Cinderella Man (19 page)

Max sneered, eyes on Braddock. “Don't worry about it.”

“Then quit screwing around!”

Ernie spoke up. “Boss, I think Maxie stopped screwing around a while ago—”

Ancil's thorny glare shut the corner man up.

“Relax,” gargled Max, spitting water.

Ancil followed Max's gaze to the opposite corner. Gould was huddled tight with Braddock.

“Yeah, sure. I'll relax,” said Ancil. “After we walk out of here with that title.”

ROUND 6

A snarling Max Baer drew first blood. The champ came out swinging, driving three terrific uppercuts home within the opening seconds of the round.

Blood flowed from Braddock's nose, his mouth. Baer saw the crimson torrent and was back in the slaughterhouse, breathing the metallic tang of freshly spilled gore, feeling the life-and-death power of his smashing hammer, the cracking skulls shocking his arm, building his body into the Apollo of the boxing world—a godlike standing he had no intention of relin
quishing, least of all to a broken-down bum three years his senior. Baer grunted with animal satisfaction.

Braddock came back with a weak left that creased Max's face. Baer fired back with a short right uppercut that threw Braddock back. He closed to finish the aging Irishman, when suddenly, Baer found himself on the receiving end of a wrecking ball.

From somewhere, Braddock summoned enough raw power to dispatch a devastating right to Baer's jaw. Max's knees sagged, the stadium lights faded, came back brighter than before. He fought for air, tasted leather as Braddock rattled his head with one, two, three left jabs.

Through a hazy fog, Baer wobbled on the canvas. He threw, determined to continue the slugfest, but Braddock's left was everywhere, delivering body blows like Baer's chorus girls delivered kisses—though Braddock's connections were a tad less gentle.

Baer repaid Braddock in kind, dishing up a flurry so fast and furious that Jim gasped for breath. Baer stepped in to press his advantage, but his eagerness turned his punches wild and wide, and he missed his target. Braddock didn't. His left dug into Baer's face. Surprise left Max with a lowered guard, and Braddock's glove hammered the champ's temple.

Thunder and lightning struck together, splitting Max's vision. He staggered. Through a red veil he saw Braddock's silhouette. He wanted to strike back, but his right eye throbbed, began to close.

For the first time in this title fight, Baer was relieved to hear the bell that ended the round. As he stumbled to his corner, Baer vowed to finish the challenger off in
the next, even if he had to kill Jim Braddock right here and now, in front of tens of thousand of the Cinderella Man's pathetically devoted fans.

ROUND 7

Joe Gould watched Max Baer burst from his corner and knew by the gleam in the fighter's eyes that the champ was finished clowning. Crouched, fists raised, Max Baer was all business. The audience sensed the change as well, and were swept to their feet in quiet alarm

“Keep sliding, Jim,” Gould bellowed, his voice hoarse. “Just keep sliding to the right. And don't rush him.”

But Jim was unafraid, and met Baer in the center ring. After hurling a glancing body blow, Baer took a left-right combination to his outthrust jaw. Max fired back with a long right that barely missed Braddock's head—Joe Gould could hear the swish of leather cutting air, the collective intake of breath from the audience.

Baer missed with another wild right and Braddock popped him with a hard jab, then another. Baer threw his weight against his foe and they fell into a clinch.

“I'm getting bored, old man,” hissed Baer, loud enough for the people at ringside to hear it.

McAvoy moved quickly to pull them apart, and Baer used his muscle and weight to toss Braddock around.

“Watch that!” the ref warned.

Max connected with a quick set of slams to Jim's sweet spot, the blotchy red bruise on his vulnerable ribs. The last jab hit below the belt, and Gould went crazy—

“Dirty stinking rat! Pay attention, McAvoy!”

Braddock grunted in agreement. “Keep 'em up, Max.”

Max smiled—a deadly poisonous thing—delivered a stunning combination to Braddock's torso, his head.

“That
up
enough?” Baer roared.

Through the brutal surge of agony, Jim forced a half smile. “Yeah, Max. That's fine.”

Gould could see his boy was hurting. That the tenderness in his ribs was going to bring him down. But Jim swallowed the pain, found a way to slap Max back with a jerking jab to his head before falling against Baer in another clinch.

McAvoy yanked the boxers apart as the bell clanged. But Baer, whether he hadn't heard the signal or simply ignored it, shoved the ref aside and landed a series of combinations on Jim, who came back, raging mad, with a powerful uppercut followed by a left hook. They were the most forceful blows Jim could muster. Max Baer just laughed.

