The Essay A Novel (4 page)

The next time we played Seven-Up, the rules changed and you no longer tapped your classmates on the head. Rather, you tapped them on the back or shoulder. Mrs. MacIntyre changed the rules, I guess, so even us dirty necks could play.

I won't lie. Being treated like an outcast makes you angry and bitter and itchy for a fight. It gnaws at your gut and makes your face hot, not the pink tinge of embarrassment, but the scorching, crimson burn of ridicule and exile. I was a raw-boned kid, hardened by years of fighting with other boys on Red Dog Road and taking regular beatings with a strap from the old man. It wasn't unusual for me to have belt bruises crisscrossing my ass and upper legs. Sometimes I deserved it, but there were a good number of times when I was just a target. Girls like Lindsey Morgan had fun at my expense, but I didn't get much grief from the boys because I wouldn't hesitate to bust their heads.

Early in my freshman year, Danny Clinton thought he would get some laughs in the locker room by taking a tongue depressor of orange muscle balm and trying to swipe my asshole while my head was under the shower. I twitched as soon as I felt it and he left a streak of orange along the side of my crack. He laughed and pointed until he saw my fist driving toward the middle of his face. The cartilage in his nose sounded like a dry twig snapping and the punch sent him sailing on his back across the shower room floor, water flying away from his shoulders like the wake of a speed boat. I broke his nose and split his lip, and he ran bawling from the shower, blood gushing from his face.

Our principal, Theodore Speer, a tired little man with sad eyes who hitched his slacks up just below his nipples and earned the nickname “Teddy High Pockets,” summoned me to his office the next morning. He sat there for a long time massaging his temples, his eyes pinched shut, before he asked, “Are you going to give me problems, too, Jimmy Lee?”

I knew what he meant. My older brothers had been nothing but trouble at school before Edgel got expelled after being accused of stealing from a teacher's purse and Virgil dropped out to join the carnival, neither of them finishing their sophomore years. “No, sir. I don't go looking for trouble, but I don't take to people messin' with me. Danny was trying to put hot stuff up my butt to get a laugh at my expense, and I won't have any of that.”

“I certainly see your point, Jimmy Lee, but you nearly put him in the hospital. He's got a broken nose, it took more than twenty stitches to close up his lip, and he's got a lump on the back of his head the size of a baseball where he hit the shower floor. I just can't have students assaulting other students.”

“But he started it,” I countered.

“The punishment didn't fit the crime.”

That was easy for Principal Speer to say, I thought, because it wasn't his rear end getting the furnace treatment. In reality, he was saying that Danny Clinton's dad was vice president of the school board, and my dad was a split-tooth drunk from Red Dog Road. Danny got off with a warning to knock off the horseplay, and I got hung with a three-day suspension, but it was the first and last time anyone at East Vinton High School ever messed with me.

That was the difference between being the kid that everyone picks on and the one no one wants to be around. I didn't get picked on because most of the kids were afraid of me, and if they weren't before the Danny Clinton incident, they were afterward. Sometimes, I think it's worse to be the kid who gets ostracized. I would walk down the hall and I wondered if I were invisible or a ghost. Other kids were talking, flirting, horsing around. It seemed like no one even saw me. It's tough not having any friends. It makes you not want to go to school.

The thing that most of my classmates never knew was that I was pretty smart. I liked to read and write, and math came easy to me. But I didn't get good grades because I didn't try, and I didn't try because I didn't see any margin in it. And, since I was a Hickam, the teachers never had any expectations that I would excel. I thought my life's course had been predetermined. Someday I would be working at the sawmill with the old man or at the carnival with Virgil or sitting in prison with Edgel. There weren't many opportunities for Hickams, so why bother with schoolwork?

I might have finished my sophomore year, but I doubt I would have gone to school much longer if it hadn't been for football. During gym class the second week of school my sophomore year, we were playing flag football. Petey Kessler, who was the starting halfback on the varsity, ran around left end and was heading for a touchdown except I ran him down from across the field. Coach Battershell, who was the gym teacher, put down his newspaper and watched me play for the rest of the period. After class, he pulled me aside and asked, “Young man, how come you didn't try out for the football team?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I've never played sports.”

