The Bat

(The Donkeyland Neighborhood,
a Chick Evens Story, summer of, 1961)


When you’re just fourteen years old, you don’t have sense enough to realize what you are doing and often tremble, get so mad you can’t think, and overreact, or at least I did. Because even now I can remember some of the things Richard Zackary and I did for instance, and in my case I didn’t think twice about it, and I wonder how any of us kids in the neighborhood (called by the police: Donkeyland), us boys in particular ever lived long enough to grow up. I remember I was just fourteen, weightlifting, had fourteen inch biceps, strong as a bull; Richard Zackary had just taken a bat I had found out from my hands; this was after (this is how I remember it anyhow) after, Richard was standing against some bushes by his house, we both went to the same High School, we were about the same height, and weight, it was a warm day. We began to talk about sharing the bat, but he wouldn’t give it back to me and I tried to grab it, pull it away from him. Richard said he’d give it to me for three-dollars, since we both spotted the bat, and I grabbed it before he could. But I said, “Let’s just share it,” of course I wanted to have it first, and so did he. Before he could say another word I hat him with my right fist alongside the upper left side of his temple, hard, I just hauled off and hit him, right through the bushes he flew, cloths, bat and all.
So we (his father and I) got him out of the bushes, and we tried to wake him up, but the blow was so solid, he was completely knocked out.
“All right,” the mother said, standing by her son, “you better go home Chick…” the father was getting extremely upset, and so I did.
I hadn’t thought about that, about leaving him, I did leave the bat, and Richard ended up in the hospital. And the father called my mother up, said, “That boy of yours is like a gorilla; keep him away from my son!”
“If that’s what we got to do, okay,” she said.
“That boy of yours is taking advantage of my boy,” said Richards’s father to my mother—meaning, I was twice as strong as he.
Well, Richard and I had more or less hung around together ever since he had moved into the neighborhood, some two-years prior, but I stayed away from him for a long time. Perhaps his father had let me off lightly, he had every reason to want to harm me but didn’t. But I didn’t think of that at the time.
Fine, I wasn’t trying to prove I was the toughest, I never thought of it that way, but it did seem to build up a little reputation for me, one I didn’t care to have, simply because other kids wanted to test me out, see if I was all that tough, I mean, one blow knocked out a boy—evidently, that was something. And I tried to explain it was just a mishap in the neighborhood, but the more I did, the more folks thought I was being modest. I mean the thing I was trying to do, was not have to fight everyone to prove I was worthy of fighting. If anything, I was more guarded now and harder to get to fight; it was like life was trying to take revenge on me for hitting Richard or the Devil was working overtime.


No: 565 (12-8-2009)