As McAvoy jumped between the boxers, they glared at each other over the referee's bobbing head.

At ringside, Ford Bond's tinny voice spewed words faster than the challenger's fists—

“Baer, a crude swinger but heavy handed, had smashed former champion Max Schmeling into defeat on his way to the title and cruelly battered the huge Primo Carnera to become champion. He had been expected to blast Braddock out of the fight. But here it is, the end of the seventh and Baer and Braddock are dead even.”

Mae came through the front door, unpinned her hat. The house seemed empty.

“Alice?”

She stepped into the parlor. A lamp was glowing, a newspaper spread open across the couch. A meal was set on the kitchen table, uneaten, and the dining room was dark and deserted. Then Mae heard a voice—muted, familiar. The sound was mingled with the noise of a crowd.

Mae found them in the hallway, gathered on the hardwood floor around the open closet door: her sister Alice, Jay and Howard at her side, Rosy resting on her elbows, staring intently at the radio, listening to the distinctive voice of announcer Ford Bond.

“In the seventh round, Max Baer staged a slashing outburst. He tore into Jimmy Braddock with a series of vicious uppercuts. The crowd was impressed with the champ's display and waited for big things from Max Baer in the eighth round. But they didn't count on Braddock's determination to finish the fight, and it was the champ who took it on the chin…”

Rosy saw her mother in the doorway. “It's the cops.”

Jay and Howard looked up. Mae loomed over them. Howard's guilt was all consuming. Jay's was mingled with defiance.

“…By the ninth round, it was an established fact that Braddock has fought better than anybody thought he could, though some would say that it is only because Baer allowed it. The proof of their assertion came in the tenth round, when Max Baer completely dominated the ring…”

Mae reached for the cord in the wall. Jay caught her eye. “Please, Ma.”

She peered into their pleading faces—including her sister's. Against such odds Mae couldn't help but surrender. But she stubbornly refused to listen herself. Wordlessly, she walked away.

On the radio, the bell clanged, signaling the start of the eleventh round.

ROUND 11

Raging mad, Baer stormed out of his corner, his eyes a black abyss. Jim saw him coming, danced to the right. Max stayed with him and ripped away, pinning Braddock with a right-left combination.

Jim tasted the leather, blinked to clear his eyes. Then
it came. Baer's sledgehammer right—the punch that buried Frankie Campbell, that turned Ernie Schaff into a walking dead man. It seemed to Braddock that he'd been lifted off the canvas, that his legs had been cut off. He felt weightless and heavy at the same time. Mind floating, knees unable to support his weight

“Oh,” screamed Ford Bond. “What a tremendous shot by Baer, flush on Braddock's chin…”

Jim stumbled backward, felt the ropes cut into his back. He heard the crowd's roar, the announcer screaming over the chaos.

“…Braddock is reeling against the ropes while Baer stands like a wood chopper waiting for the tree to fall!”

Suddenly, ridiculously, the cry of his youngest son, Howard, popped into Braddock's frazzled mind. “Timmmm-berrrrr!” With it came the memory of his family, of what he was fighting for—and against. Like an approaching subway train, reality roared back, the howls of the audience battering his ears. Jim felt the ropes, let them carry his weight for a moment. He knew he'd been hit, but it was nothing new. Baer might have smashed him, but no harder than he had been smashed by the Crash of 1929. He'd forced himself to keep going after that knockdown. To get up again. And he got up now. Back on his feet.

Through eyes suddenly focused, Braddock saw Baer hovering near. Braddock grinned. Referee McAvoy stepped aside to allow the fight to resume, but Baer just stared at Jim, an expression of frustrated disbelief on the champ's broken face.

Braddock shifted his weight, bounced back on his feet. Baer shrugged, tucked his chin into his chest and
moved in to finish the job. Braddock lashed out with a sharp right that took the champ off guard. He followed that jab with another—then another.

Baer staggered back, startled as blood burst from his lips. He touched the gloves to his face, they came away red. Baer wiped his gloves on the back of his trunks—the opening Braddock was waiting for. Braddock stepped in as fast as he'd moved in the first round and nailed Baer with an explosive right. Baer wheeled in a half turn, caught his balance.

He turned back to Braddock, insulted that the challenger would interrupt his preening ritual, and lunged with looping rights that failed to connect. With each miss, Jim stabbed at Max. A jab, a cross, another jab. Braddock felt the strength flow back into his limbs with each swing.

