Tent Boxer
By Roy McPherson
Kevin Leigh
‘Dedicated to the memory of Kevin,
every boxer who ever was a gladiator
and set foot under canvas,
Jimmy Sharman Junior & Senior,
Ellie, who always supported me
and made me the stilt walker I am.’
– Roy Maloy
Published 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008 in Victoria Australia by Mac Brothers Publications
Po Box 6319
Point Cook
Victoria
Australia
All rights of content and images reserved.
For more information or feedback email mac@macbroscircus.com
Carnival Culture is a Mac Brothers Publication
© Roy Maloy 2009 publication: current.
TENT BOXER
Preface by the Author
When I left school I had no idea what my life would hold. 15 years later, and I must confess that I have been pleasantly surprised. I joined Mac Brothers Circus as a 19 and toured vast portions of Australia. It was an amazing experience. During that time I met some of the most extraordinary people on earth, and was captivated for life by their amazing stories and the lives they’d lead.
To this day, Kevin Leigh remains one of the most amazing of all of them. He astounded me from our first conversation. He was a walking contradiction; a figure of great simplicity in a time of unendingly intricate complexity. In the years between 1997 and 1999 he told me his story. By that stage his adventures had wound down and he was living in a home for the elderly. I had been volunteering my services at a geriatric hospital by entertaining the residents, and as such gotten to know some of the residents there. I loved offering my services in that way, and it gave me a chance to test out new material for my show.
When I met Kevin I realized quickly that he was one in a million. The first time we met he told me about a man he used to know who supposedly looked just like me. He told me that he had ‘boxed his ears in’ during a one-bout boxing tournament. I wasn’t entirely sure whether to be slightly alarmed by such a tale, so I shifted my chair just out of swinging range. I was right to take him seriously though: it turned out that Kevin was one of the few men in the world who had made a name for himself as one of Jimmy Sharman’s Sideshow Boxers.
As a result of his upbringing he found himself thrown into one of the world’s most esoteric cultures in the Sideshow alley. Week after week he would tell me stories. Each time I arrived he would have prepared another story for me and I could see in his face weather he’d found a good one, a sad one or a great one to tell before he begun. He was the last of the truly great story tellers, but quietly spoken all the same.
What I found most perplexing of all was that he was telling me stories about things that happened in the town where I lived, but that I had never heard of before. Any one of these stories would have made news, surely, but – I had never heard of them happening. I often wondered if he was flat out lying, but, over time I learned that he generally wasn’t.
How could such tales could have gone unrecorded, and more than that, how could an astonishing phenomenon like the tent boxing culture of Sideshow Alley could have vanished almost without a trace? Kevin had fought, bare-knuckled, in a roofless tent, against any and all comers, back and forth across the country for nearly 30 years. He lived his everyday life in a portable town of freak shows and performers of bizarre feats and now there was nearly no record of him.
The characters he described sounded too surreal to be true. Stories featuring one-punch knockouts, a full-grown man overtaken by a dwarf, an elephant rampaging through an alleyway of tents and games—these things were commonplace for Kevin. Any single one of them would have been enough of a story for any ordinary person to dine out on for a lifetime. But he was a long way from ordinary.
For me the most gripping of all his stories was his love affair with Peggy, a girl from a travelling striptease show known as The Dancing Harem. His love for her was as simple as himself— touched by tragedy through the long years, but pure, straight, and blindingly true.
I tried to tell Kevin’s story just as I heard it myself, but with the liberal addition of descriptive prose to make it come alive on the page. Taste, smell, sound and atmosphere have all been added, or at least tampered with, by me, but the story and the characters all appear just as I heard them myself for the first
Chapter 1
Like thousands of other children in the 1920s, Kevin Leigh was born into poverty. His father’s income came from manual labour. He had made a small profit from retailing in mining tools and hardware in the heart of Victoria’s central goldfields, but when the gold dried up, he pulled up stakes and headed for Swan Hill with his family of 3 sons and a pregnant wife.
Soon after they arrived, the new baby arrived too. His older brothers, Syd and Rowan, were 4 and 6 years old when Molly was born. The four children were very different to look at despite the common thread of family resemblance that ran through them all. Syd was thin with straight, snowy blond hair—the image of their mother. Their father had dark, Irish features and curly brown hair, of which Rowan inherited the curls, but in strawberry blonde. Kevin was a good mix of the two, with his mother’s face and his dad’s olive skin and dark curly hair. Molly, the baby, had milk-white skin, cold blue eyes like her mother, and strawberry blonde hair that grew redder as she grew older.
Like many rural Australian towns, Swan Hill was hit catastrophically by the Depression. The Leigh family was not immune. When their family business failed little remained of their hopes and dreams beyond soured memories and a bitter taste in the mouth. As a final blow this unremitting hardship severed the bonds of his parents’ marriage, and the evening of December 12th, 1929, found Kevin and all his siblings sitting in the waiting room of the Salvation Army children’s home in Balart while their father filled in the paperwork before he walked away without even a goodbye.
Kevin’s memory of his life before the children’s home was sketchy at best. He barely remembered his mother and father at all and he couldn’t even be sure whether the memories he did hold were real or just the product of wistful imagination. He knew that his older brothers were likely to remember more than he did but somehow he never asked them. Each child when left at the home possessed a bag containing all their clothing and a very few personal effects. Kevin had found a photo of his family at the bottom of his bag, taken only a month before his family fell apart. He hid it at the bottom of his only dresser drawer in the dormitory, tucked under a brown paper lining where he hoped no one would find it.
