The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island

by Scott Semegran

  Randy leaned over to me. “I’m already bored!” he whispered through pursed lips.

  “Me too!”

  Mr. Roosevelt pressed on. “I have a lot of things to announce including information about cheerleader tryouts and an update on nuclear disaster drills. But before I get into all that, I have a quick announcement I’d like to make.”

  The din of the students’ chatter returned and I could make out the collective curiosity.

  The principal continued. “Over the summer, I was awestruck by a news story about four boys who were stranded out on an island in the middle of Canyon Lake...”

  With the unexpected mention of the lake, I immediately felt a twist in my gut as if a mystical creature shoved its hand down my throat and gripped my stomach in its clenched fist. I looked to my three friends who obviously were accosted by the same mystical creature. Their faces were wide with surprise. And embarrassment.

  “These four, brave boys were stranded on a little island for days on end without food or water. One of them was even bitten by a poisonous snake, until they were saved by a military helicopter. And I just wanted to acknowledge these four boys—your fellow students—and welcome them back to F. D. R. Middle School, safe and sound.”

  The auditorium erupted into applause, but I don’t think most of the kids were aware of who he was referring to. Many heads swiveled on curious necks; many faces looked for the honored students.

  “The four boys, please come up here on the stage with me. William Flynn, Randy Moss, Brian Johnson, and Miguel Gonzalez!”

  And that’s when all eyes turned to us, to the collective sound of plastic chair feet rubbing against cheap floor tile. We were no longer ghosts in that school. Everyone was looking at us. Us—of all people. The cheering began. Then hooting. Then clapping. We stood up, beaming red from the sudden attention. I made my way out of the aisle, sidestepping made difficult with my limp leg, my backside rubbing against other seated students. My three friends followed close behind. I limped down the middle of the auditorium with my friends behind me while the entire student body cheered and clapped, even called out our names. It was like we landed on the moon or discovered the cure for cancer. It was, I thought to myself, an odd thing for me and my friends to be praised for: our collective stupidity. We hopped on the stage and Mr. Roosevelt directed us with a stiff arm to stand in a line next to the podium, and motioned for us to look at our audience of peers.

  “Let’s give these boys a round of applause!”

  And applaud they did, raucously for a couple of minutes, the entire school cheered for us, stomped their feet even, a seance for the ghostly seventh graders to emerge as revered eighth graders. Fellow classmates. Survivors. Heroes. Once Mr. Roosevelt felt we had enough of his allotted time, he commanded the kids to quiet down, pushing down the air in front of him to quell their enthusiasm.

  He turned and smiled. “Welcome back, boys. Glad you’re safe. You may return to your seats.” He motioned again with a stiff arm for us to exit the stage.

  We hopped down, then returned to our seats at the back of the auditorium, receiving high and low fives from seated students all along the length of the middle aisle.

  Mr. Roosevelt roughly cleared his throat again, then leaned to the microphone. “Okay, where was I?” he started, rewinding in his mind the prepared outline for his assembly speech. “Oh, yes! Cheerleading tryouts.”

  Back at our seats, we gave each other fist bumps and hand slaps. I remember thinking to myself, amidst all the adulation that morning, that things would be different for us from that day forward. I couldn’t have been more right about that.

  ***

  Here’s the thing about adulation for an introvert: it’s kryptonite. After about an hour of stares from strange students and congratulatory handshakes from grinning teachers, I was ready to cover myself in the sheet of anonymity that a ghostly wallflower like me enjoyed so much. Being anonymous is only truly appreciated after it’s gone. I guess if I learned anything that day, it was this: I didn’t want to be famous. If that morning standing in front of the entire student body taught me anything, it was that being famous was for suckers. Privacy was where it was at. By the end of third period, I was ready to return to being a ghost at Franklin D. Roosevelt Middle School.

  After school, I unlocked my bike, shoved the chain and combination lock in my new backpack (nylon, blue, water resistant), and waited for my friends at the bike rack, straddling my bike, ready to go home and eat a snack, maybe a Little Debbie chocolate cake or something salty. After a few minutes, Randy joined me, his football helmet under his arm, a large duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and sweat streaming down his face.

