Part: One

Friday, June 3

Jim woke up feeling chilled. He was also sore, but that was to be expected after going the full fifteen with Max Baer the evening before.

Without opening his eyes he paused a moment to enjoy the silence. Mae was doing a great job of keeping the kids quiet while he slept, a fact for which he was grateful. Exhausted from the fight, with his share of the purse money safely hidden away by his wife and the title of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion hovering like a halo above his head, Jim had slept better than he had any night since the Crash in '29.

It had taken six years, but at last he had had a restful night's sleep. Last night he had slept like man who had found a way to strike back and get back on top - and even better, he'd insured his family's future.

One hand reached to massage the back of his neck while the other rubbed his eyes open above a yawn. He blinked and smiled, expecting to see the familiar surroundings of the one room basement apartment the Braddock family had shared since losing the last of their money and moving to the tenement in Newark.

Instead, nothing was familiar.

Jim's smiled wilted on his lips as his brows pulled down in confusion.

He was stretched out in the front row of some kind of theater. Recessed spot lights shone soft accents onto a wide white screen with heavy bronze colored fabric curtains pulled back on either side. Instead of the ornately decorated walls he'd expect to see in a motion picture house, the walls were flat and appeared to be covered in honey-gold carpet. The seat he had been sprawled on was comfortable enough, and like the others in row beside and behind his own, cushioned in a soft, velvety bronze fabric. The arms in between were hard, some in place between the seats, while others were pushed back to make wide multi-seat settees, but each one ended in a recessed hole, designed to hold some kind of snack, he guessed.

How had he gotten to this strange theater and, more importantly, where were Mae and the kids? 

It wasn't impossible to imagine spending a tiny portion of their newly won fortune taking Jim Jr., Howard and Rosemarie out to a celebration night at the pictures - after all the kids had never been. It was even less difficult to imagine that Jim might have dozed off, given the pummeling and excitement of the night before, despite the elegant and extravagant novelty of such an outing.

It was, however, unbelievable that his family would have left him behind.

Confused and completely disoriented, Jim pushed to his feet and forced his strong but tired legs to carry him up the inclined aisle towards the rear of the oddly small room.

The door at the back of the house pushed open easily under his large hand, then he was blinking again as bright light from the day outside washed into the glass walled lobby and overwhelmed him.

The pervasive aroma of hot, salty buttered popcorn made his stomach grumble a complaint, but he had no time to stop and eat. He needed to find Mae and the kids. He needed to get home.

Tuesday, June 14

It should have been Friday, Jim told himself, but that didn't mean much. It should have been a lot of things. 

For example, it should have been 1935. For another, Jim should have been at home with his family enjoying their company, a good, thick steak and maybe some ice cream.

Instead, he was holed up in a doorway, dozing off the effects of the previous night's hootch. 

James J. Braddock (formerly James Walter Braddock, until his manager Joe Gould had changed his middle initial to J. way-back-when because the alliteration had sounded better when he was announced to a fight) had never been one for hard sauce, but what did that matter when everything that had ever meant something to a man was lost, gone, kaput? Why bother keeping your senses sharp when all he really wanted was to dull the pain?

Having left the movie house, Jim had made his way through strangely crowded streets full of even stranger cars and buses. He'd taken a few wrong turns, but had eventually found his way back to the north New Jersey neighborhood where he lived.

Make that had lived. 

Not only had the place apparently changed overnight, but the entire clutch of smoke stained tenements where Jim, his family and his neighbors had resided was gone, replaced by a shopping center anchored on one end by a place called Blockbuster and the other a slick and fragrant café called Starbucks.

Jimmy's head spun like a punch drunk kid's as his heart sank into the unstable depths of his growling belly. Where was his home? More importantly, where was his family? Where were Mae and the kids?

Despite the fact that every sense Jim had was ringing wrong and wrestling with the idea that maybe his brain had been hit loose by one of Baer's uppercuts after all, he decided that maybe he'd gotten the streets mixed up. He had tried stopping a few pedestrians to ask where the apartments had gone.

That had gotten him guarded looks, confused or hostile glares and a few snapped answers to the tune of the shocking "Fuck off" and the slightly less antagonistic "Hey, buddy, go sleep it off before I call the cops."

By the end of the week, Jim had given up trying to find the places and the people he'd lost. They weren't simply changed or missing - they were gone. Worse yet, it wasn't them who had left him behind.

He had somehow left them - seventy years in the past.

Somehow Jim Braddock had gone to sleep in 1935 only to awaken in 2005. 

His birthday slipped past uncelebrated on the 7th of the month - after all, who was he going to celebrate with? And what should he celebrate - turning 30 or the full 100? Loneliness and the heartbreak of losing everyone and everything that had ever mattered had driven him nearly mad, and after a few days of sleeping on park benches and in doorways, he was beginning to have the look and smell of madness, too.

