A Tuesday Afternoon in the Fall
I first met the boy who was to become my BFF during grade school shortly after my eighth birthday. Having discovered each other in the third grade class we both attended at the small school house a few blocks away, we developed an instant affection. We discovered, as we walked home from class that first day -- a Tuesday afternoon in the fall -- that we lived just four houses apart. I had only recently moved to the neighborhood and knew no other children.
Following the habits of the day, we become fast friends and almost inseparable. We "stayed all night" at one another's homes, accompanied the other's family on various excursions, made snow forts in winter and practically lived at the other's residence.
I was a slight lad and Murray fairly towered over me. Also, he was overweight, which only invited the ridicule and scorn of the other children on the block and in school, almost none of whom could stand him. Which made his friendship with me all the more precious to him.
"Why are you hanging around MacRae?" demanded one of my classmates, having spied Murray and me at recess.
"He's a pecker," opined the first boy's companion. "He thinks he knows everything."
Indeed, even in class, the third grade teacher confided aloud that Murray was a "know-it-all." This opinion was greeted with the snickers and the bobbing heads of the other children. Like water off a duck's back, Murray let these recriminations fall away.
ii
"Sweeney," Murray said one day early in our friendship, "do you want to stay all night this Friday?" I agreed that I did. I had stayed over several times already and I had naturally met Murray's family -- an older brother and sister and his father and step-mother. And in his stepmother lied the rub.
Kay interrogated me at length about all variety of things, most pointedly about my religious affiliations. She was given to infrequent but rather zealous flights of Roman Catholicism. Murray at no time seemed to be guided in his behavior by religious strictures, although on occasion he would volunteer that "Jesus is the answer!" I was never certain if the sentiment was heartfelt, or if he was taking a jab at Kay.
One time I came back with, "But, what is the question?" At that time no one in my family attended a regular service, so Kay took me in hand to proselytize. She insisted that Murray and I burrow under the covers of her bed, there to recite prayer after prayer. She was alarmed at my unfamiliarity with them. When Murray made a facetious quip about Kay's "holy-roller" attitude, she excused me to go upstairs and wait for my friend. It wasn't until after he returned fifteen minutes later that I discovered she had beaten him viciously with a leather belt.
Immodestly, Murray pulled up his shirt and lowered his pants to show the angry red welts on his backside and flanks.
"Why'd she do that?" I asked incredulously.
"Because I laughed at her religion," he explained, tenderly feeling the abrasions.
"So what? I laughed too," I pointed out.
Murray shook his head. "You're lucky she didn't lay into you, too," he observed.
"If she had," I said confidently, "My mom would've murdered her."
We spent the rest of the evening playing with Murray's toys, preoccupied with the stuff that interests eight-year-olds. Murray seemed to have put the episode behind him, but it stuck with me for a long time.
Sometimes I would talk with Murray on the telephone and we would be interrupted by an angry Kay, who would violently knock the receiver from my friend's hand for any of a hundred reasons, or for no apparent reason at all. One time, she chipped his tooth, he told me, showing me the tooth in question the next day at recess.
Perhaps it's appropriate to mention at this point in the narrative that while my parents spanked me -- but only when I really had it coming -- they were never overly severe in their discipline. There stemmed from them none of the brutality visited upon Murray by his step-mother. The number of times I got slapped I could count on one hand, and I was never beaten. I loved my parents and they returned that love. It was as simple as that. One time, my mom said that, as I got older, other children would tell me how badly they were treated by their parents. "But you'll always be able to look back," she said, "and tell how your parents never mistreated you." Before I met Murray I hadn't a clue what she was talking about, but now I knew.
Such physical—as well as psychological (sometimes even worse)—violence, was especially repugnant to me because my brother and I were raised with great tenderness and affection. I forever felt embraced by my parents’ loving arms and supportive characters. They were always on my side. One time, that same year, when I was in third grade, our teacher hatched a hairbrained scheme: using construction paper, she fashioned a giant “crib” on one of the bulletin boards.
If anyone were deemed to be acting inappropriately, she plumped down their name into the crib, to illustrate how badly they had behaved. For most of the day I remained free of the shame of the hated crib, having done my homework, successfully tied my shoelaces and avoided all the other crimes for which I might be humiliated. But, when she then asked us all what we’d had for breakfast, I admitted I’d had only toast, oatmeal and orange juice, which seemed like a feast at the time. She tsk-tsked and added my name to the crib. In fact, as if to emphasize the permanence of the penalty, she stapled rather than pinned, my name in place. I was crestfallen.
When I got home that night after school, I groused to my mom about the tyranny of “the crib.” In a flash, she was on the phone to old lady Dinwiddie, who had been principal of Burbank School for perhaps 200 years, and Mom raised holy hell. What did that school mean by humiliating her son that way? She must have burned up the telephone line. Next day, the crib was history, but for the telltale pinholes where the paper had once been affixed to the bulletin board.
