Zorro's Fighting Legion

'a change'

           Joel was a year and a half older than me and I always held a quiet suspicion that he had been adopted. Never did he look like me or act like me. The blue eyes that dominated my father’s largely Irish laden ancestry and the tan skin that came from our mother’s Native American lineage were both lost on him. He was a pale kid with dark hair and dark eyes to match. Most, including my mother argued that Joel was an exact prototype of our dad when he was his age.

“They may not resemble physically, but he acts the exact same way your father used to. They have the same mannerisms and have you ever noticed the way that Joely stands with his hands on his hips and slouches his shoulders? Your father has always done that.” Mom always had a great eye for detail where her sons were concerned.

            During the summer of 1992 I was twelve and Joel was almost fourteen. Though the age difference was never all that obvious Joel seemed to think that he had advanced light-years ahead of me in a less than nineteen months. No longer was I allowed to play with him when his friends were over. Only when we were alone and he was bored did I receive any of the interaction with him that I at one time craved.

            The school we attended was about as ordinary a school as any school in the rural South was at the time. Joel being a high school student now was in an entirely different building than me. We never saw each other until school was over. In an attempt to keep dismissal orderly the high school students were let out of their final class ten minutes before we middle schoolers were. All this really did was allowed the high school bullies more time to find better hiding places from which to pounce the unsuspecting junior high kids as they walked to their buses or parents cars. More times than I care to remember I saw kids walking to their parent’s cars shirtless or rubbing their hind ends after a paddling.

            Middle school was hard enough to deal with without having to worry about having your shirt stolen or your rear paddled pink. I was one of the few lucky ones though. In my three years at Carver Middle School I was never accosted by these shirt-swiping Neanderthals. I always had a strong suspicion that Joel was the reason for that.

            I remember that in his first week of high school he was approached by a very large black guy who was nearly in his twenties (what my father called a ’career student’). This large individual accused Joel of starring at him in a manner that he found offensive. After several pushes, Joel simply balled up his fist and hit the guy in the face as hard as he could. It was said that the guy crumbled to his knees in front of my brother as soon as he was hit. Joel got three days home and a ride to the police station, where my father and mother had to pick him up. I could tell that dad was quietly proud of his son for standing up for himself, but my mother was sure that this short trip to the police station would lead Joel to a life of crime. The other guy got three days home and two reconstructive surgeries on his shattered nose.  No one ever bullied Joel again.

            As the school year came to an end there was a lot going on. Over the course of the year Joel had discovered a band called Nirvana, and began wearing a lot of t shirts and jeans instead of the usual polo shirts and baggy shorts. He got rid of his Arrested Development and U2 tapes and replaced them with the Meat Puppets, Alice in Chains, and The Pixies. The difference between Joel and most of the kids who were embracing grunge at the time was that his cloths, and his taste in music changed, but his attitude never really did. He was still the same laid back and occasionally mischievous kid that he had always been.

            The other big event that was going on at the time was the L.A. Riots. Late in April of that year four white police officers were acquitted for viciously beating a black man after a high speed chase. The response to this was what I heard called ‘civil unrest’ on the news. Every day we were seeing businesses looted and destroyed, people being pulled from their cars and beaten. They even began setting fire to their own city. That never made any sense to me, but then again to this day the whole thing still doesn’t make any sense to me.

            Of course at our school there was talk of similar actions starting since the day the riots began. Our school was predominately black and there had been tension there since the beginning of the year thanks to an incident that happened at the middle school open house. The LA acquittal only added fuel to that fire.

            The open house was something that the middle school had every year the week before school started. It was so that new students could find their classes easily on the first day and wouldn’t have to wander around lost. It also gave the more involved parents a chance to meet the teachers that their child would have that year. The incident stemmed from, what I heard, (my parents and I were at the other end of the building when this took place) was a young white girl being followed and harassed with crass talk from a couple of black guys. When one of them allegedly groped her the girl turned and yelled some cursing laced with the ‘N’ word very loudly. From that moment on there were whispers of a racial uprising. That May we were sure that something was going to happen.

            Our parents must have felt the same way. The Friday before the last week of school I made my usual dash to the car in an attempt to avoid bullies. Joel had started the year riding with us, but had since begun taking a ride home from a friend of his that had just turned fifteen and gotten his license. When I got to the car my mom had a grave look on her face. “Caleb,” she said. “How would you like to stay home from school next week?”

“But, it’s the last week,” I reminded her.

“I know. That’s the point. You’re done with all of your final exams and tests aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I took my last one today.”

“You’ve only been out for four days this year. You can use the rest of your sick days next week. There’s no reason for you to be here.” She drove with both her slender hands gripping the wheel of the Buick and never looked down at me.

“Is that alright with you?” she asked.

“Yeah. For sure,” I answered. I wasn’t going to argue with being asked to stay home from school. After a long silence I asked, “Is this because of the riots in Los Angeles?”

