Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page B

the driver's seat, which must have looked pretty damn funny, though those parents following us didn't laugh. It was a rare victory for the Maloney family against the forces of evil.

CHAPTER Two
    Nothing more was said about the dogs and it was suggested that Vera Forbes keep the incident out of the Gazette. It probably wouldn't have stopped her talking her head off around town anyway and the verbal version would have turned Bozo and me into villains.
    But the long and the short of it is that Sergeant Donovan comes to see Nancy and says that there's a prisoner doing a brick (ten years) on the hill who was a handy boxer in his day. He once fought for the Victorian professional welterweight crown but lost on a knockout in the first round. Still and all, that's pretty big time for Yankalillee. He explains that he's talked to the prison governor, Mr Sullivan, about starting something up for the town's kids, who've got nothing to do and always seem to end up getting into trouble with the po]ice. He's thinking of a boxing club under the auspices of the police and with the help of the prisoner, namely Bobby Devlin, who he hopes will be the coach. He'll call it the Police Boys Boxing Club and he wants Bozo and me to join, Mike also if he'd like to.
    Nancy says it's up to us to decide but that she doesn't object in principle. She points out to Big Jack Donovan that we don't have much time and we could only attend training afternoons after school and no weekday evenings except Fridays because of the garbage collecting next morning. Saturday nights would also be okay because we could sleep in Sunday mornings. She's throwing what's left of our lives away Page 31

    willy-nilly but she puts the kybosh on Mike joining up, although she doesn't tell Sergeant Donovan it's because she needs him to help her with the layettes in the afternoons. Mike tells us he wouldn't have joined anyway and Sarah says that at least one of us has some brains.
    Bozo loved it from the first go and couldn't get enough of boxing.
    Though it turns out to be a big ask for me and, although I stick at it for a while, to tell you the truth I'm not that good and I'm that bloody exhausted after getting up at three in the morning, I can hardly stay awake waiting for my turn to spar. Sometimes I'd fall asleep leaning against the big red punching bag. The mornings at school are bad enough, let alone spending the afternoons learning to get my head knocked off.
    Most mornings I'd snooze at the back of the class during the first period of the day and often enough take the strap coming to me from our teacher, Mr Brown. He was English and known to one and all as
    'Crocodile Brown' because he had these big yellow teeth from smoking little black cigars and his eyes had these heavy lids so they'd never open properly and, when he smiled, you knew you were in deep shit.
    'Peter Maloney, are you asleep again?' he'd shout from the front of the class.
    I'd wake up with a start. 'No, sir, only thinking.'
    'Thinking? Hmmm... that would make a nice change in a
    Maloney,' Crocodile Brown says all sarcastic like. 'And what were you thinking about, laddie?'
    'The lesson, sir?'
    'The lesson? Well, well, then perhaps you'll be so kind as to enlighten us a little, eh? What was the last thing I said?'
    'Missed that, sir, too deep in thought.'
    Laughter from the class.
    'Don't be cheeky, lad. We don't like crowns in our classroom, do we now?'
    'No, sir, sorry, sir.'
    'Sorry isn't good enough, Maloney. You're not paid to think, laddie, you're paid to listen!'
    'I didn't know we were being paid, sir.'
    More laughter.
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    'Right, that's just about enough from you, Maloney! Up you come.' Whack, whack, whack, three of the best, the deadly strap whistling
    through the air, the new welts on my bum freshening up the ones the bastard gave last time round.
    A lot of the teachers in country schools were bloody sadists, and Mike and Bozo copped the same as me until they got to high school.
    Anyway,