Davo's Little Something

by Robert G. Barrett

  As he stepped outside a sign over a shop window across the road caught his eye. ‘Hi-Fi Warehouse—Annual Stocktaking Sale.’ With his records tucked up under his arm he waited for a break in the traffic then jogged across George Street to have a look. What he was looking for was on special and stacked in the window with several others. A good solid top name ghetto blaster with detachable speakers and a 5 band graphic-equaliser: marked down from $330 to $260. After checking it out thoroughly and having a good listen he bought that too—also paying cash. That was just about the end of his $1000.

  He placed the ghetto blaster and the records carefully in the back of the ute alongside the punching bag so they wouldn’t roll around. Davo couldn’t help it but he was feeling pretty pleased with himself as he got behind the steering wheel and started the car. He’d managed to get everything he needed in one go and at the right price and he was looking forward to this new type of training—just how keen he was he wasn’t quite sure though. Was all this trouble really worth it? He sat there for a few moments softly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while the motor quietly ticked over. Seeing he was down that end of town he decided to give himself a bit of incentive.

  The narrow twisting little alley didn’t look anywhere near as sinister in the daytime as it had in the night. In fact, with the sun shining on the old converted houses snuggled together it looked a little cute if anything. He left the car on a no standing zone and walked slowly over for a closer look. Standing next to that rusting, cyclone-wire fence on his own the feeling of elation he had had in the car earlier soon disappeared to be replaced by one of intense anger, and although it was broad daylight and there was hardly anyone around—slight trepidation. Suddenly the memories of that Thursday night came flooding back, he began to feel uneasy in the pit of his stomach and a cold sweat of fear spread across his forehead. He wanted to turn and run and get the hell out of there but he stood there forcing himself to look; firstly at the surrounding walls then down into the gutter and along the roadway. There were vivid discolorations and stains on the road. Were they bloodstains? His? Wayne’s? He jammed his eyes shut as Wayne’s screams and the savage frenzied shouts of the gang and the thuds of their boots and fists came bouncing off the walls and cars. Davo threw his hands up in front of his face and opened his eyes as if he expected it all to start happening again but instead he was momentarily stunned to see the sun shining brightly. Davo stood there feeling giddy, swaying slightly from side to side as his breathing returned to normal, then after a few minutes he was alright. He walked back to his car and sat behind the wheel staring over at the lane, the hatred and malevolence now bubbling up inside him like a boiling saucepan of milk. He realised, as he started the car, that if ever he needed any incentive for what he was doing he knew where to come.

  *

  Once he got all the gear inside the garage, putting up the punching bag wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. Davo was no handyman but the new bit chewed straight into the concrete roof of the garage like it was sponge-cake and the eye-bolt screwed straight into the hole. Just to be on the safe side he clamped a small metal bar through the eye, where it met flush with the ceiling, and secured it with two dynabolts. He slipped the swivel meat-hook through the eye-bolt and hung the four metal rings holding the bag straps off that. This was a little bit tricky but by balancing the bag on his shoulder and stepping up on a milk crate he managed to get the four rings attached in two or three attempts. Which showed him that although he was getting a little fitter he still wasn’t all that strong: he made a mental note to make sure he did plenty of weight training before he attempted anything else. The bag was still just a bit high so he got back up on the milk crate, took it down and added another meat hook. Yes, that was perfect. The bag was on one side of the garage with plenty of room for him to move around it and plenty of space for him to skip on the other side. Spot on.

  Davo watched the gently swaying red leather bag for a couple of moments and decided to try it out. He unpacked the leather mitts, the same colour as the bag, from their plastic wrapping, put them on, then gave the bag a bit of a push, watched it for a second or two and threw a left and a right: another left and two more rights. They landed more with a slapping sound than a thump and were a pretty mediocre effort; Davo realised he didn’t have a great deal of ability when it came to throwing a punch. Another thing he noticed. Even the jarring from those few, feeble taps vibrated right up his arm and hurt inside his head, something like if you move suddenly when you’ve got a bad hangover. He knew there was going to be a lot of pain and frustration in front of him before he’d be able to overcome that pain and his ineffectiveness; but he was determined to get on top of it.