“There's a first time for everything, you know? You've got good speed. You could help us out.”

To be on the football team you had to buy your own shoes, mouth guard and game socks. I didn't have that kind of money. “I can't afford it.”

“I'll find you a pair of shoes. You stick it out and I'll pay for the mouth guard and socks.”

“Okay,” I said.

After school, I reported to the locker room and the student manager fixed me up with gear and a practice uniform. The restriction of the shoulder pads and helmet felt funny. The helmet had a facemask with a protective bar running down the middle and I couldn't not focus on it, causing me to see double. “You'll get used to it in a couple of days,” the equipment manager said.

I ran out to the field where the team was doing stretching exercises. “What are you doing here?” Danny Clinton sneered.

“I'm gonna play. Coach Battershell asked me to come out for the team.”

He snorted. “This'll be fun.”

I wore black dress socks to my first practice and put my thigh pads in upside down. I stumbled through the grass drills, and the first pass that was thrown to me during individual linebacker drills went through my hands, hit me square in the face mask, and shot fifteen feet in the air. This all drew a lot of snickers. I was pretty raw, never having played any sport before, but I was fast, strong, liked to hit people, and soon learned that I had a knack for football. Also, it provided me a way to take out my frustrations. Not only did you not get in trouble for smacking around people like Danny Clinton, but coaches and teammates patted you on the back and said things like, “nice job” and “great hit.”

Coach Kyle Battershell had been a star quarterback for the Ohio University Bobcats and his name was legendary in southeastern Ohio. He had been an assistant coach at Marietta High for a couple of years before coming to Vinton East before the previous season. It was big news in Vinton County when he took over our pitiful football program. East Vinton hadn't had a winning season in my lifetime, but Coach Battershell was not accustomed to losing and while he was pretty easygoing as a gym and health teacher, he didn't put up with any nonsense on the football field. I liked that because it meant we were all treated equal, and it didn't matter if you lived on Red Dog Road or your dad was the vice president of the school board—the best players got on the field.

Each day after practice, Coach Battershell took a few minutes to work with me and told me not to worry about never having played before. “You'll pick it up,” he assured me. He said I was a natural-born linebacker and gave me a playbook with defensive schemes. During gym class, while the rest of the kids were playing games, he would take me off to the side and drill me on my footwork and how to read a quarterback's eyes. By the end of my second week on the team, I was the starting outside linebacker on the varsity. This steamed a lot of kids who had been playing for years, but I was better than they were. For the first time in my life, I was someone other than “one of them Hickams.” I still didn't have a lot of friends, but the guys seemed glad to have me on the team. Parents nodded at me after games and said, “Nice game, Jimmy Lee,” which was a far sight better than, “Did you steal that, Jimmy Lee?”

I was named honorable mention all-league and earned a varsity letter. We had a banquet at the end of the season and I was presented with my letter and a certificate, and for two days I just stared at that award. My mom got me a varsity jacket for Christmas—a navy jacket with gray leather sleeves and the words “East Vinton Elks” on the back—and sewed the gray chenille letter, an interlocked “EV,” to the left breast. Dad said it was a damn waste of money, but I had never been so proud of anything in my life. I was a varsity letterman and it made me someone. It made me want to stay in school. My grades got better and I went out for the track team in the spring and earned another letter as a sprinter, anchoring the 440-yard relay team that won the districts.

My junior year was even better. I was first-team all-league and all-district, third-team All-Ohio, and enjoying the recognition that accompanied my achievements on the football field. Coach Batter-shell stressed the importance of keeping my grades up as he expected some college coaches would be interested in me if I had a solid senior year. “You mean I could get a college scholarship?” I asked.

He nodded. “Possibly, but you've got to keep the grades up.”

The very thought boggled my mind—a son of Nick Hickam earning a college scholarship.

