Читать книгу The Ghost of Johnny Tapia - Paul Zanon - Страница 10

Chapter 1
Baptism of Hell

“Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.”

—Joe Frazier

Albuquerque, New Mexico, is geographically situated in a bygone era of gunslingers and fast drinkers. The Wild West, from 1865 to 1895, ingrained itself in America's folklore, and when John Lee Tapia was born there on February 13, 1967, it's as if he picked up the baton, ran with it, and left a trail of smoke behind him that immortalized Mi Vida Loca.

Was Johnny Tapia boxing's most tortured soul? Arguably. Known by boxing aficionados as a colorful multiweight world champion, Johnny stared death in the face more times than would seem physically possible.

As a seven-year-old boy, he was given his first taste of how quickly the circle of life can end for an individual at any given moment. While on a bus as part of a school field trip, Johnny was sitting next to a woman named Concha, who was heavily pregnant. The bus hit a rock while going down a mountain road, went off a cliff, and Johnny flew straight down the bus and cracked his head open, lying there barely conscious. Concha was also propelled out of her seat, through the bus window, but was then jammed between the bus and the tree. Her blood was literally dripping on Johnny as she died in front of his eyes.

This, however, was not the episode that would affect Johnny's mental health for the rest of his life. The day his mother Virginia gave birth to him, he was already absorbing second-degree shock: His father was murdered when his mother was pregnant with him. But it was a horrific episode that took place eight years later that was the beginning of the end for Albuquerque's most decorated boxer and New Mexico's most infamous athlete.

On May 24, 1975, an uncharacteristically tearful Johnny was taken to his grandparents’ house while his mother was looking forward to going out dancing. He described her as wearing dark blue slacks and a beautiful white blouse. She was the most important person in his life, the human being he owed everything to. His best friend, his parent, the person who loved him, encouraged him, dressed and fed him.

Johnny pleaded with her not to go, claiming he had a bad feeling he couldn't explain. Something in the pit of his stomach wanted to be with her, protect her, and under no circumstances did he want her to go dancing. His mother had been on the sore end of a violent relationship a couple of years before, during which Johnny had intervened with a steak knife, stabbing the boyfriend to defend her. He was only five. His intervention worked on that occasion, and perhaps he sensed that air of vulnerability again.

Unable to fight back his tears, Johnny begged his grandparents to let him go to the dance. At this point, his mother handed him a Snickers bar as a treat, which acted as the necessary calming tool. From that day forth, before every fight, amateur and professional, he had to have a Snickers bar. As Johnny took the candy, his mother kissed him and said, “I'll be back tomorrow.” She then headed off.

Despite the short-term comfort of the candy, Johnny, unable to sleep, remained an emotional wreck and spent the whole night looking frantically out the windows, waiting for his mother to return. He kept telling his grandparents, “I want my mom, I want my mom,” but he was unloading on deaf ears.

Then came that haunting memory: the last time he would see his mother alive. Looking out of the back porch in the middle of the night, Johnny saw a pickup truck with two men riding up front and a woman tied up inside it. He was even convinced that his mother locked a frightened stare with him for a split second. He immediately went and woke up his grandparents, describing vividly what he'd just witnessed, right down to the color and type of truck (which would later match police reports). His grandparents dismissed his cries for help and instead punished the little boy for waking them up. Johnny's mother never did come home.

Soon after Johnny spotted the truck, his mother was driven to a remote gravel pit in the Southwest Valley of Albuquerque.

Johnny's interpretation of the attack as a little boy was that she was tied up and stabbed twenty-seven times with an ice pick, but the coroner's reports would confirm it was actually a screwdriver and an open pair of scissors. It was such a brutal attack that one of her breasts was almost completely severed.

Somehow she managed to crawl out of the pit, and when nearby workers found her, it looked like she had been aiming to crawl to the local houses in the distance. They called the police instantly and described her as wearing a red blouse—her white shirt was no longer recognizable amid the blood-drenched scene.

As the days went by, Johnny kept asking his grandparents what was going on. Nobody from his family called the police, but three days after he'd last seen her, Johnny was in the living room when there was a knock at the door. It was a family member holding a newspaper, showing an article to Johnny's grandparents about an unidentified woman wearing unique jewelry. The woman had been found brutally attacked and was in intensive care. The family member said, “Isn't this Virginia's jewelry?” The grandparents confirmed, “That's hers,” then rushed down to the hospital without Johnny.

Virginia was in a coma, hanging onto life from a thread, but nonetheless still alive. She then received one last visit that ensured her fate: A man, believed to be one of her assailants, walked in with a blunt object and struck her across the head. Virginia Gallegos died in the hospital on May 28, 1975, four days after saying goodbye to her beloved son. Johnny later said his mother's death would “kill” him every day he remained on this planet.

Understandably, Johnny was left emotionally scarred. Irreparably, to be more accurate. In the coming years he refused to go to her grave and on one of the rare occasions he did muster the strength to see her resting site, he tried to take his life. He threw himself on top of a large knife, but somehow only the tip penetrated. Johnny took that as a sign that it was not his time.

This would not be his only tango with death.