The Killings of Stanley Ketchel

by James Carlos Blake

  Welch gestures for them to resume fighting and Ketchel bulls into Johnson with his head down and butts him under the eye. Johnson grabs him in a clinch and Ketchel punches him low. Johnson curses and locks an arm around his neck and grinds the laces of his other glove into his eye cut. Nearly choking, Ketchel clubs at Johnson’s kidney with the heel of his fist. Welch shrilling rebukes. Johnson clouts at Ketchel’s battered ear with an elbow. Welch shakes a finger in Johnson’s face and as Johnson cuts his eyes at the ref Ketchel hits him with a hook that sprays the sweat off his head. Johnson curses and clinches and they grapple against the ropes, butting, elbowing, oblivious to Welch’s commands to break until he bravely wedges between them.

  The gong declares a minute’s truce.

  Ketchel is panting hard when he arrives at his stool. The Goat examines the eye cuts and pronounces them insignificant. So too the cheek welt.

  “Keep it up, kid, keep it up,” Britt says. “You’re whipping him, I swear to God, you’re whipping his black ass!”

  Ketchel knows better. But he also believes with all his heart and soul that if he can land just one big punch he can bring the big bastard down.

  In the opposite corner Johnson’s seconds minister to the swelling raised under his eye by the head butt as George Little continues to reprove him. “The little bohunk’s making you look bad, goddamnit! Don’t let him do you like this!”

  “I ain’t letting him do a damn thing,” Johnson says.

  In the eleventh, Ketchel lands his best punch of the fight thus far, an overhand right that rocks Johnson and raises a thunderous outcry, but even in the instant of landing it Ketchel knows it is not the Big One, it’s a little too high on the jaw. Johnson leans backward as he retreats, keeping his jaw out of range, taking punches on the shoulders and arms, fending with his gloves. The crowd baying like a massive wolf pack smelling blood on the air. But again Ketchel’s bombardment lacks accuracy and Johnson counters with a straight right that flashes a light in Ketchel’s head and almost unhinges his knees and he grabs Johnson in a clinch.

  So ends the eleventh.

  “Christ sake, Jack,” George Little says, “how much longer this gonna go on?”

  Johnson works his sore jaw. “I’ve give him some shots, man. He ain’t hardly human.” He means the remark as a joke but it does not carry that way to George Little or even entirely so to his own ears.

  “He’s a goddamn feist dog don’t know who he’s snapping at, is what he is,” George Little says. “And you, goddamnit, are Jack Johnson. You’re the heavyweight champion of the world. Enough’s enough. Yank the leash on the son of a bitch. Bust him.”

  The gong sounds.

  Johnson keeps his chin down and hands high to defend his aching jaw, and Ketchel hooks him to the body repeatedly, trying to bring down his guard, expose the chin, make an opening for the One Big Punch.

  They jab and close in and clinch, half-wrestle into Johnson’s corner, where George Little shouts, “Bust him, goddamnit, bust him!” Johnson bangs at the back of Ketchel’s neck. Ketchel butts Johnson in the forehead. Welch issues more warnings, orders them to break.

  Ketchel backs away and lowers his hands, right fist at his hip, like a gunfighter set to draw. Johnson comes away from the ropes, touches a glove to his forehead where a lump is forming from the headbutt and as he lowers the glove Ketchel springs and hits him with a right cross carrying all of his weight behind it.

  Johnson barely manages to avert his chin but the punch bashes into his temple, knocks him into a sideways totter…and he drops on his ass.

  The arena explodes in a shuddering soar of cheers.

  Johnson rolls up onto one hand and tries to rise but is dazed and off balance and falls back again. He braces himself on one arm as the ref starts to count.

  Ketchel stares down at him and thinks Yes, yes, yes…. He barely hears the ref yell, “Twooooo!”

  Welch swings his arm in a great high sweep with each count, as he cannot be heard above the hysterical din, not even by some at ringside.

  “Threeeeee!”

  Johnson’s yellow eyes are glassy and disbelieving.

  “Foourrrr!”

  Ketchel feels the robust pull of his own grin, as aware as everyone in the crowd that he is but seconds away from the heavyweight championship.

  “Fiiiiive!”

  Johnson rolls sideways and pauses with both hands on the canvas.

