Max Baer and the Star of David

by Jay Neugeboren

  “This is Hawkins Johnson,” Miss Hémon said. “Hawkins, this is Mister Horace Littlejohn.”

  “I am pleased to meet you,” I said, and then, instead of shaking my hand, Hawkins took the fingers of my right hand in his.

  “This man gonna be good at reading the Braille,” he said. “I know this man, see—oh I know him good. Ain’t nobody ever seen these fingers forget this man. ‘Frank “long-fingered” Joleen Jr.’ they called him, in memory of the man your man put in the ground by that wicked right hand of his…”

  I said that Miss Hémon had talked favorably about him, but he waved away my remark, and, his mouth close to my face, he suddenly seized the back of my neck. He seemed to have no teeth, and his breath reeked of chewing tobacco—I could see a large plug of it wedged between his gums and his cheek, though how he would be able to chew tobacco without teeth was puzzling—and for a moment, so forceful was his grip on my neck, and so close his mouth to my cheek, I feared he was going either to kiss me, or—strange thought—to bite me.

  “So listen, my brother,” he said, letting go of me. “When you gonna let me meet the great man himself, Mister Maximilian Baer?”

  “Perhaps,” I began, “you might join me one afternoon at the YMCA when Mister Baer is scheduled to address my boxing teams. I am employed by the YMCA, you see, to—”

  “Oh I know that,” he said, and he turned a chair around and straddled it, resting his forearms on the chair’s back. He winked at me with his good eye, then reached a hand toward Miss Hémon and, as if he had been with me and Joleen the night we first met Max Baer and he was signaling this fact to me, he caressed Miss Hémon’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Ain’t Miss Marie-Anne the loveliest woman you ever know—ain’t there never been a woman lovelier than her?”

  “As the song would have it,” Miss Hémon said, and, to my astonishment, she took the hand with which Hawkins was caressing her cheek, and pressed it lightly to her lips. “Hawkins is a terrible flirt, as you can see, Mister Littlejohn, and a most irresistible man.”

  “Oh yes,” Hawkins said. “Like I like to say, ‘Ain’t no pleasure but pleasure.’ So the way I see it is when you ain’t got what you want, you take. Ain’t that so?”

  “It surely is,” Miss Hémon said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “That be ’cause you a most jealous man, my friend,” Hawkins laughed. “I seen that right away, the look you give me,” he added, and saying this, he caressed my cheek in the way he had caressed Miss Hemon’s. “But you still a brother, and we brothers do get this jealousy thing going time to time. Ain’t no crime. But comes the day we can’t see what we want, we still be wanting all we can take.”

  “I have told Hawkins about your diagnosis,” Miss Hémon said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why else you be here lessen you got a problem with your eyes,” Hawkins said. “Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. Things happen. Look at me.” He closed his good eye, then spoke again: “But I know you, my brother, from once upon a time, and your eyes, they look good still—fact is, all of you do, ’cause you always a fit man like Mister Max. Now Mister Max, he’s the best I ever seen. Ain’t nobody except maybe the Brown Bomber had the power and the dancing feet both like your man do. And you weren’t far behind, what I seen. You had the goods, my brother. So I ask you again—when you gonna let me meet Mister Max and make yourself a righteous man?”

  He punched me on the shoulder with his right hand, hard, then wiped off the blow with his left. “I sure can ramble on, tell you that. Ha! Not like you. Your trouble, you ask me, see, you stay at home too much with your woman. You made a good move, coming here. ’Cause this diabetes thing ain’t no pleasure. Put my old man in the grave with more pain than you want to know. Went blind first, got a leg cut off, but he was still one mean son of a bitch—pardon my French, Miss Marie-Anne, but hey, you know bad French where you come from too. We both from Lou’siana, did you know that, mon ami chèr with the long fingers? So I asking you: Where you come from?”

  “Texas,” I said. “My wife and I are both from Texas, but we have been living in California for many years,”

  “Your wife?” he said. “I see a ring on that finger, but rings don’t always mean we been blessed by the law.”

