“He ate of our beans and drank our whiskey. That makes him enough of one of us that the code applies. I demand satisfaction!” Felchin’ Rick stood up and went to the other side of the box car, where he began taking off his frayed gloves and one of his jackets.
I smiled nervously. “What does he mean?”
“Well, he’s got a right to satisfaction,” said Jim again. The others nodded.
“What does that mean?”
Jim stood and put out his hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me up. “Plainly, it means he gets to fight you.”
“What? Fight me?”
“Not to the death or nothin',” said Jim. “We ain’t savages. Hobo Code says we should be gentlemen. It's just bare knuckle boxing. He may get to mess up yer face a bit if he’s lucky.” He paused. “Or yer unlucky, I guess.”
I looked over to where Rick was stretching out. He jumped from one foot to another with his fists in front of him in an unintentional parody of nineteenth century boxing. I turned to Jim. “So what are the rules? Is there a ref? Who says when it starts?”
I turned back to look at Rick for just a second, long enough to be on the receiving end of a painful punch to my gut. I doubled over in pain as Rick danced away.
“Whenever he wants it to start,” said Jim. “Hobo boxing ain’t got a lot of rules.”
I struggled to take a breath while keeping track of Rick. I gasped – he had just barely knocked the wind out of me. Slowly I straightened back up, drawing breath as I could. I finally caught my breath just in time for Rick to come at me again. I barely dodged, practically falling backwards with my arms flailing wildly. I caught myself before I fell backwards completely and regained my balance. I had no time to act, as Rick came at me again.
This time he aimed his punch at my head. He narrowly missed, but ripped tatters from his sleeve whipped across my face. I don’t know what filth they were covered in, but my eyes burned. I stumbled, clutching my eyes. I couldn't open them without the pain beginning anew. I rubbed them, desperately trying to clean them of the foul stuff, but I was interrupted by another punch to the gut. I staggered again, but remained standing.
I was blind. My eyes were watering, which alleviated the pain, but I couldn’t see. It’s a funny cliché that when you lose one of your senses that the others become enhanced, compensating for the missing sense. I had heard that so many times on TV that I now desperately needed it to be true. I went through all my senses. I tried to listen for Felchin’ Rick, but the sound of the train rattling made it hard to hear anything of value. The ride was rocky enough that I couldn’t feel any meaningful vibrations when Rick moved. Instead, something in me resorted to the last option I had: my sense of smell. Even after two hours with these gentlemen, my nose had not yet become completely numb to their stench. Instead, if anything, it had become more discriminating. I had begun to tell the stench of one of these men from the others. There was the garbage-dumpster-mixed-with-rotten-lemon smell of one, the rotten-egg-mixed-with-meat smell of another. All I had to do was differentiate.
It was a Zen-like moment as I stood there, turning my head to sniff the air. I tried to sniff the ebb and flow of the different scents, separating them out into trails of unique stenches. Later Jim would tell me that Rick paused, unsure of what I was doing. Something in the way I stood confused him. I wasn't admitting defeat, I wasn't flailing my arms, I just stood there stretching out a lesser used sense. But this didn't last. Eventually my opponent bored of watching me and decided to once again go on the offensive. However, by that moment, I was ready. I had caught his scent, a wry combination of vomit and babyshit. My nose followed it as he feinted right, then left. Somewhere in my mind I saw the opportunity and I took it. I put everything I had into a right-handed uppercut.
I felt it connect with a great crack. I had hit him! Well, I knew I had hit something. But in putting everything into the punch, I had overextended myself. I went stumbling across the car and fell to the floor. I hurt more than ever.
I lay there on the floor, exhausted and empty. On the floor, I ached in every spot Rick had hit me. I was spent. It was over. I had nothing left to fight with. My ears were ringing, so I could hear nothing but the rattle of the train. I waited for the inevitable attack from Rick - a kick, a strike, or him grabbing my shirt so he had a better angle to punch my face. But no attack came. Slowly my tearing eyes cleared up. A minute later I could finally see.
