The Power of One

Jackhammer’s taunts. He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. ‘All I can say is, I’m lucky I’m not fighting your mouth, which is a super heavyweight.’

Jackhammer exploded and sprayed beer all over the railway men who were seated opposite him. ‘Come, Peekay, let’s get going, man,’ Hoppie said moving towards the door to the cheers, whistles and claps of the railway men.

Bokkie and Nels followed quickly. Hoppie turned at the door. ‘Keep him sober, gentlemen, I don’t want people to think I beat him ’cause he was drunk!’

Jackhammer Smit half rose in his chair as if to come after us. ‘You fucking midget, I’ll kill you!’ he shouted.

‘You done good,’ Bokkie said, ‘it will take the bastard two rounds just to get over his anger.’ He then told Hoppie to get some rest, that they’d pick us up at the mess at seven-fifteen to drive to the rugby field where the ring had been set up. ‘People are coming from all over the district and from Letsitele and Mica and even as far as Hoedspruit and Tzaneen. I’m telling you, man, there’s big money on this fight, those miners like a bet.’

‘No worries,’ Hoppie said. ‘See you at quarter past seven.’

We walked the short distance to the railway mess. The sun had not yet set over the Murchison range and the day baked on, hot as ever. ‘If it stays hot then that changes the odds.’ Hoppie squinted up into a sky the colour of pewter, his hand cupped above his eyebrow. ‘I think it’s going to be a bastard of a night, Peekay. A real Gravelotte night, hot as hell.’

When we got to the mess Hoppie told me his plan. ‘First we have a shower, then we lie down, but here’s the plan, Peekay, every ten minutes you bring me a mug of water. Even if I say “no more”, even if I beg you, you still bring me a glass every ten minutes, you understand?’

‘Ja, Hoppie, I understand,’ I replied, pleased that I was playing a part in getting him ready. Hoppie took his railway timekeeper from one of the fob pockets of his blue serge waistcoat hanging up behind the door.

‘Every ten minutes, you hear! And you make me drink it, okay little boetie?’

‘I promise, Hoppie,’ I said solemnly as he began to undress for his shower.

The window of Hoppie’s room was wide open and a ceiling fan moved slowly above us. Hoppie lay on the bed wearing only an old pair of khaki shorts. I sat on the cool cement floor with my back against the wall, the big railway timekeeper in my hands. In almost no time at all Hoppie’s body was wet with perspiration and after a while even the sheet was wet. Every ten minutes I went through to the bathroom and brought him a mug of water. After five mugfuls Hoppie turned to me, still on the bed resting on his elbow.

‘It’s an old trick I read about in Ring magazine. Joe Louis was fighting Jack Sharkey. Anyway, it was hot as hell, just like tonight. Joe’s manager made him drink water all afternoon just like us. To cut a long story short, by the eighth round the fight was still pretty even. Then Sharkey started to run out of steam in the tremendous heat. You see, Peekay, the fight was in the open just like tonight and these huge lights were burning down into the ring, the temperature was over one hundred degrees. In a fifteen-round fight a man can lose two pints of water just sweating and if he can’t get it back, I’m telling you, man, he is in big trouble. I dunno just how it works but you can store water up just like a camel sort of, that’s what Joe did and he’s the heavyweight champion of the world now.’

‘What did Mr Jackhammer mean when he said you were a Kaffir lover, Hoppie?’

‘Ag, man, take no notice of that big gorilla, Peekay. He’s just trying to put me off my stride for tonight. You see Joe Louis is a black man. Not a Kaffir like our Kaffirs, black yes, but not stupid and dirty and ignorant. He is what you call a negro, that’s different, man. He’s sort of a white man with a black skin, black on the top, white underneath. But that big gorilla is too stupid to know the difference.’

It was all very complicated, beautiful ladies with skin like honey who were not as good as us and black men who were white men underneath and as good as us. The world sure was a complicated place where people were concerned.

‘I’ve got a nanny just like Joe Louis,’ I said to Hoppie as I rose to get his sixth mug of water.

