The Power of One (37 page)

Sergeant Borman grinned. “Next time, make the black bastard lick it clean, he is used to eating shit.” He turned to Geel Piet. “That's right, isn't it, kaffir? You all eat each other's shit, don't you?”

Geel Piet had his head bowed and was standing at attention, though his thin, bandy legs, crossed with scars and blobbed with black scar tissue from past bush sores, didn't actually come together at the knees. “No,
baas
, “he said softly. There was no fear in his voice, only a sort of resignation. He seemed to know what would happen next.

The warder reached out and grabbed him by his canvas shirt. “When I say so, you say yes, understand? Now, do you eat shit, kaffir?”

“Yes,
baas,
” Geel Piet replied.

“Loud! Say it loud, you shit-eating bastard!”

“YES,
BAAS!

“Yes,
baas,
what?”

“Yes,
baas,
we eat each other's shit!”

The sergeant from Pretoria turned to us. “There you are, Professor. I told you they eat each other's shit. Next time, make him lick it up, it will be a proper treat for him.” He turned and walked away.

Geel Piet came padding over to us, his bare feet making hardly any sound on the sprung wooden floor. “Thank you, big
baas,”
he said with a grin. “He is right, man, in prison we all eat shit.” He turned to me as he picked up the bucket. “Your feet, small
baas,
box with your feet, punch clean so it is a scoring shot. No clinches, that way a bigger boxer can push you over. Good luck, small
baas,
the people are with you.”

“Thank you, Geel Piet, tell the people I thank them.”

“Ag,
man, it is nothing, the people love you, you are fighting for them.” He was gone.

Doc cleared his throat to break the silence. “Maybe now we can play Chopin, yes?”

I gave him a big hug. “That sure was quick thinking, Doc.”

He chuckled. “Not so bad for a brokink-down old piano player,
jaV
He frowned suddenly. “I wonder what wants the kommandant?”

We were to leave for Nelspruit, a distance of some forty miles, at eight the following morning. Though I avoided having to rest on Friday afternoon, I had been ordered to bed at six o'clock. I woke as usual just before dawn and lay in bed trying to imagine the day ahead. What if I was beaten first off? How would I hide my despair? With seven Eastern Transvaal teams competing, I had to win twice to get to the final. I had never boxed six rounds in my life, and even if I got through them I would have to box another three in the finals. What if I lost concentration and the other kid pushed me over? Even if I was winning, Fd lose because I'd hit the canvas!

I couldn't stand the “What ifs” any longer, and I quickly got out of bed and dressed and ran through the garden. In a little more than ten minutes I was on top of the hill, sitting on our rock.

It was early spring and the dawn wind was cold. I shivered a little as I watched the light bleed into the valley and merge with the darkened town below me, smudging the darkness until the roofs and streets and trees were rubbed clean. The jacaranda trees were not yet in bloom, but patches of bright red from the spring-flowering flamboyant trees already dotted the town. I tried to think how Granpa Chook would have looked at the situation. He would have taken things in his stride, just like any other day. While Granpa Chook was a less important mentor now, he remained a sort of checkpoint in my life, a reference on how to behave in a tight spot. I thought of Hoppie too. If only Hoppie could have been there to see me. “First with your head and then with your heart, Peekay.” I could almost hear his cheerful and reassuring voice.

After a while I felt much calmer. I made my way back down the hill as the sun began to rise. Some of the aloes, mostly the taller
Aloe ferox,
were showing early bloom. I watched as a ray of sunlight caught a tiny jeweled honeysucker as it hovered around a spray of orange aloe blossom. Its long, hooked needle beak probed for nectar, the tiny bird's wings beating so fast they held it suspended in one spot, too fast even to make a blur in the surrounding air. I imagined being able to punch that fast, my opponent retelling the fight to someone else. “I was still thinking about throwing a right when the welterweight champion of the world hit me three hundred times on the chin.” Even to me it sounded improbable.

When I got back to the house, Dee and Dum had prepared breakfast, brown kaffircorn porridge, fried eggs, and bacon. On the kitchen table stood my school lunch tin. After their day spent as purveyors of sandwiches to the Earl of Sandwich Fund at the Easter fete they regarded themselves as world authorities on the sandwich, and my school lunch was always a bit of a surprise. Grated carrot and jam was one of the combinations that would crop up once in a while, or avocado pear and peanut butter. I had drawn the line at onion and papaya, and gooseberry jam and Marmite was another variety struck off their culinary repertoire.

I wondered briefly what they'd packed to sustain me, hopefully for nine rounds of boxing, but refrained from looking. Until, unable to contain themselves, they opened the tin to show me six pumpkin scones neatly wrapped in greaseproof paper. “We baked them last night, your favorite!” Dum said, and I could see they were both very pleased with themselves.

I packed all my stuff into my school satchel, including my beautiful boxing boots, which Dee had given another polish, even though they were spotless. At half past seven I had already said my farewells to my granpa and my mother and was sitting on the front wall waiting for the blue prison light utility which was to pick me up. I could have gone to the prison, but Gert had said, “No problems, it's only a few minutes out of our way, save the energy for the ring!” Gert wasn't like the other warders. Indeed, all the kids thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. He liked to help people, and he once told me he only hit kaffirs if they really did wrong. “A kaffir hurts also, maybe not like a white man, ‘cause they more like monkeys, but they hurt also when you hit them.”

After breakfast, when I had gone to bid my granpa good-bye, I put the question to him about being knocked down so that even if I was winning the fight I would lose it. The usual tamping and puffing and lighting up took place. Finally, squinting into a haze of blue smoke, he answered.

“I think you'd best do what I did in the Boer War.”

“What was that?” I asked anxiously.

“Why, lad, run away as much as possible.”

