Jessica by Bryce Courtenay Page A

it ain’t fair. We all done it the same to her!’
    â€˜That’s a confession if ever I heard one,’ Billy says, smiling at Jack. ‘You heard him.’ ‘We’ll fight yiz,’ Flats decides suddenly.
    Billy turns back to him. ‘Wait on, you ain’t heard the terms. It’s two at a time, one minute by the clock fighting, half a minute rest for me, then I take the next two and so on, till the six of you has learned yer lesson.’
    â€˜How many times do we fight?’ Fly-speck asks. Though he’s the smallest of them all, he’s clearly the brains in the group. ‘Just the once.’
    Fly-speck looks over at Flats and nods.
    Jack tries one last time, Jessica egging him on silently. ‘Billy, Jessie thinks she’ll lose her place in the shed. She says my old man told her any trouble and she’s out.’ ‘Bullshit!’ Billy points to the tar boys. ‘They’ve chosen their own punishment. They’ve admitted they did it, you heard the boy. It’s not her that’s responsible, it’s them lot that has to cop what’s coming.’
    By now most of the men have come from the shed and they’ve made a semicircle around the group. There is a hum of approval at Billy’s reasoning. Billy is one of them, a grafter, and while Jack is a good lad who can put in a day’s work, he’s still the boss’s boy. The men like to settle things their way. Billy’s right — the tar boys have to learn they can’t muck about. What’s more, it’s a fair contest. These are all tough kids and at fourteen years they know how to scrap. The men don’t say it, but it’s also a bit of amusement before tea.
    â€˜So, what’s it to be?’ Billy asks. ‘A bucket of tar over yer miserable heads, or fight me two at a time?’
    Jack looks down at Jessica and shrugs, then says quietly so that only she can hear, ‘She’ll be right, Jessie. I’ll talk to my father if it comes up. I’ll take care of it — you won’t lose your job.’
    The tar boys go into a huddle. They break and Flats says again, ‘We’ll fight ya, Billy.’
    Billy digs into his pocket and takes out a battered watch together with his rosary beads and hands both to Jack. ‘You’re the timekeeper, mate. One minute on, half a minute off.’ He points to the tar boys. ‘Two of them girlie beaters at a time.’ He pulls his shirt over his head and hangs it on the mallee log where the two horses are tethered.
    Billy now stands bare-chested with his legs apart facing the tar boys. ‘Righto, first two step up,’ he says to the six boys, none of whom has removed the rags they wear for shirts. Billy is a magnificent-looking young man, deep-muscled, huge in the chest with a stomach flat and rippled like a washboard.
    Flats pushes two of the boys forward, the one wearing boots and another with his head clean-shaved.
    Billy grins. ‘You should’ve picked the tar brush, son,’ he says, getting a laugh from the crowd.
    The men form a circle around the fight. There’s fear to be seen in all the tar boys’ eyes but they can’t back out if they ever hope to make it in a shearing shed. They walk around Billy, Boots to the back of him, the shaven-headed one to the front. Billy slaps the boy in front of him to the side of his head with the flat of his hand, hard enough to give him a thick ear and not much more. The boy jerks his head back as Billy pushes him and the lad loses his balance and falls to the dirt. Billy turns quickly to confront the second boy, but he’s not fast enough. The boy takes a vicious kick at Billy and the steel toecap of his boot connects with Billy’s knee. Billy goes down into the dirt clutching at his knee.
    Then all the other boys rush in, kicking and flailing wildly at Billy, their fists and feet landing anywhere they can find. One of them bites a