I was out-of-doors, eating snowballs
for dinner & sleeping by Lake Michigan.
Nights so cold even the Chicago police
weren't up for rousting me. The soles
of my shoes so thin I could step on a dime
& tell whether it was heads or tails. If I
had a dime. Sparring with Frank Childs
was my first bit of Chicago luck. They
called Frank "The Crafty Texan,"
but I have yet to meet a colored Texan
who isn't crafty. In the ring, Frank followed
me like I was the one who ran off with
his wife. He'd grab my shoulder with his left,
then hook my ribs with his right until his corner-
man pulled him off. I was smaller then
& couldn't defense like I can now, & Frank
was a big man—grappling gloves & red eyes.
But when somebody told him I needed
a place to stay, he let me sleep on the floor.
I had to leave when his no-good wife decided
to come back. In the middle of the night,
the snow coming down so furiously even
the bricks in the buildings wanted shelter.
I spent that night seething underneath a statue
of General John A. Logan. It was so cold,
it seemed as if the bronze horse the general
sat on turned his head away from the wind.