Max Baer and the Star of David

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I recall when Horace Jr. attended his first kissing games party. Yes.”

  “They’re practicing,” Miss Hémon said. “That’s all. How sweet.”

  “How sweet,” I repeated.

  “Yet you were worried, weren’t you?”

  “A bit,” I said. “Not very, but…”

  “You are the dearest man I have ever known,” she said. “And the most innocent. How did I get to be so lucky?”

  “Practice?” I asked, and when I did, she slugged me hard, on the arm.

  “You can be mean too, can’t you?” she said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I like that. Hmmm. Perhaps we can take our cue from my children,” she said. “I had no brothers or sisters, so incest was a possibility that was never available to me. But you, Horace?”

  “I had three sisters,” I said. “But I left them, and home, when I was fifteen years old.”

  “Perhaps we can pretend,” she said. “You can be the brother and I can be your sister, and one day when we come home from school early…”

  She kissed me again, held to me. “What’s so wonderful,” she said softly, “is the sense that, with you, I’m starting all over again—that with you I can do and say anything I want, without fear and without doubt and without all the other vexations that have plagued me across a lifetime. And I sense—I know—you’re feeling the same way.”

  “Yes,” I said, and would have embraced her more tightly, but I heard footsteps—Anna and David, coming down the stairs—and so we separated, and I picked up plates and silverware, and went into the dining area to set the table for dinner.

  When I arrived at the Lighthouse the following Wednesday afternoon for my Braille class, instead of going directly to Miss Hémon’s office, as had become my habit, I went to the library so that I could work for a half hour or so on the Braille assignments our instructor had given us the previous week. When I entered, neither Miss Duncan nor her two assistants were there.

  I sat at a desk, opened a box of cards, closed my eyes, and began reading the words on the cards with my fingers, skipping over those of which I was unsure, and setting them aside so I could return to them later. After several minutes, Miss Duncan appeared. Her hair tumbling down past her shoulders, she was in the process of pinning it back up.

  “Well, Mister Littlejohn, we have arrived early today, haven’t we?” she said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  She smoothed down the wrinkles in her dress, and withdrew several pins from her mouth—how she had spoken with them in her mouth was unclear to me—and asked if I had visited with Miss Hémon yet.

  “I have been working on my Braille cards,” I said.

  At this point, Hawkins emerged from the back room, Miss Duncan’s two assistants, Pamela and Gail, with him.

  He grinned, and spoke without embarrassment: “So now you be seeing again how what I say about the country of the blind be true,” he said. “And ain’t that what you come here to see, my brother?”

  “Do not call me brother,” I said.

  “Ah, but I am your brother,” he said. “I be your brother in pleasure, my friend. Like the Good Book says, the more sadness the more joy, the more pain the more pleasure, and you and me been taking our share of pleasure with the ladies, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hawkins!” Miss Duncan scolded. “Please. You stop at once. What will Mister Littlejohn think if you talk like this?”

  “He’ll think I be a man lucky as him,” he said. “Way I figure, he got the upstairs covered, where Miss Hémon be, and I got the main floor covered, and that way everybody gets to be happy, and that’s what God wants for us, ain’t it, that we be his happy children down here?”

  “As to Miss Hémon,” I said. “You will not refer to her in a disrespectful way, or…”

  “Or what?” he answered. “You gonna punch out my lights so I get to call the cops on you? Got witnesses right here—très beautiful witnesses too, don’t you think? Or you gonna get your boy Max Baer to help you, ’cause when it comes to the ladies, I hear he’s the man they love even more than they love you and me.”

  “Do not mind Hawkins,” Miss Duncan said, picking up a telephone receiver. “Appearances can be deceiving, and I trust you will not draw false conclusions. Would you like me to let Miss Hémon know you are here?”

  “No thank you,” I said. I looked at Pamela and Gail, who stood side by side in matching white blouses and gray cardigan sweaters. “Are you all right?” I said to them.

  They responded to my question by giggling, hands over their mouths as if they were Ziegfeld girls in an old silent movie, and I closed my eyes, then opened them again to make sure I was not dreaming.

