Champion

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘George Perry didn’t want to pay.’

  ‘George never wants to pay. He gets round here like Phar Lap when he has a win.’

  I watched Dad count the money and put it away.

  ‘Jack’s been a boxer.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘He’s won some fights by knockouts.’

  ‘And lost some too,’ Jack said. He was idly rolling balls into the pockets.

  Dad threw a speculative look at him. I guess right there he started working out a use for Jack. But all he said was, ‘Don’t talk about losing, it’s bad for the kidneys.’

  Marv and Herb walked in. They stopped short, seeing Jack at the table.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ Dad said. ‘There’s time for one game then I’m closing up.’

  Marv was a great blusher but he blushed with anger and insult not embarrassment. A man like him doesn’t get embarrassed and is angry and insulted most of the time. I knew what the colouring-up of his face meant – and so did Jack, who gave a sideways look at him then rolled another ball into a pocket.

  ‘You got a table for white folks here?’ Marv said.

  Dad did a little double take, trying to make things comic. It didn’t work. So he said, ‘All tables the same. She’s set up for snooker down the end. Two bob each.’

  Marv looked at Jack. ‘Oughter get a discount.’

  ‘Aw, Marv,’ Herb said. He was always saying that. He put two coins in Dad’s hand. ‘Come on. I’ll break.’

  They took cues from the rack and Herb broke up the balls, and Marv, still sending looks at Jack from his pale blue eyes – mad sort of eyes – lined up his shot. He leaned across the table, potting for a red in the corner pocket, but he miscued – oh it was deliberate – and the cue ball jumped the cushion and rolled across the floor to Jack’s feet.

  ‘Well, shoot!’ Marv said. ‘I guess I need some more chalk.’ Then casually to Jack, ‘Pick that up, boy.’

  I thought he meant me. I was the only boy there. I bent to pick the ball up.

  ‘Not you. The nigra.’

  ‘Aw, Marv.’

  Jack didn’t move. Well, he took just a short step back from the table. His eyes were very watchful and I saw he wasn’t scared but was confused. Marv would not make him pick up the ball. On the other hand he didn’t want to fight, not with me there.

  Everybody had forgotten Dad. But it never does to overlook him. He might have been fat and comical but in certain situations Dad was proficient. He stepped across and picked up the ball. He put it on the Ozark boys’ table, then reached underneath to a little ledge and came up with the butt end of a cue, a two-foot length. A cut-down cue makes a deadly club. Dad smiled. ‘No fighting, boys.’ He tapped the club casually on the back of his hand, meaning that’s where he would whack Marv if he tried anything.

  Marv went redder. His eyes seemed to go a paler shade. Marv was a sort of Viking, a berserker, and he was, I think, close to letting go.

  ‘You get him out.’

  ‘We don’t have any colour bar,’ Dad said. ‘You want me to call the MPs?’

  ‘Alf,’ Jack said, ‘it’s okay. Me and Rex are going.’ He moved to the door. ‘Come on, Rex.’ If he hadn’t left there would have been a fight. There’s no stopping men like Marv when their blood is up. Jack knew them well and knew that Dad would get into the fight and get himself hurt. He steered me out the door and through the shop, into the street.

  ‘You could have beaten him,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You weren’t scared.’

  ‘Can’t let yourself be scared of men like Marv. I been frontin’ up to them all my life.’ He grinned at me. ‘Your daddy, he’s a tiger. But I didn’ want him in no fight.’

  ‘Dad was great.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s okay. You’re a lucky boy.’ We walked along. ‘Men like that,’ he gestured back at the poolroom, meaning Marv, ‘killed my daddy.’ He saw my look of fright and disbelief. ‘A mob of them, they chase him in an alley. An’ Daddy, he can’t climb that wall in time. They pull him down and kick him.’

  I waited; but that little bit was all of it. ‘He was dead?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘But – why?’

  ‘Black man, Rex. You heard ole Marv. They killin’ lots of niggers ’bout that time.’

  ‘They can’t do that.’

  Jack laughed. He should have been angry but I amused him too much. He laughed happily.

  ‘If anyone did that to my father…I’d…I’d get a gun and I’d go after them and I wouldn’t stop…’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack said, ‘too right.’ He’d picked up that bit of slang from us. ‘I wasn’t that big, Rex.’ He measured with his hands again. ‘Not so big as a rat.’

