I grew up on the cul-de-sac end of a long suburban street. The neighborhood this street was part of backed up to a small strip of young but wild wood about a quarter mile wide, and this, beginning with a long downward slope, formed the barrier between our back yard and the farm fields and county roads beyond. My brother and I spent long afternoons in what we called “the ravine,” climbing trees, chasing squirrels, and generally reveling in a place protected from parental view. “To the woods!” was our stock answer to the ever-present question of the time: “Where are you going?” The woods had its limitations, however. In particular, it had no friends, and it afforded no opportunity to ride a bicycle. And so at some point, earlier in my childhood than the specificity of memory, we began to explore in the other direction, up the street.
The configuration of the streets was such that to gain access to the rest of the neighborhood, we had to travel along our street, past the two corner houses, and onto the adjoining road. It was a bit of very bad luck that those two houses, like sentinel towers guarding the way in and out of a prison, were home to Jason on the left, and Paul on the right. They were, and I say this without a hint of hyperbole, the two meanest boys I have ever known. Paul and Jason were three or four years older than me and they seemed to possess a hatred of everything and everyone; A quality that results in a relentless need to exert power for its own sake. Young boys, as a general rule, have no real power, and so they approximate it through victimization. We, as much younger boys of eight or nine years, were naive enough to believe that these bullies might, possibly, kill us one of these times, and that proper fear made us ideal victims.
For several years, every time we conspired to leave our corner of the world, my brother and I would weigh the risk of being caught by Paul or Jason or, worst of all, both of them together. The harassment often took the usual forms. Jason, for instance, was fond of entrapment. He might wrap his arm around my neck, the crook of his elbow leaving just enough space for my trachea to admit a little air. He would often ask how I liked this, although I rarely gave this question much consideration as I struggled to break free. Other times he would push my brother to the ground and sit on his chest. He sang a sort of triumphant song when he did this.
Paul was more of a prop man. He had a BB gun, for instance. It may as well have been an assault rifle as far as I understood things then. I certainly believed it could kill me. He would aim the gun at us as we rode our bicycles up the street and ask, loudly, if we’d like to be shot today. One halloween he had a package of bottle rockets, which were the sort of illegal fireworks that elicited a great deal of awe in those days. He shot one at my brother, hitting him square in the chest. It hovered there—pressing against his chest as it expended the last of its propellent—for what seemed like a very long time, but must really have been no more than a second. The explosion that eventually came left a small burn hole in his shirt and we were genuinely surprised he was not more seriously hurt. I think we concluded it has been a “dud” and called ourselves lucky that day.
One day, I don’t remember how old we were, we made a life-saving discovery. We were playing in what we called The Dead Forest, which was a section of the woods where, for unknown reasons, every tree was dead. Hundreds of young trees, no more than three or four inches in diameter, stood straight and tall and leafless. They had evidently been this way for many years because their trunks were brittle and dry. We could push the smaller trees over with our hands. The Dead Forest was a long way from our back yard, down the ravine and past the doctor’s lawn mower shed. Beyond The Dead Forest was The Old House, which was a partially-covered platform held up by a tree. In hindsight, it was probably an aborted attempt at a treehouse started by boys like us years before. We thought of The Old House as something very far away, and also very dangerous. I remember my brother climbed up into it once, and I was convinced he was taking too great a risk. On the day of the discovery, for the first time, we walked up the hill at the point of The Old House. As we crested the hill we were surprised to find a tennis court, guarded by a tall chain link fence. It was the very same court that could be found in the back yard of the family across the street from Drew’s house. It is strange to think now that we never before realized our woods connected with the rest of the neighborhood, but at the time this seemed like magic.
We had found a way to bypass Paul and Jason, and so we started walking our bikes through the woods most days. For a long time we came and went as we pleased.
