Champion

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘Yes, Miss Betts?’

  ‘Take your bag. You can have the rest of the afternoon off.’

  Dawn grabbed her bag and almost ran to the door. We heard a voice outside say, ‘Dawnie, love,’ and high heels clatter again; and from the jeep a Yankee laugh. The engine roared and they were off.

  ‘Powder and paint!’ Miss Betts said – although she didn’t spare them on herself. ‘Well, what a pity Dawn will miss our experiment. Some of you will have to tell her about it. What we’re measuring, children, is the specific gravity of the milk. That means the amount of water in it. School milk. Copy this down.’ She read the hydrometer. ‘Eighty-seven per cent. Exactly normal. Now, McDonalds’.’ That read eighty-seven too. ‘So that confirms it. Now, number three, Stewarts‘ milk.’ She put the bulb in and left it bouncing – made it bounce deliberately, I think, to keep her little comedy running longer. It stopped at last. She bent down to desk-top level to read. I saw one eye go huge through the top of the jar. She took her time. Then she rested on straightened arms and looked at the class. She showed all her teeth in a smile.

  ‘How very strange.’

  Jim Whittle guffawed.

  Dawn, meanwhile, was on a picnic. The jeep sped back through town and turned along the beach road. Grandma, on her bike, with a sack of horse manure from Dunwoodies’ farm as passenger, was folded in the dust it left behind, but she made out Rose and Dawn and a pink-faced American with glinting specs. She hoped that Dawn would have a happy time.

  They came to the beach and spread a rug and then a tablecloth on top of it. Rose laid out food. Dawn, telling Grandma, mimicked her.

  ‘Look, Dawnie, real ham. Ham in a tin. And look at this, goody gumdrops, a pudding in a tin.’

  ‘Smile, kid. I’m Santa Claus,’ said Lootenant Paretsky. (Dad should have met him, he was in Supply.)

  There was also whisky in the basket – that, at least, is what Dawn thought it was.

  ‘Ooh, Stan.’ Then Rose said quickly, ‘Lootenant Paretsky has been fighting in the war so we have to make sure he has a good time.’

  Dawn thought Rose was beautiful that day. She could not understand how her cheeks had grown so pink and her lips so red and her hair so curly. She did not seem like a mother at all.

  Dawn had no bathing suit and so could not swim. Rose and Lootenant Paretsky let their afternoon tea digest, then changed in the bushes and Rose skipped into the tiny waves and shrieked as though they were ten-foot ones. The Lootenant, his pink waist bobbing, chased after her. ‘They only went in up to their knees,’ Dawn said.

  He chased her in the shallows and round and round she went, shrieking like a girl, and keeping just away from his hooked fingers. In the end she let herself be caught – showing, Grandma guessed, some skill in it. (It seemed to me Grandma was sympathetic to Rose.) They fell over in the waves, then sat with the water up to their waists and Paretsky kissed her. Then Rose was up and off again. Paretsky yelled, a bit bad-tempered Dawn thought, ‘Rosie, I’m pooped.’ Rose let herself be caught again, easily. So it went. Dawn sat cross-legged on the rug and watched.

  I saw them arrive back in town. The jeep stopped close to the barbershop. I’d just arrived from school and was leaning my bike on the veranda post. Dawn was in the middle and she climbed out across her mother’s knees. I thought I’d never seen anyone prettier than Rose Stewart. She seized Dawn and kissed her. That embarrassed me so I looked at Paretsky and saw him glancing at his watch. He had a smear of lipstick on his cheek.

  Dawn got down. ‘I think we’d better go or I’m going to cry,’ Rose said.

  Paretsky leaned across her and gave Dawn a candy bar. He winked at her. ‘That’s for having such a peach of a mom.’ The jeep roared. I’m sure he didn’t need to roar it so much. It went off with a spitting of gravel.

  ‘Goodbye, love. ’Bye my little Dawnie. Don’t tell Grandma we were here.’

  Away they went, Rose waving. Dawn stood there a moment, her schoolbag trailing from its strap. Then she rubbed her cheek where Rose had kissed her. She turned and came past me. I wanted to stop her and say something kind. I knew how I would feel if my mother was running round with a Yank. But she went by with never a glance. I should have told her about the hydrometer test so that she could have warned her grandma. She was too far down the road when I remembered. I walked a little way and watched her cross the domain. Halfway over she found the candy bar in her hand. She swung her arm and sent it flying away. It fell between two small boys playing marbles in the dust. They picked it up and looked at it and ran away fast.

