Not long after the knock down the stairs, my mother divorced the abusive Irish step monster and moved us to a small semitropical wet dank southwest Florida town to be near my grandparents. A land with bird filled mangrove fringed estuaries that smelled of sulfur and oysters at low tide. Meandering black water creeks crawling with blue crabs, jumping mullet, and three-foot long snook floating like they were dead on the coldest of mornings. My grandparents lived on one of these creeks and had bought a canoe. I would spend hours in silence paddling through the jungle like scenery bordering the eroded side banks. Some were steep with ancient manatee ribs sticking out and occasional large fossilized shark teeth at their base. I would glide past lounging gators and water moccasins that were around the skinny twists and turns of the tannin stained pathway. I would slow drift under roosting owls and nesting herons secure under dark green canopies sparkling with hints of sunlight playing off swaying draperies of Spanish moss. It was a place with some unspoiled beaches where the no-see-ums swarmed biting every exposed pore as I watched breathtaking sunsets through the dark silhouettes of palm trees softly swaying in salt scented air. I fell in love with Southwest Florida.
This was also a place with few youngsters and lots of old people. Ninety percent of my peers were also transplants with the same story, a divorced mom moving here to be close to her parents. Few of us had fathers present. Just a mom and grandparents. Not much to do in a town like that. Soon the beatings in the ancient halls of the catholic school gave way to paddlings with imaginatively carved or decorated wooden paddles, in wooden portable classrooms. These were raised cabin like rooms where during class changes, we often had to take off our shoes to slog through the muddy water with our binders held over our heads during semitropical down pours. I quit wearing socks around then. I got paddled frequently. Mainly it was the gym coaches for forgetting my gym clothes. There would always be a line of us every morning getting a swat for that. But some at that school paddled way harder than others. Once I got sent to the principal’s office with a note from my English teacher. I guess I had made some unmemorable wise crack or something. On the way, I opened up the note. It said “Please feel free to paddle Michael as long and as hard as you feel wont hurt us legally.” Well, I knew our principal had a swing and I wasn’t about to hang around for that. I tossed that note in the trash and walked off campus for a long hike home. I decided to cut through the woods where I skirted palmetto thickets and late winter marsh. The only sound was the breeze whispering through pine needles and the crackling of desiccated marsh grass still pulling water up to the sky through dry brown stems. It was like a bowl of rice crispies. I finally reached the boulevard my apartment complex was at the end of. The last leg of that long walk. The sun was beating down and the heat beating up from the pavement underfoot. I strolled past other condo complexes and green fairways with cotton headed golfers and their white caps. Then suddenly, Déjà vu, a 1980 white chevy pulls up in my periphery. With my neck prickling and my arms tingling I looked over. It wasn’t my stepfather. It was a cop. “Where are you going?” “Home” I said. “Why aren’t you in school?”. “I felt sick and didn’t feel like going to the clinic.” He looked unconvinced as he sauntered around the vehicle and opened up the back door telling me “Git in”. “Sweet! My first ride in a police car” is what went through my head. It was my first of a few encounters with officer Jarvis. I told him where I lived and explained my latch key kid status and that my hard working mom would not be home until her second job finished around 9:30. He let me go and said he would be speaking with her later. I don’t think he did as nothing ever came of it. He was actually a really cool cop. He always ended up letting me go and wound up knowing a few of us in that neighborhood on a first name basis.
I left school one other time after that. Mr M we shall say, was the hardest paddling curmudgeon of the school. I never saw him smile. He was stern with a shiny bald head. Whereas most teachers would make a kid bend over the desk at the front of the classroom, Mr. M would say “outside put your hands against the wall.” The resounding thwack would make every student in the surrounding portables jump a little in their seats. He was notorious. I would see kids come back in with their cheeks flushed, sometimes glistening with tears. He was my math teacher. I was still performing well and was the first one to finish my quiz on this day. I went up to the desk and set my quiz down in the designated spot. Feeling elated, because I knew I aced it so quickly, I reached over and rubbed his shiny bald head. He smacked my arm back with a rage I hadn’t seen since the nuns. I about shit myself when he yelled, “OUTSIDE! ASSUME THE POSITION!” I bolted out that door and kept running until I was off campus. Slowing down, I sauntered off to the beach a half mile away through the royal palm tree lined historic district with the quaint tourist shops that sold seashell and shark tooth necklaces to the tourists. In a secluded spot among the sea grapes I sat and just chilled, watching the sunlight glisten off a thousand small rippling waves on a quiet Gulf of Mexico. I paid a little bit of attention to the time and slipped back on campus to catch the bus home so I could avoid another run in with officer Jarvis.
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