  ‘The police –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, ‘the police. Hey, let’s ride this thing instead of pushin’.’ He straddled the back mudguard of my bike. I climbed on, he kicked us along, and that’s how we arrived home, wobbling up Barrington Road, laughing our heads off.

  Mum gave us mince and dumplings for tea. And lots of silver beet and mashed potatoes. And sago pudding.

  I dreamed that night of mobs and Marvs and rats as big as dogs, and Jack standing up to them and other times running away.

  I stood by his side.

  I ran away too.

  Chapter 10

  Gala day

  Our gala raised money for the War Effort. Jack and Grandpa got the amphibian running and Grandpa sold threepenny rides round the football field. He wasn’t ready to try it on the water, there were too many leaks. But chuggity-chug, round and round the wheeled dinghy went, with Grandpa at the wheel in a borrowed sailor’s jacket and braided hat.

  I could drive the amphib. Grandpa had let me have a turn in the paddock by the garden, with Jack as ‘co-pilot’. He wouldn’t let me drive it at the gala. I had other duties anyway.

  Dawn was there, working on Grandma’s vegetable stall. But what Mrs Stewart gave with one hand she had to take back with the other. Dawn was so happy to be going. She was out in the cowshed as the sun came up, whistling as she milked into her bucket and singing songs as she hosed the yard. So Mrs Stewart made her unhappy. (Perhaps she didn’t do it deliberately, it was just a habit with her to put a damper on happiness.) She looked in the two urns on the tray of the truck.

  ‘Give me that hose.’

  Dawn made a small shake of her head.

  ‘Come on. Give.’

  Dawn handed up the hose. Mrs Stewart plunged it in an urn.

  ‘Turn it up.’

  Dawn obeyed.

  ‘Harder. And don’t you look at me all biggy-eyed. They ruined my husband in their war. They left me on a farm that’ll hardly grow gorse, with a mortgage the size of Mt Cook round my neck. Twenty years – and Rose – and you. Stop looking at me!’ She pulled out the hose and thrust it into the second urn. ‘Well now they can have water in their milk. They wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Turn it on harder.’

  Jack and I stood on the porch and watched Dawn coming up the street. We wondered why she looked so hangdog. She gave a little grin as she found the candy bar he’d left in the billy, but it only lasted a second. I went down and brought the billy back.

  Jack had taken his place at the table. Gloria was jiving to radio music by the settee. I didn’t like the way her skirt flew out and showed her bloomers. Mum brought a pot from the stove.

  ‘Oatmeal,’ Jack said.

  ‘Porridge,’ Gloria cried, correcting him.

  ‘Yeah, porridge.’ He watched her dance. ‘Loosen them hips. Hey, now you’ve got it.’

  I brought a jug to the table.

  ‘And real milk,’ Jack said.

  Dad came in with his racebook. He looked in the jug. ‘Real water, if you ask me. She’s going to get caught.’

  ‘Listen to who’s talking,’ Gloria said.

  ‘I don’t cheat,’ Dad said huffily. He saw Mum bending at the stove and whacked her behind with his folded race-book. H
e pulled her away and did some jive steps.

  ‘Cold hands, Alf.’

  ‘I’ll warm them up.’ He held his hands in front of the stove.

  Jack put milk and sugar on his porridge and took a spoonful. ‘It tastes okay to me.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve got so much sugar.’ Dad was troubled by a memory. ‘Into thin air, two whole sacks. Vanished. Poof!’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Jack said.

  ‘It wasn’t George. I asked him.’

  Jack wanted to get away from that subject. He asked Mum how her poem was getting on.

  ‘Finished,’ she said. ‘Handed in.’

  ‘You’ll win, Mum,’ Gloria said, sitting down.

  ‘As long as it rhymes,’ Dad said. He looked at his plate. ‘Podge, stodge.’

  Mum put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him into his chair. ‘Seat, eat.’

  Jack laughed. He was at home with us now. I went into the bedroom and came back with his Purple Heart pinned on my shirt. Later in the morning, when Gloria asked for something to wear, he fitted his cap on her head at a jaunty angle. Dressed like that, with Mum in her gypsy costume, we got in the hearse after lunch and drove to the gala.