  Dawn went home. Later on she went to the launch. It must have been lonely without Jack.

  Chapter 13

  Awol

  I was lonely too. I was confused. I could not work out how I’d come to like Jack so much. What were the steps? I knew he wasn’t perfect. I knew he was scared of things, scared of Japs. In the water, dog-paddling (trying to), he was worse than a primer kid. But on that first night he was away I tried reading Rockfist Rogan and Bill Ross, and Jack kept interrupting, his face kept getting in the way. He wasn’t fighting Marv or taming dogs or doing jive – nothing like that. He was walking, sitting, talking – grinning at me. I said his name out loud a couple of times when I remembered I wouldn’t see him again. As for Rockfist, he was getting unreal. I read a story about striped pyjamas his aunt sent him and how his friends tied them on his Spitfire as a joke, and later on Rockfist waved them from the cockpit of a German fighter he’d stolen so his own squadron wouldn’t shoot him down. I started feeling too old for that sort of stuff.

  ‘When will Jack’s first letter get here?’ I asked Mum in the morning.

  ‘Good heavens, not for days. I wouldn’t expect him to write too often, Rex, not in the war.’

  ‘He promised to write.’

  ‘Well, he will. Not yet though.’

  I went to school. Said nothing to Dawn, though plenty of other kids told her about the hydrometer test. At morning playtime I played French cricket with half a dozen boys. Leo joined in. He won the bat and kept it for a long time, but wandered off when he was out.

  After lunch I had to drill my platoon. I was tired of it and wished I could resign but knew it wasn’t possible in the war. Mr Dent stood on a chair clicking his teeth and trying to look like Freyberg as we marched by. Miss Betts had ridden into town at the start of lunchtime. Although we didn’t know it, she’d gone to the police station with the result of her hydrometer test. Bob Davies agreed to pass it on, and maybe a milk inspector would come, but he refused to act on it himself. Miss Betts should know that sort of thing was no good. How was anyone to know she hadn’t put water in the milk herself?

  Miss Betts was in a temper when she came back to school. She wheeled her bike through the gate and I didn’t see her.

  ‘Platoon,’ I yelled, ‘left wheel!’

  They made their usual ragged turn, and ran smack-bang into Miss Betts. She had to let her bike go and jump back. It went down on the asphalt with a crash and Miss Betts’ pie shot out of the basket. Someone trod on it.

  ‘Pascoe!’ she shrieked; but luckily for me found a better focus for her rage. ‘Mr Dent! Can’t you drill your boys better than that? Oh, my pie. That’s a ninepenny one. Who’s going to pay?’

  She strode at the door. ‘This school is turning into a zoo.’ Dent hurried after her, digging in his pocket. ‘Carry on, Pascoe,’ he managed to say. I put Miss Betts’s bike in the bike shed. Then I tried to get the platoon together. They were kicking bits of pie round the playground. ‘Platoon! Hey, fall in, you jokers.’ They ignored me. I knew if I didn’t make them obey they’d turn me into a joke sergeant major. Then I forgot – forgot the whole thing. A jeep was coming down the hill into town. The two Yanks in it had white helmets and armbands.

  ‘MPs,’ someone yelled, and we ran to the fence and watched them go by. Two big men. They both chewed gum.

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘They must be after deserters.’

  ‘Did
you see their clubs?’

  The jeep went from sight into the main street. I turned from the fence and hunted for Leo. ‘It must be Jack.’

  ‘Who says? They could have come for anything. They might’ve come for wine.’

  Sitting through afternoon school was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I listened for the jeep heading back for Auckland and risked looking out the window whenever I heard a car. Miss Betts was in a stinker of a mood. She caught me once and gave me six.

  As soon as the bell rang I was out of the room. I was at Dad’s shop before most of the others were halfway down the hill.

  George Perry was in the chair and Dad was trimming his eyebrows, a tricky job. He did not look up as I burst in.

  ‘Did you see the MPs?’