The tumultuous screams that filled the stadium drowned out the sound of the bell, and Johnny McAvoy had to pull the fighters apart. As he stumbled back to his corner, Max Baer spat blood.

“Doc, get over here!” Gould screamed. Braddock was hardly on the stool when the cutman started working under his eye, cleaning and closing the deep wound. The gash had been torn by Baer's sledgehammer, which Braddock had survived, to the champ's dismay.

Through streams of sweat and blood Braddock focused on Joe Gould. The man's face was flushed, he seemed close to tears. Jimmy tried to cheer him up with a wisecrack—“Do I look that bad?”—but his lips felt like wet putty.

“Jimmy,” said Gould. “Win, lose, or draw…” His voice caught.

Jim smiled under the surgery. “Thanks, Joe. For all of it.”

Gould's mouth moved, Braddock lifted a blood-stained glove. “Joe. Stop talking.”

 

Mae gave up pretending. Pretending to relax in the living room. Pretending to read the newspaper article she'd been staring at. Pretending she could not hear the muted sounds from the radio in the next room. Pretending that her husband was safe and fine and not battling for his life.

Finally, Mae threw aside the paper, rose from the couch, and crossed the living room. She peeked around the corner, into the hallway. The closet door was still open, Alice, Jay, Howard and Rosy transfixed by the voice of the sports announcer.

Lurking just around the corner, where her children couldn't see her, Mae leaned against the wall and listened too.

ROUND 12

Baer and Braddock faced each other, swapped left hooks. The motion seemed futile until Braddock's lightning combination sent Baer scrambling backward in an effort to escape.

Braddock moved with him to press the attack. Then Baer lifted a gloved fist and stuck it in Braddock's face—not to strike him, but to blind the challenger to his real swing, a lethal right cross.

From the sidelines, Joe Gould recognized Baer's trademark move, opened his mouth to scream a warning.

Gould didn't have to. Joe Jeanette had spied the move while viewing Baer's fight films weeks before, clued Jimmy to the trick, made him train for endless hours to be ready for just such a maneuver. Braddock deftly slapped Baer's left aside and stung Max with a sharp jab. Then he circled to the right, out of Baer's reach.

“He's slow, Jimmy!” howled Gould. “Dance around him. You know what to do. Baer's a bum.”

Baer, angry and off balance, threw a futile swing that cut the night air. Jim slipped behind his guard and walloped the champ with two of his own. Baer slapped his glove against Braddock's face to hold him back. Jim faked right, skipped left, hammering the champ with two more well-placed clouts. Helpless and outboxed, Baer slipped into a clinch. The champ slapped his glove against Braddock's ruined ribs, eliciting a grunt.

As the referee pulled the fighters apart, Baer cuffed Braddock on the chin with a desperate backhand. Braddock shook it off, found a gap in Baer's armor and pounded him some more.

The crowd was roaring, driven to a frenzy by conflicting emotions. Joy. Terror. Disbelief. Even the jaded members of the press seemed stunned.

“Am I seeing what I'm seeing?” cried Sporty Lewis.

“It's a funeral, all right,” shouted the young reporter at his shoulder. “And Max Baer is the guest of honor.”

But Lewis didn't hear the kid's words. He was already on his feet, screaming at the top of his lungs—just like everybody else.

Soon the chant rolled down the aisles toward the ring, a tidal wave of sound.

“Braddock! Braddock! Braddock!”

Sporty Lewis joined the chorus.

Through a haze of pain and confusion, Max Baer heard the chanting, the cheers. Gripped by a berserker rage, the champ charged Braddock, left swinging. His blows connected fast and hard—the last one below the belt. The leather glove sunk deep into Braddock's gut. He folded up around the fist as the air shot out of his lungs in a hiss. Jim stumbled backward as the bell clanged, ending the round.

Joe Gould was over the ropes, lunging at the champ before the sound of the bell had faded. “Why don't you just kick him in the balls, you asshole!”

Johnny McAvoy intercepted Gould and hauled him back to the ropes.

“Let me have a shot at him, you son of a bitch,” Gould continued to rage.

Doc Robb grabbed Gould's belt, helped the referee hoist the little spitting-mad manager over the ropes, out of the ring. Meanwhile Braddock, puffing hard, sank onto his stool.

Baer was bleeding from a new cut and his right eye was swollen nearly shut. But he stood in the center of the ring, refusing to move into his corner, until Johnny McAvoy crossed the canvas to face him.

