My Great-grandfather Turns Twelve Today
(c) 2003 Bill Dodds
Chapter 17
A lot can happen in an instant. A lot of thoughts can run
through your head. I looked out over the top of the other bank and saw how
beautiful the land was. I thought how different it would become in another 88
years when there would be freeways and houses and malls all over the place.
Even without glancing down at them, I knew the other boys
were watching me. Without our clothes on, we weren’t all that different. I had
a better haircut.
I started down and thought how much fun this was. It was a
lot better than the rec center pool where I had taken lessons every summer for
the past four years. I wondered how warm -- or how cold -- the water would be
and I heard Richard yelling something.
The surface of the water was rushing up at me -- or at least
that was the way it seemed to be happening -- when his words and his message
sank in.
It was an important one, but I was too late.
I started to move my hands when I slammed into the water feet
first. In fact my feet were spread a little bit apart and it wasn’t just my
feet that did the slamming. Right after they hit my private parts hit and I
gasped because -- man, oh, man -- did that hurt!
Of course, gasping just as your head goes under water is not
a good idea.
I kept going down into the water and it kept getting colder.
I felt the muddy bottom and stopped. The current was gently pulling me along. I
wondered if I would die from filling up my lungs with water or losing my jewels
when I had hit the water.
I automatically went into a crouch and pushed off. I opened
my eyes and it was slowly getting lighter and warmer, too, as I kicked my way
up.
When I finally broke through the surface I started coughing
and then I started moaning and I could hear the other boys laughing.
"You all right?" I heard Charlie call out.
I took a deep breath. I was treading water. I hadn’t gone
too far downstream. The pain in my crotch had lessened a little, from a 10 down
to a 9.5.
"I’ve been better," I said
"You still got everything you used to have?"
Richard shouted out to me.
The pain continued to get smaller.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Only now they’re up
around my tonsils."
He really hooted at that one. "You all right,
Michael," he said. "You all right."
We swam and splashed and threw mud at each other and swung
out on the rope for another hour or so. It was as if I had passed some kind of
an initiation. I was one of them: just another kid.
When we were all too tired to stay in the water anymore we
climbed up to a warm spot by the bushes and let the sun dry us off. I noticed
that the skin on my shoulders was starting to turn pink.
"I think I’m getting sunburned," I said and
Richard looked at his shoulders and said, "Oh, no, me, too" and
everybody laughed.
"How did you guys meet?" I asked. "You go to
the same school?"
They all laughed at that, too.
"Michael," Richard said, sounding very serious,
"I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a Negro."
"You are?" Charlie said, sounding shocked.
"Him and Bucky and Martin..." That was the third
white kid. "...all go to the white school," Richard said. "Nate
and I go to the colored school. Or we did. I went up through fourth grade. Nate’s
still going. He just got done with fifth."
"You quit school after the fourth grade?" I asked,
shocked.
"I didn’t just quit," he said, sounding a little
offended. "I had to go to work."
"You work? I mean full time?"
"Well, yeah," Richard said. "Lots of boys do.
Girls, too."
"And they don’t go to school?" I asked.
"Yeah, where you been?" he asked. "Kids work
in mines and in factories and on farms and anywhere else they can make fifteen
or twenty cents."
"An hour!" I was shocked.
" 'An hour?' " Richard said, imitating me.
"Listen to him. Twenty cents in a day."
"Eight hours to..."
"Eight?" Richard said. "No way. Ten. Twelve.
Sometimes fourteen. I’m lucky. I get off some Saturday afternoons and all day
Sunday. I got a good job."
"What’s your job?" I asked.
"In town. At the colored blacksmith’s shop."
"What do you do?"
"Whatever he tells me."
"Richard’s going to be a blacksmith when he grows
up," Charlie said.
"I sure hope so," Richard said. "Every town’s
always going to need a good blacksmith or two."
"You sure got the arm for it," Charlie said,
pointing at his own head. The other boys laughed. It was obvious I didn’t get
it.
"Richard can throw a rock a lot farther than I
can," Charlie said. "Show him."
Richard easily hopped up and then jumped down to the river’s
edge. He found a rock about the size of a pool ball and climbed back up.
"What you want me to hit?" he asked me. I pointed
at a tree that was maybe 20 feet away.
"Pshaw," he said. "See that stump?" He
pointed across the river to a spot that was maybe 100 feet away.
"Uh huh," I said as he cocked his arm and let the
rock fly. It slammed into the rotting piece of wood and chunks of stump went
everywhere.
I had never seen any kid throw anything that far or that fast
with such accuracy. "You should play baseball," I said.
"I do," he answered. "Sunday afternoons. The
Culver City colored boys team."
"You keep at it," I said, "and you could play
professionally. No kidding. In the major league."
Suddenly it was deathly quiet.
"That’s not funny," Charlie said.
"What?" I asked.
"You know a Negro can’t play in the major
leagues."
How was I supposed to know that? This was a whole different
world.
"But you swim together," I protested, trying to
defend myself.
"Here," Charlie said. "Not in town. Not even
near town."
"Coloreds got separate everything," Bucky said.
"But you guys are friends," I said. "I know
you are."
"That’s a fact," Richard said. "But last
summer when Charlie and Bucky and Martin here found our swimming hole we didn’t
give it up without a fight."
"The rocks were flying," Charlie agreed, rubbing
his head. "Richard and Nate were up in the bushes over there on the other
side. We couldn’t even see who was throwing them."
"We won that war, all right," Richard said.
"But now you both use it," I said.
"Uh huh," Charlie said. "That was a hot summer
and neither one of us could get in the water without getting shelled by the
other. We had to call a truce."
"Too hot to fight," Richard agreed. "Even if
you are winning. But I’ll never forget old Bucky’s face when he saw me and
Nate coming out of those bushes."
"He looked pretty shocked, all right," Charlie
said. "And then he says, ‘Ah, who cares? We’re all sweatin’ like
hogs. I’m goin’ swimmin’.’"
"This must be the best place in the whole world to
swim," I said and no one disagreed with me.
"I could spend the rest of my life at Fair Brook,"
Charlie said.
Go to Chapter 18.
