Max Baer and the Star of David

by Jay Neugeboren

  “You’re ‘Long-fingered Littlejohn,’ ain’t you?” Max Baer said when he came to our table.

  “I am,” I said. “And who might you be?”

  Max turned a chair around and, straddling it, rested his large forearms upon the chair’s back.

  “I’m Max Baer,” he said, “and I’m a fighter too, hey—won all five of my professional fights so far, four by knockout. I heard about you at Silvio’s, where I work out, and I’m in the market for a sparring partner with quick hands.”

  “While it’s true that I have at times trained at Silvio’s,” I said, “I have recently made a decision not to enter the ring, either as an amateur or professional, for the foreseeable future.”

  “Whoa Nelly,” Max said. “You got some fancy gift of gab for a nigger. You didn’t pick up lingo like that in any ring I been in, I can tell you that much. But hey—I can pay you good. I got money rolling in these days, with more coming.”

  “The allure of monetary gain will not affect my decision,” I said.

  “So okay then, if that’s the way it’s gotta be,” Max said. “Good-by and good luck to you.” He stood and started to move away, then turned back and, with exceptional tenderness, caressed Joleen’s cheek. I stood at once in preparation for a confrontation, but Joleen showed no reaction to his uninvited gesture, nor did she give any sign that she required my intervention, and a short while later, Max desisted in his attentions to her, and once again made as if to leave. He turned back a second time, however, pivoting sharply on one foot and shooting a swift right toward my chin.

  I stopped it with my own right hand and retained his hand in mine.

  “You’re quick all right,” he said when I released his hand. I sat, and he sat down between us. “I see how you earned your nickname. But listen to this: here’s a new one I just heard—‘Confucious say that man who fish in other man’s well often catch crabs.’ Get it?”

  Neither Joleen nor I laughed. Max punched me on the shoulder. “I got more where that came from,” he said.

  “We were enjoying a private dinner,” Joleen said.

  Max lifted Joleen’s left hand, upon the third finger of which she wore the wedding band we had purchased at an F. W. Woolworth Five and Dime. We had taken to this ruse because we found that when we were in public establishments, men, seeing the ring, were less likely to make unwelcome advances upon her person than if we identified ourselves as brother and sister. This deception, I note, is the opposite of one the patriarch Abraham used when he believed himself and his wife Sarah to be in hostile territory: to ingratiate himself with those of whom he was wary, he declared that Sarah was his sister.

  “Well, I ain’t married yet, though I got women banging on my door all hours of the night and day,” Max said. “And I ain’t against hooking up with a good lady some day and making a few good-looking baby Baers too, but here’s the thing of it: Watching from the bar, I said to myself, now there’s a pair of gorgeous kids sweet on each other the way I’d like to have somebody sweet on me. And vice versa. But now that I know what’s up, I gotta say that you two sure make marriage look like a swell thing.”

  “It has been that until your untimely arrival,” Joleen said.

  “So here’s another one,” he said. “‘Confucious say that wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse.’”

  “Your vulgarity is exceeded only by your rudeness,” Joleen said.

  “True, true,” Max said. “Sometimes, like now, I try too hard, and you know why?”

  “No,” Joleen said, “but I’m certain you will tell us.”

  “Because I want everyone to like me,” Max said. “Everyone! Crazy, right? It’s my Achilles’ heel, for sure, except when I’m in the ring. The other guy may be the nicest guy in the world, but once the fight starts, we don’t know each other. Once that bell goes ding-dong, all I care about is him feeling the power I got here.”

  Saying this, he made a fist, offered it to Joleen, and opened it slowly. “Okay,” he said, letting out a long breath. “I apologize. I’m butting in where I ain’t been invited, but when I saw you two looking into each other’s eyes the way you do—and both of you so goddamned beautiful!—I never seen a couple, black, brown, white, or yellow, as beautiful as you, and I just wanted…”

  He turned away. “You wanted what?” Joleen asked.

  “I just wanted to be near you, is all,” he said. “I wanted to drink in some of what you give off that makes you so beautiful.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I wanted to touch you,” he said.

  “Yes,” Joleen said. “And—?”

  “And I had to come over and maybe get a chance to feel your skin against mine, maybe just in my fingers—”

  “Please, then,” Joleen said, and she set her hand upon the table, close to where Max’s hands were resting. Max hesitated, his eyes those of a child seeking permission. I showed nothing.

  Max chewed on his lower lip, looked at Joleen’s hand and, very gently, placed his right hand on top of hers.

  A moment later I let my hand rest on top of his.

  He spoke to me: “When I got closer and saw your hands—kind of freakish, a guy your size, you don’t mind my saying so—I guessed who you were right off, so I just kept on coming.” He rubbed a finger along the curve of Joleen’s wedding band. “And hey, maybe this is the ring for me—not that other one, where people get hurt, though I guess married people can hurt each other too.”

  Joleen stared at me, nodded slightly, and I discerned her meaning.

