Wherever I Wind Up (5 page)

I just keep my terrible secret, keep it all inside, the details of what went on beneath the hot, sticky sheets of a Tennessee summer, of the orders and the odor and the hurt of a little boy who is scared and ashamed and believes he has done something terribly wrong, but doesn’t know what that is.

I TRY TO
jam the memory of what happened on the second floor of the condo that summer as far back in my brain as it will go. I try not to think about what will happen if a grown-up finds out about it or if someone confronts me about what went on. I become good at compartmentalizing things, boxing them away into secret places forever.

Much better that they stay boxed away forever. Things are safe in boxes.

Weeks pass. I start fourth grade and like my teacher, Mr. Hazen. We read
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, and I think about what it would be like to go down the Mississippi River. The more time that goes by, the more comfortable I am with the idea that my boxes are in a place where nobody can get at them.

In the waning days of September, my mother, sister, and I drive into the country to visit with family, as we often do. It’s a few hours outside of Nashville and a completely different world, a place with farms and barns and one-room schoolhouses, the kind of place where you don’t make a playdate; you just go out and play. I am out in the yard, throwing a tennis ball off a roof behind a dilapidated garage, an area with a little knoll and a tomato garden. A kid from the neighborhood is there. I’ve seen him before but don’t know his name. He’s sixteen or seventeen years old, tall and wiry. He lives somewhere nearby. He doesn’t talk much. He seems to be interested in my game with the tennis ball. He walks closer and I’m thinkinghe wants a turn, tossing the ball on the roof, seeing if he can catch it.

Maybe we can make a contest out of it and see who gets the most catches, I think.

I turn around and see him unzipping his pants.

No.

I don’t know what he’s doing but that’s my first thought.

No.

I start to run but he grabs me. You ain’t going anywhere, kid, he says. I am back on the bed with the babysitter, except this time there is physical force involved.

A lot of force.

I struggle to get away, but it is no contest. He is rough and strong, and he forces himself upon me, overpowers me. This time there are no words, no vents or clinking glasses. There is just submission and so much sadness. I can’t do anything. I close my eyes and wait for it to be over. When people ask me how I got the scratches and bruises on my face and lip, I have a ready answer.

I fell down in the garage, I say.

On the ride back home, I say nothing and try to forget, but there is no forgetting. I try to distract myself by counting the yellow dashes along the center of the road. It doesn’t work. I feel filthy and bad, like the scum of the earth, only worse. I have been stained and it can never be cleaned up. There is no helping me or my shame. It feels as though it is choking me to death. Mile after mile, the car keeps moving, but there is no escaping the beat-up garage on the knoll. It is so much worse than the babysitter. I don’t know why and it doesn’t matter why. There is no hope for me and no help for me. I have no options. No place to go. The car rolls on to Nashville, to my house. I think of my room and my photo of Larry Bird. I want to get in my bed and pull the covers up over my head and not wake up for a long time.

Please, God, let me be safe.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2011

Port St. Lucie, Florida

First impressions are important, and in his first full meeting with us as the Mets manager, Terry Collins makes a really good one. We are in a conference room in Digital Domain Park. Everybody is there—Sandy Alderson, the new general manager, his assistants, the players, the coaches, the trainers, the clubhouse manager, and even our two cooks. We go around the room and introduce ourselves. Sandy speaks first. “The expectations for this club outside of this room are very low,” he says. “I know you guys expect more of yourself, and I expect more of you too.”Sandy is not a rah-rah guy, and his approach is low-key but very compelling. “The goal of any professional sports franchise is to win, and that’s why we’re here.”

When he’s done, he turns the floor over to Terry, who says, “Sandy stole my speech.” Everybody laughs.

Terry has no notes. He speaks from the heart. I’ve heard a lot of these first-day speeches, and believe me, it’s more common than not for them to seem formulaic, straight off boilerplate. This is not like that at all. Terry is intense, fiery, and enthusiastic. I never get the feeling he is saying things for effect. It seems so authentic, the way he makes contact with everybody in the room and jacks up the decibel level. Even when he dabbles in clichés—“We’re going to do things the right way”—you can’t help but feel his passion and energy. Terry is a small man and doesn’t have an imposing presence when you first see him, but he is powerful nonetheless. The essence of his talk is simple: “Everybody says we’re going to stink. I hear it over and over. I think they’ve got it all wrong. You want to come along as we prove them all wrong?”

Terry talks for twenty minutes or so, and by the time he is done, all I can think of is: This is a guy I’m really going to enjoy playing for.

