Chapter 2

I didn't much care for San Pedro. For that matter, except for the weather, I didn't much like anything about our new home. Californians seemed strange to me. I got in a fight my very first day in school there.

It was silly, but they did things differently in California than we had done in Ohio. They called it "checking". This was when a bunch of guys would lean against the side of buildings, just watching as the girls strolled by. The guys would be free to make comments to their other male friends, and no one seemed to think anything of it, or to take any offense at what had been said.

There were also designated smoking areas for students. This was something I'd never been exposed to before. In Ohio, we had to get off school property if we wanted to light up.

I was in my sixth period English class, and this cute girl kept looking over and smiling at me. Since she was cute, I naturally smiled back at her. This went on for about half the class, and I didn't really think that much about it. After class, out in the hallway, some kid I didn't even know came up behind me and told me he wanted to see me in the boys room.

"Go in the boy's restroom. We need to talk about something." Since I didn't know him at all, I had no reason to think he might be mad at me about anything. I hadn't done anything, not as far as I was aware of. He moved ahead of me and went into the restroom before I did. I noticed there were three or four boys following right behind me, but I just assumed they needed to go to the bathroom.

Once I went through the door, the kid who'd told me to meet him in the boy's restroom moved back towards me and said: "Your mother is a whore."

I couldn't believe I'd heard him right. I knew, looking at his face, that I'd never seen this kid before in my life. Here he was though, standing in front of me, telling me something like that. I punched him in the face, just as hard as I could, and when he went flying backwards, I moved after him, hitting him with four or five unanswered blows to his head. Two or three boys grabbed me from behind, pinning both my arms in the process. Just then, a male teacher walked in the boys room and everyone tried to scramble away from being blamed for doing anything wrong. The boy I'd hit turned to the sink behind him and started washing his hands. I went and stood next to him, turning on the water taps and started washing my hands too.

I found out a few minutes after this, that what I'd done, hitting him so quickly, was considered dirty fighting. There was this complicated ritual that this boy and I were expected to observe. The boy had been in the process of "choosing me off". After he said that about my mother, I was supposed to say something similar back to him. When I did that, he'd have shoved me with his open palms, then it would have been okay for me to punch him.

I hadn't known of this bizarre ritual, so I'd handled it the same way I would have done back in my old high school. The boy who explained all this to me was friends with the other boy, the one I'd been fighting. I explained to him that I was from Ohio, and hadn't known how things worked in San Pedro, since this was my first day at the high school. I told him we did things a lot differently back in Ohio. He told me the boy was angry at me because the girl I'd been smiling at in English class, the period before, was one he was interested in going out with.

After I'd been told what was expected of me, the friend told me that I was supposed to meet the guy I'd had the fight with, after school, at a place he, the friend, would take me to, just as soon as school let out that day. I have to admit that I found this whole situation somewhat laughable. At the same time, I had a fairly clear idea that my future reputation at the school would be, in large part, determined by how I handled this matter.

Normally, I wouldn't have blindly walked into any situation where I couldn't know what was going to be waiting for me. It just didn't make sense to do that. For all I knew, there might be a whole gang of them waiting to jump me as soon as I arrived where they were now telling me to go.

"About how long is all this supposed to take? I'm asking because I need to meet my two younger brothers at their school and walk them home. They go to the junior high. Can we go pick them up first, then go back to where I'm supposed to meet this friend of yours?"

"They're in junior high and they can't walk home by themselves?"

"We just moved here a couple of days ago. My mother is the one who doesn't want them walking home alone yet."

We agreed that he would accompany me over to the other school to pick up my two brothers. It turned out that it was really on the way to the open field where this next fight was going to be. I thought my brothers would enjoy being there to see me in yet another fight. Kevin and Willy, my brothers, both enjoyed a good scrap themselves. Kevin was fourteen years old, and Willy had just turned thirteen. If I ended up getting jumped by a bunch of this guy's friends, I wanted my brothers there to help me identify anyone who ganged up on me, for when I could go back later and extract some revenge on them.

It turned out that I didn't get jumped. When we got to the field where this guy I'd fought and his friends were waiting, I could tell the guy wasn't happy to see me show up. He looked very worried. He didn't really know it yet, but he was right to be worried. He and I were about evenly matched, as far as height, age, and weight went. I seriously doubted that he'd had anything comparable to the training and experience I'd had from three years of participating in the Golden Gloves program.

