The Winning Side Read online

  ‘Where’s Jones?’ I asked Sharkey.

  ‘Dropped him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re a better man.’

  4

  WE were heading for Normanton, north Queensland. Me, Arch, Chloe, Dopey Reg and Flash Jack were crammed in the back of the truck and we were hot and touchy. Especially Arch; he was sitting on the rolled-up canvas that made the ring floor, with his eyes bleary from last night’s grog. He also had the beginnings of a shiner from a left hook he’d copped from a drover in Burketown. Arch was the heaviest man in Sharkey’s troup, but he was only a blown-up middleweight really—this fourteen-stone drover had got him with a lucky punch.

  But Dopey Reg was always good for a laugh and when he put his hand on Arch’s wife’s leg, Arch grinned.

  ‘Give him a kiss Chloe,’ he said and she did.

  Sharkey hit a bump and the truck veered off the road and bucked. I finished up between Arch and Reg while Chloe landed fair on top of Flash Jack.

  We sorted ourselves out; I yelled at Sharkey to take it easy and Arch kidded Chloe on being sweet on a half-wit, which Reg was of course. He was good for knocking in tent pegs, handling the buckets, playing the mouth organ and not much else. He was punchy.

  Jack was a full-blood from the north-west. He took on anyone up to twelve stone and I never saw him lose. He was unmarked, and a bit of a fancy pants in clean moleskins and a white shirt. He untangled from Chloe and muttered apologies. Chloe handed Reg back his hat. I rolled a smoke, and Jack tapped me on the knee.

  ‘You don’t want to do that, Charlie’, he said. ‘Bad for the wind.’

  ‘I’m not after a title, Jack’, I said. ‘This is just wages for me.’

  ‘Yeah’, Arch sneered. ‘Charlie’s moving south, aren’t you, Charlie?’

  I didn’t bite. I’d been south and liked it; but south had meant stadium boxing and I didn’t like that. Somehow I always drifted back to Sharkey’s but I’d really had enough—five years of tents and stadiums was plenty. Sharkey always knew that I’d come back to fight for him, but it was different this time—for me, at least the others seemed to be as they always had been.

  Jack brushed his moleskins down with his clean, pink palms. I rolled one for Reg and Chloe took my matches to light it for him. Arch touched his eye gingerly and I knew what he was thinking—Normanton was full of meat workers and cattle men; it’d be tough.

  The hot air smelt of sweat, canvas and tobacco. The road was like a steel ruler glimmering with heat haze under the sun, and the bare earth stretched away for miles on either side. There was a bit of light cloud billowing up in the east, but we were in the middle of the dry.

  We had about an hour of daylight left when we reached Normanton and Sharkey used it to pick a good level spot for the show tent, somewhere for the sleeping tent and to find firewood. He stalked around, bald as an egg and with his dirty face creased and shining with sweat. The old .22, the one he used to shoot cigarettes out of Chloe’s mouth as an added attraction, was on his shoulder and his wicked old blue heeler was following him step by step.

  Bell, Flynn and Bunker were behind us in the ute and due in half an hour.

  ‘Keep an eye out for those buggers, Charlie’, Sharkey told me. ‘They’ll duck the work if they can.’

  They were late; we had the camp pretty well set up when they drove in and you could tell that they’d had a few already. Flinty was a Maori, Eddie was black, both old stadium fighters; Snowy was a real mongrel—black, Jap, Islander and other things. He wasn’t much of a fighter but he idolished Flinty and Eddie and fetched and carried for them.

  Flinty swung down out of the ute. ‘Have a beer, Tom’, he said, full of cheek.

  ‘I’ll Tom you, you black bastard.’ Sharkey unslung the .22 and fired one right over Flinty’s hat. Flinty grinned and snapped the top off a beer bottle with his clasp knife.

  ‘Have a beer, Mr Sharkey.’

  Sharkey took it and drank a bit. ‘Help Arch get the fire going’, he said quietly. He took another drink and gave the bottle back to Flinty, who passed it to Snowy, right beside him.

