Free Things as They Are by Guy Vanderhaeghe Page B

while watching Hiller put Kurt through hispaces. There amid the yellow grass, the run-over tricycle with the sow thistle growing up through the spokes of a twisted wheel, the greasy patch of lawn which Mr. Deke had killed by draining the oil from his car onto it every change, there amid all the other symptoms of neglect – scattered gaskets, a picket pulled from the sagging fence by Deke’s brothers and sisters, a lid from a paint can, shards of vinyl from a broken record, a torn plastic diaper, a discarded hot plate whose two rusted elements seemed to regard the scene with blood-shot, whirling eyes – the training of Kurt Meinecke went on in a blistering July heat wave.
    Meinecke jumping rope in the hottest stretch of the afternoon, Hiller roaring abuse and ridicule at him. “Knees higher! Get them knees up! No pain, no gain! I still see titty bouncing there! Bouncing boobies, Meinecke! Shame! No fighter of mine goes into the ring looking like he needs a brassiere! Knees up!”
    Road work was even more brutal. Hiller conned Kurt into allowing himself to be tied to the bumper of Murph’s reservation beater Chev with twenty feet of rope. The car was then driven at exactly six miles an hour down two miles of deserted country road with Kurt flailing along behind in the dust. If Meinecke didn’t keep up he’d be dragged. When I protested, Norman said that it was the only way to get Meinecke to put out, he was such a lazy fuck. Anyway, boxing was survival of the fittest.
    “But what if he trips and falls?” I asked.
    “He’s got no business tripping,” said Norman.
    The really bizarre thing was that Meinecke seemed grateful for the opportunity of being leashed to a bumper and towed up and down country lanes. “Like Norman says,” he explained to me when I told him he was crazy, “ ‘no pain, no gain’ and another thing – which Norman also says – ‘you don’t know what you can do until you have to do it.’ Couple of times there on the road I wanted to quit awful bad, but when you know you can’t … well, you don’t. And then you’re the better for it.”
    “Yeah, and after that fucking lunatic ends up dragging you a couple hundred yards behind a car, then you’ll say you’re the better for the skin graft too.”
    Norman was a genius of the stick-and-carrot school of psychology. For Meinecke, the carrot was the rapturous commentary which Hiller provided to accompany Kurt’s daily thumping of the heavy bag dangling from Mrs. Deke’s clothesline pole. There was no doubt about it, Meinecke could punch. Even with Murph clinging to the bag, bracing it, Meinecke could rock them both with one of his awesome right hands. A little praise from Norman and Meinecke looked like a cat full of sweet cream. “That’s a boy, Kurtie! Look at that! That boy’s what you call a banger. Your classic body puncher, your get down and get dirty George Chuvalo kind of fighter. Jab! Jab! Stick it in his face! Set it up! Go downstairs now! Hit him with the low blow! Crack his walnuts! All’s fair in love and war, Kurtie, my man! You beauty, you!”
    A typical July afternoon.
    Each of Hiller’s boys had a role to play in the making of a champion, nobody was left out. The pattern was the same as in
The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen
, where each contributed according to his talents. Dooey was our equipment manager, shoplifting vaseline, adhesive tape, gauze, iodine, Q-tips, copies of
Ring
magazine – all the props – from the local drugstore. Murph and his beat-up ’57 Chev towed Meinecke through his road work. Deke’s yard was our training camp. I was delegated corner man and masseur. To Hop Jump fell the honour of being appointed Meinecke’s sparring partner, a seemingly perverse choice since the Hopper was notorious for his cowardice. This he cheerfully acknowledged with the frequent declaration, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.” The truth was that he was neither, but everyone instinctively