Dynamite Hands

Juan Flew Johnny Pushe coach class up to Washington State to fight Seattle's light heavyweight, a white kid got him a record of 20–0 called Irish Tommy Wilde. The word was out: This guy is so bad he eats glass for breakfast, pisses razor blades and shits hot gravel. Truth is, his handlers had fed him some easy targets to develop his confidence and get everybody all whipped up for payday, but Tommy Wilde still had to undergo the test by fire. Sooner or later you got to show or got to go. People want to know if you got juice. Some of that boom boom. They want to know if you've got that essential thing.

Our guy, Johnny, looked to be that test, proof positive. Johnny was kind of a perennial number nine, a solid fighter but no puncher, a guy with a weight problem, known for carousing. Juan and Lolo chewed on toothpicks and shrugged like what-tha-fuck when Tommy Wilde's business consortium came by to check out the action. Juan knew they was coming and had Johnny go into the locker room and drink a full gallon of water. Johnny comes out to meet them smoking a cigarette and by the time Wilde's people left, they were rubbing their hands in glee. They had Johnny figured for a sure thing. Flying back to Seattle, they were probably already lining up their next fight, some headliner action: Atlantic City, Vegas, Tahoe, whatever. They were going to recoup their investment and march straight to the title. Didn't know jack shit about the fight game, and their mind just wasn't on Johnny Pushe.

This was not lost on Juan. He is a shrewd guy, and he was still hungry. Although he had come close, he'd never taken a fighter all the way. He had a burning desire, and Johnny, with Johnny, you know—hey, just maybe. You till the soil, plant the seed, fertilize and pray for the right combination of sunshine and rain. And hope God is smilin' down.

Juan ran his ass ragged getting Johnny in almost decent condition. He worked harder than Johnny. Lolo was always kidding him about it. "Here come Juan, look at heem go, mon. Roadrunner!" Juan was a trainer by day, Johnny's babysitter by night, and on the graveyard shift he was a bakery distributor. Training Johnny for this fight, he did nothing but hustle. Kept Johnny out of clubs, away from nooky, away from every temptation. Got him up at four for a run. Back for his shower, fixed him a couple of soft-boiled eggs, toast and a pot of green tea for breakfast. Then he set the alarm clock so Johnny could rack out until noon. All Johnny had to do was get up and drink some more tea, lounge around for a while, read the paper and then down to the gym at three. After that it was rare steak and vegetables, a little TV and to bed at eight, with Juan crashed on the couch mapping out strategy. Each day the pounds were coming off Johnny and he was getting stronger both physically and mentally. Training for a big fight is no day at the beach. Boxing, you do it right and it's a holy activity.

I did my part by showing Johnny how to juice up his firepower. I showed him punches I learned early in life while I was doing a little sabbatical in Mexico City Correctionals. This one old dude stood me against the wall in the prison yard and showed me all about dynamite hands. It's not a secret really, just something that went out of style. Fighters now are into weights, Nautilus and shit, and more concerned with looking nice and buffed out than winning fights. They can get downright vain.

Anyhow, what you do, you put your left hand against the wall not quite fully extended and you press with all your might. It's an isometric thing. Clamp your jaw and press so hard you think you're going to crush your teeth. You do the same with the right. Same thing. You do your hooks, uppercuts, you go through your whole arsenal. You do each punch in sets of five, three times a day. You won't get big biceps, but one day, all of a sudden what you got is a pair of dynamite hands. That boom boom I was talking about. Pure TNT.

I showed this to Johnny and he got real curious about it. Pretty soon he had a right hand like the hammer of Thor. Before I came along, he couldn't crush a grape, and suddenly he was ringing everybody's bell with this punch, which, on top of having thunder in it, was sneaky fast. Johnny didn't tell me thanks or anything. He just said, "I always wondered how a Mexican with skinny arms could punch. Huh huh huh!" Johnny is a smart guy in his way, but he laughs like he's got an IQ of 52.

Another good thing they did—why Juan had to babysit—Johnny went six weeks without sex. Modern guys say it doesn't make a bit of difference, but if you go six weeks without sex you will become just a little bit mean. Johnny is a cool 'n' easy guy but for this fight he had an edge. I know. I drove him and Juan to the airport in my beat-up Cadillac and Johnny was spitting fire. Mean. You could smell hormones in that car. I ain't lyin'. The very air around Johnny had electricity in it. Sparks were flying off the man: Frankenstein at charge-up time. Zzzzt! Pow! Bap! Boom!

