Becoming Muhammad Ali

Returning to Cassius’s perspective, he details how they would go to Camp Sky High in the summers during the day. On Saturday nights, they would all go over to Riney’s house to watch boxing fights on his front porch. 

Cassius remembers how these Saturday night fights captivated everyone on their block. At the end of the three rounds, judges would declare the winner “Tomorrow’s Champion” (100).

Even though his mother doesn’t like Cassius betting on the matches with Riney, he does it. He bets that Gorgeous George will knock out Billy Goode (and wins the bet). After the match is over, he imagines being in the ring. He also tries to hide that he’s interested in a girl named Tina “Teenie” Clark, who his friends believe is in love with him.

Cassius shadowboxes on his way home, emulating the boxers he sees on television. He pretends “like I was in a ring / like I was Gorgeous George / like I was a bigtime boxer” (103).

To save money for new bikes, all of Cassius’s friends have jobs, like making deliveries for the florist or cutting grass. Cassius and Rudy deliver Ebony magazine each month. More regularly, Cassius babysits for the Montgomery family, which is easy because he can listen to boxing matches on the radio.

Cobb gets a bike first, after being given a betting ticket from the racetrack instead of being paid. He won $560, enough to buy himself and his cousin a new bike. Cassius also makes enough money to buy a bike but never needs to spend it, ending the poem by saying, “And here’s why…” (106).

Cassius begins a flashback. One day, everyone was out on the block. Cassius was shadowboxing. Short Bubba was recounting how he heard from Cobb (who heard from Big Head Paul) that Chalky was holding onto a rope with his teeth and pulling the attached boxcar.

Chalky is “the biggest / strongest / meanest / kid / in Louisville” (109). He bullies everyone in the neighborhood. No one is sure exactly how old he is, and he often is seen with gangsters at Dreamland.

Cassius believes that it’s possible he could use his teeth to pull a car.

Teenie walks by Cassius with her friends, stopping by the Montgomery house and sneaking looks at him. Cassius continues shadowboxing until his father appears in his truck and rolls down his window.

Cash invites Cassius into the car, saying that they’re going somewhere, just the two of them, but not saying where.

Cassius asks if he can get a pair of boxing gloves for Christmas, and his father asks if he wants to be successful. Education, he thinks, is the key to success. He tells Cassius he needs to improve his grades, and boxing won’t get him there.

Cash explains that Cassius has “the chance to be the first Clay to really do something,” since his great-grandfather had been enslaved, Herman had once been in prison, and Cash didn’t finish high school (114). Cassius points out that the Cassius Clay they were named after freed all those he enslaved, but his father retorts that he didn’t free everyone. He wants Cassius to go to college, believing that he himself learned how talented an artist he was from a teacher in school. He would’ve been more famous, he says, if not for racism, just as Herman could’ve been a great baseball player if they let African Americans onto major league teams. As Cash pulls into a church, he looks to his son and says, “This world is white, Cassius. […] This world is snow white” (116). He adds that he wants to show Cassius something.

When they walk into the Clifton Street Baptist Church, Cassius sees angels on the ceiling. Cash asks what his son thinks of his latest artwork. Cassius replies that it’s great but, noticing that it is almost a replica of an image in the Bible, asks, “Where were all the black angels when they took the picture?” (118).

They arrive at their home, and the kids are still outside. Cash tells Cassius to get the Christmas tree and his painting stuff out of the truck.

When Cassius goes around to get the items, he pulls the tarp off the Christmas tree. The poem repeats a litany of his father’s painting equipment: cups, pencils, erasers, stencils, and the like. Then, in all capitalized letters, Cassius identifies his new Schwinn bicycle.

Everyone stares at Cassius’s new bike. He lets Rudy try it, and Rudy falls immediately, scraping the chrome. Cassius promises to teach him later. Riney tries it, and then Cassius races around the block four times. On the last one, Teenie comes over and gives Cassius a rabbit’s foot key chain “[f]or good luck” (123). In return, he lets her ride on the handlebars.

Cassius returns to the present summer after his flashback about getting the bicycle. School resumes in the fall. Teenie doesn’t come over to see Cassius as often, but this doesn’t bother him because he’s busy with tutoring, bicycling, and running.

One day, Cassius bikes home with Rudy on his handlebars, and it appears that Corky Butler is leaving the alley behind his home. They try to sneak in the back of their house before their father arrives home drunk but hit something. When they get up, they see someone “stone-cold dead / on the gravel” (126). They go inside, not knowing who it was or if the person was really dead, and they never say anything about it to anyone.