Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  BOZO

  ‘THE BOY BOXER’

  BARGAINS!

  THREE KNOCK-OUT LAWNMOWERS

  FOR SALE

  ONLY 40/EACH.

  HURRY

  DON’T LET THE GRASS

  GROW UNDER YOUR

  //////feet//////

  Before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’, the lawnmowers are sold and we don’t even need the second advertisement, which Bozo can now use for something else he wants to sell. He reckons Joe Turkey, who has the second-hand shop and junkyard in Wang, would have given him fifteen shillings each, at the most a quid.

  Bozo gives Mike ten bob because he did the advertisement, Nancy the same because he couldn’t give her less than Mike, and me seven and sixpence, which is more than the pound Toby Forbes would have paid us altogether for dropping off the Gazette, so we’re happy as Larry and he’s still made an extra one pound, twelve and sixpence more than he would have made if he’d sold them to Joe Turkey. Not bad, eh?

  Nancy says Bozo’s the only one of us she’ll never have to worry about because he’s got his head screwed on right. Although she always says after, ‘That is, if he doesn’t get his brains mashed in the boxing ring!’

  The tram ride was beaut, it sort of clanks and rattles but is also smooth at times and everything has to get out of the way. The tram is boss of the road and it feels pretty important trundling along with it swaying and clickety-clacking, coasting along and then suddenly surging. You could stay on it all day and not get tired of riding in it. I’ve still got to go in a train so I can’t compare the experience, but it would have to be pretty good to beat the tram and we got to see a fair bit of the city as we went along.

  We arrive at the Russell Street Police Headquarters and ask a cop coming out of the building to direct us to the gym. When we get there, we can hardly believe our eyes. There’s five boxing rings, and boxing bags and speedballs and weight-lifting gear and stuff we’ve never seen before. The gym is full of boxers working out on the equipment, skipping, shadow-boxing in front of this big mirror, knocking the crap out of the heavy punching bags and blurring the speedball. Every ring is occupied. There’s a helluva racket. It’s not just boxers hitting punching bags and the skipping rope whipping the jarrah floor, but instructors are yelling at their boxers in the ring and there’s a smell of liniment, sweat and physical exertion.

  Bozo and me just stand there with our mouths halfopen. We’ve never seen anything like this before. Bozo’s got his gloves hanging around his neck and the rest of his clobber, his boxing boots and trunks together with his jockstrap, mouthpiece and a small towel, in an old sports bag he’s carrying.

  ‘Jesus, Mole, have a decko at that!’ he says, almost under his breath.

  ‘This is the big time, Bozo,’ I reply. ‘I suppose they’re all going to the Olympics, hey?’

  We’re both a bit, you know, intimidated. Where to go? What to do next? It’s like walking into a sort of cathedral, only with noise. Nobody’s taking any notice of us, we’re just a couple of kids standing at the door gawking. Then I see Mr Flanagan come out of a door at the far end and move to the ring furthest from us, where there’s two young boxers sparring with another trainer in charge.

  ‘That’s him!’ I say. Bozo nods and we start to walk towards the far ring, careful not to get in the way of any of the boxers, of which there must have been about thirty altogether. We get to where Kevin Flanagan is standing with his arms folded, he’s got his back to us concentrating on the boxers in the ring and doesn’t even see us. We know we’ll have to wait until he’s got a moment. Bozo’s watching one of the boxers, who seems the better of the two, and he’s the one Flanagan’s mostly yelling instructions at.

  ‘Box him, Johnny, go in fast, come out fast, don’t mix it, move, lad!’ Kevin Flanagan shouts up at the ring.

  ‘That’s him,’ Bozo says, almost as though he’s speaking to himself. ‘Who?’

  ‘The flyweight.’ I can see this bloke’s a flyweight, ‘So?’ ‘The one Mr Flanagan says will be too good for me.’ Just then Kevin Flanagan sees us. ‘Hello there, Bozo, thought you might show up today, got a bell from Big Jack Donovan about you coming.’

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Flanagan,’Bozo says and I say the same.

  ‘Afternoon, lads.’ He shouts to the two boxers sparring,

  ‘That’ll do for a moment, take five, stay warm.’ The two boxers stop and the bloke who’s been in the ring with them puts a towel around each of their shoulders. The boxers climb down through the ropes. ‘Let me introduce you,’ Kevin Flanagan says. ‘Bozo Maloney, Johnny Thomas and Eddie Blake.’ He points to the coach still standing in the ring, ‘And Mr Jones.’

