The Power of One (11 page)

My hands in the gloves were just as lost as my feet had felt in the tackies when Mevrou first made me put them on. Only this was different. The gloves felt like old friends. Big, yes, and very clumsy, but not strangers.

“C'mon, kid, hit me,” Hoppie said, sticking out his jaw. I took a jab at him, and his head moved away so my glove simply whizzed through the air. “Again, hit me again.” I pulled my arm back and let go with a terrible punch that landed flush on his chin. Hoppie fell back into the leather seat opposite me, groaning and holding his jaw. “Holy macaroni! You're a killer. A natural-born fighter. You sure planted one on me, man.” He sat up rubbing his jaw, and I began to laugh. “That's the way, little
boetie,
I was beginning to wonder if you knew how to laugh,” he said with a big grin.

And then I started to cry, not blubbing, just tears that wouldn't stop rolling down my cheeks. Hoppie Groenewald picked me up and put me on his lap and I put my arms with the boxing gloves around his neck and buried my head in his blue serge waistcoat. The heavy chain that held the whistle was cool against my face.

“Sometimes it is good to cry,” he said softly. “Sometimes you fight better when you've had a good cry. Now tell old Hoppie what's the matter?”

I couldn't tell him, of course. It was a dumb thing to cry like that, but it was as far as I was prepared to go. I got off his lap. “It's nothing, honest,” I said, going to sit on my side of the compartment.

Hoppie picked up the sucker, which he'd put on the table before we had started to spar, and held it out to me. “You finish it. It will spoil my appetite for my mixed grill. You're still going to have a mixed grill with me, aren't you? I mean, I'm paying and all that.”

I reached for the sucker, but the gloves were still on my hands and we laughed together at the joke. He pulled the gloves off and handed the sucker to me.

“No worries, Peekay. When you grow up you'll be the best damn welterweight in South Africa and nobody, and I mean no-bod-ee, will give Kid Peekay any crapola. I'm telling you, man.”

When we reached Tzaneen, Hoppie pulled down a bunk concealed in the wall above my head, which, to my amazement, turned out to be a proper bed with blankets and sheets. From a slot behind the bunk he took out a pillow with a pillow slip and a small towel. He then put my suitcase on the bed to reserve it, in case other folks came into the compartment at Tzaneen.

Taking me by the hand, we crossed the station platform, which looked much like the one from which we had left, only the platform was longer and the buildings bigger. Opposite the station was a lighted building with a big glass window on which
RAILWAY CAFÉ
was written. Inside were lots of little tables and chairs. Several people were seated, eating and drinking coffee. There was a lot of smoke in the room.

A pretty young lady behind the counter looked up as we entered and gave Hoppie a big smile. “Well, well, look who's here? If it isn't Kid Louis, champion of the railways,” she announced. An older woman came out of the back, wiping her hands on her apron. She came up to Hoppie, and he gave her a big hug.

“Your cheeky daughter is already giving me a hard time,
ounooi,
” Hoppie said. “She needs to go three rounds in the ring with Hoppie Groenewald, and then we'll see who's laughing.” He was grinning from ear to ear.

“So when's your next fight, champ?” the lady behind the counter asked.

“Tomorrow night at the railway club in Gravelotte, a light heavy from the mines. It's the big time for me at last,” Hoppie smiled.

The pretty young lady giggled. “Put two bob on the other bloke for me.” One or two of the other customers also laughed, but in a good-natured way. The older woman was clearing a table for us and fussing around Hoppie. He turned toward me, and, taking my hand, held my arm aloft. “Hello, everyone, I want you to meet Kid Peekay, the next welterweight contender,” he said, keeping his voice serious. I dropped my eyes, not knowing what to do.

“Enough of your nonsense, Hoppie Groenewald. Come sit now or you will not be fed before the train leaves,” the older woman fussed.

The pretty young woman smiled at me. “How would the contender like a strawberry milkshake?” she asked.

I looked at Hoppie. “What's a milkshake, please, Hoppie?”

“A milkshake is heaven,” he said. “Make that two, you lazy frump.” He turned to the older woman, who was still fussing about. “Two super-duper mixed grills please,
ounooi.
Me and my partner here are starving.”