Everything around him was wrong. He had given up even trying to understand how he'd gotten here.  It had taken most of that first week to fully comprehend that he was never going to find Mae and the kids. After so many years of resiliently fighting to keep his family healthy, happy and intact, just when he should have been on top again - suddenly all hope was completely and finally lost.

Jimmy was out on the streets and all alone. 

He had missed Mae and the kids with a pain so bad it had made him sick. Sick enough to finally give up completely and begin drinking. With nothing left to fight for, why not seal the deal and use the last of the money in his pocket to try and drink his pain away like so many of his compatriots had?

A week spent wandering the Newark docks as lost as any stray dog had ever been had left him alternately exhausted and drunk. Both of which had led him to begin explaining to anyone who would even half listen that he didn't belong here, wasn't supposed to be here, that he hardly even understood where here was anymore... 

And now dusk on the evening that was Monday, but should have been Thursday, found Jim hung-over and once more trawling through the depths of his despair. Remembering the silky feel of Rosy's hair beneath his broad, callused palm, Jay's big trusting eyes, Howie's impish smirk and, the granddaddy of them all - the velvety sweetness of Mae's soft skin as she'd held him, Braddock let go and cried.

He'd been doing that a lot lately it seemed, the very last of his pride gone as he wiped at his oft-broken nose with the palm of his big, dirty hand.

"Hey there! What's a big, healthy fella like you doing crying on the stoop?" 

Jim didn't even look up as the friendly voice hailed him. Nor did he shift on the steps as the man who owned the voice sat down next to him. "You lose something?"

The fighter nodded.

"Want to talk about it?"

Braddock shook his head as fresh tears cut tracks through his stained, unshaven cheeks.

"Y'sure? I hear confession is good for the soul."

Jim finally looked up, his hollow eyes hard as they fell on what, sure enough, turned out to be a man wearing a priest's collar. Never mind that he was also wearing denim dungarees - the man was clearly a priest.

Rubbing at a tear that tickled as it clung to the edge of his nose, Jim found his voice at last. "Nice try, Father, but I've given up God."

"That's okay." The priest's voice didn't lose one ounce of friendly sincerity. "He hasn't given up on you."

Despite all of his protests and claims to the contrary - or maybe it was the promise of a hot shower, shave and decent meal that finally made him give in - Jimmy eventually agreed to go back to the shelter for the night with Father Garcia.

It took more than a few hot meals to put Braddock back on his feet. It took two weeks of hard sober thinking with days spent working odd jobs and nights reading at the public library until closing time.

Maybe Jim didn't understand why or how he'd come to be here, but that didn't mean that he couldn't try to make some sense of the Here and Now.

The Depression had passed, a painful shadow in the wake of a second World War that had, despite the losses, cemented the country's new prosperity. Many of the families who had survived the 20's and 30's went on to become the new Middle Class, raising families as the country continued to rebuild itself.

The Korean War, the Cold War, the race for space, the Vietnam War, the Sexual Revolution... Jim had never been a very good student, having traded in schoolbooks for life experience at the age of 14, and all the reading he was doing now made his head spin.

But like some kind of real- life Rip Van Winkle, hungry to comprehend the new century in which he'd awakened, through the early part of summer, Jim read everything he could get his hands on - every book, every newspaper, every magazine.

If he saw the advertisements for the movie Cinderella Man, he never mentioned them to Father Garcia. Confession, he'd realized early on, wasn't always good for the soul after all. And as kind as the Father might be, he and God didn't always have the answers Jimmy needed.

If the good Father noticed the resemblance between his new found handyman and the movie star whose determined face peered over his raised boxing gloves in all the ads for the film, he too kept his own council.

That was another funny thing that didn't make a lick of sense to Jimmy. 

His face in the mirror was nothing like the one in the old newspaper articles he'd found in the reference files in the basement of the library. Sure, he still had a boxer's build, dark hair, jug-handle ears, the tattoo on his left arm and the false tooth up front... but he was shorter now, his eyes had gone from brown to a mutable blue-green and his face was both familiar - the face he expected to see - and yet not much like the face of the Braddock he found in old photos.

Of course the discovery of a motion picture about his life had been tempting, and Jim might have gone to see it, too. But two bits didn't buy a night out anymore, and he was reluctant to part with the ten or so dollars it took to buy a ticket to the show. Besides, he knew the story better than anyone - at least up to the point where he'd beat Max Baer at the Madison Square Garden Bowl on that fateful night in June of '35.

After that, he only knew the present and what he'd read.

