“I’ll give you a break”

It was raining. It often rained in Dominica, but not for long at any one time.

“Come on, gang, it’s time for breakfast,” I called, raising my eyes to the ceiling and the little trap-door at the top of the ladder.

There was a scuffling on the floor above and a young boy placed one foot and then another on the ship’s ladder. He came down backwards, in the manner of ladder descents. He wore a clean school uniform; dark blue shorts, a white short-sleeved shirt and a stylized matching blue tie.

“Where are your books, Reed?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “I left my bag upstairs, Dad. Can I get them after breakfast?”

“Okay, Honey, but don’t forget.”

“How about a kiss, Reed? For both of us,” his mother asked.

“Yes, Mom,” he said and went to exchange small hugs and kisses on the cheek with each of his parents.

“Where are your brothers, Honey?”

“Pete’s brushing his teeth and Daniel is putting on his shoes. I think.”

“Hey, you two get down here! We are running short of time.”

Muffled affirmative responses were followed by the missing two boys, rushing down the ladder. Their arrival was followed closely by their pre-schooler, the youngest, who wore nothing but underpants.

Annie, one of the two sisters who shared the housekeeping duties, came to the kitchen doorway and as was her habit, stood at attention.

“What for you today, Sir? Madam?” she asked, using the standard address for island employers that was natural for her.

“You have potatoes, Annie?”

“Oui, Patat Anglay (English Potato), Suh.” She was not as careful about the pronunciation of Sir when her mind was analyzing facts in response to a question.

“She has everything, Honey,” Margie explained. “I sent her down to the hotel last night with my list. Eggs, bacon, penny breads; everything.”

“Good. You fellahs, tell Annie what you want for breakfast and be quick about it, we have to get going, it’s getting late again.”

The boys switched their accents from American to the singsong West Indian schoolboy English that they automatically used when speaking to Dominicans.

“Annie, you have that streaky bacon, nuh?” Reed asked.

“Yes, Suhhh,” she said slowly, dramatizing, as she smiled warmly at the boy.

“Well, I don’t like it, nuh. It’s too hard on the edges.”

“That’s all we can get right now,” his mother explained. “You don’t have to have it, Reed. Now cut out the nonsense; Daddy has to get you to school and there isn’t much time.”

The breakfast order hurdle was managed, and with Annie’s sister, Virgin, helping in the kitchen, the breakfast was produced in a short time.

“What’s the matter, Daniel? You seem awfully quiet this morning,” I asked.

His older brother answered for him. “A fellow that is troubling him in school,” he had lapsed into schoolboy English and its idiom.

“Is that true, Honey?” his mother asked.

“Yes, Mom, he takes my pencils and I don’t have anything to write with.”

“That’s terrible. Did you tell the teacher about it?”

“No,” he answered, sounding diffident.

“Why not, for Lord sake?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t do any good, Dad,” Daniel answered with a small show of either impatience or forlorn resignation.

“The teacher has too big a class, Dad,” Reed explained, “He can’t make his students do what he wants.”

“Well, then, I’ll send Eric over from the Cold Store to tell that bully to leave you alone. What’s his name, anyhow?”

“Dad!” two of the boys chorused, and Reed, the fighter, explained. “Then they would watch for him and beat him after school or somewhere.”

“I see. But what does this kid do? Is he bigger than you, Daniel?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Does he hit you? What does he do?”

“He always takes my pencil. And, and he hits me from behind when he is walking by.”

“We better give you a couple of pencils. Hide one in your sock, maybe.” I thought for a long minute and then asked, “Are you still the only white boy in the school? Could you beat him if you fought with him?”

“I could,” Reed answered for his brother.

“You are not even in the same school, Reed. And you’re a lot older. Actually, you fight too much anyway. I wish you would cut it out; that fighting.”

“I’ll second that,” his mother said.

“That’s not solving the problem. Let’s try breaking the pencils and keeping a couple of short pieces in the top of his socks. I could go by and speak to the principal, for all the good it would probably do. What’s her name?”

“Dad, no! You will just make it worse. Daniel will have to get though this himself,” Pete explained and Reed added “Yeah, Dad.”

“You guys are great brothers. Both of you are a lot bigger and always have been more aggressive and you want to impose your handling of this situation onto your brother when he isn’t of the same nature as you.”

“I’ll take two pencils, Dad. Maybe that will work,” Daniel said with some brave sounding, apparent conviction.

——————————————————-

At the end of the school day the boys usually walked through town from their respective schools and met other children at the Dominica Club a couple of blocks south of the center of the capital. The parents would either already be at the club or would arrive shortly. In addition to being a place for them to wait for their children, parents could have drinks in the bar, a tennis match, or both, before collecting their bewildering offspring and heading home.

“Daniel!” I called from the window of the Dominica Club bar when I saw him playing by the tennis courts.

“Yes, Dad?”

“Come, give me a report. How did it go today?”

“Mr. Cauldron put me on detention. I had to stay fifteen minutes after school.”

“That’s your teacher? Why, Honey?”

“Bobo took all my pencils again,” Daniel answered and tears welled in his eyes.

“Ah, Honey, I’m sorry. Don’t you think, now, I better talk to Mr. Caulderon? To explain the situation?”

“Ah, Dad, it wouldn’t do any good. You don’t understand. Mr. Caulderon is, well, he’s scared of the class. He’s very nervous.”

“Hell, I’ll go to the Minister.”

“No, Dad, no.”

“Hey,” I said after a moment, remembering another possible tactic. “I thought Chief Phillips’ son was your good buddy. Isn’t he in your class?”

“Yes, Dad, but he’s small, like me. And, and, he won’t let his dad do anything either.”

