I was eleven years old.
It was springtime. I was living in a trailer park about six miles from Mt. Vernon, Missouri, which had about 3000 people living in it. And still does.
Everyday, the bus driver, a big middle aged farmer named Buck would drive our school bus all over the stoney rural routes of the back hills of the Ozarks picking up and dropping off children before and after school. It was a long roundabout journey that took hours, as our stop was the last stop on the line. I remember the rides took forever. Especially in the winter where the bus would get bogged down in the snow or the mud from the unpaved, rocky roads.
I would sleep, or read or sometimes talk to other students.
In the winter I wouldn’t get home until five or six, due to snowy conditions.
There was a farm boy who lived about a half mile away from our trailer park in a huge house. His name was Joey and he was my age, maybe even younger but bigger than me. Thick arms built up by years of, like, shoveling manure and picking up cows or whatever farm boys do.
He used to sit by me and talk to me but I really couldn’t relate to him. I don’t think I was ever outwardly rude to him but, really, I was into Tolkien back then and wasn’t into talking about sports or anything like that.
This kid eventually used to kind of torment me, in a low-grade under-the-radar kind of way. Pinch me. Give me covert punches in the arms and so on. I came to dread the rides home.
One day Buck made a turn and went on a different road and stopped at a farm house. There were only about five kids left on the bus. My sister, a couple of girls who lived in my trailer park, Joey and myself. Buck was gone for a long time. I don’t know how long it was, but in my memory it was like twenty minutes.
While he was gone, Joey came over to my seat and just started beating the shit out of me. Whaling on me. punches all over my body. It didn’t really hurt but I didn’t know what to do. I had never fought before, other than little spats with my sister.
I am really not a physical person and the idea of inflicting physical pain on another person is just not something that ever occurs to me. I can be quite vicious with my tongue; I am relatively good with words and I can be very hurtful in that way. But not only do I not hit people, it never even enters my mind to do so. So I just kind of sat there asking him to stop. Eventually he did stop and when Buck re-entered the bus (with several bales of hay he had apparently just purchased!)all the other kids told on Joey.
Strangely, I don’t recall much pain in that situation. Nevertheless, I can not describe the utter humiliation I felt at the beat down I had gotten and my utter inability to fight back. I was a wuss and I knew it. Worse, everybody else knew it. All the books I read about heroes fighting monsters and Orcs and what-not…well that wasn’t me. I was a weakling. A nerd. The lowest of the low. If I was a character in the Lord of the Rings, I would have been, at best, Fatty Bolger. Only, I wasn’t that fat. (Back then. Now, a different story.)
Buck sort of grunted. He drove on. WE got to Joey’s stop. Joey sort of strutted out, grinning at me. When he passed by my seat, I stuck my foot out and sent his brawny oversized ass sprawling flat on his goddamn face in the black centre aisle of the bus. Mother fucker!
Under Buck’s disapproving eye, he left the bus, giving me a hateful eye that made me feel sure that he was going to kill me next time he was alone with me.
Afterwards, Buck asked me if I wanted him to report JOey to the principal, telling me if he did, he would also have to report me because he had actually seen me trip Joey. I remembered the little thrill of vengeance I had felt when I tripped Joey, and I told him not to report Joey.
Buck said he wouldn’t and that he never wanted to see him or me fighting again.
Buck never left us kids alone in the bus after that. A little while later, I moved to a different town.
Written December 16th
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