The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay Page A

enough guilt for her to withdraw the promised thrashing, I dropped back another fifteen paces and took the raspberry sucker out of my pocket. Taking off the cellophane wrapper, I licked the tiny bits of crimson sugar crystal which had stuck to it before throwing it away. I then settled down to suck my way back to the hostel.
    I was right about the sjambok, which was not mentioned on our return. I spent the remainder of the afternoon putting more stones on Granpa Chook’s grave and making a border around the pile of rocks with white pebbles that took ages to collect from all around the place. I must say, the toughest damn chicken in the whole world had a very impressive grave, a stone copse that
    would probably last forever, hidden by successive generations of khakiweed and blackjack.
    The cook boy had packed me a big brown paper bag of sandwiches for the train journey. We left the hostel about five o’clock to catch the seven o’clock train. My suitcase, though large, contained very few things. Two shirts, two pairs of khaki shorts, my pajamas, the four suckers, which I’d hidden in a pair of shorts, and my new tackies with the paper boats in them. There was plenty of room for the sandwiches. While the suitcase banged against my knees, it wasn’t really heavy, and besides, with all the iron bar torture sessions, my muscles were pretty big. Mevrou was completely puffed out from making two trips into town in one day, and with the suitcase banging against my knees it took us almost an hour to get to the station.
    The station turned out to be a raised platform about thirty yards long upon which sat a building with two doors facing the railway line. On one door STATIONMASTER was written and to the right of this door was a window. Above the window it read TICKETS . On the remaining door it said WAITING ROOM . Outside the stationmaster’s office there were three truck tires painted white, and in the middle of these grew red cannas, their long, flat leaves dusty and shredded with the blooms equally torn and bedraggled-looking. Mevrou seemed to know the stationmaster. He opened the locked waiting room for us and brought her a cup of coffee in a big white cup with SAR monogrammed on it.
    â€œDon’t worry, Hoppie Groenewald is the guard on this train, he will take good care of the boy.” He turned to acknowledge me for the first time, “He is champion of the railways, you know. That Hoppie,” the stationmaster grinned at the thought, “he laughs all the time, but if you get into a fight, I’m telling you, man, you better pray he’s on your side!”
    I wondered what a champion of the railways was, but I clearly understood, and greatly liked, the idea of having someone on my side who was good in a fight. My life seemed to be made for trouble and it would make a nice change to have a champion of the railways beside me when the next lot hit, as was bound to happen.
    Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random ifioment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark. Hoppie Groenewald was to prove to be a passing mentor who would set the next seventeen years of my life on an irrevocable course. He would do so in little more than a day and a night.
    â€œThe boy is a rooinek and also too small to fight yet,” Mevrou said, as though it was only a matter of time before my bad English blood would turn nasty. She produced a ticket from an envelope and inserted a large safety pin into the hole at one end. “Come here, child.” She pinned the ticket to my shirt pocket. “Listen carefully to me now, man, this ticket will take you to Barberton, but your oupa only sent enough money for one breakfast and one lunch and one supper on the train. Tonight you eat only one sandwich, you hear?” I nodded. “Tomorrow for breakfast