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FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 74

Thrilla-n-Manila (Part 1)

I didn’t hear the blue truck drive up, either, but when Red finally hammered his gavel to get order in the court, he told me to go get the mixer cranked up and get the mud out. I had a little hop in my step since, for one of the first times all summer, I was not the main attraction.

But that wouldn’t last long.

I got out to the mixer, added water to the half of a mixer full we had and let it mix for a minute, watered down the mud tub and shook up the little bit it had in it, then dumped the mud out into the tub. By that time, Doocy had grabbed a couple of wheelbarrows and wet them down so we could load them up with mud. Willum and Hook made their way to the scaffold, wetting the mortar boards and “shaking up” what mud they had left before lunch. Nobody had noticed the blue truck or the country boy sitting in it quietly. He had parked on the east side of Red’s and Pee Wee’s trucks, so his truck was halfway blocked, but he was back far enough to see Doocy and me working at the mixer.

Doocy had me shoveling mud from the mud tub into one of the wheelbarrows while he grabbed a bag of Portland and was getting it ready to make a new batch. That must’ve been when the boy got out of the truck because I never saw him until he was halfway from the truck to the mixer. I heard him hollering out something, so I leaned over and cut off the mixer, and said,

“Yes sir, can I help yuh?”

In retrospect, I suppose I should have been more vigilant. I had learned vigilance, but I’d also learned you don’t have to keep one eye on the woods watching for a Grizzly. I had enough Grizzlies walking around on the premises masquerading as bosses, laborers, and bricklayers. Then my vigilance upgraded when the ’51 Studebaker drove up and the dark-haired girl got out of the car. At that point – and this is every day of the summer – I had to out-maneuver the redheaded Grizzly and try to keep Corrina out of the same zip code as him and Doocy if possible.

But this scene was as calm as if a baby kitten walked up to the mixer and we had to shoo it away.

I spoke to the boy; and to be polite, I grabbed the screwdriver that you had to use to shut that old mixer off. It was still sputtering as he got within about ten feet of me. I didn’t think I had ever seen him before. I forgot about the blue truck and the boy in it who came out on the job a couple of weeks before and who hightailed it out of Dodge and down the long red-dirt driveway.

I took two or three steps toward him to greet him, flashed a Southern smile, and was about to ask again if I could help him when he – without slowing down his gait – spoke loudly,

“Stay away from Cori!”

I had never called Corrina ‘Cori’ and never did, especially after what happened next. Her mom would call her “Cori Belle,” but seldom just Cori.

“Say it again?”

“I said, I want you to stay away from Cori, got it!”

Then it hit me. I still shake my head at how oblivious I was to the whole scenario, how naïve I had been, especially after he had come out on the job looking for me. I should’ve had my alert up a lot more, but I had my hands full with Doocy, Corrina Belle, and Mama and didn’t think twice about some aloof country boy in a blue truck.

He wasn’t just a country-fed boy, either. He was a big boy, well over six feet, two hundred pounds, some of it fat but still a good forty pounds heavier than I. He was about as much bigger than I as that boy I tangled with out behind the gym when I was nine or ten.

The corn-fed country boy repeated, “Got it?” and, without warning, rared back and swung at me. It’s funny that we were standing almost in the same place where Doocy and I were standing a couple of hours before when Doocy swung at me inadvertently, and I ducked to keep from being knocked into next week. The boy’s swing was every bit as unexpected as Doocy – but not nearly as quick – and I’d learned the hard way that when you see something coming at you, you duck and ask questions later.

The boy had put all his weight behind that one punch. I suppose he planned on this being a one-punch fight, and it would’ve been had I now ducked. But all his weight moving forward threw the boy out of balance when all he hit was air. It must’ve surprised him, because he looked stunned.  Plan A was to deliver the KO punch, stand over me sprawled out half unconscious on the ground, threaten me never to talk to ‘Cori’ again, and be off in his ’71 Ford truck just as fast as he came. I don’t think he had a Plan B.

Best-laid plans work against you almost every time, I thought.

He regained his balance enough to take another swing, this one with his left hand. If I knew how to dodge the first that came with a high degree of an element of surprise, I was easily quick enough to dodge the second. Battling with the likes of Sauter and Kilgore on the basketball court paid off sooner than I expected. When he swung that time, he was way out of position. As an act of defense more than anything, I grabbed him by his western shirt and slung him, and I swung him right into the handle of the mortar mixer. I’ve banged into that handle more times than I can remember (and it hurts, I guarantee you), but I never got slung into one the way that boy did.

His next words were not words at all, just a moan, and I could not help but feel sorry for him. But that pity didn’t last long because he rebounded and, with what I think was the angriest look I’ve ever seen on a boy’s face, came at me again with that big right fist. I didn’t have time to do any play-by-play analysis, but I think I had already figured out that it would be in my best interest not to let him connect on one of those punches. So, I ducked down like Joe Frazier and got into his body so he wouldn’t have full extension. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t duck quite enough, and that right fist scraped across the left side of my forehead and rolled on over my left ear; but I was under him by that time and just embraced him across the chest and drove him as hard as I could toward the ground. But he didn’t land on the ground. He tripped and landed hard on that stack of busted brick that I had tripped over a couple of hours before.

I’d never heard a man – or boy, whatever he was – groan any worse than he did. I let loose of him, stepped back, my heart racing, and ran my hand across the side of my face and saw that the blood was already trickling down the side of my face and a little in my eye. I wiped it off with my dirty sleeve, standing there over him – like the iconic picture of Mahammed Ali standing over Sonny Liston in 1965 – but I was well out of reach. I could feel that I had taken a good blow on those brick myself. I had cut the back of both of my hands and busted my right knee and leg. Of course, in those moments, you don’t feel a thing.

You also don’t take note of your surroundings. I vaguely remember seeing Doocy standing ten or fifteen feet away and wondered why he was standing there, but I was glad he was. I remember Willum hooping, hollering, and saying something to the effect of, “Git ‘im Pup, don’t take thet!”

 

Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.

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