"Rod, Jim here is new in school. He didn't know how we do things here. That's the reason why he hit you, instead of doing what he should have." This was Daniel, the guy who'd explained things to me about what I should have done.

"He sucker punched me, and that isn't right. Let's see how he does when I'm ready for him."

"What's going to happen is the same thing that happened in that bathroom. You're going to end up getting your ass kicked. This whole thing is stupid anyway. You don't own that girl, not just because you like her. I wasn't the only one who was smiling, you know? Anyway, I need to get my brothers home, so if you really want to continue this, then let's go ahead and do it."

With that, I went up on the balls of my feet and started moving casually to my left, both my hands up in a southpaw stance. I could see that Rod wasn't too sure he really did want to continue. I was ready to let him get himself out of it, even after what he'd said about my mother. It wasn't going to be me that asked him to forget it though. He was the one who went to all the trouble to get me to come out to this field to face him. I looked over at Kevin and noticed he was on the alert too, willing to try to jump in and help me, in case all of them tried to pile on.

This fight didn't last any longer than the first one had. I hit him five or six quick pops to the head and then really let him have a stiff left hand, right to the soft bread basket. The body shot was what sent that final necessary bit of discouragement to him. He went down on one knee, raising both hands in an attempt to cover his face. I backed away from him, perfectly willing to let this be the end of it. I think the suddenness of what had just happened kind of froze all Rod's supporters in place. Before they could get all worked up, their buddy was staying down, taking a knee, and covering up to avoid further punishment.

My brothers and I walked home, after no one else started any further trouble with me. I hoped that what had just happened would be enough to ensure that other kids wouldn't feel the need to try me out themselves. I asked both my brothers to keep quiet about the fight at home, but didn't really hold out much hope that they would.

My father heard everything from Willy, not five minutes after he stepped in the door, after his shift at the refinery ended.

"You want to tell me what you thought you were accomplishing by getting into a fist fight your first day in school, Jimbo?" I could see my father was upset, and knew it wouldn't take too much to push him over into a state of real anger.

"Some guy I didn't even know, said something really bad about ma. I couldn't just walk away from him and let him get away with that."

"What did he say?"

"He called her a bad name, said she was a ... Said she did things with men for money."

"He called your mother a whore?"

"Yes sir."

"Okay, let's eat. Tell me why he'd go and say something as stupid as that to you."

At supper, I explained about this "choosing you off" thing, and explained that Rod was starting things off so I'd want to escalate things to a boiling point. After which, we'd eventually go ahead and fight each other.

My father listened, and then laughed at people having such silly ideas. He had already told all of us that people from California had it too soft. His opinion was that they'd had everything handed to them in life, and didn't have any idea of what to do when things suddenly got hard for them. Most of them had no idea why anyone would travel two or even three thousand miles to get a decent paying job for themselves. My father understood hard times, both from the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, and coming home to an area just starting to come out of a severe economic turndown, one where people were losing their jobs all around the state.

Later that evening, my father took the belt to Willy, telling him it was for trying to start trouble for me, for running to him and telling stories, without first telling what the real story was. My father had a strict code that he followed, and it was a code where people didn't go around trying to cause problems for others. He decided that Willy had been trying to cause trouble between my father and me. I'd have given Willy the benefit of the doubt, if it had been left up to me, but I wasn't that upset to see Willy getting a lesson directly from my father either.

The next day in English class, while the teacher was taking the roll, I paid attention to the name that girl who'd smiled at me the day before had answered to. Her name was Cheryl Fleischer. After class, I waited for her, just outside the classroom door, and introduced myself to her.

"Hi, Cheryl, my name is Jim Flanagan. I was wondering if it would be okay if I walked you over to your next class?"

Instead of answering me, she just smiled at me and started walking down the hallway. I fell into step with her and started walking abreast with her. She hadn't said whether I could or not, so I took that as a positive signal from her.

"Where are you moving here from, Jim?"

"Ohio, south of Cleveland."

"How far is that from Cincinnati?"

"Clear across the state. Probably two hundred miles and more. Are you from Cincinnati?"