Brothers & Blood

BROTHERS & BLOOD

DAY 1,

I didn't want to move to Belton Texas in 1971, in fact I hated the idea. Why, why do I have to move? I was quite content go to Rancier Jr. High. I knew most everybody there, my friends that I went to elementary school with were there. I played sports there, I was running track, I was happy. But no, daddy had to buy land in the Belton school district where we built our house and because they get money for every kid in their school district they were hot on my dad's ass to put me in Belton school.

Now don't get me wrong, my dad fought long and hard trying to keep me there at Rancier, I mean the school year was almost over, only two months left to go before the summer break, but I think my dad finally just got tired of the harassment from the school district and so on April first 1971, and of course it was April Fools Day there I was... standing in the Belton Jr High School office, looking down at my new classroom schedule with all the enthusiasm of a scared little boy, who was about to crap my pants. I did not want to do this, I didn't want be here. I thought to myself “shit... this sucks”.

I was in the seventh grade, that alone by itself was bad enough. Do you remember how mean we were at that age. Monsters I tell you, just plain mean ass O monsters and that was to the kids we knew and liked. No one knows me here no one likes me yet, man am I screwed. The first couple of classes went okay though, I guess, I don't remember anything out of the ordinary happening to me. That or I mentally blocked it out. And by lunch I had made two friends, Allen and James Chaney, two brothers, they were different, like me. We seemed to have hit it off pretty well and they were showing me the ropes.

After lunch though, I was pretty much on my own and that seemed to be okay because I only had two more classes to go before making it through and finish out my first day unscaved. Then wouldn't know it, no such luck, I was heading to my last class and sure as hell there's a fight in the hallway between two boys and I get pulled right into the middle of it. It was between Jake Beaver and Arthur Bartlett. I got knocked up against the hall lockers, my books get knocked out of my hands while some how I wind up in the middle of these two yahoo's go after each other like two cats with their tails tied together and thrown over a clothesline. What a perfect ending to a perfect freaking day, you might even think so but awe hell no. I some how get out from underneath all this commotion, and finally make it to my last damn class of the day and the teacher tells me... There's an empty desk behind miss Diane there, you go sit over there, and so I do... This black haired... Mexican girl... ever so slowly... turns her whole body around in her desk with her feet firmly in the isle now turn her head the rest of the way around and is now squarely looking at me, with her piercing squinted dark brown eyes looks me up, and then down, doesn't say one word and then ever so slowly, turns back around and faces the front of the classroom. With my head held down looking at the top of my desk, I very gently shake my head, I am seriously thinking to myself right now I must have died and I'm in HELL. Why daddy, why me?

THE NEXT DAY.

Standing at our bus stop at seven o'clock in the morning in front of our house with my two younger brothers, both acting like a couple monkeys... and then, there I am. There is absolutely no love lost standing here going some place I did not want to go to. Oh boy, here comes that big ass yellow bus topping the hill and starting to slow down. He's turning on the yellow flashing lights and now the red ones. He first stops at our neighbors the Fox's who I haven't even met yet and we have been living next door to them for months. Next he stops at our house, the bus comes to a rather slow stop and I'm looking around trying to figure out where I could possibly hide. Of course nowhere, when the double doors of the school bus opened and in the drivers seat of this death trap is this old ass man with a mouth full of chewing tobacco, motioning for us to hurry up and get in. He then turns his head and with a stomach hurling hack, pokes his head out the driver's side window and... spits. It's a beautiful morning.

“Come on boys hurry up and find you a seat”, Mr. Lester says as I climb in and start walking toward the back of the bus, when all of a sudden he talks off like a bat out of hell. The only thing I could do was grab a seat, any seat, it didn't matter at this moment so I did. I grabbed one that was about three quarters of the way to the very back. I knew better than take the last seat in the back. That seat was reserved for the “Bus King”. The bad asses, the ones you didn't want to mess with and it being my first day and all on this bus... I didn't want to press ones luck.

The bus driver made a few more stops before heading down Nolanville hill and turning around in this very fancy gated driveway. There was a whole passel full of kids and when they all started piling in the bus this one guy steps in... Oh my god... Elvis Presley's son just got on. Well, that's what I was thinking anyway. He went strutting all the way to the second to last seat of the bus and then I thought “what... not the last seat?”

We were all sitting down when we got back up to Highway 190 and then turned down Simmons rd. On the first stop the kids were getting on and guess who the hell was getting on too? ARTHUR BARTLETT, Yeah I met this little shithead yesterday... in the hall, headed for my last class of the day. And wouldn't you know it he sits down in the seat right behind mine, Oh boy. We hadn't even moved the bus yet when this pecker head reaches over my shoulder and grabs my pencil out of my shirt pocket.

Now ordinarily I wouldn't care about a stupid old pencil, but you would have to know my dad. My dad bought these school supplies and we were not rich by any means. In fact we were extremely close to dirt poor, except for the fact my dad worked his ass off providing for his kids. We weren't hungry, but we didn't have much either, I mean that with nothing but love for my dad. He had four boys and a girl he was raising all on his own, along with running a new start up small business that was just making it. There wasn't a lot of pennies left over at the end of the day. But we all got new shoes at the beginning of the school year, and they really needed to last until at least May. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't.

Now this little shit is going to take my only pencil... that is just unacceptable and not going to happen. So I stood up, turned around, and asked nicely, give... me back... my... pencil. And then I stepped into the isle of the bus. Now Arthur look up at me and started to stand up when all of a sudden Elvis Presley's son grabbed the back of Arthur's seat and in less than a second stood up... Now this guy is a lot taller than I am, bigger than I am, and I'm thinking... “awe shit, this is going to hurt” But no way was I going to back down.

