Read Online Good Hope Road: A Novel by Sarita Mandanna - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sarita Mandanna
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bar-rooms in Washington and Tennessee, outside the Tribune offices – that Sunday evenin’, everywhere you looked, there were crowds around a telegrapher. We even gotten a pool runnin’ in County Cook prison, with the wardens arrangin’ to have one of the inmates operate the telegraph keys. Ten to six and a half, the odds were, Jeffries to Jackson, and I wagered everythin’ I got on the Giant.
Fifteen rounds they went, and when they announced the Giant’s name at the end of it, man you should have seen the way the city went wild. Well, our parts of the city anyhow. It was a Fourth of July too, and I heard tell after that the fireworks that gone off that evenin’ were somethin’ to see alright.
There been ugliness, sure, in some parts of the country, broken bones and worse for some of our kind, but that only made the rest of us all the more loud. The champ, our champ was champ of the world once more, and we gone boo coo crazy happy, figurin’ the fight that evenin’ gonna shut those folks up for good.
I’m talkin’ ’bout the folks burnin’ bad over the fact that a coloured hold the world championship title. Even if Jack been holdin’ on to that title for six years now, since 1908.
He first won it from Tommy Burns, and I’d have given everythin’ I owned to watch that match, ’cept it was held in Sydney and what I owned at that time, it weren’t hardly enough to get me even as far as New York. Jack, he won the title fair and square, but the papers said all kinds of things – that the match been fixed, that Burns been in decline anyhow. Them folks, they gone and badgered Jeffries outta retirement – someone got to teach this cotton pickin’ blackbird a lesson, they said – until finally he agreed to the match in Reno.
Jack beat him proper, smilin’ the whole time; the papers said the next mornin’ that his win been so effortless, obvious it was fixed.
Ever since, them folks been out there, trawlin’ the coal mines, farms and dockyards, huntin’ for someone tough enough to beat the Giant. The Great White Hope they been callin’ it, the hope that a white man gonna bring back the championship to their side of the colour line, where by their account, it rightfully belongs. Well, Jack, he believe no such thing and for the past twenty-five matches, he been reignin’ king. They hate his guts and his hard drinkin’, his proud, unashamed ways, and when he take a white woman for a wife, they slap a case of immorality against him. Jack, he got no choice but to leave America, makin’ his way to London and now Paris.
Still them folks been searchin’ and finally now in 1914, they gone and found themselves a new Hope in golden-haired Frank Moran. Tomorrow’s fight ain’t just some boxin’ match, I tell that salesgirl, it much bigger than that. The Giant, he stand for more than just being a champion fighter, he . . . he . . . I struggle to explain what Jack Johnson come to mean to men like me.
‘He’s a champ ,’ I say finally, ‘he my champion.’
The salesgirl look at me funny and I think at first she laughin’ at me. But she tell me to wait, and damned if she don’t go into the backroom and come out some minutes later with a hat fine as can be. There a slight fade to the brim, one you can’t hardly see, but on account of which the price is only a bit of what it would have been otherwise.
I stand there, turnin’ the hat this way and that under the lights. I tell you, it been one of the most beautiful things I ever held in my hands, chers included, and there been a fair number of them through the years.
The salesgirl ask what I plan to wear with the hat. ‘These,’ I reply, pointin’ at the clothes I got on.
She shake her head. ‘ Incroyable .’ She quickly write on a piece of paper and hand it to me. ‘Go here. They are costumiers for the opera. Tell Yvette that Celine sent you.’
I hardly know how to thank her, and she grin when I try. ‘Ah, it’s okay. Maybe you come by later
Fifteen rounds they went, and when they announced the Giant’s name at the end of it, man you should have seen the way the city went wild. Well, our parts of the city anyhow. It was a Fourth of July too, and I heard tell after that the fireworks that gone off that evenin’ were somethin’ to see alright.
There been ugliness, sure, in some parts of the country, broken bones and worse for some of our kind, but that only made the rest of us all the more loud. The champ, our champ was champ of the world once more, and we gone boo coo crazy happy, figurin’ the fight that evenin’ gonna shut those folks up for good.
I’m talkin’ ’bout the folks burnin’ bad over the fact that a coloured hold the world championship title. Even if Jack been holdin’ on to that title for six years now, since 1908.
He first won it from Tommy Burns, and I’d have given everythin’ I owned to watch that match, ’cept it was held in Sydney and what I owned at that time, it weren’t hardly enough to get me even as far as New York. Jack, he won the title fair and square, but the papers said all kinds of things – that the match been fixed, that Burns been in decline anyhow. Them folks, they gone and badgered Jeffries outta retirement – someone got to teach this cotton pickin’ blackbird a lesson, they said – until finally he agreed to the match in Reno.
Jack beat him proper, smilin’ the whole time; the papers said the next mornin’ that his win been so effortless, obvious it was fixed.
Ever since, them folks been out there, trawlin’ the coal mines, farms and dockyards, huntin’ for someone tough enough to beat the Giant. The Great White Hope they been callin’ it, the hope that a white man gonna bring back the championship to their side of the colour line, where by their account, it rightfully belongs. Well, Jack, he believe no such thing and for the past twenty-five matches, he been reignin’ king. They hate his guts and his hard drinkin’, his proud, unashamed ways, and when he take a white woman for a wife, they slap a case of immorality against him. Jack, he got no choice but to leave America, makin’ his way to London and now Paris.
Still them folks been searchin’ and finally now in 1914, they gone and found themselves a new Hope in golden-haired Frank Moran. Tomorrow’s fight ain’t just some boxin’ match, I tell that salesgirl, it much bigger than that. The Giant, he stand for more than just being a champion fighter, he . . . he . . . I struggle to explain what Jack Johnson come to mean to men like me.
‘He’s a champ ,’ I say finally, ‘he my champion.’
The salesgirl look at me funny and I think at first she laughin’ at me. But she tell me to wait, and damned if she don’t go into the backroom and come out some minutes later with a hat fine as can be. There a slight fade to the brim, one you can’t hardly see, but on account of which the price is only a bit of what it would have been otherwise.
I stand there, turnin’ the hat this way and that under the lights. I tell you, it been one of the most beautiful things I ever held in my hands, chers included, and there been a fair number of them through the years.
The salesgirl ask what I plan to wear with the hat. ‘These,’ I reply, pointin’ at the clothes I got on.
She shake her head. ‘ Incroyable .’ She quickly write on a piece of paper and hand it to me. ‘Go here. They are costumiers for the opera. Tell Yvette that Celine sent you.’
I hardly know how to thank her, and she grin when I try. ‘Ah, it’s okay. Maybe you come by later
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