  “You make the team?” I said.

  He tossed the duffle bag on the ground and hung the helmet on one of the bike handles. “Yup. Varsity. Coach wants me as defensive tackle. He says I will destroy running backs.”

  “That’s coooool!”

  “Practice starts tomorrow morning at 6:30am.”

  “Six thirty?!” I said. “I don’t even wakeup that early.”

  “You guys might be riding to school without me. Sorry.”

  “That’ll be weird.”

  “I know,” he said. He slung his duffle bag over his shoulder, then pulled his bike off the rack and parked it next to me. “We’ll still eat lunch together, right?”

  I nodded. “Definitely.”

  Brian and Miguel soon joined us.

  “I got three girls’ phone numbers today,” Brian said. “That’s radical!”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah! Getting stuck on that island has boosted my popularity. Girls are throwing themselves at me!”

  “Calm down, Romeo,” Miguel said, rolling his eyes. “You gonna get crabs on your hairy beanbag.”

  The three of us cackled to Brian’s dismay. He looked at his crotch, then whipped his head up defiantly.

  “Nah!” he said. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Miguel replied. “Better wrap your love sausage so your meatballs don’t get infested.”

  Brian and Miguel unlocked their bikes, then placed them next to me and Randy.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “Ready!” they all said.

  I mounted my bike and pedaled as fast as I could. My friends followed.

  We made our way down the sidewalk that wrapped around the two blacktop basketball courts and two tennis courts, until the sidewalk ended and turned into a gravel path. We followed the path into the wooded area behind F. D. R. until we came to the clearing where we always met, so we could hangout for a little while before going home. It was the same clearing where we were accosted by Bloody Billy and the Thousand Oaks Gang last spring. The set of bleachers was still there in what seemed like the same spot, sitting in patches of tall grass and sticker burrs, a few crushed beer cans strewn about. I rode around the left side of the bleachers, then jumped off my bike and watched it careen into the surrounding brush.

  “Bullseye!” Randy cheered.

  “Two points!” I belted out.

  “That was awesome.”

  “Why didn’t you jump off yours?”

  “It’s a new bike. I don’t want it messed up.”

  “Ah,” I replied, a little jealous of his new bike.

  Brian, Miguel, and Randy dropped their bikes where they stood, and Randy jumped up on the bleachers to entertain us.

  “Want to hear a joke?” he said, clapping his hands to encourage us to respond. “It’s a dirty one!”

  “Yeah!” the rest of us said.

  “All right, all right! Gather round,” he said, indicating for us to get closer. “I don’t want to say it too loud cause it’s really dirty.”

  Brian, Miguel, and I returned sadistic smiles.

  Randy cleared his throat. “OK. What’s lumpy, brown, and slimy all—”

  Brian interrupted his comedy routine, pointing at something in the brush. “Hey! What’s that?”

  Randy turned to look.
“What’s what?”

  “There in the bushes.”

  “Shit, I don’t know,” Randy said, then hopped off the bleachers and walked over to investigate.

  We curiously followed him. He stepped into the tall grass, then leaned over. When he stood back up, he was holding a red backpack. It looked like it had been left outside for quite some time and been dowsed by a few thunderstorms, maybe peed on by a dog or two. He pulled it close to his face as if to sniff it, then jerked his arm stiff and as far from his face as possible.

  “Eww! It stinks!” he said, then dropped the backpack.

  The three of us stared at it for a moment or two. Dead silence. Not even the wind whistled. And I was certain we collectively thought of last spring, and the time we ran from the Thousand Oaks Gang, then hid in the culvert. We looked at each other, all our eyebrows lifting like repulsed caterpillars. It was clear we had all come to the same conclusion.

  “I’m not picking it up!” I said, shaking my head.

  “Me neither!” Brian said.

  “Then leave it,” Miguel suggested. “I gotta get home anyway. I have a lot to do for History Club.”