  Dad went snip, with a steady hand. ‘Yep. They came in here.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You pay attention, Alf, you’ll have my eye out,’ George said.

  Dad stopped cutting and turned to me. ‘They’re looking for Jack.’

  ‘What? What for?’

  ‘He’s gone AWOL. They’ve been all over town, son. Bob Davies with ’em.’

  ‘At least it keeps Davies off your back,’ George said.

  ‘Why’s he AWOL?’

  Dad shook his head. He felt a tiny bit responsible. ‘It was Marv. He and Jack got in a dust-up in town. When they got off the bus. Someone called the MPs. Jack took off. And he never turned up in camp so I guess he’s running.’

  ‘The darkies are noted for long legs,’ George said.

  I looked at him with hatred, and Dad slapped oil on his head and worked it in, shutting him up.

  ‘They’ve been around to our place, talked with Mum.’

  ‘Why do they think he’ll come to Kettle Creek?’

  ‘It’s the last place he was at. So they think he’ll head this way, poor old Jack. There’s no place he can hide though.’

  ‘No,’ I said. But there was a place. I went out and got on my bike and rode away – and already I was cunning. I rode towards home, then went down a side street and crossed the domain and got on the road to the estuary. Before long I saw Leo ahead, making his way home at a jogtrot.

  ‘Leo!’ I came up fast on my bike. ‘Jack’s run away from camp.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. He got in a fight with Marv. The MPs are after him. He’s coming here.’

  Leo’s eyes swung to the mangrove swamp. ‘Does anyone else know about the launch?’

  ‘Only us.’

  I saw Dawn then, taking a short cut home through a paddock.

  ‘She better come.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I pushed my bike into the bracken. We climbed the fence and chased after Dawn.

  ‘Jack’s run away.’

  ‘The MPs are after him.’

  Like Leo, she looked towards the swamp.

  ‘Who else knows the launch is there?’

  ‘Only Grandma. She never goes.’

  ‘Come on.’ We ran three abreast as far as the mangroves, where Dawn put down her bag and took off her sandals. Then we walked, not talking, along the edge of the swamp to the jetty path. We were afraid. We wanted to find Jack and didn’t want to.

  Still three abreast, we climbed the fence. The wires made a squeak at our triple weight. We paused, not breathing. Down by the jetty something splashed.

  ‘Fish,’ Leo whispered. I tried to believe him. I did not want it to be Jack. We walked along the planks laid on the mud and skirted old-man mangroves, jungle trees, and came to the jetty. Dawn plucked at our shirts.

  ‘Me first.’

  We let her lead. It was her launch. She picked her way over the rotten boards and put both hands on the launch rail – swung one leg over, two. Leo followed. I came last. And there we stood, triangular, waiting for Jack to show himself. Nothing moved. The tide made little whispers and sucks in the mangrove trunks.

  ‘Jack?’ Dawn said.

  No answer.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Jack?’ She stepped up to the deckhouse and looked in. Leo and I peered over her shoulders. We would have seemed a three-headed creature to someone inside. I let my breath out.

  ‘He’s gone somewhere else.’

  Dawn said nothing. She stepped in, eyes going flick – cupboards, table, photo, cushion in the corner. Everything seemed in place to me, nothing was shifted by a single inch.

  Dawn knew better. She stepped across to her old patchwork rug and took the hem two-fingered. She lifted it as though she might uncover something alive. There was Jack’s name – Coop, J. E., Pte – stencilled in faded black on his khaki bag. We heard each other gasp and heard our breathing.

  Dawn let the rug fall into place.

  ‘He did come here.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘Hiding, I suppose.’

  I said nothing. I could not work out what it meant. Good or bad? Good and bad? I did not know. It was as if, in a street I passed through daily, something from down below had lifted a manhole cover, and now the hole was there, empty, black; and I waited for whatever might come out.

  Leo made a sudden lift of his head. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

  For a moment I heard nothing. Then splashing sounded, down-creek. We ran out to the deck. The noise increased. It was like a hippo wallowing. The mangroves parted. Thigh deep in water, Jack appeared, in fatigue trousers and T-shirt. He gave a big wide grin.

