Champion

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘I can ask him though?’

  ‘All right, ask. Not in the mornings. After two o’clock.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Betts.’ I grinned around, for this was a triumph – my Yank coming to school, me getting the class off some work. All my sums were right too, when Miss Betts marked them. What a day! Only Leo Yukich wasn’t impressed. He hardly spoke a word to me when we carried the milk crate back.

  Chapter 3

  Canoe

  I circled my bike round him on the road outside the school.

  ‘Want a dub?’

  He looked uncertain for a moment, then jumped on the bar. I had meant to take him as far as the turn-off to the vineyard – Kettle Creek Wines – but when I stopped at the corner he said, ‘Come and have a go in my canoe?’

  ‘You bet. I better tell Dad though. I’m supposed to sweep the shop.’

  We rode into town. I leaned my bike on the veranda post and went inside. Dad was cutting Bob Davies’ hair. He had him in the chair sheeted like a ghost and was giving him a short back and sides, taking his time so he could blarney at him about the duties of a law-abiding citizen. He winked at me as I came in. Leo hadn’t been in the shop before. His father cut his hair. The forest of lotions and creams, the range of clippers and combs and brushes on the marble-topped sideboard intrigued him. As Dad yacked on to Davies, Leo slipped by me and examined them. When he thought I wasn’t looking he put his finger in the Brylcreem pot and hid a dollop in his palm.

  Davies said, ‘You’re a good barber, Alf, and a damn poor liar.’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Dad said, ‘in front of my boy! But tell me, Bob, what harm does a little bet do? People want some fun in their lives. They need to be kings for a day, not going round with long faces – ’ Dad pulled one – ‘mustn’t do this, mustn’t do that. It turns our boys in blue into bogeymen, Bob. You know, I’m sometimes tempted to take up bookmaking myself, as a social service, for morale, what with Hitler and his pals around.’

  ‘Ha!’ Davies said.

  The Ozark boys, Marv and Herb, came in.

  ‘Tell me, boys,’ Dad said, stepping away from Davies, ‘do I look like a liar to you?’

  It startled them. ‘Ain’t nobody calling you that,’ Herb said. Herb was the skinny one with boil scars.

  ‘We came in for that free game of pool,’ Marvin said.

  ‘Sure thing,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll set up a table.’ He started for the back room, where the tables were.

  ‘Wait on, Alf,’ Bob Davies said, ‘how about some oil on my hair?’

  Marv, the big American – he was broad right down his body from his shoulders to his behind, and thick-necked too, and not so flabby as I’d thought – Marv turned round. None of us had guessed the way an American from the South would see Bob Davies.

  ‘You hear that, Herb? You hear this nigra giving orders?’

  ‘Aw, Marv, he ain’t a nigra, he’s a May-or-ree,’ Herb said.

  Marv took no notice. He said to Dad, ‘What you cuttin’ his hair for anyways? I thought this was a white man’s saloon.’

  Dad always knew when actions were better than words. My Dad never missed a trick. Davies’ mouth had dropped a little open, he was getting ready to give Marv a blast, but Dad got in before him. He spun the chair – it was one of those revolving chairs, very expensive, but Dad believed in having the best – he spun it half round until Davies was facing the Ozark boys. Then he whipped away the sheet and picked up Davies’ helmet from his lap and put it on his (Davies’) head – and there he was, Constable Davies, in his full police uniform.

  ‘Meet Constable Davies,’ Dad said.

  Davies played along. With a kind of American drawl, he said, ‘While you’re in town you boys watch your mouths.’

  Well, Marv had a pink skin but now it went red. I don’t think he was used to people getting the better of him. He was going to answer back, but Herb gave him a series of little shoves, like moving a stubborn cow along, and got him out of the barbershop into the pool room. I said to Leo scornfully, ‘The big one’s fat. My one’s got the Purple Heart.’ Leo had a huge grin on his face. He told me later on it was the best thing he’d ever seen.

  Dad turned Davies back. He lifted the helmet off his head. ‘Southern boys. Don’t know any better. I’ll go in there and take their money off them.’

  ‘You leave them alone.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Bob. Oil, eh?’ Instead of going to the jar he went to Leo and opened his hand and took the Brylcreem Leo had pinched, without looking at him, as though he always got it from there. Leo had not noticed the mirrors round the shop. Dad saw everything. It was Leo’s turn to go red; and I was pleased the Pascoes had scored a win against him.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I’m going out to Leo’s to see his canoe. I’ll sweep out later.’

