Chapter Twenty-Three
posted in Novel |
Back again from a brief hiatus from posting. One of the reasons for taking some time off was to focus on getting some more writing done so I could get ahead of you who are are reading this. However, holiday “stuff” got in the way and I didn’t make hardly any progress at all.
I’m sort of going back to my old ways of doing everything under some sort of stressful deadline. Not a good thing!
I do hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that you are all well …
… and be in peace,
Ron Rink
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My father continued with his periodic temper flare-ups throughout the year. Each time would result in his taking me to the attic for another beating. Each time was the same, with the Bible in his hand, along with the yelling and screaming about my inevitable sinfulness. Each time I was showing more courage and toughness by yelling back at him and not allowing myself to cry or show any pain.
Since Billy was spending so much time teaching me how to fight, and the fact I was getting a lot of confidence in myself, the temptation to strike back was extremely strong. The only thing which kept me from doing it was the lesson from Billy to avoid getting into a fight with anyone bigger than me. He always said, “If the guy is bigger than you, it’s almost impossible to get him down—they either have long arms to keep you from getting close to them—or they’re so much heavier that their weight alone will stop you.”
My father was a lot taller and heavier than me even though I was big for a nine-year old kid.
Billy and I continued our street-fighting lessons as often as we could. One day at the bowling alley right after my father had given me another beating, Billy asked, “When your old-man hits you, is he using his fists?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “he uses his fists most of the time, but sometimes he just hits me with the heel of his hand. Why?”
“Well, what do you do when he hits you? Are you just standing there, or do you move away from him when his fist is coming at you? Are your eyes open or closed?”
I didn’t have any idea what Billy was getting at. He was just leaning on the post by his lane and squinting at me through the smoke of his cigarette.
“I guess I’m just standing there,” I said. “I don’t really know exactly what I’m doing, but I do know my eyes are closed when he hits. I’m learning not to cry any more, though.”
Billy looked at me with a smirk on his face as he ground out the butt of his cigarette on the post.
“After work today we’ll go over to my house so I can show you how to move your body so he doesn’t hurt you as much. It’s not hard to do, but you do have to watch him when he swings at you. You can’t be flinching with your eyes closed. I’ll show you later,” he said as he climbed back up to set pins for a new bowler on his lane.
Later Billy spent about two hours showing me how to roll with the punches so they wouldn’t strike with the same force as they would if my body or face was rigid. It took quite awhile for me to get over the natural reflex to flinch and close my eyes when the blow was close to me. Billy had on boxing gloves and he just kept swinging at me over and over again until I got used to moving away from the force of the blow.
It worked. On my next trip to the attic I was able to do exactly what Billy had taught me. My father didn’t seem to notice the fact that I was doing something different. Plus, it was so much easier not to cry or show pain, because it just didn’t hurt like it did before. I still didn’t dare to strike back at him, but I could now move myself in the same direction as his striking fist so that he landed a more glancing blow rather than a solid hit.
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