The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  Yan Ianelli smiled wanly. Calhoun got up and walked out.

  “They say he can’t keep hitting that hard for more than three rounds,” Ianelli defended Calhoun against the growing suspicion, among fans, that Calhoun wasn’t able to go the full distance, “but there are very few fighters who can take that sort of punishment for more than three. You’ll have to show me someone who can. My regret is that, when he scores an early kayo, that fans can’t see how well he fights in the sixth or eighth.”

  Buford Lee, a black man fighting out of Memphis, was the first fighter to give Calhoun’s fans a chance to see how their man stood up under pressure. He stayed on top of Calhoun, at Madison Square Garden, with both hands high all the way. He capitalized on Calhoun’s wildness, used combinations to body and head, and every time Calhoun took the offensive he fought back.

  In the fifth Calhoun sent Lee reeling across the ring, but Lee’s jabs bothered Calhoun so much he was unable to follow through.

  “I knew I was going to whip you,” Lee assured Calhoun after taking the decision. “You weren’t fighting your own fight. You were concentrating on the fans instead of on me.”

  “We learned a lot from Buford Lee,” Ianelli rationalized this defeat. “We silenced people who were saying Calhoun couldn’t take a good punch. It was a setback but not a serious one. Boxing isn’t a single-elimination game. We’ll fight Buford Lee again.”

  “When this boy learns to put punches together he’ll be better than Dick Lion,” Sandy Randolph, who had once whipped Lion, observed.

  By the time Calhoun fought Buford Lee again, again in Madison Square, he’d learned to put punches together. A terrific right hand started Lee down in the first round. He held on until Calhoun came on with both hands. The southerner dropped, mouthpiece dangling, over the bottom rope. The referee didn’t bother counting.

  Two minutes and seven seconds of the first round.

  “I thought I’d learned a lot about Calhoun the first time we fought,” Lee acknowledged ruefully. “It looks now like he learned more about me.”

  A host of rooters tried to crash Calhoun’s dressing room after he’d whipped Buford Lee. Police were required to control the crowd.

  “This is the first time this happened since Marciano beat Louis,” Matt Haloways, an old-time fight fan, recalled. “He’s the same type fighter as Graziano, but he can do a lot more than Graziano ever could. Graziano went for the head. He couldn’t score to the body like Calhoun. I could feel some of those blows to Lee’s midsection. They hurt.”

  While training for his fight against Emilio Sanjurjo, one of Calhoun’s spar mates told Calhoun he was going out for an ice cream soda; he never came back. He abandoned his equipment and took off, that was all.

  “It’s bad enough what he does to you, but why does he have to keep telling you about it?” the spar mate wanted to know. “The worst part is the blow-by-blow account he gives you while he’s doing it. I maybe could take his punch. But not his announcing.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be a fightie-talkie?” Calhoun defended his curious habit of informing an opponent that he was chopping him up while chopping him up. “It’s my business, my job. Would you tell a carpenter not to whistle on the job? Would you tell a butcher to keep his mouth shut when he’s slicing pork chops? It relaxes me. Sanjurjo is the toughest man I’ve fought, I know how well he is thought of, that’s what I’m telling myself when I work out. If I can whip him it’ll be a tremendous boost.”

  Jennifer, Red and Dovie-Jean, Billy Boggs, Floyd Calhoun and old man Matt Haloways took ringside seats at St. Nick’s for this bout. Hardee Haloways was not present. He did not belong to Calhoun’s entourage. Hardee had not the faintest interest in sports. He followed the stock market.

  Emilio Sanjurjo was an experienced man. He’d fought several times at St. Nick’s and had been on Garden cards half a dozen times. He was methodical, working an opponent over before attempting a knockout. He began pecking away at Calhoun with his left. As they swung toward the ring’s west ropes Calhoun lashed out with a blurring left that caught Sanjurjo flush on the jaw. Down went Sanjurjo.