“Kind of,” she answered.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your father and I really don’t think the kids at your school will do anything, but we would rather be on the safe side and keep you and your brother home next week. Just in case.”

“Joel is staying home too?” I asked.

“Yes. We spoke to him about it last night after you had gone to bed. He’s going to be keeping an eye on you while we are at work.”

“Mom, I don’t need a babysitter,” I said.

“I know, but it won’t hurt for you two to keep each other company will it?”

“I guess not.”

            The next day was a quiet Saturday. I had grown fond of sleeping into the late morning usually waking up around eleven a.m. That morning I woke up to the sound of our loud door bell. Our house wasn’t particularly big, so when the door bell rang it echoed from all of the walls and never seemed able to spread over enough ground to fade out. It just bounced back and forth. I heard the voice of our neighbor and Joel’s friend Cam Horton.

            Cam wasn’t a bad guy, but he was famous for having the most irritating laugh in the state. It was a high nasal squeal that inevitably turned to a cackle, like you would hear from the witch on a Looney Tunes cartoon. What made his laugh even stranger than the obvious sound was the fact that Cam was at fifteen 6’1 and in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds. He also had a very deep voice that sounded like James Earl Jones must sound first thing in the morning.

“Hey f*g, you wanna come down to the park and play some football?” he asked as my brother invited him in.

“Watch the language, Cam,” my father said strolling by in his robe with a magazine under his arm.

“Yes sir’” Cam said. “So how about it?”

“Yeah, I guess I can go,” Joel answered.

            I heard the door slam as I rolled out of my bed and stretched. I fixed myself a bowl a cereal and sat in our living room to watch television. It was no surprise to me that the Riots were on every channel. The news assured us that they were beginning to wind down, and to the relief, or distress, of the citizens of Los Angeles the National Guard were no longer keeping lookout. However, several fires still raged and there were some dead bodies still being found here and there. My father sat in his battered old recliner concentrating on his Sports Illustrated. I think he had blocked the news of the riots out by this point.

“What you reading, Dad?” I asked looking for something to distract me from the constant trials of Los Angeles.

“Some ridiculous story about the NFL starting a football team in Charlotte of all places. Never happen.”

            I never saw my father watch a lot of sports, but for some reason he loved to read about it. He also loved to watch documentaries about the old days of sports. Mickey Mantel and Walter Peyton were his all time favorite athletes. However, I never saw him watch an entire baseball game and only a handful of times did I see him watch a whole football game. But, he always compared the current big hitters to Mantle, and the current running backs to Peyton. “That fellow is good, but he couldn’t touch ‘Sweetness’”, he had once commented about Lions running back Barry Sanders.

“What do you plan to do today?” he asked me not looking up from his magazine.

“I don’t know, probably nothing. I may go down to the park and watch Joel and those other guys play football.” This was something that I did often. I enjoyed watching my brother and his friends play football, but I would never in a million years have played with them. I had seen them break fingers, twist ankles, gouge eyes, and get into fist fights too many times. I guess that was part of the reason I used to go down to watch them. You really never knew what would happen.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Caleb,” my dad said still looking at his magazine.

“Huh? Why not?”

“You know, with everything that’s going on I don’t think your mother would want you walking down there all by yourself.” He looked at me over his glasses and then looked at the television as if to remind me of what was going on in the world.

“But, you let Joel go.”

“Joel went with a group of friends, and he’s older than you. Besides, Cam drives. He wouldn’t be walking.”

“Being in a car didn’t help that trucker in L.A. did it?” I said spitefully.

“You aren’t going. Understand?” I knew when I heard him use that tone that the discussion was over. So I let it die.

            I mostly just kicked around the house for the rest of the day. I read a few comics and watched some television. Later, in the day right before the sun had gone down I heard Joel come in. I peeked out into our hallway and saw that he was covered in dirt and his dark hair and pale skin were stained with red clay like dirt. He limped around the house for the remainder of the day.

“What happened to your leg?” I asked.

“Nothing. My ankle just got tweaked. That’s all,” he said. He wrapped the ankle in a bag of ice and sat on the couch with his leg propped up on an ottoman. After nearly an hour the zip lock bag started to leak and spill the melted ice on our floor in large cold drops. Joel tossed the bag in the sink and didn’t limp for the rest of the day.

            The next morning I was in front of the large oval mirror in my room when I heard Joel scream out and heard the sound of him fall on the floor. I was putting on my gray and black stripped tie. Dad had just taught me to tie it and every Sunday I now enjoyed the challenge of tying it just right before church.

            Our linoleum floor gave a snapping thud sound followed by a soft squeak. I ran into the room right next to mine and I saw my thin brother doubled over in front of his bed trying to stand. He managed to pull himself up into a seated position and grabbed his right ankle with both hands as he grimaced in agony. I looked down at his ankle and saw that it was swollen almost double in size and was an angry purple color with a thin green ring around it.