  There were stalls and raffles and games and competitions and running races, a tug of war, a greasy pig, hoop-las, a shooting range, a tea tent where, at a table, Gypsy Nell studied tea leaves in people’s cups, and told them how lucky they would be. Gypsy Nell was Mum. She wore a scarf round her head and brass curtain rings as ear-rings and had her eyebrows darkened with soot. ‘Crossa my palm with seelver,’ she quavered in a fake Italian voice.

  Over at the edge of the parking field Dad had a radio wired to the battery of the hearse. Jack had helped him set it up. Dad wasn’t going to miss the races. He sold beer to selected customers. Dad was in business for himself. We kept away from him that afternoon, pretending he was nothing to do with us.

  Grandma had every sort of vegetable on her stall. Her motorbike stood beside it with the sidecar overflowing with extra stock. Dawn weighed out beans, tomatoes, kumara, pumpkin halves, on her scales. Stipan Yukich, in a dark suit too small for him and a tightly knotted tie, bought her largest pumpkin and carried it round under his arm for the rest of the day.

  He eyed Grandma’s parsnip wine uneasily. ‘You put me out of business.’

  Grandma blushed. ‘Take a bottle free.’

  ‘No, no, I have some left in the last bottle. And thank you for the worms. I eat them fry with batter.’ He kept his face straight and Grandma didn’t decide to laugh until he’d gone away.

  Matty was in his best clothes. Every time he spotted Gloria he whipped out his comb and slicked his hair.

  Who else was there? Mr Dent, conducting the town band. Miss Betts, painted up, glamorous, but speaking like a teacher whenever she came across someone from school. Herb and Marv were there. They soon learned where the beer was. Once, when Bob Davies walked by two car rows away, they had to hide with Dad in the macrocarpa hedge. Marv didn’t like hiding from a Maori cop.

  Jack and I teamed up with Leo. Jack sat between us on the greasy pole and we belted him with sacks filled with straw. He had to turn half round to get at me but soon knocked me off with a couple of swipes. Then he and Leo fought, and Leo’s arm worked so fast Jack couldn’t get a hit in. Leo’s sack thumped him everywhere, ribs and arms and head and face, and Jack tumbled down and lay beside me on the bed of hay under the pole, looking up at Leo with a half-scared expression. Leo raised his arms in victory. He seemed half drunk with hitting. The straw dust spun about him like golden gnats. In things requiring speed, balance, toughness, dexterity, no one could beat Leo, not even Jack.

  Later on Leo and I won the three-legged race – and Leo won his age group sprint by a dozen yards.

  We bought toffee apples and went across to watch the amphibian rides. Grandpa was doing great business. People reckoned the amphibian was better than Bob Semple’s tank. Four at a time could ride in it and children could sit at the back and work the tiller, pretending to steer. Up front we’d set my BB gun on a tripod but that came off early in the day and Grandpa put it out of harm’s way in what he liked to call ‘the bilges’.

  We decided not to have a ride. We could ride in the amphib when we liked. Most of the children from our class went around. So did Mr Dent. So did Bob Davies. Next in the queue were Matty and Gloria. Gloria stood on the box Grandpa used as a step, and Matty, being gallant, vaulted in and held out his hand to help her up. Marv and Herb were next in line. Marv saw his chance with Gloria. He stepped up close behind her, put his hands on her waist and lifted her easily into her seat.

  ‘There you are, little lady.’

  I had a quick look at Jack. He didn’t like it. The Pascoes were his family. Matty didn’t like it either but there was nothing he could do. But Gloria, although she blushed, didn’t mind. Marv and Herb climbed in and the amphibian sank inches under their weight. Grandpa started off. He went across the field and started back. Marv was talking with Gloria. When they came close to the waiting crowd he saw Jack. His head made a bull-like butt and his shoulders swelled. The amphibian turned and came along the front of the crowd. As it went past us Marv reached down and grabbed my BB gun. He stood up, straddle-legged, and aimed at Jack.

  ‘Blam! Blam!’

  I felt Jack jerk. His chest hollowed and his arms hooked round. His head dived for cover in his shoulders. I saw a roll of white in his eyes and white teeth flashing in his mouth. His lips set rigidly, squared off. He looked as if bullets had gone through him.

  ‘Jack?’

  Marv saw what he had done. He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Boy, you’re dead.’

  Jack opened his eyes. He blinked. He straightened up. But somehow he was smaller than before.

