Sweet Thunder Page 11

  Yaddo—green, quiet, remote—had charmed Hughes. He loved the woods, strolling narrow roadways, listening to the sounds of nature, joining the other guest artists for dinner by candlelight in the mansion on the premises. He had befriended Carson McCullers at Yaddo back in ’42; his return visit saw an introduction to Katherine Anne Porter, and they roasted wieners on her nearby farm. Hughes wrote during the day. He had started a column for the Chicago Defender before going to Yaddo, and the fan mail that arrived at Yaddo about the column charmed him. Some evenings—his writing and reading finished—he made his way over to the Saratoga racetrack. He enjoyed hobnobbing with the Negro stable-hands. Evening found him back in his cabin, usually reading more mail. “I’m getting wonderful fan letters thru my column,” he wrote to his friend Arna Bontemps. “Three today, one from two house servants in darkest Mississippi; another from the colored sailors on a Pacific battleship.”

  The United States military had been issuing regular reports for the public about the thousands of troops Louis and Robinson had entertained. It was good public relations to counter the news stories of sporadic racial unrest in parts of the country. So plans were fixed for them to take off for Europe in early 1944.

  American confidence about the war was rising rapidly as the new year dawned. “Good news comes in from every battlefront,” a White House assistant informed President Roosevelt. But the president himself—who had gone on grueling international forays in late 1943 to augment the final Allied push, traveling to Casablanca to meet with Winston Churchill and Tehran to confer with Russian premier Joseph Stalin—warned against overconfidence in his 1944 State of the Union address. “If ever there was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness to the national good, that time is now,” Roosevelt said to the nation.

  In preparation for their overseas assignment—Robinson ex pressed little relish for the mission—the Louis and Robinson assemblage was sent to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where they’d make final preparations for the trip.

  Robinson, however, did not complain about being back in the Manhattan area—if only for a short stay. The fighters were delighted with their new surroundings. Robinson was simply back home. They were far removed now from the rural South and all those odd and menacing stares. Wartime Manhattan may have been nervous and exhausted—but it was also hopping. In Times Square and along Broadway, the movie-house marquees glittered brightly.

  Hollywood had stayed busy during the war, offering its movies to the hungry public and to servicemen. Wartime movies were a heady mix of melodrama, comedy, the spies-among-us concoction, and of course the always intoxicating romantic tale. Greer Garson was stalwart—and lovely—in the 1942 Mrs. Miniver, a William Wyler–directed film which portrayed an English family’s togetherness through wartime bombings, deaths, and separations. Mrs. Miniver read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to her sleeping children in an underground shelter as German bombers flew overhead. (Churchill loved the movie and would say that all the Mrs. Minivers had been crucial to England’s success in the war.) A standout in 1943 was the Bette Davis film, Watch on the Rhine, adapted from a Lillian Hellman play and set against a Washington backdrop where Nazi spies strolled in the shadows. But perhaps no film merged such an array of different genres—sarcastic comedy, war, romance, patriotism—as Casablanca did. Moviegoers were enraptured with Rick, the mélange of characters who populated his café, and the dramas that swirled around them. There were Vichyites and Nazis. There was unforgotten love. There were flashbacks to romantic Paris. And there was the music of Dooley Wilson playing Sam—Lena Horne had been considered for the role of the black piano player before they’d gone with a man—as he serenaded the joint with “As Time Goes By.”

  As time went by at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn for Robinson and Louis, who were waiting to travel to Europe, the pugilists couldn’t help but consider postwar plans, which meant their return to the ring. Deep in the minds of many, however, the reality had set in that the best years of Louis’s career were behind him. His last authentic bout—more than two years before, not counting exhibitions—had been in March 1942 in New York against Abe Simon, whom he knocked out in the sixth round. (Louis donated those winnings to the war effort—causing his fan base to swell even more—and entered the Army soon after.) Robinson had managed to have several fights during the first year of his wartime duties, affairs that carried plenty of Sturm und Drang but were often overshadowed by war news.