  Miss Hémon pushed aside the finger Hawkins was pointing at me. “I think we have completed our introductions for the day, Hawkins,” she said.

  Hawkins stood. “Ain’t no shame, not being married legal,” Hawkins said. “Main thing, if you get kids into the world, you raise them with love—and the rest, who cares, ain’t that so?”

  I stared at him but did not respond.

  He poked me in the shoulder with a forefinger. “Ain’t that so?’” he said again, his voice rising. “‘Ain’t that so?’ I asked, so you answer me that, you hear? You ain’t such a big shot just ’cause you know Max Baer. You ain’t more than a poke to a pig, ’cause look at me now. Look at me, and you remember this, like I like to say, Miss Marie-Anne can vouch, ‘In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ Ain’t that so? You answer me that. Ain’t that so, I asked?”

  Miss Hémon stood and touched the small of Hawkins’s back, lightly. “Calm down now, Hawkins,” she said. “Calm down now, please. Mister Littlejohn means no offense.”

  “I mean no offense,” I said.

  Hawkins bent toward me, and lifted the patch over his right eye so I could see the stitched hollow where an eye had been. “Like I like to say,” he said, “‘in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king,’ and you in my country now, so you take good care and you be good to this good woman, hear? Or I do mean things like I been known to do.”

  “You stop this talk at once, Hawkins,” Miss Hémon said. “And be gone. Be gone with you.”

  “I mean no offense neither,” he said and, tipping an imaginary hat, he turned and limped from the cafeteria.

  “It is often a shock to meet Hawkins for the first time,” Miss Hémon said when we were again sitting in her office. “But one gets used to him, and even to have affection for him. Therefore, Mister Littlejohn, I think you may safely let go of your wariness.”

  “My wariness?”

  “Your wariness,” she said. “He is a very exuberant man, and his exuberance—his very joy in living, if you will forgive the cliché—is infectious, and more than admirable, don’t you agree?”

  “When I have let go of my wariness, I will let you know.”

  “Touché, Mister Littlejohn,” she said. “Really, though. I have never known anyone quite like him. It is exciting to know him, and I find—how best to put it?—that I actually envy him at times.”

  “Envy him?” I said.

  “Not him exactly,” she said. “I am, as I hope you’ll come to understand, quite content with who I am—happy in my skin—but it’s more his refusal to keep thoughts and feelings hidden, his saying and doing what he wants…”

  “The only person I have known who has anything like the exuberance you attribute to Hawkins Johnson,” I offered, “is Max Baer, a man I admit to envying at times. But there are worlds of difference between them.”

  “Such as?”

  “I believe Max Baer’s greatest pleasure lies in giving pleasure to others—in conveying to others the joy he feels in living, and in sharing this joy with them.”

  “And Hawkins?”

  “I suspect he acts the way he does because he cannot help himself,” I said. “My opinion is, of course, based upon a first impression, but I am not persuaded Mister Hawkins loves life in the way you believe he does. My impression is that he loves himself too much to be capable of doing so.”

  “My, my,” Miss Hémon said. Then, a moment later: “You are smarter than you appear.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hawkins Johnson is certainly an indulgent man, and like you, he too is smarter than he appears.”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

 
“I am teasing you, Mister Littlejohn—playing with you, perhaps?” she said.

  “I do not understand,” I said again.

  “Your manners are impeccable—too much so, I think—yet you do possess a capacity for being direct, and even succinct, when provoked,” she said. “And what I find when I provoke you—which I admit to doing—is that you are also an uncommonly intelligent man, and a caring man. In my experience of men, this is a rare combination.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I speak freely?”

  “Would I be able to stop you?”

  “Correct,” she said. “So: what I was thinking of saying is that you do not have much experience of women, do you?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Exactly,” she said, and she raised her left hand in the air to show me her ringless fingers. “Permit me to provide you with some basics. I am not a married woman. I have never been a married woman. I will never be a married woman. A non-conjugal conjugation, yes? My two children are the children of different fathers. They do not and never will know their fathers. I offer you this information so that we will feel free to be the friends we promised to be: to be frank and open with each other, and to hide nothing essential of what we think and feel. So answer me, please, and tell me you understand what I have said.”