A bunch of us guys from the gym watched the fight over in Lolo's living room. It was an ESPN main event. The plan was for Johnny to work up a lather in the dressing room, shadowbox for six hard rounds and then go out and nail this guy. Catch him cold. This is what Juan came up with when he crashed on Johnny's couch to babysit, when he was suffering from sleep deprivation, when he was red-eyed. It was sound thinking. Johnny knew he'd better catch Tommy Wilde cold, 'cause no matter how hard he trained, he wasn't gonna have the gas for no ten rounds. The plan was a gamble and we all knew it, but it was the only way. Wilde's people were expecting a hope-you-get-lucky boxing match from an over-the-hill, no ambition, no punch, no gas tank number nine. Wilde had cash dollars on his brain and was already thinking of the light heavyweight title as his right; he was shopping for real estate, talking to investment brokers and picking out kelly green boxing outfits and emerald jewelry. He wasn't concentrating on the here and now. He wasn't expecting tough-as-nails from Johnny Pushe, and he sure as heck wasn't ready for dynamite charges bouncing off his jaw. But then we never stopped to consider that Irish Tommy Wilde might have a little boom boom himself.

It was a great fight. Johnny started clipping early. He wobbled Wilde in the first round, then dropped him twice in the third, and almost put him away in the first few seconds of the fifth. Johnny didn't take a backward step. He bulled forward, strong and confident, but Tommy Wilde wasn't exactly running away. It wasn't like he was a sucker for a straight right, a left hook or whatever, like he was making some kind of stupid mistake over and over again. His trainer was top class; it was his management who failed to scout out the situation. Wilde fought real good, but Johnny was onto the man's patterns. He was doing the high calculus of the ring. The way he was setting this guy up was inspired. But then after the seventh we started to worry. The glaze cleared from Wilde's eyes and Johnny was running on fumes by now.

The referee was on the take, that was obvious. Whenever Johnny put his man in hurt, the ref was stalling to reinsert a mouthpiece, retape the man's gloves, warning Johnny for borderline punches and actually taking a point away for an alleged low blow. Then Johnny went down on a slip and the ref gave him a standing eight—almost called a TKO. It was outrageous. After we saw this referee, we knew the fight couldn't go to the cards because the judges were in the pocket. It had to be a knockout or nothing.

Johnny started to sag after seven and Wilde, young and tough, came on in a big way. But then Johnny found something down deep and he took over again. Like he drank a six-pack of ass kick or something. Showed some heart. As soon as it looked like Johnny was going to put on the kill, Wilde would come back. We were in the wave and then out of the wave. In and out. Out and in. It was fucking crazy.

Nobody expected Johnny to extend to the full ten rounds. When they gave Wilde a split decision, oh, man! There was big-time depression in Lolo's living room. As high as we got, we got that low. We knew the price that had been paid—roadrunner!—and to end up seeing our guy getting robbed, man. There ain't no justice in the universe, any fighter knows that much but—oh, man.

•

When Johnny got home he didn't cry about losing since with all those knockdowns on national TV, he knew he would get another shot. He'd got a reprieve from the short-order-cook vocation. We gave him a hero's welcome (continued on page 206) Dynamite Hands (continued from page 160) when he came back to the gym. He'd won the fight, of that there was no doubt, and we wanted to hear his story. You see one of the best fights in your life and you want to hear it from the man's lips.

Instead, what Johnny told everyone about was how he sparred with boxers at the Monroe Reformatory afternoons, about all these rough motherfuckers in prison and then about how Juan drove him up near Stevens Pass every morning so Johnny could run at a high altitude and store up extra red blood cells—the cells that carry oxygen. Johnny told us about waterfalls and shit. Mountain vistas and shit. The prophet comes back from the wilderness and starts talking about bluebirds and squirrels. I'm not lyin'.

He said Juan had him running 12 and 15 miles up there on backcountry timber roads. He said, "Yeah, no shit, one morning I'm running up this road, a one-lane dirt job, and here comes this bear."