  ‘Gidday,’ they both say, not too interested. Johnny Thomas doesn’t even look up. Mr Jones nods his head.

  ‘And Mole Maloney.’

  ‘Gidday,’ we say to the two boxers, then ‘Good afternoon’ to Mr Jones.

  Thomas now looks up, ‘Bozo and Mole, they your real names, that what yer was christened?’ ‘Yup,’ says Bozo. ‘What’s it to you?’

  I can’t believe my ears, Bozo’s not the sort to pick a fight, not outside the ring anyway. Besides we wasn’t christened those names.

  Johnny Thomas laughs. ‘Bozo’s a clown’s name, mate. You a bit of a clown then?’ He’s got his head to one side and this little smile, you just know he’s a real smart-arse.

  Bozo looks him in the eyes. ‘And a mole is a rodent.’ He turns to me, ‘What d’ya reckon, Mole, think we’ve got stupid names?’

  ‘Whoa there, lads!’ Mr Flanagan interjects. ‘Steady on, Johnny, you too, Bozo.’

  ‘Sure,’ Thomas says, ‘but they’ve still got bloody stupid names.’

  ‘That’s enough, boys,’ Mr Flanagan says and turns to Bozo and me. ‘Come, I’ll show you around. There’s everything here you could wish for, all mod cons, no expense spared, reckon we’d have got bugger-all from the government, wasn’t for the Olympics. Now we just have to ask.’

  Bozo looks down at his boots then up at Johnny Thomas. ‘I’d rather spar with him, Mr Flanagan,’ he says, pointing to Thomas.

  ‘Now then, Bozo, Johnny here is three or four years older than you, don’t be impatient, mate.’

  ‘Who’s he think he is?’ Thomas says, pushing his glove out so it touches Bozo’s chest.

  Bozo knocks Thomas’s arm away, not even looking at him, addressing himself to Mr Flanagan. ‘It’s only sparring, sir,’ Bozo says quickly, ‘If I get taught a lesson, that’s why I came.’

  Kevin Flanagan shakes his head, ‘I dunno, Bozo, some lessons ought to wait a bit.’

  ‘Please, Mr Flanagan, we’ve driven seven hours, special to get here.’ He looks up at Johnny Thomas and grins. ‘I’ll never get another chance to get into the ring with someone like John Thomas, who’s gunna be in the Olympics and who is named after a big prick.’

  I can’t believe I’m hearing this, Bozo taking the piss. Thomas is going to slaughterate him. (Maloney word.)

  ‘Shit, who the fuck do you think you are? Cheeky sod!’ Thomas says. You can see now he’s really cranky. ‘I’m ready, Bozo the clown, any time, mate! How about right now?’ He makes as if to climb back into the ring, turning and grabbing the bottom rope.

  ‘Please, Mr Flanagan, just give me three sparring rounds. I want to see what it’s like to spar with someone who’s really good.’ The way Bozo says it you can’t tell whether he’s being sarcastic or means it. I think he means it, because Bozo isn’t like Mike and doesn’t come on all sarcastic at the drop of a hat. But you can see Thomas thinks Bozo’s mocking him again.

  Flanagan laughs, ‘Jimmy Black was really good, Bozo.’

  Bozo indicates Thomas with a nod of his chin, ‘Yeah, but you said he’s better.’

  ‘Okay, Bozo, we’ll put you through your paces, see how you go, but I’m stopping it at any time I think, you unde
rstand?’

  Bozo shakes his head. I’ve never seen him like this. ‘Give me one round first please, Mr Flanagan? One round where whatever happens you don’t stop us. After that, whatever you say, sir.’

  Eddie Blake, the other boxer, hasn’t said a word up to this point. Now he looks at Bozo, his head to one side, and he sort of smiles like Thomas did previously. ‘You’ll be bloody lucky to get through it, mate.’ Now he’s taken his mouthpiece out, I can see he’s got two front teeth missing, ‘Johnny’s gunna eat yiz for breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast’s already over, it’s after lunch,’ I say, which is real dumb, you’d expect a little kid to say a thing like that.

  Kevin Flanagan grins and puts his hand on Bozo’s shoulder. ‘Big Jack says you’re a stubborn little bugger, more guts than is spilled on an abattoir floor. It’s not always enough, son. Better think about it, eh? Johnny here is a very good boxer.’

