The Big Fight Read Free Page B

hour away in northern Virginia.
    Pops didn’t have a choice. Good jobs for black men were not in abundance. He and Momma were struggling to feed six children and couldn’t afford to alienate anybody. The boss men weren’t cruel to my dad, although they didn’t hesitate to put him in his place.
    â€œYour son is too small,” they said years later, after I began to attain a little success as an amateur boxer in the Washington region. “He will never be anything.”
    â€œHe will,” insisted Pops. “He will. You just wait.”
    They laughed.
    When I became rich and famous, they stopped laughing.
    â€œDo you think your son might want to buy the store?” one of the owners asked.
    â€œNo,” Daddy said. “Not a chance.”
    He told me one of the most satisfying moments he ever experienced was when he walked into S&R for the first time as a customer instead of as an employee after I made it possible for him to retire. He was as proud as a father could be.
    The feeling was mutual, even if I was slow to come around. I will never forget the day I saw Momma holding Daddy’s unsteady hand, showing him how to write his name, one letter at a time. My father, my hero, could not write his own name. Eventually, though, I grew to have a deep appreciation for the sacrifices he made and how tough it must have been to survive in the world without a decent education. Yet he never felt pity for himself or allowed anyone to feel pity for him.
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    P almer Park, a community of similiar one-story structures, was not the most dangerous place, although we did have our share of drug dealers and troublemakers, many of whom hung out at the Landover Mall, a couple of miles from my house. My friends and I tried to keep our distance from them but didn’t always succeed. One afternoon, several of us were hanging out near the front entrance to the Palmer Park Recreation Center when we stumbled upon an argument between a thug in the neighborhood and a fat, mentally challenged kid. The guy suddenly took a wrench and pounded the kid’s head over and over. The blood gushed out the way you see it in the movies. He didn’t care that we were watching. He knew we weren’t going to call the cops or help the kid, or we’d have the rest of his friends coming after us.
    Violence was nothing new to me. I saw it in my home as well, whenever my dad taught my brothers a lesson for acting up, which was quite often, though it didn’t keep them in line for very long. His methods of discipline included an extension cord and making us bend down and put our heads between his legs while he hit us with his belt. As a shy kid who mostly stayed out of trouble, I wasn’t punished nearly as frequently as my brothers. Yet as much as I detested the violence, I was drawn to it. I admired the power and control held by those who resorted to it.
    Worse than the cord or the belt was the stare Daddy gave us whenever we let him down.
    The time I remember too well was when he bought some battery-operated race cars for me as a special present. I pestered him every day for weeks, not giving any consideration to how much they might cost for a family squeezing by from paycheck to paycheck. Sick of my nagging, he went to a jar and poured out a large pile of silver dollars. He was as excited to buy the cars as I was to play with them. The fascination didn’t last, however, because by the end of the next day, after breaking the tracks, I left the cars scattered throughout the living room as I went to play outside. Daddy did not say a word. He gave me that familiar stare and walked off. I can still see the disappointment on his face and it makes me feel horrible all over again.
    Money worries were a constant throughout my childhood. I wore my brothers’ hand-me-down clothes and stayed home from school when my class went on field trips to the famous landmarks in D.C. The lack of any savings also