He watched his older brothers ‘come of age’ and leave the orphanage at sixteen, a standard rite of passage in the home, but he didn’t feel the loss as much as one might as expect. By then he had lost all sense of the real meaning of having a brother; to him, in the home, ‘brother’ had become just another word. Kevin, Rowan and Syd were in different grades in school, and they were generally placed in different groups for social activities too. So it was that breaking the bond they’d forged in the time they’d spent together was no more difficult for Kevin than watching any other classmate move on.
He became a solitary boy, never making tight friendships with any of the others, and he found himself a popular target for bullies. He was no one’s fool and when he realized that the bullying wasn’t about to stop, he concluded that he could remain their whipping boy or try to make himself invisible to his tormenters. To win a fistfight was to win the fearful admiration of the others in the home. Even when Kevin’s brothers were still there, it was well known that they wouldn’t stand up for him, and he was unwilling to seek advocacy from any adult. Invisibility was his best course of action.
On one of the hottest day Balart had seen in over a decade, the children headed for the home’s swimming pool. This surprising luxury was a vestigial remnant of past glory, when the building that was now home to orphans had originally been the home of local aristocracy. The children’s home couldn’t afford to maintain the pool well properly and it had become green and slimy but still cool and wet—a welcome respite on a hot, hot day, and wildly popular with the children. Other souvenirs of the glory days were a tennis court, now waist-high with weeds, an impenetrably overgrown rose garden, and a dried-up fountain.
On this particular day the children made a beeline for the dormitory to change into their swimsuits when the last bell rang to end classes for the day. Kevin’s was a hand-me-down swimsuit from a stranger named Anthony, whose name remained stitched into the back. It was several sizes too large for him but the drawstring was his salvation—if he tied it very tight he could save himself from the humiliation of having his trunks pulled down by the bullies as a not-so-funny stunt.
The children loved the pool and made it a great social centre where they could joke and play out their uninhibited childish games, but Kevin kept to himself. He liked the cool water, and he liked to watch the others play. Captain Roy Heard, the Salvation Army officer who cared for them, walked slowly around the pool. He was acting as a sort of lifeguard to make sure none of the children hurt themselves or each other. He was a young man to carry the responsibility for a full house of over 30 children and the administration of 5 other staff, but he was a calm, focused, God-fearing man, and the children responded well to him. Kevin knew that Captain Heard would wait to see the last child out of the pool.
Kevin walked around the edge of the pool watching the other children to see who was already in the water, and where he could make the most discreet entrance, and he found a place near the edge where he could put his towel and then walked to the built-in steps of the shallow end.
A new boy had come to the home a month earlier, a 15-year-old named Dukey, who was now skulking around the deep end and appeared to be sizing up the pool and its contents for himself. He was as tall as Captain Heard and easily as muscular as any full-grown man. Kevin was particularly cautious of Dukey who only a week earlier had crashed into Kevin deliberately as he stood at the kitchen sink chopping vegetables for dinner. He chopped his finger pretty good with the impact of collision, but concealed his injury, knowing that drawing attention would only make things worse. By the time his got back to his dorm that night his lacerated finger had bled badly through his makeshift bandage and all down his pocket and pant-leg. He had never seen his own blood before, and he stared at it long and hard before he washed his hands and shoved his old shorts and blood-stained handkerchief into the incinerator.
Unconsciously he stopped in his tracks when he saw Dukey climbing down the ladder into at the deep end. Kevin felt the hard, scabbed top of his index finger and began walking toward the shallow end.
Dukey was not a renowned conversationalist, and this was evident as he now looked around the pool, sizing up the other boys in the water. He never spoke except to mock or order others around, and he had quickly made a bad name for himself around the home. Captain Heard had tried on several occasions tried to talk to him, hoping to find a way past his hostilities to his heart, but so far hadn’t got beyond surly monosyllabic responses.
Kevin slipped into the pool and sunk deep and deeper into is cool green water until he was nearly sitting on the bottom, with only his head above the surface. As he looked around he found the shallow end too crowded for his liking, and he slowly began to drift towards the deep end.
Kevin sank beneath the surface, instantly feeling the silent calm fall over him as the water filled his ears. He could hear echoes of the screams and laughter of the other children nearby. It was a strange sound, as though he was there but not there. After a moment he resurfaced, wiping the water from his face and looking back toward the diving platform. He watched as the boys took off their shoes, socks and shirts and arranged them carefully on the platform alongside their towels. Kevin glared in disgust as they pranced on top of the platform. Still vivid in his memory was an incident earlier that year. He was instinctively inclined to avoid people who could hurt him and he knew from experience that they were exactly that. Not long after his second brothers left the home, the two boys atop the diving board began to pick on Kevin. They made him the butt of their practical jokes, laughing as they pushed him and spat on his shoes; generally making life miserable for him. This kind of bullying was beginning to be old news for Kevin as he’d been through it all before with other bullies. However unlike them, these two were undeterred by his lack of response. It was the only thing Kevin had ever known how to do to defend himself – to ignore the taunts. One day while he was cleaning the dorm, the taller of the boys managed to find the photograph of Kevin’s family under the brown paper in his drawer. Kevin was sitting on his bunk, and when he looked across the room to see his drawer open and his photo in the other boy’s hand he darted across the room. The boy sprung into action and sprang about the room, while the other boys cheered with excitement. ‘Give it back, ya bastard!’ Kevin screamed. Finally, Kevin got within reach he grabbed at the boy’s shirt. Spontaneously, the boy’s shirt made a loud ripping sound as they all realized that Kevin had ripped off the boy’s sleeve. The boy looked at his sleeve, then at Kevin and then tore the little photograph into six pieces. Kevin tried desperately to stop him, but he was too small to compete and the boy threw the little pieces of photograph into the air and walked out of the room. Kevin pensively gathered together the tattered shreds and climbed into his bunk, where he tried to reassemble it. It was his last remaining link with family and home. From then on he hid his treasure in a new hiding place behind a loose skirting board under his bunk, taking it out to reconstruct and gaze at it only when he could be sure no one else would see.
