This entry is from a short story I wrote a few months back titled "Last one out, bring the flag" in two parts. It tells of how a kid learned about racism and how to cope as best as he could in the turbulent late 60's.
Towards the end of my teacher’s pet days and before I was asked to
take ten steps backwards (poem reciting) in my still developing manhood,
I’d ask Mrs. Gladfelter to drop me at the curb close to my house so I didn’t have
to explain myself to anyone, specifically my Mom. My mom was militant
before I knew what the word meant. It didn’t cotton well with her to
know I might be getting beat up or fighting every day. I’d flat out lie
to her and say we played rough at recess, and that much was true, but
coming out on the short end of a two and sometimes three on one scrap
would mean my mom would show up and the Yankee in her (she was from
Maryland, born this side of the Mason-Dixon in a small railroad town
named Cumberland, but I called her a Yankee anyway just to piss her off)
would reveal itself in all its Gray and White Union colored glory. It
would be like the Civil War was being fought all over again and
something I’d just soon avoid back then. God help you if your Mom ever
showed up at school to defend your honor. It meant one thing and one thing only,
you were a dead man. I was convinced my mom didn’t give a rat’s ass
about me back then, but you were not going to beat up her kid. It was
more of a personal pride thing for her, not a love your son thing as far
as I could tell. If she knew what I was going through and not winning
100% of the time, I was a dead man. If she showed up at my school and
raised all manner of hell because I was getting the shit kicked out of
myself a few days out of the week, then the terrorists I attended school
with would kill me dead. I figured that out after the next to the last
white kid’s mother did just what I feared mine might. My buddy Pat
McGill was a scrappy red-headed kid (aren’t all of them?) of Irish
descent who lasted about two more weeks and those two weeks were filled
with face down, dirt-sniffing, torn clothed ass-whuppins from the new
locals. His family moved away shortly thereafter, leaving the duty of
flag bearer to just me. Years later Pat and I attended the same high
school, as fate would have it, but by then we were both just distant
memories remembered by an occasional “What’s up” in the hallways of
higher learning. Maybe we just both wanted to forget what we’d been
through and seeing each other brought back those memories, unpleasant
for us both.
Life’s like that.
I feel like I need to make one thing clear here. I was not a whiner
or a pussy back then. The first term, whiner, was just that, someone who
complained about every little thing that went wrong. The second term,
pussy, might mean a lot of different things to many, from a critter of the feline persuasion to
woman parts. What it meant to an athlete was you were unable, unfit,
and worst of all, unwilling. It also meant you pissed sitting down, played with Barbie Dolls (as
opposed to “action figures” like G.I. Joe) wore dresses, anything that
might mean you weren’t a man or at least well on your way there as far
as athletics were concerned. Back then I played every intermural sport, save for
basketball, that a kid could play. I would not ever be known as a pussy as
long as I lived, so I learned one inalienable truth; I was going to have
to fight for the rest of my life if the fifth grade was a window into
my future. “It’s going to be alright” meant that I’d better learn to
fight, like it, and somehow balance the victories and the defeats so I
could survive. I learned one thing in the fifth grade, and that was that
for every kids ass you kicked, there was an older brother, a cousin, a
second cousin and sometimes even a sister whose ass you’d have to fight
after your pugilistic dismissal of their “kin”. I needed to
win if I wanted to eat my lunch that day.
My daily activities did force me to learn how to dance back then. It made me
take full advantage of the one fiftieth Cherokee Indian it was rumored I
possessed; it made me do the rain dance. And pray too. I'd dance and pray for rain, and do both a lot. But I also learned
I didn’t want to fight during recess and have to fight my way home to
boot. So when I’d get in a fight, I’d make sure I knew who and how many
family members I was going to engage afterward. It was a balancing act
most nine-year olds might never consider. At one point it got so bad and
frequent, I wore the same pants to school for three weeks straight
because I had fought Dexter Washington, his six brothers, four cousins,
his sister (twice) and Dexter one more time, and getting my clothes torn
up would set off warning shots with my mother. I think I have
adequately explained the slings and arrows of that scenario, so I
avoided it like a potential life-ending plague.
I remember those green “Docker” style pants well. They were
hand-me-downs from my older brother, who I guessed was fighting his own
wars in Junior High (aka middle school), and they got a year’s worth of
wear in the three weeks I donned them to do battle. It ended when the
principal of my school called me into his office and asked me if my
family was in some sort of financial straits. I told him that I was not
aware of any hardships that had befallen my clan and my clothing was not
a reflection of those unknown straits, if they indeed existed. Mr.