My teacher took me aside and asked bleakly, “Why do you hate me?” Hurricane Katherine had worked its magic.
But cruel or violent teachers and parents made no sense to me. Were these people monsters, two-headed dragons who preyed on the minds and bodies—the souls—of defenseless children? Well, basically, yeah. Seriously, though, they were just ordinary people, raised in the culture they inherited. They were your store clerks, your policemen, your letter carriers; they were us!
iii
I detected a sort of love/hate relationship between the MacRae children and their stepmother. One day, as I ate breakfast with them in the dining area, and Kay filled the dishwasher with dirty plates, she remarked whimsically that "I'd rather give up one of you kids than this dishwasher."
"Me!" cried Lori, 13.
"Me!" cried Malcolm, 17.
"Me!" chirped Murray gaily, joining the chorus, but with fear and mistrust in his eyes.
I don't know if Kay abused the other children as she did the youngest amongst them, but they were a disaffected bunch.
Late the next summer, while on break between third and fourth grade, Murray's dad invited me to join them on an expedition to the "clubhouse," a vacation cabin on the Illinois River. Of course I said yes. Armed with my miniature suitcase full of underwear, sweaters and army men, I joined the entourage on the 80-mile trip.
One night, as we sat about a camp fire, a mudpuppy crawled up inside my pants leg and about scared me to death. I flung myself to the ground and kicked and screamed and pled for mercy. Finally, the creature escaped, probably as frightened as I had been, and Mrs. MacRae comforted me. I instantly felt better; I'd no idea, after the way she treated Murray, that she was capable of hugs and squeezes and an arm about the shoulders. It seemed so out of character for her.
Over the next year, Murray received regular beatings from Kay. Always with a stiff leather belt. Always on his bare backside or legs. No matter what he and I were doing, she seemed to find some fault with it.
"Does your mother ever whip you, Sweeney?" she asked out of the blue one time, in an eerie voice and with a vapid smile. I shook my head no. "More's the pity," she said in a hollow voice.
The time came, however, when Kay beat a hasty exit. I don't know what the reason was for her sudden departure, but Murray would often cryptically remark that his "folks were having trouble." At any rate, one day, she was just gone. But, the abuse didn't stop; it just transferred from his stepmother to his dad. One time, when we were both eleven and I was on another trip to the "clubhouse," I was tossing rocks from a graveled pier into the river. Murray's father, Doug, saw me pitch one in that was oversized and he took umbrage. And he took it out on his youngest son. Approaching Murray, who wasn't even casting rocks into the water, but was sitting on the ground nearby, Doug hauled off and kicked Murray brutally in the thigh, then muttered darkly at him. Struggling to contain tears, Murray only nodded his head.
When I asked him what that was all about, my friend told me that I had thrown into the river a rock that was too big. "Did he really kick you?" I asked, reluctant to believe what I'd seen.
"Damn right he did!" muttered Murray resentfully, tears of pain and anger rolling down his cheeks.
iv
The next year we entered junior high school and Murray's beatings, a secret between him and me until now, became common knowledge. Still punching and kicking his son only where it wouldn't show in street clothes, Doug's aggression only accelerated. Murray would show up for P.E. and strip to don his gym attire, revealing a garish rainbow of bruises and cuts and welts.
"I'd kill my old man if he did something like that to me," asserted one classmate.
"My old man is 6' 2" and weighs 250 lbs, Murray pointed out.
"Does he own a gun?" asked the first boy. Murray nodded. "Then blow his goddamn head off," the boy suggested.
"Murray seemed to turn this idea over in his mind for a moment, but then apparently decided that a life in juvie hall wasn't for him and he shrugged the suggestion away.
One afternoon, as we walked home from school, Murray turned to me and remarked, "You know, Sweeney, I can't wait till I get big enough to fight back." I glanced at him. "I'll kick his ass," he promised.
As we progressed through school, Murray became something of a cut-up. He smoked, he drank, he experimented with pot, and he got a girl pregnant. He cut classes and got bad grades. How much of this owed to the beatings at the hands of first his stepmother and then his father, I can't fathom. Were the beatings the cause or the result of his mischief?
I asked him once in our sophomore year: "Just what the hell is your old man's problem?"
"He ain't gettin' any," Murray replied at once.
"Any what?" I asked naively.
Murray rolled his eyes. "Sex, stupid. He's not getting laid."
I nodded. I hadn't thought of that. I had not considered that old people -- Doug was then in his 40s -- thought about or ever acted on sexual impulses.
Lo and behold, one day Doug announced to God and everybody that he was to be wed -- perhaps the third time would indeed be the charm. Carol was a plain-looking woman about Doug's age, but she seemed to have a way about her that Murray found appealing. In no time at all he was calling her "Mom." He confided to me that Doug's new wife reminded him a little of his birth mother, who had died when Murray was just 3 or 4.
v
Murray and I did not see much of one another after about freshman year; he went on to cultivate an array of ne-er-do-wells as friends and I was studying in preparation for college. We checked in once in a great while, however. On the abuse front, he reported several times that things were looking brighter.
