(1.3) Fireflies:When the Levee Breaks

It seems odd to me that I have no enduring memories of Summers in their relative entirety until my preadolescent years. Of course, for my brother and me there were no summer camps or vacations or schedules; that may have been part of the reason. But I recall certain bits, disconnected from each other, uncertain in time.

They are bits of summers I remember from when I was Young, and they blink in my mind like the fireflies of those early nights. Let me use these next few pages as my jar and catch these tiny sparks of lightning for a little while. I promise to open the lid when I'm done and let them fly away if they want to...

When the Levee Breaks

Winton Woods is a state park in Ohio. Winton Lake is a man-made lake that originally acted as a reservoir for the Mill Creek. About three miles long and maybe an eighth of a mile across at its widest, it is a nice little park for the surrounding communities.

On the extreme eastern end of the lake is a long levee, a relatively small dam, and a flood spillway, all built by the Army Corps of Engineers. My family lived within an eighth of a mile of the levee, the creek that sort of wandered along it, and the east end of Winton Lake. At the north base of the levee was a strip of trees perhaps 100 yards wide, then the aforementioned creek, and then our subdivision. The creek, the levee, the lake, the dam, the Gorge, the Bridge, Bird Island… All these things featured prominently in my childhood; my friend and I were among these places constantly. And in the summers, I remember we tended to wind up there like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

On the Rocks

Donna and David Maxberry lived next door to us when I was young. Their sons, Brian and Andre were roughly the same ages as my brother and me, respectively. As Tom was friends with Brian, it seemed natural enough that I should be friends with Andre, and so it was. Or so it seemed. I don't think Andre was very interested in a friendship with me. We were very different, and I have never been very good at bridging differences. That relationship might have been the first time differences occurred because of different cultural backgrounds--Brian and Andre are black, and Tom and I are white. That never mattered to us, though, the racial part… not then.

One day David invited Tom and me to join him and his boys in a fishing trip up by the levee, up the road a little less than a quarter mile. I had to have been in first grade, second at the most--maybe younger. This memory is vivid, but disjointed. I remember I was happy to be included, but I didn't really know what to do. I climbed on the rocks down by the shoreline. There was a clear high-water mark along the rocks. David had a metal tacklebox.

You see how it was: the memory is broken up and not cohesive. But it's a strong memory because I was invited somewhere. That didn't happen much as I grew up, and the times it did tend to stand out in my memory.

On the Nose

David and Donna did not stay together; my parents intimated (or maybe stated explicitly) that David drank, and that that killed the marriage. I don't know about that, but I know that good-hearted, kind man left…and Donna began dating Don. Don was a mean guy, angry, quick to yell. He didn't seem to like Brian and Andre being friends with Tom and me. I don't know if there was any racial drive behind his personality, but I know I began to feel the beginnings of a wall between white and black around that time. And I suppose my father's casually sarcastic racist rhetoric helped define it all the more.

I was perhaps eight when this happened, maybe nine. After supper one night, I went next door to see if Andre wanted to come out and play. When he came out, he was very upset. "I threw away my chicken, and now Don won't let me have no jerky beef!" he complained.

Somehow, Andre and I ended up arguing. Who knows what it was about; we were little kids. At the height of our anger we did the unthinkable: we spit on each other!

Andre didn't take kindly to that, and he went inside and told on me. Don came out of their house like a windstorm. He crossed the street to where Andre and I had been bickering and grabbed me by the arm. He was furious and yelling at me, and I was scared. I remember that clearly: I was scared.

And then, beyond any expectation I could have dreamed up... Don hit me! It was no slap on the wrist, either; he swung--SWUNG--from his hip and cracked me right in the face, albeit with an open hand. I remember distinctly seeing his hand coming toward me. It had to be a long swing for me to remember seeing that dark hand getting larger and larger before the pain.

Don didn't break my nose, but he bloodied it pretty bad. A grown man bloodied a nine-year-old kid's nose because he acted like an nine-year-old. The terrible stories we hear and read these days about incredible abuses are shocking and bizarre. But when I was nine all it took to shock me out of all my frames of reference was for the grown-up guy next door to slap the blood right out of my nose.

Mom and Dad went high and to the right when I walked into our house crying and bleeding--rightfully so, I think. The adults yelled back and forth at each other, and my nose hurt, and Mom hugged me even while she was angry, and I was scared, and the dusk started to come down. The ambulance came and paramedics checked to make sure my nose wasn't broken.

The police came.

The officer talked with Mom and Dad, talked with Don. He may have even talked to me, but I don't remember that part. I remember that after he had talked to everybody, he asked my parents if they wanted to press charges. And my parents asked me.

They explained what each of my choices could mean, and I really thought about it. That summer evening I decided it was disproportionate to halfway ruin someone's life just because I took a smack in the nose. At nine years old, I made what might have been my first adult decision: temper justice with mercy.

And at nine years old, I made what might have been my first adult judgment: it's "us" and "them," now--black vs white; there's no such thing anymore as "we."

None of it was fair.