  He unpacked the weights next and started sliding them onto the short metal bars, then, with the Allen key provided, tightened them flush against the rubber grips making two sets of hand dumbbells 30 pounds each. The attendant had given him a chart of exercises to go with the weights which he pinned on the wall with some plastic putty. He peered at it intently for a while then decided to try a couple out sitting on an old wooden bench already placed up against one wall of the garage. Overhead presses and curls. The 30 pound weights felt like they weighed a ton at first as he forced them up over his head then dragged them from below his waist up level with his shoulders. But Davo was used to lifting fairly heavy things at work—though not repetitively—so he knew it would only be a matter of time before he would get used to doing this; he was quite looking forward to it actually. He did ten of each then placed the weights with a bit of a clang next to the bench; he made a mental note to get an old piece of carpet for them so he wouldn’t damage the floor. That left the skipping rope.

  Oddly enough, Davo knew the fundamentals of skipping rope properly. He remembered when he was a kid, going down after school to watch a mob of professional boxers work out at the old Boys Club when it used to be down North Bondi before the council bulldozed it and put a park there. He never got into the boxing and sparring but being a cheeky kid he used to borrow their skipping ropes and away he’d go. He got fairly good at it and over the years Davo found that skipping rope, boxer style, was a bit like riding a pushbike: once you got the knack, you never really forgot it. He moved to the other side of the garage, stood there with the skipping rope in his hands for a few seconds then took a deep breath, flicked the leather rope over his head and jumped. He did this slowly at first, like a schoolgirl, then gradually started changing and shuffling his feet. Yes he thought, after about three or four minutes, I might be a bit rusty but I’ll be able to get into this alright. One thing he did notice, as he hung the skipping rope up on a hook sticking out of the wall, the new ropes were a vast improvement on the ones they had down the old Boys Club—this one literally hummed through the air. Yes, skipping was going to be alright.

  So. Weights, punching bag, sit-up board and skipping rope. It was like having his own little gymnasium right underneath his flat. He could get as fit as a fiddle and nobody would see him. They might hear the music going when he brought the ghetto blaster down there but with the doors closed and the garage being right on the end no one would know much what was going on and everybody in the block kept pretty much to themselves anyway. Yes it was all going to be nice and hush hush, then, after about ten weeks, poor crippled Bob Davis was going to come roaring out of that garage one night like a tiger. Worse. He gave a nod of approval as he took a last look around then with a sinister contented expression on his face turned out the light, locked the door and went upstairs.

  After some more chicken and salad for tea he started sorting out his records then rummaged around to find several blank cassettes. With plenty of Midnight Oil, Dragon, Cold Chisel and other rock albums to choose from Davo knew he’d have no trouble making up plenty of good training tapes. He remembered picking Sue up a couple of times from aerobic classes when they were married and watching the girls parading around in their crotch-tight leotards like Jane Fonda, kicking their heels up and doing stretc
hing exercises to Cindy Lauper and Madonna and Michael Jackson and the rest of that disco pap. That might have been alright for the women but it didn’t appeal to Davo one bit; not in the state of mind he was in. He needed mean music. Not that repetitious, don’t wash your clothes, look vacant, head-banging shit. But good driving Oz rock. Something he could get his teeth into while he trained. He placed an album on the turntable then dropped a cassette into the tapedeck. He set the bias, twiddled the input dials then hit the pause button and the first track started going down. Midnight Oil—I Don’t Want To Be The One. Yes, he smiled, as he sat back and listened to it. I can just see myself skipping to that.

  I can’t believe the perfect families on my colour TV, If I don’t make it to the top it’ll never bother me,

  —and I don’t want to be the one.

  Funny lyrics he thought, as he read the sleeve while it was taping. It was the first time he’d ever taken any notice of the words of some of these songs. He dug it.

  While Davo got his first sixty-minute cassette of rock ’n’ roll tracks down, he read the sleeves and studied the album covers out of idle curiosity; he also put aside the records he thought he’d use for the next cassette. While he was taping this second one however, he sat back and started leafing through the three books he’d bought at the martial arts shop, starting with the one on boxing.

