The only thing bigger than her mountain of hair was the smile that lit up her face when she saw me. The door to her apartment was open and the smells of sausage, peppers, onions, and garlic drifted from the kitchen. I could hear a Mario Lanza song playing on the radio, and Mrs. Esposito’s parakeets chirping from their cage in the living room. Her cat Tiger rubbed against my ankles and weaved between my legs.

  “So nice of you to tell me,” she said. She motioned me inside. “Can I fix you a plate? Some sausage and peppers? A little pasta, maybe?”

  I shook my head. “Thank you, but I can’t,” I said. “I have a big fight and need to make weight. Have to be careful about what I eat.”

  “Such a dangerous business,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Wanted to let you know that I won’t be around,” I said.

  She smiled. “You’re such a nice boy, Roberto,” she said. “Coming down to tell me.”

  “I don’t want you to worry, Mrs. Esposito.”

 
; “Always thinking of me,” she said. “Your mother must be so proud. Such a good son.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I worry about you,” Mrs. Esposito said. “Such a dangerous life for a good boy like you. You need to settle down. Marry that pretty little girl from down the street and raise a family.”

  I smiled. “Soon, Mrs. Esposito,” I said. “Soon.”

  “It’s only two weeks,” I told Ginny. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “You know how I feel,” she said.

  I knew how she felt- there was no mystery about that.

  We had talked about it ever since she got home from work. There was nothing more to say about fighting Michael Boyle, Uncle Manny, or the job in his butcher shop that hadn’t already been said but that didn’t stop her from saying it anyway. The door had barely closed behind me before Ginny unloaded on me. She came at me with both barrels for three quarters of an hour before the conversation faded.

  We sat on the couch, holding hands in silence. Her mother was rattling pots and pans in the kitchen but the smells coming from her oven didn’t quite match the aromas from Mrs. Esposito’s apartment. Ginny’s father hadn’t been seen in over an hour. He disappeared into the bathroom before I got there.

  “Two weeks isn’t that long,” I added.

  “Long enough,” Ginny said.

  “This will be a great payday,” I said. “Ten grand for two weeks’ worth of work. It takes some guys two years to make that kind of money. Twice as much as some guy working at the soup factory over in Camden can make.”

  “Yea, but the guy working at the soup factory doesn’t take his life in his own hands,” she said. “Doesn’t risk being killed.”

  “I can buy that pretty ring you had your eye on. The one we looked at last year.”

  She shrugged and stared across the living room.

  “I can put down some money on a place of my own, and stop paying rent,” I said. “Buy a new Chevy. Maybe even a Corvette.”

  “You can buy a nice plot in the cemetery and a pretty marble headstone,” Ginny said.

  “It’s two weeks,” I said. “Two weeks. Then we can talk about Uncle Manny and about boxing and a shot at Sugar Ray. You can wait two weeks.

  “You know, you can come down to visit me,” I added. “Take the bus out of Reading Terminal on Sunday. We can spend the afternoon together. Take a walk on the boardwalk and have an early dinner.”

  Ginny shook her head from side to side. ”I cannot spend the night with you in Atlantic City,” she shot back in a hushed voice. “That’s just not done.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Really, Roberto,” she went on. “It’s not the proper thing to do - what would my mother say?”

  “Just come down for the day,” I said. “I’ll have you back on the bus by nine o’clock and you’ll be home before midnight.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll have a great time. When’s the last time you were in Atlantic City?”

  “I said, we’ll see,” Ginny repeated. After a minute she gave my hand a little squeeze. “It might be a nice day out.”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “I’ll talk to my mother,” she said. “Maybe she’ll want to come. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  I closed my eyes. “Wonderful.”

  ROUND ELEVEN

  I tossed my bag in the luggage rack and took a window seat near the back of the bus while Frankie slid into a seat across the aisle. He settled back with copies of Ring Magazine and The Inquirer and I slid the window open, letting the breeze cool the sweat on my face.

  Ray Gold had already gone down to Atlantic City earlier that morning to get rooms and make arrangements for us to train at one of the gyms. Making sure there were no surprises and that everything we needed was in place. The only thing we had to do was get out of Philly on time.

  The bus went across the new Walt Whitman Bridge that had opened a few weeks earlier, crossing the Delaware not far from my South Philly neighborhood. The heavy smell of distilled whiskey from the Seagram’s plant on the other side of the river filled the bus and all the other passengers quickly slammed their windows shut. Not me. I sucked in deep breaths and let the smell fill my lungs. I loved that about Philly. Sometimes on a clear day I could go up on the roof of my building and take in the burning odor of distilled whiskey and the strong stench of malted barley fermenting at the local brewery. There was something about those smells that felt good to me.

