Recurrence Read online

  John was placed in the care of Mrs. Farmer, a kindly neighbor, until after the funeral. He could still remember the three closed caskets at the end of the parlor, with photographs of his family members propped on easels at the foot of each one. The two larger caskets were at an angle, with the smaller one between them.

  While walking unnoticed as a child among adults, he overheard the graphic details of their deaths. He felt numb, as if it was happening to someone else, and couldn’t feel the floor under his feet.

  After the funeral, he went home with his maternal grandparents who lived in the country several miles from Grand Haven, Michigan. The following summer, he was to stay with his paternal grandfather in rural Virginia, near Suffolk.

  At first, his life in Michigan was exciting, and kept him from thinking of his family. The remote, sparsely populated area with its miles of pine forests on either side of sand and gravel roads seemed like a wilderness to him after living in Indiana. Until that time, he had lived in Carter, only a few miles from Fort Wayne. Carter was a friendly, family-oriented town where John had friends and classmates since early childhood. Now he was isolated from others his own age until school started.

  He explored the forest around his grandparents’ property, finding new and different plants and animals. He discovered meadow-like clearings and old logging trails. He saw pheasants and coal-black squirrels. Once, he saw a black bear on the other side of a clearing. It seemed to discover him at the same time and they both ran, but in opposite directions.

  After that he always carried a Louisville Slugger baseball bat that he’d found in the woodshed behind the house.

  Several times, he almost got lost in the woods, but was able to find his way back by using the compass his grandfather had given him.

  His grandfather didn’t talk much, but John sensed him to be boy-friendly. He worked long hours in Grand Rapids on weekdays, but on weekends they fished in small nearby lakes from a rented wooden rowboat, or along the Grand River from the bank. John learned how to fish, and how to row and paddle the boat. He also learned how to clean and cook the fish. The first time he watched his grandfather clean a fish he was surprised. The fish was quivering and appeared to be breathing while the man was scaling it and cutting out the fins.

  “Doesn’t that hurt them?” he asked.

  His grandfather scraped some gut and scales from the blade, wiping it against the edge of the block. “It’s in shock, it doesn’t feel a thing.”

  Just then, the fish started to flop, and his grandfather grunted and hit it on the head with the hilt of the knife, driving his fist down like a hammer.

  “Don’t worry about fish or wild animals, Johnny. Mother Nature hands them a lot worse treatment. They’re designed for it.”

  That night he had another nightmare.

  The boy ran through the brush and weeds and into the forest, heedless of direction or minor obstacles, protecting only his face from the foliage. His pursuer was gaining, and he feared that the big ugly man would soon be upon him and smash him to the ground. Worse would follow and he would be beaten, degraded and humiliated. The man would probably kill him too, but he wasn’t afraid of that.

  The man would take the little girl after finishing with him. He had been threatening for days and said that he would kill them both if they told anyone. He escaped when the man had tried to make him suck on his thing. The hands and whiskers rubbing against his privates had been humiliating enough. And then, even worse, was the probing finger at his butt. It was horrible!

  He stomped on the man’s moccasined foot with his hobnailed shoe, stabbed at his eyes with his fingers, and twisted free. The man’s buckskin trousers were bunched around his ankles, and he fell back cursing. It delayed his pursuit of the boy.

  On and on he ran, winding through any narrow space and over, under, or around any obstacle he could place in his pursuer’s path. Leaves and limbs tore through his hair and smacked his head, while briars and branches clawed at his bare arms and snagged his trouser legs, seemingly in a personal effort to impede his progress.

  They had run almost a quarter-mile from the dilapidated and peeling log cabin at the back of the meadow. The little blonde, blue-eyed girl was still there, bound with rawhide strips. His hope to find help in the settlement on the other side of the forest seemed hopeless, like an unreachable goal.

  Now, in his haste, he was too late in seeing a large fallen fir tree. The trunk, with a tangle of branches supporting it from below, loomed in his path too high for him to clear. He slowed.

  Behind him, he could hear the crashing and panting of the man as he tore through the undergrowth.

  The man pursuing him was tall and solidly built, with close-set dark eyes and straight, shaggy iron-gray hair that hung just below the collar of his gray linen shirt. One unbuttoned shoulder strap of the greasy, bibbed trousers still hung free and bounced wildly during the pursuit. Gaps in his rotting teeth and a large scar bisecting his face made him appear even more frightening to the boy. One of the man’s eyes was offset below the other, enhancing his monster appearance.

  The boy dived headlong into the branches under the tree trunk—just short of colliding with it. He clawed and kicked his way through and found himself rolling and sliding down an unseen, steep embankment on the other side. A heavy accumulation of leaves accelerated his descent to the bottom, where a rock-strewn creek with a gravel bed awaited.

  He landed with a splash and found himself in a sitting position. Cold water flowed around his legs and hips and over his supporting hands. A tan muddy cloud roiled downstream past his outstretched legs and feet. He had just missed landing on a rock as big as a man’s boot. It was only inches from his right hand.

