The schoolyard slopped away in every direction. Schoolroom windows were on every wall, so there would be lots of people watching from inside the school. I went into the schoolyard and sat on a wood rail, the only place that could be called the back of the school. I knew that was where the fight would take place, and I was ready. A few kids were just hanging around, waiting for the show to start. Joe Dully and his friends didn’t show up for several minutes. When they came around the corner, a large group of students was right behind them.
Joe walked right up to me. “Are you going to just sit there, or are you going to stand up, so I can knock you down?”
I quickly stood up. “Okay, Joe, I’m standing up. Now, let’s see you knock me down.”
He came in with a wide, swinging right, which I ducked. Then I came up with a right uppercut, into his breadbasket, which knocked the breath out of him. It didn’t knock him down, but it hurt him, and I could tell by the expression on his face that it really surprised him.
I then stood ready, just waiting. Now I knew I could beat him.
He came in slowly this time, and in a boxing stance. I could tell by the movement of his feet that the boxing stance was just a pretense of knowing how to box. I waited with my hands at my sides for him to make his move.
He made the same mistake again by coming at me with a swinging right. I just moved back out of his reach and let the swing pass, then moved in with a stiff left jab to the nose. It caught him solid. He went down hard with a bloody nose. I could tell by his watery eyes that he couldn’t see very well. His hair was all messed up, and he was breathing hard.
I felt a sorry for him, so I made the mistake of reaching down to pull him up and when I did, I learned very quickly that I had underestimated him. He wasn’t a good boxer, but he was a very determined fighter. As soon as he stood up, he came up with a swinging right again, but this time I wasn’t expecting it, and the blow caught me over the left eye. He followed the right cross with a left hook into my stomach that made me glad that I hadn’t eaten my lunch.
That reminded me of the lesson Dad taught me to “never underestimate an opponent.” Now I was going to have a black eye, and for sure I would get a whipping when I got home. That made me mad, but I remembered another thing Dad had said. “Never get mad while you’re in a fight. Your anger will work against you. It’ll cause you to take foolish chances.”
So all right, I’ll just settle down to business. I came back at him in a boxing stance, watching his feet, waiting for his next mistake. I didn’t have to wait long. He made a lunge to grab me, trying to take advantage of his size to wrestle me to the ground. I side-stepped and put my right leg behind his, and my right arm across his chest, and threw him over my hip to the ground, in what was aptly called a schoolboy throw.
I didn’t extend my hand to pull him up this time. I stood over him, waiting for him to get up. When he did, I stepped in with a short left jab to the nose and followed with a hard right to the chin. He went down again, and this time he just sat there.
“We’ll finish this tomorrow,” he said while sitting on the ground looking up at me.
I wasn’t even breathing hard. “Surely you’re not crazy enough to try this again! But if you are, I’ll be waiting …Just let me know when you’re ready.”
I walked back into the schoolroom to get my lunch and was sitting on another rail eating it when two boys and a girl came and sat down beside me.
“Thank you for whipping Dully,” the girl said. “He’s had that coming for a long time. He beats up on every new kid that comes to this school. Maybe he’ll think twice before he picks on someone smaller than him next time.”
One of the boys with her was her brother. He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s sure good to see him take a licking for a change, but you’d better watch out. He’ll try it again, when he feels he has an advantage. He’ll get his friends to help him get you down; then he’ll take advantage of his size and hold you down while he beats on you.”
The girl was looking at me with the nearest thing to admiration I’d seen for a long time. It made me feel a lot better. She was dressed in old worn-out clothes, as I was. She was not very pretty, but she could have been if she’d had some nice clothes and had her hair done up in curls. I asked what her name was, and what grade was she was.
She said, “I’m in the fourth grade and my name is Martha.”
“My name’s Wayne Dicksion,” I told her.
“Oh, everybody knows your name,” she smiled. “I’ve gotta get back to my room now. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow. I hope we’ll see each other.”