By the end of my junior year, I was carrying a “B” average in most classes except English, where my morning erections were contributing to a downward spiral that was bringing me perilously close to failing for the year. At the end of English class on Friday, two weeks before the end of the school year, Miss Singletary handed out our homework assignment and as she slipped behind her desk said, without making eye contact, “Jimmy Lee, I would like to speak with you after class, please.”

“But I have American History,” I said, not so much worried about missing class as I was losing the time I needed to dispose of the expansion in my jeans.

She looked up, her brows arched. “I'll write you an excuse.”

When the bell rang, I stayed in my seat, second from the back in the third row. When the classroom had cleared, Miss Singletary said, “You can come up here and sit, Jimmy Lee.”

“If it's all the same to you, Miss Singletary, I'm pretty comfortable right here.”

She frowned, but picked up her grade book and sat in the chair of the desk in front of me, maneuvering around to face me. “We have a big problem, Jimmy Lee,” she said. “You are about to fail my class. I've been looking at the grades and right now you have a fifty-two average for the last grading period—an F. If you get an F, you fail for the year. If you somehow manage to get a D, and that doesn't seem likely, you would pass by the slimmest of margins. Frankly, Jimmy Lee, I don't see any way you can even salvage a D at this late stage.”

It had been years since I cried, but I had tears in my eyes. “I can get a D, Miss Singletary,” I said. “I've got two weeks until the final. I'll pull it up.”

“Even if you did get a D, I'm not sure it would be in your best interests to tackle senior English without a better foundation. I think you need to repeat junior English.” She pulled out her grade book. “You failed more in-class quizzes and assignments than anyone in the class. In six grading periods you have two C's, a D and two F's. And, frankly, the D was a gift. You're struggling, Jimmy Lee.”

“If I don't pass, I won't be eligible for football in the fall.”

“I understand that, but there are things in life more important than football.”

“Not in my life, Miss Singletary. Football is just about the only thing I have going for me. It's the only thing that makes people look at me like I'm somebody. Before I started playing football, I was just another Hickam. I might as well have been invisible in this school. You went to school with my brother, Edgel. You know what I'm up against. The only reason I get any acceptance is because of football.”

I blinked away a tear. She took a deep breath and tapped the eraser of her pencil on the grade book. “What happens . . .” Her voice trailed off as she seemed to struggle for the right words. “What happens if you manage to get a D, but get into senior English and fall even further behind? Then what?”

“I won't fall behind. Just give me a chance. I don't want any gifts. I'll work hard, I swear. I'll get the D. I'll do better in senior English, I promise. I'll work a lot harder, you'll see. I had some distractions this year. I'm not stupid, Miss Singletary.”

“I don't believe you're stupid, Jimmy Lee. I think you're very capable when you put your mind to it. But, for whatever reason, you just didn't put forth much effort this year.”

“I have a good reason.”

“Care to share that with me?”

I shook my head. “No, ma'am, not really. But if you give me a chance, I promise you won't regret it. I won't let you down.”

Chapter Two

W

e visited my brother in prison every other Sunday.

He was an inmate at the state penitentiary in Mansfield, a hundred forty-two miles and a three-and-a-half hour drive from our house. It was an arduous ride, during which my dad cursed the ignorance of other drivers and chain-smoked, filling the interior of our car with plumes of blue haze and bluer language.

About six months after Edgel was sentenced to Mansfield, Mom wrote a letter to the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation requesting that he be moved to a prison closer to home to make it more convenient for our visits. “If you could move him to the prison in Lucasville, that would be nice as it is only about fifty miles from our house.” In response, she received a curtly worded letter stating that the state couldn't honor such requests, which came as a surprise to no one but Mom.

On the first Sunday of my summer vacation before my senior year, Mom made a breakfast of biscuit gravy and fried eggs, after which I put on a clean shirt and sat on a front porch swing that was sun-bleached gray and suspended from exposed joists with a rusty chain. I put my feet on the porch railing and slowly rocked, listening to the chain squeak and the house groan with each push, enjoying a moment of solitude before we began the journey north to the Mansfield State Reformatory.