I looked up to see most of the men standing around the body of an unconscious Felchin’ Rick. Only Swearing Jim stood by me. He offered me his hand and helped me up again. As they saw me standing, the other men came and stood around me, patting my shoulder and congratulating me.
I had won.
“That’s a helluva punch you got there,” said Jim with a toothy smile and a strange twinkle in his eye. He looked friendly, but also there was something else I couldn't read in his look.
“I guess,” I said. “I’ve never really had to hit someone like that.”
“Maybe you should,” he said. “Have you ever considered boxing?”
We talked it over that night what my boxing name should be. When Rick woke up, he said no hard feelings and helped us think of a name. He was the one who came up with our first idea. I would be called Left Hook Collins. I protested that neither my first nor last name was Collins, but Swearing Jim said it didn’t matter. I also pointed out that the punch which got his attention was actually a right hook. “Shh,” he said, “That’s where we’ll get the element of surprise!”
This name lasted until my first bare knuckle hobo boxing fight in Georgia. It turns out that there had already been a fighter in years gone by named Left Hook Colm, so it wouldn’t be right to call me that. Swearing Jim cursed but then nodded, remembering the man.
“Why can't I be called that? “ I said. “We would be honoring Left Hook Colm.”
“No,” said Jim. “Left Hook Colm had to have his left arm amputated due to diabetes complications. Now we call him Short Reach Henderson. Left Hook Collins would jus' remind him of what he had lost. And a man who loses one arm becomes that much more vicious which his other. Provided he’s an honorable man and don’t hit nobody with the stump. And Short Reach ain’t no honorable man.”
“So would I have to fight Short Reach Henderson?” I asked.
“God, no! Amputee boxing is a whole ‘nother league. You ain’t prepared to get in the ring with their likes. You wouldn’t last five seconds. No, just keep to two armed boxing. You’ll be fine. We just need a new name for you.”
“Can’t I just use my own name?”
Swearing Jim’s laugh rang out across the night. Hobos from the other side of the camp even turned to look. “No, son, you can’t use yer own name. That ain’t the hobo way.”
"The hobo way seems overly complicated," I said.
"Don't be criticizing the hobo way," he said sternly. "The hobo way has kept order for over a century. You don't jus' drop a thing like that cause of complications. We need a new moniker for you."
“Well, let me think for a while and I'll come up with something good," I said.
“Also wrong,” said Jim. “Hobo names aren’t chosen, they’re given. We’ve got to give you a name.”
“But all your names are stupid,” I pointed out. “It’s like you thought of them while sniffing paint fumes.”
He looked at me in surprise. "How did you know that? That's a long kept hobo secret! Who told? Was it on 60 Minutes? They sure do some good journalism there, when they’re not answering to their alien masters on the conspiracy to remove all pudding from local markets and transfer it to the global banks. Their investigative reporting borders on witchcraft.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense. You might as well have put any collection of words there that also made a sentence.”
He gave me a rough pat on the back. “Now yer learning our ways!”
Later that night, he dubbed me Tennessee Tex Tornado. I was knighted with it by Swearing Jim using a wooden
spoon that was still dripping with mulligan soup.
I still hate that name.
Fightin' Montage
July, 1994 - Various Places, USA
Newly dubbed with my appropriate hobo boxing moniker, I began a violent period of my life. For a few weeks I fought men not out of desperation, not out of malice, not for money, and not for safety. I broke noses to the roar of the crowd for a little thing known as Sport.
Under Swearing Jim's wing, we rode the rails. Each night, we'd travel to a place outside of town and not far from the tracks where hobos congregated at night. These were the standard spots where hobos came for company and rest, but on these nights many more came to see the fights.
After that first fight, it was easier. I'm not sure if I had more confidence or if the expectations of Jim and the crowd made it natural. When I fought Felchin' Rick, I was going against the grain of all expectations. Now it was what everyone wanted. I won my second fight, my third, and none of it ever seemed difficult. I won fight after fight and travelled to so many places that the whole experience is one long blur of trains, punches, and victories. Imagine an Eighties montage of “You’re the Best” by Joe Esposito with me punching hobos and them crumpling to the floor. The montage and music are very important to that image. Otherwise, I look like a psychopath who likes beating up homeless people for fun. That’s not true.