  “We are a particularly close-knit family here at the Lighthouse,” Miss Duncan said, fingering the necklaces that rested on her bosom. “Do you see what I mean, Mister Littlejohn?”

  “And Miss Hémon,” Hawkins said, “she say you be ready to talk with me, so let’s go do it.”

  He took me by the arm, tried to turn me toward the door. I pushed him away, but he shadowed me out of the room and along the hallway.

  “Like they like to say, no time like the present,” he said. “I seen you in the ring, know you a man don’t scare easy, so why you be scared of old Hawkins who just wants to be your friend the way he be to the ladies, and when I say ladies I don’t just mean the ladies here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your wife—Joleen her name now, right?—I be talking about her too.”

  I grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “I talking about how your wife—so-called wife, because she ain’t legal, I hear—and how she’s one smart lady, and not just some dumb—”

  “Has Miss Hémon talked with you about my marriage?”

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. “’Cause the way I see it, women get what they want same as us, and your wife, we gonna call her that, out of respect—so how about we get to what we here for? How about telling me how I gonna meet Mister Max Baer, show him what I got.”

  “Which is—?”

  “All right then,” he said. “Since you wanting me to spell it out, I do you the favor.” He looked to both sides of the hallway. Then: “What I got to show, see, is pictures of you and him, that’s what I got, and you can tear out my tongue or poke out my good eye, but those pictures still be here to do their work.”

  “But how—?” I began.

  “You be patient, you learn it all,” he said, “’cause what’s happening here is I only asking you to let me talk with the man, tell him what I been saving up so he can give me what I want.”

  “Which is?”

  “The money, man,” he said. “What else? The money. Because I’m a simple man, see, and I want the money that gonna set me free so I don’t be cleaning out toilets and mopping floors and sneaking around for my pleasures the rest of my life. And let me tell you, when it comes to taking pleasures, Hawkins Johnson is your man. You don’t believe that, you one sorry old black man lets his sister lead him around by the you-know-what.”

  That was when I slammed my fist into his gut. He doubled over, sucked air.

  “You watch your mouth,” I said, “or it will lose what teeth it has left, do you hear me?”

  He inhaled huge gobs of air. “You touch me again, and you be one dead man,” he said when he had recovered. “You wouldn’t be the first, you know. And what I got to show, it show you I mean business, ’cause it gonna show you how I been following you years now, see—years and years, all the way from Lou’siana and Texas—kept me alive, oh yes it did, keeping my eye on you and her, so I got to thank you for that.”

  He started to slip down along the wall, so I pulled him up by his shirt, kept him upright.

  “You’ll be the dead man,” I said. “And when you’re gone, who will miss you, Hawkins? Who will care?”

  He tried to spit at me, but I grabbed him by the throat so that
he could do nothing but gurgle helplessly. “I am known as a peaceful man,” I said, “but I can be roused. Be assured of that.”

  When I let go of his throat, he spit tobacco juice on the floor, then leaned close, spoke in a low voice. “I know who you are, see, and who your wife is, and what Mister Max Baer done with you both,” he said. “Oh yeah, it be the death of him and his family, his good name too, news gets out and around—so you do all you want to me with them long-fingered bones, but it’s time. It’s time, see? It’s time to go and show the man what we got.”

  I struck at him again—quick left-right-left blasts to the body—and then, as he fell toward me, a rabbit punch to the base of his skull, a chop hard enough to put him out cold but not enough to kill. Crazed as I felt—my head ready to explode—yet was I levelheaded enough not to do anything that would leave marks. I watched him slide down the wall, collapse onto the floor. Without going upstairs to see Miss Hémon, I left the building, took a streetcar to the YMCA, and while my boys continued their exercises and sparring, I put on my leather glove wraps and worked the speed bag at the highest rate I could without losing control, and my boys’ delight in having me there when they had not expected me, and the admiration in their eyes for the skills I displayed, gave my heart ease.

