The really bizarre thing was that Meinecke seemed grateful for the opportunity of being leashed to a bumper and towed up and down country lanes. “Like Norman says,” he explained to me when I told him he was crazy, “ ‘no pain, no gain’ and another thing – which Norman also says – ‘you don’t know what you can do until you have to do it.’ Couple of times there on the road I wanted to quit awful bad, but when you know you can’t … well, you don’t. And then you’re the better for it.”
“Yeah, and after that fucking lunatic ends up dragging you a couple hundred yards behind a car, then you’ll say you’re the better for the skin graft too.”
Norman was a genius of the stick-and-carrot school of psychology. For Meinecke, the carrot was the rapturous commentary which Hiller provided to accompany Kurt’s daily thumping of the heavy bag dangling from Mrs. Deke’s clothesline pole. There was no doubt about it, Meinecke could punch. Even with Murph clinging to the bag, bracing it, Meinecke could rock them both with one of his awesome right hands. A little praise from Norman and Meinecke looked like a cat full of sweet cream. “That’s a boy, Kurtie! Look at that! That boy’s what you call a banger. Your classic body puncher, your get down and get dirty George Chuvalo kind of fighter. Jab! Jab! Stick it in his face! Set it up! Go downstairs now! Hit him with the low blow! Crack his walnuts! All’s fair in love and war, Kurtie, my man! You beauty, you!”
A typical July afternoon.
Each of Hiller’s boys had a role to play in the making of a champion, nobody was left out. The pattern was the same as in The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, where each contributed according to his talents. Dooey was our equipment manager, shoplifting vaseline, adhesive tape, gauze, iodine, Q-tips, copies of Ring magazine – all the props – from the local drugstore. Murph and his beat-up ’57 Chev towed Meinecke through his road work. Deke’s yard was our training camp. I was delegated corner man and masseur. To Hop Jump fell the honour of being appointed Meinecke’s sparring partner, a seemingly perverse choice since the Hopper was notorious for his cowardice. This he cheerfully acknowledged with the frequent declaration, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.” The truth was that he was neither, but everyone instinctively understood poetic licence and what he was getting at. Hiller was implacable; no amount of whining and pleading on Hop Jump’s part got his sentence commuted. For the rest of us seated on the pulpy mattress, swigging Cokes and puffing cigarettes, the sparring match was the highlight of the day. We jeered and hooted “Beep! Beep!” as Hop Jump, the human roadrunner, ducked and dodged and scrambled all over Deke’s backyard, dust puffing up out of the dead grass around his sagging white socks, Meinecke in awkward, earnestly determined pursuit.
Up and down, back and forth, from corner to corner, from pillar to post, around the clothesline pole and the smashed trike they went, Meinecke occasionally unleashing a looping roundhouse which nearly always missed the mark, or at best, landed a glancing blow to Benyuk’s shoulder or back, pinching a squawk of terror out of him and spurring him on to swifter flight.
When I asked Hiller about this strange pairing, inquiring why he had assigned Meinecke a sparring partner whose one aim was to avoid an exchange of blows at all costs, he gave me a long, steady look before answering. “I don’t want Meinecke getting used to getting hit – and Hop Jump isn’t going to hit him. I don’t want Meinecke hitting nothing but the bag – nothing human – and Hop Jump sure the fuck isn’t going to let nobody hit him. Perfect,” he concluded enigmatically.
Meanwhile, the changes in Kurt were growing more and more pronounced. It was bad enough that he did exactly what Hiller told him to do when Hiller was there, but now he went even further, obeying his instructions to the letter even when Norman had no way of checking up on him. Hiller had ordered him to get lighter on his feet and now Kurt minced along on tippy toes. Walking home with him was like taking a stroll with Liberace. It didn’t stop there. Each night he poured half a box of Windsor salt into the bathroom sink filled with water and soaked his head in it because Hiller had told him that fighters who cured their skin in brine toughened it, making themselves harder to cut.
Kurt may have been having the time of his life, but for the rest of us, the novelty began to wear off soon enough. Even Hop Jump’s scampers around the backyard weren’t as funny as they once were. We’d seen too many Road Runner and Coyote cartoons, they’d begun to pall. Nobody said it, but all of us were thinking it. What was the point?