Saffo was a man of action, and any trouble would be dealt with by a
principal with a no-nonsense approach to young people. What that meant
in English (based on my now innate sense of survival) was that if he
stepped in I’d be fighting on my way to school, from school, during
school, and possible week-ends… and maybe Christmas and Easter too. That
was a prospect I’d just as soon avoid. So I lied to my principal that
day, in my ragged green slacks and ragged mind-set. I lied to him so I might survive, not just that day, but the many days that lay ahead.
Around then, I was already fighting my way through the Jackson
family. The Jacksons were a huge family big enough to field a football
team (both offense and defense), a basketball team and a baseball team
to include a bull pen and farm league. There was what seemed to me, to
be a few hundred Jacksons. Their mom and dad named them all after the
books of the bible. I am not kidding when I tell you this. I fought
Genesis Jackson, Exodus Jackson, Leviticus Jackson (now he could scrap)
all the way to Malachi Jackson. I skipped a few books, but did duke it
out with both first and second Samuel (known as the twins), Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Nehemiah and even Ruth and Esther Jackson. I had punched my way
through the Book of Moses, The Prophets, most of The Writings. I
guessed names like “Lamentations, Kings, Numbers and Deuteronomy” were
just way too strange to name a kid, Biblical or not. What I didn’t know
was those were used as middle names for other Jacksons, like Bubba,
Leroy, and Skillet Jackson, one mean SOB.
I was busy fighting my way through the New Testament and had the shit
kicked out of me by Luke Jackson, a dude who was a foot taller than me
at the time and the first Jackson to have pity on a neophyte scrappy
white kid born on Peachtree street. I had whipped Matthew, Mark and John
Jackson, even-steven with “Jesus” Jackson, who hollered for me not to
punch him in the face (and for some strange reason I didn’t) because, as
he said “I am the chosen one, mutha fukka”. I was working my way into
Acts Jackson (his family called him “Action”), when it all stopped
suddenly with the Jackson clan. I was ready to fight it out now and
explain my blasphemous altercations with the biblical books expressed in
human form, to God himself if necessary, but later.
I would soon learn why the fights all stopped, and that right soon.
It seemed that the Jackson family was regular attendees of the
Baptist Church in the burg of Atlanta where they were all bussed from.
The political lottery deciding that all the Jackson family between the
Seventh grade and Kindergarten would receive the earliest part of their
education at the same school I was required to attend. It seemed like
the lottery favored some and not others, if you saw things from my point
of view. My brother was in Junior High School, smart as Hell and a
decent opponent when it came to fighting. He was 457-0, kicking my
younger ass every single time I stepped up to the plate to take his
crown. It would be many years later before I took his title away and he
and I became more like friends than siblings afterward. I guess you get
used to your bigger brother watching your back when you are physically
smaller than him, meaning you had something with which to threaten a
larger threat with. The first time I bested my older brother, and the
last time I tried, my thin layer of protection vanished like a fart in a
hurricane.
The Jacksons, it seemed, had “testify day” at the Baptist Church a
few Sundays back, where they all were supposed to confess their sins in
front of the church. As fate or God would have it, my name came up
during said confession from one of the kinder (I’m guessing Hebrews
Jackson or maybe 2nd Timothy…he was a bit of a sissy and his turn was
coming soon) more gentle books of the Jackson Bible. In other words, one
of the family members confessed that I had to fight the majority of the
family and by no fault of my own. It seemed that the heads of the
Jackson family (it was an even proposition in the black family… Mom had
as much sway over the family as the father did) made sure that it was
known that continuous willful sin would place them in the hot-seat of
Hades faster than rejecting Jesus as Lord and Savior (and not Jesus
Jackson either-the real sho-nuff Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the most
high). That’s the same Jesus whom I was now proclaiming as my personal
savior. Although the source of my thankfulness was a by-product of the
Jackson family’s public confessional, the best part of that Sunday was
the cessation of getting my ass kicked in by the biggest family in
Atlanta. It did not, however, compel them to take that one extra step in
their still evolving faith walk. That extra step would be protecting or
even praying for their enemy. In other words, none of the biblical
Jacksons I had locked horns with ever stepped in to halt any other
scraps I was involved in. That was how I saw myself back then. I was the
enemy and I didn’t even know for sure why. I guess any battle that gets
fought too long ends up that way. Nobody remembers why it started or
how it will end. It even took me a while to figure it out. Mine ended
six months later with a large yellow moving van backed into my yard.
It was many years later when I discovered what “Last one out, bring the flag” really meant.
I guess I was that “one”.
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