Apparently, he and Mae had taken his winnings and bought a house in North Bergen where they'd raised the kids until even sweet little Rosemarie had been grown enough to move out and start a family of her own. That knowledge gave him some solace. According to the papers, he'd provided well for his family and he and Mae had grown old together happily and gracefully.

Jim's search for news of his family might have ended there, but a reference librarian proficient in computer use had navigated the mystifying Internet on his behalf. The Braddock's, like many Irish-American families, had been a fairly prolific lot and Jim discovered that he had grand kids living in both New Jersey and New York.

That bit of good news came on the heels of the revelation that his beloved Mae was gone now. Jay had passed too, even sweet little Rosy had gone in 1995. Jim took it hard, mourning the loss of them all over again, but he clung to the thought that Howard, his middle son, was still alive.

The idea of heading out to South New Jersey and visiting his surviving son began to haunt Jim. Questions danced in his head day and night and he found himself tossing and turning when he should have been sleeping, working his thoughts over like a heavy bag in his mind.

Would Howard recognize him? 

The last time he remembered seeing his son, the boy had been eight. But Howie would be an old man himself now. Would his son know his new face? And if he did, how would he feel about his father - who had supposedly passed on in 1974 - showing up on his doorstep looking decades younger than himself? Was it fair to show up like a ghost from his child's past, especially when he couldn't explain how he'd come to be here?

But what harm would it be to walk past where Howard lived? To maybe see his face at the window, or pass by him on the street?

Was there harm in that? Jim didn't know. But the temptation to find out begin to weigh in against his need to protect his son. And that had been the final straw that had sent him packing.

Unable to sleep, he'd gathered up his belongings - one pair each of new work trousers and denim jeans, a few undershirts, socks, shorts and two work shirts. He packed his razor and a few other toiletries, then turned to the Bible on the night stand - a gift from Father Garcia.

Opening the book at random, he stuck a twenty dollar bill and a ten between the onion skin pages like a bookmark. Marveling at the thought that thirty dollars had once felt like a small fortune and would now barely cover a good steak dinner, Jim turned to write a quick note for the kind priest only to be startled by the man himself standing in the doorway.

"Not taking your Bible, Jim?"

"I only read the good parts, then skipped to the end to find out what happened," Braddock quipped in his thick Jersey lilt. Somewhere between regular hot meals and a couple of weeks of hearty physical labor helping out around the parish, his resilient sense of humor had gotten a toehold again.

"They're all good parts," the priest pointed out, but his tone was as gentle as his smile.

"Yeah, I know." Jim shrugged, his gaze moving self consciously from the book to the new work boots on his feet. "Thought I'd leave it for the next guy." He pulled a deep breath, squared his wide shoulders and forced himself to meet Father Garcia's knowing gaze. "Someone who might need it more than me."

Garcia nodded, sizing up the young man before him for what was sure to be the last time. 

Though Jim appeared to be nearly a decade younger than himself, there was something in his eyes that the priest had never been quite able to put a finger on that always made him feel like the younger of the two men.

"I left some money, there, in the Bible." Jim's big hands twisted the bag in his hands around and around. "It's not much, but... " he paused to shrug again. "I was gonna leave you a note, to thank you for what you've done for me."

"I only helped you back onto your feet, Jimmy," Father Garcia countered. "You made the decision to walk a good path."  

"I think I've still got some walkin' to do." Braddock's lips twisted in a wry grin before folding serious again. "A lot of it. That's why I've gotta go."

"I understand." The priest's patient smile found his eyes as he held out a hand to the young man. "God will be with you."

"Thanks, Father." He gripped the priest's hand and they shook on it, a smile of mutual respect passing between them before Jim headed for the rectory door that led to the street.

"You're a good man, Jim," Father Garcia was finding it hard to let this one go, but he knew that nothing he could say or do would make this overgrown foundling stay. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Jim nodded, took a deep breath a set his shoulders with a confidence he wasn't sure he felt. He'd faked the feeling enough times over the years to know that in the end it didn't matter if it was real or not. Sometimes pretending was enough to get you through a rough patch. Sometimes pretending could make it all feel real enough to get by on.

"Mama, I want to eat, too..."

The voice blew through Jim's memory like a chill wind through barren branches. Rosy, big eyed and hungry, and all too wise to the ways of hardship at the age of four.

He had pretended then, too. Pretended that his dream of having steak and ice cream at the Ritz had left him too full to eat the thin slice of bologna Mae had just finished frying and slipped onto his plate that morning.

It took some doing to convince his wise little daughter that he was too sated by his dreams to eat his own breakfast, a fact that wasn't helped by the worry for him that creased Mae's pretty face. Somehow, in the end, he'd managed to put on a convincing enough show and Rosemarie had taken to the slice of meat with all the delicacy of a hungry pup. A kiss for his wife didn't go far to smooth away her worry for him, but he was already out into the cold pre-dawn in search of a day's work that might put a few bits in the jar and another few thin slices of meat on their plates.

