Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Read Online Free PDF Page B

still the South and it was still the 1960s, and we were as steeped in racism as frogs in a swamp. There were only a few black students and only one was a boy. John was a likeable guy, and I felt for him as he struggled to fit in. At the end of the school year, one of the other seniors—a kid named Tim who, ironically, had moved to our town from up north—decided to challenge the “black kid” to a fight. Word got around quickly. By afternoon, it seemed as though everybody in the school was buzzing about it. The time was set for three-thirty in the afternoon by the gym.
    The whole thing disgusted me. All day long, I pondered the situation and tried to decide what to do. I thought about the fact that the whole time I was growing up on the farm, my best friend was a black kid. I thought about Indians and forts and Miss Mildred’s collard greens. And when the hour for the fight came, so had my decision.
    When the last bell rang, I walked around to the side of the gym where a crowd had already gathered in a loose circle. Girls holding their school books whispered to each other. Boys crowded their way to the front for a ringside seat. The gladiators arrived almost simultaneously, working their way to the center of the crowd. John was outnumbered a hundred to one, but he had too much pride not to show.
    I couldn’t wait any longer. Stepping into the center of the crowd, I confronted Tim. “This isn’t right,” I told him. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”
    Tim looked at me, puzzled, but said nothing. A low murmur rippled through the crowd.
    “There isn’t going to be a fight,” I said, looking around. “So just break this up and go home.”
    Now Tim got angry. He twisted his face into a sneer. “What’s your problem, Boykin?” he spat. “You don’t want to see this nigger get his ass beat?”
    I hated that word. My face flushed red. “I’ll tell you what, Tim, you better start by trying to whip my ass first, because you’re going to have to get by me before you get to him.”
    We were just about nose to nose by then, and we stared each other down. Tim was furious, but I could see the calculation in his eyes: he’d signed up to fight someone smaller than him, not someone bigger. After a long moment, he backed down.
    I turned to the crowd. “Go home. No fight today.”
    Then, for the first time, I looked at John. “Let’s go. It’s over,” I said. He followed me out to the parking lot and without a word, we parted ways.
    I knew I was risking scorn and accusations of being a “nigger lover.” But I also knew that the whole time I was growing up on the farm, Junior’s parents treated me like one of their own. And besides all that, I just couldn’t abide a bully.

4
    AFTER GRADUATION, I went on to Virginia Tech on a football scholarship and was accepted into the Corps of Cadets, a military program that led to an army commission. My dad and uncles had laid down the pattern for Boykin family military service and I wanted to do them proud. Since the Spanish American war, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has trained officers to lead the nation’s forces, and I knew VT cadets had earned a truckload of decorations for valor.
    Since I was playing football on scholarship, I lived in the athletic dorm instead of the upper quadrangle with the rest of the corps. During the last weeks of the summer of 1966, while the other cadets were in indoctrination classes learning how to march and salute and so forth, I sweated my butt off in two-a-days and fell into bed at night, exhausted. In fact, I don’t think I even looked at the contents of my standard-issue olive-drab duffel bag until the night before the first day of classes. That was a mistake.
    Late that evening, alone in my dorm room, I thought I’d better take a look at what I had. I unhooked the top of my duffle bag, upended it, and inspected the mess: a large pile of grey shirts and trousers, some wool and some cotton. A hodgepodge of