The Fighter (15 page)

Old Mick is in training, attending lessons from the best teachers, refining his skills. Collecting records. Dancing to them as he practises in the upstairs room. Studying his moves in front of full-length mirrors. Taking home sashes and trophies. Getting on with it.

22

Half a lifetime later, Henry too is getting on with it. He has the keys to the city. Doors open for him. Doormen wave him through after a quick catch-up. He is at the MCG attending a sportsmen's dinner and signing photos to be auctioned for charity. He is mingling with elite footballers. They are pleased to see him. They clap him on the back, the little goer.

He is back on the move, north to an ex-boxers' gathering. The fraternity is raising funds for a bronze statue of former world champ Johnny Famechon. They are looking out for one of their favourite sons, according him due recognition. Sticking by him after an accident that has severely impeded his movement.

Henry signs his picture, one of several among the framed
photos lined up for a silent auction. Montages of boxers caught in their finest moments: the knockout punch, the moment of triumph. Victors carried on waves of adulation, on the shoulders of supporters, holding up trophies, waists garlanded with title belts. Full-length portraits of old legends in tights and runners so light they resemble ballet shoes. Posters of ‘moderns' in black lace-up boots with whiter-than-white laces, posed in classic stances, neat, sweatless, with hair slicked back, fists up and best foot forward: a choreography of grace and determination. Among them is a poster of Henry Nissen in his prime: Empire title belt round his waist, a Star of David on his white silk shorts. His eyebrows arched, and his gaze direct. Focused.

The next day he is off again. The yellow Hyundai flies along Nepean Highway. He's on the road early to attend court. This morning it's Broadmeadows, an hour's drive from his home in Bentleigh.

He arrives before the procedures open, and stands on the footpath, sipping coffee. He coaches the defendant on the art of composure. He puts an arm around her distraught mother. Then he sits through the interminable hearing in a windowless room. Unadorned. Functional. Stripped to the essentials.

The magistrate peers down from the bench. She glances at the submissions, and listens intently to police reports and cross-examinations. Henry sits by the defendant, waiting for his moment. When it finally arrives he steps up to the box.

He is here to provide a character reference. He explains the circumstances. He has known the young woman's family since before she was born. He knew her father, first met him when
he was a street boy. He witnessed his progression in and out of prison, his ebbs and flows, his addictions. He has kept in touch over the years. He has known his daughter since she was a baby. He has seen her grow up.

He is pleading her case. Giving it all he's got. He's in there, fighting. He knows the stakes, knows that her future is in the balance. ‘She's been a loyal daughter,' he says. ‘She looks after her sick mother. She takes care of the younger children. She is a loving, caring person, Your Honour, the backbone of the family. She was desperate to make ends meet and got caught up in her elder brother's activities.

‘She wants to make amends. She's going to turn over a new leaf. She has prospects for employment. The family would fall apart without her presence. She deserves a break, Your Honour. It would be a tragedy to have her imprisoned, a lifelong cross for her to bear if she's tainted by a conviction.'

The court is in recess; the magistrate is deliberating. The scales of justice are precariously balanced. The family waits in the foyer. The defendant is nervous. She is waiting for the call back to the court. She holds her sister-in-law's baby, taking comfort.

They file back in, and fifteen minutes later Henry is making his way to the parking lot. Relieved. Exultant. It was the best possible verdict: a suspended fine, no criminal conviction recorded. Henry does not dwell on it. He is back on the move, driving back across the city to South Melbourne.

He is doing the rounds on Dorcas Street, talking with the old folk seated on wooden benches in the sun, beneath the public housing towers. He goes up with them to their flats and
makes a note of what they need.

He dashes back to the car, and he's off to a rooming house in St Kilda. He pulls up on a side street and gets out to a stiff sea breeze. He walks round the corner, hurries up the steps of the three-storey building and is buzzed into the foyer.

R is waiting.

He is tall and lanky, with a dark complexion. He wears tight-fitting black jeans, a khaki army jacket and a pair of black runners. His face is all but concealed by the brim of a baseball cap, tilted over his forehead at a sharp angle.