CHAPTER THREE

FAITH ON WALNUT

S
ome kids are fighters. Other kids are scrappers. I am a scrapper. I spend two extremely scrappy years—fifth and sixth grades—at St. Edward School, and the trend continues into the seventh grade at Wright Middle School, where the kids are bigger and stronger than me, but not too many have less regard for their bodies. I don’t worry about pain or getting hit or getting knocked down. I just get back up and come back at you like a boomerang. My goal when I fight is simple: I want to give more than I receive. This doesn’t make me proud. It’s just what it takes to survive, and in seventh grade survival is what I’m all about.

Fights aren’t an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood, but I seem to have more than my share of them. I fight to defend myself, to right a wrong, or to settle a dispute. I’m not picky. I figure out early that in a school where smoke billows out of the bathroom and pregnant girls walk the hallways, you don’t want people thinking you are wimpy.

So I learn to act tough when I need to, and sometimes when I don’t need to—which gets me into trouble. In the lunchroom one day, I get up from my seat. You have assigned seats at Wright at lunchtime, and strict rules about leaving them, the school’s effort to prevent the cafeteria from turning into WrestleMania. But I need to get a homework assignment from a classmate, so I get up and walk across the lunchroom.

A monitor corrals me and says, Get back to your seat.

He’s kind of nasty about it. I don’t appreciate his tone. I cuss under my breath. Not loud, not a bad cussword, but an audible obscenity, no doubt.

Now he doesn’t appreciate
my
tone.

Come with me, young man. You are going to regret your garbage mouth.

He’s right—I
am
going to regret it—because this is Tennessee in the mid-1980s and corporal punishment still rules the day. The monitor escorts me down to see Mr. Tinnon, the assistant principal in charge of paddling. He conveniently keeps the paddle by his desk.

Bend over, Mr. Tinnon says.

He wallops me hard on the butt three times, then informs me that I have been suspended for three days.

Three days? For one little whispered cussword?

I don’t think the punishment fits the crime—I know kids who had full-scale brawls in the hallway who didn’t get suspended for three days—but my viewpoint does not get a forum.

Three days, he says.

I serve my sentence, but whether I learn any enduring lesson from it is far less clear. I have my first fight in seventh grade two weeks later. It’s against a big, fat kid whose name I never learned. I have no idea how or why we wind up in the Wright parking lot behind the school, but somehow he crosses me, or I cross him, and there we are, a couple of dopes with our dukes up, ready to rumble. I follow my usual strategy, which is to barge right in and see what the guy’s got, and watch carefully to see if he closes his eyes when he throws a punch. Most kids do. And when they do, I know I have an opening to hit them. This kid hits me with a few minor punches when I charge in on him, and he closes his eyes with every punch. I take a step back and when he begins to throw another one, I rip an uppercut into his jawbone. Blood spurts out of a gash in his face and he goes down on the pavement. He isn’t moving.

I take a look at him, lying there in a bloody heap, and at my blood-splattered right knuckle, and then pick up my stuff and head for home as casually as if we’d met for afternoon tea. I return to the usual empty house, have a bowl of Froot Loops, and climb the poplar tree in the front yard. I think about the kid again, wonder if he is still laid out in the parking lot. I can’t believe how little I care.

I never mention the fight to anybody.

The next time I fight, I use the same full-bore approach. We are playing a tackle football game a couple of streets over from my house, and this older kid, strong and sinewy, takes me down hard.

Too hard.

What do you think you’re doing? I say, scrambling to my feet.

What’s your problem, punk? Can’t take a hit?

We square off and I wade in on him and he drives a fist into my temple and knocks me almost to the ground, doubled over, and finishes the job with a kick to the gut with what feels like a steel-toed boot. I am done. TKO in the first round. The other kids disperse. This time I am the one left on the ground. Some boomerang.

A stray dog comes over and sniffs me. I slowly get to my feet, mad at myself that I couldn’t take the kid’s punch, furious at him that he used a kick to end it.

I never mention this fight to anybody, either.

R. A. DICKEY

IN THE SPAN
of four years, I go from Glencliff Elementary to St. Edward School to Wright Middle School. Whatever my address, I keep finding my way into tangles and still don’t care about pain. I don’t care about lots of things. At St. Edward’s, my uniform consists of dark green chino slacks and a collared shirt. I wake up late one day and have to dress in a hurry. I really have to go to the bathroom, which is downstairs, and I really don’t feel like going downstairs. It will take too much time, so I just go ahead and pee right in my pants, which are now just a little darker. I finish getting dressed and walk to school. A block into the walk, my legs start getting chafed by the wet pants.

What am I doing? Why didn’t I just change my pants?
I think, Do I really care so little about myself? When I finally get to school I head for the bathroom and stuff a wad of paper towels inside my pants to blot up some of the wetness. It doesn’t help much.