  Dad was rubbing Brylcreem in Davies’ hair. He looked at Leo sharply as we left. He hadn’t recognised him up till then.

  ‘Hey, young Yukich!’ Dad came after us over the footpath. He sent a glance inside to see that Davies was in the chair. ‘Tell your old man I’ll be out to see him.’

  ‘All right,’ Leo said.

  ‘I’ve got something he might like.’ He winked at Leo. ‘To sweeten his sherry.’

  ‘Da-ad,’ I protested.

  ‘Nothing wrong with doing business, son.’ He wiped the remains of the Brylcreem in my hair and went back inside.

  We rode out to Leo’s past the Stewart farm, where we saw Dawn walking towards the creek, and past my Grandma and Grandpa Crombie’s place. We didn’t stop there. Grandma wasn’t home anyway, I’d seen her in town on her motorbike, wearing her goggles and leather helmet and leather gloves, with her white hair streaming out behind and her pink and blue floral print dress flapping on her thighs – and of course I’d looked the other way, though just as I loved Mum and Dad I loved my Grandma. The sidecar of the bike held a sack of vegetables, I guessed she was taking them to Mum. There’d be lots of greens and pumpkin in the next week. But more of Grandma later, she comes later. A lot of what I know about Dawn I learnt from her.

  We went past their place, saw Grandpa through the open door of his shed, working on his amphibian, went whooping down the hill towards the vineyard, with me standing up on the pedals and Leo on the carrier behind, legs out wide to keep our balance. The vineyard had been a farm once and gone to scrub. Stipan Yukich, coming down from the north in the twenties, had bought it cheap and cleared it and planted vines. Everyone had laughed at him, the Dally who thought New Zealanders would drink wine, and in a way they were right, Stipan had to make port and sherry, extra sweet, to make a living. Now, with sugar short, he was having hard times. Only the Americans kept him from going broke.

  We rode up a dusty road between vine rows and came to the house, a weatherboard cottage built by the original owner. Vines on overhead trellises made a shady cavern in front of it. Leo jumped off the bike and went into a shed at the edge of the yard. Barrels on their sides lined a corridor and vats stood beyond them like giant mixing bowls.

  ‘Dad.’

  Stipan and Matty were scraping out a barrel. I knew Matty because Gloria was going out with him – a good-looking boy of seventeen, a good rugby player and tennis player – and I knew Stipan by sight. But until he stood up I hadn’t realised how huge he was. He was, I suppose, six foot six.

  ‘This is Rex, Dad,’ Leo said. ‘We’re going in my canoe.’ He added something in Dalmatian and Matty said something too. I heard Dad’s name in it so he was telling Stipan who I was.

  Stipan offered his hand. ‘How you do?’

  ‘How do you do,’ Matty corrected kindly.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said, awed by his size. My hand in his was like a matchbox in a builder’s clamp. He felt how brittle it was and didn’t squeeze.

  ‘Mr Pascoe’s coming to see you, Dad. He’s got some sugar,’ Leo said.

  Matty repeated that in Dalmatian, and grinned at me, ‘He’s always got something, your old man.’

  ‘Where he get suga
r?’ Stipan’s big bony face had a look of surprise.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ashamed.

  ‘Sugar good for sherry. Not real wine. You like wine?’

  ‘I’ve never tasted it.’

  ‘Taste now.’

  He ran a glass from a barrel. I couldn’t believe it when he offered it to me, full to the brim. He gave a little ceremonious bow of his head.

  ‘No,’ I began.

  ‘Go on,’ Matty said. ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I’m not allowed.’

  ‘Have a sip. I’ll drink the rest.’

  ‘I will,’ Leo said.

  So I took the glass, and sipped, and gagged on it and almost spat it out. I’d sneaked a sip of port or sherry at home; but this was…‘Sour!’ I thought they were playing a joke on me.

  Matty frowned. Leo was furious. ‘It’s supposed to be like that. God, you’re dumb.’ He looked as if he would punch me.

  Stipan said sadly, ‘You no like? Only like sugar?’ He sighed and took the glass. ‘I drink.’ He swallowed the wine in a single gulp, then went down on his knees and started scraping out the barrel again.

  Leo pulled me roughly. ‘Come on.’ I knew I’d failed a test, but I still thought they were crazy, drinking stuff that was sour.

