the terror of Bridge Street

Bubba sings opera. 

Bubba loves Kate. 

Bubba drops little stones 

down through the grate. 

Bubba sings opera. 

Bubba cuts bait. 

Bubba watches fishermen 

swagger past the gate. 

Bubba sings opera. 

Bubba’s ribs quake when 

Bubba sees the little ones 

skipping to the lake. 

Bubba sings opera. 

mama’s heartache. 

thirty seven candles drip 

all over Bubba’s cake. 

The year he was in fourth grade, his family had moved again. They seemed to move right on cue every two years, and it always kept him just a little unsettled and insecure among his peers. The new neighborhood was always a challenge—getting acquainted, learning the pecking order, finding a place in it without getting hurt, forming alliances, learning which adults were friend and which were foe to the energy of kids. This neighborhood was a little different though. The houses and most of their occupants were at or beyond retirement age. There were almost no kids around at all—except Brent.

Brent had a pretty severe mental handicap. He spoke in simple chopped syntax with a noticeable slur to his speech when he was in a good mood. When his temper flared, which seemed to be as often as not, he had no syntax at all. At such times he seemed only to be able to push out undifferentiated vowels with his rage.

Usually, Brent was packing his Daisy air rifle whenever he was out and about the neighborhood. He always wanted to play, and that nearly always meant pointing the Daisy at you and either shooting you in the face with it at point blank range or poking you in the ribs with the barrel. Nobody really had any patience for this sort of thing, and play time with Brent nearly always ended up angry and fighting. And fighting with Brent was a particularly bad idea. He was bigger than everyone else, and stronger, and reacted strictly on the basis of his rage, having no rational temperament to balance him. And there was always the problem of the Daisy, which instantly turned into a formidable club at such times. Its barrel was dented and scarred from this kind of hard service, and everyone imagined that the damage to the gun was inflicted against the skulls and ribs and arms and legs of kids who had crossed Brent in his endless career as a child.

All the neighborhood kids had felt the blows of Brent’s Daisy at least once. There seemed to be so few kids in the neighborhood in part because everyone learned quickly to run for cover when Brent showed up, and to peek out the window before answering a knock at the door, just in case he was there seeking a playmate to torment.

Brent was a remarkable slice dissected and extracted from the human psyche. He was pure emotion entirely divorced from reason. In his peaceful moments, he was generous and sweet and gentle. When hurt, he lashed out with a lunging fury that knew no fear, no boundaries, no balance. He seemed to be a distillation of the raw pure animal spirit that lies hidden and regulated and often suppressed in the hearts of all of us.

Thirty-five years later, he wondered what had become of this tragic, haunted soul. Now he understood as he could not have as a child that buried deep within himself were the same primal urges and intensity that were so transparent in Brent. He now knew that Brent had given him a glimpse of a part of himself that he could never have seen in any other way. A part of him that rarely was expressed openly, and always was monitored and censored far below the conscious level of action. A part of him that found more subtle ways to express itself than Brent had, but that was at its core no more sophisticated. The memories of Brent now stirred his recognition of this animal creature deep in his heart with a new awareness. The terror of Bridge Street had actually been a gift that he had not recognized as such until many years later.