  “Perhaps I can spar with you on occasion,” I said to Max. “Given your reputation for reckless power, however, I will insist that we use twelve ounce gloves and wear headgear.”

  “You got a deal,” Max said, leaning forward. “But now I got an even better one. My family, we moved out to Livermore where we got a ranch—cattle, hogs, sheep, and stuff—and we could use some help. We call our place Twin Oaks Ranch, and we’d pay okay, you’d get room and board for free, the country air ain’t bad—free too—and we could get to know each other and become friends.”

  “I intend to become a schoolteacher,” Joleen said. “To that end, I am preparing for the licensing examinations here in San Francisco.”

  “And I am working toward my high school diploma,” I said.

  “Like my old man says—he’s part Jew, you know—an education, that’s something nobody can take away from you, and I agree, dumb as I am,” Max said. “But out at Twin Oaks, you’d catch plenty of time to study, and maybe, with your smarts, you could put some learning into my kid sister and my brothers. We’d pay for that. I got two brothers, both younger than me—Buddy, who’s a monster, bigger than me though he can’t punch worth dick—and Augie, who’s a butcher like the old man. We adopted him, see—he’s Portuguese—and he’s got even less between the ears than I do and could use some civilizing, so what do you say?”

  “I say that you will need to spell out the terms in specific detail, for how and why are we to depend upon your word when we have known you for but a few minutes?” Joleen said. “Nor have you conferred with your family about what you propose. How then do you—?”

  “How?” he interrupted. “How?! Because I like you! Because my family loves me and I’m their best hope and shining star, see, and the three of us together having good times—that’s something I feel the way you feel blood pumping through your heart ready to explode to kingdom come, and when I feel it like this, I believe in it, and do you know why?”

  “Pray tell us,” Joleen said.

  “Because I’ve got a million dollar body and a ten cent brain,” he said, “but I’m gonna be heavyweight champion of the whole goddamned world! Me—Maximilian Adelbert Baer!”

  Then he ordered another bottle of champagne and began telling us about his life before coming to California—about living in Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico, where his father had worked as a butcher, mostly in meat packing plants, and how, for the first time, in California, h
is family had been able to purchase their own ranch. That, he explained—the ranching and butchering—was where his power came from: building himself up lifting hogs, sledge-hammering cows and fence posts, and hauling meat carcasses.

  He talked on and on while we ate—our entrées had arrived—then gave us a huge grin, winked, closed his eyes, and let his head bump down onto the table. I put a finger to his neck. His pulse was slow and strong. Joleen took my hand in one of hers—the hand that had touched Max—after which, with her free hand, she began caressing his forehead in the tender way he had caressed her cheek.

  It seemed magical—“Kismet” for sure, Joleen whispered—that on her twenty-first birthday we had met this remarkable man—the most gorgeous man she had ever known, she said, and a man through whose good offices we would soon begin what was certain to be a great, new adventure. I agreed, and reminded her that when we had passed through the village of Kismet, California, on our way to San Francisco, I had said that not only were we passing through Kismet but that in our new life Kismet would soon be passing through us.

  On fire with expectation, Joleen and I ate, drank champagne, and exchanged kisses and, as Joleen sometimes did when we were aglow from our private pleasures, she began reciting from The Song of Solomon about how she was black but comely, and how my kisses were better than wine. I responded with words I had long before set to heart: “‘How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse!’” I said, “‘How much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!’”

  When all but a few patrons were left in the restaurant and, our plates cleared, we were drinking coffee, Max suddenly sat up, took the coffee cup from my hands, drank what was left, then set it down and lifted my water glass high in the air. I thought he was going to propose a toast, but instead he turned the glass upside down, letting the water spill onto his head, after which he shook himself from side to side the way a puppy does when it emerges from a lake.

  He moved closer to Joleen. “I could fall in love with you in a split second if you weren’t married,” he said.

  “Why would my being married stop you?” Joleen asked.

  “Because of him,” he said, gesturing to me. “I respect him too much.”

  “I believe that I respect him at least as much as you do, for in truth, my friend, I know him far better than you or anyone else might ever know him.”

  “And so—?” Max asked.

  “And so we are joined in our respect for him.”

  “That’s all?”

  Joleen gave us her most bewitching smile, pressed a finger against my mouth to keep me from speaking, and for an instant I thought she was going to tell him the truth—that she and I were brother and sister, and that therefore she was free to reciprocate his affection. From the high flush in her cheeks, I could see how powerfully drawn she was to this man whose black hair, broad forehead, high cheekbones, and wide-set slanting eyes gave him the look of a man of Eurasian ancestry, and I sensed she could tell from my expression—I felt heat emanating from my own cheeks—that in this too we were joined.

  I pressed my lips to her palm, and she took this kiss and gave it to Max, upon his mouth, and in that moment I feared that the role of marital partner that had been mine on this evening, as on a multitude of evenings before this, might be destined to remain mine alone. As if to confirm my surmise, Joleen closed her eyes and touched her lips to Max’s cheek in what could only be called—how rich the irony, we would later agree—a sisterly manner.

