And now with the fight finished, physicians and attendants were rushing the ring, gathering around the fallen body of Higgins, knocked to unconsciousness by the greatest right hand the boxing world had ever seen. Higgins, who until tonight was the most fearsome fighter in boxing, was finished. His boxing career was now behind him.
They gathered around Blue Higgins, revived him with smelling salts, lifted him up and helped him stagger out of the ring and into boxing history. Meanwhile, Rachman Babatunde, the father of four and man of one, son of the seventh son of the seventh son, the loudmouth and newly crowned world champion, pranced around the ring, relishing the pandemonium, gloating, his arms raised, screaming at the television cameras: “I told you! I’m the greatest! The baddest! No man alive can whup me! Didn’t I tell you!? I shocked the world!”
After several moments of wild frenzy, Rachman, who was prancing around the Forum’s boxing ring filled with cops, handlers, ringside onlookers, and photographers, with his gloves tied and looped over his shoulders, slid his giant frame through the ropes, jumped down onto the arena floor, and started up the aisle toward the locker room. The entourage of trainers, cops, reporters, and tuxedos followed him like a flock of birds, a swarm of excited, shoving, laughing humanity.
Several rows up the aisle, the champ stopped short and the cacophony of humanity that followed him stalled. The people behind Rachman tried to press forward, but Rachman had already slid into the seats away from the aisle, leaving the entourage and cops to stare in surprise as he bumped past startled fans who grasped and touched his sweaty body as he squeezed past them, making his way to four seats in the middle of the row.
A cop assigned to the security detail grabbed Rachman’s trainer by the arm. “What’s he doin’?” the cop asked.
“Losing his mind,” his manager said.
“What’s that mean?” the cop asked.
“It’s okay. It’ll pass.”
They watched as Rachman stopped in the middle of the row, facing four people who now stood, staring at the champ in awe. They were a middle-aged woman in a tweed fur jacket, a wide-eyed girl in a freshly ironed cotton dress, a straight-backed businessman in a suit and tie, and a man in a flannel cotton shirt holding a beer.
Rachman eyed them. He seemed puzzled for a moment and suddenly shy. “I don’t know why I came over to see you,” he said.
“We won these seats in a radio contest,” the man in the flannel shirt said proudly. “Flights paid. Hotel. Expensive seats. Everything. And now you come to say hello! What a day!”
“Strange day,” Rachman said slowly. “I had a strange dream this afternoon. Then I woke up.” He glanced around the arena at the crowds, which had recovered from his detour and were now running at them.
He spoke to the man in the plaid shirt. “I shocked ’em, didn’t I?”
“Sure did.”
There was an awkward silence as the four people stared in awe and the fighter stared back at them. The entourage behind him began to squeeze into the aisle now, bumping through the seats to catch up to the champ. They pressed forward, surrounding the little group, watching the champ, who was suddenly strangely subdued.
“You said it was a radio contest?” he asked the man in the flannel shirt as he pulled his gloves from around his neck.
“Sure was,” the man said.
“Well, I don’t know nothing about no radio contest,” Rachman said. Silently and without ceremony, he removed his boxing gloves from around his neck and handed them to the man.
“What’s this for?”
“Wasn’t I pretty? Tell me I was pretty.”
“You was pretty,” the man said.
“Tell me I’m the greatest.”
“Yes, sir. You are the greatest. But can I ask you a question?”
“Surely can.”
“What makes you great?”
Rachman reached over and grabbed the man and put him in a bear hug. He whispered into his ear. Then he turned away.
“I’m the greatest!” he said, shouting as he made his way back to the aisle. The huge swarming group of hangers-on that followed him reversed direction, laughing and high-fiving as they made their way to the top of the auditorium where the exits were.
The four watched Rachman make his way to the top of the auditorium, and as they did, the woman standing next to the man in the flannel shirt turned to him and asked, “What did he say?”
“He said he loved Blue. He said he loved the evil in Blue. He loves the evil in all people. Because in loving their evil, he loves the evil in himself enough to surrender it to God, who washes it clean. He’s loving what God made, is what he said.”
“That’s what makes him great?”
“No. That’s what makes him, him.”
They watched as Rachman made his way to the exits, and above the cacophony, the yelling and shouting, above the roar of the crowd, the four could still hear his voice, and it seemed to come from outside him and inside their own chests, pushing inside their own veins, kicking through their feet and into the wide space of their own inner souls, ears, and hearts.
“I’m the greatest!”
THE CHRISTMAS DANCE
Herb was sitting with the old Judge in Sylvia’s soul food joint in Harlem munching a plate of fried green tomatoes when the Judge spotted a stooped, elderly Puerto Rican wearing a post office uniform standing in line holding a tray of food.
“This is your lucky day,” the Judge said to Herb.
“Carlos!” he called out. He motioned the man over.
The old man glanced up from his tray, saw the Judge, and threw his eyes toward the ceiling as if to say “Oh God.” He paid for his food and shuffled over reluctantly, taking a seat.
“What’d I do wrong, Judge?”
“Want you to meet a man from Columbia University,” the Judge said proudly. He nodded at young Herb sitting at the table. “Herb here’s doing a report on the black soldiers who fought in World War Two.”
