Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [67]
Nothing near being so tenebrous in Joe’s quarters. He was spending the last adrenaline of the fight that had been a tourniquet for the pain, the last rush still directed at Ali. “It was wild,” Les Peleman said. “He was still out there in the ring.” Tears ran down his face as he kept walking in frantic circles, shouting: “I want him over here! I want him to crawl to my feet! Crawl, crawl! He promised, promised me! Crawl to me, crawl! Why aren’t you here?” Durham embraced him, led him sobbing to the table. “Easy now, easy,” Yank said. Dr. Harry Kleiman entered with his black bag. Joe lay sprawled, his chest heaving, his face a frieze of a lab experiment that was a disaster. Kleiman traced a light through eyes that were busted shutters as he looked for concussive signs. He felt gently for shattered bone. “Can you gimme somethin’ for the pain, Doc?” Joe asked. Kleiman shook out several tablets. Joe asked: “Did he fall?” Yank said: “You dropped him in the last round. They took him to the hospital.” Joe thought, then said: “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. They took him to the hospital?” Eddie Futch advised: “You should have some ice on that face, Joe.” He eased himself up, went over to a sink filled with ice, and kept burying his head into it. Yank, his face exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, pulled on a champagne bottle. Like a child, he asked: “Can I have some, Yank?” After a long shower, he hobbled out like an old man; his aides took a long time getting him dressed.
The next day Ali was public again; the X rays were negative. He wanted his legions to know that he didn’t lose, it was a bad decision, and that he had only trained for a six-round fight. He had shown remarkable heart and endurance, now with cameras grinding he was trying to steal the fight back from Joe, issuing some subtle, dippy call for a referendum, and he was succeeding. Privately, he was of another mind: “We been whupped. Maybe I’ll get some peace now. We all have to take defeats in life.” Joe watched it on television at the Pierre, had Ali’s comments read to him as he lay in bed. “It’s not like I even won,” he said. “He’s robbin’ me. Like nothin’ changed!” He struggled to his feet. He tried to lift the TV set, to hurl it across the room. He was too weak. Durham guided him back to bed, saying: “Now, now, Joe. You know he ain’t got any sense.” Nevertheless, Frazier continued to seethe. A commission doctor came by, suggested he be moved to a hospital in the Catskills. “What?” Joe said. “So he can make more headlines, show how he beat me so bad I gotta be put in a hospital?” Joe slipped out of the Pierre, went to St. Luke’s Hospital in Philly. For twenty-four hours, Dr. James Giuffe had him lay in a bed of ice. Joe dreamed a spirit had taken his hand, said he would be okay. “I could feel his touch. He was right there.” They told him the next morning there had been no visitors.
His life hung out there for several days. His blood pressure was in another galaxy, and he had a kidney infection. Day and night, every five minutes, doctors scurried in and out of his room. They thought they would lose him to a stroke. Durham was in London on business, and quickly hustled back. But for a time, only Joe Hand, a cop and stockholder, sat out the nights with him. “Let him live,” Joe said to no one in particular. Joe stayed in a deep sleep, almost a coma. When he awoke, he mumbled over and over: “Don’t say a word, Joe. Don’t let Ali find out I’m here.” At one point, four doctors lingered ominously over his bed. He awoke one time, and said: “All the money I made for people, and you’re the only one here, Joe.” Hand tried to comfort him; what could he say to a man on the brink? Finally, Joe broke through, like he had through Ali’s mechanized jab, and he began to stabilize. One doctor sighed and said: “It was close.” Joe stayed in St. Luke’s for three weeks.
Frazier had no reason to cower, to shrink from what he had done in that fight. He had nearly paid with his life. He won with the kind of conditioning that, to attain it and keep it at such a keening