  Louis and Robinson again hustled over to see promoter Mike Jacobs while based in New York—“[t]o put the touch on him,” as Robinson put it, which meant having Jacobs stake them money against future bouts. (The German, Max Schmeling, who had been a paratrooper in the war, was in Berlin telling news correspondents that he’d soon be landing in Mike Jacobs’s office himself, via parachute, to discuss a future Louis bout—which never was to be.)

  Jacobs—always of the hard grin, the slick glance—fortified Robinson and Louis with cash: “And we were finding ways to spend it,” Robinson allowed. Away from the military base in New York, food, wine, and the treats that the fighters bestowed upon women cost much more than in the haunts of Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama.

  There were movies to see, drinks to buy. The music remained intoxicating. There were old Harlem friends of the duo’s who needed a buck or two. (Edna Mae Holly—the girlfriend Sugar Ray was most serious about—kept reminding him how she couldn’t wait for him to come home for good; he wondered about nightclub dancing, what smoothies might be sending her gifts.) There were hard-luck soldiers they had befriended on the Brooklyn base, who also needed a little help with dough. Louis got lost in the part of patriotic messenger for the Army; the role was so full of the respect he was often denied from society at large—save when he had a foreign foe such as Schmeling standing in the ring with him. The war had given him a stature beyond Negro America; he thought he saw freedom on the horizon and equality for all. (Robinson saw duplicity and felt that was an assault upon his own personhood and future.) Louis’s eagerness to fight in the ring seemed to be ebbing. There had been telltale signs of his shifting feelings during the war. Before the Louis-Robinson contingent had taken off for Mississippi, Louis spent time with some reporters in New York City. “I’d like to fight again, I guess,” he said, without emotion, “but I don’t know—it’s more than just a personal matter. We have more than that to talk about now.” He liked the feeling of being a man with a grand mission, and he held a belief that racial woes could be fixed within the jubilation of a united home front and that Hitler could be defeated because of that unity. It was a mirage—great civil rights battles surely lay ahead—but it bewitched him. He was also going through domestic travails, of which he said little. His wife Marva had divorced him in the midst of the war. Louis was made poorer by alimony and a settlement, but still he refused to sulk about the fight opportunities he had lost because of his wartime service.

  But Sugar Ray Robinson was staring at a different clock, and he found it hard to shrug off the passage of time. Days and weeks meant lost fights, lost training. The so-called uncrowned champion lacked a belt, and thoughts about the absence of one consumed him. Now came the prospect of Europe and a further distancing from the goal he so cherished. He had concocted a fanciful—and risky—plan to get out of the Army.

  Evenings at the Fort Hamilton barracks often found Louis and Robinson and their sparring mates playing cards along with a few other soldiers. On the night of March 29, 1944, the game was straight poker. It came down to Sugar Ray staring across the table at friend Joe Louis.

  “Four jacks,” Sugar Ray barked. His happy hands prepared to scoop up the money on the table.

  “Four queens,” the champion retorted, howling.

  The laughter of the other soldiers pushed Sugar Ray up out of his chair. He made his way to the bathroom. And with that laughter echoing in his ears, he just kept walking. As simple as that, Sugar Ray Robinson abandoned the sometimes too-quiet life of a Fort Hamilton–based enlisted man awaiting
orders to be shipped to Europe and vanished behind a bewildering movielike screen of shadows, deception, imagination, and make-believe.

  Otherwise known as AWOL.

  He missed roll call. Then he missed roll call again. All of the Negro troops on the base were rounded up and questioned. No one uttered a word. The faces of Army superiors began to tighten. They had previously cautioned Robinson against complaining about the upcoming European trip, at one point going so far as to cite the Articles of War, particularly the part about punishment in light of desertion. Robinson did not care; he had looked good in his Army uniform but felt uneasy about everything else. Army brass did not wish to press Joe Louis too hard, lest a publicity nightmare explode on the eve of his taking off for Europe, but they did request that he phone Robinson’s Harlem home. Joe reported to Army officials he’d had no luck locating Robinson. The Army appointed Lt. Col. Frederick Weston to lead an investigation into Robinson’s whereabouts. Weston was told if Robinson was located, he was to be brought back to base immediately. His men were told to use force if they had to.