  He rose before the mandatory eight but was stunned. Groggy, reeling and ducking, he managed to stay clear of Calhoun’s left for almost a minute. Then, in mid-ring, a real blockbuster caught him and knocked him almost through the ropes. He slumped against them while the referee counted eight a second time. The fight was over but the referee didn’t stop it.

  He let Sanjurjo come on until another bone-crushing left caught him. He didn’t bother counting Sanjurjo out.

  One minute and thirty-eight seconds of the first round.

  “Calhoun hits harder than anyone I have ever fought,” Sanjurjo acknowledged later.

  “A lot of fighters hit hard,” the referee added his comment, “but when Calhoun hits you, you don’t get up.”

  Calhoun took his wife, father, Red and Matt Haloways, Dovie-Jean, Yan and Elvira Ianelli and Billy Boggs to a pizza parlor after the fight. Yan and his spaced-out wife were the life of the party.

  “They’re all going to be quick,” Yan assured a couple of sportswriters who had invited themselves to Calhoun’s table. “This boy is as powerful as any middleweight in the world. He’s going to be champion. Let me tell you how strong and good this boy is. When we fought Hirsch Jacoby and got beat, we agreed to fight three times in one night for charity in Jersey City. The first guy was a heavyweight. Ruby knocked him out in one round. The second was a middleweight. He went out in one too. Then came another heavyweight. This was the main event. It was rough. It took Ruby two whole rounds to put him away. What you’re looking at tonight, gentlemen, at this table, is the greatest middleweight since Stanley Ketchel!”

  Elvira stood up. She was slightly stoned. Elvira was always slightly stoned.

  “You are unusually beauty-loving and artistic,” she addressed the table but no one in particular, “your sense of proportion, line and color are superb. You vibrate toward balance and harmony. You tend to appreciate music and other cultured entertainments where aesthetic values are involved. You have an excellent constitution and have great powers of endurance. Libra rules the back and kidneys. Afflications to your sun can cause trouble in either of these regions.”

  She sat down to scattered applause. Nobody knew who she’d been talking about. Or what an “afflication” was.

  “Anyone who does four and a half years in the joint,” one ex-number observed, out of Calhoun’s hearing, “can’t have no kind of chin. Where Calhoun been, they didn’t have no training table. And they don’t let you out in the morning because they’re not sure you’ll come back. The first place that shows up is in the chin.”

  Roddy Nims was a thirty-three-year-old black pro who’d fought the best and had always looked good. Calhoun had declined to meet him when he’d been with Billy Boggs. Because Nims was as workmanlike a fighter as there was in the ring. He had never been knocked down in his career. Calhoun hit him with two left hooks and Nims’s legs sagged. It looked like Roddy Nims was going home early.

  “Push him off, Rube! Push him off.” Red Haloways shouted to Calhoun from ringside.

  Middleweights had been trying to push Nims off for twelve years. Calhoun couldn’t. In the fourth round Nims put Calhoun down, for the first time in his life, with a right hand to the head. Calhoun was up at four.

  “He had me down,” Calhoun said later, “but I said to myself, he got to keep me down. I didn’t think he could do it. Nims is tough. I’m proud to have whipped him.”

  “If Calhoun had had the experience I have,” Nims acknowledged in his dressing room, “I couldn’t have lasted a single round. He is the most determined fighter I have ever been up against.”

  It had been a good fight, a close fight. It showed Calhoun to be still improving.

  A couple of nights after whipping Nims, Ruby walked into the Paradise. Dovie-Jean was at the bar. Red put a fifth of Cutty Sark in front of Ruby, with two glasses, and poured one for Dovie-Jean.

&n
bsp; “You going to put something in the juke, Champ?” she asked Calhoun. He handed her a half dollar and she put on a song called “Back Door Man.” Then she asked Ruby to dance.

  Calhoun paid her no heed. “You know anything about Rocky Olivera?” he asked Red.

  “Rugged,” Red assured him. “You going down there?”

  “It’s an offer.”

  “He owns the town.”

  “Which town is that?” Dovie-Jean wanted to know.

  “Buenos Aires,” Calhoun informed her, then asked “Where you from?” “Outside Raleigh, North Car’lina.”