  While she flicked words at me, my head bobbed backwards several times, as if to protect itself from a series of quick, short jabs.

  “Tell me,” she said again. “Please tell me you understand, Mister Littlejohn.”

  “But I do not,” I said, and was aware, now, of the sound of my heart beating rapidly in the way it would when, at the start of a fight, a referee would be instructing me and my opponent to protect ourselves at all times, and to come out fighting.

  “You choose not to understand?” she said. “Or you will not understand?”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “Yes. All right then. I choose—will choose, however, to reciprocate by stating that Hawkins Johnson seems to have inferred a truth of which I am not embarrassed. Although I wear a wedding band, and although my wife and I, together now for several decades, are legal in the way ‘common law’ marriages are legal, we have never felt the need to formalize our bond. Although what you say has unnerved me, I think I may possibly understand what you have said.”

  “Possibly?” she said.

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “You are also a most attractive man when you ease up on yourself a bit, as you seem to be doing,” Miss Hémon said. “Therefore: what I can promise is that I will continue to work at making you my good and dear friend, as Doctor Levitzky asked me to.”

  “Did he really ask that of you?”

  “Oh, Mister Littlejohn, you are a wonder,” she said. “And you and I are going to have some lovely times together, I expect, and to that end, I have a proposal.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “You have seen the lay of the land here—a land where Hawkins Johnson is self-proclaimed king, and a land where I believe you have the potential, perhaps, to rise to the position of crown prince,” she said. “I believe you will come to trust me as I trust you, and to enhance that possibility—fond word—and because I am, to state the obvious, fond of you and wish to cultivate our friendship, I propose that you and your wife—Joleen, yes?—come to my home for dinner at the end of the week. You have told me that you lead an insular life, but surely you can shed that insularity for an evening. I would enjoy meeting your wife and I would enjoy having the two of you meet my children. If your son can get away from his studies, perhaps he might join us.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You are most kind, and…”

  “… and quite forward. Hawkins and I are alike in that: when we see or know what we want, we see no reason not to take it. So the answer is yes, yes?”

  “I will talk with Joleen.”

  That Friday evening Joleen and I had dinner at Miss Hémon’s home, and we met her children—Anna, who was thirteen, and David, who was eleven. On the following Friday evening Joleen and I made dinner for the three of them in our home, at which dinner Horace Jr. joined us, and on the Friday after that, the three of us again had dinner with Miss Hémon and her children at their home, and thus did we and our families become friends. Joleen and Miss Hémon took to one another as women who are mothers usually do, having in common the many delights and frustrations that accompany the raising of children—“responsibilities without end amen,” was the way Miss Hémon put it to Joleen—and her two children were charming, bright, well-mannered, and seemed, at least in our company, not at all self-conscious about their disabilities.

  Anna, in the most unobtrusive manner, would lead David from place to place, letting him know where walls, steps, tables, chairs, doors, rooms, and food were located—and David, his hands deftly signing words for Anna, or lightly holding his fingers to her lips—would translate what we were saying that she could not comprehend by lip-reading. Their lack of self-consciousness was epitomized by the pleasure they took in explaining a familiar statue of three monkeys that graced the living room mantel.

  “This is our family,” Anna would declare in a set piece she delighted in reciting. “David sees no evil. I hear no evil. And our mother—why she speaks no evil … except, of course, when she is really really angry with one of us.”

  Horace Jr. told them stories about growing up on the Baer ranch, and of adventures he and Max Jr. enjoyed together, and he recounted stories for them from the Bible in which he noted that many of the principal characters—Isaac, Jacob, Samson, Eli—were blind, and of how Jesus healed the blind, and also of how Homer, the greatest poet of them all, was blind, yet could recite, by heart, his epic poems, The Iliad and, Horace Jr.’s favorite, The Odyssey, in which tale the wandering Odysseus is made temporarily deaf—his ears stopped up with beeswax so he does not succumb to the seductive songs of the Sirens.

