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We’d all felt the malevolent force in those unnaturally man-sized hands. The reigning, alpha bully at my elementary school, Spike waited until the child in front of him was perfectly poised at the top of the slide, in the very act of executing a flawless launch. Then he pushed from his perch on the ladder’s step, triggering out-flung legs and a twisted torso, as the victim tried to regain balance. If his mark was lucky enough to complete a lopsided descent without falling off altogether (Spike’s best-case scenario), most still went home with purple shoulders and shin burns. All hell would break loose in the principal’s office, but system-sponsored, report-a-bully hotlines were unheard of in the 1960s. What we did hear was Spike bragging that suspensions were vacations he was privileged to enjoy.

Summer offered no relief from Spike’s predation. He haunted our municipal pool, waiting for the teenaged lifeguard to play kissy face with his girlfriend behind the pump shed. Then he circled like a shark, isolating the weak in the almost-deep-end, yanking them under until just before the seeing-stars stage. When he finally allowed them to surface, coughing and sputtering, none doubted that he’d kill them if they told.

When Spike was held back, he ended up in my third-grade class, seated in the front row for maximum surveillance. My desk was in the rear, and I kept a low profile, hoping to stay out of his sight. For most of the year, I managed to dodge his tripping leg when asked to write on the board, the expertly aimed, phlegmy spittle, and the gum wads he’d deposit on the butts of girls’ skirts as they passed. The sense of relief was palpable when Spike went “on vacation”; but he always returned, sullen, brooding, and plotting revenge on tattletales. There were no “special” schools for the incorrigible, no psychiatrists to diagnose conduct disorders. Truant officers, devoted to the notion that everyone acquire the three Rs at their neighborhood grammar, kept Spike on radar.

My turn came on a Saturday afternoon. Riding my bike from the library, I pumped harder when I turned on Cable Lane, Spike’s territory. Once I passed his makeshift fort, built on an absentee owner’s vacant lot, I relied on passive momentum to round the curve overgrown with kudzu. That’s when he lunged from the bushes. He rushed the bike. I lost control. Handlebar, pedal, fender and skin slammed into pavement. The precious Weekly Readers on which I’d spent my allowance flew from the basket and scattered in the road. Laughing manically, Spike made confetti of one edition; the outliers he balled and threw in the ditch. He ripped the jacket from Cherry Ames: Country Doctor’s Nurse. Nancy Drew’s fate was worse. He tore her cardboard cover from its binding, stomped on the artist’s rendition of my heroine wielding a flashlight, confronting The Invisible Intruder. I sat with bloody knees drawn to my chest beside my crumpled birthday bike (a Schwinn, sky blue, girl’s style) and cried.

Mama’s calls to Spike’s mother went unanswered. The most she got out of the local precinct was “boys will be boys.” She didn’t tell Dad about Black Saturday until he returned from the road, where he’d been selling the new color TVs to far-flung GE dealers. Mama said he’d been working too hard. She didn’t want to upset him by phone.

But upset he was, as I watched him beat out a dent in the bike’s fender the day after he returned. I was his carport assistant, learning the names of tools, along with forbidden curse words. “Your mother just doesn’t understand,” he said, more to himself than to me. “A bully thinks he’s a train that can’t be stopped. You gotta sabotage the rails, switch tracks, stoke your locomotive, butt it against his.” He handed me the hammer. I placed it in the toolbox. “All done. Almost good as new. Try out the new kickstand and take her for a trial run.”

Two boxes the right size for dresses or car coats appeared under the Christmas tree that year. Fingers crossed that my great aunt had not sent another frilly Easter ensemble, I scratched through enough paper to verify the Sears & Roebuck logo. The cowgirl outfit I had spotted in my grandmother’s catalogue, the one that kept me awake with longings to reinvent myself as saucy, scrappy, and brave, would soon have me conquering wild frontiers. I gasped when it was all laid out on the living room carpet: cowhide patterned, fringed vest and skirt, deep-cuffed shirt with wagon wheels embroidered on the yoke, a red necktie that matched the wide-brimmed hat, and best of all, knee-high Roy Rogers boots with the rising wings of thunderbirds stitched on the sides.