“Caleb, go get Mom,” he said.

            As I turned to find her I saw that she was already on her way down the narrow hall. She was wearing her black dress lined with blue and her hair was still pinned up on the top of her head. Her face had a look of concern as if she already knew that something was wrong with one of her children. She walked in the room and bent down beside Joel.

“This is a nasty sprain, Joely,” she said. “How did you not notice this until now?”

“I iced it last night. I guess it just got worse while I was asleep.” With Mom’s help he was able to pull himself back up on the bed.

“The ice probably numbed it too. Well, there’s not a lot we can do today. Unless, you want to go to the emergency room. Do you think it’s that bad?” she asked.

“No. I think its probably just a bad sprain. If it still feels bad tomorrow I will go to Doctor Huggins,” Joel answered.

“Alright. I will get you some Motrin and Tylenol. I want you to stay in the bed and wrap it with the heat pad. I’ll stay home from church today so that you don’t have to be alone.”

            We were taught in church that each one of us has a special gift given by God. My mother’s gift was that of caretaker. She was so sweet, helpful, and attentive when something was wrong with one of the men in our family that we almost looked forward to being sick. I still maintain that the week I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was seventeen was one of the best weeks I ever had as a teenager. I was on my back with my favorite quilt under the relaxing haze of Vicodin and bowls and bowls of ice cream. Being injured or sick could be a beautiful thing in our home.

            The next day Joel was up on his feet. He still limped, but he was determined to get around without my help. With Mom and Dad at work we were not allowed to go very far from the house. All of mine and Joel’s friends were at school. So to say we were bored would have been an understatement.

            We split an oven baked pizza at lunch and then we sat in our living room and watched television. To no one’s surprise there wasn’t much on a one pm. As Joel was flipping by a soap opera he stopped. There was a very buxom blonde acting terribly, but neither of us was paying much attention to her acting. She was wearing a very small bikini top with a towel wrapped around her. My brother and I were mesmerized as we watched this beautiful woman mechanically recite her lines to a large jawed man with jet black hair, who was swimming in the pool in front of her.

“Wow. She’s amazing,” my brother said. I had never heard him comment on girls before. I had over heard him telling some friends of his how he had felt up Penny Crawford once after he walked her to her house. I was learning more about girls by the day, but for the most part the were still clandestine to me. I knew all of the mechanics thanks to the sexual education classes that we were all given in Phys. Ed. that year. However, I always felt that my robust gym coach, Mr. Hanna wasn’t the best person in the world to teach me about the intimate mysteries of the opposite sex.

“Look at those cans,” Joel said. “What I would do with those.”

“Yeah. Nice,” I said. I did believe that she was pretty and I liked what I saw, but I still wasn’t at the point where I felt as comfortable as Joel about discussing it.

“Nice? Look at her. She’s more than nice,” Joel said, as if he were offended. “You aren’t a f*g are you, Caleb?”

“What? Shut up, Joel! Mom says you’re not supposed to use that word.”

“Are you going to tattle on me? Come on, just tell me. You aren’t are you?”

“Not what?”

“A f*g.”

“No, Joel.”

“Then how can you not be impressed with those?” he said pointing with both his fingers to the two large breasts on the television.

“I’m impressed. I said the she was nice. Geez, what do you want me to do?”

“I got a question for you,” Joel said as he shifted in the recliner to face me. “Have you kissed a girl yet?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that. The truth was that I hadn’t, but I had thought about it a lot. Every time I looked at Lauren Tomlinson in my English class I thought about it. The thought of it excited me, but the reality of it scared me to death.

“No, not really,” I answered.

“What do you mean not really?”

“I mean, no. I haven’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. Just give it time. It’ll happen.”

“When did it happen for you?” I asked.

“I was just a little older than you are now,” he said as if it had been centuries ago.

“Were you nervous at all?”

“Sure I was. But, once you do it your not really nervous anymore. You forget about being scared really quickly.”

“Were you good at it the first time?”

“Not really. She never complained, but I feel like I can do a lot better now,” Joel paused for a moment. “Do you know all about sex and everything, Caleb?”

“Yeah. They taught us in sex education this year.”

“No, I mean….have you ever seen people having sex?” he asked with a whisper.

“Gross! Why would anyone want to see that?”

“Its actually pretty cool. You won’t think its gross pretty soon.” Joel spoke with a confidence and a worldliness that would make one think that he was an old hand at playing the schoolyard Lothario.

“When did you see someone have sex?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“I got a couple of pornos from Cam. His dad has a closet full of them.” After Joel gauged my reaction he asked, “Do you want to watch one?”