Kevin watched the boys standing on top of the diving platform. They were a year older than he was, and they always seemed to be together. Looking down, he saw the water-distorted image of his own limbs beneath its surface. Following his gaze, the bullies broke into raucous laughter.
He had never a conversation with either of them nor did he have any desire to begin now. The Boys were always talking loudly to one another, but never about anything of importance. To Kevin they had always seemed to have a stalker-like persona. Even though they were loud by nature he knew they were not to be trusted. As they horsed around, flicking one another with their towels, he remembered a summer day two years ago when they had ganged up on him at the home. From his experience when they’d torn up his photo he knew what they were capable of. However, when they joined force in an intimidating show of power to make a point with the other children it just so happened that Kevin was their target yet again.
It had been a hot day that day, and Kevin was wandering in the grassy field behind the property. It was the remnants of what had once been a manicured lawn, but was now waist-high in weeds. It led down to a stream where little catfish and yabbies lived under the rocks. Kevin only went there when he knew no one was watching him and he would catch the little fish and feel then slip about in his fingers. He would never harm them, and he would pretend that it was the same fish he caught each time. It made him smile to think it had grown since last he saw it there and then he would release it again.
Unbeknown to Kevin the two boys had hidden themselves in the grass when they saw him coming. Thinking there was no one else around he walked right into their ambush. He only saw their faces for a fraction of a second before a flash of brilliant white light wiped out everything. He awoke in the field some time later and opened his eyes slowly on the night sky full of stars. It was a battle for him to bring himself to an upright position. His stomach turned. He froze with fear that he would start to vomit and never be able to stop. Once he had struggled his way to a sitting position his head began to reel with a pain he’d never known before—excruciating and dull, engulfing his head with throbbing, like the pounding of some huge drum. He gradually reached back with his hand to find out where the pain was coming from. He could feel something hard, wet, sticky and apparently stuck to the back of his head. He couldn’t feel anything through it. He looked at his hand. In the moonlight he was just able to distinguish a colour on his fingers. He touched his finger to his thumb and felt them stick together. It didn’t make sense. He put his fingers to his mouth, spitting back the deep metallic taste of his own blood—blood from the back of his swollen head. It was so swollen that the skin had grown tight and hard and numb.
His stomach turned. He was so ashamed of not being able to stand up for himself. The blood trickling from his head seemed to ignite his throat and chest with a burning anger as memories of past taunts and torments crowded in on him, and he wished every one of them right back on his attackers. Unwillingly he wept. He groped his way to his hands and knees, feeling the weight of his head hanging heavy between his shoulders. His arms and legs were four black and blue sticks with all the bend gone out of them. He remembered that the boys carried cloth bags of marbles. That accounted for the back of his head, and he assumed that his bruised limbs came from a brutal kicking. Turning his head, he could make out the house lights. Even at a hundred yards they hurt his eyes. Slowly he began to walk back to his dorm, stopping at the pool changing-room to use the mirror and taps. He stood in the dark looking at his silhouette, trying to persuade himself to turn on the light and inspect the damage.
The bright light stunned him for a moment. The sight of his bloodied body stunned him again. Blood dripping from his head trailed down over his face in a red web. Delicately he touched the back of his head again. Still numb. Warm. Swollen. Most of all, wet. He’d never seen so much blood before—so thick, so sticky, so hideously red… His stomach lurched and he braced himself against the basin as he vomited over and over again.
He turned on the tap, which issued a deafening roar. Slowly and methodically he began to wash off the mess, using the small squares of newspaper that hung from a long nail beside the lavatory and served as toilet paper.
Back in his dorm he stood still, listening for sounds. His three room-mates were still in the dining room. His body had been vandalized, his rights violated and his pride crushed. He slid his body between the cool, soft cotton sheets and lay down his heavy head. Blankly he stared at the wall. There was nothing he could think, nothing he could say, and nothing he could do.
His thoughts cleared as he returned to the present moment. In the pool water his skin was beginning to wrinkle. He raised his eyes to look once again at the boys laughing, and he remembered himself in the mirror that night, in the changing-room right next to where they were standing now. He remembered the crushing feeling of humiliating defeat and helplessness he felt as he lay in his bed that night.
As the first boy began to approach the edge of the platform, Kevin looked around the pool to calculate his most likely route into and out of the pool, to avoid becoming his target.
After a quick glance around he thought that his best plan might be to shelter against the side of the pool where he could feel inconspicuous and yet appear casual to any observers. With his eyes fixed on the boys as they positioned themselves at the edge of the diving board, Kevin continued to walk, neck deep, toward the edge of the pool. Slowly but steadily, he moved through the water, gliding gently toward the wall. The first dozen or so steps took him inadvertently into deeper water. Like a fish moving its fins, Kevin waved his hands in the water to propel himself toward the shallow end again.