Hoppie was right again, a strawberry milkshake is heaven. When the mixed grill arrived I couldn't believe my eyes. Chop, steak, sausage, bacon, liver, chips, a fried egg, and a tomato. What a blowout! I had never eaten a meal as grand and was quite unable to finish it. Hoppie helped himself to the remaining food on my plate, although I slurped the milkshake, in its aluminum shaker, right down to the last gurgling drop.

The pretty lady came over and sat with us and Hoppie seemed to like her a lot. Her name was Anna and her lips were very shiny and red. The clock above the counter read ten o'clock. It was set into a picture of a beautiful lady in a long white nightdress that clung to her body. She too had very red lips and was smoking a cigarette. The smoke from the cigarette curled up onto the face of the clock, where it turned into running writing. The running writing said, “C to C for satisfaction.” I had never been up as late as this before, and my eyelids felt as though they were made of lead.

The next thing I remembered was Hoppie tucking me into my bunk between the nice clean, cool sheets and the pillow that smelt of starch. “Sleep sweet, old mate,” I heard him say.

The last thing I remembered before I fell asleep again was the deep, comforting feeling of my hands in the boxing gloves. “The equalizers,” Hoppie had called them. Peekay had found the equalizers.

I
woke up early and lay in my bunk listening to the lickity-clack of the rails. Outside in the dawn light lay the gray savannah grasslands. An occasional baobab stood hugely sentinel against the smudged blue sky with the darker blue of the Murchison Range just beginning to break out of the flat horizon. The door of the compartment slid open and Hoppie, dressed only in his white shirt and pants with his braces looped and hanging from his waist, came in carrying a steaming mug of coffee.

“Did you sleep good, Peekay?” He handed me the mug.

“Ja,
thanks, Hoppie. I'm sorry I couldn't stay awake.”

“No worries, little
boetie,
there comes a time for all of us when you can't get up out of your corner.”

I didn't understand the boxing parlance, but it didn't seem to matter. To my amazement Hoppie then lifted the top of the small compartment table to reveal a washbasin underneath. He turned on the taps and hot water came out of one and cold out of the other. He kept running his fingers through the water until he said the temperature was “just right.”

“When you've had your coffee you can have a nice wash and then I'll take you to breakfast,” he said.

“It's okay, Hoppie, I have my breakfast in my suitcase,” I said hastily.

Hoppie looked at me with a grin. “Humph, this I got to see. In your suitcase you have a stove and a frying pan and butter and eggs and bacon and sausages and tomato and toast and jam and coffee?” He gave a low whistle. “That's a magic suitcase you've got there, Peekay.”

“Mevrou gave me sandwiches for the first three meals because my
oupa
didn't send enough money. Only last night we had a mixed grill when I should have eaten the meat one,” I said in a hectic tumbling-out of words.

Hoppie stood for a moment looking out of the carriage window. He seemed to be talking to himself. “Sandwiches, eh? I hate sandwiches. By now the bread is all turned up in the corners and the jam has come through the middle of the bread. I bet it's peach jam. They always have blery peach jam.” He turned to address me directly. “Where are these sandwiches?” I pointed to my suitcase on the seat below my bunk. He stooped down and clicked it open and from the case removed the brown paper package tied with coarse string.

“As your manager, it is my solemn duty to inspect your breakfast. Fighters have to be very careful about the things they eat, you know.” He unwrapped the parcel. Splotches of grease had stained the brown paper. He was right, the bread had curled up at the corners. He removed the slice of bread uppermost on the first sandwich and sniffed the thin brown slices of meat. Then he replaced the slice. He dug down to the bottom two sandwiches. The jam had oozed through the middle of the brown bread while the outside edges had curled inwards, dry and hard.

“Peach!” Hoppie said triumphantly. “Always peach!” He looked up at me, his eyes expressionless. “I have sad news for you, Peekay. These sandwiches have died a horrible death, most likely from a disease they caught in an institution. We must get rid of them immediately before we catch it ourselves.” With that, he slid down the window of the compartment and hurled the sandwiches into the passing landscape. “First class fighters eat first class food. Hurry up and have a wash, Peekay, I'm starving and breakfast comes with the compliments of South African Railways.”

