from San Quentin, July 4th, 1975

by Kenneth R. Brydon

“Okay, now for the feature match!” came the shout from inside of the ring as Mike laced up the glove. Loud shouts followed the announcement. I looked over to several guards standing ringside holding a slim stack of bills while they looked at me with a smirk.

“Let’s do it!” Mike said, as we got up and climbed in.

Smitty ambled up, and jumped over the ropes like a gazelle. The crowd immediately roared, and he obliged them with a flexing of his twenty-four inch arms. At six-feet-four, he was a volcano with long bright red hair, and a thick beard half way down his thick chest. If there was ever a group of guys who had no respect for the under-dog, these were the ones. “Eat his brains, Smitty!” came one shout from the crowd that made me flinch as I tried not to turn and look.

There were no introductions. It was Smitty against the young nobody who didn’t have enough sense to let Smitty pick up his two cartons unopposed. “You guys know the rules?” asked the inmate ref, but Smitty wasn’t interested in hearing him as he stepped right up in my face and tilted his head down to push his forehead onto mine. The crowd was screaming loudly things like making my grandchildren retarded and using a mop to get my brains off the mat.

“Smitty,” the ref finally said, “keep it clean, or the gunner’ll shoot your ass.” There was something similar to the sound of a grunting laugh he gave out as he stepped back. “Touch gloves!” he ordered, and we smacked leather and turned to walk back. I gave a look upward to the catwalk strung above the gym, to see the gunner all the way on the other side away from the bout. I wanted to scream for him to get over here, but that wouldn’t say much for my self-confidence.

“We got his smug ass right where we want it!” Mike said as he shoved the mouthpiece in. I tasted the tang of rubber as I bit down hard. The give under my teeth brought a surge of courage into my heart; picturing Smitty giving the same way.

The bell rang, and the crowd roared. As if they had all one mind, “kill him, kill him” came the chant, and it wasn’t me they were talking to.

He simply walked directly towards me, with his gloves raised against his chest as he stepped up and raised a pillar of an arm to hit me. In a flash, I hit him with a combination that landed a blow square on his chin.

There was a lull in the screaming, as they watched Smitty step back away from my work. He looked at me with shock in his eyes. “You hit me,” were his first words ever spoken to me. A grin came over his face. As if recalling some forgotten protocol, Smitty now raised his hands into the same position that Mike had been drilling with me. Once more he approached, only now those massive arms had become real obstacles.

“Jab, jab,” Mike screamed from behind, and that is what I did. Once, twice, I flicked out my left hand, catching only the top of the head, and suddenly I was seeing a cloud of stars.

I wasn’t sure of what the roar was. It may have been some distant galaxy that I had been transported to, or the screams of the crowd. Through the fog I began to hear the words, “…three, four.”

“Get up, get up!” screamed Mike, as I caught the transport bus back to San Quentin. Smitty’s hulking body was turned away from me, hands raised in the air.

“…six, seven,” was all the further he counted before I hopped to my feet. The crowd was a bunch of snitches, screaming for Smitty to turn around.

“Are you ready?” the ref asked grabbing both gloves and shaking them. I gave him a nod as I danced on my toes. But he still held on as he gave me an unbelieving look. “Where you at?” he probed.

I quit dancing and looked him straight in the eyes. “Doing life!” I shouted as I yanked my gloves away and faced off in the middle of the mat.

The behemoth came my way to the continuing chant, “Kill him, kill him!”

I happened to look to where Smitty’s corner man stood, and saw Jimmy beside him with a yellow grin on his face. As Smitty tried to take me down again with a fast left, I ducked under it, and delivered the hardest punch I’d ever thrown right into his ribs. There was a funny sort of crunching feeling under the glove, followed by Smitty spitting out his mouthpiece as he staggered away from me.

“Time!” shouted ref, and I was ordered to go to the neutral corner while he went over to where the mouth guard lay on the mat.

Picking it up, he slowly walked over to the opponent’s corner. “Hurry up!” Mike screamed as they washed it. I turned to look at Mike, whose expressions were sheer delight. “You got him!” he said pointing over to Smitty. A grimace covered his face as he stared up, twisting his upper body. “Do some dancing,” he said as the ref stuck the mouth piece back in.

“What?” I asked, eager to begin tearing this mountain down.

“Dance,” he yelled as Smitty moved straight for me with fury in his eyes, “dance!”

