The Story of the Iron-Fisted Glove

The Story of The Iron-Fisted Glove

By Robin Ford Wallace

This is a true story that happened when I was a court reporter. 

I was called in to take a deposition in a lawsuit between two men who had started a business together, one of those sleazy paycheck loan places that cheat the poor.  A man in Cleveland, Tenn., I think it was, had started one and made a fortune.  This was not that one.  This was a copycat business and I don’t think it ever got off the ground.

I forget the names of the parties but let’s call them Chump and Spike.  I remember them both as being rather short men but Spike was a little shorter than Chump, one of those small, fast-talking men, clever-looking, blond.  Chump was the plaintiff and Spike the defendant.  Chump was suing Spike to get some money back he said Spike had defrauded him of. 

This is the story Chump told during his deposition:

Chump and Spike had known each other a long time.  They were best friends.  They had been fraternity brothers in college and I think best men at each other’s weddings.  They would go over to each other’s houses for dinner or out for pizza.

Then Spike convinced Chump to go in with him on the payday loan business.  Chump put in as much money as he had and he borrowed a whole lot more.  So he was responsible for repaying the loan, but almost as soon as they started the business Spike began closing him out of it.

This was a start-up business but the way Spike set up the corporation he was the CEO and he paid himself a six-figure salary from the beginning.  Spike hired the employees and was in charge of them and he didn’t allow them to give any information to Chump.  When Chump asked how the business was going the employees explained Spike had forbidden them to discuss it.  It’s been a long time but I think maybe Spike even had Chump escorted off the premises once. 

It shortly became evident the business was losing a lot of money.  Chump began calling Spike every day and Spike stopped answering his phone.  In the end the only way Chump got any response out of Spike at all was to hire a lawyer and start the civil suit.

One of the attorneys at this point asked Chump:  “Well, you were an equal partner with Spike in the business.  Why didn’t you just demand to see the financials?”

“You don’t understand how Spike operates,” said Chump.  “He rules with an iron-fisted glove.”

I, the court reporter, had been plinking right along, taking down Chump’s story quietly, but that made me look up.  What Chump meant was that Spike ruled with an iron fist or that Spike had an iron fist in a velvet glove, but he’d gotten the expressions mixed and made up this weird combination.  Well, maybe he was upset or maybe he just didn’t know any better, but in the course of the deposition he said it at least one more time, that Spike ruled with an iron-fisted glove.  So that’s how I have always thought of this story: The Story of the Iron-Fisted Glove.

There was then a long discussion of money and I can’t remember how much it was that Chump said Spike had gotten out of him, or what all he had tried to get it back, though I do believe the salary that Spike was paying himself out of Chump’s money was $180,000.

Anyway, after Chump had told his side of the story the lawyers conferred with their clients and we all had a break.  I went to lunch or to the bathroom or something. When I came back, I saw Chump and Spike in the hall together. 

In a deposition setting you don’t usually see the defendant having a heart-to-heart with the plaintiff.  Usually by the time people initiate legal action they’re not on speaking terms and in any case they’re paying attorneys the big bucks to state their side of the argument. 

But talking they were.  Spike was leaning forward, speaking fast and earnest, using his hands a lot.  Chump was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, his eyes big and hurt like a child’s but hopeful, too, one might say wistful. 

We’d been scheduled next to take the deposition of Spike and we didn’t do that.  It got postponed somehow and if it was ever taken back up they used a different court reporter.  If I’d remembered their names I could have looked it up later and seen what happened to the lawsuit.  I didn’t do that; I never did back then because I was always too busy with the next case, really too busy even to be interested.

So I don’t know what happened in the end but what I think happened that particular day is that clever little Spike managed to convince Chump to give him another chance to screw him.  Spike had betrayed his trust and robbed him of his money and shut him out of the business and his life, and all poor old Chump wanted was his buddy back.  You could see it in his eyes.

I thought it was odd then but later I learned it is not all that rare in human relations.  Get involved with a manipulator and even at the end, after the scales have fallen from your eyes and you see that you’ve been played for a chump, managed with an “iron-fisted glove,” if you will, you still find yourself asking:

“But can’t we go back to the part where you loved me?”  

END