He glanced toward his goal, a relatively clear spot against the wall. The first of the boys launched himself high in the air, compelling the full attention of all the children in the pool before he plummeted into the water, breaking the surface with barely a ripple. The children broke into applause suitable for the finale of a Royal Variety Performance. Kevin rolled his eyes as he drifted slowly backward toward his safe harbour. He could feel the slimy texture of the pool’s floor with his toes while his yes remained transfixed by the boy at the top of the platform who waited for his moment to dive. Still gliding toward the wall of the pool he was distracted by the top of the tower when he felt himself bump into somebody
He tried to change direction but his momentum in the water wouldn’t allow him to. Uncontrollably he continued drifting into the side of the largest boy in the home, named Dukey. He could no longer escape Dukey’s notice. Like a Beast awaking from a sleep he grabbed Kevin’s forearm in a vicelike grip. Kevin looked back at Dukey helplessly, not knowing what to do. An innocent horror had him in its thrall and Kevin’s heart began to pound.
Dukey’s menacing glare pierced into him and he twisted Kevin’s arm up sharply behind his back. Kevin knew better than to make a commotion as Dukey wrenched his hand up further toward the back of his neck. From his past experience with bullies, Kevin knew that his best option was to hang on tight, make no noise and give no satisfaction to his tormenter. He knew that bullies loved a reaction, and while his silence sometimes made the bully temporarily more irate, in the long term they usually lost interest faster.
Kevin’s sister Molly, who was then only seven years old, had been sitting on one of the many benches dotted around the pool. She was an exceptionally pretty girl with icy blue eyes and fine elfin features. She had such fine red hair and pale skin, in contrast to Kevin’s thick, dark brown curls and almost olive complexion, that she would burn fast on a hot day, so she generally avoided swimming with the other children in favour of sitting in the shade at the side of the pool with a book. As Kevin became entwined with Dukey, he began leaning forward toward the surface of the water to accommodate Dukey’s attack, and to relieve the agonizing pain now coursing through his shoulder. With everyone’s attention on the diving display, Kevin’s sudden movement when Dukey began to twist his arm caught Molly’s eye. She strained to make sense of what she was seeing. At first she didn’t notice the twisted arm, and thought that Dukey has pushed Kevin from behind. But as Dukey kept twisting Kevin’s arm upward until it reached the top of his shoulder blades it became clear to Molly what was going on.
“When I’m finished with ya, they’ll have t’ bury ya here on the spot cos y’ll be too mushie t’ get in t’ a coffin”. Dukey sneered into Kevin’s ear as he forced his arm further up behind his back toward his neck.
In her six or so years at the children’s home, Molly had gradually earned a reputation for being intrepid and fearless. When her mind caught up with the reality of the situation, and she saw what Dukey was doing to her brother, she wasn’t about to fall short of anyone’s expectations. She jumped from her seat, broke into a sprint and ran around the perimeter of the pool, shedding her hat and book as she ran. Upon her approach she leapt from the edge of the pool, into the air, colliding with her bent knees on the back of Dukey’s head, making a tremendous splash. The children who hadn’t noticed Molly running soon stopped what they were doing to award their attention to the commotion. The pool rules were clear, no running and no diving from the sides. Captain Heard swiftly stood from the wooden fruit box he’d been sitting on at the sound of the robust splashing, and began striding toward Molly, Dukey and Kevin. Molly surfaced first, swimming over to the pool’s edge where Kevin had found temporary sanctuary. Dukey followed clutching the back of his head with his hands.
“What’s going on”? Demanded the Captain as he walked toward them.
Molly, who was profusely rubbing and massaging Kevin’s injured shoulder, gestured for him to offer his story to the Captain, but Kevin knew that dobbing resulted in a revenge attack at a later date and he remained silent.
“Kevin”? The Captain questioned.
“Nothin’ Captain, we was just playin’”, mumbled Kevin reluctantly.
“That isn’t true Captain”, piped Molly, “That boy was twisting Kevin’s arm behind his back; all the way to here”, Molly added as she turned Kevin around and pointed at the place between his shoulder blades where his hand had reached.
“Is that true Dukey”? Asked the Captain as he folded his arms.
As Dukey turned his attention to the Captain, he displayed an odd habit, which he tended to do from time to time. He seemed to have a nervous disorder where he would put one hand over his ear whenever he was talking to anyone. It was a peculiar habit, almost as though he were talking through a tiny microphone imbedded in his wrist and the only way he could hear the other person was through an earpiece in his middle finger, which he put deep inside his ear.
“The stupid bitch jumped on m’head”. Answered Dukey, as he put his hand to his ear.
“Righto Dukey, Out of the pool”, ordered the Captain. Dukey however wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from anyone, and he folded his arms and glared.
“Go on you big wart, you heard Captain Heard, get out of the pool”, Molly yelled, the adrenalin still surging through her veins as she continued massaging Kevin’s shoulder wildly to accentuate the damage done to him.
“Molly, that’s enough”, the Captain said softly as he turned his head briefly from Dukey.
“How you gunna make me”? Dukey blurted defiantly, as he again put his finger in his ear and glared.
The Captain paused for a moment, put his hands in his pockets and spoke in a strong, yet gentle tone. It was a firm gesture of authority he used well, along with a stern expression that fell across his face. There was no mistake that this would be the final word on the issue. “Now I want to say this. I have no intention of making you do anything. You have two options Mr Duke. You can do as I say and get out or I’ll personally make sure you stay here until tomorrow morning when I let you out to go to your classes”.