Scotty, a lightweight of Ugandan origin, said, "Whoot the fook you talkin' aboot, Johnny, a fookin' bear?"

"It's no lie, man, this was a big-ass bear. I measured this sucker, 'cause I figured I'd tag him on the end of the nose with a jab—maybe a double jab, and then come over on top with a right. I'm hoping the bear's nose is tender, like they say the bull's is. What the fuck do I know about livestock, right? I'm not some fuckin' Montana-head. I'm a civilized person that grew up in a city! What the fuck would you do? Tell me about your fight strategy, man."

"You got to improvise," I said, "when the shit hits the fan in such a fashion, and do whatever. Fall down on your belly and pretend like you're a sack of greasy old, dirty old clothes."

"Play the possum," Chester said. "If you was Goldilocks, went into the cottage and ate the Quaker's oatmeal?"

"Hey!" Lolo says. "Chester, you're crazy, mon."

Chester's eyes flared. "That's right. I'm crazy. You got that straight. I'm crazy, man! I'm a crazy motherfucker. Goddamn it, that's for sure." Chester bit at a piece of tape hanging from his left handwraps, cocked his head at a right angle and looked off into space in a vacant way. The way he stood there smacking his lips, biting at the tape, made me think he was going to have a fit.

Everyone got quiet; it was the look we sometimes saw on his face before he had a seizure. Suddenly Chester stuck his left hand in his right armpit and began flapping his elbow like he was a large bird of prey with a broken wing. He began bobbing his head and started a kind of high leg-pumping action like he was trying to follow a Jane Fonda exercise video. Chester's dance was antithetical to the salsa music coming from Cuba's boom box, but it didn't seem to matter. He screamed, "I'm crazy, man!" He cried, "Ahh feel good! I feel nice, sugar and spice, now!"

Meantime, Johnny was still staring at me waiting to know if I had some strategy for fist-fighting a bear. He held onto his own beat and waited for Chester to stop making noise. No matter what Chester did, Johnny considered Chester as little more than outer environment. Johnny was still running on stacked-up hormones, acting highly pissed. He kept on moving in on me, violating any reasonable concept of personal space. The other fighters looked away from Chester and began to focus on the two of us.

"Double jab and a right over the top," I say.

Johnny laughed and said, "Right, an' hope you get lucky. A double jab and a right over the top. I sure as fuck ain't gonna rassle it."

Chester said, "Hey, Johnny, was it one a' them grizzly bears?"

"I don't know, fuck! It was just a bear. I don't know classifications, I told you. A big fuckin' bear, all right? He comes flying down the road right out a' nowhere."

"Whachew do when you seen that bear, Johnny?" Chester said. His voice was husky from an old injury to the larynx.

"Roadrunner!" Lolo said with a crooked, goofy smile.

"I wiggled, man," Johnny said. "I did the electric slide trying to spook that sumbitch off. But he comes right down on me. I started backpedaling until I could turn and run. Then I set a world record for the mile run wearing combat boots."

"Roadrunner!" Lolo said.

"That's right," Johnny said. "I don't know—having a bear chase you, you survive it, it's good information. I stand before you today with no deep gut fear of any man alive."

Chester slammed a speed bag with the butt of his hand. "Rassled a bear at the carnival, man. Cuba and me was drunk. He put me up to it, man, encouraged me to play the fool. Afterward I stunk so bad my ma made me towel off with gazzoline, man. A bear on you as bad as a skunk. Funky, man!"

"Hey!" Lolo said, "Let Johnny tell the story."

Chester puffed up. He walked over to the tall yellow windows by the fire escape and looked down at the traffic outside. "Lolo always tellin' everybody, 'Hey!' Fuckin' 'Hey!' Fuckin' Lolo, you 'hey'-in' me out. Everybody in the fuckin' gym be sayin', 'Hey!'"

"Hey!" Lolo said. He always held a gym towel around his neck and now he took it off and made like he was going to snap Chester on the ass with it. Chester scooted back.

"There he goes with 'hey!'" Chester squared his shoulders and did his take on Lolo. "'I goes up to this guy and I tells him, "Hey!"' Cause fuckin' Lolo be a bad motherfucker. You hear what I'm sayin', make his voice go 'hey!'"