Hoppie laughed. ‘In that case I’m glad I’m not fighting your nanny tonight, Peekay.’

After a while Hoppie rose from the bed and went to a small dresser and returned with a mouth organ. For a while we sat there and he played Boeremusiek on the mouth organ. He was very good and the tappy country music seemed to cheer him up.

‘A mouth organ is a man’s best friend, Peekay. You can slip it in your pocket and when you’re sad it will make you happy. When you’re happy it can make you want to dance. If you have a mouth organ in your pocket you’ll never starve for company or a good meal. You should try it, it’s a certain cure for loneliness.’

Just then we heard the sound of a piece of steel being hit against another. ‘Time for your dinner,’ Hoppie said, slipping on a pair of shoes without socks and putting on an old shirt.

Dinner at the railway mess was pretty good. I had roast beef and mashed potatoes and beans and tinned peaches and custard. Hoppie had nothing except another glass of water. Other diners crowded round our table and wished Hoppie luck and joked a bit and he introduced me to some of them as the next contender. They all told him they had their money on him and how Jackhammer Smit was weak down below. They almost all said things like, ‘Box him, Hoppie. Stay away from him, wear him out. They say he’s carrying a lot of flab, go for the belly, man. You can hit him all night in the head, but his belly is his weakness.’ When they had left Hoppie said they were nice blokes but if he listened to them he’d be a dead man.

‘You know why he’s called Jackhammer, Peekay?’

‘What’s a jackhammer, Hoppie?’

‘A jackhammer is used in the mines to drill into rock, it weighs one hundred and thirty pounds. Two Kaffirs work a jackhammer, one holds the end and the other the middle as they drill into the sides of a mine shaft. I’m telling you, it’s blerrie hard work for two big Kaffirs. Well, Smit is called Jackhammer because, if he wants, he can hold a jackhammer in place on his own pushing against it with his stomach and holding it in both hands. What do you think that would do to his stomach muscles? I’m telling you, hitting that big gorilla in the solar plexus all night would be like fighting a brick wall.’

‘I know,’ I said excitedly, ‘you keep it coming all night into the face until you close his eye, then he tries to defend against what he can’t see and in goes the left, pow, pow, pow until the other eye starts to close. Then whammo!’

Hoppie rose from the table and looked down at me in surprise. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he exclaimed.

‘You told me, Hoppie. It’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?’

‘Shhhhh… you’ll tell everyone my fight plan, Peekay! My, my, you’re the clever one,’ he said as I followed him from the dining hall.

‘You didn’t say what happened to Jack Sharkey?’

‘Who?’

‘In the heat when Joe Louis fought him and drank all the water?’

‘Oh, Joe knocked him out, I forget what round.’

Bokkie and Nels picked us up in a one-ton truck which had South African Railways, Gravelotte painted on the door. Nels and I sat in the back and Hoppie sat in the front with Bokkie. In the back with me was a small suitcase Hoppie had packed with his boxing boots and red pants made of a lovely shiny material and a blue dressing gown. Hoppie was very proud of his gown and he had held it up to show me the ‘Kid Louis’ embroidered in running writing on the back.

‘You know the lady in the cafe in Tzaneen, the young one?’

‘The pretty one?’ I asked, knowing all along whom he meant.

‘Ja, she’s really pretty, isn’t she? Well, she done this with her own hands.’

‘Is she your nooi? Are you going to marry her, Hoppie?’

‘Ag man, with the war and all that, who knows.’ He had walked over to the dressing table and taken the brown envelope from the top drawer. He tapped the corner of the envelope into the palm of his open hand. ‘These are my call-up papers. They were waiting for me when we got in today. I have to go and fight in the war, Peekay. A man can’t go asking someone to marry him and then go off to a war, it’s not fair.’

I was stunned. How could Hoppie be as nice as he was and fight for Adolf Hitler? If he had got his call-up papers that must mean that Adolf Hitler had arrived and Hoppie would join the Judge in the army that was going to march all the Rooineks, including me, into the sea.

‘Has Hitler arrived already?’ I asked in a fearful voice.