Nebraska
by Tommy Winfrey
Nebraska isn’t the type of place most people want to remember. Stuck right in the middle of America, it seems like the place is stuck in time as well. I remember the summer I spent there running wild with the spirit of independence. My family would end up moving around the country quite a bit when I was a kid. This was the first place I remember and it’s where I learned about love.
My father and uncle followed the pipelines for work. They both grew up in the same small town in Missouri, poverty or nostalgia the only things that kept the town populated. Uncle Gary was a little bit younger than my dad, and though they didn’t share blood they were like family. Sometime in the sixties, work took them to Texas and that’s where they met my mom and her sister. My dad being the older of the two, naturally started to date the older sister, who became my Aunt Bonnie. That left Mom to date my uncle. The way my mom tells it, it didn’t take long for them to figure out they were coupled up wrong. So, they switched. I don’t know what the tipoff was, but maybe my mom just liked my dad’s smile more. Or perhaps my uncle complimented my aunt on her appearance and she decided she liked him more. Regardless of the circumstance, the eventual matching created some long lasting marriages. My aunt and uncle are still married over 40 years later, and my parents stayed married until my dad’s death a few years ago.
All of us boys these two couples raised were hell raisers, no doubt. I’m almost certain we reminded the whole state of Nebraska of a scene out of the Bible when locusts destroyed everything. At least the townspeople had judgment in their eyes when they saw a pack of rowdy Texas boys headed their way. The small plains town probably hadn’t seen our likes in quite some time. We were dirty, ragged, and ready to fight. Because we were outsiders, the local boys were our natural enemies. We were a band of brothers. To join our army, you had to share our blood. This was comforting to a five year-old in a new place.
The local boys probably felt threatened by us. We were a foreign invasion from the south and there was no way to penetrate our ranks. We fought each other every day of our lives, and were unafraid to get hit or to roll in the dirt. Our favorite weapons were dirt clods, with the occasional rock added for impact. In serious dogfights, we might switch to glass bottles. The explosion of bottles when they hit solid ground was quite impressive, and serious enough to strike fear in our enemies’ hearts. To prove our mettle we all had scars, and we wore them like badges of courage. My little brother John had a scar under his left eye where I hit him and he fell and opened up his cheek, almost causing him to lose the peeper. He got stitches and a scar that showed how tough he was. I got my ass whipped for almost costing him an eye. We were even.
My cousin Gary Cecil only had sisters, so the time he spent with us was a blessing for him. We were wild and he could act as outrageous as he wanted to with us. He didn’t have to worry about hurting our feelings or being too rough. This release made him take greater risks to show how tough he was. The only problem was that when we would get into trouble, he often blamed one of us for whatever he had done. He often got away with this because we had the reputation as the rough and rowdy types. But Gary Cecil was as often as not the creator of mischief himself. This would cause tension between our parents sometimes; they would mistakenly believe their own kids instead of the truth, leading to periods when our parents wouldn’t even talk. Nevertheless, that summer Gary Cecil was part of the brotherhood and we had many adventures that involved him.
We would scour the town for aluminum cans. We collected them for the change that we got for turning them in to the local junkyard. Heaven on earth. I think all five-year-old boys probably love junkyards. Rusted wrecks on wooden blocks acted as forts and odd pieces of scrap metal made for treasures. The change we got from the cans we put to good use purchasing the bottles we used for ammunition. Gary Cecil thought we worked too hard for this change. We would often wander for miles, down train tracks, across lawns, and down the side of the highway looking for cans. He came up with a get-rich- quick scheme that involved a whole lot less work. He showed us the houses where occupants had done all the collecting for us. We would sneak right up on their porches and steal full bags of cans. I can still hear the popping and clinking of empty beer cans as we stole off with the loot. Because of our innate outlaw tendencies, we took to this new way of collecting cans naturally.
Looking back, I realize we weren’t all that bright, so we didn’t take into account the many problems with this plan. One problem was that we didn’t consider that because we were in a new land as foreigners we automatically aroused suspicion. The rash of can burglaries didn’t go unnoticed in that small plains town, and I’m sure it wasn’t hard for the local residents to figure out who was behind the crimes. To figure out who the culprits were, all they had to do was go to the one place that people redeemed cans in that small town: the junk yard.
As it turns out, it didn’t take long for us to be caught at our new vocation, and it sure didn’t take any detective work on the towns peoples’ part. As we snuck away from a front porch with a sack of beer cans, the noise must have alerted the homeowner. John and I had not got more than ten feet away from the house before on old man descended upon us and lifted us both off the ground by the seats of our pants. He dragged us home, and we got whippings that night. Dad said he wasn’t going to raise no thieves; it didn’t matter if it was Gary Cecil’s idea.
My brother Jerry was a year older then Gary Cecil and, being a natural leader, Jerry was meaner. The two would occasionally fight for the right to be in control, but more often then not, Jerry would come out on top. He had the natural airs of an oldest son, the confidence of being stronger and a sense of entitlement. We followed his orders unless one of us happened to feel brave that day. This rebellion happened often enough that he would hit us for no reason except to teach us our place in the world. The junkyard became his own private kingdom and he had his own personal army to defend it.
After our punishment, the junkyard became our new center of operations. The local boys didn’t take too kindly to our occupation. Jerry was a brilliant general though. He instinctively knew that we had to occupy the higher ground if we were to hold onto the zone. We knew battle was looming; you could see it in the way the local boys looked at us. Jerry had us making our special dirt clods right after breakfast.
“You’re not putting enough mud around the rock,” Jerry told Gary Cecil.
“I know how to make the damn things!” responded Gary Cecil.