"Let Johnny tell us about the bear. How about it? And no denigrating racial remarks." Lolo pulled the cord from the boom box and the bag punchers and rope skippers and the fighters doing calisthenics all gathered around Johnny, who said, "I ran the four-minute mile. The next thing I knew, it was gone. Crazy son of a bitch. I mean he had me. I checked out a Marlin Perkins tape; they can do 30 and they're highly unpredictable. Even that one in the cartoon, Yogi or whatever. He ain't normal. He's in serious need of psychiatric care. I mean, I don't want an individual like that livin' in my neighborhood. Fuck all that save-the-grizzly shit. They ought to kill all of them. What the fuck good are they, anyhow? Here I am now with another loss on my record." Johnny was saying this like he was unhappy but it was just an act, you could tell.

Lolo said, "Johnny, man, they're good for the planet. God put them here. They're good for the ecosystem."

"Good fuckin' how?"

Suddenly, Lolo had his fingers out, tabulating. "They go into hibernation, then come out of it all grouchy, eatin' the salmon and stuff. Gooseberries. And then there's also what's-his-hat—Smokey. Mon, only you can prevent forest fires."

Chester began to laugh. "That bear showed Johnny the law of the jungle."

Johnny turned to Chester. The tightness in his shoulders melted away, the jive dropped out of his voice and Johnny took on a scholarly air. He spoke slowly and deliberately, in a whisper. "I lost my color vision. Everything happened in slow motion. I was running away but it wasn't doing me any good. With one swipe of the paw, I'm gone. Pound-for-pound, a bear is one of the strongest things alive. One swipe of the paw and man, it looked like he was ready to snag me, too. I was thinking, it's strange, but I was thinking, Good, this motherfucking life is over. I don't have to go through no more, get old, rot with cancer, become a bum or whatever it is that's in the cards for Johnny Pushe. I don't know, for the first time in I don't know how long, I experienced peace."

"That was before the fight. Now you ain't scared a' nobody," Chester said.

Johnny brightened. "I carried that slow-motion business into my fight. I seen his punches coming in and slipping them was the easiest thing in the world. I had all of the moves, man. I'm not braggin', but it was a great night. Win, lose, who cares? I got so fuckin' high. Chester feels good? Hey! I feel good, motherfucker! It was beautiful. I can live the next three years off that night."

•

Johnny picked up his headgear and mouthpiece and headed for the locker room. Like, that was it. That was the story. Meanwhile, in spite of a sore hand which had already been broken twice, I was gloved up to go in with Chester when a brash, mouthy black kid from the Kane Street neighborhood came in with a retinue of friends in gold chains, leather jackets with 55 zippers each and White Sox ball caps worn backward. This guy said, "Where's Johnny Pushe? I need some work."

Juan was not running a big-time gym, we were used to walk-in trade like this. Lolo said Johnny was in the shower, and I heard Chester say, "Hey, I'll give you some work, I'm Chester Werthe."

Kane Street screwed up his face. "Chester? What kind of a name is Chester?"

"Chester Werthe, you motherfucker. I fought 'em all. Get your ass up here." Chester started to drool a little and grunt, rocking back on his heels. For a minute I thought he now might be about to have a fit, but then he leveled out. Before an epileptic attack, Chester makes strange noises, like a man drowning in air. Like an animal in rut. Mmm grrr mmm!

Because of my hand, I hadn't planned on doing much more than move with Chester, so I said OK and relinquished my ring time. Suddenly this new guy was in the ring throwing serious leather. Lolo was calling, "Tiempo, tiempo! Time!"

He hopped up on the ring apron and went over to the new guy's corner, where all of his pals were whooping it up, and if you didn't know it before, by now you knew there were some serious cocaine vibes in that corner. Lolo pulled at the gym towel he wore over his neck, dipped his head low and whispered to this guy. "Hey, what's the matter with you, blood? Lighten up. That's Chester. He takes Dilantin, mon." Chester heard this and said, "That nigger ain't hurtin' me none!"

Kane Street said, "Nigger, I had you stagglin'!"

"You don't tee off on Chester," Lolo said. "And no racial remarks. Act like sportsmen!"

"Well, he's in the ring and he's standin' there. I want some work."