We were doing exactly this one day when Paul and Jason materialized among the arboreal tombstones of The Dead Forest. I remember it vividly. My brother was 20 feet ahead of me when he yelled, “Run!” I didn’t want to leave my bicycle, and it was a struggle to push it through the leafy mulch and vegetal tangle of the forest floor. Before I got far, Paul had me by the wrist. Jason held my brother in the characteristic “head lock.” Paul pulled me towards the others, and the two tormentors discussed what to do with their quarry. Paul had with him a jumprope, the kind that is a thin cord strung with a hundred plastic tube-like beads of alternating white and blue. The kind that pinches your hands a little when you carry it in a bunch. He insinuated that they could tie us to a tree. There was talk of making us take off our clothes. In the end, they announced the decision to “cut [us] up.” Paul produced a pitch fork, which had been resting alongside a shovel against a nearby tree. While Jason pressed my brother against a tree, Paul held the tines of the pitchfork inches from his face, threatening to stab him or blind him or who knows what. I was no longer being held, and I only stood there, watching, unable to come to any conclusion. The fear pressed down on me more suffocatingly here, off the street and away from even the remotest possibility of adult rescue. I thought I would probably cry if I was in my brother’s position. For his part, although his lower lip betrayed his abject terror, he did not cry. He actually talked down to Paul, I remember. “I know why you’re doing this, Paul,” he said. “It makes you feel big.” I thought I might be sick.
I can’t remember how the skirmish ended. I’m quite certain we weren’t killed. There may have been some light punches mingled with more intimidation. It did end, though, somehow, and as far as I remember, we never spoke of it again.
Some months went by and things stayed largely the same. And then one day we came home from a day of playing, and my mother asked us to sit with her at the kitchen table. It was dark in the house after being outside in the summer sun, and there was a quality in the atmosphere of the room that made it plain she had something important to say. She told us, haltingly, that there had been an “accident.” Jason was dead. The doctor with the lawn mower shed had administered to Jason, but there was nothing, really, to be done. She wasn’t sure how well we knew Jason, and she wanted to know how we felt. In hindsight, I imagine she was worried about how we might respond if we learned this news in the presence of neighbors. Jason’s death was taboo because, as I learned a few years later, he had hung himself with a belt from the chinning bar in his bedroom.
I don’t remember everything my mother said that afternoon. She probably told us it was all right to be scared, or sad, or confused. My understanding of death at that point in my life was simply this: My mother had a father, but my father did not. His father had died a year before I was born. And that was the closest I had ever come to death. It would be two or three more years before my neighbor Megan’s grandmother would die, and she would tell me how she felt. It would be seven or eight more years before my own grandmother would die. But I understood the basics: You die, and then you aren’t alive anymore.
My mother asked us how we felt. And this is how I felt: Relieved. It was a gift. My life would enjoy a 50% reduction in complexity. My mother’s sobriety made it clear that I should not express this relief enthusiastically, and so I looked at my feet and quietly told her that Jason was mean and that I was happy he was dead. I don’t remember the words of her reply. She didn’t scold me, but she made it clear that the death of a young person is a tragedy without respect to circumstances. She said he had “difficulties”, and that we must remember that his death had brought a great deal of sadness to his family.
For the first time in my life, I tried to imagine Jason with a mother. I tried to picture a kind woman holding him in a loving embrace, but no image would form from the haze of such impossibility. I told her I would try to understand, and she kissed me on the head and told me she loved me.
For some time, I thought about Jason’s death. I tried to make myself feel sad for Jason, but I couldn’t do it. The one certain thought I could embrace with respect to his suicide was this: I wanted to live my life in such a way that nobody would celebrate my death. I suppose I should thank him for that.
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about these things. There was a tree planted in the soccer park in our home town, with a plaque by it that invoked the memory of Jason. I suppose the last time I really thought about him was when I visited that park in high school. Of course now looking back I can see the tragedy of the death of a young boy with struggles beyond my comprehension at the time. But the anger of the bullied dies hard and mostly I remember how cruel he was.
I watched the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Ladin live on Sunday night. My wife and children were with me. At one point, the CNN photojournalist aimed the camera across the White House lawn, where a crowd had gathered against the gates. My fellow Americans were exuberant. At one point they took up a chant of “USA! USA!” It was reported that similar ad hoc rallies were springing up around the country. Times Square was mentioned. And my feelings were mixed. Like a lot of people, I was put off by the cheering. Osama Bin Ladin was less than a man, and I do not mourn his death. But I could not bring myself to cheer. It is possible my mood was softened by the presence of my young children, for whom I wish the world was only good.
Since then, many people have said they were disgusted by the exuberance. They say that it is sick and wrong to celebrate any loss of life. I stop short of that declaration as well. Although I can’t bring myself to feel joy in the face of an act of violence, I understand, accept, and perhaps even respect that same reaction from others. And I suppose, in a small way, I’ve been there before.