Tell Me A Story

WILD CHILD – PART 2

“Barge Right In”

They crouched behind the rocks at the end of the sandy beach, looking out at their objective. The waters of Southampton Bay lapped quietly at the pilings that supported the old pier and they could see that the tide was still rising, approaching the high water mark. Fifty feet or so out onto the pier there was a shack that served as a bait shop and rental office, and then beyond the shack and below the raised pier were the pontoon-supported slips where the fishing boats were tied. Each boat was painted red, severely faded now, with “Costa’s Resort” in white letters on each side. A few of the wooden boats had been hauled from the water and were stacked on their sides like a row of clamshells, but several remained in the water, bobbing gently on the rising tide. There was a light burning in the shack and they watched closely to see if there was any movement inside.

“I don’t like it,” Hank whispered. “There could be somebody in there.”

“It’s almost midnight,” Nick replied. “There’s nobody there. They don’t live on the damn pier.”

“What if somebody’s in there?” Darin shared Hank’s misgivings.

“Then we’ll run like hell. It’s no big thing.” Nick wasn’t about to let either of them back out now. They were coming if he had to drag them.

It all started when Nick and his mom had dinner one evening at Spenger’s. The restaurant was located on an old ferryboat christened the Encinal, anchored in Southampton Bay, looking out at the Carquinez Strait. Spenger’s was an old favorite, famous for its seafood, and Nick and his mom had been there many times. On this particular evening, while waiting to order, Nick happened to flip the menu over. On the back was a short history of the Encinal and its service on the bay as a car ferry. And then there was a paragraph about a barge anchored out in the Strait at the mouth of the bay where, allegedly, illegal prizefights had been staged in years past.

Illegal fights? That got Nick’s attention. Later, as they left the restaurant, he paused in the parking lot, peering out across the bay toward the Contra Costa shore. Sure enough, there it was: a large, wooden barge anchored out where the calm waters of Southampton met the turbulent Carquinez Strait. He had recently read “The Light Of The World,” a Hemingway short story that referenced a fight “out on the coast” between Stanley Ketchel, the “Michigan Assassin,” and Jack Johnson, the great black heavyweight champ. He recalled bits and pieces of the dialog:

“Steve Ketchel… his own father shot and killed him. Yes, by Christ, his own father. There aren’t any more men like Steve Ketchel.”

“Wasn’t his name Stanley Ketchel?”

“Oh, shut up… what do you know about Steve? Stanley. He was no Stanley. Steve Ketchel was the finest and most beautiful man that ever lived… He was the only man I ever loved.”

“Didn’t Jack Johnson knock him out though?”

“It was a trick… a fluke… Steve knocked him down… He turned to smile at me and that son of a bitch from hell jumped up and hit him by surprise…”

That was the only suggestion Nick needed. His imagination ran wild. He began to construct his own narrative: Ketchel versus Johnson, a great battle out on that barge, staged there because the State wouldn’t give Johnson a license and no one was sure who had jurisdiction out on the bay. Nick could visualize the barge surrounded by vessels of every shape and size, overflowing with fight fans, shouting at the top of their lungs, wagering their paychecks on one man or the other.

No doubt about it: Nick would find a way to stand on that barge. And here they were on this mild summer night, ready to execute the mission he had planned so carefully.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Nick took off running toward the end of the pier and a second later, Hank and Darin followed him. Now they were on the pier, approaching the shack where the light burned inside, expecting to be jumped at any moment. Now they were past the shack, climbing down the ladder that led to the boat slips. They chose a skiff in the last slip at the end of the dock and Nick and Darin scrambled aboard. Hank untied the rope and gave a strong push with his right leg as he jumped in. Now the small boat was floating free of the dock. Nick slipped the oars into the oarlocks and began to row as quietly as he could, moving steadily out into the bay. They were on their way.

Nick leaned hard on the oars, no longer worried about the noise. To his right, he could see the sandy beach as it swung around toward Lover’s Point; to his left, the long arc of the shoreline leading to Dillon’s Point; looking back, Costa’s Resort and the pier growing ever smaller with each stroke of the oars. It was a long hard pull out to the barge. Hank and Darin each took a turn rowing as they zigged and zagged their way across the water, not a straight line but good enough given their inexperience.

Finally, they pulled alongside the barge and tied the skiff to a wooden ladder that led up to the deck. They climbed the ladder and stood on the deck at last, grinning at each other. Mission accomplished. Well, half of it at least.

The flat wooden deck was a large rectangle, about 100 feet wide and maybe twice as long. There was a sturdy rail that ran all around the perimeter and a small wooden shack in one corner. And that was it. Nick walked along the railing, taking in the view. To the west, he could see the double span of the Carquinez Bridge, and below it, on the south shore of the Strait, the town of Crockett and the sugar refinery with the bold C&H sign in red, white and blue lights. To the east, the lights of Benicia burned brightly. All around them, the dark waters of the Strait lapped at the barge. They had arrived at high tide. He tried to picture a fleet of boats, jockeying for position to view the epic fight, the crowd raucous and loud, fistfights breaking out here and there.

“Okay, so that’s it. There’s nothin’ to see. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Hank broke the mood and the scene faded from Nick’s mind. They headed for the ladder and the skiff to begin the journey back to shore.
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It was a typical July night at Lover’s Point with four or five cars parked facing the water. You could drive out onto the point, turn slightly to the left or right to keep the center aisle clear, facing out toward the Contra Costa shore or inward toward Southampton Bay. Every now and then a door would open slightly and some lovemaking debris would be dropped to the ground. Then headlights would come on, the car would back out of its space, turn and head back toward the street. Before long, another vehicle would arrive to take the vacant spot.

It isn’t likely that any of the couples in the parked cars noticed the little skiff making its way across the water, angling toward the beach just north of the point. If they noticed, they didn’t react. There were more important things to do.

The boys pulled the boat up onto the sand well out of reach of the tide, which was past its ebb and beginning to turn. Before long, the current out in the Carquinez Strait would be flowing hard toward San Pablo Bay. They scrambled up the path from the beach and made their way to the car where they retrieved an ice chest from the trunk. A few minutes later, they were relaxing on the beach, enjoying an ice-cold beer, toasting their successful mission to the barge.

They would leave the skiff there on the beach. When the sun rose in the morning, it would be easy to see from Costas' pier. The Costas would have no trouble recovering their property. No harm, no foul.
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Many years later, Nick would learn that the great championship fight that took place on that barge was between Gentleman Jim Corbett and Joe Choynski, 27 brutal rounds, finally ending when Corbett landed a devastating body blow. The fight actually started in San Anselmo on May 30, 1889, but was broken up by the police after four rounds. The battle resumed on June 5 out on the barge in Southampton Bay, surrounded by boats of every description, most of them, according to the newspaper reports, coming in from San Francisco.

It isn’t often that reality trumps fantasy, but Nick had to admit that the historical accounts of the fight and the setting were even more vivid than his imagination. It was July of 1959 when Nick and his friends stood on the deck of the barge, 70 years after the Corbett-Choynski fight, and it seemed incredible that it was still there after all that time.

Yet even faced with the facts, Nick had a hard time giving up his fantasy version of the event. He could almost hear Hemingway’s characters in that train station up in Michigan:

“He was a great fighter…”

“I hope to God he was… I hope to God they don’t have fighters like that now… My soul belongs to Steve Ketchel. By God, he was a man.”

For Nick, it would always be the Ketchel-Johnson Barge.
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