She looked right at me, smiled, and walked away. I was feeling better now. The two boys with her were both in my classroom, so they walked with me back to class.
“The principal wants to see you in his office,” Mrs. Pringle said, when we got back to the room. Her voice wasn’t harsh, and her face showed sympathy. She knew I was going to get a whipping for something that was not my fault.
Rebecca Dully looked at me with a sneer that said, “Now you’ll get what is coming to you, for beating up on my brother.”
When I got to the principal’s office, Joe Dully was already there. The principal’s name was Mr. Bingham. He was a big man with dark hair and eyes. He seemed a little flabby. I guessed it was because he spent his days sitting behind a desk instead of walking behind a plow or working cattle. He didn’t appear to be an unkind man, and I felt he would be fair.
Mr. Bingham looked first at Tom, and then at me. “All right, you two, stand up here in front of my desk. Now, which one of you started that fight?”
“I did,” I said and stepped forward.
Mr. Bingham knew, and I knew that he knew, who had started the fight. It was very likely one of the many fights that Joe Dully had started as the school bully. But I wasn’t going to let Joe off that easy this time. I wasn’t going to let him play the martyr.
Mr. Bingham looked at me in surprise. Tom was quick to see what I was doing. He was a bully, but he was no dummy. “He did not! I started it,” he said, and stepped up.
“I hit first,” I said.
“Yeah! But I swung first and missed, and then you hit me, so I started it.”
I was beginning to like this guy; he had spunk.
Mr. Bingham was trying to suppress a laugh. “All right, I’ve got to give both of you a paddling. Who wants to be first?”
“I do,” we both said at the same time.
He took Joe first and laid ten pretty good licks on him. Joe didn’t let out a whimper. This kid is tough, I was thinking. I hope some day we can be friends. Mr. Bingham dismissed Joe. I was next. He walloped me ten times also, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I knew I wouldn’t be this lucky when Dad took his strap to me.
"Well, Wayne,” Mr. Bingham said, when he turned me around after finishing with the paddling, “are you going to become the school bully?”
“No sir, I don’t like fighting.”
“They tell me you did a pretty good job of it. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“Father taught me.”
“I thought so. I’d like to meet your father.”
“I think you’d like him, but he sure is going to give me a whipping when I get home with this black eye.”
“Fathers have to do what fathers have to do. Now go back to class, and take this note to Mrs. Pringle.”
I don’t know what was in the note, but she smiled when she read it.
The afternoon passed without event, but I found myself wondering about the little girl from the fourth grade who had been kind to me after the fight. I kept remembering her smile.
After school, I stayed to talk to Mrs. Pringle. I wanted to ask her about the story she was reading.
“Mrs. Pringle,” I said, “I’d like to read the part of the story that you’ve already read to the class—the part I’ve missed.”
She took me to the library and showed me how to che
ck the book out. “You can read it at home and catch up on the story,” she said.
I hurried home. I had to help milk the cows and tend the animals before supper. Then I would get my whipping, go to bed to read about Robin Hood, and think about the next day at school, wondering if I’d have to fight Joe Dully again.
When Mrs. Pringle introduced me to the library, it opened up a wealth of information that I never knew existed.
THE HAWK
“Son,” Mother said, pointing at a big bird flying overhead, “I’m tired of that hawk stealing my hens. Go get a gun and shoot it.”
It was early summer, and a red-tailed hawk was circling in the clear, morning sky, waiting for an opportunity to kill another of Mother’s chickens. The hawk was almost as big as an eagle. Either he or another of his kind had carried off some of our baby pigs and several full-grown chickens.
I was ten and my older brothers and I used guns often around the farm. We brought food to our table, such as rabbits, squirrels, quail, wild geese, and ducks in season. We also shot nuisance animals like wolves, rats, and rattlesnakes. We practiced with the guns every chance we got. Any of us would have been considered an expert marksman with a rifle. We didn’t own or use handguns.
