I’d never fought a black guy before, just good old boys, roofers, electricians, bricklayers. I did scrap a Mexican on time, or part Mexican. He looked pudgy and soft but he was tougher than a fifty cent steak. He was short and I finally got on top of him and punched him in the face till his friends said enough and threw in the towel. I never did knock him out, but I did bust him up and knock knots on his forehead, which didn’t do nothing good for my knuckles.
This was way back in the late 70s way before the UFC took off and everybody started training in mixed martial arts. Nowadays, you gotta know boxing, muay thai, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and a bunch of other shit. Back then, the folks who fought in old man Poole’s lumber yard pretty much just punched and kicked. I was a bit of an oddity because I learned a couple of choke holds from an old man who learned it overseas somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, cause I would punch a mother fucker in the head if I had to, but in the fifiteen or so times I fought, I strangled all of them but the Mexican and the negro. Some folks didn’t like the wrestling and said it wasn’t real fighting, but the only rules were no gonad shots, or eye gouging, or biting, though another roofer did try to bite his way out of one of my holds but went to sleep before he could.
That’s when it was over, when the other guy couldn’t continue or just plain quit. Sometimes some friends would step in and say it was over, like they did with the Mexican. Sometimes, Mr. Poole himself would make the call that enough was enough.
It was really all his idea. He made up the rules and he paid the fighters. Well, the fighter, cause he would only give $200 to the man who won. The loser didn’t get shit. I think he just liked watching poor people beat the living shit out of each other, though he did make some money betting on me I suspect.
That morning when I fought the black guy, I didn’t know who I would be facing. I remember it was not long before Christmas. The power poles all had electric candy canes hanging on ‘em and some of the store fronts had that fake snow spray paint on ‘em.
I remember it was cold as a snow man’s pecker when I walked out into the yard. There must have been at least a hundred men milling about, talking loud and laughing. I knew most of them by sight except for five or six black men and one small black boy who couldn’t have been no more than seven or eight years old.
I looked them boys over and knew then what old man Poole had done. He had gone out and found him one that he believed could whip me. I knew which one he was the moment I laid eyes on him. He wasn’t tall, maybe five foot eight or ten, more than half a foot shorter than me, but he was built in blocks and chunks. He looked like a black fire hydrant, and about that goddamn hard. He had a dirty thermal shirt on and I could still see all that muscle underneath. When he took it off I just about fell out. I had never seen muscles like that before, even his stomach was all knotted up like that thick Hawser rope.
I was always a little bit nervous before a fight, but I was downright scared of that man. The fellas began circling up and me and the fire hydrant dude walked out in the center. I threw a few shadow punches and kicked the gravel with my boots to make sure I could get traction. My stubby opponent just walked back and forth flexing and staring at me. If he was trying to be intimidating it was working.
Old man Poole stepped in between us and told us to shake hands. We did. It’s been almost half a century ago and I can still remember that fucker’s fingers. They were thicker than the Mexican Gordita cigars that Mr. Poole smoked. Anyways, his fingers were something extra.
We stood there for what felt like an hour while Poole talked to the crowd giving them time to place all the bets they could afford. From the sound of the chatter, it sounded like the white boys were betting on me.
Poole clapped his hands real loud and said, “let’s go.”
I knew I was in trouble from the start by the stance the muscle-man took. He held his hands up high, one by each temple. I threw out a few weak jabs, just trying to make out the distance. He caught them on the hands and the top of his head and kept coming forward, bobbing and weaving all the time. He closed the distance and threw a hard right hook. It just missed my chin as I ducked away. I tried to grab his head and snap him down into a front headlock and see if I could get a hold of his throat. He was simply too strong to snap anywhere. As I tried to back aways from him after that didn’t work, he caught me with a left hook to the body, right under my right rib cage in the liver. If you aint never been punched in the liver you aint missed nothing. I staggered back and doubled over and almost went down one one knee. I thought about yelling calf-rope right then and there. That’s how bad it hurt. Instead, I turned and tried to run away. He swung at the back of my head and missed. He then lunged forward and tackled me from behind. In a split second, he was riding my back like a colored cowboy. He wrapped his left arm around my waist to hold me and started punching me in the side of my face with his right. I tried to cover up and did somewhat, but even the punches that hit the back of my hand hurt. One of the punches got through and caught me right on my jaw joint so hard as I knew it was broke.
I grabbed his left hand with mine and tried to peel it off. Here’s where I got lucky, real fucking lucky. I ended up with only two of his thick Gordita cigar fingers in my hand. I bent them back as hard as I could. It sounded like a 22 rifle when they broke right back near the last knuckle.
He turned me loose and grabbed his snapped fingers with his good hand. He was still on his knees where he had straddled my back. I stood up and kicked him as hard as I could right behind his left ear. He didn’t fall over like he should have. He just sat back on his ass in the gravel and sat there. I just stood there and looked, waiting on him to crumple. I knew he was done, but he didn’t cry out or say nothing about quitting. His boys didn’t say nothing either. I don’t understand any of that. Mr. Poole stood on the edge of the circle saying nothing at first and then he looked at me and yelled out, “kick him again.”
I did, again, right behind the left ear. This time I heard, or felt, something crack, like you had dropped a watermelon on the road.
He fell forward and to his right, face down in the dirt and rock. He started quivering and shaking. His boys laid him out flat on his back and tried to give him some water, but his jaw was clenched closed. He shook violently and then stiffened up and stopped and then went limp. For the first time since they gathered that morning, the crowd was completely silent.
I can’t say for sure, but the little boy must have been the Fire Hydrant’s kid the way he started squalling when the oldest of the black men said, “he’s sho nuff dead.”
The black fellas loaded the dead man in the back of a worn out looking station wagon and drove away. Their tag said Fulton County. I guess they were from Atlanta. We all watched them when they left. One old man, I think he was an aluminum siding guy, said, loudly, “I’ll be goddamned.”
Poole walked over and handed me my 200 dollars. I got in my truck and went back home. It was several weeks before I could even chew right.
[Image Credit : Photo by Attentie Attentie on Unsplash ]
by 
Alan Caldwell
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