  ‘Are you all right, Jack?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m okay. Let’s get out.’

  We went back through the crowd, past Stipan Yukich holding his pumpkin and looking from his great height at Marv and Jack and back at Marv again. We walked through the stalls, past Dawn weighing beetroot, to the tea tent.

  ‘Have a cup of tea, Jack.’

  ‘Yeah, I will. You kids go and enjoy yourselves.’

  He went in and we heard Mum’s Gypsy Nell voice, ‘Ah, the talla dark stra-anger.’

  Jack managed a grin. He went across to her and sat in the customer’s chair.

  ‘Gypsy Nell also reads palms.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jack said. We watched while he found a shilling and put it in her hand. Mum opened his palm and traced his lines. ‘You come from fa-ar land.’

  ‘Anyone knows that,’ Leo said. We went away.

  ‘Can she really tell fortunes?’

  ‘She can a bit. She says so anyway. I don’t know.’ Only the gala made Mum’s act respectable.

  ‘Did you see Jack’s face?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I reckon it’s because he’s been wounded.’

  I agreed. I was feeling a bit as though I’d been shot myself.

  ‘That Marv’s a bastard.’

  ‘Jack could beat him.’ But I wasn’t sure any longer. I wanted a hero and Jack would not take that shape.

  What did Mum tell him in the tent? Standard things. ‘You love life.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You love to be happy. You make people happy.’

  ‘Well, maybe…’

  ‘You must beware of water. Do not travel on the sea.’

  ‘That ain’t easy.’

  ‘I see…’ What did she see? I asked her later on and she wouldn’t say. And I asked Jack. He replied that he didn’t know. She’d glimpsed something that she didn’t like and she wouldn’t tell him what it was. She pretended nothing bad was in his palm and told him easy things like, ‘You’ll be lucky in love.’ But Mum claimed it was all a game, all hocus-pocus. ‘Let’s forget it.’

  Leo and I watched the mallet game. Men took their jackets off and flexed their shoulders, spat on their palms. They picked the malle
t up and set their legs apart and made gargantuan swings and the slug ran up the groove at the bell – but never reached it. The tension must have been set very strong. The prize was a cake. It seemed that no one was going to win, and George Perry, roped in to run the game, must have been thinking he’d get off with it himself when the day was over. Then Marv and Herb came along.

  ‘Lemme have a go at that,’ Marv said.

  ‘The US cavalry has arrived,’ George said sarcastically.

  ‘Gimme a bit of room.’

  People stepped back. Marv was a big man and some of his fat was really muscle, I saw. He set his feet wide and worked his soles into the ground. His grunt when he hit was like a tractor starting. The slug whizzed up the groove and it just, only just, reached the bell, which gave a tiny ‘ding’, lady-like. People cheered. It wasn’t enough for Marv.

  ‘Another one. Pay the man, Herb. More room, folks.’

  He swung the mallet again. This time the bell made a healthy ring.

  ‘Do I win the prize?’

  George Perry, looking sour, picked the cake up from the table. But Stipan Yukich pushed through the crowd from the back. He handed Leo the pumpkin, which almost made him buckle at the knees.

  ‘I try,’ Stipan said. He took his jacket off, draped it on Leo’s shoulder, and rolled up his sleeves. The tight little knot of his tie was exactly the shape of his Adam’s apple.

  ‘Come on the squareheads,’ someone yelled.

  Stipan paid. He took the mallet from Marv – after a little tug of war – and set himself in front of the machine. He rubbed his hands on his shirt. The mallet, sledgehammer-heavy for other men, seemed light enough to be made of balsa. Stipan lifted it, felt its balance, gave a nod. He swung it back easily over his head. He made no grunt, but the ‘whack’ of the blow went racketing through the crowd. The slug took off like a weasel. It struck the bell and knocked it off the pole like someone’s hat. It dangled, vibrating, on its spring, and the bell itself flew off in an arc and hit the toe of Marv’s army boot and dinged again.

  Stipan had a huge grin on his face. Leo beamed. We all cheered. Marv trod the broken bell into the ground but no one took any notice of him. Over beyond the stalls the town band started playing the Colonel Bogey March. That stopped me cheering. I turned and wriggled back through the crowd and ran at top speed for the field. I was supposed to be out there, leading my platoon.