Norman, with his exquisite sense of timing, broke the news just when interest was nearly dead. “Having just concluded extensive and lengthy negotiations,” he reported, “I am pleased to reveal that I have signed Meinecke for a fight.”
“What?” I said. “You negotiated Hop Jump into a phone booth? Because that’s the only way you’ll get a fight going between those two.”
Everybody laughed. Everybody but Hiller.
“I got him a fight with Scutter,” he said flatly, in a tone that judges in the movies use to hand down a death sentence.
Nobody spoke. We all avoided looking at Meinecke. A kind of deadly hush embraced the seven of us.
“Nothing to worry about,” Norman said calmly. “Scutter’s a street fighter. This is way different. If Scutter can’t flash the boots he ain’t much – and he can’t flash the boots in a boxing match. Never fear. He’s soap on a rope. Our boy’s got the training, our boy’s got the know how, our boy’s got the neck and he’s got the hands.” Hiller gave us a significant look. “Our boy’s got the team.”
The team didn’t say anything, the team was thinking of Blair Scutter. Scutter was unquestionably the most dangerous of the local psychopaths, a square, stocky kid with acne so bad that his head looked like a gigantic raspberry perched on a cigarette machine. When he was twelve he had given up terrorizing contemporaries and started picking fights with teenagers; when he was a teenager he graduated to brawls with miners at dances in the community hall. When Blair Scutter walked down one of the humanity-choked corridors at R.J. Plumber High, an avenue opened in the congestion, everyone shrinking back against the lockers so as not to risk brushing up against his brutish shoulders. Brushing up against Scutter was like rubbing shoulders with death.
Hiller could see we weren’t convinced. “Everybody heard what I said?” he demanded. “I said we got the team. And the team backs Kurt here a hundred and ten per cent. We all think positive. We all do positive. As President Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what Kurt can do for you, but what you can do for Kurt.’ Right?” He looked at each of us in turn, gouging out of us grudging nods of agreement. What we were thinking went unvoiced.
I felt compelled to speak to Norman and hung around until everybody had left that afternoon.
“What is this?” I said to him. “You know he hasn’t got a chance.”
“He does if he does what I tell him,” said Norman. “But the rest of you got to back me up. No fucking with his head, putting doubts in it. A right attitude is a winning attitude. Anybody gives him doubts is a traitor in my books.” It was clear whom he was thinking of when he used that word. “Anybody’s a traitor in our camp better watch out.”
I left that alone, tried another tack. “But why Scutter?” I asked. “Why start him with Scutter?”
“Box office,” said Norman abruptly. “You promote a fight you got to have a draw. Scutter’s a name attraction. I got a hall to fill.”
Things were moving too fast. “What do you mean hall? What hall?”
“Kingdom Hall. That Jehovah Witness place a mile out of town. Deke’s old lady has the key to it because she cleans it. So Deke’ll steal her key and we have the fight out there on a Thursday night. It being out in the country it won’t attract too much attention if we borrow it a couple of hours. If somebody drives by and sees cars and lights they’ll just figure the Jehovahs are having one of their singalongs or circle jerks or whatever they do out there.”
“You’re going to throw a fight in a church?”
“Hall,” Norman correct
ed me. “The place is called Kingdom Hall. It isn’t a church.”
There was no debating with Hiller. Arguments with him were conducted in a twilight zone where normal mental operations were suspended and invalid. I switched tracks. I wanted to know what was in this for Scutter.
“Twenty-five bucks,” said Norman. “I guaranteed him twenty-five to fight and fifty if he wins. But no sweat. We can charge two bucks a head at the gate for a fight like this. And there’s no problem getting a hundred guys in there. I got Murph to drive me out so I could look in the windows yesterday. They don’t have pews. Just those tin stacking-chairs. We can clear a space easy. It was made for us.”
“And what about Kurt?” I asked. “What are you paying him? What does he get out of this?”
Norman gave me one of his dangerous stares, the kind in which his eyes went flat, unreadable. “Don’t play stupid with me, genius. You fucking know as well as I do what Kurtie gets. He only gets what he’s been begging for all along. Nothing else.”
“So tell me, what’s he been begging for?”
“Just what he’s going to get,” said Norman.
