Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg Read Free Book Online Page A

my signing as well. But still my father preferred for me to do my special signing for each match.
     
     
    I n 1941 both my endurance and my special signing were put to the test. On a warm, clear June evening, Joe Louis fought the upstart, much lighter and smaller but dangerous boxer, Billy Conn. My father was wild about this fight but terribly conflicted. He explained, as a runup to the bout, that Billy Conn was a Jew fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world. My father’s head was with his religious brother, Conn, but his heart was with his long-time hero, Louis.
    In anticipation of the fight, I went into training. My father had told me this would not be a one-round affair. Conn was too agile for that. He would stay out of reach of Louis’s gloves. There fore I needed to build up my wind. This time I might be called up on to got he distance. My father had signed to me that Conn could dance: the two fingers of his right hand formed a V, and the legs of the V danced across his open left hand. I could see BillyConn’s plan; he intended to dance his way to a decision. So I practiced dancing. When there was music on my radio, I had often seen my father dancing with my mother to the rhythms they both felt rising from the floorboards. With that image in my mind, I practiced.
    By the night of the fight, I was ready; and now I had added my mother to the audience. She knew absolutely nothing about boxing and cared even less, but she seemed fascinated by my strange manic antics. Where my father laughed, she stared in utter amazement.
    As they sat in obvious anticipation, I turned on my radio, and the fight began. I immediately went into a crouch and retreated, dancing. I was Billy Conn.
    I ducked, I bobbed, I weaved around the room. Then I reversed position—now I was Joe Louis. I stalked, I threw ineffectual jabs in the air, into the space Conn had just vacated.
    BONG! The end of round one.
    And so it went, round after round. I retreated. I advanced. I ducked. I swung. And I danced. Boy, oh, boy, did I ever dance that night; I danced my eight-year-old heart out. The look of pure amazement and wonder on my mother’s face was my reward.
    Rounds ten, eleven, and twelve came and went, with the same result: Louis advancing, Conn dancing.
    Billy Conn’s on the balls of his feet, the announcer screamed. He’s dancing up a storm. Dancing. Dancing. Louis CAN’T CATCH HIM!
    Between rounds I sat in my corner (on the kitchen stool I had put there for that purpose). I was exhausted. How long, I wondered, could I—I mean, Billy Conn—last?
    In the thirteenth round I had my answer. NOT LONG! Conn is retreating. Conn is dancing, dancing…OOOPS, Louis has Conn trapped in the far corner of the ring. Conn looks desperate! He can’t go left. He can’t go right. I stepped to my left. I stepped to my right. I was right back where I started from, trapped in the corner of the room.
    Louis is shooting short punches to Conn’s body. Conn is covering. Now Louis is punching to the head. Look at those punches! They only travel six inches, but what damage they’re causing! I covered my head. My head bounced backward, then sideways. Louis is a punching machine. Then I reversed position and punched, punched, punched the air. I was Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber. I was a piston, a pile-driving man.
    A tremendous roar shot out from the radio. Conn’s down. He’s down! HE’S DOWN! Louis caught him right on the end of the jaw, between a bob and a weave. My bobbing stopped. My weaving ended. My chin jerked up. Conn’s not dancing now. I stopped dancing. I fell. You can run, but you can’t hide. Not from the Brown Bomber. Lying on the rag rug of the ring, I knew that. “You can run, but you can’t hide from Joe Louis.”
    The count droned its way to the inevitable conclusion of every one of Joe Louis’s fights: TEN! AND YOU’RE OUT!
    I leaped to my feet. I signed the inevitable numbers. I signed, FINISHED!
    Wonderful! Wonderful! my father