In 1976 when I started the first grade in Harland, North Carolina, nobody had taught me to be afraid of people that were different. Dogs maybe, if they belonged to somebody we didn’t know. Or some cats. (Our twenty pound tom, Rufus, taught me to fear his claws and teeth if I pulled on his ears and tail too much.) And Daddy drilled it into me that it was okay to pick up black snakes but not copperheads and timber rattlers.

But nobody had told me anything about black people or Hispanics or Arabs or Jews or any other “minority” group. A couple of reasons for that. One, neither of my parents ever made reference to such folks. (I now know they forbade relatives and visitors in our home to make derogatory references to these people.) Two, just about everybody I knew at age six was fair skinned and of Scottish-English-Irish descent. So if I was afraid of somebody, it wasn’t because of how they looked; it was because of how they acted. Like Uncle Horace who’d fire off his magazine fed twelve gauge when he got drunk and somebody’d have to cold cock him and hog tie him ‘til he sobered up.

So it was on that Tuesday right after Labor Day that Calvin Tubbs became the first black person I ever met. We were about the same height, but where I was scrawny, Calvin was built like the linebacker he would eventually become. My eyes were blue; Mama said they were innocent and open. Calvin’s were dark and piercing. When we walked up to each other at our first recess, he stared at me for a good thirty seconds. It was a hard stare but held more curiosity than menace.

“What’s yo name?”

“Jake.”

“Where you live?”

“I don’t know. Not far. Momma brought me in the car. Didn’t take but a few minutes.”

“I’m Calvin. How come you didn’t ride the yellow bus?”

“She said I could do that tomorrow. She said she wanted to bring me herself the first day.”

“We ain’t got no car. Daddy took the truck and went off before the sun like he always does.”

I nodded as if that made good sense. Then he stuck out his fist and held it in front of me. He could see I was confused; he gently reached for my hand and told me to make a fist as he had done. Then he softly bumped my fist with his.

“That’s how you say ‘hey’ when you meet up with a friend.”

___

Calvin and I were standing together chatting about something when Momma came to pick me up that afternoon. After she parked the Chevy somewhere out of the way, she waived and sort of pranced over to the two of us with that wiggling hip roll Southern women seem born with. You would have thought she hadn’t seen me for a month, not just six hours.

“Well, Jacob. It looks like you’ve found a new friend.”

Before she got right on top of us, Calvin whispered, “I thought your name was Jake.”

“Nobody else calls me Jacob. Just Momma.”

I believe that’s the first time I saw Calvin really smile. “That could change,” he said, nudging me with an elbow.

“Better not,” I said nudging back.

I could see Momma move as if she were about to pick me up and give me smooches. She caught herself at the last instant. I don’t know if Calvin noticed; safe money says he did.

“Momma, this is my friend, Calvin. He got to ride in the yellow bus this morning. And he’s gonna go back home in it, too.”

“How nice. I’m sure the two of you will find a way to sit together on that bus tomorrow morning.” Then she squatted down and extended her hand and said, “Calvin, it’s so nice to meet you. I’m Mrs. Thompson.”

Calvin took Momma’s hand and shook it and said, “Very nice to meet you, ma’am. I hope Jacob gets to meet my Momma, too.”

“Calvin,” she giggled, “I don’t think he particularly likes to be called Jacob.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a nod and a straight face.

That was more than thirty-two years ago. I still haven’t gotten him back for that one.

___

As we were pulling away from the school, Momma asked, “Well, Jacob, how was your first day in the first grade?”

I tried what all little boys try in response to such maternal queries: “Good.”

“Good?”

“Real good.”

“Uhm-huhm.” Then she slowly nodded her head as the car wound its way around the switch backs to our home. When we pulled into the driveway, she was still nodding as I began opening the door to scamper into the house and put on more comfortable clothes.

“Jacob …” I kept the door unlatched but settled back into the seat.

“Yes, ma’am?” She cocked her head ever so slightly and raised her eyebrows as she locked my eyes with a tether I would not slip until I gave her a fuller accounting of my day. So I did. I told her about our nice teacher, Miss Simpson, who told us we were starting out on a long and fascinating trip of learning. I told her about the little girls who never stopped talking except when Miss Simpson fussed at them. But mostly I told her about Calvin. All the while she listened to me like she still does. Like I’m the only person in the world.

“Jacob, what do you think it was about Calvin that made such an impression on you?”

“Not sure, Momma. Maybe it’s that he seems older than me and the other kids. ‘Cept he’s not. He’s six years old like all of us.” She nodded and opened her eyes a bit wider but said nothing.

“Don’t know. Maybe Calvin’s seen more things than we have …”

“What kind of things, do you think?”