Dukey realised that it wouldn’t be very difficult at all for the Captain to foil any attempts he might make to leave the pool by simply pushing him back into its depths. He further realised that it would become very cold within the next couple of hours and that too would be to his detriment. After a moment of calculating the situation and its implications, Dukey turned, shot a glare at Molly, and then began slowly moving toward the steps of the pool.
“Thank you Mr Duke” The Captain said as Dukey moved up the first step. “Now go and get dressed and head inside for dinner, mate”, the Captain added as he softened his attitude somewhat toward the boy, yet still remembering why he was being disciplined. While the Captain knew that Kevin had been victimised, he would never entertain the idea that Dukey was without hope. He also knew that Dukey needed as much love as any of the other children in the home, and was most likely re-acting to a bad home life. He found a delight in offering the children a love they each had missed out on from not having parents. Yet he also needed to demonstrate to Dukey that an appreciation of the rules was as important as a respect for others, therefore he felt he had to teach Dukey through discipline.
Someone challenging his authority in front of his peers didn’t at all impress Dukey, who could feel the anger building inside of him as he climbed out of the pool. Kevin watched all the while in disbelief, as did the other children in their total silence. For Kevin, this was an entirely new experience. For the first time in his life he was feeling protected, and Captain Heard knew it. The Captain already knew that Kevin was a born victim and an easy target for anyone who wanted to gain status in the home, but today the Captain was determined to show Kevin that he was important.
Slowly, Dukey hauled his massive frame out of the pool and walked around to the bench where his towel hung on a rail. Once he had his towel and shirt, he walked toward the gate of the pool. The only rout he could walk was via the place where Captain Heard was standing. The Captain watched Dukey as he approached him, knowing that he would have to move if Dukey were to be able to pass by. It seemed that the Captain’s curiosity caught hold of the circumstance at hand and he began wondering how Dukey would react to such a situation. Unbeknown to the Captain, Dukey had devised a strategy to do so on his own terms and salvage the respect of his peers. He had estimated that the Captain, being essentially a polite man, would move to let him pass and he would later boast to the other children that he was the boy who made the Captain move from fear of him.
Dukey walked toward the Captain with his towel and shirt in his hand and his shorts still dripping. The Captain didn’t move. Dukey boiled with frustration. Shoving his face nose to nose with the Captain he snarled, “What’re you gonna do if I don’t do what you say?”
A sad and disappointed frown crept across the Captain’s face as he looked at Dukey, standing there in front of him. He knew that Dukey’s world would turn on this moment, and he saw no option but to lay down the law in a way that Dukey would understand.
The Captain said nothing. Slowly he took his hands out of his pockets and he lowered them to his sides, standing like a soldier in front of him. Then he lifted his right index finger and moved it from side to side like a pendulum in front of Dukey’s face. Not sure what was going on, Dukey watched the finger intensely to protect himself against being flicked or, worse, poked in the eye with it. Suddenly, like a shot of lightning, with his left hand the Captain gave Dukey’s shoulder and almighty shoved sending him flying backward into the pool, hitting the water’s surface with a clap.
The shadow of sadness and disappointment still flickered across the Captain’s face despite the smile he gave to Kevin, who stood there wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open. He had never known the Captain to so much as raise his voice in anger, let alone do anything so forceful.
Dukey crawled out of the water, clutching his dripping towel and shirt in one hand and clutching at his side with the other, glaring at the Captain all the while. He seemed winded by his unexpected collision with the water. Dukey was determined not to show his pain and risk making more of a public a display of his humiliating defeat than he had. He shot a menacing glance at Kevin and he began to slowly walk toward the Captain again. This time he stopped two feet away. The Captain looked over Dukey’s shoulder to see Kevin and Molly still standing in the water, their eyes transfixed on the action. When Molly saw that the Captain was looking at them, she began madly rubbing Kevin’s shoulder again, to show just how badly Dukey had hurt him. The Captain again put his hands in his pockets.
“Kevin,” he asked, “Is your arm still sore?”
Molly jumped in, “Yes, it is!! And he’ll probably never be able to use it again--“, she blurted out before Kevin cut her off, seeing in his mind’s eye upcoming horrific episodes of the revenge of Dukey that he wanted to avoid at all costs.
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” he contradicted her, and then, catching Molly’s reproving eye, “well, maybe a little…”
“Well then, Dukey, I reckon you owe Kevin an apology.”
Kevin could hardly believe his hears. No one had ever apologized to him in his whole life. But the glory of this prospect was more than cancelled out by the horrific prospect of Dukey’s revenge wreaked out on him throughout the living hell of his remaining days in this home.
Duke wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. He glanced at his feet for a split section while he spat out his apology.
“Sorry,” he said. The word was little more than a snarl.
“For…?” prompted the Captain.
Dukey looked stunned as he tried to compute what was being asked of him. He took another deep breath and growled, “Fer twinstin’ yer arm.”
“Good,” said the Captain as he smiled at Dukey. “Now, see? That was so hard, was it?”
Dukey glared at him and the Captain smiled again. “Now, I want you to put it into a sentence and say it to Kevin.”
Dukey could hardly believe his ears. He thought about his sore ribs, his sore pride, his damaged public image and he could not believe that even more was being asked of him. He turned enough to see Kevin out the corner of his eye and spat one word at a time, “Sorry fer twistin’ yer arm.”
“Thank you, Mr. Duke. Now go and get changed and I’ll see you in the dining room,” said the Captain, as he stood to the side of the pathway and let Dukey pass.