  “Siiiiix!”

  Johnson now on all fours, pausing. Ketchel thinks, Fall over, fall over, fall over….

  “Seevvvvven!”

  Johnson on one knee. Okay, Ketchel thinks, okay you no-good lowdown stinking nosebone son of a bitch, do it, get up, get up and see what happens, goddamn you.

  Eeeiiiight!

  Johnson is up.

  The referee gestures for them to resume. Johnson’s gaze now un-glassed. He reads Ketchel’s eyes. Shows his gold teeth.

  In this moment all Ketchel can think to do is to hit that golden smile with all his might and drop the man for keeps. He leaps headlong, swinging from the hip, letting fly with what is commonly called a haymaker.

  It is a rankly reckless move and Johnson has seen it coming. And he beats Ketchel to the punch with a right cross that by his own later admission is one of the hardest blows of his life. It hits oncoming Ketchel squarely in the mouth in a collision of opposing forces not unlike a baseball bat connecting with a fastball. All in a heartbeat Ketchel’s forward motion is arrested and reversed and he is aloft and then thumping onto the canvas like a bundle of the latest edition hitting the sidewalk at a newsstand and Johnson’s forward momentum carries him into Ketchel’s upslung legs and he trips and goes sprawling and immediately scrambles to his feet as the cheers of a moment before transform to a colossal groan.

  Ketchel lies supine, spread-eagled, unmoving. As the referee begins the count Johnson leans on the ropes, one hand on his hip, his posture suggesting a workman at rest, a gravedigger, perhaps, who has completed the most arduous part of a job and is watching someone else finish up.

  “Ten!” cries Welch. He waves his arms crosswise over Ketchel and then hoists Johnson’s hand to a weak chorus of boos, the majority of witnesses still too stunned to do other than stand gaping at the terrible sight of Ketchel flat on his back.

  Johnson goes to his corner and says to George Little, “I think I done killed him.”

  He is not the only one to think so. Not even repeated applications of smelling salts rouse Ketchel to consciousness.

  “Let’s get to the dressing room while the getting’s good,” George Little says. Johnson says he wants to see if Ketchel recovers. Little casts nervous glances at the hostile crowd and says they can wait for word in the dressing room. Johnson says he’s not leaving the ring until he knows if Ketchel’s dead or crippled or what.

  Nearly fifteen minutes elapse before Ketchel finally comes around with a moan and is helped to sit up. One of Johnson’s seconds chants loudly: “Nine hundred fifty-four, nine hundred fifty-five, nine hundred fif—”

  “Cut out that shit,” Johnson says. They make their way back to the dressing room in a rain of boos and epithets. And a few minutes later, as he removes Johnson’s gloves, George Little says, “Jesus.” Embedded in the facing of the right glove are Ketchel’s two front teeth.

  In the ring, Ketchel is assisted to his feet amid a scattering of relieved cheering and applause. His mouth is a bloody wreck, his balance tentative, his vision indistinct. Britt’s face comes into partial focus before him and Ketchel hears him ask, “You okay, champ?” but he is unsure what the question means, and so says nothing.

  He is helped into his robe. Helped to step down from the ring. Helped through the crowd, to his dressing room.

  IN THE POSTFIGHT interview, Jack Johnson told reporters what he would tell everyone ever after: that the only reason Ketchel came within two seconds of taking the heavyweight title from him was a sneak punch. He said he and Ketchel had agreed the fight would be no more than an exhibi
tion. They would put on a good show for twenty rounds to give the fans their money’s worth and both of them would benefit. He would have a hell of a good payday and Ketchel would have the honor of having fought the heavyweight champ to a draw. Everything was going along as agreed until Ketchel double-crossed him with a sneak punch in the twelfth.

  “Mr. Stanley ain’t so dumb he would imperilize his life by fighting me for real,” Johnson said. “But he ain’t so honest he wouldn’t try and put Poppa Jack down for the count with a sneak punch, neither, get him the heavyweight belt and some big-time glory, know what I mean? Nothing for it after that but to give the little fella what he had coming.”

  “It sure as hell didn’t look like an exhibition match, Jack,” one reporter remarked. “Not from the start.”

  There were snickers and elbow nudges among his colleagues, every man of whom was thinking the same thing. Jack Johnson’s cavalier attitude toward the truth in matters large and small was already well established.

