The Human Stain

In East Orange, where mostly everyone was white, either poor Italian—and living up at the Orange edge of town or down by Newark's First Ward—or Episcopalian and rich—and living in the big houses out by Upsala or around South Harrison—there were fewer Jews even than there were Negroes, and yet it was the Jews and their kids who these days loomed larger than anyone in Coleman's extracurricular life. First there was Doc Chizner, who had as good as adopted him the year before, when Coleman joined his evening boxing class, and now there was Dr. Fensterman offering three thousand dollars for Coleman to place second academically so as to enable Bert to come in first. Doc Chizner was a dentist who loved boxing. Went to the fights whenever he had a chance—in Jersey at Laurel Garden and at the Meadowbrook Bowl, to New York to the Garden and out to St. Nick's. People would say, "You think you know fights until you sit next to Doc. Sit next to Doc Chizner, and you realize you're not watching the same fight." Doc officiated at amateur fights all over Essex County, including the Golden Gloves in Newark, and to his local classes in boxing Jewish parents from all over the Oranges, from Maplewood, from Irvington-from as far away as the Weequahic section over at Newark's southwest corner—sent their sons to learn how to defend themselves.

Coleman had wound up in Doc Chizner's class not because he didn't know how but because his own father had found out that since his second year of high school, after track practice, all on his own—and as often sometimes as three times a week—Coleman had been sneaking down to the Newark Boys Club, below High Street in the Newark slums to Morton Street, and secretly training to be a fighter. Fourteen years old when he began, a hundred and eleven pounds, and he would work out there for two hours, loosen up, spar three rounds, hit the heavy bag, hit the speed bag, skip rope, do his exercises, and then head home to do his homework. A couple of times he even got to spar with Cooper Fulham, who the year before had won the National Championships up in Boston.

Coleman's mother was working a shift and a half, even two shifts running at the hospital, his father was waiting tables on the train and hardly at home other than to sleep, his older brother, Walt, was away first at college, then in the army, and so Coleman came and went as he liked, swearing Ernestine to secrecy and making sure not to let his grades slip, in study hall, at night in bed, on the buses back and forth to Newark—two buses each way—plugging away even harder than usual at his schoolwork to be sure nobody found out about Morton Street.

If you wanted to box amateur, the Newark Boys Club was where you went, and if you were good and you were between thirteen and eighteen, you got matched up against guys from the Boys Club in Paterson, in Jersey City, in Butler, from the Ironbound PAL, and so on. There were loads of kids down at the Boys Club, some from Rahway, from Linden, from Elizabeth, a couple from as far away as Morristown, there was a deaf-mute they called Dummy who came from Belleville, but mostly they were from Newark and all of them were colored, though the two guys who ran the club were white.

One was a cop in West Side Park, Mac Machrone, and he had a pistol, and he told Coleman that if he ever found out Coleman wasn't doing his roadwork, he'd shoot him. Mac believed in speed, and that's why he believed in Coleman. Speed and pacing and counterpunching.

Once he'd taught Coleman how to stand and how to move and how to throw the punches, once Mac saw how quickly the boy learned and how smart he was and how quick his reflexes were, he began to teach him the finer things. How to move his head.

How to slip punches. How to block punches. How to counter. To teach him the jab, Mac repeated, "It's like you flick a flea off your nose. Just flick it off him." He taught Coleman how to win a fight by using only his jab. Throw the jab, knock the punch down, counter.

A jab comes, you slip it, come over with the right counter. Or you slip it inside, you come over with a hook. Or you just duck down, hit him a right to the heart, a left hook to the stomach. Slight as he was, Coleman would sometimes quickly grab the jab with both his hands, pull the guy and then hook him to the stomach, come up, hook him to the head. "Knock the punch down. Counterpunch.