  Chloe was the cook officially, but Arch did a lot of the work. Chloe had always been a good-looker; her skin was brown from the sun and she had a lot of wavy, fair hair. I’d seen her swimming nude in a creek once, and I wasn’t surprised that Arch was so jealous of her. She was a prize for a gaol-bird like him. That’s where he learned to cook, in Darwin gaol, doing five years for manslaughter. He picked up Chloe somewhere and she’d played straight with him until she started this bullshit with the Dopey. She was with him now, pulling on a guy rope. I took a load of wood over to Arch.

  ‘A man óught to brain that loony,’ Arch said as I dumped the wood.

  ‘Take it easy, Arch. Reg’s harmless. Chloe’s just mucking around.’

  ‘You reckon?’ In the light from the fire there was a fierceness in his face I hadn’t seen before. ‘I’m a bloody jealous man, can’t help it. Ever wonder why I like her to be in the tent, Charlie?’

  I shrugged. ‘Natural I suppose.’

  ‘No. It’s because I don’t want her getting ideas. I can flatten anyone in these tin-pot towns and Reg and Sharkey are the only other whites around. No offence, Charlie.’

  I didn’t take offence. I just thought about Sydney and how much money I’d have in the bank after this spell with Sharkey. Snowy brought some more wood, and Chloe heaved over a food bag. Arch started peeling potatoes, using a long knife that had been sharpened so often its blade was thin and worn back in a curve.

  We had the meal around the fire; Flinty had brought back half a dozen bottles and we got into them; all except Jack who drank tea. He hadn’t done much camp work and his shirt was still fairly clean. He ate neatly too, wiping up with bread and not belching like the rest of us. We were tired after the drive and the work: Chloe got Reg to play a few tunes, but no one was very interested. Arch and Chloe bedded down in the truck, the rest of us crawled into blankets in the sleeping tent, along with the heeler.

  The next day was a scorcher. The sun seemed to climb extra fast and there was this gritty, south-wester blowing. We were in business by ten o’clock, with Sharkey ringing the bell and doing his spiel out of a sandpaper throat. It was the standard agricultural show, with animal judging and the like. There were coconut shies, a fortune teller, a duck-shoot and a couple of other daggy tents.

  Sharkey spruiked hard and we half-filled the tent for the first session. Some of the meat workers had been coming up for a go year after year. They were keen on fighting and making a quid. The admission was only a bob, and sixpence for kids, but it was a fair take. Arch was on first and he went easy on a big meat worker—let him go the three rounds. Reg was in Arch’s corner but Chloe wasn’t around. Arch was worried and asked Reg if he knew where she was but all he got was Dopey’s foolish grin.

  ‘Go and have a look for her will you, Charlie?’ Arch gurgled water and looked across at his next opponent.

  I wandered out of the tent, looked around and spotted Chloe heading for the truck. I went over but stopped when I heard voices from the truck. Flash Jack was in there with Chloe, and they weren’t playing euchre.

  I went back to the tent, gave a shrug to Arch’s enquiring look, and got ready to do my stint. Sharkey decided it was time to let the mugs make a few bob and I was the bunny. I didn’t mind. I went down to a big stockman black enough to be my grandfather on my father’s side. I gave him a wink from the canvas and he banged his gloves together in front of his face to hide his smile.

  I was too worried to fight properly, anyway, until I saw Jack come in to do his rope-skipping. He wore silk trunks and a superior smile. Sharkey usually saved Jack for the evening show; by then half the drunks in the crowd would reckon they could take the flash Abo. It never failed.

  Sharkey was pretty pleased with himself at lunch-time and he shouted for some pies and cold milk. Arch was relaxed and happy; he’d had an easy morning and we hadn’t heard about anyone in Normanton
gunning for him. I wondered what excuse Chloe had given him for not being in the tent; it must have been good because he was very chipper.

  It must have been over a hundred in the shade when the afternoon session got going. Arch was first on, as usual, and once the crowd was in, Sharkey told Reg to lay open a side of the tent to get a bit of breeze. Arch fronted up to a bloke who looked like a cook. Arch ducked under a wild swing and then he sort of stiffened and lost his balance. I was off to one side and couldn’t follow his eyes, but he was looking straight through the opening in the tent. Next minute the cook landed a hay-maker on Arch’s jaw and he went down hard. Sharkey applied the count, taking it slow, trying to string it out, but Arch just lay there without moving. At ten he sat up and waved Reg away. I was in the ring then, close up and I could see the spittle frothing around the sides of his mouth. He didn’t look good, but he’d taken a hard punch and there was blood on him from a split lip. He pulled off his gloves and swore at Reg, who was trying to look in his eyes.

