Hero
My Hero
HOW MUCH BLUNT-FORCE trauma -- to or between the vertebrae at the base of the neck -- would it take to produce permanent paralysis or even death?
Battle Creek, Michigan -- home to Tony the Tiger -- was a racially tense town. Maybe it had something to do with all those black squirrels Dr. Kellogg brought back with him from Australia.
John Harvey Kellogg was the medical director of the then-world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium. He's the one who invented Kellogg's corn flakes for his patients, rather guests -- like Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It was Kellogg's brother, W. K. Kellogg, who capitalized on the flaky idea and who shortly found himself competing with Post Toasties. Turns out Mr. Post had recently been a guest at the San.
Over time, the black squirrels -- along with members of the black community -- grew from few to many. Ninety-five percent, in the case of squirrels. Nearly fifty percent, when it came to the people population.
I can't speak for the squirrels, but I'd have to say the up-and-coming blacks were not happy campers -- at least some of them.
If I tell you police had to be stationed in the hallways of Central High School after two white girls were raped between classes and another student had his ear cut off …
Or that on my wedding day, both my mother and my oldest brother were shot by a teenager who just happened to be walking down the street where we lived and apparently thought he could up his street cred by shooting some white folk sitting on their porch late one afternoon …
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I had never seen an honest-to-goodness black person -- except on television -- until first grade. We lived seven miles out of town, and everyone in our neighborhood -- in fact for miles around -- was white.
At the private school I attended for twelve years, only four students in all twelve grades were black. For most of those years there were none.
If it hadn't been for Amos and Andy, I wouldn't have heard a black voice on the radio at all! As it turns out, neither of them were actually black!
Billy Owens -- one of two black kids in our first-grade class of close to thirty -- was polite in the extreme. First impressions take about ten contradictory follow-ups to change. Consequently, I thought all black kids were quiet and polite.
When I was in the fifth grade, my mom remarried. We moved into town.
My two older brothers and I walked to school the apocryphal ten miles, barefoot, in three feet of snow, uphill, both ways -- only it was one mile, pretty much flat, and we each wore appropriate footwear. After the first week or so, we stopped complaining and actually enjoyed the talk time, occasionally catching rides from fellow classmates whose parents considered us less fortunate or simply wanted to set a good example for their own kids. After all, it
was a private parochial school …
* * *
Fast-forward three years.
I'm now a freshman in high school -- ninth grade.
A new kid, Don Renshaw, is kind of weird. We get a few of them from time to time -- parents hoping if they shell out the pricey tuition, their son or daughter will get that extra attention from teachers and a more tolerant and compassionate student body.
Renshaw was, in a word, hyper.
I don't know where he shipped in from, but the way he dressed and wore his hair made him stand out. No one in our entire school had a crew cut. His was cut long, which made him stand out even more.
And dress?
How can I say this?
It was kinda woodsy.
Plaid wool shirts.
Big belt buckles.
Not your typical middle-class Midwesterner. As I recall, he even wore leather boots on occasion.
Not an unlikable guy. If anything, he was rather gregarious. Maybe a bit too gregarious.
Very athletic -- really, really good at a game we called Soldier. That was some game …
You take a full-size gymnasium.
Cut it in half. Now we're only using from center court to the left or right, but not both.
Cut this down the middle -- not that hard, since there was a painted black line demarcating the two sides.
The walls of the gym were about three feet from the perimeter of the court.
Enter one volleyball -- later, two or three!
With ball in hand, you rush up to the center line and aim at anyone still standing in enemy territory.
If you hit 'em, they have to go to "prison" behind you -- that'd be behind the three-foot line out from the wall.
This is a somewhat active prison. If your compatriots throw the ball over to you while you're in prison, or it happens to make it through enemy lines, you can pick it up (or catch it in the air) and pick off the enemy from the rear. This way, when more than one ball is in play, you can catch 'em in the crossfire!
If someone you hit catches the ball before it touches the ground,
you, the thrower, go to prison. They stay free.
Renshaw was lethal. He could pick off anyone, anywhere in enemy territory. Often he didn't even bother to rush the line. I don't think I ever saw him get hit but that he caught the ball!
Renshaw lives in my neck of the woods. Normally he takes the bus home. But for whatever reason, on this particular day, he catches up with me as I'm leaving the schoolyard.
We aren't particularly buddies. We've both dated the same girl, Alice, off and on. But other than that …
We stop at the store that is midway between the school and my house. It's the highlight of most walks home. We pick up the obligatory gratuitous carbohydrates.
Consuming these takes us to my street, which is only three blocks long.
We're almost at the end of the first block when I feel a light tap right at the base of my neck. I'm thinking maybe one of those squirrels carelessly dropped a nut -- my street is totally engulfed in trees from both sides.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Renshaw whirl around. Actually he starts his whirl just before I feel the tap, but I don't put these two events together until later.
Before I have a chance to turn around to see what he's looking at, he yells, "Run, Ruskjer! Run! I'll hold 'em off!"
Stunned, I just look at him, slowly registering the fact that we're not alone.
"Go!" he shouts two inches from my face.
OK. That clarifies the situation a little better! As I put my feet in gear, I glance over my shoulder.
Six, maybe eight black kids -- probably students from the high school next to ours -- are just a few feet behind the one who was previously right behind me. He -- up until Renshaw knocked it away -- has a broken stick about a foot long and an inch in diameter. I say holding -- thrusting would be a better description. Renshaw knocks it away just as it makes contact with my spine.
Renshaw quickly eyeballs a couple of rocks by the curb and scoops them up. By now the group has consolidated, and they're getting ready to give chase.
"I can only get two of you!" Renshaw yells as he sweeps both his gaze and his cocked arm back and forth from left to right, measuring distance from rock to skull. "Who's it gonna be?"
While the group doesn't stop, they slow appreciably. He's pretty convincing! Had they seen his kill ratio with that volleyball, they would, no doubt, have gone in the opposite direction. Just seeing his command performance, they allow him to slowly put distance between himself and them. By this time, I'm now a block and a half away!
At some point, he figures he can outrun them. Still clutching a rock in each hand, he beats feet my way. The group gives a halfhearted chase, but probably figures there's better fish to fry.
* * *
I often wonder how much damage a sharp stick backed by the mass and acceleration of a motivated, physically-fit youth might do inserted between two vertebrae at the base of one's neck.
Had Don Renshaw not intervened, I might be able to tell you …