Violence on the Playground

(Continued from last Wednesday, August 14 . . . )

Bloodthirsty cries overshadowed the laughter of the fifth graders surrounding me on the icy playground at St. Peter and Paul Grade School in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday, January 15, 1960.

         “Kill ‘im, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         “Bash his head!”

         “Looka’ that blood!”

         “Bill, break his nose!”

         “Kill ‘im, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         “Go for his eyes!”

         “Bash him a good one!”

         “Kill ‘im, Ron!”

         The words shocked me into action. Alarmed, I rushed toward a circle of boys gathered in the shadow of the school building. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, three deep around a center I couldn’t see, shouting, punching the air with clenched fists. Frenzied, I tried to move them aside.

         “Excuse me! Let me through. I’ve got to get through.”

         The boys, in their thick winter jackets, seemingly unaware of anything beyond what was happening in front of them, refused to budge. Their churning circle tightened. Contracted.

         I shoved. Pushed. Tried to pull them apart.

         They shoved back. Snarled at me. Cursed.

         Struggling to pull them apart, I edged forward toward the center of the shouting circle.

         “Keep bashin’ his head, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         Hearing those vicious words, I instinctively looked to the left. A boy, blond hair flapping over his forehead, stared avidly at the scene before him. His body moved back and forth to the thumps coming from the center of the circle. Saliva dribbled onto his dirty white shirt. Most of its buttons had popped off so that it gaped open over his stomach, which pooched out over his tight belt.

         I followed his maniacal gaze downward to where two boys struggled.  One atop the other. Blood matted the hair of the one on the bottom. The boy tabled above held his opponent’s head between splayed fingers. He bopped it up and down, up and down, against the ice. The boy’s head thudded. Blood spurted.

         The eyes of the boy on the bottom rolled back. His limp hands lay at his side.

         “Kill ‘im, Ron!”

         Those words galvanized me. My hands gripped the shoulders of the boy doing the bopping. I tried to pull him backward.

         He punched out at me. Grazed my cheek. Socked my eye.

         His own eyes were glazed, staring unseeingly at the force trying to stop his crazed battering of the boy beneath him.

         “It’s a nun!” the boy with popping buttons shouted. “Don’t hit her! You’re be excommunicated!”

         The shouting stopped. Silence.

         The boy on top fell to the side and lay panting on the ground. The boy beneath him opened his eyes, tried to rise, fell back.

         Just then Sister Julian came running from around the back of the school building. “What’s happening?” she shouted.

         The boy with the popped buttons tried to head her off. “Nothin’s happenin’, Sister. Just a friendly fight.”

         She stepped aside, avoiding him, and headed to where I stood, surrounded by boys, their eyes downcast. She glanced at the two struggling to get up, turned toward me, and asked, “Are you hurt?”

         “He just grazed me.”

         Julian ordered me to go over to the convent and ice my face. She’d get my fifth-graders settled in their classroom.

         As I walked away, I could hear her voice demanding an explanation from the boys. Wondering how that boy had learned the word excommunication and whose classroom he and the rest of the boys were in, I felt grateful that I hadn’t had to teach them for two weeks. The next day I’d travel to Walsenburg, Colorado, and never see those boys again. Thank heavens!

                                                      (. . . to be continued next Wednesday)

Photographs from Wikipedia.