  ‘Rex!’ Matty called. I looked back. ‘Tell Gloria I’ll be at the flicks tonight.’

  Leo didn’t give me time to say yes. He pulled me out the back door into the sunlight. The vines stretched away in straight lines, with dark green leaves and bunches of grapes turning purple. The canoe stood upright against the back wall of the shed. It was made of canvas on a wooden frame. Two paddles poked out of it like hands. We got on either side and carried it down the drive, along the road, down the paddocks at the edge of Stewarts’ farm, to a little muddy beach in the estuary. Hard work! But once launched, the canoe made everything easy. We glided over the water with shallow paddle strokes, Leo in front, me behind, heading along the edge of the cliffs and past the fringes of the mangrove jungle. It was half tide and the incoming water helped us along. The nearer mangrove trees had drowned trunks. A fizz and crackle sounded further in, where advancing water ran into crab holes. A smell of salt and rot and ripeness hung in the air. It would have been easy to imagine crocodiles basking in the mud and snakes sliding in the crooked trunks. But Leo’s mind wasn’t working that way.

  ‘Dad makes the best wine in the world.’

  ‘Sure. Okay.’

  ‘Only dumb buggers don’t like wine.’

  I had no answer to that. We paddled on.

  ‘He used to carry sacks of gum twenty miles on his back when he was young.’

  I didn’t know what he meant. I’d never heard of the kauri gum trade. I said, ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Mum’s dead.’ He dug his paddle in and turned us into a side creek running up the back of Stewarts’ farm. It was spooky up there. High mangroves reached down with crooked arms. The only sound was the splash of paddles. As the creek got narrower I said, ‘Jap subs could hide up here.’

  ‘They’d get stuck in the mud.’ Leo wasn’t going to help me fantasise.

  We went round a bend and saw a launch tied to a rotting jetty. It leaned outwards as though its keel was fixed on an angle in the mud.

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘Ma Stewart, probably,’ Leo said.

  ‘Let’s go on board.’

  ‘It’ll probably sink.’

  We paddled up. It was one of those old narrow-gutted launches with high sides and a deck-house like a roadman’s hut. The paint was flaking and rot had eaten into the hull. We could just make out the name Rose painted on the bow.

  Leo stopped paddling. ‘There’s someone on it.’ We saw a face lift up over the bow and duck away.

  ‘It’s a Jap spy.’ Although, of course, I’d seen who it was.

  ‘Sure, he came by parachute,’ Leo said.

  We went alongside, close enough to touch it with our paddles. But as we banged and poked it Dawn stood up with one foot on the rail. She looked six or seven feet tall. She held a tin bucket full of water and she threw it at us in a sheet. I got a mouthful and nearly capsized the canoe.

  ‘Get out,’ Dawn screeched. ‘This is my launch.’

  Leo was back-paddling. He’d got the worst of the water and was wetter than me. ‘Keep your launch. Who wants it?’

  She dipped her hand in the bucket and threw a handful of watery mud at us. It freckled our shirts.

  ‘Get out of my creek.’

  I tried scooping water at her with my paddle and nearly tipped us out again. Dawn laughed. She was standing on the bow, barelegged, with her dress tucked in her bloomers and her hair hanging over her face and she looked like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. She threw her bucket in – it was on a rope – and hauled up more water. We turned the canoe and got out of range.

  ‘She’s barmy. She’s only a Maori anyway.’

  Leo turned and looked at me. ‘And I’m a Dally.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  He took no notice. ‘Okay, Stewart,’ he yelled, ‘it’s your launch.’

  We paddled out of the creek and back to the beach. Leo said nothing on the way. ‘Grab it,’ he snarled at me when we stepped out. ‘Jeez, you’re a weakling.’

  ‘I am not. It’s got water in it.’

  ‘Well tip it out. Not that way, dummy, the other way.’

  We hid the canoe in some bracken.

  ‘You show anyone and I’ll belt you,’ Leo said.

  ‘Why would I show them?’

  He grabbed my arm and gave me the Chinese burn.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘You’ll get worse than that.’

  ‘I won’t show.’

  ‘I only needed you to help carry it anyway.’ He started off, running easily on the clay track and I sat down and put my sandals on. I could not work out what had gone wrong but I hated Leo. I knew he would beat me in a fight – and he could climb the flag pole and he owned the canoe. The only good thing I had was my Yank. I didn’t run after Leo but walked up the paddocks and collected my bike and rode to Dad’s shop. On the way I started feeling better. Buddy Storm would be getting on the bus in Auckland now. Who needed Leo, who needed square-heads, when I had him?

