Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [41]
Ali knew the Muslim directive: he was to give no indication at all that he needed the white man’s fame or money or media. For all of his career, Ali thought most reporters were groupies content to be in his presence and fill notebooks with his gibberish, or if he thought they were clever they were no match for his own cleverness. He was suspicious of those who didn’t take down his every word. He was not concerned about accuracy; the note-taking process assured him that he was in command. Domination of content, the neutralization of hard questions by swarming nonsense, was what he was after. “Why aren’t you taking this down?” he’d often ask. A pencil and a notebook, worst of all, a tape recorder made him think that he was talking to millions.
“People ain’t supposed to see I care anymore,” he said. He began to throw punches in front of a mirror, started to bob and weave around a glass coffee table, and put an opponent in with him; already he was looking down the road at Joe Frazier. He supplied narration, even the sound of the bell. Belinda came out and kept a steady eye on the coffee table. Before winning, Ali let Frazier knock him down in the second round, and he dropped with a thud to the floor, his legs twitching dramatically. He then disposed of Joe quickly and collapsed back onto the couch, puffing and laughing. “He’s always doing that,” said Belinda. “He’s crazy.”
So, it was clear, he was still much more the fighter than the preacher; in a tenuous self, boxing was still irreducible. Later, I spent a few days with him in South Chicago. In these days he seemed unstrung, on an aimless search for the briefest reinforcement, from people in barber shops, bakeries, and the La Tease beauty shop filled with giggling women. One evening he ended up looking at his boxing gear. He said nothing about a past life, simply wrote with his finger M. Ali on the patina of dust on a boxing glove. He looked at it absently, then said abruptly: “Let’s take a ride. I got some business.”
The tawny Cadillac Eldorado moved on the highway toward Milwaukee. He was eerily silent (for him) and kept looking at the speedometer. “Cops’ll put me in jail for anything.” He continued on, then finally said, “You don’t ever ask questions?”
“’Cause I know the answers, maybe.”
“You don’t know any answers. What color is God?”
“Which is why I don’t ask you questions.”
“You’re poor company,” he said.
“All right, how’s your money situation?”
“I got more money than you.”
“That’s not hard.”
“What else you got?”
“All right, they’re going to the moon soon. That’s amazing, don’t you think? Kind of makes you feel tiny. How ’bout you?”
“Not me, it don’t,” he said. “Black men put the moon up sixty trillion years ago, and…”
“Oooops, wrong question.”
“And there weren’t no white trash on the planet then. Whites just learnin’ ’bout gravity. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that black men drilled a hole in the earth, and with high explosives caused a piece to go into space. That piece is now the moon. Can’t nobody live on it. No water. When the white man goes up there, his eyes’ll pop out or sumpin.” He paused, adding with finality: “God is a black man!”
“Okay.”
“You don’t care?”
“He could be a porpoise.”
“A what?”
“A porpoise. It’s said they’re smart.”
“God’s a porpoise!” he said. “You gonna go straight to hell sayin’ that.”
Did he give $135,000 to the Chicago mosque?
“There you go. Changin’ the subject. You always do it. We’re talkin’ ’bout a porpoise, and now you’re in my wallet.” He thought for a second, then said, “If I did, just like you puttin’ money in your church collection.”
“I don’t go to church.”
He said: “You not goin’ straight to hell. You already there.”
“If eyes will pop on the moon,” he was asked, “there must be a lot of eyes you’d like to see pop here.”
“I’d fill the moon ship with white women,” he said. “They dangerous. They lure you in with them smiles. But they’ll never get me. Then, on the second trip, I’d load it up with all those kinky-headed half-black niggers from