The action was over, the children burst into a buzz of activity and the boys resumed their diving display to great applause. Like a flash of lightning Molly turned to Kevin, kissed his cheek, took a deep breath and sighed. “You don’t need to thank me, I know you’re grateful,” she whispered before she pulled herself out of the pool. The boys continued their diving display and one by one the children headed back to their dormitories and got ready for dinner. Kevin remained in the pool until he was the last one to leave, so that he would be less likely to be singled out by any of the other children on his journey back to his dorm.
He knew that the Captain would stay until the last child was out of the pool and if he were that child he would feel more protected. Looking around the pool he saw the he was in fact one of the last four children in the water. Lurking in the deep end, Kevin watched the others. They were three boys who were all a year older than he was, and they always seemed to be together. He watched them slowly leave the pool. Suddenly they broke into a loud burst of laughter.
Kevin had never spoken to any of these boys before in any manner that might be confused with conversation, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He waited until they were halfway along the path leading to the main building before he got out. He walked slowly, keeping a difference between them and himself, listening to the sound of their feet on the gravel path as they laughed and bragged among themselves. Kevin listened to the soft regular beat of their footsteps, hearing the way the beat slowly changed and became one beat, and then scattered to several footsteps again. Suddenly he noticed a new set of footsteps approaching, quickly; from behind. Dread flooded his system. He thought it best to feign ignorance---he was sure that any acknowledgement on his part would only encourage further bullying. His heart began to race. The shadow of an unknown person fell across him and his throat tightened. A hand felt on his should and he jumped. The hand was large. Kevin froze.
“G’day, mate!,” came a deep and familiar voice. It was Captain Heard.
“Hi,” Kevin answered softly. He glanced briefly at the Captain and tried to conjure up a smile. The Captain hadn’t slackened his pace, and the moment and the force of his hand helped to launch Kevin back into motion.
“I need to ask you something, mate,” the Captain said softly, as he looked along the path toward the other three boys. “You don’t get a great time from some of the other boys here, do you?”, he enquired.
Kevin shrugged.
The Captain was not to be so easily brushed off. “You know that even Christians don’t have to put up with that kind of think, don’t you, mate?” Kevin shrugged again, still afraid of making things worse for himself by accusing anyone of anything against him. Captain Heard stopped walking. He put his other hand on Kevin’s other shoulder and got down on one knee so that he could look him in the eye.
“I tell you what,” he said, almost in a whisper, “I want you to meet me in the games room tonight and I’m going to teach you something that my dad taught me because I know you’ll be better off for the experience. A silence grabbed Kevin, and he found himself incapable of speaking. Captain Heard had kind eyes. Kindly, gently, keenly he looked into Kevin’s eyes, really seeing him. Somehow, silently, really speaking to him. It was a strange experience for Kevin, because when he saw the smile in the Captain’s eyes, he too smiled, even though smiling wasn’t something he did often or easily. They began to walk again and Kevin continued to listen to the rhythm of their feet against the coarse gravel pathway. Their feet were the only ones he could hear on the pathway and it sounded tranquil to him.
Kevin sat in his usual place at dinner, staring somewhat vacantly at the back of the Captain’s head. His meal of boiled potatoes, peas and a slice of bread sat steaming in front of him, untouched. He was beginning to have misgivings about what the Captain wanted to show him. He had never been in a position where he was given preferential treatment, and he began feeling very vulnerable. His imagination ran way with him and he began to picture a miserable scenario in which the Captain would try to reconcile the differences between him and Dukey. He knew that Dukey would only abuse such a situation and he felt defenceless. He gazed across the room, his eyes resting on the doorway to the kitchen, through which the other children began leaving to do their chores. He looked at his plate and saw that he hadn’t touched his food. Standing up he began to scrape his plate clean in a mechanical, almost robotic fashion.
The rec-room was located in the back of the main building, with a window that overlooked the garden and a corner of the swimming pool. By the time Kevin put his dish in the kitchen and completed his after-dinner chore, clearing the place settings from his table, the sun was gone. He looked at the clock on the wall: lights-out in thirty minutes. His anxiety was nearly choking him and it gave him some relief to know that whatever the Captain had it mind, it couldn’t last for too long.
The rec room was behind the last of a series of six doors leading off the long corridor whose hallway was paved with terracotta tiles, marked by small, ornate, blue tiles placed neatly at the junction of every third set in the grid. The hallway was one of the first parts of the house one would walk into from outside, and it greeted people with a cool, high ceiling and an odd smell of dust and coffee. He felt that cool air fall upon him now, as he began walking down the hallway toward that final door. The well-worn leather soles of his only shoes made no sound. He liked that. He never liked the echo of his footsteps to beat him to a destination.
As he approached the rec-room his hands began to shake. He looked at the back of his right hand and began rubbing it with his left thumb. The hallway was dark. The door to the rec-room was slightly open. Light poured out into the hallway, and Kevin felt cold all over. He walked even more softly. He could see shadows moving inside the room. Quietly, he peeked around the corner of the door to see if the Captain was alone. To his surprise he seemed to be wrestling something to the ground. It was a peculiar sight for Kevin and the curious/strange distraction distracted his fears. For another moment he stood silently watching until the Captain noticed him. He stood up straight and Kevin saw what he’d been wrestling with. Relief washed over him: it was a bed mattress, rolled into a cigar shape and secured at each end with a leather belt!
“got any idea what this is, Kev?”
Kevin shook his head.
The Captain raised his eyebrows for a second, then turned away and stood the mattress on its end against the wall.
