Taunting the Reaper

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       I should explain how improbable it is that I survived beyond my teens. Here are a few of the many instances where, as a boy, I taunted the Grim Reaper’s snare...

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       I was seven years old. I’m not entirely sure whether or not I intended to do it, but I was a show-off, so I’d put 4-to-1 odds on intentional. Keith Sanson and I were playing army in the upstairs of his family’s spacious old farmhouse. I’d guess that the ceilings were nigh on fifteen feet high, which made the stairs especially long. I recall that the back stairs were particularly steep.

       I was standing at the top of the back stairs when Keith pretended to shoot me with his broomstick rifle. I grabbed my chest and leaned backward. I wasn’t worried about being hurt by my fall down the stairs because I was wearing my hard-plastic army helmet. The first jolt was the top of my head, and then I continued to cartwheel end-over-end to the bottom and out onto the kitchen floor. Keith’s mom rushed to attend to my injuries.

       “Are you okay, Scotty?!” Gerald shrieked.

       “Lucky thing I was wearing my army helmet!” The little chirping birdies fluttered around my head, much like those that Sylvester the cat experienced when the anvil intended for Tweetie Pie clobbered his feline noggin, instead. “I’m okay.” I reached up and felt the narrow, flimsy strip of broken plastic that remained strapped to my head.

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       My mother gave me a bow and steel-tipped arrows for Christmas when I was nine years old. Keith’s parents gave him a high-powered BB gun. As we often did, Keith and I hiked down the “little lane,” a narrow dirt access road to the farm’s fields. When we got to the burn pile at the end of the lane, Keith offered to let me play with his BB gun if he could try out my bow. Somehow, we got into a showdown. I don’t remember who pointed first, but Keith drew back the bow’s taut string, and I pointed the BB gun at his face. I looked straight down the shaft of his arrow into Keith’s eyes as he did into mine down the barrel of my BB gun. We stared each other down for a long time.

       THUNK!!! Keith’s fingers had slipped off the string, and the arrow’s steel tip stuck in the inside corner of my right eye. I instinctively grabbed the arrow’s shaft and jerked it out. Blood spurted. Keith grabbed my wrist and guided me along the little lane back to his house. As we trotted, I couldn’t see through all the blood, but I could feel my shirt and pants becoming drenched. The last thing I recall is hearing Gerald’s screech as Keith pulled me through the doorway.

       It turned out that I was okay, and I never had any resulting problems with my sight. I sure was a lucky little boy.

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       At ten years old, the next-door neighbor boy Kenny and I were moving a doghouse across my yard for my dog Tippy. We were porting the doghouse above our heads so we could make sure we didn’t trip over Tippy. When we got to the spot where I wanted it set, we counted to three and dropped it. I slipped as we let go, and the house landed on my head. A one-inch nail sticking out of the frame drove into the outer portion of my left eye orbit bone. One-eighth of an inch to the left and I would have lost the sight in my left eye; one-eighth of an inch to the right would have pierced my temple. I settled for three stitches instead.

       That same summer, I was teaching myself how to do flips on the diving board at the Lockbourne Air Force Base swimming pool. I had become quite good at doing a one-and-a-half somersault on the low diving board. I was perfecting my routine and striving to complete the somersault as early as possible to enter the water perfectly vertical with the slightest splash. I wanted to spring as high as I could and yet be as close to the board as possible. I completed the one-and-a-half with lots of height to spare, however, I was a little too close to the board. WHOP!!! I smacked my head on the diving board, and it split my head wide-open. I was so disoriented after I entered the water that I couldn’t find the surface. Seconds shy of drowning, I managed to flounder my way to the edge of the pool, crawled out, and lay there on the concrete for a while before the lifeguard finally noticed my blood everywhere. Seven stitches and I was on my merry way.

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       About a year later, a couple of the boys and I were playing out in my backyard. I think it was Danny Legg, Russell Gee, and me. I had built quite a reputation for being a daredevil. As such, I dared the boys to join me in a game that would make any mother cringe in horror. We began taking turns shooting a steel-tipped arrow straight up and watching for it to return to Earth. We pulled the string all the way back, released the arrow with a twang, and intently watched it disappear into the blue sky overhead. We stared straight up, poised to spring out of the plummeting arrow’s descent in the last split-second between seeing the arrow reappear and hearing its “Thunk!” as it punched several inches into the dirt near our feet.

       I suppose that was sort of like Russian roulette, except more than one person got to enjoy the thrill of defying death at the same time!

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       The Scioto River skirted our little town of Shadeville three miles south of Columbus, Ohio. This river was so polluted with industrial waste that one could see oily streaks in the water comprised of every possible color: orange, red, purple, yellow—you name it.