That was the trouble with my granpa. The advice he gave when you needed it most wasn't always very useful.

I saw the blue prison ute coming up the hill with Gert at the wheel. Next to him someone sat reading a newspaper. I couldn't see who it was. Gert stopped outside the gate. “Jump in the back with the other kids, Peekay,” he said cheerfully. I climbed into the back of the ute, helped by one of the others. It was an exciting business, all right, as Gert changed gears and we pulled away. A fourteen-year-old called Bokkie de Beer was in charge, and he told me no one was allowed to stand up. All the other kids were giggling and splurting into their hands as they looked at me.

“What's so funny?” I shouted above the sound of the wind and the roar of the engine. Bokkie de Beer pointed to the rear window of the driver's cabin. I followed his hand and there, framed in the window, wearing his unmistakable panama hat, was the back of Doc's head. I couldn't believe my eyes, and all the kids fell about laughing at my astonishment. I just couldn't believe my good fortune.

It was the first time since my arrival by train three years earlier that I had left the small town. It was a perfectly clear, early spring morning as we traveled across the valley toward a row of distant hills. The thornveld and the flat-topped acacia had already broken into electric green leaf. In a month they would be a mass of tiny pom-poms that would turn the valley into a sea of yellow and pink.

The road from Barberton was tarred all the way, and by nine-thirty we'd reached Nelspruit. My windblown skin felt tight around the eyes and cheeks, and I was glad to get out of the back of the ute when we drew to a halt in a parking lot behind the town hall. I rushed to Doc's side to open the door for him. His blue eyes were shining, and I think he was almost as excited as I was.

“We are together outside again, Peekay. It is goot
Ja!
Absoloodle.”

“How did you escape?” I asked clumsily.

He chuckled. “With the permission of the kommandant. That's what he wished to see me about after breakfast yesterday.” He saw me frown. We both knew the way of the prison system, where nothing is given unless something is taken in return. Doc shrugged. “It is not so much he wants. He wants only I should play a little Chopin when the brigadier comes from Pretoria next month.”

I knew how Doc felt about playing in public. He refused to play at any of the town concerts and had long since retired as a musician. While he had overcome his fear when he triumphed at the Beethoven lunchtime recital in the market square, Doc was a perfectionist and it gave him great pain not to meet the standards he demanded for himself. When I told him Mrs. Boxall had said there was no one in Barberton who didn't think he was the greatest pianist they had ever heard, he had replied, “You must thank Madame Boxall for her kindness, but I am too old and too weak to inflict badly played Beethoven and Mozart on myself.”

“You should have said no!” I said.

“Tch-tch, Peekay, then I would not see you in your debut. One day I will say I was there when the welterweight champion of the world made his boxing debut. Absoloodle!”

“You still shouldn't have.”

“Beethoven yes, Mozart yes, Brahms yes, but Chopin I can still play enough not to tear myself to little bits. I will play Chopin to this Mr. Brigadier. That is not so hard
,ja”

We entered the town hall through a back door and walked down a corridor until we reached a room that said “Barberton Blou” on a piece of paper stuck on the door. The room smelled of dust and sweat, even though nobody had changed yet. Lieutenant Smit was standing against the far wall, and next to him stood Klipkop.

“This is where you will change today, but not all at once, hey?” The room tittered. “This morning are the preliminary fights for the kids and this afternoon for the weight divisions. Tonight, starting six o'clock, the finals. Nobody leaves the town hall, and if I catch anyone drinking a beer, I'm warning you now, there'll be trouble. We come here to win, and that is what we are going to do! Okay, so what's our motto?”

“One for all and all for one!” we all shouted. Doc put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt very proud. “I wish Geel Piet was with us,” I whispered. The room emptied and Klipkop shouted for the kids to stay behind. Doc, who was in charge of first aid, left to fetch the towels and the first aid kit from the parking lot but promised to be right back.

Klipkop grinned. “Today, man, I'm Geel Piet.”

“Does that mean we can hit you and you can't hit back?” Bokkie de Beer said cheekily, and we all laughed.

Klipkop smiled. “I will look after you, and the lieutenant and me will be your seconds. You can all get changed now and I'll fetch you in fifteen minutes. Don't nobody go nowhere, you hear?”

I found a corner, took my boots from my book satchel, and put them on first. All the kids crowded around. “Where'd you get those, man?” Bokkie de Beer exclaimed. I had been too excited to think up an explanation.

“My—my granpa made them,” I stammered.

“Boy, you lucky having a bootmaker for your granpa,” Fonnie Kruger said.

“Well, he's not really a bootmaker, more a sort of gardener.”

“Well, he's blery clever, that's all I can say,” Bokkie de Beer said enviously, and the other kids seemed to agree with him.

I rolled my gray school socks down so they made a collar just above the boots. Then I put my lovely blue singlet on and the blue boxing shorts with the yellow stripe down the side. Geel Piet had sized the waist perfectly, but the length was wishful thinking. The bottoms of the shorts went way past my knees. When I stood up, the other four kids broke up. Maatie Snyman and Nels Stekhoven even rolled on the floor. I guess I must have looked pretty funny with my sparrow legs sticking out, but I also felt terribly proud.

Fonnie Kruger and I were the first of the Barberton Blues to fight as we were in the under-twelves, the most junior division. We waited for Klipkop and followed him into the town hall. Kids from other major towns in the Eastern Transvaal were standing in groups with adults, and they too were changed and ready. I looked around, wondering whom among them I would have to fight.

Doc entered the hall and moved over to me. We sat on two chairs, slightly away, but within easy beckoning distance, from the others. Doc held my hand, and I think he was more nervous than I was. He had taken out his bandanna and was wiping his brow. “I think examinations in the conversatorium in Leipzig when I was so big as you was not so bad as this,
Ja
. Absoloodle.”