A Book of American Martyrs(184)

Rainbows, shimmering blurs. The strongest fighting is by instinct not by craft or calculation.

She did not tell her trainer, corner men, Mr. Cassidy or even her friend Mickey Burd how blurred her vision was sometimes. During the fight if she told them, the fight would be stopped. If the referee knew, or the ringside physician, the fight would be stopped.

Or, Ernie would not stop the fight and she would understand that they didn’t give a damn for D.D. Dunphy only for the crowd applauding her. For the Hammer of Jesus had fans, followers. These were men. Bringing the crowd to its feet, or almost. Some of the crowd. The kind of fans willing to pay money for serious boxing.

In the car where they’d told her to wait D.D. Dunphy sat eating a hero sandwich with shaky fingers. They’d taken her to Dr. Danks for vitamin shots. She was so hungry: sausage, tomato, onion, drenched in mustard, running down her hands.

She wasn’t sending Edna Mae much money lately. Seemed like, Edna Mae could have written to her, to thank her. But her great-aunt Mary Kay wrote. Mary Kay was promising to see her fight “real soon” if it wasn’t too far away like Cleveland, Cincinnati.

Saying she was a “good brave girl.” Saying that Edna Mae loved her but “found it hard to say what is in her heart.”

After the sixth fight when D.D. Dunphy was raised to number three MWBA welterweight contender and number seven WBA contender a televised fight was almost certain sometime in the New Year (2010).

In an envelope carefully printed EDNA MAE DUNPHY she mailed five hundred-dollar bills as she’d mailed in the past. Of this Jesus approved for it was turning the other cheek, returning love where there was not love, or did not seem to be love.

Momma, this is for you. Hope everybody there is OK.

If you want to call me my number is ——.

I am a “ranked” fighter now. I am a “contender.”

I am doing pretty well. Look for me on TV in (maybe) January next year.

Love

Your Daughter Dawn

“D.D. Dunphy”—“Hammer of Jesus”


ANOTHER TIME she’d been pounded in the lower back. In the kidneys.

In the lavatory before she flushed the toilet she saw, and looked quickly away. Oh, why had she looked!

That languid curl of red in her urine.


HAVE TO SAY, I was surprised Dunphy turned out so terrific.

First sight of her (in the gym) was not impressive. Looked to me like some homely girl stumbling over her own feet, that clumsy. And her legs short, and her arms—you could see her reach was shit. But Ernie Beecher kept saying, Dunphy has promise. Give her a chance.

Turned out Ernie was correct. Just took a little time.

A girl boxer is not much different from a male in training. They can be just as serious. But they can get discouraged faster. Dunphy was not like that—Dunphy did not get discouraged.

Right away you could see how strong she could punch. It’s said—you are born with a punch, or you are not. If you are born with a punch you can be trained to use it. If not, not.

Dunphy was real promising with that left hook and a cross-over right and a left uppercut she could sometimes land exactly on the tip of the chin like you are supposed to—despite her short reach. She was a terrific counter-puncher once she got excited—nothing could stop her.

Everyone commented how Dunphy had heart. She would not be stopped. You’d have to kill her to stop her. That is the warrior-type—you would have to kill them to stop them. People were saying, Cass you got a girl-Tyson there.

But there’s no comparison, see. Girls don’t hit hard—not like Tyson. Any injury that happens it’s a weakness in the opponent, or she falls sideways and hits her head on the ring post. Or in sparring, they clinch and hit each other’s kidneys. The actual punch, even Dunphy’s—is not that great no matter how it looks. A man could take it.

Well—they can get concussed in a fight. That is true. There’s female boxers pretty punch-drunk, I guess. That is so.

It’s a weakness in the female skull. You can’t hit it without the brain kind of swishing inside like something in water—like if there’s a sac or something, and you shake it. But Dunphy had a hard punch, male or female notwithstanding, and could protect herself.

Problem was, the public don’t like to look at females who look like athletes or like men. That’s what the promoters say, and the TV producers, and advertisers. What they say is correct because they say it. They are buying goods and nobody blames them.

We got this neighborhood girl Mickey Burd who’d been one of Ernie’s girl-boxers to help us out. She sweet-talked Dunphy into having her hair streaked, getting showy tattoos, ear studs. Even thinned Dunphy’s eyebrows a little so she didn’t look like some kind of female orangutan.

Dunphy had a high threshold for pain. The fans can mistake that for courage. If she was hit, she’d laugh. If she’d lost a tooth she’d have spat it out on the canvas and just laughed, and kept on with the fight. Like Arturo Gatti or what’s-his-name—“Boom Boom” Mancini—she’d give all she had for the crowd, wouldn’t hold nothing back. A boxer like that will risk everything trying for a knockout, make the fans cheer.

If she was lonely, that had to feel good to her. Hearing people she didn’t know cheering for her.

Her breasts were kind of heavy for a female boxer but we taped them as close to flat as we could without injury. Or maybe there was injury. Dunphy would never let on. The pills she took we arranged for her, she never had a period. She didn’t bleed like a normal girl or woman will bleed. You’d think the black blood would be backed up inside them like sewage, wouldn’t you?