Maybe at seventeen I was already as cynical at heart as I hoped to be in those future haunts – London, Paris, Vienna, Rome – which I imagined for myself. When Hiller unveiled his fight plan naturally I assumed Meinecke was being set-up, jobbed. Norman claimed that the way to beat Scutter was to blow his mind the way Paul Newman had blown George Kennedy’s mind in Cool Hand Luke. How had he done this? By absorbing all the punishment that Kennedy could hand out while proving that it was not enough to break him. This totally fucked a guy’s head when he was giving you his best shots and you were laughing at them. “Meinecke will not even think of throwing a punch until he gets the nod from me,” said Hiller. “Meinecke will let Mr. Hardass wear himself out hitting him. He will inform Mr. Hardass that his sister can hit harder than that. He will Cool Hand Luke him. He will be trained for this. He is going to show Scutter that when you got the tree trunk neck, when you got the Floyd Patterson peekaboo defence, when you got the team behind you – then you are unstoppable. You are the hardest ass in town, none harder. You got the plan to twist all the bolts and nuts loose in Scutter’s head. Once they are good and rattling I will turn Meinecke loose. He will execute.”
I didn’t point out the obvious to Kurt – that being forbidden to hit back in a boxing match is a handicap. I was busy trying to convince myself that he was asking for whatever he got. I felt disgust for his naked need, for his gullibility, for the soft, accommodating clay he had become under Norman’s hands. In one of Hiller’s favourite movies, The Magnificent Seven, a ruthless bandit, who has been robbing and terrorizing poor peasants, poses a question to Yul Brynner, the gunman who has become their protector. He asks: If God did not wish them to be shorn, why did he make them sheep?
A sheep myself, I still managed to muster contempt for the others in Hiller’s flock, for their stupidity if nothing else. Didn’t they know what was going on? When Hiller made his speech about how we ought to show team spirit by each handing over to him five bucks to bet on Meinecke, I knew what was up. The bet wasn’t going on Kurt, it was going on Scutter. And when Scutter pounded the snot out of Meinecke those morons would believe their money was lost because Kurt had lost. Sure, lost. Lost in Hiller’s pockets. Still, I didn’t break ranks. He got my money too.
Five days before the fight Meinecke was christened. Hiller explained to us that his research proved there had never been a great fighter who didn’t have a great ring name. Check it out. Archie Moore? The Mongoose. Beautiful. Jack Dempsey? The Manassa Mauler. A one. Robinson? Sugar Ray. Sweetness itself. Ingemar Johansson? The Hammer of Thor. You had to love it. Joe Louis? The Brown Bomber. Outstanding.
For days now, he confessed, he had been racking his brains to come up with a moniker that would elevate Meinecke into the same class as Robinson, Moore, Dempsey, etc. And now he had it.
There was a stir of anticipation. I glanced at Kurt who looked like he was about to come in his pants.
“Yeah?” said Murph, unable any longer to contain himself. “So what is it?”
“Gentlemen,” said Norman, making a sweeping gesture of introduction, “let me present, Kurt Meinecke, The Master of Disaster!”
Enthusiasm was unanimous. “Right on, like a mouse’s ear!” “Fucking, aye!” “Leave it to Hiller.” “The Master of Disaster! It’s pissing!”
Kurt beamed.
I did not bother to point out that the meaning of Master of Disaster was ambiguous. English Composition was never Norman’s strong suit. Psychology was.
The big night arrived. As Murph headed his Chev out of town for Kingdom Hall, the streetlights were flickering feebly into life and then, one after another, exploding full strength in the failing light. Norman sat up front beside Murph. Kurt, in running shoes, shorts, and boxing gloves, was in the back seat wedged between me and Hop Jump like a prisoner under escort. Nobody said anything during the short drive, although Meinecke kept nervously clearing his throat and striking his gloves together, one muffled pop after another. Deke and Dooey had gone on ahead to open the hall and sell admissions to what Norman predicted would be a standing-room-only crowd.