  ‘Then let me find that out for myself, sir,’ Bozo pleads. Kevin Flanagan shakes his head and sighs. ‘G’arn then, get your gear on.’ He points to the change room. ‘There’s headgear in the big box, wear it.’ He looks up at Thomas, ‘You too, Johnny, put your headguard back on when you go back in the ring and, in the meantime, stay warm.’ Then he calls to Bozo again, ‘When you’ve got your clobber on, get onto the speedball, then five minutes on the skipping rope, I don’t want you going into the ring cold. Have you got a jockstrap and a mouthpiece?’ Bozo nods and we go into the dressing room.

  ‘Shit, Bozo, what the fuck are you doing?’ I yell at him.

  ‘That bastard is going to the Olympics. You heard Mr

  Flanagan, he’s a class act and he’s three years older than you.’

  ‘So?’ Bozo says.

  ‘So he’s had three years’ more experience!’ Bozo looks at me and laughs, ‘Mostly with his mouth I’d say. Did you see his build? He’s not had my experience lifting rubbish bins. I don’t suppose I’ll beat him, but I reckon I’ve got the strength to stay in there with him. Just hope I’ve got the speed to hit him back. Be a bit embarrassin’ otherwise. I guess that’s what I’m here to find out.’

  ‘And have him give you a bloody good hiding in the process?’

  Bozo grins again. ‘Mole, everyone gets to take a licking somewhere along the way. We’ve been fighting in Yankalillee and all the country shires since I was twelve and I ain’t been beat yet, how am I gunna know if I’m any good unless I get whupped by someone I can respect? What if I’ve been fighting mug lairs all the way? Country bumpkins like us who don’t know diddly-squat?’

  ‘Jimmy Black wasn’t a mug! You heard Mr Flanagan say so yourself.’

  Bozo shrugs, then starts to pull on his boxing boots, concentrating on doing up the laces. ‘Jimmy Black hadn’t trained in six weeks, his timing was out, he smokes like a chimney. Someone said they saw him pissed, fallin’ about outside a pub in Albury a couple of nights before the fight. Truth is, Jimmy Black ran out of puff halfway through the second round. Kevin Flanagan knew that, he just didn’t say. I’m a big hero in Yankalillee for fighting an Abo bloke who was way out of condition and who beat me in the first round when he still had some puff left.’

  ‘So now you have to show you’re an even bigger hero by fighting a white bloke who’s in tiptop shape and is probably going to the Olympics?’ I wish Mike was here, Mike would give Bozo a real tongue-lashing.

  Bozo ties the lace of the second boot and then sits up and looks at me. ‘I’ll be eighteen when the next Olympics comes around. If I’m going to make it, I’m gunna have to fight in the city where the real boxing talent is, where I can be seen. You know what that means, Mole?’

  ‘No, what? You mean you’ll have to leave Yankalillee? Leave us?’ I can’t imagine life without my brothers, Bozo in particular. There’s a sort of hole in me since Sarah’s gone.

  ‘Nah, it means catching the train to Melbourne every weekend, sleeping over at Sarah’s and coming back the next day. It means using all the money I can make fixing things for my boxing career, it’s two pounds, sixteen shillings and threepence there and back every week.’

  It’s just like Bozo to have worked it all out already. To have done the sums. Now he looks at me, he’s got this real serious expression on his face. ‘Look, mate, now’s my chance to find out whether it’s gunna be worth it. Whether I’ve got what it takes? Find out what my chances are if I work my arse off to go to the Olympics in four years. If this bloke gives me a real good belting today and if I don’t reckon I can reach his standard, then perhaps I’ll be able to make up me mind, see.’ He grins, ‘One way or t’other, I’ll know if Bozo Maloney is good enough to go all the way.’

  Like I said earlier, Bozo doesn’t do nothing without thinking about it first. He’s the original spoon-out-of-thesink boy. On the other hand, just going into the ring with Thomas is, in my opinion, a whole drawer full of cutlery left lying in the bottom of the sink. If he’s thought this whole thing out, like he suggests, and if getting a boxing lesson is part of his plan, my only hope is that my brother doesn’t get the boxing lesson of his life and gets himself hurt bad in the process.

  Bozo now goes to this big box in the dressing room that’s filled with headgear and gloves, all of them almost new, and he takes one out that’s black.

  ‘Take that one,’ I say, pointing to this beaut-looking red headguard. ‘What’s the diff?’