  It wasn’t until six days later that the Army recorded Robinson’s memory of where he had been: He told them, while lying flat on his back in a hospital, that he didn’t know, couldn’t remember a thing. He said he must have fallen somewhere in Manhattan. He said it all must have begun inside the barracks, when he tripped over some duffel bags and banged his head. He was actually now in Halloran General Hospital, on Staten Island, wearing a white smock and raising his voice: “Nurse … Nurse!” Eyebrows were raised among the staff, but the necessary examinations were administered by well-trained doctors—all of this alarmingly close to the departure date for Europe. Manager George Gainford rushed to his bedside. Robinson kept complaining of headaches. Promoter Mike Jacobs made inquiries, trying to track down high-level hospital personnel. (The medical report said that Robinson had been found in the streets of Manhattan and ferried to a hospital on April first—April Fool’s Day. Doctors found no brain injury of any kind. Robinson’s own self-diagnosis was amnesia. The medical report goes on to state: “He was unable to give any information about his past life or the events leading up to his hospitalization, and he failed to recognize relatives … who visited him.”)

  Aside from the phone calls he had made at the request of the Army, Louis continued to steer clear of the Sugar Ray imbroglio. Joe Louis had certainly intervened on behalf of other soldiers: He was instrumental, shortly after entering the service himself, in helping the onetime UCLA student Jackie Robinson gain entrée to Officer Candidate School when he had been denied admission because of his race. The soldiers Louis had assisted were soldiers who had clearly been wronged, and he knew that the weight of his fame could sometimes right an injustice. In such situations, the heavyweight champion had no qualms about using his War Department contacts, coupled with his close relationship with Billy Rowe, the Pittsburgh Courier reporter. But this—amnesia, a forgetful mind on the eve of overseas departure—was something Louis turned away from. It was silly, laughable, a descent into theatre—albeit with consequences that could be severe. Once again, the word “court-martial” swirled around Sugar Ray.

  But Robinson had calculated the fallout while unspooling the entire episode in his nimble mind. Being back in Manhattan had convinced him the world was passing him by. Both Gainford and Edna Mae had reminded him of how worried they were about him. Robinson needed little reminding: One didn’t have to trek to Europe for wartime danger. That plane with Carole Lombard in it had gone down stateside. The prospect of being in an accident in Europe—even if it were a goodwill mission—was very real to Robinson. Bombs were falling from the sky over there. Robinson figured he would salvage his rising career—and blunt the criticism sure to come—by becoming a champion. Some, he knew, would believe the medical diagnosis, but perhaps many would not, branding him cowardly. But how much of a coward could one be stepping into a ring with vicious punchers? He trusted his right-left combination more than he trusted Uncle Sam.

  Louis and the other fighters took off for Europe without him. Shortly after arriving in London—the seas had been choppy coming over, and there had been a couple of submarine alarms, but they passed without incident—Joe Louis and his fellow pugilists were spotted in central London. Gawkers surrounded them. Newsreel cameramen were also scurrying to keep up. When asked about Robinson, Louis said he’d fallen sick. He was also asked about a story in Yank magazine that speculated he’d be getting married following his divorce, and the new bride would be none other than Lena Horne. Louis grinned and said the story simply wasn’t true.

  Army officials had to think about what to do with Sugar Ray Robinson. His previous run-ins with authority had been relatively minor—but explosiveness had also lurked just beneath the surface of any incident where race and dignity were concerned, a fact Eleanor Roosevelt herself had noticed. And now this, a bizarre spell of amnesia.

  Meeting behind closed doors, Army officials decided to thank Sugar Ray Robinson for his military service. He would be granted an honorable discharge.

  On June 3, 1944, Sugar Ray Robinson left the Army. Louis and the others were in war-scarred Europe, rallying the troops for the last big push.

  Years later, Dave Anderson, coauthor of Robinson’s autobiography, published in 1969, wished to put that bizarre incident to rest and implored Robinson to give the details of what really happened. Robinson, then in retirement, hunched his shoulders, widened his eyes, told Anderson he had nothing to add to what was in the Army report. Anderson chuckled, pressed him further, but Robinson was steadfast, which Anderson found strange. “So I just wrote it the way the Army wrote it,” Anderson says. “Of course most of the sports-writers charged him with desertion.”