I flung the blanket and sheet back to get down from my bunk and looked down at my headless snake in horror. Hoppie had removed my pants before putting me to bed. My heart pounded. Maybe it had been dark and he hadn't noticed I was a
rooinek.
If he found out, everything was spoiled, just when I was having the greatest adventure in my life.

“C'mon, Peekay, we haven't got all day, you know.” Hoppie pulled his braces over his shoulders.

“I am still full from the mixed grill last night, Hoppie, I can't eat another thing, man.” I quickly pulled the blanket back over me.

“Hey, you're talking to me, man, Hoppie Groenewald. Who you trying to bluff?” He took a step nearer to the bunk and ripped the blanket and sheet off me in one swift movement. My hatless snake was exposed, not six inches from his face. I cupped my hands over it but it was too late, I knew that he knew.

“I'm not the next welterweight contender, Mr. Groenewald, I'm just a
verdomde rooinek
,” I said, my voice breaking as I fought to hold back my tears. It always happens. Just when things are perfect, down comes the retribution.

Hoppie stood quietly in front of me, saying nothing until his silence forced me to raise my downcast eyes and look at him. His eyes were sad, and he shook his head as he spoke. “That's why you're going to be the next champ, Peekay, you've got the reason.” He paused and smiled. “I didn't tell you before, man. You know that bloke who beat me for the title in Pretoria? Well he was English, a
rooinek
like you. He had this left hook, every time it connected it was like a goods train had shunted into me.” Hoppie brought his arms up and lifted me out of the bunk and put me gently down beside the washbasin. “But I think you're going to be even better than him, little
boetie.
C'mon, wash up and let's go eat, man.”

I can tell you, things were looking up, all right. Hoppie took me through to the dining car, which had a snowy tablecloth on every table, silver knives and forks, and starched linen napkins folded to look like dunce's caps. Even the coffee came in a silver pot, with
SAR
in running writing on one side and
SAS
done the same way on the other. A man dressed not unlike Hoppie but without a cap and with a napkin draped across his arm, said good morning and showed us to a small table. He asked Hoppie if it was true that the light heavy whom he was to fight that night had a total of twenty-seven fights with seventeen knockouts to his credit ... a real brawler?

Hoppie said you couldn't believe everything you heard, especially in a railway dining car. That it was the first he'd heard of it. Then he shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “First he's got to catch me, man.” He asked him about something called odds and the man said two to one on the big bloke. Hoppie laughed and gave the man ten bob and the man wrote something in a small book.

The man left and soon returned with toast and two huge plates of bacon and eggs and sausages and tomato, just the way Hoppie had said it would happen. I decided that when I grew up the railways were most definitely for me.

“Are you frightened about tonight?” I asked Hoppie. Although I couldn't imagine him being frightened of anything, I wanted him to know I was on his side. He had told me how it was with a light heavy, and it was obvious the man he was going to fight was to him just as big as the Judge was to me.

Hoppie looked at me for a moment and then washed down the sausage he was chewing with a gulp of coffee. “It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss,” he said, tapping his heart with the handle of his fork. I noticed he held his fork in the wrong hand, and he later explained; a left-handed fighter is called a southpaw. “Being a southpaw helps when you're fighting a big gorilla like the guy tonight. Everything is coming at him the wrong way round. It cuts down his reach, you can get in closer. A straight left becomes a right jab, and that leaves him open for a left hook.”

Hoppie might as well have been speaking Chinese, but it didn't matter: like the feel of my hands in the gloves, the language felt right. A right cross, a left hook, a jab, an uppercut, a straight left. The words and the terms had a direction, they meant business. A set of words that could be turned into action. “You work it like a piston. With me it's the right, you keep it coming all night into the face until you close his eye, then he tries to defend what he can't see and in goes the left, pow, pow, pow all night until the other eye starts to close. Then whammo! The left upper-cut. In a southpaw that's where the knockout lives.”

“Do you think I can do it, Hoppie?” I was desperate for his confidence in me.

“Piece a' cake, Peekay. I already told you, man. You're a natural.” Hoppie's words were like seed pods with wings. They flew straight out of his mouth and into my head, where they germinated in the rich, fertile, receptive soil of my mind.