"Call time," Chester said, chomping his mouthpiece and giving his headgear a little slap with his glove. His eyes locked on his opponent with grim determination.

You could see that Lolo was ambivalent. He wanted to let Chester have his self-respect, but Chester was brain-damaged. His epilepsy came from a right hand I landed on his temple during a fight over in Paris, France.

Chester still had something of a name then. He was the number five WBA middleweight and I was a fighter on the way up, but just another Mexican with a string of knockouts, which is a hard act to keep going. Anyhow, Chester's opponent sprained his ankle—actually this French fighter was scared after he got a look at Chester's fight clips and faked an injury. Juan had me flown over on two days' notice. Flew me over to fight a stablemate—a friend. Juan was better than most, like I said. He was pretty straight, but really, that was low, and I was low to go for it.

Chester fought with absolutely no regard for his own welfare. His face was so ugly he didn't care what happened to it and that's how he fought. Like angel dust, like PCP. The French guy saw Chester's fight clips and lost his nerve. He didn't know Chester was shot—you wouldn't—but I was sparring with him every day and I knew it, and I also knew that he was weak from making weight. I knew that when Juan had put me in as an alternate.

I thought by taking him out quick I would be doing him a favor, but what I didn't calculate was the effect of the crowd on Chester. For a crowd, he could rise to the occasion, and we got into a hellacious fight, Juan working his corner and Lolo working mine. It seemed so strange. I mugged the poor bastard. I got him drunk and then I nailed him with the worst kind of punch—the one you don't see coming.

Four days unconscious didn't help, neither him nor me. Chester got a $7000 payday—it wasn't nothing but shoeshine money, popcorn change. I saw a Judas payment around $2500. Chester was just an accident waiting to happen, but it gave me a rotten feeling.

Max Baer, Ray Robinson and Emile Griffith killed men in the ring—Ray Mancini—it happens. When you are a boxer, putting people in trouble is your business, but I knew Chester and I had to live with him. I should have said I wouldn't fight a stablemate. But I was greedy for fame and fortune. I won't deny it. Most likely the same thing would have happened to Chester in a bar or back alley for no payday at all. It's just that it wouldn't have been on my conscience.

I was thinking of this and of how far Chester had fallen when Lolo clicked his stopwatch, called time again and this guy who just walked in off the streets started nailing Chester, formerly a world-class fighter. Kane Street was a counter-puncher and he was letting Chester walk head-on into his punches. Mugging him. Getting him drunk.

Chester couldn't adjust, couldn't slip, or duck, bob and weave, side-to-side—nothing. He never could. He just pressed after the new guy in a balls-out windmill assault. This had worked a few years back when he was in shape and rang up a string of knockouts, but he had since been annihilated mentally and once that happens you're a shot fighter, pure and simple.

I was gloved up and ready to get in there to take care of business, clean some house, but Chester called for another round. Lolo was running back and forth frantically. Like, where's Juan? I was thinking it, too. Kane Street danced out to the middle of the ring and greeted Chester with a flurry of uppercuts, dumping him on his butt. There Chester sat like a little baby that wanted to cry but couldn't get the breath up for it. From the look on his face, you could tell he finally knew that he had gone from world-class to a fighter who couldn't even make it as a gym rat anymore. It was a terrible thing to see.

Lolo was helping him out of the ring when Johnny Pushe, freshly showered and back in his street clothes, took one look and picked up on the situation. Johnny pulled off his jacket and jumped into the ring in his Levi's, T-shirt and Nikes, pulled on a pair of 16-ounce gloves—no mouthpiece, no Vaseline—and said quietly, "Let's go, man. I'm Johnny Pushe and I'd be honored to work with you."

They touched gloves and then Kane Street got uppity and hit Johnny with a right hand lead the very second Lolo called time. This was a bad mistake. I jumped down from the ring apron and stood along the wall and watched as Johnny commenced to commit homicide on the new guy. I mean, I'd been going to give it to him, but I wasn't going to kill the man.

Johnny said, "Is that all you got, bad boy? If that's all you got, your black ass is in trouble." Johnny egged the man on. He said, "Give me a shot, man. Show me some stuff, bad boy."

