University of Northern Iowa

The Red-Haired BoyAuthor(s): Richard JohnsonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 252, No. 4 (Jul., 1967), pp. 9-10Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116629 .

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The

Red-Haired

Richard Johnson

When I first saw him he made no impression on me; I thought him somewhat odd, but beyond that nothing particularly registered. That afternoon I was watching the Sunday Matinee on television at the home of the

parents of my fianc?e. My attention was divided be tween the film and work I ought to have been doing:

preparing Mill's essay, On Liberty, for an examination I had to take at the University the following day. Mill's

speculations about the degree to which one ought to be allowed to limit the activities of another were scarcely keeping pace with the sisters-of-mercy in a French

hospital of the Second World War, when there was a run on the front porch steps and a knock at the door.

Then the door bell rang. "Can Carmen come out and play?"

Carmen was the family's golden-haired cocker. I called her and she barked and romped out the door. The episode made little impression on me.

I did question the family. "Is this the usual Sunday afternoon thing?"

RICHARD JOHNSON teaches English at Central Washington State College, is married and the father of three.

"No. It only happens when Carmen isn't already out."

I wondered to myself why the red-haired boy didn't ask to play with the little sister of the family; she was

about his age, but I could understand why he might choose Carmen.

Finals came and went as they do and Mill was placed on the shelf to collect dust along with others of lesser note. I was at the home of my fianc?e most of the summer weekends. It was then I learned Carmen was

the lesser of the red-haired boy's interests. The under

ground sprinkling system in the lawn was his favorite. He would come down in his swim suit and run and

jump and have a merry time in the sprinklers. It didn't matter if Carmen was there or not. He'd leap in the air like a modern dancer at Martha Nishitani's studio. But more than leaping and running he liked to dive. He'd run up on the front porch and belly-flop on the

soggy front lawn. It made his stomach red, but he liked it.

My fiancee's father told him he couldn't jump off the porch, which wasn't a serious setback. He then ran

along the parking strip like a liberated gazelle and then B-twenty-nined down on his stomach. He lost the

porch for diving but he replaced it with the fire hydrant. There he poised like a weathered Olympian, toes

tucked under and arms extended toward the hori zon. Swoosh and he swan-dived a belly-flopper on the

well-flooded grass. I watched the boy every chance I had. I really think

I envied him, envied his freedom. He may not have known I was watching, yet he may. He was a natural

performer and yet he didn't need an audience. He didn't need the proper facilities. He didn't need com

petitors. He just gave free rein to his spirited will and this was the result.

However, he was not admired by others. My fian

cee's family actually thought he was mentally imbal anced although they seldom said it, more on my ac

count than on his. They just suspiciously wondered if he was all right "in his top storey." I finally had to wonder some too, but still admired him and envied him.

He had tired of the fire hydrant and the parking strip; they were of little service to him any more. He had perfected the racing dive, standard and backward

method. He had perfected the swan, what little he

could do in a two and one half foot drop. He needed a bigger challenge. One day he found it.

My fianc?e was taking care of her two year old niece.

The weather was very good so she put the little girl out in the sun, in a plastic wading pool. When they had

gone inside, the boy discovered it. He scaled the pic ket fence and then swung along the cross bar of the

clothes line pole till he reached the edge of the garage roof. That was where I spotted him. By the time I

made it to the backyard he had tried a jacknife and

hit the four inches of water in the folded position. It

dazed him.

I carried him a block up the street to his house; the

family had pointed it out to me before as one of the

July, 1967 9

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worst houses in the area. His mother answered the door. She was wearing a slip and her hair hung down around her face. She didn't speak or invite me in, but

just looked at him with disinterest and then motioned for her husband. He got up from where he had been

sprawled on the couch, watching Sunday baseball on television. He was in his shorts and a soiled under shirt. He didn't talk either. I told them the boy might be hurt but was probably only dazed, from the fall. Then I left. Walking back on the sidewalk I was glad to be away from that house.

