Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [45]
Maddox also had a big thing in common with Ali’s credo, his race fundamentalism. Desegregation, “race-mixin’,” was “ungodly.” Citing Deuteronomy 22:10 he would bellow, “Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.” Ali often used wildlife to make Elijah’s point of race isolation. But they parted company when it came to geography, allowing blacks their own nation. Such an idea could only have come from “a rotten Suvit Commonist, ’cause the races must learn to live together.” No, it was not likely that Maddox would do a Lazarus for Ali. How would he ever again be able to share a chicken wing with his Klansmen and rednecks? Except: Lester Maddox, near the end of his term, was now in a sort of political life review. There was the matter of a second term, and he was casting his “baby duck” eyes toward the presidency, one of many textbook self-delusions that Wallace thought made him psychiatrically committable. Lester had taken office in 1966 by a legal technicality that left the Georgia legislature, with a heavy Democratic majority, with the task of naming their governor; Lester was put in through the machinery of the courts. He was an hallucination to blacks, a fool and outcast to the monied Georgia aristocracy. Now, suddenly, Lester was dead-game on being viewed as a sensible bigot. Lacking a State Athletic Commission—the principal tool used nationally for denying Ali a license—through which he could kill the fight, he counted on Washington, where Ali by now had the attention of only a few demagogues. The most-sung name in racial politics was cornered, between having no constituency to back him up and his newfound pragmatism, and all Lester Maddox would ever do was proclaim a day of mourning in Georgia when Ali signed to fight Jerry Quarry in Atlanta.
Quietly, Ali said, “My, my, right under the nose of Lester Maddox himself. Ain’t the world strange. The Lord must have a lot of fun, don’t he?” He was belly-down on a table in a little dressing room in the back of the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach. A gospel song floated thinly from a radio, “Yes, Jesus loves me…I know he does.” The bony fingers of Luis Sarria, his ancient, black masseur, worked through his muscles. These were the early days of his return, and it was all off-center to him, and he looked out from the table, eyes dead, as if he were wandering about in some labyrinthine daydream that maybe could help make sense of it all. This was the gym where he had begun ten years before, and now he was trying to make it a launching site again for a trip from the claustrophobic recent years into a ring hyperspace. “Who knows what I got left?” he brooded. “That ain’t just talk, either. For a fighter, I’m goin’ way out there now.” Bundini entered and referred to him as the “Blessing of the Planet.” Ali waved him away with a curt hand. He was in no mood for the arabesque curve of Bundini’s phraseology. He sat up on the end of the table and began to prepare for a workout.
The dressing room door soon opened, and out came Ali, with Angelo Dundee smiling and Bundini yelling: “Look out, give him room. Here he come now, the king of allll he see!” Ali swatted him on the head with a taped hand, then seemed to squint as his eyes met the sun-swept, whitewashed walls that always made the gym look like a Sicilian hill dwelling. His first stride was toward a full-length mirror, where for a long moment he studied his visual progress and what centimeters