  That was all I had time for because the crowd wasn’t happy with what they’d seen. They wanted Arch to go on again but Sharkey shooed me in fast and I found myself up on my toes with this cocky little half-caste who had some idea of it. I got on the bike and kept away for two of Sharkey’s long rounds, and flattened him in the third when his legs had gone. Then it was a drover who wore a blue singlet and wouldn’t go down no matter what I hit him with. I was worried about my hands by the end of it and he was still on his feet. I felt sorry for my third bloke; he was a bit full and held his hands like he was climbing a ladder. I belted him two hard, clean ones and put him out of business.

  I got the gloves off and as Jack hadn’t turned up to skip, Sharkey put Eddie on.

  ‘Go and get Jack’, Sharkey rasped and I ran out of the tent.

  I raced over to the tent and pulled back the canvas that hung down like a tent flap. It was sticky to the touch. They were in there: blood had soaked everything, the mattress, the bedding, the clothes lying about—in the half-light Jack’s moleskins looked as if they’d been painted black. His face was a pulpy mess and the flies were gathering around a big, dark wound in his chest. Chloe was lying on her back with one leg out at a crazy angle. The worn old potato knife was sticking straight up between her breasts.

  It was a madhouse after that. The police said that Chloe must have been a whore, Sharkey said something about Jack’s sweet left and how he could have won the lightweight title. There was a lot of sympathy for Arch and Sharkey was on his side until he found the heeler with its head caved in. The dog had been guarding the rifle which was gone. Sharkey didn’t have a good word to say for Arch after he found that.

  They found Arch in the scrub three days later. He’d used the .22; the dogs and birds had been at him, and he wasn’t too pretty.

  CHARLIE’S WAR

  Sydney Herald 1 May 1940

  ‘MY COLUMN’

  by Sean Fennessy

  Among new recruits to the Second AIF I spoke to today outside the Pitt Street recruiting centre, was Mr Charlie Thomas, 23, of Erskineville. Mr Thomas is an Aborigine from Queensland who left Tom Sharkey’s boxing troupe to join up. When asked whether he thought all able-bodied Aborigines should enlist Mr Thomas said, It’s up to them’. His own reasons for shouldering the rifle and putting on the army khaki? ‘I want to travel and see the world.’

  1

  THEY were scattered over the sandy plain like vegetation trying to take root. But there was movement: bits broke off and clumps divided and merged. The canvas of the tents was a harsh green, the uniforms were a soft dun, and here and there was a flash of white, exposed skin. The encampment was made untidy by the men despite the alignment of tents and vehicles. The soldiers strolled about, did jobs in groups, sat and smoked.

  Charlie Thomas, corporal in the 17th Infantry Training Brigade of the Second AIF, sat outside his tent cleaning a .303 rifle. He pulled the cleaner through, squinted down the barrel and pulled it through again. A tall, sandy-haired man pushed out through the tent flap behind Thomas.

  ‘That rifle’s as clean as a squatter’s boots, Charlie.’

  ‘I can still see dust in it.’ Thomas said.

  ‘Abos! You’re the only Abo in the Brigade so you’re the only bastard who’d be able to see it.’

  Thomas wound the pull-through up and wrapped it in a chamois cloth. ‘Maybe you’re right, Cec. Don’t suppose a bit of dust’d make it shoot crooked, anyhow.’

  ‘That’s right’. Cec Meredith lowered his six foot two inches into a squat. ‘You know what it is? You’re nervous about Greece.’

  Thomas grunted.

  ‘Why does Greece worry you, Charlie?’

  ‘Hills and islands’, Thomas said quietly. ‘I don’t care for them. I’d rather fight in the desert, like here.’

  ‘You’re mad. There’s trees and rocks in Greece, things to hide behind, camouflage. Not like here.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I just don’t feel lucky about it.’

  ‘Lucky! I’m talking about cover and tactics.’

  ‘I say it all comes down to luck.’

  They’d had the discussion before and always reached the same point. Meredith had joined up in 1939; he’d held Sergeant’s rank three times and lost it for breaches of discipline, but he thought like a soldier. Thomas had enlisted later and resisted his promotion. He believed that the generals were fools, a point which Meredith accepted, and argued that the outcome of battles was determined by luck. Meredith disagreed. They were about to settle into the comfortable routine of point-scoring when they heard shouts from behind the row of tents opposite. A short, burly man came marching towards them from the direction of the noise.