The train was right on top of me then, and I feinted with a right hook, and then jumped away from the counter blow that would have sent me back to the mat if I hadn’t stepped back.

I did a Muhammad Ali as I backpedaled around the furious beast at the center of the ring. “Come on, punk!” he shouted while beckoning me with his glove, “I’ll show you your tonsils.”

“Dance,” Mike screamed again, but that was easier said than done now that Smitty began to cut off the ring as he attempted to corner me.

“Fight me!” Smitty screamed as he lunged at me with a right round house that landed on my upper arm.

My body tightened to it, but I was still thrown off balance, and I saw Smitty coming in for a fatal blow. I did what Mike had told me to, and stepped in front of the punch and wrapped my arms around his thick waist.

Didn’t anyone around here know where the showers were? Smitty stunk, his hairy arm pit in my face as he swung downward blows trying to ring my head, and that was when I had a thought.

As he raised both arms up for antoher assault, I reached up around Smitty’s huge barrel chest and clamped down again. “Auuugh!” he screamed in pain, and his intentions turned from trying to hit me, to just working himself free of my grasp.

“Break!” shouted ref, and he began to pull me away.

I let go, just as the bell rang for the first round. I cautiously moved back from Smitty, whose stare was designated in the California Penal Code under Section 187. I watched him watching me move far enough away from any sudden attack by him; and only then did he move back to his own corner.

I spit my mouthpiece into my hand to take a deeper breath. “You got him!” Mike shouted as I sat down on the stool. Cold water splashed on my face as I took a bottle and drank a large gulp. “Listen,” my coach said with a slap on the cheek, “three to the head…” He slapped me on the cheek again, “Hey, look at me!”

I was looking at the other side of the ring, and at the enraged Smitty watching back.

“Ignore that son of bitch,” he shouted while squeezing my cheeks in his grip and pulling my eyes to him.

“You do three count to the head, and back off. Three count to the head, and back off again.”

“Okay?” I asked as my eyes again looked back to Smitty who was making his corner man almost piss his pants in trying to keep him happy.

“When he keeps his guard up to protect his head,” Mike shook my head to bring my stare back to him, “you take that right and sink it into his side just like you did before.”

“Okay,” I said as the warning was sounded that the round was about to start.

As I stood waiting, I stepped from one foot to the other, kicking out each shoe as I looked to the other corner. Smitty matched my foot motion, coupled with a smacking of his right into his left glove. I suddenly seemed to be outside of time, as if I possessed some sort of ability to grasp every possibility, and I knew that I could bring this colossus down.

The bell rang, and on came the rushing bull as he screamed at the top of his lungs. The crowed screamed, “Finish him, Smitty!” Two steps and I waited, but the mad rush wasn’t as mad as he made me think, and Smitty anticipated that I would side-step him. He pulled up one step sooner than I thought he could, and he caught me with my guard down as I was playing twinkle toes till a left jab lashed out.

I stayed in orbit around earth on this one, but an interstellar launcher was certainly coming quickly if I didn’t do the right thing. I went down. Smitty towered over me. “Get up!” he screamed, but I lay on my back, and pursed my lips and blew him a kiss.

“Go to the corner,” shouted the ref, and Smitty didn’t move. “Go, Smitty. Nice move,” he said low enough that Smitty didn’t hear and I gave him a wink and a nod as I once more approached my Everest.

“Kill him, kill him!” These guys just loved a blood bath. I stood waiting, my game plan ready as he once more approached me like a real boxer. We circled in the middle of the ring, and I noticed that he had his left arm down low where I’d hit him in the side.

I hit him with a right, another right, and then a third right, and Smitty brought up his left to block me. He was waiting for something, but I kept to my plan. The left kept coming back too low. Again, one, two, and three, and now he wasn’t thinking of his ribs as my blows threatened to knock his brains out.

A left jab brought him off center, and I stepped to my right and made a round house that landed square on his side. “Ow!” both Smitty and the crowd cried out.

He bucked, but he didn’t buckle as he wrapped me up in his big arms. Smitty’s left arm was under my right so I couldn’t hit the sore spot. His other arm was wrapped about my head. Suddenly, I was lifted off my feet as I heard the sound of the ref, “Break.”

From the location of where ref’s voice came, he’d picked me up with one arm and suddenly swung me completely around as Smitty’s other thick arm moved over my face. “Break!” I heard from the ref shouting from behind Smitty, but I was now smelling the leather of a boxing glove, and then there was a searing pain on my face as I was slung loose of Smitty.