  “I was stationed there one time,” Calhoun tried to make conversation, “Fort Bragg. Used to go to Fayetteville on weekends.”

  “Olivera is a busy boy,” Red brought the conversation back to the main track. “He owns two hotels. You stay in one of his joints. Win or lose, he gets dough back like that.”

  “Dance, Champ?” Dovie-Jean still insisted.

  They danced through a song with a catching refrain:

  This is a great big city

  There’s a million things to see…

  Calhoun caught Red’s eye over Dovie-Jean’s shoulder. “Take her if you want her,” Red’s look assured him.

  “Where you staying?” Ruby asked her.

  She made no reply.

  “With Red?”

  “Till I get a job.”

  She didn’t sound like somebody in a great rush toward employment. He suggested they go out for a bite to eat, and drove her to a barbecue joint beside a bar. A motel sign gleamed greenly on the other side of the highway:

  VACANCY

  He steered her into the bar, told her to order what she wanted and one for himself. Then he went across the highway and, when he returned, put the motel key down beside her glass. She smiled.

  “It’s what I thought you were up to,” was all she said.

  She sounded contented.

  “Red don’t care what time I get in,” she assured him as soon as they were in the motel room, “so long as I’m with you. You and him been friends a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since we been kids,” he told her, “we were locked together.”

  He stretched out on the bed when she switched off the lights. The green VACANCY sign cast a curious glow, behind the curtain, in reverse. She came to him, in her panties, stockings and bra, and sat back on her haunches while he unhooked her bra. Her breasts were full and her nipples pointed. He felt them hardening under his palms while she unbuttoned his shirt, drew it off, then unhooked his belt and drew off his pants. He studied her face while she undressed him.

  “I’ve never done this before,” she told him, drawing off his shorts, then sat back, smiling, while he undressed her completely.

  She studied him, as he lay back, stroking his chest, belly and genitals. Her touch was light, yet her eyes were bright. “I’ve never seen a man totally naked before,” she explained.

  He put his hands behind his head and encouraged her, “Help yourself, Dovie-Jean.”

  “You really mean that?” she asked. Then, without waiting for further encouragement, put her lips down lightly upon his penis and began a soft sucking which brought the organ up hugely. She sat back, holding it in her hand, immensely proud of her power over it.

  He waited as though to say: “Let’s see your next move.”

  Her next move was simple enough: she swung herself over, straddling him, still holding his upright cock, pressing her cunt down upon it.

  It wouldn’t fit. Either he was too big or she was too small.

  Yet, by the way she held her head back, and by the determination of her mouth, he knew she wanted it in. Deep in. He put his big hands upon her hips and pressed her firmly down. Her mouth strained back in pain yet pleasure as he entered her.

  She began a slow, instinctive woman’s dance upon him, working him farther and farther into her belly as she rocked. A pang of pleasure took her, so intense that she straightened up rigidly. Then relaxed only a moment before she came once again. She collapsed upon him, breathless with wonder and surprise. He rolled over above her, and withdrew in order to let her catch her breath.

  He waited until she smiled up at him. Then he got his arms about her in a good firm hold and held her so until he’d exhausted himself. She crossed her legs behind his back to help him; he rolled off and lay, mouth parted and asleep, on her breast.

  They slept for almost two hours. When he wakened he moved away to look at her. There was something here he did not understand; yet didn’t know how to ask.

  “Has it been a long time for you, Dovie-Jean?” he asked her at last.

  Her eyes gleamed in the dark and she laughed softly. “All my life.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Eighteen years a virgin.”

  “What about Red?”

  “When we sleep together that’s what we do: sleep.”

  “Why? Don’t you like him?”

  She raised herself onto her elbow. “I like Red very much. I like him as much as I’ve ever liked another person. Red took me in when I didn’t have a nickel. Red never looks down on me. I never had nobody, my whole life, to respect me enough to make me feel I was somebody. Red done everything for me.”

  “Except screw you,” Calhoun mumbled sleepily.

  “Is that so important?”