When out of the blue Elvis's son says... Arthur, give the dude back his pencil before he beats the living shit out of you. Man... my heart started pumping blood again, I'm like holy shit what bullet did I just dodge, when Elvis Presley's son says “hey man, my name is Simon, Simon Vaca”. Arthur hung his head down and handed me back my pencil. Maybe today wont be so bad after all.

Now our bus had to stopped at Southwest Elementary to let all the little kids off and pick up the rest of us older ones and take us on to Jr. high and High school. There were these two brothers that got on there and as they passed by me... I knew the bad asses just got on. Tommy and Ray Puckett... Now let me tell you those two boys scared Satan himself an of course there was some dumb ass kid setting in the last seat of the bus when Tommy just walked up and just stood there looking at him. Tommy reached into his back pocket pulled out the biggest damn knife I think I ever saw and with a flip of his thumb, whips that blade right open and in two shakes of a lambs tail that kid was sitting at the front of the buss. We went on to the Junior High and High school and thank god nobody died that day.

ONE MORE YEAR

CHAPTER 2.

I got held back at the end of the school year in 1971. I really wanted to blame everyone else for their decision on that issue, but I can't. I wanted to blame my dad... the teachers... Belton school district... everyone but me. But, the truth be known, it was all my fault. I didn't want to go to Belton. I wanted no part of Belton... But I had no choice in the matter, so I did what any dumb ass would do, absolutely nothing and I mean nothing. I went from a solid A in Math, and Science, and Sports, solid B in History, and English. A pretty good C in everything else to a F,... in everything. That will teach them.

September was here now, and it will be a totally new school year. As I'm getting ready for school... I for some odd reason started to get excited about going to this new school again. This time... I wasn't going to screw off like I did the last part of last year. I was going to get back on top of everything, get my grades back up and keep them there. NASA had just a few days earlier mentioned something about a Space Shuttle Program, and oh my god, I have always wanted to be an astronaut and by gosh, I was going to be one.

Earlier that summer... I scared the living shit out of my dad. I know at times I had to have really disappointed him. At Christmas he had gotten me this toy that was really a tool. I can't remember the name of it but it had everything. It had a small table saw, and you could turn it over and it was a drill press and a belt sander and lathe. My dad got this thing for me in hopes that I would build little dollhouse furniture and stuff. Nope, I made ROCKETS, little rockets, midsize rockets and the biggest one I could make was about eighteen inches in height and about two inches round.

It was right before the Fourth of July and I had gone to the fire cracker stand and bought some fire crackers and bottle rockets. Well... sometimes when you light a fire cracker the fuse might burn out just inside the thing, that's what we would call a dud, but you can break it in half and light it again and it becomes a chaser. Well I had this brain storm... I needed fuel for one of my rockets that I had made and Black Cat fire crackers just might be my answer... So I went to the stand with my last twenty dollars and bought nothing but large black cat fire crackers. I must have had over five hundred of those things and I sat down and unraveled every single one. Now I had this pretty good size pile of this gray gun powder going on and I was thinking this should do the trick, so I started loading it into the hollowed out tail end of my rocket when I noticed, I still had quite a bit of powder left over so now I'm a thinking well... if I pack all this powder in the rocket awe man this thing is going to go ten thousand feet in the sky. Ooooh yeah I can't wait.

Now I had taken all the fuses and connected them together so I had a fuse that was about seven or eight foot long, I figured that was enough to be safe and I can always step back some if I needed too. Now where was I going to shoot this thing off... I know, on the back side of the house so I set everything up and went into the back of the house. Dad was asleep on the couch taking him a much needed nap, when I spotted his cigar in the ashtray and it was still smoking. I very, very gently crept into the living room and snuck that cigar right out of there.

Everything is set... I had to puff on the cigar once or twice to keep it lit. T minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, look around real quick three, two, light the fuse ONE. With a flash and sizzle the fuse is lit, no turning back. I stood there looking and watching as the fuse got closer and closer to the rocket, I am so wired up, this is going to be so awesome when all of a sudden.... KABOOM!!!!

I'm not talking kaboom, kaboom, I'm talking holy shit KABOOM. That blast shook the windows in the house and these were new tight windows, blew my ass to the ground. My daddy was in the Korean and Vietnam war... he came out of the house loaded for bear, mad as hell, and totally confused. He had his old 38 in his hand looking around when he spotted a smoking hole in the ground and me laying about ten feet from it.

Of course the first words out of his mouth was “What the Sam hell did you do Jerry Wayne?” I don't remember totally but my hair might have been standing straight up and smoking just a tad bit. School had better hurry up and start.

School didn't start for us back then until after Labor day in September. So we were already a couple days into the month when we started that year, we had our class schedule in hand so you knew where you were going and where your first class was. Belton had what we called the "New Building." I don't know when it was actually built, but it did look pretty new and it had air conditioning. Now behind the new building there was an old paved parking lot with this huge oak tree in the middle of it that got converted into our morning kick the can play ground while we waited for school to start.

Kick the can... Now that was a the game of champions. Real athletes played that game, awe I ain't fooling nobody, that game hurt like hell. You get a bunch of crazed, hyped up, adrenaline filled BOYS, bunched into a tight group running around kicking a smashed tin can. There is going to be pain.

There was this one young man named Bobby, He had two prosthetic legs and one prosthetic arm, now let me tell you something he may have had some challenges but that boy was not a handicapped person by no means and we didn't treat him like he was one. He would be right in the middle of us boys kicking that can, kicking shins and oh hell do not fall down because nobody stopped long enough for you to get back up. It was one of the most fun and brutal games us boys could play.

When the fist bell of the day would ring, everyone would reluctantly stop and pick up their books and head to class like there was nothing wrong with the world. Now some us limped to class and some of us laughed at the ones limping.

I started fitting in, and it felt pretty good.

To be continued