“Maybe bad things. Maybe things he shouldn’t have to see. But he’s seen ‘em anyway.” Her eyes moistened as she reached for my hand and squeezed it.

“I suspect he has, Jacob. Why don’t you go on in and change.”

I was in the house before she’d reached over to close my door.

___

By the summer of 1977 Calvin and I were “running buddies.” Whenever we could steal away from chores and other family obligations, we were either cooking up a scheme or carrying out one we’d just cooked up. I can’t remember most of them, but some stick out. This one sticks out.

When Calvin and I would meet up half way between his house and mine, it was a five mile hike over to Interstate 40. That is, if you were willing to trudge through thick brush, barb wire fences, and not step on cow shit and venomous snakes. We were willing.

The first time we made our way there, we had to slam on the brakes to keep from tumbling off a bluff with a sheer drop of 200 hundred feet. Panting from the terror of almost plunging to our deaths, we drank in the view. Below us was the four-lane with all manner of cars, pick-ups, tractor trailers, and motor cycles flowing along with a thrum punctuated here and there by a blasting horn or the growl of a trucker’s shifting gears. When we looked up we saw acres of rows of corn and soybeans and hayfields thick with alfalfa. Beyond that were the Great Smoky Mountains with their maples and oaks and hickories and ashes and spruces and others I still don’t the names of.

“Something, ain’t it, Jacob?”

“It is.”

“You bring the slingshot and the ball bearings?”

“No. Didn’t think to.”

“Damn. This is perfect for it.”

“Wanta go back and get it?”

“No. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

___

The sling shot was a neat device Calvin and I had fashioned, with some help from Daddy, in the woodshop in our basement. The prongs were half-inch diameter maple dowels set into a hickory rectangle about four inches long. The handle was an inch diameter dowel about eight inches long set into the bottom of the rectangle. I’m not sure where we got the powerful rubber bands. Maybe a Western Auto shop in town. The pouch was a soft piece of leather about an inch and a half square. We’d attached it to the bands by cutting holes in it just big enough for the bands to squeeze through so they could be secured with tightly wound fishing line. We’d put a tad of epoxy glue over the fishing line so it wouldn’t unravel. Our “ammunition” was a cache of five hundred or so quarter inch, worn out ball bearings we’d found in a junk yard.

Hell of a weapon. To measure its range Calvin and I had paced off one hundred yard marks from an old barn with a corrugated roof. When a ball bearing hit the roof, the clank carried for a quarter of a mile, maybe more. I could hit the barn from three hundred yards back. With his longer and stronger arms Calvin could clank it from over 500.

When we got out on that bluff the next day, Calvin said, “We need to lay down some rules for this.”

“What you talking about?”

“Way I see it, we wanta have some fun with this, but we don’t want to cause no big accidents.”

“Yeah?”

“So how about this? No shooting at anything but them big old trailers on the long haul trucks. That’ll make for a good clank but won’t do no harm.”

“How about police cars?”

“How about I push you off this bluff?”

“Trailers’d be good.”

“You go first.”

I did. Slowly pulling back on the pouch loaded with a ball bearing, I took aim at the trailer of a stretched out rig whizzing by below us. I let her go. No clank.

“Jacob, ain’t you ever shot at a rabbit running flat out in front of you?”

“Nope. Like rabbits too much to shoot ‘em.”

“Well. Let’s say you did. You gotta lead the rabbit. You gotta aim out in front of him. You aim right at him, rabbit’s gone by the time the bullet gets there.”

I gave that a try on the next rig and got a good clank. The driver probably heard it because he slowed ever so slightly. We both whooped and did a high five.

“Take nine more shots. That’ll make ten all together. Then I’ll take my ten. We’ll see who gets the best score.”

When Calvin finished his shots, we were even at eight out of ten apiece.

“We need to break the tie,” he said.

“What do you wanta do?”

“You got a quarter on you?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to flip no coin. That just makes it luck.”

“Let me finish the idea, Jacob.”

“So?”

“We do the flip to see who goes first. Then the loser picks a target. If the toss winner hits the target, he’s the winner overall.”

“What if he misses?”

“We just keep going like that ‘til one of us hits the target.”

“All right.”

Calvin won the toss.

“So what’s my target?”

I took my time on this. “See that trucker on the side of the break down lane bent over working on that big old tire?”

“I see him.”

“Hit him in the ass and you’re the winner.”

“Shit, that’s too easy. Give me something harder.”

“That right? Show me how easy.”

Well he did.

___

As soon as the trucker was struck, he dropped his tire iron, grabbed his buttocks and whipped around to look up in our direction. We started laughing so hard we about peed ourselves. By then we were lying prone in some tall grass and knew he couldn’t see us. But it didn’t feel like it. He leaped into the cab and dragged out a deer rifle with a big scope on it. He pivoted the rifle from side to side trying to pick up a target. We put our hands over each others’ mouths to stifle the laughter. That didn’t work too good.