  ‘I wasn’t sure it was you so I thought I better lie low.’ He grabbed the stern of the launch and heaved on it to lift himself on board. The deck rocked, making us lurch and shift our feet – and that same lurch went on in my brain. Then Dawn and Leo ran to him and hauled him over the rail. I didn’t move. They hauled him in like a giant fish. He came falling on board, over the rail, with a kind of slither. He lay there a moment, then stood up. He looked very tired. No one spoke.

  ‘Hey, c’mon. It’s me, Jack.’

  ‘The MPs were here,’ Leo said.

  ‘I know. I saw them.’ He grinned. ‘Kept my head down.’ He hauled up a bucket of water and washed his legs. He tried to make everything ordinary.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Dawn said.

  ‘I walked all night. Slept this morning. I found me a nice barn, full of hay. Then I came down the river this afternoon, kinda sneaky.’

  ‘Have you run away?’

  He smiled at her but his eyes were shifty. ‘I had a mite of trouble with ole Marv. He’s kinda persistent. He gives me a shove when we get off the bus. So we had a – altercation. Hey, Rex, I’m lickin’ him, the old right hook. Then I see the MPs comin’, wavin’ their clubs, so I lit out. Thought I’d come back to Kettle Creek an’ see my buddies.’

  It was all evasive. It was not in Jack’s style. His eyes went slewing at me, dropped away, and came up looking somewhere else.

  ‘You’re scared,’ I said.

  ‘Them’s big clubs.’

  ‘You’re scared of the war.’

  He stopped pretending. His eyes held mine. His voice lost its phoney jump and lilt.

  ‘I never knew a man who wasn’t scared of something.’ He sat down on the engine cover. He looked at the deck and swept some muddy water with his foot. ‘Sure I’m scared. I ran away.’

  Dawn said, ‘Have you got something to eat, Jack? Have you got dry clothes?’

  Jack nodded. Then he grinned. ‘Hey, look’t I got.’ He dug in his pocket and brought out an empty cigarette packet – a Philip Morris with a filter tip. ‘Bet you never seen one of those.’ He handed it to me. ‘You’ll have to dry it out, it got kinda wet.’

  I took it and looked at it, and looked at Jack grinning down at me. I crumpled it and threw it away. Then I turned and climbed off the launch and ran along the jetty.

  ‘Rex!’ Dawn called. I heard the alarm in her voice but didn’t stop. I went through the mangroves, climbed the fence, ran up the paddock. The wires squealed again as Leo climbed. ‘Rex,’ he called. I ran up the hill toward
s my bike. His feet were beating closer. He came alongside.

  ‘Stop a minute.’ He tried to hold my shoulder but I shook myself free. ‘Wait, Rex.’ Then he fell back, and made a rush, and brought me down with a tackle. He knelt over me and pinned my shoulders.

  ‘If you bring the MPs they’ll stick him in prison.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ I twisted my head and would not look at him.

  ‘He’s not yellow.’

  I would not look.

  ‘He’s been in the war and he got wounded, so what’s wrong with him being scared? He wasn’t scared of Marv.’

  ‘He’s scared of Japs.’

  ‘So would you if they came with bayonets.’

  I tried to buck him off but he put his forearm on my throat.

  ‘He likes us, we’re his friends. So we should help him.’

  I made no answer. Could not think of one. Friendship seemed like something I must swallow. It hurt like the arm across my throat. I did not want friendship if that was it.

  Leo let me go. He stood up. ‘Go on, be a stinkpot if you like. Get the MPs. Me and Dawn are staying with Jack.’

  He walked away, with swishing feet. I heard him start whistling to show he didn’t care. The grass heads leaned over, fringing the sky. My throat ached where his arm had pressed. I felt a tear roll over the ridge of my cheekbone into my hair, cold as a slug. I swallowed and sniffed and wiped my arm across my eyes.

  ‘Friends,’ I said, and thought it was a stupid ugly word. All the same it could not be got round.

  After a while I stood up and went back to the launch.

  Chapter 14

  Thieving

  ‘What will happen if they catch you?’

  ‘They got a kind of prison. It ain’t very nice.’

  ‘You’ll have to get further away.’

  Jack slapped his hands on the rail. ‘I’ll take my chance with Rose, if it’s okay with you?’

  ‘Can you make her go? You could sail up the coast.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And find a place to hide.’

  I sat on the engine cover and listened, and thought how childish they were, even Jack.