“You don’t know shit,” said Jerry as he pushed Gary Cecil face first into the mud pile. The tension of the forthcoming fight was making us eager for battle. Just as Gary Cecil got up to shove Jerry back, the attack reigned down on upon us.
Blond haired boys tan from the Nebraska sun came running around rusted out wrecks. John, who was supposed to be looking out for them, allowed them behind our lines. Before we knew it, the biggest Nebraska boy with a clenched fist hit Gary Cecil square in the nose. Without a doubt, he was the neighborhood bully, but he met his match in us. As soon as he hit Gary Cecil, Jerry grabbed him by his hair and kicked him in the back of the knee.
The boy screamed and Gary Cecil, recovering from his punch, shoved a handful of mud down his open mouth. Chaos reigned. Other Nebraska boys came running out from behind wrecks as I scooped up handfuls of our dirt clods. Hiding behind an old Studebaker I began to take aim. The first boy I hit with my rock-laden projectile was wearing overalls and a beatup pair of sneakers. He immediately sheltered his face covering the red mark the missile left on his cheek. With tears in his eyes, he made a mad dash at me.
I could tell he had been in fights before because he didn’t run from a little pain. He began to windmill punches right at me. His arms flailing in a rhythm every five year-old boy knows. He hit me square in the lip. I could taste the familiar coppery tang of blood in my spit. The blood elicited a battle cry from my lips. “Aaaggghhh!” I screamed as I threw a punch that blackened the blond boy’s eye. The boy went down under my assault of limbs. Pinning the five year-old down with my knees on his shoulders, I forced mud into his mouth.
As the battle went on, I could hear Jerry yelling for us to make our way to the old pile of wrecks where our main cache of weapons was hidden. I let the Nebraska boy up as I ran to the center of the junkyard. Meeting there with my brothers, the Nebraska boys were out gunned. We threw dirt clods, rocks, and bottles with wild abandon, scattering the their ranks.
Fighting a wild bunch of boys from Texas proved more then the Nebraska boys could handle. Eventually, we made a peace accord. The local boys could come and hang out, but it was within our power to make them leave. Our power was recognized officially, and messing with one of us usually meant messing with all of us. Though they had the advantage of numbers to run us out, we had the advantage of being bound by blood. They had to deal with lifetimes of local politics that would keep them from truly forming into a unit that would be able to turn the tide of the war.
Jerry, just as enterprising as Gary Cecil, came up with his own schemes to make money, only his were crazier. Gary Cecil had nothing on Jerry when it came to viciousness and cruelty. So when he decided that he would make money off the local boys by ripping the legs off toads, I was not surprised. He would get a crowd around him with a big fat toad and tell them if they each paid him a nickel apiece, he would let them watch him pull the poor animal’s legs off. It was disgusting, cruel, and a little scary, but every boy from the train tracks to the end of town shoved a nickel in Jerry’s hand as quick as they could fumble them out of their pockets. The ones who couldn’t pay, we ran off with the big sticks we liked to carry. Just before Jerry got the chance to disjoint the toad, my cousin Danielle warned the authorities. My mom and aunt showed up just in time to ruin his frog de-legging exhibition and forced him to return the money he had collected.
That summer in Nebraska put love into perspective for me, and ultimately I found out that the caring warmth of a mother’s comforting words is more powerful than the bonds of brotherhood. When I needed my brothers, they were not there to protect me or offer support; it was just me in a locked room.
I was in the laundromat with my mom while she was doing the week’s wash. I was probably annoying the hell out of her, so when I asked to use the restroom I’m sure she felt a moment of relief, the kind a mother may feel for wanting a moment’s peace from her child. She’d never admit it aloud, but I’m sure she felt it all the same. She said one thing when I told her I needed to go to the bathroom: “Don’t lock the door.”
When I think of that room, I think of pure terror. It smelled of urine and the stale air of a hot Nebraska summer day. The toilette in the corner of that wretched restroom was white and full of old rust stains. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in awhile. The walls were painted a salmon pink and the tiny window was far beyond my five year-old reach. A leaky sink sat almost directly over the toilet and beat out a rhythm that you could keep time to. In the corner was wadded up tissue that someone hadn’t even bothered to throw in the toilet.
A mom should never tell her five-year-old boy not to do something if she wants him to do what she asks. Naturally, I defied her. The lock was of the hook and eye kind, and covered in rust. Even if I
D been six foot tall and grown, it would have been difficult for me to latch that tight lock, but at three feet, I could barely latch it as I stood on my tippy toes and managed to get the curved part to slide into the hole. In my young mind, I thought she would never know, and it felt good to defy her. I was a man, and no man that I knew listened to his momma.
When I was done with my business and it came time to leave, I discovered I was trapped. I couldn’t get the lock to release its death grip. My heart was pounding in my tiny cheat and my breaths came in shallow bursts. The air grew staler with every second. I was imagining the police finally busting down the door and finding nothing but a skeleton left. A lesson for other five year-old boys to listen to their moms. I was not prepared to die. The worst part was that my mom would find out that I disobeyed her. My five year-old psyche was fragile, and I began to cry from the pressure of the situation. I began to scream and kick. I pounded on the door to get attention.
After what seemed an eternity, I heard the voice I was longing for. The voice that I feared hearing, but the only one I could take comfort in. My mom was there telling me not to panic while, at the same time, berating me for not listening to her. I cried to her that I was trapped in this death cell. That I was sorry. That I would never defy her again. For all her anger, I could still hear the warmth in her voice. The love that I need in times of terror. She became my salvation in that room, and I was no longer the strong willed savage seeking his independence. I was the five year old-boy who needed his momma.
Tommy Winfrey is a writer currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.