Again his smiled, and then he drove his right fist deep into the mattress making a ‘whoomph’ sound. Kevin couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d walked up the wall, across the ceiling and down the other side. His eyes grew wide as the Captain stood in front of him once again and looked him in the eye. “Kevin, I can’t promise you I’ll always be able to protect you from bullies, so I reckon the best thing I can do for you is teach you to protect yourself.”
Kevin felt dazed. He felt light, as if the weight of his burden had been lifted off him, but he also felt unable to comprehend what he was meant to say, or do or think.
“Go on, mate. Have a shot!”
It was apparent that he just didn’t know what to do. Kevin had never raised a hand to anything in his entire life. He had learned to hide. He had never entertained any thought of violence.
The Captain moved over toward him and crouched a little behind him. “It’s easy: clench your fist like this, and then stand sideways and throw your arm out like this.”
‘Woomph!’ The mattress sprung back out from the corner. Kevin looked at his fist. It was clenched tightly. He looked at the mattress. Before he knew what was happening he found himself slumped against it.
“Well done, mate. Now have another shot at it, but stand sideways so you don’t fall over again.”
In the weeks that followed, Captain Heard and Kevin began a regular training routine where he would teach Kevin how to stand, defend and strike out against his enemies. The Captain knew that the Salvation Army adamantly disapproved of fighting of any sort, so he had Kevin bring his schoolwork with him. They revised first, and boxed second. This way Kevin could honestly say to anyone who asked, that the Captain was tutoring him.
Kevin paid close attention to all that the Captain Heard told him. He was keen to learn about boxing, and that made the learning easier. He soaked it up like a sponge.
“Now, Kev, a very important thing for you to remember is that most blokes don’t know how to stand and that means they can’t throw a swift punch. You see, if you stand sideways with your hands up like this to protect your face, you don’t have enough room to bring your fist back before you punch. So you have to throw your punches from under your nose. That means the other bloke won’t see you wind up for the punch and you’ll catch him off-guard. It’ll look something like this.” The Captain began demonstrating with a furious combinations of stab-punches that all started under his nose. “It’s also important for you to watch the other bloke because he’ll most likely bring his fist back like this and swing it all the way out here like this when he tries to hit you. So if you’re quick you can get in a couple of good hits before he can even get near you.” Again the Captain threw a quick burst of punches to demonstrate.
Kevin felt good. He revelled in the sense of power and self-confidence that washed over him.
The Captain moved on to another town to fulfil his holy commitment to the Salvation Army, and Kevin didn’t say goodbye. [ As an organization] the Army regularly moved their officers to destinations far and wide, in order for them to be able to apply their talents where they could best be spent. The Captain wrote several letters to the children’s home, telling them all what he was doing at his new appointment, and he wrote five letters to Kevin, asking how he was getting on at the gym.
Kevin didn’t open any of them. Instead he put them at the bottom of his drawer, under the brown paper. He also kept a letter his older brother Syd had sent him several years earlier when he left the children’s home. He never opened that one either. Syd had written to Molly at the same time, telling her his news and giving her his address. She tried to talk to Kevin about it, but he said nothing, and she never mentioned it again.
* * * *
Chapter 2
Kevin liked working at O’Connor’s gym. He often did more than he was paid to do because he liked it all so much. Being there made him feel needed and important for the first time in his life. The regulars made something of a mascot of him, bringing him pieces of fruit and tipping him with a coin here and there, building up his confidence. He liked getting to know them because of the respect they paid him. The days went by and bit by bit he began to hold his head up, thanks to them.
He was meeting a lot of new people in this first job of his. Some of them he held in high esteem, and watched in awe as they practiced in the ring. His favourite was a man named Jock. Jock had never fought in competitions but he trained every second night of the week as something of a fitness schedule. More importantly for Kevin, Jock did everything in his power to make him laugh as often as he could. Instinctively Kevin tried to mask the delight he took in Jock’s silly antics, but the temptation overwhelmed him and now and then a soft chuckle or two would escape him. At the home he never allowed himself the luxury of laughing openly at anything but at the gym he felt a little less guarded. As a means of self-preservation he kept himself to himself at the home, and never let the others in on the things that moved him.
One cool spring afternoon while Jock was training in the ring, he let out a whistle through his teeth, and Kevin looked up from the towels he was folding. Jock beckoned Kevin over to him.
“Oi, I need some help,” he yelled. Kevin stopped in front of the ring and looked at Jock, who stood on the other side of the ropes, puffing, grinning and sweating.
“What?” Kevin asked, looking as Jock with humorous suspicion.
“I need a sparring partner,” Jock replied, as a grin began to consume his entire face.
“Get out of it,” Kevin answered, knowing full well that a sparring partner needed to be equally yoked in talent and size, or the offensive boxer would pummel him to a pulp.
“Nah, not like that, just someone to try and catch me while I’m doin’ my exercises, help work on my dancing, is all,” Jock answered.
Kevin thought about it for a moment and then grinned. “Well, alright, but you get rough and I’m getting out,” he warned.
“No, no, wait, “Jock said, as he pointed his gloved hand toward the corner, “First, bring me my bag.”
Kevin obliged and fetched the bag. It was full to the point of bursting, but deceptively light at the same time. Kevin threw it over the ropes and it landed on the canvas mat with a small thud.
“Too bad if my dinner was in there,” Jock said as he picked up the bag. Then, using his teeth, he pulled o pen the drawstring at the top and spilled its contents onto the mat.
“Here, put these on,” he instructed, as he unlaced his gloves and began rummaging through the small pile of leather pads, gloves, and wraps.