  ‘It’ll make you look tougher,’ I tell him. But really it’s Mike’s influence on me, Bozo’s boxing gloves are red and now so is the headgear, what Mike calls colour co-ordination. Bozo’s got white trunks with a dark-blue stripe down the side. So now it’s red, white and blue, that’s your colour co-ordination. But I can’t say that to Bozo, so I add, ‘I saw this picture of Joe Louis when he was heavyweight champion of the world and he had red headgear on.’

  Bozo laughs, ‘Joe Louis, eh? Mole, you’re whacked in the head,’ but he picks up the red one and I do up the chin strap for him. Then I help him with his boxing gloves. I like tying the gloves, it’s sort of tough, like you belong to something that’s men’s business which women don’t know about and if you tie them just right it could influence the result of the fight. I know that’s stupid, but it’s what you feel.

  We leave the changing room and find a speedball that isn’t being used. Thomas is close by, he’s removed his gloves and is having a go with the skipping rope making it sing, whurr-whurr-whurr, doing twists and whirls and figures of eight and generally drawing attention to himself. You can tell he likes himself a whole heap.

  Bozo goes to work on the speedball until his back and arms and neck are shiny with sweat. Then he does the skipping rope, just fast and plain, Bozo doesn’t know how to show off, it’s not part of his nature. He’s one of those boxers the punters like straight off, all business in the ring and someone they always know is going to give them one hundred per cent. He’s a pretty good-looking kid too, so the sheilas love him as well.

  ‘Righto,’ Mr Flanagan says, ‘Lemme see your gloves, lads.’ He examines the gloves, unties Bozo’s left glove and does it up again. I blush for shame. I’ve done it lots of times and nobody’s said anything before. Mr Flanagan looks at Thomas’s gloves and nods. ‘In the ring, boys. Bozo, you take the blue corner.’

  The two of them climb up into the ring and so does Kevin Flanagan. Thomas is snuffling and snorting into his gloves and smacking them together and looking tough, halfspitting out his mouthpiece and then drawing it back into his mouth again, setting about the business of intimidating Bozo. He’s also walking around and throwing punches in the air and looking over at Bozo’s corner, trying to catch his eye.

  I don’t know how Bozo feels, but, I’m tellin’ ya, Thomas is doing a damn good job on me, I get this real scared feeling just looking at him. I forgot to say he’s got this thin moustache like Errol Flynn, which helps make him look real nasty. If Johnny Thomas is as cranky as I think he is, then sparks are
gunna fly.

  On the other hand, just looking at Bozo, you’d think he was half-asleep because he doesn’t appear to notice Thomas. He stands in his corner with his arms by his sides, his head down looking at the floor. But that’s the thing, see. Bozo standing there makes you feel confident. He’s got this silence about him, no fuss . . . he’s, well, just Bozo Maloney, the Boy Boxer you can trust.

  Some sort of buzz must have gone around the gym because several boxers have stopped what they’re doing and they’ve come over to watch. The thing is, they don’t know Bozo is several years younger. He’s got a better build than Thomas, stronger around the shoulders, and the arms and his stomach muscles can be seen, every one of them perfect, like plaited rope. There’s a lot of garbage-bin lifting that’s gone into making them look like that. Though mine don’t. Maybe when I stop being a kid?

  Bozo’s father, the Yank marine, was Polish or something. Nancy was never too sure and Bozo’s skin is tanned a nice brown, not like the rest of us Maloneys, who’ve got freckles and turn reddish-pink in the sun. Nancy says it’s because we’ve become overcivilised, primitive Africans are black and we’re the extreme opposite. Overcivilised. It don’t sound like a Maloney though, does it?

  For an Australian, Thomas is white as a Pommie migrant. It doesn’t look like he’s been out in the sun ever. There’s not a freckle, nothing. He’s probably spent his whole life in the gym and that’s why he’s so good. Even I know snow-white skin doesn’t mean he isn’t tough.

  ‘This is a sparring session, understand?’ Mr Flanagan says sternly. ‘No funny stuff, okay?’ He says this looking at Thomas. ‘We’ll let it go for the first round, see your form,

  Bozo, then I’ll try to be useful. See if I can help a bit. Couple of things I saw in your fight with Jimmy Black need correcting.’

  When he says the name ‘Jimmy Black’, Thomas looks up suddenly. You remember, Bozo and Jimmy Black had a hard fight which could have gone either way. I don’t know if it’s Kevin Flanagan’s way of telling him that Bozo’s gunna be no pushover, or he just means what he says, that Bozo needs a bit of coaching help.