  “History Club? Did you get permission to start it?” I said, leading my friends away from the brush and back to our bikes.

  “Yeah,” Miguel said, mounting his bike. “The principal said it was cool. Better get your bike.”

  “Oh yeah!” I said, then ran back into the brush, where I released my bike. When I came back out with it, my friends were all waiting for me. “Hey Randy?!”

  He turned to me. “Yeah?”

  “Will you finish that joke tomorrow at lunch?”

  “Yeah, dude!”

  “Coooool,” I said, then mounted my bike.

  We rode away, leaving the stinky backpack behind for someone else to find. We had had enough adventure already for that year. For all of us, it was enough for a lifetime.

  PART V.

  Legacy of the Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island

  30.

  I wish I had another crazy adventure from middle school to tell you about, but I don’t. The rest of the eighth grade was pretty uneventful, kind of like watching an old dog take a nap. There were fits and starts of excitement, but nothing too crazy or dangerous happened. We weren’t bullied by the Thousand Oaks Gang anymore. With the disappearance of Bloody Billy and Rogelio’s nascent military career, that terror organization pretty much disbanded. All for the better, if I say so myself. The world was a much better place without the assholes that made up that gang of bullies. They never did find Bloody Billy’s body in Canyon Lake. The Comal County Sheriff Department claimed to have trolled the body of the lake—using a team of scuba divers and the best sonar technology—but he wasn’t to be found. My younger self imagined Sheriff Hill standing out on the pier by the Cabin of Seclusion, looking southwesterly as the team of divers brought up a whacky collection of sunken treasure like rubber boots covered in algae, rusty metal anchors, and slimy car tires. My older self knew their hunt was probably less comical and much more somber. Rogelio never returned to Converse, as the military shipped him off to Arizona, where he spent dozens of years as a mechanic for a variety of planes and trucks. The Thousand Oaks Gang simply disintegrated. But the disappearance of Bloody Billy continued to haunt me for years to come. I’ll get into that later.

  Randy, Miguel, Brian, and I remained friends for the rest of the eighth grade, but “thick as thieves” did not describe us anymore by the end of middle school. Our personal obsessions kept all of us from being together all at once, and by the time high school came around, we got together less and less. That’s the natural order of things as adolescents become full-blown teenagers. It wasn’t anything personal between us, nor was it for a lack of effort. We simply became entrenched in our hobbies, school activities, and our own selves. Randy was the star defensive tackle on the varsity football team at Robert E. Lee High School. Miguel was the President of the History Club and Debate Team. Brian dropped out of the Boys Scouts and focused all his attention on girls. And me... well, I still wanted to be an artist, or a writer. And you know what that means? A lot of time alone. Being alone suited my introversion to the detriment of my friendships. Luckily for me, my friends didn’t give up while I wasn’t around. Good friends will do that—they stick with you.

  As I said, Randy was the star defensive tackle at Lee High School and all his time was spent at practices—before and after school—as well as games on the weekends. That was just in the fall. In the spring, he attended football camps, morning and nights. Summers, too. He was a full-on athletic star, and I rarely ever saw him in person. Every once and a while, like a fool, I would attend a Friday night football game and watch my friend from the stands as he destroyed the opposing team’s offensive players. Randy was a giant compared to almost everyone else and he used his size to his advantage. By the end of high school, he was a highly sought-after college recruit and eventually chose the University of Texas at Austin as his team and college of choice, although I’m certain he didn’t study at all. Randy wasn’t the greatest student in the world. C minus average, at best. But boy! He sure could crush running backs and wide receivers. He was unstoppable, mostly.