Our guns were small-caliber rifles and small-gauge shotguns. I didn’t like to use shotguns; they damaged the game too much. So Mother’s request was not unusual. Father had taught us to use guns and gave us strict orders on what a gun could and could not be used for. "A gun is not a toy," he said. “It’s a tool, just like an ax or a shovel is a tool.”
“That hawk is a mighty wily old bird, so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to shoot him, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Use the 22-caliber rifle. That hawk probably won’t let you get close, so you’ll need the long-range cartridges,” Mom said.
“Okay, Mom, I’ll get him if I can.”
I took the rifle from the rack over the back door, making sure to keep it concealed under my jacket. I knew that if the hawk saw the gun, it would be difficult to get close enough to get a good shot at him. Somehow, hawks have an uncanny instinct and can recognize guns.
When I walked by, Mother was hanging clothes on the line to dry. “The last time I saw him,” she said, “he was flying up the creek. He won’t go far. He’ll be waiting until we go inside the house, and then he’ll come back and kill another hen.”
I walked around a bend in the creek and saw the hawk sitting in the top of a dead tree, not more than a hundred yards away. I placed the butt of the rifle to my shoulder, hoping to get a shot at him before he saw me, but I wasn’t quick enough. Before I could draw a bead on him, he flew a couple of hundred yards away and landed in another tree, just far enough to be out of range. The hawk knew I was after him, and he knew I had a gun. He was going to be difficult to kill. The only way I was going to get a shot at that old bird was to sneak up on him.
I started walking back in the direction from which I had come, hoping the hawk would think I had given up and was going back to the house. As soon as I got around the bend in the creek, I changed direction and continued stalking him. This time I walked under the trees thinking they would hide me, but just as I got in range, I accidentally stepped on a dead stick. When the hawk heard the stick snap, off he went! Again he flew just out of range.
It was as though that hawk was playing a game with me, taunting me. I could almost see him grinning. He was making me angry. How in the world could that hawk know the range of my gun, when I hardly knew it myself, especially with those long-range cartridges in it? The last place the hawk stopped was on a branch in the top of a cottonwood tree, on the boundary of our property. The tree was a half mile from our house. The barbed wire fence that marked the boundary to our property was nailed to the tree. The hawk was not really off our land, so I thought it would be all right to shoot him. After all, the hawk was eating our chickens and Mother had asked me to shoot it.
The bird was more than two hundred yards away. There was no chance to get closer. It was all open ground between the hawk and me. I had to remain hidden behind some trees. I knew that if the hawk saw me, it would be long gone. It would take more than an expert marksman to shoot that bird from this distance. It would take a lot of luck, as well. I placed the barrel of the gun in the fork of a tree to steady it. The slightest movement of the gun barrel would mean a big miss. The hawk was sitting right in the top of the tree, in plain sight, mocking me. I aimed four inches above his head to allow for the drop of the bullet. It was considered bad shooting to shoot an animal in the body. You're supposed to shoot it in the head. I took a long time steadying the gun, and I carefully squeezed the trigger. For a time nothing happened. Then, to my amazement, the hawk fell as if he had been hit with an ax!
I stood dumbfounded. Was it possible I had made that shot? I ran to the base of the cottonwood tree to look for the bird. I looked all around, but there was no bird! But I saw him fall! A bird doesn’t fall like that unless he’s dead or badly wounded. Then I spied it lying on the sandy bank of the stream—on our neighbor’s property. My hawk was flopping around like a chicken with its neck wrung.
I wanted that bird! I wanted to prove I had killed it. I placed my gun on the ground and crawled through the fence to get the hawk. He was wounded, but he was still very much alive. I had only shot him through the neck. I knew that a hawk, especially one that big, could be very dangerous. I decided the best and safest way to handle him was to grasp the feathers on his back. But that was a mistake. When I picked him up, he twisted around and sank the talons of his right claw into my belly grasping a good chunk of my flesh. I quickly grabbed the left claw to prevent him sinking those into me, also. I had to kill him. His neck was injured, so he couldn’t use his beak, thank God. Holding his left claw with my left hand, I picked up a fallen branch and tried to beat him off.