“Get your filthy paws off my mouth, goddam it.”

“You do the same, goddam it.”

“Stop laughing. He’s gonna pick us up on that scope and start shooting.”

“Time to go.”

Just before we started to low crawl back from the edge of the bluff, the trucker waved at something in his cab. It wasn’t two seconds before a huge German Sheppard vaulted from the cab and squatted by his master. The trucker pointed at the bluff and shouted at the dog. The Sheppard rocketed up towards us.

“Drop off’s too steep,” I said. “Ain’t a dog in the world can climb up here.”

“You wanta wait and find out?”

“No.”

There’s something about being scared shitless that endows you with the speed of a world class sprinter. (And Calvin and I were already faster than most boys five years older than us.) Because of his greater bulk and strength I let him go in front. Tripping and tumbling and rolling to get back up, I stayed about two or three feet behind him. We were flying through those woods; I couldn’t imagine any living creature catching up with us.

“Think we might be able to slow down some,” I gasped.

“No way! Keep them legs churning.” It sounded like he wasn’t breathing all that hard.

Calvin had made the right call. Suddenly the Sheppard’s throaty bark was 200 yards behind us. And further back the man was howling and screaming away.

Slowing the pace just slightly Calvin looked back and whispered, “We got one shot at getting outa this.” I nodded and as my eyes opened as wide as they could.

“The run. It’s right up there.”

“Jumping in?”

“Yep. After we do, do exactly like I say. You don’t, we gonna get shot or chewed up or both.”

Chum’s Run was a good sized stream that flowed swiftly in some sections and pooled in others. Calvin picked a ledge over a deep pool and launched himself feet first into the water. I did, too. Given we weren’t real big, I don’t think the trucker heard our splashes over the Sheppard’s barking and his own hollering. I know the dog heard us, but with his eyesight and nose, he didn’t need sound to figure out where we’d made the jump.

With his mouth just above water Calvin grabbed hold of my shirt and pulled me inches from his face. The water was way over our heads. I puzzled at how he could keep us both afloat and still be barely out of breath.

“Listen to me, man.”

“I’m listening, Calvin.”

“Dog’s gonna get here first. If he jumps in, we’re gonna work our way behind him and try to grab hold of his hind legs?”

“What?!”

“Yeah, dogs run like the wind but they lousy at swimming. We gonna try to pull him under and drown him ‘fore that trucker man gets here.”

“Calvin, I don’t know I got it in me to do that.”

“Probably won’t have to. My guess? The dog’ll wait up there where we made the jump to show the man where we’re at.”

Calvin was right. About thirty seconds later the Sheppard was at the ledge barking as loud and furiously as I’d ever heard any dog do. He kept jumping a good two feet in the air, but he didn’t come into the water after us. A minute later the trucker was at the ledge and down on his hands and knees puking. The Sheppard kept barking and jumping while he tried to lick the puke off his master’s face.

Calvin and I peeked out over the top of a floating oak trunk that jutted out from the other side of the pool. Scared as I was I started to laugh.

“Shut up, fool.” That was followed by a sharp knuckle rap on the top of my head. It hurt, but it made me laugh more.

Straining not to smile, Calvin gently said, “Save the laughing ‘til later. You ready?”

“Yep.”

By then the trucker was done puking and up on his feet using the barrel of the rifle as a crutch. His head swiveled back and forth so fast it was hard to see his eyes.

“Where the fuck’s he at, Ranger?”

Seconds later Calvin dove under the giant log and surfaced just long enough to yell, “Hey, cracker! Over here!” Then he was under the water and headed downstream.

Just as the man raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the spot where Calvin had disappeared, I yelled, “Stupid redneck asshole. Gonna let a little kid play you like that?”

For about five seconds the man went rigid – almost like he’d been frozen in one of those ice storms we get some winters. Then he was firing the rifle at the log. Bark and oak chips were flying over my head like a chain saw cutting away at it. Then the hail of bullets stopped. I heard the metallic screech of a magazine being yanked out of the rifle. I risked a peek over the top of the log.

“Fuck this, Ranger. We got us a n***** to shoot.” The dog bolted off downstream with the trucker struggling to keep up.

___

When I met up with Calvin behind the abandoned barn we’d agree on, I said, “Plan worked good.”

“Not bad. I swam under water just a bit and found me another log to hide behind. Knew the dog didn’t have no way to pick up my scent. Those two probably still running downstream and away from us.”

“Okay to laugh now?”

“If you want. I don’t feel like it.”

“How come?”

“Think we might have pissed off the wrong man.”

___