“There was black soldiers in World War Two?” Carlos said.
The Judge laughed and winked at Herb. “This is the guy you wanna talk to,” he said.
Herb was a slim, enthusiastic young fellow dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap, brimming with innocence. He shook Carlos’s hand, which felt like a wet, damp rag. “Actually, I’m doing my thesis on the Ninety-Second Division,” Herb said proudly. “They fought the Germans in Italy. I’m doing an oral history as part of my Ph.D. Trying to spread the light of history on the Buffalo Soldiers. Frankly, it’s thirty years after the war and people know as little about the Ninety-Second today as they did in 1945.”
“Why’s that?” Carlos asked.
“You kidding, right? Because it was an all-black division.”
“Well, there it is,” Carlos said. “All blacks. Puerto Ricans had nothing to do with it.” He turned to the Judge. “Judge, how come they don’t serve plantains here? Puerto Ricans walk in and outta here all day and all Sylvia serves is collards and chicken. What’s wrong with black beans and rice?”
“So what did you do in the Ninety-Second?” Herb asked.
“Engineer,” Carlos said, not looking at him. He spoke to the Judge again, his mouth full of collard greens. “Judge, whyn’t you speak to Maddy the cook? I think she boils these collards in gunpowder. She don’t believe in salt. Se sabe como mierda.” He sucked his teeth and grabbed the saltshaker, flicking salt onto his plate. Herb noticed a big clump of a collard green had stuck to Carlos’s front gold tooth.
“What kind of engineer?” Herb asked.
Carlos glanced at Herb, then looked away. “I blew things up.”
“Wow. Like what?”
“Balloons mostly,” Carlos said. “Balloon brigade. I blew up all the balloons. Red ones. Yellow ones. I pumped air into ’em. By hand mostly. Man, them things went high.”
The Judge stifled a smile as Carlos shifted his irritated gaze from Herb back to the Judge. “So what’s the number today, Judge?”
The Judge took a bite of liver and said, “I just missed it.”
“You said that last week,” Carlos said.
“No kidding. Missed it by one. I’m gonna change my picking strategy from here on out.”
“What’s it now?”
“I play my wife’s birthday and my daughter’s birthday. How ’bout you?”
“I play the grid.”
Herb watched a checkered darkness slip across the Judge’s face. The Judge’s smile vanished and a weary, dark misery flashed into his eyes for a second, then it was gone, and his smile returned. The Judge was a man of eternal optimism. He said softly, “Drinking don’t help you forget, Carlos.”
“I don’t drink to forget, Judge,” Carlos said. “I drink to remember—all the good things in my life. So far, I can think of two. One is a girl from the first grade. The other I can’t recall.”
With that he stood up, left the tray at the table, and departed.
“He didn’t finish his food,” Herb said, watching him leave.
The Judge smiled again. He reached for his fork and dug into his fried green tomatoes. He was a bright, sunny man, always enthusiastic, a man of boundless optimism. He forked his food into his mouth and glanced at Carlos’s back as he disappeared out the door. “You oughta see him dance,” he said gaily. “Carlos is a great dancer.”
• • •
AFTER CARLOS LEFT, the Judge clammed up. Before Carlos arrived at Sylvia’s that day, the Judge was an open book, just the kind of veteran soldier Herb was looking for: cordial, fun, brimming with humorous stories about the colored boys fighting the Germans in Italy’s cold Apennine Mountains, laughing as they dodged German .88 shells. It was so pitiful you had to laugh, the Judge said. He described the colored soldiers sitting around, bored, cold, warming their hands over a fire, laughing at some joke about a baby boy who was so ugly that his ma diapered the wrong end—then woo-woo-woo—the terrifying scramble as the whir of an .88 incoming rent the air, the men leaping into terrified action, grabbing for some gun they forgot to load, or sprinting over to the artillery guns to pump shells towards Germans labeled “Special Delivery from Harlem for Hitler.” It was all light, funny, colorful stuff. But when Carlos left, the Judge grew silent and pensive, and he departed soon after Carlos, promising to meet Herb again the next week.
But the next week came and the Judge begged off, saying he had a doctor’s appointment for his leg, which had been injured in the war and required him to walk with a cane. The next week he had a dentist’s appointment. The next week a cold. Then a funeral for a cousin. Then a trial, even though the old Judge was retired. Finally the Judge stopped picking up the phone altogether.
After three weeks of desperate calling, Herb finally got the Judge on the line. The Judge seemed diffident. Oh yeah, he mumbled, we were getting some work done on that paper of yours, weren’t we? Well, you probably got enough. I gave you all I had, son. That was a long time ago. I don’t remember too much more. I wasn’t a judge then, see, I was just little ol’ Walter Booker from Harlem. The war wasn’t nothing like the movies you see anyway, mostly just lying around and marching and feeding the Italians, that sort of thing. I’m afraid that’s pretty much my story. But there were other guys who were there who might be around. I’ll find some other guys for you to talk to. Then he hung up and was gone. He never picked up his phone again.