“I said break, Smitty,” I could hear at a distance, but I was bleeding over the bridge of my nose. He’d used the laces of his glove to rip across my face, and I could see the torn flesh over the top of my nose. My eyes kept wanting to cross in order to inspect the damage, but I needed my focus elsewhere.

There he stood with a grin on his face waiting, and then I looked at him. Smitty puckered up and blew me a kiss. I no longer cared for this man, he was to be removed. I wanted him to be wearing a toe tag, and my rage suddenly met up with a sense of dark cunning that told me just what I had to do.

Once more we circled in the middle of the ring. Smitty was landing blows on my arms and chest as he softened me up for a headshot, and I countered with my own punches to his head and then to the side.

Thinking he’d figured me out, I sprung my trap. A left jab to the face was followed with step to my left and the delivery of a thundering hit to Smitty’s solar plexus. “Oooh!” came the noise of his lungs emptying of air, and I didn’t stop.

Both hands were now at his sides, and nothing else mattered to him, until I hit him with a left on the side of the face that laid open his cheek. As quick as I pulled it back, my right was on flight path, zeroed in on his chin, and it took him of his feet. He landed flat on his back. Big Smitty was out cold.

The crowd screamed its total shock, and disbelief of the destruction of their idol. I looked down on Smitty, eyes rolled up his head, and I only heard the ref because he screamed it in my ear, “Go to the corner.” He shoved me in the direction of the crowd.

I began to focus on the crowd which half seemed to now be rooting for me, but then I saw Jimmy. Blood dripped from the end of my nose as I stepped up to where he stared in wide-eyed shock and disbelief. Muscles tightened and rippled as I leaned forward. “Auuugh!” I screamed in victory. The crowd roared, they all stood screaming their approval. From somewhere distant, I heard the sound of a bell ringing.

I turned around to see that Smitty was now slowly climbing to his feet, still dazed. “End of the round, go to your corner,” I heard, but I didn’t want to. I wanted him dead, and the idea of waiting any longer just didn’t work. “Go!” the ref said, and shoved me towards Mike who was waving for me.

I watched Smitty move back to his corner, and he was broken. “Sit down!” Mike ordered as I wandered close enough. I allowed myself to sit only because I could continue to stare at the object of my hatred. Smitty’s handler was now slapping his master about the face, trying to bring him back to the fight.

“Hey!” Mike said, “Great job!” He began rubbing Vaseline on the bridge of my nose. I could see that Smitty was now back in his full senses as he slapped his handler, while Jimmy was standing right on the corner with his hand out. “Are you ready to finish this?” Mike asked me.

“Hell, yes!” I said, and took a swallow of water.

“Same thing,” he began, “three to the head, and one to the ribs.” Mike grabbed me by the cheeks. “You got it?”

I was looking at Jimmy, who was putting something in the corner guy’s hand. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good!” He paused as he finished putting the touches on the nose. “If you’re lucky, you’ll shove a rib into his lungs and the bastard’ll drown in his own blood!”

“Get ready!” the ref shouted.

I stood and looked over to see Smitty was also on his feet, but turned away facing his corner, and his handler was putting a chain around his neck. The bell rang, and I quickly approached— ready, eager to begin my annihilation of this person.

Smitty slowly turned, and moved at me with an expression on his face that passed for being worried. “Last round,” shouted the ref, “touch gloves.”

As Smitty came close, I noticed there was a piece of metal hanging from the chain; it was a small silver cross. I immediately looked over at Jimmy, who looked at me with a sinister grin. Smitty’s glove smacked against mine, but I didn’t notice as my thoughts seemed to rewind, asking what to do in this sort of situation.

At first Smitty wasn’t sure, expecting me to immediately dive in for the slaughter, but I held back, trying to decide if my faith denied me the right to want to kill him. Smitty tentatively jabbed with his left. “Get in there!” I heard Mike scream.

I finally shook off the doubt, and began the attack, striking at his head with both right and left blows till his arms were raised high above his ribs, but I couldn’t go there. “Finish him!” Mike screamed, seeing that I had let slip several clean shots at the potentially fatal spot. My head shook in refusal of the offered target. “Oh for Christ’s sake!” I heard Mike shout.

I tried, but I fought without wanting to punish him, and Smitty quickly realized that I wasn’t going to hit him where he feared I would. “Kill him, kill him!” came the chant, and now it was me who they called out to.