            I wasn’t sure what to say here. Truthfully, I had no interest in seeing strange people have sex on television, but my curiosity coupled with my concern of what Joel would think if I said no made me say yes. I began to feel nervous as my brother hobbled down the hall to his room. When he returned he held in his hand a movie. From the cover it appeared to be an old black and white serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion. Joel held the case in his hand and allowed the black unlabeled tape to slide out with a whoosh.

            The tape gave a soft hum as it began to spin its film through our VCR. That noise was usually a good indication that the tape was old and had been watched way too many times. From the beginning I could tell that it was a collage tape full of scenes from different movies. There was never any particular story.

            The lighting and picture of the movie had a dense, hazy quality to it. The woman on the tape wasn’t particularly attractive, and it was obvious that this had been filmed at least fifteen years ago. I didn’t know a lot about adults, but I did know that none of them wore those hairstyles and mustaches anymore. The woman was being placed in all sorts of strange arrangements.  Her thick, curly quaffed hair moved back and forth; all flopping from front to back in a one singular motion. 

            Loud grunts from the man and high pitched squeals from the woman covered the sound of the odd twangy music that pulsated in the background. I remember seeing a B-rated slasher movie once from the seventies and the soundtrack was very similar to this one. The man wore an angry snarl that showed over his mustache. I never understood why he looked so incensed. They continued for what felt like hours until the woman released one final piercing scream, and collapsed onto the chest of the man. They both laid there in a still heap until Joel fast forwarded to the next scene.

            We spent a little over an hour watching the tape. I saw people doing things to each other that I didn’t think people could do to each other. There was a strange fascination that never let me leave the room. Despite the fact that after only a couple of minutes into the first scene I began to feel sick. The things that the people on our television screen were doing appeared depraved to me. At the time I looked at them as one would some rabid animal. Yet, I never looked away. That in itself created a great guilt inside of me. Something in my heart and mind was screaming that this wasn’t something I should have allowed my eyes to see, but I never blinked.

            As I looked over and saw my brother watching with total and utter complacency, I began to remember the last time that I had felt this feeling. I had felt it several months ago when I first saw the footage of the four police officers beating Rodney King. I also felt it the week before when I saw the footage of the trucker being pulled from his eighteen wheeler and beaten senselessly, and I felt it when I saw the fires and all of the innocent people who had just lost their livelihoods for no good reason.

            The feeling was a shaky and anxious. It turned my stomach. A feeling that something inside of me saw something transpire that was very wrong, yet I was powerless to do anything about it. I think what really bothered me was that I could do something, at least in this case, but I never did. I just watched.

            Months after I first watched the tape there was a period in which I was uncomfortable just looking at a woman. It was as if the skin had been peeled away from them and I could see them in a way that they never could see themselves. Relaxing around a girl was something that didn’t happen until I started the eighth grade the following fall. The thing that I found most strange was that only a few days after watching the video and being disturbed and disgusted by it, I wanted to see it again. I suppose it was my animal instincts overriding my moral sense. That would become a theme in my life, and I would later learn that it was a common theme in most men’s lives. It would have been helpful to have known that back then.

“Well,” Joel said as he turned the tape off. “That’s sex, little brother.”  I thought if that was sex, then I would never have it. There had always been an unknown attraction that I felt towards girls. It was ubiquitous and constant. Now that attraction was uncovered and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I felt like Dorothy must have felt when she pulled that curtain open.

            Of course, as these things go, I became a regular watcher of porn about a year or two later. It didn’t bother me anymore. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. I looked forward to what this new invention called ‘internet’ could give a horny adolescent in the way of adult entertainment. Joel even passed his modest tape collection to me when he left for college.

            Later on in life porn became a stranger to me again. A wife and children tend to change a persons outlook on such things. My brother Joel is now a devout Christian and family man who abhors pornography. I know how my wife feels about it, and I know that it doesn’t set a good example for my children so it’s not an issue with me either. I find it strange that family introduced me to porn and later on made me estranged from it.

            While the tape and the actions on the tape that day are no longer in my life, I have from time to time gotten the old feeling that I felt that summer afternoon in my parent’s living room. I felt it as I watched television on September 11^th, 2001. I felt it when a friend of mine was attacked and mugged in a parking lot. I felt it when I watched an HBO special on dog fighting. It will always be with me. A nauseating reminder that something is happening that shouldn’t. A reminder that we all have the capacity for good, and we all have the capacity for animalistic depravity. 

            That afternoon after Joel and I were finished with our viewing we walked out into our backyard. We tossed our old football back and forth to each other. Joel grunting every now and then from leaning too much on his ankle. There weren’t a lot of words spoken between us that I can remember.

            On the way back inside I asked, “Do you think things will get back to normal soon?” He looked down at me and smiled. “They have to. Until the next time,” he answered. I walked in behind him and for the first time I can remember I locked the sliding glass door behind me.

 

 

                  THE END