  ‘Corporal Thomas’, he shouted.

  Thomas groaned.

  ‘Disturbance at the clink, corporal’, the man rapped. ‘Be glad if you’d lend a hand.’

  ‘I wish you blokes’d learn to do your own bloody fighting. Who is it?’

  ‘Bluey Parker.’

  ‘Christ! Drunk?’

  ‘Was, worn off now I’d say.’

  The man, who wore sergeant’s stripes, turned smartly and marched off. Thomas and Meredith ambled after him.

  The clink was a hastily constructed timber building; a high barbed wire fence ran around it and there was a small patch of bare earth in front of it. About twenty soldiers grouped outside the wire; inside, a big man held a smaller man up off his feet against the wire. The barbs had bitten in and rivulets of blood ran down the man’s back. He was weeping. Some spectators murmured ‘Go easy’, and the big man was yelling.

  ‘You dobbed me in, you mongrel’! he roared. ‘You put me in it! What fuckin’ business was it of yours?’

  Thomas joined the men at the wire. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Blue went AWL’, one soldier said. ‘Got three days in the box. He reckons Willy Carr dobbed him in. Willy went in to clean the box, and Blue grabbed him.’

  ‘Did Willy dob him?’ Meredith asked.

  The soldier shrugged. ‘He reckons he didn’t. Can’t see him going near the box if he did. Ask me, Blue’s pissed his brains away.’

  Thomas walked around the wire. ‘Let him go, Blue. He didn’t dob you.’

  ‘Shut up, King Billy, what would you know? He dobbed me and I’m going to skin him.’ Parker moved the man sideways a little on the wire.

  ‘I’m coming in, Blue’, Thomas said. ‘Let him go or I’ll stick a bayonet up your arse. Try me instead.’

  I’ll skin him and do you too!’ Parker yelled.

  Thomas took off his shirt; his skin was copper-coloured, his ribs showed and the muscles were defined on his flat stomach. He got a bayonet from one of the soldiers and kicked open the fragile gate to the enclosure. As the vibrations ran along the wire Carr screamed, and Parker dropped him. He turned around to face Thomas, his hands automatically going up into the sparring position. Thomas tossed the bayonet through the wire and moved up towards Parker. He crouched a little and kept his hands uncommitt
ed. Parker lumbered forward and swung, Thomas swayed away and landed a light punch on the big man’s cheek. Parker rushed but Thomas side-stepped and tapped him again.

  ‘Give it away, Blue,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Fuck you!’ Parker swung again and Thomas dropped under the blow; he straightened up and drove his right fist into Parker’s stomach, grunting as he landed. Parker’s hands came down and Thomas cracked him two rights to the head. There was a cheer from the soldiers, and Carr scrambled under the bottom strand of wire. Parker saw him go, and aimed a kick at Thomas’s knee. The dark man dodged it and hooked hard. Parker went down with blood flowing from his mouth.

  ‘Good one, Charlie!’ a soldier yelled.

  Thomas looked at him furiously. Meredith came through the gate, and he and Thomas carried Parker into the wooden hut.

  ‘Didn’t touch you,’ Meredith said.

  ‘He never did it for a living.’

  ‘Coming for a beer?’

  ‘No, I’m due to play cricket, us against the 19th. You want to go easy on the beer, Cec’

  ‘It’s a drinking country’, Meredith said. ‘Hot and dry, like home.’

  ‘The wogs don’t drink.’

  ‘Wogs’. Meredith spat in the sand.

  Later, Thomas was reading in the tent when Meredith lurched in. Gusts of beery breath came from him as he spoke: ‘Stoush down there, Charlie, coulda done with you.’

  ‘Turning in, Cec?’

  ‘No, not yet. I want to talk to you, Charlie, seriously. Oh God, I’m drunk.’

  ‘Leave it till tomorrow.’

  ‘No’, Meredith said urgently. ‘Gotta be tonight, while I’m pissed. I’m scared, Charlie.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Greece. Don’t wanna go. I’ve got a bad feeling about it like you. I’m going to die there.’