‘How long've you been back in town?' says Henry.

‘Four or five months,' R answers. He shifts nervously from foot to foot, rocking left to right, right to left. His eyes are pinned, and glazed over. He towers above Henry, and bends down over him.

R's need to get close is urgent. Now that Henry is here, he must seize his chance. Take full advantage. He is governed by instinct. Street logic. He has Henry cornered.

Henry stands his ground. He has been in this situation many times. He too is governed by instinct. He knows the drill. He has decades of experience.

‘I'm on methadone,' says R. ‘In rehab, kicking the habit.'

‘Good on ya,' says Henry.

‘Got a court case coming up.' He pauses. Moves his face closer.

‘You gotta be there, Henry. You gotta be there.'

He speaks in a harsh whisper. Conspiratorially. He is oblivious to the comings and goings around him, the constant movement.
The doorbell rings incessantly. Residents hang around the foyer. They sit against the walls and linger in the corridors. They pace the worn carpets, and stand on the lower parts of the stairway, elbows propped on the banisters. They hover outside the office, circling warmth, pursuing their craving for human contact, and a need to assuage their restlessness, the infernal boredom.

Now that R has got Henry's attention, he is not going to lose it. He will not let go until he is certain Henry will help him.

‘You gotta be there,' he says. There is an edge of rage in his voice. Desperation.

Henry remains steady.

He takes out his pocket diary and the stub of a pencil. He enters details: the Magistrates' Court, familiar territory.

‘It's in the book,' he says. ‘Don't worry.'

R stays in close, menacing. He views the world with suspicion; either threaten or be threatened. He is tightly wound. He can go off at any second. He is oblivious to the world around him. He sways on his feet, contemplating his options. He thinks for a long while, and moves further forward. Henry arches his back, but his feet remain planted. R puts a hand to his chin. Grits his teeth. Calculates.

Then, abruptly, he backs off.

Henry straightens up, released from the tension.

‘I've got the willpower,' R says.

He is lighter, calmer now that the business is concluded. He too is released from the tension. He shows Henry his rooms. They are on the ground floor, just off the foyer. The door opens directly onto a tiny bedroom, separated from the living room by
a partition of wood panelling. A double bed and a wardrobe take up almost all the space. The living room is furnished with worn sofas and four chairs, pulled up against a coffee table. The room smells of the stale wine and tobacco of many decades of troubled residents.

In one of the corners, wooden doors shut off a tiny closet—with a sink, the bare basics. The toilets are communal, outside, off the corridors.

The window is the saving grace. Open the curtains and there is light—light creates space. Light offers hope.

‘Got the willpower,' R says. A smile breaks out on his face. He sheds years in an instant. ‘Henry, I'm gonna get through it.'

The smile deepens. He is safe, a child again. Someone is looking out for him. All his problems are momentarily forgotten—the days and nights in search of dealers, body wracked by craving, the search for that beautiful feeling.

He'd do anything for the rush, and anything to lay his hands on the cash. He will withstand the rip-offs, the dealers' threats and the dark laneways; the beatings as the debts climb higher. And the beatings he in turn will inflict on others to get the money. His body speaks a language of its own, a dialect of defiance that flouts his efforts to kick the habit.

Maybe, just maybe, the methadone will do it. Maybe.

‘Got the willpower,' R says. As if repeating the words will do it.

The smile deepens, in childlike wonder.

Rapture.

‘Henry, I'm gonna get through it. You can bet on it.

‘Gonna get through it.'

Night is falling. The arched entrance is lit up. Henry runs down the steps. He is hit by the cold and dashes to the Hyundai. He heads back to the city. He is still caught up in R's battle. He knows that his chances of making it are wafer-thin. He knows he is a breath away from faltering.

He knows it all: the rooming house, the corridors lined with despair, the desolate communal kitchens, the accumulating refuse. And the outbursts of drunken rage: men clutching flagons of cheap wine in the dead of the night, charging up and down the stairs, banging on doors. Tearing apart dreams and peaceful slumber.

