Free Buster Midnight's Cafe by Sandra Dallas Page A

Buster wasn’t much different from the other boys who left high school to go into the copper mines—which was the first thing Toney told Buster to do. Get the heaviest, dirtiest job he could in a mine. That kind of work would build up his body, Toney claimed. Strength wasn’t all Buster needed. Strength wouldn’t save you if somebody got to you before you had a chance to draw on it, Toney said. Buster had to be quick, too. So he learned to run and dance around and dodge and chop and jab and develop a good one-two.
    Toney made him jump rope for his footwork. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna used to sit by him on the front porch of the little McKnight house in Centerville, keeping him company while he jumped up and down like some halfwit, grinning or talking to anybody else who stopped by. He even skipped rope at May Anna’s house while she sat on the stairs and talked to him. You’d think people would laugh at that big man jumping rope, but nobody did it more than once. I remember the afternoon when Pug Obie was coming off shift. “Hey, honey,” he called to Buster. “Where’s your dolly?”
    After Pug got up off the street, though, it was “Hey, bub, can’t you take a joke?” Mostly, people knew Buster and knew he was in training, and they admired that. The gang could tease him but not anybody else.
    Sometimes Toney would get a broom and wave the handle around fast in front of Buster’s nose. “Hit it, Buster! Hit it!” he’d yell. And old Buster flailed back and forth trying to hit that broom, punching and slugging. Before long, he got so good at it that Mrs. McKnight told them to use a stick or else Buster could sweep the house with what was left of the broom. That was a funny idea, all right. Big Buster hunched over, sweeping the house with a broom on the end of a twelve-inch handle.
    When he waved that broom around, Toney said mean things to Buster, like calling him “she,” or telling him he was a dumb petticoat or some others (which I would not want you to know about now that Toney’s deceased) to make Buster mad.
    There was a reason for Toney saying mean stuff. He wanted Buster to learn to control his temper in the ring. Buster, as I said before, already was a cool customer, but Toney knew there were things that would make Buster mad—mad enough to lose his temper. Getting rattled could make Buster lose a fight. So Toney trained Buster to deal with anything anybody said—inside the ring or out. Toney said a boxer had to be careful not to get into fights outside of the ring because he would be in big trouble.
    Toney also gave him a rubber ball to toughen up his hands, and when Buster wasn’t working in the mine, skipping rope, or hitting the broom, you could find him at home reading the sports page with his hands going squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, on that red rubber ball.
    Now that reminds me of something I want to say. During the murder trial in Hollywood some of those reporters said Buster was a dummy, that he couldn’t even write his own name. Hunter Harper put that in his book, which is another reason why I don’t like him and why I’m writing this down so you’ll know the truth. Buster read all the time, maybe not your major works of literature like
Forever Amber,
but he read the newspapers and the fight magazines. What’s more, he always carried pulps with him, which he read on the train or in the dressing room. Sometimes when he was traveling and staying in a hotel room with nothing to do, he even read the Gideon Bible.
    The reason that talk got started about Buster being an illiterate was Buster and Toney were fooling around once, and they posed Buster for a funny picture. Buster put on Toney’s coat, which was too small for him, so when he buttoned it, it pulled in the front. They put a hat on his head that was so tiny it just perched there, with Buster’s ears sticking out under it. Finally, Buster stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and grabbed the
Montana Standard
from the porch