Geezer

         Geezer Doolittle was the meanest son of a bitch in Sanborn County. He’d been a real bully ever since elementary school, and he carried that reputation with him through junior high and one year of high school, until he dropped out. ‘Course, it wasn’t ‘til his second year of seventh grade that kids started calling him ‘Geezer.’ His real name was Richard, but his parents never got around to sending him to kindergarten until a year later than they should've. So when he flunked seventh grade, he became two years older than his classmates. And a whole lot meaner.

         If you believe the rumors, Geezer got his cousin pregnant when she was fifteen and he was twelve, and he beat up his own father two years later. Some say the old man was liquored up and hit Geezer’s mother, but others claim Geezer was the one who was drunk, and that his mother wasn’t even at home. Whatever really happened over the course of Geezer’s growing up, one thing everybody agreed on is that you didn’t want to catch him in a bad mood. Which was most of the time.

         I was lucky enough to have pulled a thorn out of Geezer’s paw, so to speak, when we were both in third grade. He was setting traps down by the mill pond, and a trap snapped shut on his foot. I happened to be fishing nearby with my brother J.R. (which aren’t really his initials, and no one remembers where they came from). Anyway, we heard Geezer yelp, so I dropped my pole and ran over to where the sound came from. Now, I’m betting that most kids would’ve turned around and snuck away, once they saw that it was Geezer. But for some reason he didn’t scare me. Or, rather, he did scare me, but I thought that if I treated him with respect, he might do the same for me. So I helped pry the trap open, and I let him use my shoulder as a crutch while we got ourselves back up the slope to the dirt road. Then I left him there while I ran for help.

         Well, by the time I got back with Mr. Johnson—he drives a bread truck, and I flagged him down on Route 46—Geezer had disappeared. He probably was embarrassed, so I paid him the courtesy of not telling anybody what had happened. I think he appreciated that gesture, because when he was picking on other kids over the years, he always left me alone. He never mentioned the incident with the trap to me, and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna bring it up.

         Geezer got himself beaten up pretty bad when he was seventeen. He'd been harassing a younger kid—Stevie Ryerson—a skinny little guy who don't talk a lot. Anyway, harassing Stevie proved to be a mistake, 'cause one night his cousin Dave and several other guys dragged Geezer right off his front porch and did a real job on him. Some people say that’s the only fight Geezer ever lost. Anyway, he walked with a bit of a limp after that night, and I don’t think he could see very well out of his left eye anymore. But all that didn’t stop him from picking on people. He just got a little more careful about who he went after.

         I'd pretty much forgotten about Geezer some time ago. I’m forty-three now, and I think I was around twenty when I last saw him. I moved to Cincinnati right about that time, and I've been back home only three times since—once for my brother’s wedding and twice for high school reunions. Jeez, don’t you hate those things? I went to my ten-year reunion, and just last month I took my wife with me to my twenty-fifth. I think it’s safe to say she that hated it as much as I did. It was all the typical conversation. “I remember when you and ...” Or, “You look so different.” Or, “Hey, whatever happened to what’s-her-name? You know—the one you...oh, is this your wife?” The only remark we all hadn’t heard before was, “Geezer Doolittle died.”

         What? I mean, he always lived on the edge, but somehow I assumed he’d outlast the rest of us. And the strange thing is that Geezer’s demise didn’t come about in a retaliation for something he did, or as a preemptive strike before he could do something to someone. No, he died trying to rescue his next-door neighbors from a fire. Word is that Geezer managed to get the kids out, but the ceiling collapsed on him when he went back in for the parents. All three of them were killed.

         Those kids live with their aunt and uncle now, and they named one of their pet goldfish ‘Geezer,’ as sort of a tribute, I guess. Poor guy never did shake that nickname. Anyway, the kids figured they’d carry on Geezer’s name by giving it to a critter that lives underwater, where fire can’t get to it. It’s strange, though, how that fish seems to bully the other ones all the time.