“This is a hell of a note, damnit. I feel like going in and telling that kid what-for myself.”

“No, Dad,” Daniel pleaded. “Please. I will just stay until Bobo gets onto someone else.”

Margie walked up to the window and asked, “What’s up fellows?” She was told of the developments and on-going dilemma. “I think it’s time to fill Daniel in on the way a bully works, Daddy. Have you told him?”

“No, but I think you’re right. Daniel? Have you ever been told how a bully works?”

“I see him all the time, Dad,” Daniel protested.

“The time has come to put a stop to this fellow. This Bobo, don’t you agree?”

Daniel nodded a suspicious, but hopeful, affirmative.

“Well, I think the time is now, to put an end to this. Listen to me, the way you do that is to stand him down.”

Daniel’s expression was quite incredulous now.

“You see, Honey, you can only get him off of your neck by fighting him, and hurting him. He will probably be able to beat you but you have to fight him and you have to hurt him. Now this is important. Even if he is beating the tar out of you, you have to stay in there and hurt him and hurt him again. Do you understand?”

“He is going to beat me,” Daniel answered with unassailable logic.

“I know that, Honey, but to get him off of you, you will have to just take that beating and in the process you have to hurt him. That’s the important thing. Then he will stop and he won’t trouble you again. All bullies are cowards. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Dad.” He answered with some conviction because he totally trusted his parents and never doubted the truth or wisdom of their pronouncements and, also, he had noticed his mother nodding ascent as she stood beside me during this instruction.

That night, after the boys had gone to bed, we discussed Daniel’s problem.

“Do you think there is a chance that Daniel could really get hurt?” she asked.

“I’m scared to death.”

“Then we call off that challenge.” She said it firmly as though it was the only option.

“If he does that he’s going to be afraid the whole year, maybe his whole life.”

“And if he gets really hurt?”

“I don’t think it would be allowed to go that far in a school.”

“But you don’t know.”

“Damnit, Margie, you sure know how to cut to the quick.”

“Pete! I thought you knew exactly how this would work for him. I didn’t know you were guessing.”

“I am not guessing. This is the way it usually works. Almost always, that’s the way it works, but nothing is absolutely sure in life.”

“He’s such a sweet little fellow. He wouldn’t hurt a fly and he sure doesn’t want to fight, but he’s going to go in there and get creamed because you told him that was the thing to do. I think you should call it off tomorrow before we take him down to school, don’t you?”

I thought it over for a few minutes in silence and then I shook my head. “No. I think he has to go through with it. I will go and stay across the street at the Cold Store and watch for school to be over. I will tell Daniel to challenge him to a fight after school and do it so that all of his classmates hear the challenge and then it will have to wait until after school. I’ll be right across the street.” I was selling myself as much as I was trying to sell Margie.

“He doesn’t want you to show up there for the fight,” Margie said

“I know that. I mean I’ll be across the street at the Cold Store.”

The next morning we delivered the children to their respective schools and returned up the mountain to the hotel. By noon, however nervous anticipation provided the impetus for a trip back to town where we both shopped, checked on an expected shipment of supplies, and nervously bided the time for her to go to the club and me to go to my monitoring position across from the school.

The end of the school day was heralded by a bell at three. A few minutes later, an advancing miniature horde bounded across a small rise west of and adjacent to the school. The undulating mass of escaping students seemed to be in numbers that indicated all were leaving and none had stayed to see Daniel beaten in the scheduled challenge.

I was wishing this to be the case, but I knew it was not likely. I strained to see if there was a little knot of students gathering anywhere around the school; I saw none.

Suddenly the thought that it might have been a one-two punch that knocked Daniel out and ended the entertainment. Then, to my great relief, I saw him coming over the little rise, accompanied by about ten or twelve little classmates. They headed toward the Cold Store, and Daniel seemed unscathed. Even his tie was still on straight, and this would be unusual at any day’s end.

“Eric?” I called to our employee down the loading dock; “Can you chip off some ice for about a dozen young fellows?”

Eric smiled broadly, nodding, and went into the door that led to the brine tanks where the large blocks of ice were made.

As the little group started across the street I called to Daniel with a smile, “Hi! How is everything today, Daniel?” I did not want to call him ‘Honey’ in front of his friends.

“Okay, Dad,” he grinned.

“Would your friends like some ice?” I felt great relief and was yearning to know what happened, but did not wish to risk embarrassment to Daniel by asking in front of his chums.

A big block of fresh ice came across the ice room riding on the overhead chain hoist. Eric deftly placed it on the platform and began chipping pieces off into a basin for the children.

Ice pieces in hand the little group, calling goodbye to Daniel over their shoulders, wandered off up the road, toward the Goodwill residential area.

Daniel and I quickly got into the Mini-Moke for the ride to the club.

“What happened?” I asked, anxiously.

“Well, Dad, Bobo came and took my pencil like he always does and I stood up, like you said, and told him really loud, that I would meet him after school and beat him up.”

“You had the fight?”

“No, Dad. After about twenty minutes he came by my desk and leaned over and whispered in my ear. He said “I’ll give you a break.”

“What did you say?”

“I said “Oh, no you won’t. I’m gonna get you for taking all my pencils and poking me, and everything.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What happened?”

“When school was out I went around to where we were supposed to have the fight and almost everyone in the class came, too. But, Bobo didn’t show up and we all left, and some of the fellahs came over to the Cold Store with me. They were all patting me on the back and calling me ‘Killer’ and stuff like that. That’s all that happened.”

“Well, Killer, what about a coke at the club?”

“Yeah, Dad,” he smiled.