  “Well now, we sure enough made it look good, didn’t we?” Johnson’s golden grin shone. “Me and Mr. Stanley, we natural-born thespiaters, don’t you know?”

  ON RETURNING TO his San Francisco hotel after the fight, Ketchel said nothing to anyone. It pained his mouth too much to talk, for one thing, and he in any case did not want to open it and expose the gap in his top teeth. Besides, he had nothing to say.

  That evening he lay awake into the depths of the night and behind his closed eyes sporadically saw the same blinding blast of light he saw at the impact of Johnson’s punch. He ordered himself not to think about anything and fairly well succeeded. But his heart could not be commanded to cease feeling as it did, and he at last succumbed to weeping. He had a moment of wishing he had been killed. Felt as if, in some way that had nothing to do with breathing, some portion of him had been.

  The Hustler

  The colonel’s telegram congratulated him on a heroic effort and invited him to his estate in Missouri to rest up. His brother John’s wire also conveyed admiration, and asked if he would be coming home for a while. Ketchel sent cables to both of them, saying that he had various business matters to tend to and could not get away for now. He told the colonel he hoped to visit him soon, told his brother he longed to go home and spend some time with his family and in his own house, both of which he missed.

  The truth of course was that he did not want either the colonel or his mother to see him in his battered state. While the swellings and bruises would dissipate with their customary quickness, his mouth was another matter. On the train trip back to New York he was obliged to nourish chiefly on soups and puddings and beer. Once back in Manhattan, he underwent extensive oral surgery and was afterward required to wear a wire brace for six weeks.

  He spent that time in Atlantic City, accompanied by Jewel Bovine. At her first sight of him on his return she had been moved to tears. They could kiss if they were gentle about it. She had to quit the hatcheck job to be with him, but she was sure she could get another one on her return, and Ketchel gave her enough money to cover her share of the boardinghouse room rent for at least six months. He left a note for Britt and the Goat, informing them he would be away for a time but did not say where. His New York surgeon gave him the name of a colleague in Atlantic City who each week would assess the process of his recovery. They checked into a boardwalk hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Dalton. Their room was on the top floor overlooking the ocean. They rarely left its confines during the entire time they were there. When he returned to New York he no longer wore the mouth brace. His new teeth were brilliant, his repaired jaw felt fine. And he learned Willus Britt had been dead two weeks.

  The Goat had gone to Britt’s room one morning to collect him on the way to breakfast and discovered him on the floor in his bathrobe, blue-faced and half-rigid. The coroner determined a heart attack. There had been a memorial service and Jimmy Britt delivered the eulogy.

  Ketchel paid a visit to the grave, found it inundated with the wagonload of flowers he’d ordered for it. He had to dig with his hands through the heap of mums and jonquils and lilies and tulips to expose the white headstone with Willus’s engraved name and a simple REST IN PEACE.

  My friend, he thought.

  It occurred to him how few true friends he had. How few he’d ever had. The reflection brought Kate Morgan to mind, and he sat down in the flowers with his face in his hands.

  The cloying fragrances closed around him and he began to feel sick. He raised his face but the sweetness was overpowering and he quite suddenly could not get his breath. He started to rise, slipped on the crushed petals underfoot, and fell into the mound of flowers. He felt he was smothering and nearly screamed in his panic as his feet sought purchase. Then he was upright and running, shedding flowers as he ran. Ran all the way out of the graveyard and for several blocks beyond, his heart banging at his ribs like some crazed thing in a cage.

  SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS he left for a sojourn in Michigan. At the same time, Pete the Goat departed for St. Louis to see an ex-wife with whom he’d remained friends over the years. How many wives had he had, Ketchel asked, en route to the station. “Just about enough,” Pete said.

  Despite his brother’s and Barzoomian’s best efforts to keep the details from her, his mother had heard talk of Johnson’s devastating knockout of him and had been fraught with worry that her son was somehow maimed. And then he was at the front door and she saw his face as handsome as ever and she hugged him hard and wept with relief.

  After two days at his mother’s house he went to his own home at Pine Lake and there received a telegram from the colonel asking if he might come to Belmont for a brief visit. Ketchel wired back: ANYTIME OLD MAN STOP MY HOUSE YOUR HOUSE STOP STEVE. Three days later Pete Dickerson was ensconced as his guest.