  It was all there. Straight left, left hooks, short rights, uppercuts. Then the combinations. Left jab, right uppercut, left hook to the chin. Jab, step and hook. Inside treble. Outside treble. Although Davo had never done any boxing in his life the book was quite explicit and easy to follow with plenty of photos. Swing the body like a gate closing. Pivot off the hip and shoulder. Come up on one foot. Drop the back knee. He realised reading it made it look simple and putting it into practice would be a different story altogether but he felt he could to it; he was determined to do it and that was the main thing.

  The book on Thai boxing was interesting. Full of photos of nuggety little fighters whose almost innocent-looking faces belied the deadly ferocity they could muster with their hands and feet and while their bodies appear to be even slender by Western standards, their legs looked like they’d been carved out of teak logs. The boxing style was the same but the foot techniques were something else, consisting mainly of a Muay-Thai kick delivered with the instep with incredible force. It showed photos of how the Thai boxers went out into the bamboo fields and kicked at the bamboo with their insteps till they were almost rock hard and covered with callouses right up past their shins then when they got in the ring, although they’d try and kick each other in the head, they’d go mainly for crippling blows to the ribs and legs. Davo ran his hands across the tops of his legs and remembered getting corked there a couple of times playing football at school; he imagined what one of those kicks would feel like landing on the hard tight muscles of your thighs. It would be like getting hit with a baseball bat. They also had some interesting techniques with their elbows and knees; especially a close quarters knee up under the floating rib that made Davo wince just thinking about it. There was a definite knack to all of it but Davo felt he could master that too.

  The book on Hapkido seemed to concentrate more on throws and counter blows combined with brute strength. The kicks looked alright but compared to the Thai style—especially to the Thai hand movements—it looked wooden and confined. It was deadly and efficient, there were no two ways about that, but it was obvious that to be proficient at it you would have to practise for years. There was a method of kicking straight out with the ball of the foot though that looked easy enough and a method of punching with a back-fist, something like a backhand serve with a tennis racquet that definitely had possibilities. Yes, he liked that one alright.

  Halfway through the third cassette Davo finally put the books down and settled back on the lounge to think. He figured that between the three books, if he practised hard enough, he could master enough of those punches, kicks and techniques to suit his needs. But in all practicality, he realised that anyone could look good and feel like a world beater bashing away at a punching bag, because the punching bag didn’t hit back. He was going to need some sort of experience, possibly sparring, and without anyone knowing, and that was going to be a different story altogether. He settled back a little further into the lounge, capped his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling while the track he was taping played softly through the speakers; already the basics of another plan were starting to form in his cool calculating vindictive mind. It was just after eleven when he finished the last cassette, the latest he’d been up since he got out of hospital. He yawned and switched everything off then after going to the toilet got into bed. He decided to have a bit of a sleep-in in the morning; Tuesday promised to be a busy and hopefully rewarding day.

  It was eight am and still quite cold when Davo got up the following morning and had a light breakfast. If it was cold in the unit it seemed twice as cold when he stepped into the garage and closed the side door behind him. He switched on the light, walked over to the workbench and placed the ghetto blaster next to the power point, along with the three cassettes, the books on martial arts and an old alarm clock he had taken from the kitchen. He turned the radio in the ghetto blaster on fairly loud and went back outside to see how loud it sounded; though it was roaring inside you could scarcely hear it, even just a few feet from the door. He went back inside, closed the door behind him again and switched off the radio. He took his tracksuit top off, got the skipping rope from where he’d left it hanging on the wall and draped it around his neck then, with his hands shaking slightly from a sinister kind of excitement, he wound the old clock up and dropped one of the tapes into the cassette ready to go. Well he thought, as he stared absently at the old alarm clock ticking away on the workbench, this is it. No more bullshit. Like they say in the movies—this is where the story really starts. In the cold silence of the garage the ticking of the old alarm clock sounded more like a drum beat and seemed to echo off every wall right up to the ceiling. Do I really want to go through with this? Do I really want to turn myself into some sort of a superfit, superstrong punching kicking machine just so I can go out smashing people to get some sort of revenge. Is it really worth it? Is it? He gave a contemptuous chuckle and grinned evilly to himself. Is it bloody what. He placed his hand over the ghetto blaster and as he did the words of an old Doors song flashed into his mind.

