He wore a cap ’cause he was bald-headed except for the white fringe around his ears and neck. He wore glasses, but one lens had a crack in it. He had a bad back and a slight limp, so he walked with a polished, homemade old mesquite walking stick. It was thick as your wrist and was more like a knobby club than a cane. But old Dee-Cee still had the moves. The time, between now and back when he was still Dark Chocolate, disappeared when Dee-Cee had need to move. Said he never had no trouble on no bus in no part of town, not with that stick between his legs. Dee-Cee had them greeny-blue eyes what some coloreds gets, and when he looked at you square, you was looked at.
Way me and him hooked up was chancy, like everything else in fights. ’Course we knew each other going way back. Both of us liked stand-up style of fighters, so we always had a lot to talk about, things like moves, slips, and counters. Like me, he knew that a fighter’s feet are his brains — that they’re what tell you what punches to throw and when to do it. Since there was more colored fighters in Dallas and Houston, that’s where Dee-Cee operated out of most. But he had folks in San Antonia, too. He showed up again, him and a white heavyweight, big kid, a Irish boy from L.A. calling himself “KO” Kenny Coyle. What wasn’t chancy was that Dee-Cee knew I was connected with Billy Clancy.
Dee-Cee got together with Coyle, trained him awhile in Houston after working the boy’s corner twice as a pickup cutman in a Alabama casino. The way the boy was matched, he was supposed to lose. See, he hadn’t fought in a while. But he won both fights by early KOs, and his record got to be seventeen and one, with fifteen knockouts. Coyle could punch with both hands at six-foot-five, two hundred forty-five pounds, size sixteen shoe. His only loss came a few years back from a bad cut to his left eyelid up Vancouver, Canada.
The boy’d also worked as sparring partner for big-time heavyweights, going to camp sometimes for weeks at a time. That’s a lot of high-level experience, but it’s a lot of punishment, even when you’re bone strong, and sometimes you could tell that Coyle’d lose a word. Except for the bad scar on his eyelid, and his nose being a little flat, he didn’t look much busted up, so that made you think he maybe had some smarts. He was in shape, too. That made you like him right off.
Dee-Cee was slick. He always put one hand up to his mouth when he talked, said he didn’t want spies to read his lips, said some had telescopes. He was known to be a bad man, Dee-Cee, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a sense of right and wrong. Back before he had to use a cane, we got to drinking over Houston after a afternoon fight — it was at a fair where we both lost. Half drunk, we went to a fish shack in dark town for some catfish. Place was jam-packed. The lard-ass owner had one of them muslim-style gold teeth — the slip-on kind with a star cutout that shows white from the white enamel underneath? Wouldn’t you know it, he took one look at my color and flat said they didn’t serve no food. Dee-Cee was fit to be tied — talked nigga, talked common, said Allah was going to send his black ass to the pit along with his four handkerchief-head ho’s. Old muslim slid off the tooth quick as a quail when Dee-Cee tapped his pocket and said he was going to cut that tooth out or break it off.
We headed for a liquor store, bought some jerky, and ended up out at one of them baseball-pitching park deals drinking rock and rye and falling down in the dirt from swinging and missing pitches. People got to laughing like we was Richard Pryor. Special loud was the hustler running a three-card monte game next to the stands, a little round dude with fuzzy-wuzzy hair. He worked off a old lettuce crate and cheated people for nickels and dimes. Not one of them ever broke the code, but old Dee-Cee had broke it from the git. He watched sly from the fence as the monte-guy took even pennies from the raggedy kids what made a few cents chasing down balls in the outfield.