  Max arrived at the YMCA on Monday afternoon, August 24, 1959, accompanied by a young actress, Ilana Roza Bator, who had long flaming red hair, and wore a backless green silk dress. We had set up a boxing ring in the main gymnasium, and Max glad-handed the people assembled there—my boxers, the director of the YMCA, our staff, board members, and major donors and sponsors—and he introduced us all to Ilana, told us she was from Budapest, had arrived in Hollywood three months before, would be starring in a Warner Brothers spectacle about David and Bathsheba, and that while she prepared for the part, he was helping her learn how to cope with producers, directors, and assorted other West Coast predators. Fishermen too, he added, to laughter, which was why he was showing her San Francisco.

  He had also brought his accompanist, Leo Bukzin, with him—Leo often worked with Max and Maxie Rosenbloom on their tours—for whom we had brought in an upright piano, and Max announced that before we got to footwork in the ring, he and Ilana had a surprise for us. Leo played a rippling intro, and then Max and Ilana broke into a soft-shoe to “Tea for Two,” and when they were done, Max told the young boxers to get in line behind him and Ilana.

  “It ain’t that hard—if a lummox like me can do it, so can you, and here’s the way it goes,” he said, and he started in teaching my boxers the basics—the brush, flap, shuffle, and ball change—and as soon as they caught on, he showed them the time-step, and the “Jackson Heights crossover,” and told them they’d soon be dancing rings around their mystified opponents. Then he asked everyone to join in singing, and pretty soon it was as if we were on a sound stage at Warner Brothers, the air filled with music, and my boxers dancing in a chorus line, after which Max had me pass around jump ropes, and he and the boxers—I joined them—began skipping rope in time to the music.

  “Hey listen,” he said when we took a break and stepped away from the others. “I went to the doctor this morning before I picked up Ilana, and he told me he had good news and bad news. ‘So give me the bad news first,’ I said. ‘Well, Max, the bad news is that you have a serious heart problem,’ he said, ‘and unless you change your ways and take better care of yourself, you may not make it to the end of the year.’ So I said, ‘Well, thanks for shooting straight with me, Doc, but what’s the good news?’ ‘The good news?’ the doc said. ‘Oh the good news is that before you came here this morning, I screwed my nurse.’”

  Max burst out laughing, pounded me on the back, and gestured to Leo to cut the music. Then Max got the crowd clapping, a slow one-two beat, accent on the second beat—one-two, one-two—and when the beat had gone on for a while, and Leo had started playing a tinkly burlesque number, Max stripped to the waist, revealing his gorgeous chest and shoulders—my boxers cheered and whistled—and he tore off his trousers, hopped through the ropes and into the ring, and asked who was going be the first guy to get in there and knock him all the way to Alcatraz.

  “I may be old,” he said, “but I’m as strong as I ever was!” He glanced down toward his waist. “Why now I can bend it!”

  My boxers laughed, many of the women covered their eyes, and when Max beckoned to me, I entered the ring, stripped down to my trunks, which, in preparation, I had worn beneath my street clothes. The cheering grew louder. Two of my fighters now entered the ring, wrapped our hands in tape, put on our gloves, and laced them up for us.

  I put on my padded headgear, but when one of the boys offered headgear to Max, he said no thanks, that he didn’t have any brains left for anyone to knock out. He pointed to the Star of David on the left leg of his trunks, and asked if it was kosher to wear it at a Young Men’s Christian Association, or maybe I had a cross of Jesus he could pin on the other leg, and then he announced that what people should be on the lookout for were not stars or crosses, or the punches we threw, but the way we bobbed and weaved to keep punches away so our mothers would still love our gorgeous mugs, and that though he was a pretty fair defensive boxer, they were about to see a guy—me—who was the best of the best.

  The bell rang, and we danced around one another, and Max faked a left to the stomach, came over quickly with a right cross, and I brushed it away.

  “See what I mean!” he cried out. “See what style this man has! Good manners too, ’cause that was a wicked right cross I just threw, and he flicked it away like he was telling me to forget the funny business or I’d be seeing stars, right?”