After high school, I went to college and Murray moved south and became a coal miner. He wed his high school sweetheart and they had three children over the next five years. I wasn't invited to the wedding. I didn't see him for almost ten years and only then to attend his daughter's nuptials. This was the child he had sired out of wedlock, while still in high school.
As I walked into their ranch-style home, I saw his other three kids, Lori, ll, Malcolm, 12, and Murray Jr., 14, strewn out across the living room furniture, that familiar McRae gleam of the devil in their eyes. I hadn't seen them since they were infants. The bride, named Coleen, after Murray's birth mother, was just 17 and she was obviously with child.
We stayed up all night at the reception at the Moose Hall, drinking beer. At one point, I asked Murray where Doug and Carol were. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said that they weren't invited. He added that he hadn't spoken to either of them for nearly ten years, which was when he had punched out his father, as he'd promised a decade before. He pounded a meaty fist into his palm for emphasis, then grinned stupidly. One thing Murray had learned from his father: you settled issues with your fists.
When we returned to the MacRae homestead, I made for the bathroom and was alarmed to find 12-year-old Malcolm there, rubbing salve onto a huge, raised welt on his side. He looked up, embarrassed, then apologized and started to leave. I told him to stay where he was. He was the spitting image of his father. In many ways.
Now, this was 1987, and the admonition against going public about child abuse was not nearly so great as it had been 20 years before. I stalked into the living room, where Murray was holding forth, and asked to speak to him alone. Repairing to the back porch, I instantly confronted him about what he'd done to his son.
"I didn't invite you here to criticize the way I raise my kids," he barked loud enough for everyone to hear. He was quite drunk.
"I'm not trying to tell you how to raise your family," I protested.
"Then stay the hell out of what don't concern you," he snarled in a threatening manner.
"Or what?" I challenged him. "Are you going to belt me one? I know you like to beat on people half your size -- like your son. I remember Doug being the same way."
At the mention of his father's name, Murray seemed to collapse in on himself, like melting wax on a flickering candle. Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. He held his head in his hands. I hadn't seen him sob since he'd been a very young boy, when he'd gotten kicked on the bank of the river. "I don't mean to do it," he said with anguish. "When they're bad, it's all I can think of to do..."
I just stared at him, not giving an inch. This was not the reaction I'd expected.
"I'll do better," he promised weakly.
All through school, brutalizing a child was considered “family business.” But, times had changed. When I brought this up and vowed to bring the authorities in the next time such an event occurred, Murray was instantly sobered. It was a hollow threat, because the next day I departed for home, more than an hour away. I never saw my best friend again.
vi
As I crept into old age, I eschewed computers and the like until one day when I purposely stumbled into the 21st Century and bought a PC. I eagerly sought out information on the web about friends from my past. Foremost among them was Murray. I checked his last known whereabouts -- Southern Illinois -- where I had seen him more than thirty years before. We hadn't exchanged a phone call or even a Christmas card, in nearly as long. After the wedding reception, he probably considered me a buzz kill. What I discovered online didn't shock, but it did sadden me. Murray, aged 64, had died some six years before. The cause of death was not mentioned, but I discovered it later. Where in school he had been handsome, proud, smart, had even played on the football team, he was now a bloated, bent, ghost of the person he’d been. He had a wild gray beard and regarded the camera with a toothless grin and a truly mad stare. He was the epitome of Doug, down to the squinty eyes, and I sympathized with the man who had to regard his father's face in the mirror every day when he shaved. Perhaps that explained the beard.
As I silently read Murray's obituary, I considered the cultural change in attitude toward child abuse. Today, school officials are encumbered with reporting any “red flags” of abuse, both physical and psychological. Back in the day, that didn’t help my friends even a little bit. There were no such rules. I had other friends, some student leaders, others outstanding athletes, still others just regular students, who were likewise abused; everybody knew who they were, and their despicable parents, but nothing was ever done. Eventually I contacted a mutual friend of the two of us to get the skinny on his passing.
Requiem:
Murray and his wife were married for more than 40 years and I often wondered if their four children, following my well-intentioned but half-assed intervention many years before, had been larded with the same kind of abuse that was levied on Murray during his childhood. They say that abusive behavior is inheritable, either by means of a bad gene or through faulty acculturation. I never did ever find out. But all four children predeceased their parents, through tragic circumstances: automobile wrecks; hunting accidents; one son was shot to death by his estranged wife who, at the trial, testified that Malcolm had made his family's life a living hell with outbursts of temper and physical abuse.
Like his children, my friend met an untimely and violent end. Faced with
terminal lung cancer—he had begun smoking at only nine—he put a
loaded 10 gauge shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. It must have been a lonely end to a benighted existence. It’s perhaps not insignificant, and it certainly wasn't lost on me, that I lost my best friend, as I had found him, on a Tuesday afternoon in the fall.