It was easier to find work these days. Not so many hungry people crowding the streets - that made a difference. Many of the folks Jim met looking to work for cash as he began to work his way cross country were migrant farm workers, Hispanics mostly.

It felt good to be moving. His well trained body welcomed the exercise the way a stray puppy welcomes a friendly hand.

The farther West Jim went - the more distance he put between himself and the temptation to contact his son - the better he began to feel. Over time, Jim's days found a pattern. He'd walk or take rides as they were offered, moving through the country one town at a time. Sometimes he'd stop to take on work as a dishwasher or day laborer to pay for his needs, then he'd be moving on to the next town - always adding to the distance between himself and his past. Soon enough his already lean and well muscled body began to toughen and his skin became tanned.

By the time he made it to San Francisco, trading the Atlantic Ocean for the Pacific, he'd had an education - not only about life in this strange new century, but also how to get by without a past.

Jim was able to get by without calling attention to himself, which was just how he liked it. He'd never been a talkative man and two months of handing out easy answers to simple questions had made him adept at flying under most people's radar.

Bussing tables at a restaurant in North Beach, Jim had met Isidro, an illegal immigrant of Mayan descent. Isidro spent his afternoons in English classes and was all too happy to have a patient ear to try out his newly acquired language skills while he washed dishes at night. Jim's patience was rewarded in spades one evening when Isidro told him where he could get a new identity at a reasonable price.

It took a month of saving every last penny that he didn't spend on food or rent on his room at the cheap hotel on Bryant St. and Jim became a new man: Jimmy Ryan.

He chose Ryan because it was the first name he'd ever fought professionally under, way back when he was seventeen and he'd gone up against Tommy Hummell in Grantwood, New Jersey. With his elder brother, Joe already putting a Braddock on the card and at risk of losing his amateur standing if anyone found out he'd been paid three dollars to take the fight, the alias had worked well at the time. Jim could only hope that it would serve him as well now as it had then.

With a fresh identity and the paperwork to back it up, Jim found that new doors opened as if by magic for a strong young man who was willing and able to work hard.

Construction was the name of the game now. Hard physical labor that was as familiar to him as the calluses on his hands. It was as welcome for the better rate of pay as it was for the deep sense of exhaustion that allowed him to sleep each night. And every paycheck seemed like a small fortune to a man who had once paid a nickel for a loaf of sliced bread and wished for two bits to buy a few pounds of steak from Sam's butcher shop.

The warm weather of early autumn's Indian summer in the City by the Bay worked wonders on the puncher's arthritis that was part of his fight legacy. Though his joints creaked and his hands still ached a bit more mornings than not, the simple pattern of work-eat-read-sleep that he'd established had begun to work like a salve on both his body and his sense of loss, and the pain of both became less raw day by day.

Still, each weekend stretched out before him like a hostile opponent. Those forty eight hours with nothing constructive to do weighed heavily on his wide well muscled shoulders, and more than once Jim found himself battling back the temptation to wallow in the pain of missing those he loved who he'd somehow left in the past.

But, as Father Garcia had reminded him on more than one occasion, the Lord sometimes worked in strange and unexpected ways. You had to watch for His messengers. And Jim found one such messenger in the unlikely figure of a coworker named Victor Graham.

Victor was built like a mountain and had skin the color of molten chocolate. With his tree-like arms and legs, shiny bald head, strong back, and a deep voice prone to booming outbursts of hearty laughter he reminded Jim of the legendary John Henry. The foreman was well liked by everyone on the job and Jimmy was no exception to the rule.

Braddock sensed a goodness in the man, liked his easy smile, and was drawn to him. Though Jimmy mainly kept to himself, he liked to sit nearby while the men ate lunch, listening to Graham talk, smiling at his quick wit and easy going spirit.

"What about you, Ryan?"

It took Jimmy a moment to realize that Victor was talking to him, addressing him by his new surname. "What about me what?"

"Are you man enough to spend the weekend helping me build homes for needy families, or are you too busy like Levy, here?"

Jim took a moment to finish chewing a bite of his sandwich, then nodded. "Sure. Count me in."

A wide, bright smile flashed across the darker man's face, and he nodded. "Okay then! You're in. Write down your address and my partner and I will pick you up on the way Saturday morning."

For once, Jimmy found that he was actually looking forward to the weekend. He was happy to have something constructive to do, a way to fill up some of those empty weekend hours. And, it seemed, he had forged a new bond with the easy going foreman, one that might lead to a real friendship.