  I swept the shop and billiard room and rode home and had tea. Then I went to my bedroom and put on a fresh shirt and pants. I combed my hair. The spare bed had a clean pillowcase and clean sheets and a counterpane with fold marks from its time in the drawer. I took my picture of the Yank and Jap from my schoolbag and pinned it on the wall beside the flag.

  ‘Rex, we’ll be late,’ Mum called from the kitchen.

  ‘Coming.’ I made a fierce bayonet lunge in imitation of Lootenant Buddy Storm.

  Dad wasn’t coming to the bus stop. Mum didn’t think we should meet our soldier with a hearse. She and I and Gloria set out down Barrington Road. Mum had put on lipstick and a bangle and a brooch. Gloria was wearing her best dress. I thought that showed the Pascoes knew the proper way to do things. I wished though we had a proper car. Buddy Storm would think we were poor. We got to the stop in front of the post office just as the bus turned into town at the other end. The sun was going down behind the hills. It made us squint across a yellow glare.

  ‘We’re going to have a lovely sunset for him,’ Mum said.

  The bus pulled up and three or four passengers got off. Last came our American soldier. We saw his uniform moving down the aisle and his army bag bumping on his knees. He came down the steps.

  I saw his face.

  He was a Negro.

  Chapter 4

  Jackson Coop

  ‘Negro’ was the word that we used then. ‘Black’ was supposed to be insulting. Today it’s the other way round.

  He stood there all alone, with his cap in one hand and his bag in the other, feeling, I guess, that he’d come to the end of the world, our tin-pot town, our single street with paddocks at the end of it and sea beyond the paddocks and then nothin
g but the empty sky. He looked out there and then looked at the hills; and swallowed. I saw his Adam’s apple bounce. He licked his lips.

  Mum stepped up to him and Gloria went a step or two, although she whispered at me, ‘She didn’t say this.’ I couldn’t make my feet move. I stood where I was while Mum said, ‘Mr Coop? I’m Bernice Pascoe. I’m so pleased. I thought they mightn’t send you.’ She meant they mightn’t send a Negro to a white family.

  He shifted his bag and took her offered hand awkwardly, and let it drop.

  ‘Jackson Coop, ma’am. It sure is nice of you to invite me.’ He said it with great care, as though he’d practised it but didn’t have the words exactly right.

  Mum beckoned us.

  ‘These are my children. Gloria…’

  Gloria shook hands with him.

  ‘…and Rex. Come on, Rex.’

  I went up to him. I didn’t look in his face. I took his hand and felt it squeeze a bit and then we both let go at the same time.

  ‘Howdy, Rex.’

  I stepped back and wiped my hand on my trouser leg. It wasn’t deliberate, I just found my hand wiping there. Jackson Coop saw. Mum did not see.

  ‘He’s been looking forward to having you here so much. We all have. Let’s go home.’ Her words came in a happy gush. ‘Rex, you carry Mr Coop’s bag.’

  ‘No, ma’am –’

  ‘He’s dying to, aren’t you Rex? So don’t you argue, you’re our guest.’ She gave my elbow a little push and I reached out and took the bag and felt it jerk my shoulder down.

  ‘It weighs some,’ Jackson Coop said.

  ‘Rex is strong. Now off we go. It isn’t far. You don’t mind Shanks’s pony?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Walking. It’s an expression.’

  ‘I’m used to walking, ma’am.’

  Mum smiled at Gloria. ‘Isn’t “ma’am” nice? Come on then. Gloria on the other side so Mr Coop won’t be lonely.’ How merry and girlish she was. ‘And Rex brings up the rear. Giddy-up.’

  Off we went. And Rex was soon very much in the rear. The bag weighed some, as Jackson Coop had said, but it wasn’t that. I did not want to be seen with them. Lopsided, I went along, and heard Mum’s chatter and soft single words from ‘our Yank’. I’d been waiting for Lootenant Buddy Storm off that bus, and look who came. A friend of Dad’s who was ‘in the know’ about all sorts of things had told him once that the Negroes in the forces were ‘the scourings of the slums’. He had it from a colonel of Marines. And Jackson Coop (what sort of name was that?) was only a private. I saw it, Pte, stencilled on his bag. I had no doubt he was from the slums.