It was only a little fun.
Swearing Jim acted as my manager. I think he was taking bets on me, but I couldn’t be sure. I do know that my opponent sometimes changed minutes before the match. I believe that these changes were related to Jim’s boasts and bets – he claimed I could beat someone in a higher hobo weight class, and suddenly I was fighting a seven foot tall hobo with a scarred face. Luckily, nobody expected that Tennessee Tex Tornado had a very nasty and surprising right hook, since it wasn’t in his name. I may have been small and wiry, but I have always been a tricky bastard.
After a few weeks of fighting, I had received quite a bit of renown in the hobo community and Jim seemed to be rich – in hobo terms that is. He had one of the biggest hats I’d ever seen. In fact, to call it just a hat would be to understate it. Its essence was a top hat. But somehow this top hat had a bowler hat affixed at an off-kilter angle to the top. It was a serious hat. He had to use straps to keep the hat on his head, since it did not do well with even minor breezes.
I was a much dirtier man for the experience. I had developed my own distinctive stench by which other hobos and dogs knew me. After weeks in their care, I learned that many had developed an almost preternatural sense of smell, much like blood hounds. It seems that some hobo customs are based on the differentiation of the smells of various other hobos. It is such a developed trait that some could even track where another had gone in the camp by simply following the stench trail.
All this fighting was good, but it was not what Jim was aiming for. He did not tell me his goals in managing me, but I knew he wasn't doing it out of pure altruism. He clearly wanted something and had no desire to tell me. I did know we were getting closer to his desire.
After a particularly bruising fight with a boxer by the name of Pummelin’ Paulie Patterson, Swearing Jim had an announcement. I was still a little dizzy from Paulie. Five foot nine inches tall, three feet wide (mostly fat) and Popeye forearms covered with tattoos, Paulie was a tough customer. He couldn’t move fast, but his punches were strong. Body punches did not work on him, as I found my fists connecting with an unpleasantly wet-sounding thud on his fat. Only after I learned to dodge his punches and punch him only in the face (or the strange cut on his stomach that was covered by a Band-Aid) did I win. I was still getting my bearings when Jim gave me the news.
“We’ve been invited to the Tournament of Champeens,” said Jim.
“Wow, that’s an honor,” said Kirby.
We had picked up Kirby after my second fight. Jim knew him and his work. Kirby was known well in the hobo boxing circuit as a former trainer, but he was thought to be a wash up these days. I never heard the story, but I guessed he must have trained someone who lost in a pretty epic fashion. Kirby stayed on as my trainer. When Jim was off arranging matches, it was Kirby that would get me ready for the fight or wipe blood out of my eyes. Kirby was much older than Jim and I, his head almost bald, his gut large though the rest of him thin and gangly. The hair he did have was stark white and jetted out from the side of his head, making him look like a strangely unpainted clown. He was a pleasant fellow, and his thinking was much more coherent and linear that most other hobos.
“What’s this Tournament of Champions?” I asked.
“Champeens,” corrected Kirby.
“That’s just your accent,” I said.
“No,” said Jim, “Champeens.” He handed me a crumpled piece of paper that had all the information on the event. I’ll be damned if everything else scrawled there was spelled correctly, only “Champeens” was misspelled. As if they wanted it that way.
“It says by order of the Emperor,” I said. “I thought you guys didn’t have any organization. Like you were some kind of anarcho-hunter-gatherer society.”
Jim smirked. “That’s jus' what we want you to think.”
“The Emperor is the king of all hobos,” said Kirby. I almost suggested that he should then be called the King, but I let Kirby continue. “While we all have our own business to deal with, at certain times of the year, we all come together for gatherings. The Emperor meets with all the Warlords, and we have a tournament.”
“You have Warlords?” I asked.