  Still stunned, he heard a yell from above and jerked his head upward in time to see the man catapult over the tree trunk twenty feet above him, and then somersault through mid-air. The man landed flat on his back in the middle of the creek with a loud splat. It doused and temporarily blinded the boy. He brushed the water from his eyes—and to his horror saw that the man’s head was between his feet.

  The man quivered and made only short “uh—uh” sounds, seemingly paralyzed and unable to draw breath. His eyes were open but rolled up into his forehead showing only the whites, as if trying to see the boy through the top of his skull.

  The boy stared down into the ugly, terrible face as the large rock descended to meet it. Using both hands, he drove it down with all his might—again, and again.

  John awoke with a start, sitting up in bed with his hands extended before him. His palms and the bottoms of his feet were soaked with sweat. Slowly realizing who and where he was, he lay back down, staring upward into the dark. Later, he slept again.

  When he awakened he was forced to hurry in order to leave in time for school. His grandparents had discovered that he would have to walk to the nearest corner and wait for the school bus. His grandmother gave him a black, round-topped metal lunchbox and offered to walk with him the first day.

  Embarrassed, he said, “I want to do it myself.”

  She gave him a hug with tears in her eyes and said, “My little man.”

  John wasn’t sure what she meant, and gently pushed away. He did not feel like he was her little man.

  CHAPTER 3

  School was a big surprise for him and he soon found that he was among the meanest kids he had ever seen or heard of. The schoolhouse was only one room with an annex for a library and with restrooms at either end of a closed-in porch. Older facilities were behind the building in the form of two outhouses. They were still used by many of the kids when the weather was favorable.

  There was only one teacher for all of grades one through six. The teacher, Mrs. Winston, met him as he exited the bus and took him inside to assign him a seat. She also wanted to get his personal information before the others were all inside.

  He quickly discovered that only one grade w
as taught at a time and the other students were to be studying. His class would not be until afternoon. With little to do, students talked, walked around or disappeared into the library or out into the porch for several minutes at time. Some went to a pencil sharpener mounted on a windowsill at the front of the room.

  One boy, about John’s size and age, walked up to him from behind and hissed into his ear, “that’s my seat you’re in.”

  John looked up to see cold brown eyes under a mop of dark hair. “It’s the one she put me in,” he whispered back.

  The kid moved on and John thought no more about it. Before he knew it, recess was announced, and the kids streamed outside in a flurry of sound and motion.

  Outside, the brown-eyed kid was waiting for him. “What’s your name boy,” he demanded?”

  “John Luther,” John answered, and stuck out his hand.

  The boy’s eyes widened in surprise and he seemed to take John’s hand without thinking, quickly shaking it and then pulling free. “Wayne,” he said.

  “Is that something from the bible or is that your name?” a bigger, blonde-haired boy with a bowl haircut and a square jaw asked.

  “What?” John asked, sensing hostility.

  “You heard me, John Luther might be something outta the bible that you stole.”

  John shook his head. “It might be someone in the bible, but it’s still my name and I don’t steal.”

  “Where you from?” an even bigger boy asked.

  This one had dark hair also and looked like Wayne, but with blue eyes. He was as big as John’s dad had been.

  John guessed that they had probably never heard of Carter, so he replied, “Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

  Several other boys were now grouped around them and a slender blonde boy about john’s height stuck out his hand. “I’m Kenny; did you live in a fort?”

  “No fort, it’s just the name of a city.” John replied.

  Someone bumped him from behind and a voice from a different direction asked with derision, “Are you a big city boy?”

  John was trying to work his back against the building to keep them from behind him. Before he could think of an appropriate reply, a girl came out onto the front steps with a bell in her hand and began ringing it. Recess was over, but lunch was coming. He knew he’d be in for it then.

  Not long after class resumed, Wayne walked up the aisle on John’s left and passed him from behind. “I’m not a fort, smart ass,” he hissed.

  John felt a sharp pain in his leg. Wayne had stabbed him in the thigh with a pencil and then continued on to the pencil sharpener. While sharpening his pencil he glanced over to see if the teacher was watching and then back toward John with a nasty grin. The middle finger of his right hand was raised under his left arm where she couldn’t see it.

  The stabbing hurt like crazy, but John forced his mind away from the pain and didn’t cry out. He glared back at Wayne who was still at the front of the room. John had neither sworn nor been in a fight before. Now he knew that nothing from his past mattered. He would have to fend for himself and he would not let them think he was a sissy.

  After waiting for nearly an hour, John went to the boys’ room at the front of the school. He checked to see where Wayne was seated as he left. He waited until Mrs. Winston was busy with some noisy smaller kids before returning, and then went up the row from behind, stopping beside Wayne.

  He hissed in Wayne’s ear, “I wasn’t calling you anything asshole, study your geography.” He stabbed Wayne in the thigh with his own pencil.

  He continued on to the front of the room and sharpened his pencil without bothering to look back at Wayne. While returning to his desk he saw that Wayne was looking straight down at the book in front of him. He appeared oblivious to his surroundings.

  John hadn’t been seated for more than five minutes when a large figure loomed on his right and there was an agonizing pain in his right thigh. He could not help but grunt in pain as the big blonde kid with the bowl haircut walked on by. A yellow #2 pencil with the lead broken off back into the wood was held aloft in his raised left hand.