Hiller was correct, the turnout was prodigious. Forty-five minutes before fight time and the parking lot was already crammed with cars, many with their engines running and their headlights left on to provide light to party by. When we pulled into the lot, guys with beers in their hands were lounging on fenders, perching on bumpers, saluting and insulting one another, drifting about from one milling, jostling gathering to the next. Nosing a car through the throng wasn’t easy. Norman stuck his head out the window and began to shout, “Make way! Make way! Fighter coming through! Out of the way, peckerheads!” Every couple of seconds he lunged impatiently across Murph to knock peremptory blats out of the horn with the heel of his hand when people didn’t hasten out of our path quickly enough for him. Slowly we crept around to the back of Kingdom Hall, pale, excited faces with bottles tipped into them looming out of the swiftly falling darkness; dust swaying and shaking like smoke in the white-hot tracks of high beams; figures doubling over to gape through the windows of the car at Meinecke huddled up between Hop Jump and me in the back seat. As we edged along they thumped the hood of the car, gave ear-splitting whoops and hollers, chanted a variation of Hiller’s announcement: “Corpse coming through! Make way! Dead man coming through!” Hiller had been wrong about one thing. No one passing by would have mistaken this congregation for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
At last Murph got us clear of the mob and drew the car up to the back door. Norman gave everybody orders to stay put in the vehicle and wait, except for me. I was to accompany him. Inside, the hall was filling rapidly, growing warm with the funky, animal heat of packed bodies; blue with cigarette smoke and yeasty with the smell of beer. Like any promoter worth his salt, Norman immediately made for the box office to check the take. As he peered over Dooey’s shoulder into the shoe box holding the money, Deke began to gripe and bitch about the behaviour of the crowd. Who had stolen the key? Who was going to take any of the shit coming down if the premises got damaged? Him. Deke. “They won’t stop smoking,” he said to Norman in a whiny voice. “You got to lay the law down to them, Norman. I mean Jehovahs don’t smoke. You think they aren’t going to smell stale smoke and wonder how it got here? And somebody spilled a beer on the floor. Already the place stinks like a fucking brewery. You got to do something with them, Norman …”
Norman wasn’t listening. He turned to Dooey. “How much?”
Dooey gave a shake to the box. “Close to a hundred and twenty so far,” he said.
“All right,” said Norman. “Shoo those assholes in the parking lot in here. That fucking carnival out there is going to attract attention. I want this show on the road.” Norman had an afterthought. “And, Dooey, remember. No sticky fingers in the till. Sticky fingers are broken fingers.”
“Norman …” Deke began mournfully
, trying to steer the conversation back to his complaint, but Hiller was moving off, double-time, flipping a roll of electrician’s tape from hand to hand. Lugging a plastic pail and a brown paper shopping bag stuffed with a corner man’s supplies, I trotted after him.
In the centre of the hall Norman commenced laying out the boundaries of a ring on the floor with the black tape. There were no ropes or posts, but he explained that if the crowd stood flush to the tape that would keep the fighters hemmed in. I set up chairs in opposing corners and unpacked the medical supplies Dooey had shoplifted: sponge, gauze pads, Vaseline.
Meanwhile Hiller had completed his chores and was on the prowl like a caged beast, pacing back and forth, jacking himself up on his tiptoes to scan late arrivals over the heads of the thick mob, muttering to himself. Scutter hadn’t shown yet. Donald Broward, half-drunk, wandered over to get instructions from Norman. For a six pack Hiller had hired him to referee, not because Broward knew anything about boxing, but, a lineman on the high school football team, he was big enough to pull Scutter off Meinecke and prevent a homicide if things got out of hand.
The multitude suddenly stirred and then there was a surprising drop in the volume of drunken noise. Scutter trooped into the hall, flanked by his brother and some other bad actors. As he advanced on the ring, a swell of encouraging murmurs trailed after him, accompanied by several shy pats to his shoulders and back which he, supremely indifferent, accepted without acknowledgment.
I heard Hiller whispering to himself as we watched him approach. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I’ve got you in my sights now.”
From this point on, everything went forward in a dizzy rush. Hiller ordered me off to collect and ready Kurt. As I swung open the back door I heard him throwing himself into his highly coloured impersonation of a Madison Square Garden ring announcer.
“Tonight, from Kingdom Hall, Norman Hiller Productions presents the fight extravaganza of the century. The Collision of the Titans –.” The closing door had choked him off.
Things As They Are? Page 7