While I was struggling with the hawk, the neighbor rode up on his horse. He made no offer to help. He just sat on his horse laughing! I felt he should be helping, instead of laughing, but he continued laughing. His inconsiderate behavior made me very angry. We were not raised to tolerate that kind of disrespect. I threw the stick that I had in my hand at him and damn near knocked him off his horse. I was so angry that I yanked the hawk off, and its talons took a big chunk of me with them. I then wrung the hawk’s neck, made sure it was dead, climbed back through the fence with my prize, picked up my gun, and went home with blood running down the front of my leg.
That was one of the only times I saw our father show concern for an injury any of us kids had sustained. He was a harsh man. Even when we were very young, if we cried, he would say in a stern voice, “Are you going to grow up and be a man, or are you going to be a baby all your life?”
In a few minutes, the neighbor rode up on his horse to complain that I was hunting on his land. I had told my parents of the episode at the fence. Father asked the man if the story I had told him was true.
“Yes,” the man said, in a very arrogant manner, “but the hawk was on my land!”
Dad glared at him. “If you ride away quickly and never show yourself here again,” he said, in a voice that dripped with venom, “you might prevent me from pulling you off that horse and beating the shit out of you!”
The man turned and rode away, in a full run.
We nailed the hawk’s wings to the barn door. Its wings reached all the way across the door. That was the only hunting trophy I would ever take, but I was proud of it.
HITCHHIKING
Shimmering waves of heat rose from the highway blacktop, creating an illusion of water. As I walked toward the mirage, it moved away, ultimately disappearing altogether, leaving only the searing hot surface of the paved road. I realized how the illusion could drive a person mad if he or she were dying of thirst.
In the silent loneliness of the prairie, I could hear the cars long before I could see them. I saw a car approaching through the heat waves—it appeared to be another illusion. As I watched it coming, I wondered if I’d
get a ride. I had learned after hitchhiking for a few times that there were certain factors that would increase or diminish my chances. If I was to get a ride, and there was only one occupant in the car, that person would have to be a man. If there were two people in the car, the driver would have to be a man, but the passenger could be a man, a woman, or a child. If three people were in the car, the chances were slim that they would stop. If four or more persons were in the car, they for sure wouldn’t stop.
The tires whined as they rolled on the hot paved surface. Something about the whining fascinated me, and I wondered about it. I knew the sound was caused by the tread of the tires, but some of the tires were worn nearly bare, and they still caused the sound.
To pass the time, I played a game of trying to figure out where the cars and their occupants had come from, and where they were going. If they weren’t going to give me a ride, the adults would never look at me. The children—if there were any—usually looked at me and sometimes waved. I never felt bad, or even disappointed, if they didn’t stop. I knew that they, too, had a journey to make, and it didn’t include me. Eventually, someone would stop.
Some drivers stopped because they wanted someone to talk to. Some would ask me if I could drive so that they could take a break. Some stopped, just because they wanted to help someone who needed a ride. I learned to read the faces of people. Some were kind. Some were lonely. Some were just curious, and then some had hidden agendas. I learned to spot those quite easily, and I would find a reason to decline their offer of a ride.
Hitchhiking gave me a wonderful opportunity to learn to take the measure of people. Looking back I realize that those lessons served me well as I progressed through life.
On this trip, I had no real destination. I was simply going west, wherever west was, and whatever was there when I got there, was enough. If I caught a ride, I was lucky and rode it as far as it went. When the ride ended, I simply caught another. If I didn’t catch a ride, I made do with whatever the situation provided. My only needs were food, water, and a place to sleep. A place to sleep was no problem. The prairie of the whole southwest was a place to sleep. I grew up in the country, and I was raised close to the earth. I knew how to deal with the creeping and crawling things that I might encounter while spending a night sleeping on the ground. I liked sleeping out in the open. I liked the silence. When there were sounds, they were usually distant and muted.
Brief Moment in Time Page 6