‘Let me back in, you fuck'n bitch. Let me back in.' The shatter of glass, fists thudding into walls, the whip-like crack of slamming doors. And the chant of the threatened: ‘Fuck off you bastard.'

He knows the brutal truth that, despite it all, they are better off here than out on the streets. At least there is a community of sorts, a rundown homeliness, a brotherhood and sisterhood of outcasts.

And Henry knows he has to let it go. Over the years he has acquired the art, first practised in that one-minute interval between rounds, the fight paused, and poised, another round gone, the next about to come. Slumped back in the corner, sucking in air. No point worrying.

He passes the Seafarers' Mission. He is rounding the corner, driving by the white eaglehawk. He is back on Footscray Road
and the docks are approaching. The ferris wheel is moving, one half-hour for a full rotation—ample time to take in the view of the port, the bay beyond, and the river.

The breeze has fallen and the night sky is as transparent as mountain water. He passes the Port Diner, dusty and shabby, and all the more welcoming. A road train is turning into the parking lot. The lights of the mobile notice board, in front of the diner, are enticing.

It will have to keep till morning. Henry has received a call. The ship is in. It has made its stately way through the heads, up the bay, and to its berth upriver. It's a world unto itself, 263 metres in length, with multiple-storey hatches. The largest ro-ro in the world, boast the seamen. The ship towers over the wharf, and runs the full extent of it. The hold is open. The ramp is down. The cargo is waiting.

Henry turns left off Footscray Road and drives towards Appleton Dock. He draws up to the workers' parking lot. Again, the car boot is his locker. It's a cold night. He pulls on overalls over his jeans, a fluoro jacket over his jumper, and makes his way to the security turnstile.

His fellow workers are stepping out of their cars with their kit bags. They are in no hurry. They walk the slow measured pace of those who have a night of labour ahead. They fall into an easy rhythm and drift in and out of conversation. Their jackets glow in the darkness, but on the wharf the ship-lights are blazing.

Henry returns to the Hyundai at sunrise. Winter fog hangs low over the river. The early traffic moves over the Bolte Bridge. The
red lights are fading to pink, giving way to daylight. Henry barely registers it.

He unlocks the boot, exchanges his work-shoes for runners and his jacket for a second jumper. He tosses his hardhat onto his discarded gear, backs out, and drives alongside the stacks of shipping containers. The cabins of the ferris wheel are glinting eyes on the city. The wheel is still. It will start its rotations mid-morning. Henry turns left onto Footscray Road, and within minutes he is back in the Port Diner.

23

We meet as arranged at the usual table. The sun warms the dusty perspex, a welcome antidote to the cool winter's morning. Out in the car park a truck driver sits in his high cabin, like an eagle perched in its eyrie.

As always, Henry requires little encouragement. He jumps up from his breakfast to demonstrate his boxing moves. He ducks and feints, sidesteps to the left, back to the right, in an abrupt acceleration of speed and movement, all the while punching. He's been on the move for many hours, but his ferocious will counteracts his exhaustion. He still has it in him, he insists. On the docks he can outwork men decades younger, he says.

He takes a sip of water, continues his routine, and quickly
regains the rhythm. He weaves and bobs, mindful of his defences. Head down in concentration, body balanced, he leads with left jabs, followed by fierce rips and hooks at an imagined opponent. He twists his fists at the end of each blow. ‘This is how you get maximum impact,' he says, ‘and how you protect your knuckles.'

At sixty-seven his combinations are fast, and his footwork nimble. Despite his age and weight, he appears tight and compact. ‘You've got to catch your opponent off guard. Keep him missing, keep him guessing,' he says, all the while moving. He inhales short sharp breaths through funnelled lips, followed by sharp exhalations. He is pushing himself to his limits.

He comes to an abrupt halt, drops his arms and smiles in relief. He catches his breath. He's not done yet, he assures me. Yes. He still has it in him. He is about to launch into another drill, but he takes a call on his mobile.

He leaves his breakfast unfinished, pays the bill, and hurries out into the car park. He is re-energised by a sense of purpose. This is what he lives for: the call to action. Usefulness. Within minutes his yellow Hyundai is in front of me. He drives fast. He is on a mission.