The remainder of the morning was taken up with Hoppie writing up some books in the guard's van, where he had a bunk, table and washbasin, and a cupboard all to himself. Attached to a hook in the ceiling was a thing he called a speedball, for sharpening your punching. I was too short to reach it, but Hoppie punched it so fast he made it almost disappear. I was beginning to like the whole idea of this boxing business.

Hoppie explained that at Gravelotte the train had to take on antimony from the mines. There would be a nine-hour stop before the train left for Kaapmuiden at eleven o'clock that night. “No worries, little
boetie.
You will be my guest at the fight and then I will put you back on the train.”

At lunch my eyes nearly popped out of my head. We sat down at the same table as before and the man who had been at breakfast, whose name turned out to be Gert, brought Hoppie a huge steak and me a little one.

“Compliments of the cook, Hoppie. The cook's got his whole week's pay down on an odds-on bet with four miners. He says it's rump steak, red in the middle to make you a mean bugger.” Gert laughed. “I reckon his wife is going to be the mean bugger if you don't win.”

Hoppie squinted up at Gert. “I get my head knocked in, the cook loses his money, but the man who keeps the book always wins, eh, Gert?”

Gert looked indignant. “Not always, Hoppie. I dropped a bundle when you lost to that blery
rooinek
in Pretoria.”

“My heart bleeds for you, man. Twenty-nine fights, one loss, and two draws and you've been making book on me since the beginning,” Hoppie said and began to tuck into his steak.

At breakfast we had been in too early to see many other passengers, but at lunch the dining compartment was full and everyone was talking about the fight. Gert was moving from table to table, and in between serving was taking ten-shilling and pound notes from passengers and writing it down in his book.

Hoppie looked up at me, the handle of his fork resting on the table with a piece of red meat spiked on the end. “You a betting man, Peekay?”

I looked at him, confused. “What's a betting man, Hoppie?”

Hoppie laughed. “Mostly a blery fool, little
boetie.
” Then he explained about betting. He signaled for Gert to come over. “What odds will you give the next welterweight contender?” he asked, pointing to me.

Gert asked me how much I had.

“One shilling,” I said nervously.

“Ten to one,” Gert said. “That's the best I can do.”

“Is this an emergency?” I asked, fearful for Granpa's shilling.

“At ten to one? I'll say so!” Hoppie answered.

It took positively ages to get the safety pin inside my pocket loose and then to undo the
doek
Granpa's shilling had been tied into. I handed Gert the shilling, and he wrote something down again in his little book. Hoppie saw the anxiety on my face. It wasn't really my shilling, and he knew it.

“Sometimes in life, doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency, Peekay,” he said.

We arrived in Gravelotte at two-thirty on the dot. The heat of the day was at its most intense and the vapored light shimmered along the railway tracks. Hoppie said the temperature was 108 degrees and tonight would be a sweat bath. There were lots of rails in what Hoppie called the shunting yards, and our train was moved off the main track onto a siding.

“This is where I got my shunting ticket. When the ore comes in from Consolidated Murchison and you got to put together a train in this kind of heat, I'm telling you, Peekay, you know you're alive, man,” Hoppie said, pointing to a little shunting engine moving ore trucks around.

We crossed the tracks and walked through the railway workshops, where they were working on a train. The men stopped and talked to Hoppie and wished him luck and said they'd be there tonight, no way were they going to work overtime. The heat inside the corrugated iron workshops seemed worse than outside and most of the men wore only khaki shorts and boots, their bodies shining from grease and sweat. Hoppie called them “grease monkeys” and said they were the salt of the earth.

We arrived at the railway mess where Hoppie lived. We had a shower and Hoppie opened a brown envelope a mess servant had brought to him when we arrived. He read the letter inside for a long time and then, without a word, put it into the top drawer of the small dressing table in his room. He said it was best to keep my old clothes on because we would have another shower before the fight and I could put a clean shirt and pants on then.

“We are going shopping, little
boetie
, and then to the railway club to meet my seconds and have a good look over the big gorilla I'm fighting tonight. Bring your tackies, Peekay, I have an idea.”