“That last low blow will cost you the round, Max,” the referee said.

Baer snarled at the man, waved him away like royalty dismissing a serf, and moved to his corner. Ancil
leaped the ropes, pushed his face into Baer's. “You're behind. Are you listening to me? You wanna lose the goddamn championship to this nobody?”

Max shoved his manager aside.

 

From her secret vantage point, Mae listened to the thirteenth and fourteenth round with mounting dread. With one final round to go, she moved out of the shadows and approached her children.

Howard and Jay looked up fearfully—afraid she was going to make them stop listening. Somehow, Rosy understood Mae's real intentions. The little girl smiled, slid sideways, patted a spot of floor right next to her.

“Sit here, Mommy,” she said.

Mae paused for a moment, then sat on the floor to be with her family. On the radio, the bell clanged.

“It's the fifteenth and final round,” reported Ford Bond. “The crowd is yelling for Braddock to stay away because Max Baer is going for the knockout…”

Mae went pale, turned slightly away to hide her fear. Jay and Howard didn't notice their mother's reaction, but Alice frowned. Rosy reached out and touched her mother's hand.

“…But Braddock is not staying away,” the announcer continued, “and Baer is delivering the biggest punches of the fight—maybe of his life!”

Howard was pale now, his lower lip trembling. Jay put on a brave face, but Mae could see her oldest boy felt the same as his brother. Both were worried their father would be hurt, would not come home that night—or ever.

“…But Braddock is not only standing…He is moving forward…Boldly, bravely bringing the fight to his opponent…”

ROUND 15

The people in the cheap seats had surged forward, stamping and screaming, completely surrounding the fistic field of battle. The mob was a solid wall of flesh and bone that pinned Joe Gould, the reporters, the judges—everyone at ringside against the edge of the blood-stained canvas.

Inside that ring, Jim Braddock and Max Baer were knotted, bloodied, battered, and snuffing like winded horses. Sweat streamed down their swollen faces as they gasped for air. Eyes locked on his opponent, each fighter warily circled the other, stalking, waiting for an opening.

Suddenly they slammed together like charging rams. Max Baer was sailing punches, every last one with knockout power. But the shots were wild, anxious, and ineffective. Braddock was still standing, and more, he was coming on with his signature left jab coiled and ready.

“Take a walk, Jimmy!” yelled Joe Gould.

At ringside, Ford Bond, jostled by the maddened crowd, clutched his microphone like a lifeline. “This is not boxing, folks!” he cried. “This is a walloping ballet!”

To the men in the ring, the final seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. There was no other place, no other time, no other world beyond this square of roped-
off canvas. The howling mob vanished, managers and corner men disappeared, the referee and the judges ceased to exist. Only the other fighter was real.

Braddock moved forward aggressively, scoring with a string of well-placed jabs that rocked the exhausted Baer. But the champ took the raps, waiting for the opportunity to send his challenger to the mat.

Braddock danced sideways, but his movements were sluggish. He tossed a jab that glanced off Baer's bruised chin. But as he threw, Max saw an opening—and that was all the heavyweight champ needed.

With his mythic right arm, Baer clocked Braddock in the temple. The patented sledgehammer spun Jimmy, leaving him wide open for the second half of the deadly combination—an uppercut that seemed to start at the floor and climb upward to the sky over Queens, with only Jim Braddock's chin in the way.

“Baer is swinging with a tremendous blow,” bellowed Ford Bond. “I don't know how Braddock is going to survive it!”

A tomblike silence fell over the arena as the crowd waited for the Cinderella Man to topple.

But Braddock decided to die another day. With a ducking pivot, he avoided the savage uppercut and countered with a brace of hard lefts. Max loomed so close he was practically standing on Braddock's toes. But Jim dodged a clinch to deliver his own smashing uppercut that lifted Max Baer off his feet. The fighters were still trading blows when the bell clanged.

“It's over! The fight is over, and the referee is pulling the fighters apart,” cried Ford Bond.

It took all of Johnny McAvoy's considerable
strength to thrust the men away from each other. Gould leaped into the ring and dragged Jimmy to his corner. Slapping his back, the junkyard dog of a manager grinned like a satisfied cat.

Over the chaos, Sporty Lewis reached into the ring, tugged hard on Referee McAvoy's trouser leg. The ref tried to shake the reporter off, but Sporty hung on like a hyperactive terrier.