The Big Fight Read Free

whuppin’. Bilge would wait until Daddy was in bed, and beat him with a switch, the branch of a tree. My grandma Sally, as much as it pained her, did not object. She knew her place.
    Everybody did their share on the farm, including Grandma, all four feet two inches of her. The story goes that on the very next day after giving birth to one of her fourteen children, Sally was back in the fields.
    As exhausted as my dad was, on Sundays, his one day off, he took on any kid from the county who was courageous enough to fight him in a ring he built by himself in his front yard using plow line ropes, an oak tree, and wood-cut staves, narrow strips of wood forming the sides. He sometimes fought as many as three or four fights, with few interruptions. After he put away the competition, which he did without much difficulty, he was cleaned up by Grandma and ready for another Sunday ritual, church.
    I absorbed one blow after another that afternoon at the No. 2 Boys Club. I didn’t quit, just as my dad wouldn’t, searching for any openings to make the skinny kid feel the same pain I did. It didn’t happen. I didn’t land a single hard blow, while he kept connecting with lefts and rights I never saw. My head was pounding. My legs were burning. Blood was pouring from my nose. Mercifully, the slaughter ended. I was no son of Cicero Leonard. Fortunately, Daddy didn’t notice the damage on my face, nor did any of my five siblings, and after healing from the wounds, I returned to the much safer world of comic books, in which the good guys prevailed over the forces of evil.
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    I n 1941, war came and Daddy spent three and a half years in the navy, working as a cook. He expected to be sent overseas. He never was, stationed instead in Maryland and Florida. Being in the service was still a jarring experience for someone who had never slept a night away from home. Once he adjusted, he kept up with his favorite pastime, fighting. He lost only once in forty-seven bouts, to a fellow named Little Red from Philadelphia. Little Red didn’t carry much of a punch but he was fast with his hands and feet. Daddy, who fought at five feet nine and about 160 pounds, was no Joe Louis, and this was as good a time as any to find out.
    Daddy battled for everything he wanted in life, including his beloved Getha, and didn’t care who might be in his way.
    He met Getha in 1948 in the town of Gapway, South Carolina, about two hours from Columbia, when he went to pick up his cousin Robert, who had just gone on his first date with the young beauty. On the way home, Robert couldn’t stop raving about Getha and how he planned to marry her one day. Pops, also now smitten, envisioned a different future and figured he might as well stake his own claim right away.
    â€œI’m going to take that girl from you,” he told Robert.
    â€œNo, you ain’t,” Robert said.
    They proceeded to do what any two mature young men would if they couldn’t settle an argument. They fought. Without providing a blow-byblow account, let’s just say Robert never dated Getha again. Which didn’t mean Daddy was going to win her over without another fight, and this one would be much tougher.
    According to the rules established by Getha’s mother, Nettie Elliott, boys were permitted to pay a visit only on Wednesday and Sunday nights from six to nine. At nine P.M. sharp, your ass was out the door, one way or the other. When Cicero asked Getha if he could stop by one Sunday evening, she approached her mom for permission.
    â€œI reckon so,” Nettie said.
    When it came to Grandma Nettie and her daughter’s love life, that was about as much enthusiasm as she could muster, and with good reason. Getha had given birth to a son, Roy, about a year before with a man who was no longer around. Nettie and her husband took on the responsibility of raising Roy until years later, when he came up north to live with us in