James Has Fallen
By: Terry Barr
Tags: Weeds And Wildflowers, Schools, Religion, Nonfiction, Friendship

James Gilliand was one of those kids who, on the first day of school in any random grade, appeared at a desk, having moved from some other school district far far away. He was a tall kid with close-cut and somewhat oily black hair. His complexion was a tint or two darker than most of ours, too, but even on that first day, he smiled wide and seemed ready to belong.

James wasn’t a loud guy. He didn’t make trouble either, and on the playground fields, he accounted well for himself. Tall enough to be a basketball go-to; rangy enough to be uncoverable in football; and agile enough to make infield plays, though never too fast.

What I’m saying is that James exuded a non-threatening air; he fit into our boy clique of Keith and Mark and Randy and Reggie well enough. I suppose I learned where his family lived, maybe way down Clarendon Avenue, but that didn’t matter so much. Our school friend group didn’t always carry over into neighborhood games. Many of my neighborhood friends were older, anyway, so there was enough “play” to go around.

So James became an easy, comfortable, uniform school friend. I feel like once, on some early fall day, I threw a touchdown pass to a wide-open James and we celebrated as boys do afterward. I wish I could see the moment as clearly as I do his smile, but with memory, nothing stays certain for very long anyway.

What I do remember, to my shame and near disbelief, was the day I saw James get up from his desk behind me and walk up to the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. Maybe he was asking for permission to use the restroom; maybe he was heading to the blackboard to solve a division problem. Maybe I went temporarily insane. We’ll likely never know.

But on his way back to his desk, as he was clearly minding his own business and thinking nothing of what could happen to a tall, well-liked new boy, I took a very strange, and uncharacteristic for me, chance.

I stuck my leg out in the aisle just as he got to my desk.

Now, boys in my grade often did this, usually to no success. The best that had ever happened was someone stumbled or hopped up, causing a distraction that our teacher, Mrs. Shivers, chalked up to no harm, no foul. Of course, we boys did much worse to each other: using two fingers to snap down on each other’s arms; popping each other on the arms for no reason other than suspected cooties.

Or, in the worst of near-puberty games, hiding behind doors and cracking each other in the “nuts” as we entered some unsuspecting space.

Who really understands boys of this age anyway?

So, did I think my leg trick would work? Did I want it to work? Did I think James Gilliand would see my leg and stand there smiling at me until I moved it? Did I convince myself that James was such a friend now that any trick on him would be friend-fitting?

I no longer remember what I thought before, but I do remember what I thought as I saw James hit my leg at ankle-level. I remember what I felt as I saw what happened next.

I truly never had and have never since seen a live human being imitate a felled tree before. It’s like he stopped dead, teetered for only a second, and then fell straight and true, forward onto his face. Nothing broke his fall or tried to: not his hands, not his knees, not anyone else’s mercy.

Right on his face, he fell.

He wasn’t hurt, and he wasn’t mad, either, when he rose. He just looked at me, shook his head, and grinned.

I want to tell you that Mrs. Shivers yanked me up from my seat, whacked me, and then sent me to Coach Howell’s, our principal’s, office. But she didn’t. Did she even scold me? Did she make me write sentences on the board or for homework:

“I will not trip James Gilliand or anyone else ever again?”

No, she didn’t.

I know that I apologized to James, and though I was mighty impressed by his fall and my power in that moment, I also know that I have felt appropriately bad about my act ever since.

Sometime later, though not that day, James and I got into an argument. It wasn’t about religion or politics or even about Alabama-Auburn football. I really don’t know what had happened, but I do know that for the only time in my life, I neither backed down from a “fight” nor could release myself from the headlock James gripped me in. In our boyhood wrestling matches, my brother Mike, our friend Robert, and I had imposed imitation headlocks, but when James caught me, I understood their power.

“Stop fighting Terry,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I continued struggling for another few seconds, but I’ve always been a realist, and I knew in those seconds that James Gilliand’s hold on me couldn’t be broken.

And that’s an apt way of sealing this memory, I think. A way I can try to make peace with.