  Every few days, Ketchel took supper at his mother’s table, catching up on the latest news of Barzoomian’s business, arm wrestling with his brother, dancing with Rebeka. But he chiefly kept company with the colonel. They went fishing on Lake Michigan and damn the gelid winds. They went hunting at his cabin. They drank excellent whiskey and smoked superior cigars. The colonel continued to entreat him to visit his Missouri estate for a while. Ketchel promised he would, and sometime soon. On New Year’s Eve they drank to each other’s good health and the bright future ahead.

  They talked of various topics, including of course the Johnson fight. The colonel felt compelled to remark that Johnson must’ve hit him with a lucky punch.

  “Lucky’s the word for it,” Ketchel said. “I was lucky it didn’t kill me.”

  Only to the colonel did he ever confess that in the first days after the fight, he’d seriously considered retiring. But in the past few weeks he’d come to realize it would be a mistake. “I’d be quitting for no reason except I got cooled good. That’s a yellow reason.”

  “Christ’s sake, son, if there’s one thing you’ll never be it’s yellow. But the thing is, who’s left for you to fight? You’ve beat them all.”

  “Except for Johnson.”

  “The boogie don’t count, he’s a heavyweight.”

  “And the best there is.”

  “Only till this summer when Jeffries gets at him.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “No probably about it,” the colonel said. “Tell me, you decided on a new manager?”

  In the time he’d been home in Pine Lake, Ketchel had received more than two dozen wires from managers around the country who wanted the job made available by the death of Willus Britt. A dozen of them were from New York. He was leaning toward a man named Mizner. In his cable, Mizner claimed that before coming to New York he had managed boxers in various mining towns out west, and concluded the telegram with: WILD WEST GUYS GOT TO STICK TOGETHER.

  HE RETURNED TO Manhattan in late February and met with Wilson Mizner at the man’s Broadway office. In his midthirties, Mizner was lean and quick of gesture, bald on the crown but handsome, a dapper dresser, a fast talker of persuasive sincerity. A c
harming and amusing quipster who would in the years ahead discover his métier as a writer, that enduring profession of skilled liars, authoring Broadway plays and cranking out Hollywood scripts.

  He recounted with great animation his days as a prospector in Alaska when he was hardly more than a boy. “I panned for two years and all I got out of it was a total of eighteen dollars in dust, two frostbitten toes, and a no-good partner’s bullet through my hat. Oh yeah, and a dose of clap from an Indian squaw.”

  Mizner himself had fought three boxing matches in his life, all of them in Nome. After winning his first two fights by easy decisions he began to think he might have what it took to be a top pro. Then he fought a fisherman from Juneau and the fight was over in the first round. “He knocked me out on Good Friday and I didn’t completely regain my senses till Easter. It was a compelling religious experience and converted me to management.”

  He was educated in a variety of subjects that Ketchel knew nothing about, but they were familiar with many of the same places. Mizner was from California and, like Ketchel, had enjoyed grand times in San Francisco. He had managed boxers in a number of mining towns Ketchel knew well, though Mizner had been in them a few years before him.

  “Now listen, champ, you may have heard it said that I’m something of a hustler,” he told Ketchel. “Well, I want you to know that’s a base canard. I happen to be something of a superior hustler. And why not? The way I see it, God help those who do not help themselves.”

  Ketchel had known a variety of hustlers, but Mizner seemed in a class of his own, and it was impossible not to like him. He had Ketchel laughing at accounts of shady enterprises he had engineered in partnership with his brother Addison. He readily confessed that the most shameful thing he’d done so far was when he’d first arrived in New York and stolen his brother’s girl. That the “girl,” one Adelaide Yerkes, was at the time eighty years old was nothing to brag about, either, he admitted, but the shuddering truth of her age was more than offset by the cheerful fact that she was as rich as Midas’s widow. In no time at all they were married and then just as swiftly divorced. The whole tawdry episode was played out in the yellow press and made him into something of a roguish celebrity, which in turn and in the naturally perverse nature of things, made him attractive to women who otherwise wouldn’t have given him a second glance. The whole tawdry episode also got him a handsome monetary settlement.