       Bait diggers (those who made their living digging red worms from the banks of the river) sometimes left their boats near the bridge that spanned the Scioto. When finished for the day, they took their trolling motor and steering pole(s) with them and usually chained and padlocked their boat to a tree. I was twelve years old when Keith, Danny, Russell, and I spotted one of their riverboats which they hadn’t secured to a tree. Caution should’ve deterred our folly because these bait diggers had a reputation around town for being extreme rednecks: the sort of people that didn’t pay much heed to the law. We figured they’d never know if we floated downstream in their little johnboat for a while and then paddled back upstream with the one-by-four boards we pulled out of a driftwood pile. So we dragged that boat into the foul water and pushed off. Heedless?

       The drifting downstream part worked out well, but those boards provided no headway against the stiff current. We abandoned the boat on the far side of the river and then swam across that nasty, contaminated water. That put us on the same side where we put in, except now we were a couple of miles downstream from Shadeville.

       We climbed out of the river into the stinking, mucky bank, realizing that we had become mired in the waste treatment plant’s delta that oozed into the Scioto River. We learned the hard way how they treated raw sewage in those days: They dumped it in the river. YUCK!!! Wading through those fields of filthy, putrid waste was the most disgusting experience of my entire life! By the time we trudged waist-deep through that vast sea of fermenting diseases to solid ground, we had coated ourselves with that horrible sludge—and leaches too! Once home, I took the longest shower I’ve ever taken.

       The next day, while Danny, Keith, and I were sitting on the big propane tank behind the church, an old, leathery-skinned, craggy woman walked up to us. She stood there with a bait digging claw hanging menacingly from her hand. “I know you boys took my boat.”

       We lied.

       She stepped aggressively close. “You help me get my boat back, and I won’t have to hurt you. Do you understand me?”

       All three of us chimed, “Yes, ma’am!”

       We helped the woman unload a boat from her trailer, along with her trolling motor, into the Scioto River. We puttered downstream until we found the spot where we had left her boat. It was gone!

       “You boys best not be jerkin’ my chain.”

       “Wait, look!” interjected Keith. “Someone dragged it away and tried to cover the tracks.”

       We followed these tracks to a large barn. An old man dressed in overalls came out of the nearby house. He denied knowing anything about her boat.

       The craggy woman casually raised her four-pronged bait digging claw, leaned forward, and skewered, “You reckon that boat is worth your miserable life, old man?”

       He suddenly remembered having secured the boat in his barn for safekeeping in case anyone came looking for it. He quickly unlocked the barn door and helped drag the woman’s boat back down to the river.

       We boys survived that misadventure, although Russell got awfully sick after swallowing a mouthful of the treatment plant’s sewage when he fell face-first. He recovered after an agonizing bout, so all ended well.

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       One of the biggest thrills I ever got was when I was thirteen years old. A whole bunch of us were sitting around the kitchen table at Keith’s house chitchatting. There was Keith, his mom and dad (Gerald and Wayne), his sister Darlene, his cousin Bill Daugherty, me, and several other people.

       Bill took off his gold St. Christopher medallion, smacked it down on the table, and emphatically declared, “If anyone ever stole my St. Christopher medal, I’d kill ‘em!”

       Before I go on, I need to emphasize that Bill took great pride in being a bad dude, a very bad dude. He made it clear to everyone that he would take no crap from no one. His toughness made him the star linebacker for the Amanda High School football team. Bill’s reputation for being mean matched his bravado.

       Did I tell you that as a boy I had a reputation for being a daredevil? About three breaths after Bill thumped his St. Christopher medal on the kitchen table, and while he and everyone else in the room were staring at it, I grabbed it lightning-fast, leaped from my chair, flung open the wooden screen door, and ran as quickly as my body could carry me. I heard a horrific verbal eruption in my wake. The spring-loaded door slammed behind me, and a few seconds later, it slammed again. I’ve never felt a more powerful gush of adrenaline. It’s a pity that the Guinness judges weren’t timing my 100-yard dash into the cornfield that day.

       I got down on my hands and knees and zigzagged out into the long rows of corn. Hunkering down, I waited. And waited. And snickered. And waited. And giggled. And waited. A couple of hours passed. I sneaked up to the house, slipped Bill’s necklace over the screen door handle, and vanished.

       Even though Keith was my best friend, I didn’t go up to his house for many days after that. I had defiantly and scathingly challenged Bill’s macho virility. And to further insult his egotistical manly self-image, I outran him too! I’m positive that if Bill had caught me, the consequences would’ve been grim.

       Yes, I was a lucky boy!

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       My half-brother Steve paid me to warm up his nearly brand-new 1968 Ford Torino once a week while he was in Vietnam. The job included driving his car up and down our long driveway for ten minutes. He paid me well for the job, but he wouldn’t have had to because, at thirteen, I loved to get behind the wheel of a sporty car.

       One Friday night in the summer of 1970, I let my friend, Greg Harder, talk me into taking Steve’s car for a spin around town. He didn’t have to do much convincing, though, because we had drunk most of a case of beer.