I don’t remember consciously planning revenge. But memory is faulty, and surely I was tempting fate. It was the first warm Saturday in March.  Adorned in full cowgirl regalia, I rode my bike along the now forbidden road that led to Spike’s hangout. Unwilling to risk more blows to Lady Schwinn, I hid her in the cane forest that grew along the ditch, and walked to Spike’s fort. I stopped in front of a formidable fence he had built of thorny locust brush and stolen wood pallets. “You again,” he snarled, crouching low to emerge from what appeared to be a repurposed dog house. Above the dark hole of its door, he had painted SNAK PIT in red, dripping letters.

“Hi Spike. Do you have snacks in there or are you the resident snake?”

“Huh?” He blinked in confusion. “Whadayawant, yalilbitch?”

Little was the wrong adjective. Granted, I was as skinny as Olive Oyl, but I was tall for my age, with long, muscular legs from swimming and riding my bike. “I want you to say you’re sorry.” I planted my boots far apart, put hands on my hips to widen my chest, and bolstered by two-inch heels, rose to my full height. “I want you to stop beating on kids too scared to fight back. I want you to do better. Learn to spell. Before it’s too late.”

For a few seconds, he simply stood in place, limp arms gangling, mouth agape in astonishment. Then he recovered. “Whyyalilwhore!”

But I was no lil anything. I was Annie Oakley, Dale Evans, Calamity Jane. When he grabbed my vest with those monster hands, I aimed my right boot at the V of his jeans. I had seen this maneuver on TV westerns; and sure enough, I got the same results. Spike dropped like a swatted fly, rolled on his side, squalled like a baby. I kicked him in the butt with the left boot. “That’s for my bike. The first one was for all us cowgirls.”

I walked back to the canebrake, freed my bike from a cluster of stalks, and calmly mounted the seat, as I would have Trigger, My Friend Flicka, or Black Beauty. Never once did I run.

As I grew into adolescence, our town grew into a city. A new high school was built two blocks from home. Spike was zoned for the old one; we had no more news of his crimes. Not until I graduated from Lady Schwinn to a learning permit, did I confess to Dad how I had delivered Spike’s comeuppance. I asked him not to tell Mother. He smiled conspiratorially. “Bully for you,” he said.

After law school, I moved to the state capital, having snagged my dream job of assistant district attorney. However tedious the process of bringing perps to the table, I wanted to serve them their just desserts. Along with recipes for angel cake, meringue, and other delicacies I had no time to prepare, Mother mailed a clipping from the Daily Tribune. In the lingo of the 1970s, the paper wanted folks to know that a drug pusher and sex offender was back in their midst. I called an old friend I’d grown up with, who was now a parole officer.

“Yeah,” said Ernie, “Can you believe it? Sprung from Parchman and coming back here? Spike must be dumb as dirt.”

What’s in his jacket?” I asked.

“Dealing smack, speed, nose candy. Assaults on minors. Several B &Es. Firearms. Lots of domestics.”

“Where’s he living?”

“Way out at the end of Cable Lane, in a broken-down trailer. ‘Bout a mile from the freight depot, where the road turns to gravel.”

I had never pedaled further than that asphalt border. Lady Schwinn couldn’t have handled the grit. But it had more to do with the two-sided woods, the grasping branches of trees like sinewy arms twining overhead, blocking the sun. Where the pavement ran out and the crushed rock began, I had been Dorothy in the Go Back Forest.

“What’s he up to these days?” I swallowed a reflux of nerves. Ernie must have heard it in my voice.