“The next gathering is in a few days,” continued Kirby. “It's a bunch of travel to get there. Jim and I had agreed we'd take our time and get there late, so we could fit in a last minute fight against Postman Pete in Chicago, but this changes things.”
Jim nodded. “I’ll make sure they know that fight is cancelled. The tournament is much more important.”
“I guess. Are there rewards?” I asked.
There was a pause as Kirby looked nervously at Jim. “You get to fight in front of the Emperor,” said Kirby. “And if you make it all the way, you get to fight the reigning champeen.”
"The reigning champeen?" I said. "Am I even ready for that?"
Kirby said nothing but instead turned to look at Jim.
“I think you’ll be ready,” said Jim as he looked at me with a strange glimmer in his eyes.
A little later that night, Kirby was helping me clean up after my match. Jim was elsewhere.
"I was a little surprised to hear you called Tennessee Tex Tornado," said Kirby softly.
"Yeah, me too," I said. "It's not really that great a name for me. But Left Hook was taken."
"I expected that Jim would have rejected Tex when it was suggested," said Kirby.
"It was actually Jim that suggested it," I said, grabbing my shirt out of my backpack.
Kirby dropped the bottle of water he was holding and turned to look at me. "Jim suggested it?"
"Yeah," I said. "I said I'd make something up, but he said he had the perfect name. Knighted me with a wooden spoon and everything."
Kirby's lips pursed. "Did he tell you about the last Tennessee Tex Tornado?"
"I didn't even know there was one before me. Wow, so I guess you can't even pick a random hobo name without accidentally picking one already used." I chuckled. "So tell me about the other Tennessee Tex Tornado. Is he going to be mad when he learns I have his name? Will I have to fight him?"
"No," said Kirby sadly. "He's dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to speak ill."
Kirby shook his head. "You didn't know, so you didn't mean to speak ill." He paused for a moment, staring at the ground before his words came out slowly. "I was Tex's trainer."
"Was Jim his manager too?" I asked.
"No, not his manager."
"So you trained him like you're training me?" I asked.
"That and more," he said glumly. "I taught him everything he knew. Got him ready."
&nbs
p; "What happened?" I asked.
"He wasn't ready."
Kirby refused to talk about the subject anymore.
Tournament
July, 1994 - West Texas
The gathering was held in an uninhabited part of west Texas. As we rode in on the train, the summer heat was unbearable. The boxcar door remained open, and I spent most of my time sitting on the edge so that the wind cooled me. I felt like a happy dog with my face in the wind, but the truth was I wasn’t exactly happy. Besides the heat making me miserable, I was nervous about the tournament.
They were only taking the top fighters. In addition to that level of competition, all matches would be in one night. I typically had only fought once a night, maybe twice. With how few fighters were invited, there would only be four matches maximum for me, but that was still more than I was used to.
I watched the scenery go by for hours before Kirby tapped me in the shoulder. The spot was coming up. Unlike the previous fights, the gathering was not being held near a city. This gave the gathering freedom from prying eyes and kept it a secret.
So to get there, we were leaping off the train at a preappointed spot. We were in west Texas where rock formations dotted the scorched earth. The jumping point was when you saw the rock that looked like it was giving the middle finger. When I heard about it, I thought that would be hard to notice, that the rock would only vaguely resemble the obscene gesture. But when I saw it, I’m not sure how anyone could miss it. West Texas was giving you a big old Fuck You as the train went by.
We leapt and rolled onto the parched earth. It was still oppressively hot, but the sun was going down. We’d arrive just in time. The gathering started after dark.
It was night when we reached the site. It was in a basin created by rock and a small creek. It was out of view of anyone other than those looking for it, and the natural water source was useful for all those people. As I came over the rise, it was a sight unlike any other. The basin was dotted with tents and roaring fires. This was way bigger than any hobo gathering I had ever seen. There were hundreds of hobos there, and more seemed to be trickling in every minute. It was a sea of men in old tattered clothes, like a gathering of ghosts. I could see why they kept this hidden; this would freak people out. People would be paranoid if they realized that hundreds of hobos met a few times a year in secret.
Damned Lies! Page 9