       Danger! Scott Zachary! Danger!

       I was far too soused to hear—much less heed—Mr. Wizzle’s advisory. Alcohol had become a regular instigator in my death-defying lunacy that despised any form of normalcy, that heckled the pallid wallflowers.

       Near the end of our little jaunt, I turned off the highway onto the gravel road leading to my house. I was driving about 50 mph when I made that turn—or rather, attempted to make that turn. I lost control and smashed into a cinder block porch. Fortunately, an elderly couple owned the house, and they had held me in high regard back in my paperboy days. I was able to talk them out of calling the police by assuring them that I would pay for the repair of their porch. Mom insisted that I also pay for fixing Steve’s car. That alone came to $1,318.79.

       I kept a running ledger of the balance that I owed my mom. It took every penny I could make mowing lawns, washing cars, and anything else I could do to earn money that summer to repay Mom for fixing Steve’s car and pay for the neighbors’ porch repair. One would think that should’ve cured me of drinking and driving. One would think. I went on to drive in an alcohol-induced blackout for thousands of hours until I hit a bottom harder than that cinder block porch.

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       I bought my first car at sixteen years old, a spiffy 1966 Ford Galaxie 500. She was a baby-blue convertible with a 390-cubic-inch engine, a 4-barrel carburetor, and bucket seats. Not long after I bought it, I was out cruising the roads, drunk. Once again, I tried to make a turn onto a gravel road at high speed. I lost control and slammed into a ditch. I tried several times to rock my way out of the ruts. I was stuck. I staggered to a nearby farmhouse and talked the farmer into pulling my car out of the ditch with his tractor.

       While I waited for the farmer, an Ohio State Trooper stopped. I was so drunk that there was no chance of convincing him otherwise. Instead, I acted as though I was deathly sick. I dropped to my knees beside his car where he couldn’t see me and stuck my finger down my throat. I puked and puked and puked. I told the officer that my friends had tricked me into getting drunk and that I would not be doing this again. Then I got down on my knees and puked some more.

       The Trooper had my car towed away to an impound lot, and he dropped me off at my house after obtaining my promise never to drink and drive again. As soon as he left, I called Fred to come pick me up so we could get my car out of impound. We did, and off to the bars we went.

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       Keith and I were good at shooting pool. Throughout high school, the witchery of eight-ball and nine-ball muted our awareness of time while practicing at the Stardust billiards hall, and we made scads of money hustling in the bars on the south end of Columbus. Few situations are more dangerous than hard-handed, brute construction workers realizing that a couple of smart-alecky teenagers shammed them into losing their paychecks. More than once, Keith and I flung our cue sticks and dashed out the door of a redneck bar with a herd of angry, brawny drunks in our wake.

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       Shortly after I graduated from high school in 1974, I got drunk and shacked up with a married woman who I would later marry. (I should’ve seen that as a big sleazy billboard foreboding my reckless, dysfunctional life ahead.) I also signed up for the Air Force on delayed enlistment. In the meantime, she went back to her abusive husband.

       With two months to kill before reporting to Basic Training in November, I partied hard. Several of us boys got drunk and wielded butcher knives and meat cleavers to rip off ten pounds of pot from two mafia thugs. My cut gave me a little drinking money until I started Basic Training.

       While driving home one night at 75 mph, my right-front tire dropped off the road. In my drunken stupor, I over-corrected to get my car back onto the road and veered off into a cornfield. Taking out six or seven fence posts and a good half-acre of corn, I found myself in the back seat when the car stopped spinning. I had to use my jack to pry both of my front fenders away from the tires before I could drive out of there.

       The day before I got on the plane to Basic Training, I gave the remnant of my once-sweet car to my nephew, Lonny.

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       That was my childhood—my training ground for a life of alcoholic insanity. A hellion?

       I think it’s important to mention that the most significant stability in my childhood was the parents of my best friend, Keith. I spent a lot of time at their house while I was growing up. Keith’s mom, Gerald Sanson, was much more of a motherly figure to me than my own mother who focused primarily on tending to her alcoholism. My alcoholic father abandoned me when I was six years old. Keith’s dad, Wayne Sanson, filled that void to a significant degree. Thank you, Gerald and Wayne!!

       All of the authority figures in my family were full-blown practicing alcoholics: my mother, my father, my stepfather, my brother-in-law, and my older half-sister and half-brother. That in no way relieves me of responsibility for my drunken behavior throughout most of my adulthood. I’m only saying that I had lots of good deviate examples to follow early in my life; though, I do believe that I had the genetic tendency to drink. And drink I did!

       Most alcoholics perpetually blunder from one calamity to another spanning their entire lives. Few ever get sober and stay that way. Alcoholics—like me—must wipe out completely, thoroughly crash and burn, and lose everything to begin the process of recovery. There, in the pits of despair, doused in humility, the alcoholic has a chance at a lasting recovery if he/she is willing to do whatever it takes.