The red-haired boy didn't do any more diving that I was present to see. He usually ran and played with

Carmen if he passed by the place. That was all I saw of him. I forgot about him really and didn't even re

member the things he had done, the things I had ad

mired and envied. That was what surprised me most; that was what made the shock so great.

I read it in the paper, a Sunday morning paper. He

had jumped. The article said the red-haired boy was

in critical condition with multiple fractures and internal

bleeding. The doctors didn't give any hope. He had climbed up on the rail of the Twentieth Avenue bridge over Revenna Park and jumped. They didn't know

why. It was over a hundred foot drop. I walked over to the bridge that afternoon. I wasn't

the only one, but I didn't stay long. I didn't shake my head the way some did or smile as others. And I didn't say as one grey-haired old woman said:

"That was a crazy thing to do."

I walked slowly across the bridge once and looked over the rail: at the bottom of the ravine was a small rivulet a couple of feet wide and less than a foot deep.

In my mind I saw the red-haired boy standing on the rail in his swim suit, more baggy than the Olympic

Champion's. He didn't need the Olympic length pool. He didn't need the ten metre spring-board or the twenty metre spring-board. He never thought of facilities. The

spirit of liberty called out for nothing. It stimulated his desires. I imagined him on that rail, toes feeling the edge, arms still at his skinny sides before they

would swing up in the motion of the dive, every muscle

tense, as tense as they would be if he were in the pool at Rome or Helsinki or Moscow. Then the dive and he was free once again. He was free as his spirit and he swanned-down almost bird-like, never knowing the

disappointment of the shallow stream bed.

The red-haired boy didn't pull out of it and the doc tors said it was probably the best thing, for his physical infirmities would have been great. And the place with the sprinkler system has been sold. My in-laws have

moved to a newer neighborhood. The boy is out of the

people's thoughts and no more than a faded newspaper clipping in a desk drawer. But every time I see a fire

hydrant on a soggy parking strip, artificially showered on a sunny summer day, I see the red-haired Olympic Champion and I am struck with an odd sense of loss.

Paul Friedman

Some are turned out of their homes

Some are turned out of themselves

New York, 1953

The neighborhood had been bad and changing for some time; it still was. Herbert Korrnan lived here; a poet, he wrote poems about favorite subjects: Mo

thers, Apple Pies, Religion. Herbie was well known, it was good to know Herbie. People talked about him, he talked about himself. He was unusual, he was very unusual where he was. Herbie: bony fingers poking at a typewriter?that was a part of it; humped hunk of a nose inches from the keys?more of a part of

it; switchblade knife in his pocket?the part that was best understood. The famous kid rough tackle foot ball game?famous because Herbie still told about it

although it had happened seven years ago: Some of the new kids?colored?in that game. One

of them from his seventh grade class. Mortimer John son. Johnson smoked in class, every day, at recess,

when the class was buying milk and pretzels. And he was thrown out of class, every day, and back the next

day, every day. Everyone knew about Mortimer John son.

Fumble. Herbie wasn't close. Pile up. Johnson

diving on, scrambling, up with the ball, running. No one after him. Alone. In the clear. Some standing still, others running the other way, off the field, gone.

What was going on? Herbie didn't know which way to look or what to watch. Touchdown.

When Johnson walked back those who were left shouted: Which was he, crazy or nuts? This ain't

mumbly peg pal, this is American style football. Who's

going to get the ball away from a guy who got the ball in one hand and a knife in the other?

They argued a while. The six points finally count ed. Everyone quit.

PAUL FRIEDMAN, born in Brooklyn, teaches English at

Wisconsin State University, Stevens Point. His work has been

published by Prism International, The Husk, Colorado State

Review, etc. A View of The Poet is from his novel-in-progress, The Dispossessed, another of which appeared in New World

Writing #17.

10 The North American Review

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