  We traded punches, Max skipping away every fifteen or twenty seconds to joke with the crowd—patter I was familiar with—and when the bell rang ending the round, instead of going to his corner, he went to the center of the ring, and held up a hand to stop the applause.

  “Oh you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet,” he said. “’cause Horace and I got a few more tricks in our bag, but first I got things to say that are serious, and I know that’s hard to believe, all the clowning I do, but I really got some serious things to say today. Okay? Are you with me?”

  The crowd shouted its approval, and Max gestured to them to gather in closer to the ring.

  “Any of you know what tomorrow is—what anniversary we got coming up?” he asked.

  Nobody did.

  “Well, I’ll tell you then,” Max said. “Tomorrow’s gonna make twenty-nine years since I knocked out a fine young fighter in this town name of Frankie Campbell,” he said. “Now I know you know about him because you boys on Horace’s Golden Gloves teams got scholarships with his name on it. Frankie was a good man, see, and one helluva fighter, and he died because … because…”

  Max swallowed hard. I moved towards him but he waved me away.

  “… because I hit Frankie Campbell with the last blow he ever felt in this world, and it did something funny to his brain, and we lost him the next day,” Max said. “And now I’m gonna introduce you to a man who wasn’t with us when it happened on that day, but, like me, he’s a man who thinks about Frankie Campbell every day of his life. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a warm welcome for Frankie Campbell Jr.!”

  A stocky, well-built young man, standing at the rear of the crowd, waved to us.

  “Come on up and say a few words to us, will you?” Max asked, but Frankie Campbell Jr. shook his head sideways, took a step backwards, waved again. “He’s good looking and shy like his dad was, and we can understand why he wouldn’t want to come up here on a day like this,” Max went on. “It would be hard for the best of us, me included, if it was my old man we were talking about. Now Frankie Jr. was just a few months old when his father left this world, and do you know what?” Max pointed to the ceiling. “I bet your father’s up there looking down on us and being real proud of you, Frankie, and of how you went and got a college degree at Notre Dame, and how you got your own family and kids now. And you know what els
e I bet he’s thinking up there? He’s thinking that if he had it to do over again, he’d step into that ring and give it his best, and do you know why? Do you? Do you?”

  The gymnasium was silent.

  “Well I’ll tell you why,” Max said. “Because he loved the sport the way I love the sport, and Horace loves the sport, and all of you young men on Horace’s teams love the sport, that’s why. Because if you don’t find something in your life you love—really love—life ain’t worth a plugged nickel. Because hey—look at me and what boxing gave me, okay? Because it gave me things I never would of had if not for this great sport. It gave me friends, and a wife and kids, and money, and a chance to make people happy, and—” he glanced at Ilana “—and it gave me a few other benefits too, right?”

  Ilana waved to the crowd.

  “And it gave Frankie Campbell the way to marry a woman he loved,” Max went on, “and to provide for her, and bring little Frankie Jr. into the world so he could be here today to honor his father’s memory. So when me and Horace, who was with me that day and held Frankie’s head in his own hands—when Horace and I put on a little show, and then some of you boys go at it, we’re gonna know that Frankie Campbell is looking down and smiling to see us doing the one thing that makes everything else okay, ain’t that right, Frankie?”

  Max turned his eyes upwards, and we all did the same, and I almost expected, for a moment, consummate showman that Max was, that we were going to see Frankie Campbell floating up there, and hear his voice pour down blessings on us. Max pulled me to him, an arm around my shoulder, and as had ever been the case, I could not tell if he was being sincere, or playing at being sincere, or if he knew the difference. He talked to me through the opening in my head gear: “So I said to the doc, ‘I also get this ringing in my ears all the time, so what should I do about it?’ and the doc said, ‘Don’t answer it, Max.’”

  Then, to the crowd. “And in honor of Frankie, and for the anniversary of his passing, I’m announcing that I’m donating another five thousand dollars to the Frankie Campbell scholarship fund—and oh shit!—I wasn’t supposed to say that, was I? So you gotta make believe you didn’t hear me, okay? Because I don’t want no credit ever, and wanted this to be synonymous, see—”