The Bruiser Read Free Page A

happened in the ring has been in eclipse all these years. I do not even remember dressing for the fight.
    My opponent, fearful that I had been killed, called upon me while I was still unconscious. A kindly note scrawled with pencil begged my forgiveness.
    Some minutes after I opened my eyes I vaguely grasped the situation. The note began, “You were knocked out last night—”
    Still shaky, I went to the lobby, and from there to the street.
    Years of struggle followed before Tully established himself as a successful writer with the publication of his first book in 1922. But by 1935, Tully’s last two books had tanked, and, in the view of many, Tully had peaked as a writer. Beset by personal problems and jaded by the tinniness of Hollywood, Tully was at a crossroads when he met Langston Hughes, a longtime admirer of Tully’s work, at a Beverly Hills party. The two writers hit it off, and Tully invited Hughes to come by some time for lunch.
    When Hughes called a couple days later, he asked if he might bring Harry Armstrong, a former boxer turned trainer who wanted to write. Tully quickly consented and a date was set. Hughes and Armstrong planned on taking the interurban from downtown Los Angeles to Tully’s home, an hour and a half ride. Harry’s protege, Henry Jackson, who had even taken his mentor’s name and boxed as Henry Armstrong, was free that morning and offered to drive the men and wait in the car. When they arrived, Hughes mentioned that the young boxer was waiting outside in the car and Tully immediately went out to invite Henry to join them.
    Like Langston Hughes and Jim Tully, so too does it seem that Henry Armstrong and Tully were destined to meet. In his autobiography, Gloves, Glory and God , Armstrong remembered laying awake one night in St. Louis when he felt the irresistible pull of California. It was the heart of the Depression, and neither Henry nor his trainer and running buddy, Harry, had anything like train fare to California. Writing in the third-person, Armstrong recalled,
    Well, if there wasn’t money for the trip, maybe it could be made without money. He had read somewhere of an author named Jim Tully, who had been a fighter and a hobo. If Tully could make it all over the country as a hobo, surely Henry could get to California that way.
    They caught a west-bound freight train in Carondelet, Missouri, and a few years later washed up at Tully’s Toluca Lake door. Tully liked Armstrong immediately. “When he entered the room,” Tully wrote, “I knew at once there was a man in the house.” Armstrong was mostly silent but listened intently as his trainer and Hughes described how tough it was for a boxer to make a living. Tully could only nod in recognition. Armstrong had lost fixed matches with the Mexican fighter, Baby Arizmendi, that he’d clearly won and was as broke in Los Angeles as he had been in St. Louis. “You might see a way out, Jim,” Hughes said. “Henry’s beaten him twice and lost two decisions—he’s innocent and honest, and it isn’t right.” To make matters worse, Wirt Ross, who bought Armstrong’s contract when the boxer was a minor, had scheduled him to again fight Arizmendi. Moved by the hobo-turned-boxer’s plight, onehe knew firsthand, Tully impulsively raised the possibility of buying Armstrong’s contract from Ross. Armstrong was very enthusiastic, leaving Tully to mull it over. Watching his guests leave, Tully regretted not hearing more from the young boxer. “My God,” he later commented, “a great man has been here. Armstrong was the wisest of us all. He saved his breath for the pork chops.”
    The prospect of a return to boxing, albeit outside the ropes, was tempting.
    For days the idea burned in my head. I would again enter the wild world of the bruiser. The thought made the bubbles burst in my blood. It would be a return to the care-free days I’d loved. I