I landed a right to the side of his head, but it was only a glancing blow, and Smitty was ready with a left jab, which briefly blinded me to what was coming next. I don’t remember the right hitting me, just more of the stars from that far-off galaxy. As things began to come back, I was hearing, “six, seven, eight; you’re out!”

I looked about me wondering what all the screaming was about and then over to Mike who was stomping the ground and throwing his hat. It slowly started to come back as I looked at Smitty, with his arms raised in high victory. “Come on,” Mike told me as he was suddenly leaning over with his hand out, “it’s over.”

My face a bloody mess, the prison guards called ahead of my pace back to my cell. It made sure that they knew I hadn’t just got the crap kicked out of me in some blind spot, only in the ring against Smitty; I’m not sure if I would have preferred spending a couple of days in the hole after this. Every cop still stopped me, and demanded I explain to him why my face was such a mess, and it gave them the chance to enjoy the pounding I’d been given.

A hot shower didn’t help much. Later I stood in the mirror in my cell and put bandage over the bridge while pressing the skin back into place. My face was puffy and the swelling under one eye was pushing it closed. “I told you about that right, didn’t I?” came Jimmy’s voice.

Without looking, I reached into my locker, and grabbed the packs. I shoved them out between the bars.

“Get lost, Jimmy.”

“Now,” came his taunt, “that’s not the Christian thing to say.”

Billy’s voice then broke in. “Get lost, Jimmy.”

I went back to tending my face as I watched Billy open my cell door and come in. “Good fight,” there was a pause as he thought about it, “You let him get away.”

“Mike wouldn’t talk to me.”

Billy sighed. “Yeah, well, he’s got different priorities.”

I finished my doctoring, and turned and sat down on the toilet. “I think I’ll hang up the gloves.”

Billy nodded his agreement, his lips pursed. “Yep,” he looked straight at me, “you can’t expect to win if you don’t try to hurt them.” He stood up and stepped over to where I sat and reached out his hand. “You’re the champ.”

We shook, and I laughed. Billy left and I stayed seated for a minute when another shadow passed by the cell. “I’ve got bacon cheese burgers for sale?” asked the face looking in the cell.

“No thanks.”

Not moving he went on. “I’ve got an ice cold soda, candy bar, and the burger for a pack?”

I stared at the persistent salesman at the door, and let go an easy laugh. “No thanks.”

He squinted and looked closer a moment, and then a grin came to his face, “Oh, it’s you.” He didn’t wait for me to speak as he continued hawking his business down the tier.

“Yeah,” I said slowly standing, “it’s me.” Stepping over to the bunk, I sat down on the bed.

“Count time,” came the voice over the loud speaker. In another minute, the bar slid over, securing the cells on the floor.

“Cliff?” came Billy’s shout.

“Yeah?”

“Going to dinner?”

I laughed, “No way!”

Billy laughed as well, “Yeah, I guess that would be too much punishment,” he said knowing that my bruised ego wouldn’t do well in that crowded dining hall with all the wise cracks. “I’ve got a Top Ramen?”

I took a deep breath. They were serving all you can eat of hot dogs and watermelon. July Fourth was one of the best meals the prison served. “Yeah.” I waited a second and then asked, “Gary, got any crackers?”

Silence followed for a moment, and then an abrupt, “No!” was all that came.

I waited another moment before speaking. “I’ll get it later from you, Billy.” I lay down on my bunk and closed my eyes. The fight came back, and the insults to my person Smitty had done didn’t seem to matter. Things began to drift, and I dreamed that I was sailing. The sail billowed wide as a strong wind pushed me into a clear ocean. Suddenly I felt someone watching me, and I opened my eyes to look.

Smitty was standing at the bars. He looked at me with a curious expression on his face. I sat up, expecting the worst, but I could see that the bar opening the cell door was closed, and so my stare returned to Smitty and his look. His hand reached up to the silver cross still about his neck. “Nice fight,” is all he said before he turned and walked away.

I sat on my bunk, blinking my eyes wondering if I had been dreaming. That was when I looked down lower on the bars, and saw the cartons of Camels sitting there.

I cautiously took the two long boxes off the bars, and inspected them to see that they were in fact what they appeared to be. I stared up at the ceiling in amazement. “Billy, Gary?”

Billy answered quickly, “Yeah?”

Gary let a moment pass before answering in a pout. “What?”

“You guys want bacon cheese burgers?”