THE LAWSON
BOYS
Salty damp air smelling of pine,
honeysuckle, and magnolia, surrounded me most of the time. Huge live oak trees with gray ornaments of
Spanish moss shaded my world. Every road
seemed long. Trips in our old blue Ford coupe seemed to go on endlessly. My sister and I would lie in the rear
floorboard sweating, and listening to other cars zooming past on the two-lane
highway.
It was 1952 and I was five years old. I planted my feet in the sandy soil of
coastal Mississippi
Johnny and Jimmy Myers lived next
door. They were older. They pretended to like me when I brought them
my dad’s tools or something to eat, but at other times they pummeled and
harassed me until I left crying. My best
friend, David Harper and his older brothers lived down the street. He was my age. His two older brothers were Thomas and
Boogie. John Henry Jones lived next door
to David. He was also our age. David, John Henry, and I played together most
of the time. The older guys occasionally
let us join them when they needed someone to do something stupid or
dangerous. They knew we would do
anything they asked to show we were worthy.
The sandy ruts we called a road ended a
short distance beyond my house at a pasture enclosed by a barbed wire
fence. If you walked the other direction
on our street you would run into pavement just before you got to town. We occasionally shuffled to town on our
summer toughened bare feet to get some treat from the grocery store, but most of
our activities took place between John Henry’s house and the woods at the back
of the pasture.
The woods were dark and swampy. The creeks and ditches there had black water
in them. Slimy things slithered beneath
the surface. Occasionally the older boys
would challenge us to wade into the black water and scoop out some wriggling
creature.
John Henry, David and I occasionally went
to the switching yard at the railway station near town. We would walk along side the blistering hot
metal rails, and pick up loose spikes.
John Henry said it was our “doody” to turn them in. I guess, with a name
like John Henry, he felt an obligation to the railroad. He was too small to drive spikes, so I
suppose picking up loose ones was the next best thing. In the switchyard there were huge black steam
engines that hissed and chugged, covering themselves in billowing clouds of
white. We were a little afraid of
everything.
Afraid the bull or the cows in the pasture
would chase us if we got too close.
Noises in the woods made us run for home with goose bumps on our
arms. And, we were always afraid that we
would somehow get stuck on the railroad track when the train was coming. But, more than all this, we feared the Lawson
boys.
We didn’t know where they lived or how
they ever found the pasture at the end of our road, but they did.
The older boys said they weren’t afraid of
them, but we all made preparations to fight them off if they ever decided to
cross into our territory.
The Lawson boys came to the pasture and
stared at us across the barbed wire fence.
They were dirty and their clothes were ragged. Their red hair was long and curly. We all had short hair. They had real big freckles. I had never seen them at school. Sometimes four would show up, but at other
times five came. They were all different
sizes, but we could tell by looking they were kin. They never smiled. We stayed in the road, and
they stayed in the pasture.
My mother, who told us who they were,
said their parents hung out in Honky Tonks.
I didn’t know what that was, but mother said never to go near them.
I asked Thomas Harper what Honky Tonks
were and he said that he would show me.
Thomas and Boogie took David and me on the center bars of their bicycles
and pedaled us by a couple.
They were buildings with brightly painted
metal signs on them. The signs had words on them like “J-A-X”, and “P-A-B-S-T”.
The ground around them was covered in crushed oyster shells. The doors were open and loud music blared all
the way to the street. We could see
people sitting at tables. The Honky
Tonks were all lined up in a row across the street from the railroad tracks.
I hoped that my mother wouldn’t see me, or
even hear that I had been there. I also
hoped that we didn’t run into the Lawson boys or their parents.
The older boys came up with a plan to
build two tree houses. They weren’t
really houses, just boards nailed between two limbs high up in a big tree. We nailed flat short boards to the tree
trunk to make a ladder. The boards were
just a little too far apart for my short legs.
I was scared when I climbed up to the platform. I was scared when I got there, and I was
scared as I inched my way back down.
The Myers had a big tree in their yard,
and there was another one at the end of the road. The branches of the one at the end of the
road hung over the pasture fence. Thomas
and Boogie said we should build one tree house in each tree.
The plan was to stock the slanted
platforms with rocks and sticks. The
older guys said that David, John Henry, and I should hide in the tree house at
the end of the road. When the Lawson
boys showed up, the older boys said they would lure them onto the road where we
could shower them with rocks and sticks.
Johnny, Jimmy, Thomas and Boogie would
then retreat to the other tree house and hold them off from there.
My fear was we would run out of
ammunition and the Lawson boys would climb into our tree while the older guys
were still in their tree, too far away to rescue us. I imagined being captured by them, beaten up,
and taken to their house. I wondered
what would happen when their parents came home from the Honky Tonks.
We built the tree houses, stocked them as
planned, and spent many watchful hours waiting for the showdown. I had nightmares about it.
Then one day they came back. John Henry saw them first and sounded the
alarm. David and I climbed into the tree
house at the end of the road. John Henry
soon followed. The older boys stood
their ground in the middle of the street.
When the Lawsons neared the fence, Johnny Myers called out and told them
to come over. He said he had something
to show them. They crossed the fence and
walked under our tree house. The older
boys turned and ran toward the Myers house just as we had planned. The Lawsons just stood in the road wondering
what was going on. John Henry, David,
and I unloaded on them with a shower of rocks.
Our aim was good and the Lawson boys took
a pelting. They scurried for the fence
and ran back into the pasture. We
climbed down and followed the older boys who had seen that we had stopped the
invaders at the first tree and were now giving chase. We crossed the barbed wire fence of the
pasture and ran whooping behind our retreating foe. Fortunately, no cows were out that day. We
chased the Lawsons until they disappeared into the trees on the opposite side
of the field. We all slowed down when we
got to there. Moving slowly from tree to
tree, we caught sight of the small plywood house that was covered in black tar
paper. The weeds grew tall right up to
it. We could hear several kids
crying. Creeping closer, we could see
the house better. Several skinny girls with red hair and ragged dresses were
looking at bumps on the heads of a couple of the boys who had crossed our
fence. The yard was full of old junk, a
rusted car, a broken washing machine, a metal barrel full of beer cans, and two
old stained mattresses. The inside of
the house was dark. I knew I wouldn’t
want to live there. We all decided that
we should go home.
I didn’t feel good. I was sorry for them now that I knew where
they lived. Nobody felt good about what
we had done, but no one said much about it.
The older guys never told us how bravely we fought. If the Lawsons had
ever come back, we would have treated them differently. They never did.
I grew older, and sometimes wondered how
we could have been so cruel. We were just afraid, and like most kids, unable to
see how our actions would affect others.
Many more childhood episodes molded my character. But, our battle with
the skinny, red headed, Lawson boys was the first one where I came to a
conclusion about the consequences of my actions without being told by a
grownup.
I moved away from my friends shortly after
our encounter with the Lawsons, and did not return until I was an adult. The trees were much older, but didn’t seem
nearly as big as I remembered them. The bark on their trunks had grown around
the boards that we once used as ladders.
The road was short, and our house was very small. I imagined that the Lawsons had probably
never left, and might be in some nearby Honky Tonk.
