Jungle-Land, Part II

 

Throughout the two years that followed Uncle Mark’s suicide, Randy drew inward. He didn’t go outside as much, I remember thinking during those times when I’d become frustrated with Randy about his silence something that our mother would say, “Time heals all wounds.” The truth of that statement cannot be disputed, but she left out the part about what happens after deep wounds heal – they tend to leave one hell of a scar.

Randy didn’t come out of his protective shell all at once. It was a very slow process, but I found moments to rejoice in as his old personality seemed to come back. I didn’t know the extent of emotional damage that he had taken and I was the only person who seemed to care enough to wonder. After the Brian Ross incident, I knew Randy would never be the same again.

I believe that I was in the sixth grade when the Brian Ross incident happened. Brian Ross was the local school bully and everyone was scared shitless of him. He wasn’t the, give me your milk money kind of bully – he was more of the, walk up and sock you in the face kind. Brian Ross was the undisputed king of the middle-school playground and he ruled the school yard with an iron fist, at least he did until Randy dethroned him.

On the day in question, Brian Ross walked along the line-up of kids who were standing against the gym wall during recess. He was throwing mock-punches and laughing his ass off when the kids flinched. When he came to me, he didn’t pull his punch. His fist connected with the right side of my face. When the initial shock of the blow wore off, I decided that it was time for me to stop taking shit from him. I came off of the wall and gave him a fierce push backward. He reeled back a few steps, smiled at me, and then balled his fist into a tight little wad. That was as far as he got. Seemingly from nowhere, Randy’s small body flew upward into the air, arm cocked back in mid-flight and then his fist swung down and connected with Brian’s nose. There was a sick crunching sound like dry twigs as the bigger boy’s nose exploded. Brian Ross held his nose and let out a scream of pain. He looked at the little boy who hit him through half-closed watery eyes.

“You’re dead,” he said and he began to advance on Randy.

He lunged at Randy, probably meaning to tear his head off or something like that, but Randy side-stepped, keeping his leg out-stretched and tripped him. Brian sprawled face-down on the black asphalt and cried out again when his broken nose hit the black, tarred surface. Randy didn’t hesitate – he jumped onto the larger kid’s back, grabbed him by the hair, and began to repeatedly bounce the bully’s head off of the ground. To this day, I truly believe that if I hadn’t have pulled Randy off of Brian Ross, he would’ve continued bouncing the bully’s head off of the ground until it killed him. Randy didn’t get into the bully business himself after the Brian Ross incident – he didn’t have to. The whole school heard about the beating that he gave the larger kid and he became a school celebrity of sorts.

***

Randy didn’t grow very much by the time he hit middle school and was still a good foot shorter than most of the other kids in his class. My grandfather would give him shit all the time, calling him midget-boy and short-stop, but Randy never acted like it bothered him – Randy really only reacted to what he perceived as physical threats or somebody encroaching on his personal space. Then, he’d solve the problem quick and brutally.

One day I was called to the principal’s office out of my second period biology class. When I arrived at the office, I saw Randy sitting on a bench just outside the principal’s door. I asked him what happened, but he just stared at the floor, ignoring me. The principal’s door opened and Mr. Pringle poked his head out.

“Eric Johnson?” he asked.

I nodded and he opened the door wider and motioned me into his office. When I walked in, he shut the door behind me and told me to have a seat.

“I tried to call your mother,” Mr. Pringle said, “but it seems that she doesn’t like to pick up the phone during the day.”

“She works at night,” I said. “She sleeps during the day and unplugs the phone.”

Mr. Pringle considered what I said for a moment and then picked up a pencil off of his desk and began to chew on the back end of it. I could see thousands of teeth marks all over the yellow number two.

“We have a problem,” he said. “Your mother needs to come in and talk to me about your brother. We can’t have this kind of behavior at our school.”

“Sir,” I said, “If you just let me handle it, I’m sure that I…”

“You are a student here, Mr. Johnson, not a parent. Your brother stabbed another student with a pen. He’ll have to be suspended.”

I threw a sharp look at the office widow and caught Randy looking back in at me. When he saw that I was looking at him, he turned his face toward the floor again.

“I’ll have my mother call you, Sir,” I said. “If you let me take him home, I’ll make sure that he doesn’t do it again.”

Mr. Pringle picked his pencil back up and began to add more bite marks to it. He looked at me … considering.

“I’ll make an exception just this once,” he said. “You have your mother call me and set up a meeting. In the meantime, your brother is suspended for a week. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Randy said as we walked out of the front entrance of the school.

“No, I guess not,”

When we got to the sidewalk in front of the school, I stopped. It was too early to go home and I wasn’t about to wake my mother up and tell her that Randy got suspended.

“Whatcha wanna do?” I asked.

“We could go crawdadding.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s go!”

My mother never did call the principal and the school never mentioned it. The rest of the school-year flew by without incident.

 

***

Life was almost completely back to normal by the time summer rolled around. One night, we happened to be home earlier than usual, so we checked the television to see if anything good was on. The A-Team didn’t come on that night, but we did find an old black and white war movie to watch. I was completely drawn in by all of the shooting, bombing, and hand to hand combat. The rest of the night flew by in a flurry of bullets, and scattered popcorn.

The next morning we woke up early, and headed to the railroad tracks. We had come up with the idea the night before, and I was excited to put our plan into action. Once we arrived at the tracks we collected all of the tumbleweeds we could find, and each made a barrier. Our barriers faced each other, but weren’t that far apart. It would take a while before we realized that the potential for injury during our game was greatly multiplied the closer we were to each other. After our barriers were constructed we set out to collect as many of the white rocks surrounding the tracks as we were able to carry. I used the front of my shirt to carry them. I must’ve made a dozen trips back and forth from the tracks to the outer area where I set up my fort. When I finally finished, Randy was already positioned behind his wall of weeds. I gave him the thumbs up and we began the assault.

The object of the game was to throw the rocks at each other’s fort, as hard as we could, and try to knock down the individual pieces of tumbleweed, therefore rendering the fort useless. In reality Randy would launch a rock, and I’d duck down behind my wall of weeds essentially blinding myself. Randy had long hair for a boy. It was shaggy, unkempt, and hung just below his shoulders. On the top part of his head, right before where the bangs began, was a line that was about three inches long. The hair refused to grow there. This nasty scar was from when he cracked his head open on my mother’s bed a few years before. He was extremely self-conscious about the scar on his head, so I didn’t mess with him about it. A few weeks after we began playing rock wars, I got one of my own.

Normally, the forts were completely destroyed during a game, but that day, they were still pretty much intact when we showed up to play. We made some minor adjustments, and collected our ammunition. Usually, before we began firing at each other, one of us would count down from five. That day it was Randy’s turn to be the counter. He started at five and began the backward count to zero, but he didn’t go that far. On number three he launched a rather large rock as hard as he could. I realized his deception too late and the rock struck me on the side of the head before I could duck out of its path. The world disappeared in a bright flash of light. I fell to the ground, gaining more injuries from scraping up my elbows and forearms on the rocky earth. I would’ve tried to block my fall with my hands, but they were busy holding the side of my head. Randy was at my side in seconds. He took one look at the side of my blood covered face and froze in a way that looked extremely familiar. He was in shock.

The walk home usually took a while, but the day that I broke my head open it took a little longer. The injury left me kind of dizzy. My eyes found it hard to focus and every time the world blurred I became sick to my stomach. Looking back, the most horrifying memory of that day was that not a single person pulled over to see if the young man who was walking on the side of the road with the right side of his face covered in blood, was alright.