  The time to hesitate is through.

  No time to wallow in the mire.

  Come on baby light my fire.

  It was just on 8.30 when Davo hit the play button and Rose Tattoo’s Bad Boy For Love started pumping through the garage and he started skipping. And Davo’s fire was well and truly lit and roaring inside him like a furnace and what it would take to put it out no one knew—least of all Davo.

  He was naturally a bit clumsy at first. The rope caught under his feet a few times and it would also hit him across the back of the neck both stinging and annoying him. After about six trips and several whacks across the neck he felt like getting the skipping rope and flinging it across the garage in anger. But he persevered and before long it all started coming back to him and gradually he was making less mistakes and skipping along fairly smoothly; a little slowly perhaps but at a steady constant pace. The loud driving rock ’n’ roll tracks peeled off in the background—Dragon, Hoodoo-Gurus, Dropbears, Cold Chisel—and before long he could feel the sweat forming across the sweatshirt covering his chest and seeping into his sweat band. It was tough going but he didn’t falter, he could feel a soreness starting in his shoulders but he wasn’t puffing all that much. His head ached enough to annoy him but if anything the pain, and the memory of what had caused it, drove him on, making him more determined than ever to achieve his goal. Whatever that was.

  Davo skipped for about twenty minutes—though it seemed more like an hour—then stopped for a while mainly to give his shoulders a rest. Apart from that he didn’t feel too bad. He stood there for a minute or tw
o then flicked the rope up again and continued. After another ten minutes the last track on that tape played so he sat down on the wooden bench, head slightly bowed, his arms resting across his knees; perspiration dripped off his chin and steam rose off his face as he contemplated the small pool of water formed by the drops of sweat landing on the concrete floor just in front of his feet. His chest was heaving now but that hadn’t been a bad effort, thirty minutes almost nonstop. He sat there in the exaggerated silence after the pounding of the ghetto blaster and let the old alarm clock tick loudly away for a good five minutes. He wasn’t out to break any records and so far he’d gone pretty well, better than he’d expected.

  His breathing returned to normal and with his head aching only slightly he walked over and dropped the other side of the tape into the cassette then sat back down on the bench with the two 30 pound weights at his feet. Just as the tape cut in and Richard Clapton started thumping out Getting to The Heart of It, he did his first set of repetitions: ten presses above his head, which he marked down carefully in a notebook he’d had in a drawer of the workbench. He followed this with ten curls then ten bent over pulling the weights up to his chest. He did fifty of each, marking it all down while the music pounded away filling the garage around him: AC/DC, Divinyls, Non Stop Dancers. Although at times he thought his arms and shoulders were going to break and his lungs burst the driving beat of the music seemed to take his mind off the pain he was going through. He started singing along with the words of some of the songs then started trying to lift the weights in time to the beat but Cold Chisel’s Goodbye Astrid suddenly came on out of nowhere and nearly crippled him so he soon gave that idea away. Before long another half hour had gone by and that side of the tape had finished so he sat back on the wooden bench, easing his back against the wall to have another think while he rested in the surrounding silence. He couldn’t believe the change that was already coming over him, it was great. He could feel the muscles in his arms, chest and shoulders straining beneath the warm dampness of his sweatshirt and when he squeezed or pressed them they were hard and firm. The newfound strength seemed to be flowing through every sinew and vein right down to his fingertips. It was exhilarating, a feeling like he’d never felt before. It was hard, even exhausting work, but unlike having to lift heavy things around in the butcher shop it was enjoyable and if he felt this good after one session how was he going to feel in a couple of months. An evil grin spread across his sweat-stained face and a sinister gleam began to radiate from his slightly narrowed eyes. Now for the hard part.