In no time at all he had Kevin dressed in a full set of boxing pads, including gloves, head pads, body plate and even a pair of cricket pads he’d brought for his legs, and a pair of rugby shoulder pads for good measure. He stopped to admire the Michelin Tire Man he’d just created. Smiling at the little bit of Kevin still visible behind all this makeshift armour, he said blandly, “Now all I want you to do is try and catch me while I do my foot exercises.”
Suddenly Kevin began to snigger, then to chuckle and finally he burst into a full belly laugh, sweeping away the pair of them in uncontrollable laughter. Jock collected himself long enough to gaze sternly at Kevin and say, “Now am I going to have to go and tell Mr. O’Connor that you’re not doing as you’re told?”
Kevin howled with laughter.
“How am I supposed to win this Saturday’s prize fight if you won’t help me get into shape?” Jock asked with a mock frown, his gloved hands on his hips.
Kevin sobered a bit,” You’re not fighting this weekend.”
“I certainly am,” Jock protested with pride, puffing up his chest for Kevin’s amusement.
Kevin raised his eyebrows, “what’s the prize?”
“One hundred pounds!” Jock answered, throwing himself into a fighting pose. Kevin thought for a moment and then he threw Jock a grin of disbelief.
“You don’t believe me?” Jock asked in surprise, as he stood back and lowered his gloves.
Kevin smiled as he raised the corner of his mouth in a cheeky smile, “Any fight offering a hundred pounds would bring in all the best boxers in the country.”
“And…?” Jock asked.
“You’d get killed.”
“Oh no, young knave, not me! I have a secret weapon up m’ sleeve,” Jock replied as he began strolling around the ring, showing off a stride would have done pride to a duck with a broken leg.”
What weapon?” asked Kevin suspiciously.
“It’s all in the stance,” Jock explained as he comically began to mimic different boxing poses, dancing around the ring like a ballerina going into battle. Kevin had never seen an adult do anything so silly in his whole life, and as much it went against his nature, he threw his head back, lost for the first time in his life in genuine laughter. Not laughter that was put on so that he could fit in, or to avoid offending whoever had made the joke, but for the first time ever, the real thing.
Jock didn’t let up: he cycled his hands around in large circles as he threw his body from side to side jerkily, dodging the blows of an imaginary opponent. Before Kevin’s astonished eyes, Jock made himself a living monument to the bizarre.
When he saw that Kevin simply couldn’t take any more he dropped his hands, winked at him and smiled. Kevin by now was kneeling on the mat, reduced to a heap of giggling padding. Jock helped him to his feet.
With that he had bought himself a special place with Kevin for all time; Jock was one of the very few who had ever thought he was worth impressing. Kevin was stunned with delight but he tried to keep intact his shield of cool; self-preservation was still the name of the game—it had been his way of life forever. And so the happy moment played itself out and Kevin went back to silently restacking the towels on the rack.
Later that afternoon when his work was done, Kevin saw Mr. O’Connor reading the paper in his office. He knocked on the door. Mr. O’Connor looked up from his newspaper. “What’s up, cobber?”
“Is there a prize fight this weekend?”
“Yeah, at the YMCA. A hundred pounds for the winner. Round robin affair.”
In a split second, Kevin’s light-hearted mood evaporated as he saw a black cloud on the horizon. “Do you know if any of our blokes are competing?”
“Yeah, I think Angelo the Wop is gloved up for the flyweight and Jock in welter-weight,” Mr. O’Connor sat forward in his seat, “Why? Have you got a hot tip? Someone going to throw their fight?”
“Nah, nuthin’ like that. Just thinking, that’s all.” Kevin paused, and a momentary silence fell between them. “Do you reckon Jock will win?”
Mr. O’Connor reclined in his chair, like a cat stretching out in front of a fire. He was a sandy-haired man who had inherited his father’s wool store and turned it into this gym, his own little kingdom. “Jock will win when the Titanic docks in New York Harbour.” He chuckled to himself, impressed by his own wit.
Kevin gave a thought or two to Jock that Sunday as he left the morning Salvation Army meeting in the hall at Balart. It wasn’t much of a thought though, more a flickering across his consciousness that today was the day that Jock was going to have his first attempt at a professional win.
The following Monday Kevin went to the gym right after school. He did he usual job and he felt comfortable doing what he knew how to do well. He had forgotten all about Jock and his fight until he looked in the ring reservations book, which showed all the people who had booked ring use, and the times and equipment they needed. It was part of Kevin’s job to organize their equipment for them. As he checked the book, he noticed Jock’s reservation from the previous Friday and he turned to Mr. O’Connor, who was reading the paper at his desk as usual.
“Mr. O’Connor, how did Jock go yesterday?”
His boss looked up from his paper and he slowly lay it down on the desk. He leaned back in his chair and took off his reading glasses. The sandy stubble on his face made a scraping sound has he rubbed his hand over it.
“You didn’t read the paper today?”
Kevin shook his head.
Mr. O’Connor took a moment to choose his words. “He was up against a bloke who just had too much ring time under his belt to let Jock win. He only lasted two and half minutes into the third round.”
Kevin didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t surprised. The news just confirmed his view that Jock didn’t stand a chance at any point.
But Mr. O’Connor wasn’t finished. He leaned forward to make his point. “But you see, Kev,” Mr. O’Connor said gently, “the fight made Jock punch-drunk.”
“What’s that mean?” Kevin asked, not sure where Mr. O’Connor was going with his conversation.
“Well, the punch that knocked him out affected his brain. They reckon he’ll have to live in the hospital for a while until he gets better.” Mr. O’Connor looked at Kevin for a reaction.