“You don’t got to worry about him. He was no alpha dog in prison. More like an end-of-the-line omega. Another small-time bad ass with the heart of a coward. And here’s the weird thing. Remember that Madam that ran the Come & Get It over at Delano? Busted so many times, she’s out of the life. But still a hellcat, never took any crap, never will. Those two are living together!”

I had a memory of a hard-faced woman, standing in the Winn-Dixie lot, hands on hips, commanding the buggy boy to load her groceries. I had asked Mother why she wore go-to-church heels with short-shorts in winter, but was only reminded we were running late for Brownies.

“Well, that’s the odd couple,” I said. Will you let me know if he violates?”

“Sure. But you got no worries. A guy in prison for messin’ with kids? They squashed him like a bug.”

I didn’t hear from Ernie for almost a year. Sometimes when things went south, a crucial witness absconded, the judge denied our motion, a rookie cop failed to Mirandize, I would imagine the Greek goddess, Themis, intervening on our behalf. She dealt divine justice, reigned over the Oracle, wielded a power greater than that invested in human law. Themis would watch every move Spike made. She would see him sprawled on his stoop at 3:00 AM, draining a six-pack of beer, throwing crumpled cans at the man-in-the-moon, the one who drew night guard duty. She would see him kick the cowed dog who haltingly approached in hopes of a scratch behind flea-bitten ears. Spike can’t stop the rumbling trains that lurch past his bed, midnight ‘till dawn. They toss him from sweat-stained sheets (no AC in the rotten windowsills), brakes screeching like banshees. There’s no phone in the trailer and not just because Spike can’t pay Bell South. He doesn’t want the Aryan brothers he ripped off to find him.

I had just returned from lunch with twenty minutes before court when Ernie called. “The sheriff caught a domestic out at Spike’s place.”

“Did he beat up the Madam?”

“Hell no. Damnedest thing. A neighbor called it in. It was Spike who was groveling like a crybaby on the floor. The Madam had hit him with a cowhide whip. Said Spike wanted her to play Dominatrix. Sheriff said she had nothing on, ‘cept a rhinestone-studded bra, a thong, and thigh-high, Nancy Sinatra boots.

“Charges filed?”

“Naw. Spike wouldn’t hear of it.” Ernie laughed. “Some kinda kinky sex, I guess. You gonna keep fretting about that creep?’

“No.” I laughed too. “Sounds like the rat’s in his hole.”

We had tried a difficult case the week of Ernie’s call. The perp was soft-spoken, good-looking, another Baby Face Nelson. He was a stalker, a repeat offender, and I was sure he had murder on his mind.  During voir dire, a couple of the jurors had reminded me of Mother. Passive, mannerly, hoping for reform. Would they believe that ankle bracelets in a halfway house, (shed with a scissors’ snip), and another year of talking through dark desires, would keep this guy from killing his ex?

By the next Friday, we had good news. Turned out the jurors thought more like Dad. I poured myself a celebratory glass of wine. I pictured Lady Justice looking beyond the blindfold, relying on her legacy of second sight, balancing those scales by feel alone. Karma works in mysterious ways, and sometimes cowgirls can leave off the boots, relax instead in comfortable shoes.

There’s a Reason Flowers Are Not Gray

Poems by Nanci Lee Woody

  THE BOOK WE NEEDED! A collection of poems focusing on the everyday thoughts and dreams of older women and the challenges we face: the death of a spouse or a dear friend; the mysteriously old people at our sixtieth high school reunion; middle of the night obsessing about events from half a century ago. Gratitude. Fear. Wisdom. Patience and Love. "Nanci Woody’s poems, like the knots in our hands, tell the truth, even as individual poems provide the reader with a bouquet of blossoms.”— Bob Stanley, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento; past President, Sacramento PoetryCenter; author of Language Barrier “Nanci Woody captures what it means to remember, to forgive, and to keep loving across the decades.” — Geri Spieler, past President, Peninsula Branch, California Writers Club; author of Housewife Assassin- The Woman Who Tried to Kill President Ford Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or your favorite independent bookstore.

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