Late last night, I began thinking about some events in my past that I usually go year to year without spending much time in recollection of them. I wrote a couple relatively short posts about a few of those events, which you can find here: The Mojo Tokers. If you are interested in these sorts of things -- and not everyone is -- I recommend you read those two posts first, before reading this one. When I left off last night, I was uncertain that I'd be interested in continuing the story. But several kind people have urged me to do so, and besides, I'm discovering that once one opens an old creaky door into the past, it can be hard to immediately shut it again.
A few decades after the events I've been writing about, my younger brother and I were washing the dishes from our Christmas feast. It was around three in the morning, but we had (and still have) a tradition of every year cleaning up the dishes so that his wife is not tempted to tackle the job when she wakes up the next morning.
That year, he at some point turned to me and -- apparently out of the blue -- asked in a casual voice, "Did mom tell you that she once almost lost her job because of you?"
When he turned to me, and saw how stunned I was, he went on. "Don't worry about it. It was ages ago, all water under the bridge now. I was just curious if she ever told you. I'm betting she didn't. It wouldn't be like her to."
"No. You're right. She never has. Is this about when I was sixteen?"
"Yes." Bro said, sounding like he was picking his words with care. "She told me and your brother to keep it to ourselves. Not give you a hint of it. But we were to ready ourselves for bad news that might come any day, because there was talk of removing her. Some people were saying she should be held accountable for having so poorly raised you that you would do what you did. If she'd lost her job, she would not have found another in the town. We'd have to leave town. Maybe to Springfield.
"More than half the town was in panic that you were some kind of existential threat to the community. The Mayor was talking with the District Attorney, the Sheriff wanted to drive you out into the country and teach you a lesson. Mom rallied every friend she had, called in every chip owed her, pulled out all the stops, and defended you like a pissed off bear. But even she couldn't predict what was going to happen -- and you know how good she is at predicting things! It was months before she knew you were safe."
"Oh ****! ****!"
"Easy! It's too late to be upset about it now! I just thought it was finally time you should know."
Now and then, for years after my sixteenth year, one person or another would fill me in on a piece of the story that I was unaware of at the time of the events. But my brother's revelation was by far the most disturbing. I vividly imagined my mother hiding from me her fears, putting on a brave face for my sake, in order not to burden me at perhaps the most vulnerable moment in my life past infancy. Thoughts of how hard it had gone for her hounded me for days after our talk.
Life has taught me that almost no matter how miserably you screw things up, someone will sooner or later take your side. Almost always. I've heard it's an American trait. "Sympathy for the underdog." You've got to be a pretty nasty person that no one -- absolutely no one -- wants anything to do with you. In my case, I had three people on my high school's faculty that stood up for me. Foremost was the librarian, then her lover, who taught Biology and Earth Science. Last, the principal.
Yet, the person who most had my back was a fellow student, Jeff. Jeff was perhaps the gentlest, hardest to provoke boy in the high school. He might also have been the smartest, most thoughtful, and perceptive, too. He was short, but powerfully built. Only once in the few brief years I knew him did I ever see him angry, and then a side of him I had not imagined could exist emerged like a bolt of lightning.
Jeff had a cousin. A girl in middle school. One day, he and I came upon her the same moment an older boy -- older than her, older than us -- suddenly reached out to squeeze one of her breasts. Jeff flashed into action before I could even absorb what had just happened. He lashed his fists out to rain like a storm on the boy's face and throat. The boy went down. It all happened so fast, and was so disorienting, that I at first thought Jeff had gone crazy, attacking the boy without even the least reason or provocation. I had to wait what seemed like seconds for my brain to catch up and grasp the truth.
Later, Jeff confided in me his cousin had once been sexually assaulted by a relative -- he wouldn't say who -- and that when he'd seen her attacked right before his eyes, he could have killed the boy, and might have, if the boy had not collapsed so quickly. "They would have never let me off." Jeff said, matter of factly, and for once I was reflective enough to grasp he was right. Jeff was a Willis. He was fated.
He was also too proud to ask, but I knew what I had to promise. "I'll swear I saw him swing first."
To be continued...