  John breathed through his teeth from the pain while he pondered the situation. He didn’t know it at the time, but the lead from the pencils would stay with him for many years. What he did know was that he’d just been taught a good lesson.

  He ate his lunch at his desk and decided not to retaliate. There were several of them to stab him, and he was alone. The blonde was almost as big as a grown man and others were big too. He delayed going outside, afraid of what might happen but determined to face it. He knew he’d be a whipping boy forever if he didn’t go or wouldn’t fight. He just didn’t want to give them any more time than necessary to beat on him before lunch was over.

  John liked to read and during the wait he visited the library. There were blind ends between the staggered rows of bookshelves and one could remain undetected unless really looked for. The textbooks he’d been given were full of graffiti and he found the library’s literature and fiction in worse condition. Every book with illustrations of people had crude additions of penises, vaginas and excrement. The blank pages were even worse, with hand drawn pictures of sex acts including face to genital in every combination of gender age and number. Even babies were not excluded.

  When he went out through the propped-open front double-doors of the school, there was no one in sight. He walked around the corner and saw two kids disappearing around the back corner of the library annex. He followed, not knowing what else to do. They were waiting for him just behind the library where there were no windows for Mrs. Winston to see or hear through. Most of the boys from the school were there waiting for him.

  He was quickly encircled, and they began closing in. whenever he would approach one in an attempt to break through, the circle would rotate so that at least one of the larger ones was in front of him.

  “The hell with this,” the big blonde kid said. “Kenny, get in there.”

  “Aw Ben, why me,” Kenny lamented.

  “Cause you were too friendly and besides I think you can lick his ass anyway. Now move.”

  Kenny was shoved from behind while Ben was still talking. Now John knew what they were going to do, and he was determined to whip at least one before he was beaten himself.

  He was trying to figure out how to start when Kenny said, “Sorry man,” and punched him in the nose.

  Blood sprayed down the front of his shirt and onto his forearms as he staggered back. Pain exploded throughout his face and head. His eyes watered, blinding him. He had barely regained his balance and vision when he saw Kenny moving in for another punch.

  Without thinking, John lowered his head and charged him with both arms swinging wildly. The boys surrounding them howled with glee.

  He caught Kenny by surprise and one of the punches landed, causing him to stumble. Feeling it was his only chance; John grabbed the lighter Kenny and spun him to the ground, landing on top. Before he could wriggle free John began pummeling him with his fists. He tried to swing a knee over him to get on top and heard a grunt as his knee landed on the other boy’s stomach. He sensed an opportunity and tried to hold him down with one hand at his throat while smashing his belly with elbows and knees. Kenny cried out in pain and someone from the circle kicked John in the ribs.

  John rolled off expecting an attack from more of them. A boy named Donald was just stepping backwards into the circle. As John rose and faced him, he was grabbed from behind in a bear hug by a large dark-haired boy named Ronald. He tried to struggle free, but Ronald held him tight.

  Ronald was saying, “Stop, stop, it’s over, OK?”

  John nearly collapsed in his arms and tears welled up in his eyes again from the pent-up anguish.

  Ronald pushed him away from his chest saying, “Get in there and get cleaned up.”

  John staggered and fell into Kenny, who was just
getting to his feet.

  Kenny grabbed his elbow and gasped, “Come on let’s go to the boys’ room.” He held onto John’s arm until they were inside.

  As quickly as it had assembled the crowd dispersed and John noticed that there were even some girls, bigger than him and mean looking, glaring at him as they left.

  Once they were in the boys’ room Kenny said, “Hey you caught me with a lucky shot but it’s OK. You’re lucky that you won’t even have a black eye.”

  John just looked at him.

  Kenny waved his hand back and forth, “You can’t just swing wild like that. You have to punch and move and block punches. If you can’t do that, just cover up and grab them like you did me. You wrestle OK and you hit hard enough, so think about what you’re doing, all right?”

  He held out his hand and John shook it.

  Kenny said, “They picked me because my dad taught me a little about boxing. The next time you’ll have to fight someone bigger. Just stay cool, it won’t last forever.”

  “What about the girls?” John asked. He was looking in the mirror at red spots on his face. They were in places where he didn’t even remember being hit.

  “Those mean bitches, just stay away from them. They’ll team up on you and scream bloody murder if you hurt one of them.”

  John finished the remainder of the day without incident. He attended his class with his shirt still wet and his face swollen, but Mrs. Winston never questioned him. She seemed pleased with his subject knowledge and John realized from her actions that he was ahead of the rest of his grade.

  That evening he was pulled aside by his grandfather who said, “You’ve been in a fight so spill your guts.”

  John told it exactly the way it happened.

  His grandfather cursed. “Those little shits, I can’t really do anything about it because that’s the way it is out here. The people are mostly descendants from rough-and-tumble Dutch and Polish immigrants. They all grow up mean and tough and keep passing it on down. They respect courage though, so I think you’re past the worst of it. If it comes down to those bigger ones you’re probably going to have to hurt one. Do it even if you get hurt yourself.”