  “Don’t you feel it’s important, now that you’ve lost your virginity?”

  “I would have lost it long ago, if anybody had particularly wanted it. I was never crazy about being a virgin, just for the sake of being one. Now it’s gone, I feel better.”

  “If I’d known you were a virgin I wouldn’t have brought you here.” “I know. That’s why I didn’t mention it until it was over.”

  Ruby’s eyes closed as she was speaking and he began snoring lightly. She lay back, her own eyes closed yet wide awake, remembering.

  Dovie-Jean remembered gumps.

  She remembered her father, whom white folks had nicknamed Ironhead Dawkins, and the sack he had taken, every morning, to the poultry market. He had taken her with him many times as a child, to where chickens were being unloaded off boxcars, and the sick and the dying were being sorted from the healthy birds.

  A gump was a sick or dying chicken. When they were through sorting Daddy would step up with his two sacks and fill them with gumps, some still fluttering. Then the handler would say, “Take ’em away, Ironhead.”

  Ironhead Dawkins appeared to be constructed of furnace-forged iron: six-and-a-half feet in height and weighing a solid two-sixty, yet he carried himself with the appropriate air of subservience. “It’s not my fault I’m big, white boss,” was what his attitude told.

  He had to. He had better. His physical superiority over most white men made it more necessary for him than for most blacks to humble himself. Indeed, it was his huge humility that had earned him the privilege of picking up gumps. He sometimes ran into a poultry handler mean enough to charge him a nickel for each gump. No difference. Ironhead sold them in Niggertown for two dollars apiece.

  Or he’d go into some black bar holding three gumps upside down which would get them so angry—dying or not—that they would puff out and shake feathers all over the place, looking twice their skimpy size. He’d buy a beer and, sure enough, someone would try to beat him out of his chickens, but Ironhead would refuse. That would encourage somebody to buy him a beer, to loosen him up. After three beers he would appear to be getting drunk. At last he would give in and sell all three gumps for five dollars, and walk out sober. They had only cost him fifteen cents.

  Dovie-Jean remembered a rainy summer morning when she’d been playing with an older brother, a boy of eleven, in their barn. She must have been seven or eight.

  “Show me your thing,” she had demanded.

  She’d been studying the powerless little penis when a heavy odor had caught her and she’d looked up to see her father, looking like an avenging Moses, his huge hand drawn back to strike.

  She
had ducked between his legs and run and hidden, until it had felt safe to return to the house. Her mother had laughed at the incident and had said nothing but, “Shame on you, Dovie-Jean,” and it had been forgotten.

  Her mother had died that winter of bronchitis. Dovie-Jean had heard her giving a rattle in her throat, and heard it grow louder. Her grandmother, reading a magazine beside her mother’s bed, began clubbing the dying woman with the magazine because she was in the middle of some story. Then the rattle had exploded in her mother’s throat, the whole bed shook, and the girl knew her mother was gone.

  Ironhead had begun drinking after the funeral. The family had broken up. She’d been shipped north, to an aunt in Newark: a woman who already had a houseful of kids. Half-borthers, half-sisters, cousins by the score, in-laws and friends lived in that dark old house. Dovie-Jean was indistinguishable in the crowd. Sometimes some grown-up asked her, “What’s your name, little girl?”

  The little girl didn’t feel that she had a name of her own.

  Once a teacher, calling her by her first name with an accent of sympathy, had wakened in the child a feeling of great love. For she had great love in her.

  Nobody needed it. Nobody wanted it. Love was a drag on the market.

  Had anyone encouraged her to continue school, she would have continued. But there was nobody who cared, one way or another, so she dropped out. She went to work as a domestic and, after cleaning some white family’s house, sat around black bars, at first, with an I.D. card that belonged to somebody else. She was then not quite sixteen. And was not aware that the life she was leading was not a life but the shadow of living and nothing more.

  Until that nice-looking light-skinned dude, with the long, pale, freckled face, a burr-head of reddish hair and a wide white smile, had walked into the bar where she sat, waiting for a live one, hardly an hour after he’d been knocked cold.