  I stared out the window and watched as the bus rumbled down the White Horse Pike through towns like Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, and Hammonton. Places I had heard about but never visited.

  When we stopped at a rest stop west of Egg Harbor, I picked up a copy of The Evening Bulletin, hoping to find something about my fight with Boyle.

  There was nothing. It was disappointing but not surprising.

  I didn’t expect the writers to pick it up. The big news was Valdez and Pastrano, and nobody was writing about that fight until a day or two before it happened. The only ones who cared about the Boyle-Varga fight were me and Michael Boyle. But when I was done and the fight was over, I was going to make people care about me.

  I knew I could beat him in a fair fight. And that was going to be just what I needed to write my own ticket.

  The bus pulled into Atlantic City in the late afternoon and Frankie and I grabbed a cab downtown to our hotel on South Chelsea Avenue. It wasn’t much of a place – kind of run down and seedy, a block off the ocean, and my room was up four flights of stairs - but Gold liked it because it was cheap. It was also close to the YMCA where he had rented out space for me to train.

  “Why here?” I asked. “What about the Claridge? Or the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall? Those are nice places.”

  “You here on vacation?”

  I looked around my room. The wallpaper was curling in spots. There was a water stain on the ceiling that seemed to grow in size the longer we looked at it. The drapes were thick with dust and the carpet was covered in cigarette burns and stains.

  “No,” I said. “But it would be nice to have a place that doesn’t smell like the bottom of a garbage can.”

  “This is good enough,” Gold said. “You’re not here to catch a tan and relax in the salt air. You’re here to get ready for the fight.

  “Besides,” he added. “Those places cost big money.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad to spend a couple of extra dollars on a nice hotel,” I muttered.

  “You want to come here to see a show, eat taffy and splash in the ocean, you do it after the fight,” he said. “No time to go running around town. You’re here to train.”

  At least the YMCA wasn’t so bad.

  It was in a fifty year old building on Pacific Avenue, not more than a couple of blocks from my hotel. Twenty bucks a day got us a large room- big enough for a makeshift ring with an apron, posts, and ropes, plus it had a body bag, speed bag, some weights, and a couple of floor mats where I could do sit-ups. There were a handful of jump ropes and some medicine balls that looked older than Ray. A row of bleachers against one wall could be pulled out to let people sit and watch or pushed in to open more space. The showers had hot water, there was a supply of clean towels, and a water fountain with cold water.

  The first thing Gold did was hire a young kid from the local Boys Club to sit at the gym doors with a small cigar box and a sign that read: “Twenty five cents to enter.”

  “Why do I have to pay?” a teenager asked. He was a tough kid in jeans and a white tee shirt with a pack of smokes rolled up in the sleeve, slicked back hair, mean expression, and attitude to match.

  “Everybody pays,” he was told. “You want to watch the workout, you got to pay a quarter.”

  “I didn’t come to watch nobody.”

  “Then don’t come in.”

  “I just want to take a leak.”

  “Okay.” The kid at the cash box pointed towards the lo
cker room.

  “The john’s in there. But it costs a quarter to get in to use it.”

  “I ain’t got no quarter.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to piss in the gutter, huh?”

  The kid dropped a quarter in the box and wandered inside, muttering and mumbling to himself. Ray Gold stood off to the side and smiled.

  “I like this kid,” he said to no one in particular.

  There was something different about being in the gym when you were getting ready for a fight. Everything had a purpose. There was a reason to jump rope or hit the weights or work the bags - without a fight you were just killing time and staying in shape. But once that fight was staring you in the face everything changed. Every punch and movement mattered.

  Everything you did was important.

  It had been a good session, at least for the first day. Jumping rope to start off, then time on the speed bag before hitting the heavy bag and getting in the ring for some sparring. Then back to the heavy bag. Normally before a fight I would increase the number of hours I sparred, building day by day until I was in peak form right before getting in the ring on fight night. But this time it was different. That Jake Krupa fight was barely a week behind me so there wasn’t much to build towards. We had to take a new approach.

  “Want to work on speed and movement,” Frankie told me. ‘This guy Boyle is a banger. Likes to fight close, but he has a long reach, so it makes it hard to keep your distance.”

  I got that.

  “Reason he hurt you that first fight was because you let him get inside,” he said.

  “Reason he hurt me is because he loaded his gloves,” I said.

  Frankie’s expression soured and his face curled into a frown.

  “Don’t matter what he did or didn’t do to his gloves,” he said. “He still got close enough to hit you. You don’t get busted up if he don’t connect with no punches.”