  Robinson ignored the sportswriters who pilloried him over his military record, explaining that those same writers had long labeled him arrogant, had carried grudges against him since early in his career when he assailed them for not writing about the fighters (read white fighters) who wouldn’t give him a shot at the title because they feared him. Nevertheless, at times the taunts would annoy him so much that he’d carry his honorable discharge papers around in his pocket and produce them at the slightest hint of an attack upon his honor. America won the war; Robinson won the prank.

  But it lingered. When Robinson was originally contemplating an autobiography in 1952, he asked W. C. Heinz, a highly respected New York sportswriter (Hemingway admired his work), to consider helping him write it. Heinz was intrigued enough to meet with Robinson in the cocktail lounge of the Park Sheraton in Manhattan to discuss the possibility. But he had told himself he had one all-important question to ask Robinson, and it concerned his military career and the reports of desertion. And when Heinz did ask about the Army and the matter of going AWOL, the conversation grew awkward. Robinson denied desertion; Heinz wanted a fuller explanation, told Robinson he couldn’t rest until the “conflicting versions” of his military stint had been resolved. Robinson got a quizzical look upon his face. Heinz made up his mind then and there—he would have no part of Robinson’s project.

  “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do the book,” he said.

  “That’s all right, old buddy,” Robinson told him. “I understand.”

  Years later Heinz would say of Robinson: “He was a guy you’d like to have as a friend. But you couldn’t trust him. He was a great con man.”

  The war-weary nation scented victory when the Allies invaded Normandy that June. The liberation of Paris brought much celebration. The French capital was in ruins, but the wine flowed.

  As for Sugar Ray’s mind—his memory—it was now wickedly clear: He had been a professional for four years. He had no intention of waiting that long to gain a championship belt.

  Harlem was buoyant in the summer of 1944, when Robinson returned home. Many had jobs. A little money had been saved—in banks, under mattresses. The anxiety of war was winding down. The Tuskegee Airmen had proven themselves: They flew 1,578 missions; they would come to
be awarded one hundred Distinguished Flying Crosses.

  And with Joe Louis still in Europe during those waning weeks, Sugar Ray Robinson had the streets of Harlem to himself. Now the children—who used to run after him and Louis—only had him to scamper toward, and he spun with delight at their smiles when they saw him.

  The poet Langston Hughes had written a song for Congressman-elect Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in the summer of 1944. Powell had become the first black man elected to Congress from the Northeast. The poem was titled “Let My People Go—Now.” (Hughes also made his debut that autumn on the stage of Madison Square Garden, at a human rights rally.)

  Lena Horne got invited to the White House that winter, summoned by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Horne was being thanked for her work on behalf of the war effort. The nightclub star—who had also become a pinup girl against the backdrop of muddy battles in the Pacific and European theatres—took orchids to present to Mrs. Roosevelt.

  The young trumpeter from St. Louis, Miles Davis, arrived in Manhattan by train. He was just eighteen years old. He had been accepted to Juilliard, but already he was dreaming beyond formal education. He would recall: “I arrived in New York City in September 1944, not in 1945 like a lot of jive writers who write about me say. It was almost the end of World War II when I got there. A lot of young guys had gone off to fight the Germans and the Japanese and some of them didn’t come back. I was lucky; the war was ending. There were a lot of soldiers in their uniforms all around New York.”

  As for Sugar Ray Robinson, the fighter just released from the war was flexing his muscles inside a Manhattan gymnasium.

  They were all coming through the curtain of post–World War II America now. They had struck their first blows for freedom—Robinson and his battles on military bases; Horne in her demand to Hollywood that she only be offered dignified roles; Hughes in his activist and rebellious poetry; young Miles in slipping away from East St. Louis. They were in the vanguard now. There was something political in their artistic pronouncements—and stylish in their individual demeanor. Let my people go now, Hughes and Powell may have cried, but no one had to argue for freedom on this quartet’s behalf.