Chapter 4

My rendezvous with destiny, as it were, occurred on a very comfortable day. This was about as far south as you could get in Alabama, and it was one of those perfect winter days that we sometimes had. The temperature was in the low 60s, there was virtually no wind, and the sun was shinning brightly. Of course, that made it the perfect day to get your ass whipped!

When school let out, I stopped at my tricycle to drop off the few things that I had to carry home. We never had the homework load that the kids face nowadays. My staff was already extended to its maximum length so that I could walk comfortably for a short distance. I crossed the street to the vacant lot to wait for Henry Walker to show up.

There were about 20 kids there already, and there was a festive atmosphere. The spectators didn’t really care who won the fight. All they wanted to see was a good fight, the longer the better. Well, I knew that they were going to be disappointed on that score, but I didn’t say anything.

We had to wait for about 10 minutes, and the crowd had built to a sizable bunch of kids. There was some muttering while they waited impatiently for the other half of the fight to show up. Finally, Henry Walker and two large guys who looked like high school football players showed up. I guessed that the delay had been caused by the two big guys having to get here from the high school.

Anyway, they walked up, and one of them said, “We hear that you threatened my brother Hank with a whipping for accidentally tripping you in the lunch room. Well, I’m here to tell you that you are picking on the wrong guy. You will have to go through Jim here and me to get to him. What do you say to that?”

“I don’t have much to say. My threat stands. I will beat the shit out of Henry either now or later. It’s up to him when that happens.”

The spokesman for the other side turned darkly red in the face. He said, “I warned you. Grab him, Jake.”

Uh-oh, I had figured that something like this was going to happen, so I was prepared to act. I pressed the button that shortened my staff to the baton length and jabbed Jake in the solar plexus. He was wearing a heavy jacket that absorbed some of the blow, but he still was forced to bend over at the waist as he tried to regain his breath. That was when I hit him as hard as I could on the point of his shoulder with my left bracer. I could hear the bone crack as he fell to the ground. I didn’t know how badly he was injured, but I did know that he was out of the fight.

The first big guy really did not know how to fight. He took a swing at my head with his right fist, and I blocked that with my left bracer. This time, the result was a set of broken fingers. Unfortunately for both of us, he could still fight, so I hit him on the left elbow with the end of my baton. I missed the joint itself, but I did break the bone in his upper arm just above the elbow.

He screamed in pain and tried to hit me with his injured left hand. That earned him a tap on the left wrist with my baton, and the wrist joint was shattered. Actually, I had not intended to do that much damage to him, but he forced it.

At this point, Henry looked like he was about to shit in his pants. I don’t know if he did, but he did turn to run. There was no way that I could catch him, but I did shout, “REMEMBER, HENRY WALKER, YOUR DAY IS COMING!” I turned to the crowd and shouted, “SOMEBODY PLEASE CALL FOR AN AMBULANCE FOR THESE TWO! THEY NEED TO GO TO A HOSPITAL TO HAVE THEIR BROKEN BONES TREATED!” I was not worried about them. A lot of people had seen me take them down, so surely somebody would call for medical help. Their wounds would not kill them, but they were going to hurt enough to wish that they were dead.

Somebody came up to me and asked, “Do you know who it was you just beat up?”

“No, I have no idea.”

“That was Jimmy Walker and Jake Zimler. They are a couple of substitute linemen for the high school football team. Some of their teammates are going to be unhappy about the way you banged them up, so you better watch your back.”

“Thanks for the information. I’ll keep an eye out.”

My trip home was uneventful and Mom was attending one of her many bridge parties. Thus, I never had to explain why I was late getting home. However, it did hit the fan that night at supper. My brother, Jimmy, just had to open his big mouth. “Jack, I heard that there was a big fight at the junior high school this afternoon. Did you have anything to do with that?”

I knew that Dad would eventually hear all of the details, probably heavily distorted, so I admitted to being involved. The first word said was from Mom, “Oh, Jack, what have you done now to embarrass me? I am sure that it was something dreadful.”

“Mom, it wasn’t all that bad. I was attacked by two high school football players in a vacant lot across the street from the school. I had to break some of their bones to protect myself. It was a very short affair that was not really such a big deal.”

Dad said, “Come on, Jack, tell us everything that happened. This could be serious.”

Okay, there was no way out of it now. I gave as accurate a rendition as I could of the events of the afternoon, and Dad relaxed. “The fathers of those two work for the county as heavy machine operators. They both strike me as nice guys, so I am sure that they have no idea what their sons have been up to. Let me know if something comes of this.”

I nodded and was very happy to escaped my father’s disapproval. I had expected that Mom would be unhappy with me, but I was used to that. As I think about it now, I wonder what had caused my mother to drift away from me. She had gone from almost overly protective to wishing that I would just disappear from her life. I am sure that I will never know the answer to that, so I will try to forget it and just report things that happened as I grew up.

The funny thing was that I never again saw Henry Walker. I never knew where he went, but he just vanished from Hampton as far as I was concerned. I wish that had happened to all of the bullies. On the other hand, there were repercussions from the fight, but they came from the high school.

The first such event happened as I was on my way home from school one afternoon a week later. I was riding my tricycle, of course, so I was easy to spot. I always rode in the street next to the curb or next to the line of parked cars. I had to take a somewhat circuitous route to avoid having to climb some hills, but I had found a route that was not especially hard for me to manage.

Grandfather had mounted a large metal box between the rear wheels so that I could carry things, such as my school supplies, etc. The rear panel of the box had been painted in diagonal orange and black stripes, so I was easy to see even in a driving rainstorm. I never had a problem with a car getting too close to me as it approached me from the rear.

Anyway, on my way home, I had stopped at a traffic light and was waiting for it to change to green when I was approached by a hulking brute of a football lineman and three of his cronies. Normally, that never happened, so I knew that I was in for some sort of trouble. My worst problem was that I was still sitting on the tricycle saddle (seat), and my range of motion was severely limited as a result. Oh, I could still reach my staff, and that offered some protection, but I was not able to twist around as much as I needed to defend myself.

One of the other boys grabbed my front wheel and lifted it so that the tricycle had suddenly become nothing more than a wheelbarrow. He pulled me off the street and onto the sidewalk. As it happened, there were cars parked along here, so the drivers of the moving cars could not get a clear view of my predicament. That was all of the privacy the bullies thought they needed.

“Okay, Gimp, it’s your turn for some of the medicine you handed out the other day to our friends Jake Zimler and Jimmy Walker. Pick him up and hold him, Bob, while I break a few of his bones.” These guys all looked to be 10 feet tall and weigh 1,000 pounds from my point of view of 5 feet tall and 70 pounds. I was scared shitless, but, amazingly enough, I didn’t panic.