Herb was stuck. He’d been researching the story of the 92nd for two years. The Judge had been a gold mine, remembering names, places, numbers. Now the gold mine was closed and his Ph.D. was in jeopardy.
Winter turned to spring. Graduation was coming. With three weeks before his thesis was due, Herb went to see his professor.
“I hit a brick wall,” he admitted. “My live sources have dried up. Most of these guys are dead.”
“Find the written accounts,” the professor said.
“There’s not much there,” Herb said. “Very few books. Most of the records of that division were destroyed in a fire at the Army’s records storage facility in St. Louis. Most of the soldiers are dead. These two, the Judge and Carlos, are alive and they were there. But they won’t talk about it.”
“You say the Army files were destroyed in a fire? The Army doesn’t make copies of files?”
“Not in our library they don’t.”
The professor smirked. “What kind of Ph.D. candidate looks for Army records in a civilian library?”
Herb did some legwork. He borrowed a car from his roommate and drove down to the Library of Congress, then to the Fort Myer Post Library near Washington, D.C. Finally he struck gold at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. The summary of the 92nd Division listed the men in each company roster. Among those listed on the roster of the 366th Regiment were Carlos Lopez and Walter Booker. Herb pored through the list of major battles for each regiment during the Italian campaign. The 366th Regiment was barely mentioned, with the exception of a “skirmish” noted by the report with an indexed reference. Herb looked up the reference, which turned out to be an additional report by Army intelligence added a year later, which reexamined the “skirmish” because of an unusually high American casualty rate. The report revealed a surprise Christmas Day 1944 attack by the Germans against American forces stationed in the Serchio Valley near Florence—in concert with the more famous German attack at the Battle of the Bulge. Herb read the report with deep interest:
The surprise counterattack by the German forces occurred on Christmas Day 1944, in concert with the attack in the Ardennes region in Belgium and Luxembourg on the Western Front. As they did in Belgium, the Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line and caught the Allied forces in Italy completely off guard. The Germans achieved this total surprise due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance.
At approximately 0500 hours, the 67th SS Panzer climbed the Lama di Sotto Ridge and overran three companies of the 366th Regiment, comprised of 200 American soldiers, thinly spread out over a five-mile defensive line in the Serchio Valley at 1,400 feet. American forces were outnumbered three to one. Fighting was house to house, some of it hand to hand.
Herb looked at the roster of the three companies attacked in the German assault: Companies C, B, and F of the 366th Regiment. He ran his finger down the page of the roster of the companies. Among those in Company F were Carlos Lopez and Walter Booker.
He read the casualty report on Company F. It did not say much. But the numbers did. Seventy soldiers went out to meet the German assault. Seventeen returned. The rest were casualties. And it said nothing about a balloon brigade.
“A skirmish,” Herb muttered. “Some skirmish.”
• • •
HE CLOSED THE REPORT and left the library. No mention of specifics. So the company was mostly destroyed, he thought. But nothing else on Carlos or Walter. No specifics on the battle at all. No gold stars or Purple Hearts. No idea what they did. What were they hiding? Did they do something wrong?
Herb went back to New York, his curiosity now piqued. He called the Judge every day. No response. He went to Sylvia’s six times in a six-day period. No Judge. In desperation, he wrote to a New York Italian association asking about the attack in the Serchio Valley, pulling the name of a town he’d seen mentioned in the reports: Sommocolonia. As luck would have it, a volunteer civilian at the Italian association had a brother who was a partisan and fought with the Buffalo Soldiers at Sommocolonia. She gave him the address of her brother and two Italian partisans who had also fought in the area. Herb wrote to all three, pleading for information.
Two weeks later, at 3 a.m., the phone rang in Herb’s East Harlem apartment. A scratchy voice on the other end, speaking broken English with a thick Italian accent, said, “I am try
ing to reach the Buffalo Soldiers.”
“They’re not here,” Herb said.
“I need to reach them.”
“Which one do you want to reach? There were fifteen thousand of them.”
“Any one.”
“What do you need?”
“Nothing. I just want to talk to them. I want to thank them.”
“For what?”
Herb heard what sounded like choking, or perhaps sobbing. “I was at Sommocolonia. I remember the tower.”
“What tower?”
“The church tower. Grazie. Mille grazie.”
The man hung up.
Herb went to Sylvia’s and cornered Maddy, the restaurant cook. “I’ve got to see the Judge,” he said. “It’s important. I know he’s been avoiding me.”
Maddy looked at Herb for a moment, saw the desperation in his face, and felt sorry for him.
“Go ’round on a Monday morning to Mr. Pitt’s grocery store on 136th,” Maddy said. “He plays the number over there on Mondays. Don’t say I told you.”
Herb did as Maddy directed, and was rewarded by the sight of the old Judge leaning on his walking stick, standing in line inside the grocery store, waiting to play his number. When the Judge saw Herb, his face darkened a moment, then relit, like a candle that’s just found new air. He was all sunny optimism. “Ain’t you outta school yet?” he said.
“I only have one more question.”
“I already told you all I know.”
“There was a town down in the Serchio Valley. A place called Sommocolonia. And there was a church tower. What happened there?”