  And on the evening he told the story of how Jacob had tricked his blind father so as to steal his father’s blessing and inheritance from his brother, Esau, Horace began to invent a story about a blind girl and a deaf boy—brother and sister—who solve crimes by putting together clues unseen and/or unheard by others. He told these stories after dinner, and ended each evening’s episode at a moment of peril for the boy and/or the girl, while promising to tell Anna and David what-happened-next when next our families would be together.

  It was, of course, a joy for the three of us to see our children delight in one another, and if I had another life, their friendship would doubtless become the matter of a tale more sanguine in its issue than the tale I am setting down here. Perhaps Horace Jr., whose life is spent elaborating on the wonder of stories and storytelling, will one day set down his memories of these evenings when we counted none but happy hours. But, as one of the sages he would quote when taking his leave of us taught, “the day is short, and the work is great…” Therefore I will take my leave of our children for a while, and return to the story of what happened after Joleen and I left the employ of Max Baer, and I came to know Marie-Anne Hémon and Hawkins Johnson.

  I began visiting the Lighthouse regularly and, troubling convergence, found that the more often I visited, the more swiftly did my vision decline. The YMCA graciously accommodating to my needs, I signed up for a course in Braille that met on Wednesday afternoons, and would arrive early in order to spend some time with Miss Hémon, and no matter which route I took to or from her office, Hawkins would be lying in wait for me, asking when was I going to introduce him to Max Baer. He would sometimes jab a finger into my shoulder or chest, and because I was determined to not give him the satisfaction of letting him see that he upset me, I would not respond, even when he would back me up against a wall, and pepper me with ramblings that seemed without sense.

  “Your trouble, you ask me,” he said the one time he irritated me sufficiently to cause me to react, “is that you in love, and being in love like being sick. What they got in common—with being off your nut too—is that th
ere ain’t no cure. That’s why you gonna wind up one blind lovesick brother, and I gonna be there to tell you who you are and who you ain’t.”

  This was, until the very last time I would see him, the one instance in which I was unable to keep from reacting. I took the hand he was poking me with, and, bending its thumb backwards until I saw pain show itself in his wandering eye, I warned him to leave me be and to get on with his work or I would take measures to see that he was relieved of his duties.

  At this point, he pursed his mouth and spit—the spittle gobbed my left eye and cheek—and, slipping away while I wiped at my eye, he told me I was no big shot just because I knew Max Baer, that I was going to be more blind than he would ever be, and that he knew things about me nobody else knew, not even Max Baer, and that if I didn’t show him respect—“Oh you better respect me, my brother, or I put your heart in the same grave my father be lying in”—he would show the world what he knew about me and Max, and become a rich man doing so too.

  “I gonna be richer than God, you don’t treat me right,” he said. “And when Miss Marie-Anne, she find out what I know, there go the love of your life too, you be left with nothin,’ and I gonna be here to laugh in your face the way I spit in it now.”

  He sucked in more saliva, but before he could launch another stream of the nasty fluid at me, I cracked him across his eyeless cheek with the back of my hand—a quick, sharp blow that sent him reeling along the corridor wall.

  I thought he would come at me with more words and threats, but my act—my showing him the fire that was ever mine when I was aroused—seemed to defeat him, for he merely put a hand to his cheek, mumbled to himself—more whimpering than words—and, picking up his mop and pail, limped away.

  I agreed with Miss Hémon’s suggestion, endorsed by Doctor Levitzky, that while I still retained relatively normal vision, it would be good for me to visit the Enchanted Hills Camp in order to see for myself the ways people with disabilities learned to accommodate to their deficits. Miss Hémon invited Joleen and Horace Jr. to join us, but they declined, saying they thought it best if I went on my own, and began to construct for myself a community of people, in addition to them, upon whom I could, in the years to come, rely upon for guidance and friendship.