You're a counterpuncher, Silky. That's what you are, that's all you are." Then they went to Paterson. His first amateur tournament fight. This kid would throw a jab and Coleman would lean back, but his feet would be planted and he could come back and counter the kid with a right, and he kept catching him like that for the whole fight. The kid kept doing it, so Coleman kept doing it and won all three rounds. At the Boys Club, that became Silky Silk's style. When he threw punches, it was so nobody could say he was standing there doing nothing. Mostly he would wait for the other guy to throw, then he'd throw two, three back, and then he'd get out and wait again. Coleman could hit his opponent more by waiting for him to lead than by leading him. The result was that by the time Coleman was sixteen, in Essex and Hudson counties alone, at amateur shows at the armory, at the Knights of Pythias, at exhibitions for the veterans at the veterans hospital, he must have beaten three guys who were Golden Gloves champs. As he figured it, he could by then have won 112,118,126 . . . except there was no way he could fight in the Golden Gloves without its getting in the papers and his family finding out. And then they found out anyway. He didn't know how. He didn't have to. They found out because somebody told them. Simple as that.
They were all sitting down to dinner on a Sunday, after church, when his father said, "How did you do, Coleman?"
"How did I do at what?"
"Last night. At the Knights of Pythias. How did you do?"
"What's the Knights of Pythias?" Coleman asked.
"Do you think I was born yesterday, son? The Knights of Pythias is where they had the tournament last night. How many fights on the card?"
"Fifteen."
"And how did you do?"
"I won."
"How many fights have you won so far? In tournaments. In exhibitions.
How many since you began?"
"Eleven."
"And how many have you lost?"
"So far, none."
"And how much did you get for the watch?"
"What watch?"
"The watch you won at the Lyons Veterans Hospital. The watch the vets gave you for winning the fight. The watch you hocked on Mulberry Street. Down in Newark, Coleman—the watch you hocked in Newark last week."
The man knew everything.
"What do you think I got?" Coleman dared to reply, though not looking up as he spoke—instead looking at the embroidered design on the good Sunday tablecloth.
"You got two dollars, Coleman. When are you planning on turning pro?"
"I don't do it for money," he said, still with his eyes averted. "I don't care about money. I do it for enjoyment. It's not a sport you take up if you don't enjoy it."
"You know, if I were your father, Coleman, you know what I'd tell you now?"
"You are my father," Coleman said.
"Oh, am I?" his father said.
"Well, sure..."
"Well—I'm not sure at all. I was thinking that maybe Mac Machrone, at the Newark Boys Club, was your father."
"Come on, Dad. Mac's my trainer."
"I see. So who then is your father, if I may ask?"
"You know. You are. You are, Dad."
"I am? Yes?"
"No!" Coleman shouted. "No, you're not!" And here, at the very start of Sunday dinner, he ran out of the house and for nearly an hour he did his roadwork, up Central Avenue and over the Orange line, and then through Orange all the way to the West Orange line, and then crossing over on Watchung Avenue to Rosedale Cemetery, and then turning south down Washington to Main, running and throwing punches, sprinting, then just running, then just sprinting, then shadowboxing all the way back to Brick Church Station, and finally sprinting the stretch, sprinting to the house, going back inside to where the family was eating their dessert and where he knew to sit back down at his place, far calmer than when he had bolted, and to wait for his father to resume where he had left off. The father who never lost his temper. The father who had another way of beating you down. With words. With speech. With what he called "the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens." With the English language that no one could ever take away from you and that Mr.
Silk richly sounded, always with great fullness and clarity and bravado, as though even in ordinary conversation he were reciting Marc Antony's speech over the body of Caesar. Each of his three children had been given a middle name drawn from Mr. Silk's bestmemorized play, in his view English literature's high point and the most educational study of treason ever written: the eldest Silk son was Walter Antony, the second son, Coleman Brutus; Ernestine Calpurnia, their younger sister, took her middle name from Caesar's loyal wife.
Mr. Silk's life in business for himself had come to a bitter end with the closing of the banks. It had taken him quite a time to get over losing the optician's store up in Orange, if he ever did. Poor Daddy, Mother would say, he always wanted to work for himself.