Dee-Cee put on his Louisiana country-boy act, bet a dollar, and pointed to one of the cards after the monte-guy moved the three cards all around. ’Course Dee-Cee didn’t choose right, couldn’t choose right, so he went head-on and lost another twenty, thirty dollars. Then he bet fifty, like he was trying to get his money back. The dealer did more slick business with his cards, and Dee-Cee chose the one in the middle — only this time, instead of just pointing to it and waiting for the dealer to turn it face-up like before, Dee-Cee held it down hard with two fingers and told monte-man to flip the other two cards over first. Dee-Cee said he’d turn his card over last, said he wanted to eyeball all the cards. See, there was no way for nobody to win. The dealer knew he’d been caught cheating, and tried to slide. Dee-Cee cracked him in the shins a few times with a piece of pipe he carried those days, and pretty soon — wouldn’t you know it? — the monte-man got to begging Dee-Cee to take all his money. Dee-Cee took it all, too. ’Course he kept his own money, what was natural, but he gave the rest to the ragamuffins in the field — at which juncture the little guys all took the rest of the night off.
Dee-Cee got me off to the side one day, his hand over his mouth, said did I want to work with him and Coyle? He told me Coyle maybe had a ten-round fight coming up at one of the Mississippi casinos, and I figured Dee-Cee wanted me as cutman for the fight, him being the trainer and chief second. I say why not? some extra cash to go along with my rocking chair, right?
But Dee-Cee said, “Naw, Red, not just cutman, I want you wit’ me full-time training Coyle.”
I say to myself, A heavyweight what can crack, a big old white Irish one!
Dee-Cee says he needs he’p ’cause as chief second he can’t hardly get up the ring steps and through the ropes quick enough no more. ’Course with me working inside the ring, that makes me chief second and cutman. I’d done that before, hell.
Dee-Cee says he chose me ’cause he don’t trust none of what he called the niggas and the beaners in the gym. Said he don’t think much of the rednecks neither. See, that’s the way Dee-Cee talked, not the way he acted toward folks. Dee-Cee always had respect.
He said, “See, you’n me knows that a fighter’s feet is his brains. My white boy’s feet ain’t right, and you good wit’ feet. We split the trainer’s ten percent, even.”
Five percent of a heavyweight can mount.
Dee-Cee said, “Yeah, and maybe you could bring in Billy Clancy.”
Like I said, Dee-Cee’s slick. So I ask myself if this is something I want bad enough to kiss a spider for? See, when a fan sees the pros and the amateurs’, he sees them as a sport. But the pros is a business, too. It’s maybe more a business than a sport. I liked the business part like everybody else, but heavyweights can hurt you like nobody else. So I’m thinking, do I want to chance sliding down that dark hole a heavyweight can dig? Besides, do I want to risk my good name on KO Kenny Coyle with Billy Clancy? I told Dee-Cee I’d wait a spell before I’d do that.
Dee-Cee said, “No, no, you right, hail yeah!”
See, I’m slick, too.
What it was is, Coyle was quirky. He’d gone into the navy young and started fighting as a service fighter, started knocking everybody out. He won all of the fleet and other service titles, and most of the civilian amateur tournaments, and people was talking Olympics. But the Olympics was maybe three years away, and he wanted to make some money right now. Couldn’t make no big money or train full-time in the navy, so one day Coyle up and walks straight into the ship’s captain’s face. Damned if Coyle don’t claim he’s queer as a three-dollar bill. See, the service folks these days ain’t supposed to ask, and you ain’t supposed to tell, but here was Coyle telling what he really wanted was to be a woman and dance the ballet. Captain hit the overhead, was ready to toss him in the brig, but Coyle threatened to suck off all the marine guards, and to contact the president himself about sexual harassment. Didn’t take more’n a lick, and the captain made Coyle a ex-navy queer. Coyle laughed his snorty laugh when he told the story, said wasn’t he equal smart as he was big? Guys said he sure was, but all knew Coyle wasn’t smart as Coyle thought he was — ’specially when he got to bragging about how he stung some shyster lawyers what had contacted him while he was still a amateur. See, they started funneling him money, and got him to agree to sign with them when he turned pro. He knew up front that nobody was supposed to be buzzing amateurs, and he got them for better’n twenty big ones before he pulled his sissy stunt on the navy. When they come to him with a pro contract, he told them to stick it, told them no contract with a amateur was valid, verbal or written, and that he had bigger plans. He had them shysters by the ying-yang, he said, and them shysters knew it. Coyle laughed about that one, too.