Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [15]
According to Toti, however, Roberto tried to hit one male teacher, then tried to kiss a female replacement. Duran himself recalled his brief education in Sports Illustrated. “I remember in school one day, a kid came over to hit me and I moved. We exchanged positions, so his back was toward the steps. I hit him and he fell backward down the steps. And they threw me out.”
Duran’s natural grammar was the argot of the streets. But the streets were a dangerous place. Though he steered clear of the late-night haunts he would frequent later in his career, and stayed with his tight circle of friends, he would occasionally go to bars or the annual Mejorana Festival in Guarare. He found his share of trouble, often because he would look out for his friends, and his loyalty never wavered.
The fire inside him ignited one evening at La Pollera bar. Aged just fifteen, he had stayed too late into the hours when corruption and addiction prevailed. As was customary in Panama, the fiesta would end only when the final customer left. Drinkers of Panama had plenty of choice, from the national beers of Atlas, Soberana and Balboa, to the local liquor Seco-Herrerano, mixed with coke or orange juice. Someone would be delegated to fetch the bottle of liquor and the ubiquitous plastic container of ice, and the runs back to the bar never seemed to stop. Within minutes at dances or rodeos, the ice would melt into a fusion of water and liquor, sending someone back to fetch another flimsy bucket. Parties in the country often started late and ended the next morning, when everyone was sated. Wallflowers were not permitted. Everyone danced merengue, salsa, or cumbia, no matter what size or shape; everyone knew how to move.
This particular night, slow in dying down, reeked of violence and bloodshot eyes. By its end, five men would be in a Panama City jail cell connected to the St Tomas Hospital, recovering from an assortment of scrapes, broken noses and bruises. It was obvious they had been in a fight and had been caught severely unprepared. But what, asked the police, had happened?
The young Duran was charming, athletic and strikingly handsome, with a clean-cut and straight black hair. He had first frequented La Pollera with his mother, and had learned to dance there. Early this evening, he met a pretty girl, and was taking her home when he ran into a truculent group of men. It must have seemed easy to them: Beat up the kid, get the girl and keep partying. “Five guys, about six or seven years older than me, start to follow us,” recalled Duran. “They come around me. They said they were going to take my girl and I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I told them that they weren’t going to take anyone. ‘She’s going home,’ I said. One of them comes toward me and, boom, I hit him and he’s knocked out. Now, there were four of them.
“It’s rainy and I tell her to go to the side, hit another one, and now there are two knocked out and three left. Three jumped me, and I hit one of them and I break my pinky finger and I can’t close it. Two left, and I tell them, ‘Now it’s fair.’ Both come on me and I grab them and I knock one out. I’ve already knocked out four and I say to the guy, ‘It’s only me and you left.’”
Those are six words that no one in their right mind would want to hear from the mouth of Roberto Duran. He would utter such threats in the ring countless times, but there are rules between the ropes. There were none that evening. The lone survivor considered the fact that, at fifteen, the kid was merely five-feet-five inches tall and barely over 100 pounds. And if he couldn’t knock him out, he could cut him up.
“The guy reaches behind him and he has a knife,” said Duran. “The guy cuts me from behind and I was like, damn, he cut me. I turn and knock him out. There were