  “‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away,’” she said.

  “That’s the Bible,” Max said. “You can’t fool me.”

  Joleen blew on his eyes, small puffs that caused him to blink rapidly. “‘I will arise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek whom my soul loveth,’” she said.

  “A ranch with rolling hills and clean meadows would be better than city streets, take my word for it,” Max said, and pointed a finger at me. “And that’s Bible stuff again, right?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “Your wife ain’t some kind of religious nut, is she?” Max said. “Because if she is, the deal’s off.”

  “I am a lover of poetry,” Joleen said, and she kissed Max again.

  Max blushed, and when he did, Joleen laughed, which caused him to move away from her, sliding along the table until he was sitting beside me.

  “I don’t want to do anything to get you riled,” he said, “especially given how deep in the tank I am and how quick you are with those hands of yours. I’d be no match for you tonight, and I ain’t too proud to say so, but here’s the question: Do you two really like me, or am I totally bongo-bongo, or hey!—are you like people I know, from back when Dempsey and Tunney were king and queen of the hill, who believe in that free love stuff?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” Joleen said, and she moved closer to him, looping her slender arm across his back so that her fingers could play a soft rat-a-tat-tat upon the outer edge of my shoulder. “But I suggest that instead of making inquiries, you act with courage. Courage, mon ami bien aimé! Courage!“

  “That’s French,” Max said. “You can’t fool me. I know French when I hear it.”

  Joleen flicked his ear with her tongue. “Courage!” she whispered. And then: “‘As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.’ Are you a thorn, Max Baer? Pray tell us. Are you a thorn in our garden?”

  “Well, I sure ain’t a lily!” he said and, roaring with laughter, he let his hand fall upon my lap. I did not remove it, and I knew that by my decision to not act—to not remove his hand—I had lost what was perhaps the last opportunity I would have to inform him that Joleen and I were not husband and wife, and—the ironies, though obvious, were too knotted to disentangle in a moment wherein the speed of what was happening and the dizzied slowness of my thoughts contrasted so starkly—it might also be possible—this thought formed more in retrospect than in the moment—that Joleen and I might never again in this life be fully intimate with one another.

  My sad presentiments—what I came to think of as my intimations of intimacy’s absence—proved true, although the probable permanence of my loss did not come home to me until ten months later, following upon Max’s bout with Frankie Campbell, a bout that was to secure Max’s reputation both as a legitimate contender for the heavyweight championship of the world, and as a ruthless killer. By this time, Joleen and I had been living on the Baer family ranch for more than half a year, where, known as husband and wife, we were employed as domestics. From time to time I also worked with Max as a sparring partner in a makeshift ring he and his brother Buddy had set up near the barn where the hogs were maintained. In the ten-month period following our meeting at Perfidie, Max had fought fifteen bouts, winning ten by knockout and two on points, his three losses resulting from what seemed to have been agreed-upon setups arranged by interested parties: one a loss on points, the other two on disqualifications for not heeding with sufficient dispatch the referees’ commands to take himself to a neutral corner. In four of these fifteen fights I attended to him in his corner as one of his handlers.

  For her part, Joleen took to tutoring Max’s sister and his two brothers several afternoons a week, which sessions I attended in order to improve my abilities to express myself in writing and in speech. What I desired was to become adept at articulating with precision what it was I was thinking and feeling so that I might relieve the rage, guilt, and melancholy that, by turns, had begun threatening, with increasing frequency and intensity, to overwhelm me. If I could know what my truest feelings were—if I could name them!—I might, I believed, no matter how painful or humiliating they were, deprive them of their power over me.

  During these months, and until the birth of our son, Horace Jr., Joleen and I became increasingly practiced at allusive ways of talking about those matters we had relished talking about before we met Max. Until that evening at Perfidie, we had, as I recall n
ow, felt little embarrassment about what we did, about talking about what we did, or about asking particular favors of the other we imagined might increase the wonders we experienced in our intimate moments. Now, however, our physical intimacies retreating further into the past, we no longer talked about them except in the most arch and circumlocutory ways.

  “We are, it would seem, become handmaidens and handlers to butchers,” Joleen would say in one of her familiar tropes, “and the emphasis on the syllable ‘hand,’ my long-fingered companion, can not, after all, be gainsayed.”

  “After all what?” I would reply.

  “You are correct,” she would say, “and that, I respectfully submit, is the strange beauty of it.”

  “Of what?” I would say.

  “Yes,” she would say then. “You are doubtless correct in your affirmation.”

  After which, in our cottage, or in the kitchen or laundry of the Baer family home, she would announce that there were noble works still to be accomplished before the sun set, and saying this, she would wish me a good day or a good evening, and take her leave, in this way putting an end to the possibility of talk concerning those matters we had become accustomed to not talking about.