As soon as Kane Street attempted anything more complicated than a left jab, Johnny uncorked successions of punches. Even when the black kid held his hands up and danced away, Johnny scored with punches, snorting like a bull as he fired. When he got on the bicycle and just tried to survive, Johnny made things even worse for him.

The black boxer's entourage was silent. Just when it seemed that Johnny would put him away mercifully, he backed off so that the kid couldn't quit without losing face totally. "Are you tired? Are you a girl?" Johnny taunted. "Come on, man!"

Kane Street moved in firing. One last try. Johnny carried his hands down at his side and was slipping punches slicker than shit. He tagged Kane Street with hard shots, allowing him to recover sufficiently before throwing more. He beat him on the arms and shoulders. It was like overnight mail: The new guy wouldn't feel it until the morning. When Johnny got bored with this, he landed serious thunder, dropping the black fighter on the seat of his pants where he hung in the corner with one arm on the lowest rope, his left eye completely shut and his upper lip looking like he had just chewed on a nestful of hornets. Like Lolo says, it ain't nice to make denigrating racial remarks, but this guy looked like a Ubangi that just did a one-on-one with an African honey badger. "That was fun," Johnny said, tapping the downed man on the top of the head. "Come back tomorrow and I'll show you some more neat stuff."

•

I had to get out of the gym. I was wondering if I had the heart for any of this anymore. Johnny had done the right thing. There's more kindness than cruelty in a beating like that, and Kane Street was now free to pursue his other options—frying hamburgers, running for Congress or whatever. At least he would no longer harbor illusions that he would become a fighting champion. I was not so sure what Chester was thinking, only that he couldn't feel "so good—so fine" any longer.

It was a cold night for October, and outside there was a bad moon hanging in the sky like a fat ball of silver white pigeonshit ready to fall out of the skies on me like bad karma. Normally I like the full moon, but not that night. I went out and got drunk. Didn't sober up for a couple of weeks.

•

The next thing you know, through the clamor of popular demand, Johnny got a rematch with Irish Tommy Wilde. Aye an' begorra! A promoter in Belfast coughed up some of that long green, and Juan saw to it that I got a slot on the undercard.

I couldn't believe that Juan had agreed to take a fight on St. Patrick's Day in Northern Ireland. But the money was good. Juan said it was the only way you could pack a house and draw that kind of payday. However, Johnny was going to need a knockout more than ever. If not, and if Tommy Wilde didn't get him, the fight mob would. The Guinness would definitely be flowing on St. Patty's day.

In the paranoia of coming off booze myself, I was thinking that Juan wanted me in shape only so Johnny would have somebody to spar with and he could cut costs. I was also worried about my right hand, twice busted. The orthopedic surgeon who set it the last time had told me no more fighting or I would end up with a fucking claw. Because of the hand, I was learning a whole new technique. A whole new style. I squeezed a racquetball and took calcium tablets to make my right hand stronger. Green tea. Boiled eggs. No sex. Steak and veggies. Zen and the Art of Archery. Johnny was over at my place every morning at four in his combat boots and his hand weights, and we went out running together.

It's funny how you lie to yourself. When I'd seen Johnny fighting Tommy Wilde in Lolo's living room, I was wanting it so bad I wished I could become a little four-inch man and jump right in the TV and take over in that seventh round. At that moment, I had my first sense of freedom over the thing I'd done against Chester. If I could have got in that fight, Tommy Wilde would be six feet under and I would be pissing on his grave. But seeing Chester on that floor had scared me so bad I guess I had to get drunk to tamp that freedom back down.

•

I ran into Chester downtown one night after an AA meeting, at the most down-and-dirty meeting in town, in fact, and hence the most interesting, but in a bad part of town. Here came Chester with Kane Street and his bunch. I could see that they were all fucked up on dope and that Chester seemed to have gone down fast and hard. His clothes were especially bad, he was unshaven, his hair was hanging down in greasy dreadlocks, his nose was running. His face was puffy and the sclera of his eyes was covered with burst red blood vessels. He had gained bloat weight, and, wearing a fulllength leather coat like the rest of the gang, he now looked short, like a dwarf.