  After two years in college, Randy was recruited by the Houston Oilers, a move I heard he appreciated since he got to stay in Texas, but his career was short-lived. During his first season, it was discovered that Randy had an aggressive case of testicular cancer that had already metastasized to his bladder and kidneys when doctors initially diagnosed the pain in his groin and the blood in his urine. A year later, Randy passed away. His mother (who never remarried) buried him at the Converse Memorial Cemetery, a concrete statue of a football player in a similar pose to the Heisman Trophy (on bent knee, one leg straight back, the football tucked in the nook of one arm, the other arm straight-out defiantly) atop a marble base as his headstone. It seemed like an odd choice. While I attended his funeral, neither Brian or Miguel could make it. They had busy lives like most people, so I was the stand-in for our middle school group. I can’t even begin to tell you about the immense sadness I felt for the loss of my friend. I was unbearably depressed for well over a year after his untimely passing. I wanted to do something meaningful to memorialize our friendship, although I couldn’t think of anything at the time. Grief does that to you; it paralyzes you for a brief period of time before you grow as a person, becoming stronger and wiser. I still miss Randy to this day. I think about him all the time.

  As for Brian, he traded in Boy Scout discipline for unabashed skirt chasing. I truly feel this was his way of rebelling against his parents and the aggressive way they corralled him to be an overachiever and entrepreneur. They just wanted the best for him, but Brian took it as something more domineering, even fascist. It’s funny how life can take a turn after middle school. I would’ve predicted Randy and Brian on opposite trajectories. In high school, Brian did work at various stores and restaurants near our hood, but only as a means of making quick money so he could spend it on girls. The only time I spent time with Brian was between girlfriends, those ill-advised relationships usually didn’t last for more than a few weeks. He collected girlfriends like I collected colored pencils and drafting pens. He was obsessed. In some ways, I don’t blame him. Love can be intoxicating, although I think he was afflicted with a case of sex addiction. That’s the insight my generation learned in the 80s and 90s. Men weren’t cads anymore like in the 50s and 60s; they were addicted to sex. Semantics. Go figure.

  Brian’s girl problems followed him to the University of North Texas where he majored in liberal arts, a suggestion from his mother as a useful bachelor’s degree as a leadup to law school. Brian quickly discovered he was as interested in liberal arts as a squirrel was interested in rocket science. He preferred getting his “nut” and incessantly chased female undergraduates, sometimes having three or four girlfriends at a time. But after a series of drunken hookups, venereal diseases, and bad breakups, Brian fled U. N. T., and went ba
ck to the confines of his parents’ home. To Brian’s surprise, his folks were kind and supportive. His father suggested Brian enlist in the Army—a thoughtful suggestion based on his understanding that Brian craved discipline, even though he hated to admit it—and to consider using his G. I. Bill entitlement to pursue a nursing degree. “Registered nurses are in high demand, they can fill prescriptions, and get paid a boatload of money,” his father quipped. “You could be making six figures when you get out of the Army.”

  Brian ruminated over the suggestion for a few days, then agreed. The following week, he was off to boot camp. Looking back, that was one of the best decisions Brian made in his young adult life. He stayed in the Army longer than originally intended, convinced an Army commander to station him at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and he worked at Brook Army Medical Center, the very hospital where Randy was flown to after we were rescued, so he could receive antivenom for his snake bite. Crazy, huh? Life can take a turn.

  As for Miguel, his life worked out as predictably as you can imagine. He followed his passion for history and debate from middle school all the way through high school, where he captained the Robert E. Lee High School debate team and presided over the History Club all four years. He attended the University of Texas at Austin where he studied history on the Plan II track—another name for an honors degree—and even wrote an honors thesis on benevolent rulers throughout history. What else would you expect this particular benevolent lord to do? Miguel eventually found his way to Rice University, where he received his masters and his doctorate in history. And after all these years in academia, where did Miguel eventually land a tenure position to teach history? Harvard? Stanford? Nope. Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, fourteen miles from our hometown of Converse. He wanted to teach Texas history to young Texans. Makes sense, right? The turns we take lead some of us back home.

  And unlike Randy’s unfortunate early demise or Brian’s rough road to stability, Miguel’s life was remarkable and unremarkable in equal measures. He got through all levels of school with honors, married his college sweetheart (I was his best man at the wedding), then settled down to start a career and a family at the same time. Nothing unseemly about my friend to report. Not that Randy or Brian’s lives were uncouth, just more difficult, I guess. But that’s the way it goes sometimes, as they say.