I had an AA companion with me, going out for coffee. One of Kane Street's boys started in on her. I tried to look them off when Chester recognized me. "It's my man," he said. "Hey, man, whatchew say?" A distinctive odor of vomit, booze, garlic and reefer emanated from the bunch. The other young men, who did not recognize me, stopped and sized me up in a confrontational manner. My date said, "Do you know these people?" I looked Chester in the eye and said, "No," and led her away, crossing the street to my car. Chester called after me with a voice like gravel and ground glass, "Hey, man, we really got it on over there in Paris, France, didn't we, man? We wuz rumblin'. Hey, man! Hey!"

I looked over my shoulder and cried, "You gave me six kinds of hell! You was bad that night!"

Chester cried, "Number five in the world, daddy. Never can take that away from me."

•

I told Johnny about Chester later, as we did a predawn run through the streets of L.A. We were throwing out punches as we slogged through the wet streets in our sweats and combat boots where gasoline rainbows glistened on the black asphalt with the reflection of shoe-store neon, of orange tungsten streetlights and ghostly blue restaurant bug-zappers. The last of the diehard nighthawks were still on the prowl and some motherfucker yelled, "Hey boxerman! Come on back here and I'll fuck your ass!" And Johnny laughed and said to me, "Right." And I laughed, too.

"Chester is history," Johnny said. "Forget him. Hanging out with cokedout thugs. They'll all be dead in a year. You gotta know that. Fuck 'em."

"I never felt right since I put him out over in Paris. Never thought that Juan—"

"Juan was doing you a favor, my man." Suddenly I felt like Johnny was talking down to me. Patronizing me. I was talking to him straight and suddenly he's some big hero. It is necessary for a fighter to become grandiose, expansive and to entertain images of omnipotence on a certain level, but it is also important to keep a cool head and know how things are. How they really are.

So I told him, "I got ranked but I got guilty. I felt responsible. It screwed me over—"

"I picked up on the vibe, man. And now you got it out of you. You hear what I'm saying? I knew you was going to say that, and I'm glad you said it. The trouble with you is that you're nice. Nice people. Man, go be a social worker and hold the motherfucker's hand if you want. If my mother is in the fuckin' ring, I'm going to destroy. I'm going to murder. I'm going to kill. Cause that's it. What's the matter with you? What the fuck, man."

Johnny threw a lightning combination in the crisp, thin morning air and then broke away from me running at a six-minute-mile pace. We'd started out on this run buddies.

And then suddenly it came to me. I had my juice back. I'd been giving Johnny more trouble in sparring than Tommy Wilde gave him in his last fight. When he shut down on me like that, just like that, I saw that he knew it. He was thinking we might end up in a situation like what happened with me and Chester, that we might end up fighting each other for real. Stranger things have happened—and after all, this is just business. But what happened to that "no deep gut fear of any man alive?" It hurt me to think that he could see me doing that again, fighting a friend, but when I seen him shut down on me, he wasn't my friend anymore.

I thought about that old dude in the Mexico City jail that showed me dynamite hands. He was the coolest motherfucker on the planet, and I don't even know his name. I remembered watching him pulling his sweatshirt off one afternoon. He was going to show me some moves and when he did this, when he lifted up his T-shirt, I saw that his entire abdomen was covered with razor slashes. Like the bear had got him. I knew the slashes were from razor fighting and when he saw the astonishment on my face, he just laughed like he was saying, "Don't worry, pachuco. I can show you how to do this." I saw that he wasn't just some convict. I saw that he was a holy man.

Johnny, that motherfucker. Coming on like he was Sugar Ray Robinson, acting like he was going to blow me away, leave me in the dust. Pissed me off. You don't ever want to piss me off, get me riled. Like Johnny said, you survive the bear, it's good information.

I felt the thing in itself surge up inside, and I blasted by Johnny like he was standing still. I continued to pour it on, running up the crest of our biggest hill where the sun was there to greet me as it peeked out from the eastern horizon.

My legs, my lungs were burning like liquid fire but it didn't hurt. I was beyond the realm of pain. It's all right there, all you got to do is take it. I was plugged in again. I could feel that boom boom churning. The sun at the top of that hill, it said, "Angel, go out and get you some. Go out and show them something!"

I'm thinking this is going to be a really fine comeback. This time out I'm going all the way. This time I'm gonna become what you call a regular household name. Hey!