The Boxer

The Wood Shack we lived in for a time after mom left dad. Photo taken over 20 years ago at a family reunion.

The Boxer

I dug my toe into the dirt and felt my shoe slip on the small pebbles on the dirt road.  I wanted to get a good start.  It was August, but the droplets of sweat on my neck and streaming down my naked torso from under my arms was not from the heat and humidity.  It was late in the day, that time between dinner and nightfall, when the air is still, and the damp heat hangs over everything like a wet blanket.  I was nervous. My twelve-year old legs were twitchy like a cat’s -ready to spring. I wanted to not only beat my opponent in this hastily arranged 100-yard dash, I wanted to humiliate him.  As I lined up to race against this 6-foot three inch 40-year old monster, I thought of all the reasons I wanted to humiliate him.  I wanted to beat him because of my mom, and I wanted to beat him to wipe away the memory of the animal with the big brown eyes – eyes that would look up at me lifeless for the rest of my life. If intensity was a flame, at that moment I was a fully stoked locomotive.

When mom left dad in 1972 to move back to Louisa County, the place she had been born, she had nothing.  And because it had been a spur of the moment decision, we really had no place to live.  My aunt Nancy and her two young children were temporarily living in a two-room wood shack on my grandmother’s property.  Nancy had just left her own husband.  And although the shack was small with no running water, she offered to share that modest space temporarily with my mom and her four kids until mom could find something permanent. 

Because Louisa County was very rural and very poor, there were plenty of cheap houses in the county for sale or rent.  However, mom had no income.  So, the first thing my mom did was apply for welfare.  It took about four months, but she got it.  Luckily, a four-room house on a third of an acre became available across the dirt road from my grandmother’s property. Because the house had limited running water (kitchen sink only) and no bathrooms, the mortgage payment fit into my mom’s welfare budget – just barely.  And like the two-room wood shack, we had an outhouse. The good news is that we no longer had to draw our water from a well.  

One thing I’ve through the years when traveling through rural communities is how you can drive for miles with no houses and then all of a sudden, you will see a group of houses clustered together.  This was no different.  In addition to our house, there were five other houses lumped together on our side of the dirt road on small parcels, all with outhouses. To get to a paved road, you had to drive one mile in one direction and two miles in the other.  There were no other houses in either direction.  It was kind of bizarre in that we had acres and acres of woods and fields to play in, but we had to be very careful when playing in our small yard not to step into a neighbor’s yard! This cluster of small houses down a remote dirt road was my neighborhood during the formative years of my life.

Soon after settling in, we discovered an abandoned house through the woods and over a creek.  Although abandoned, it was not in bad shape.  We attempted to get in, but it was locked up pretty good.  After a few months, a family moved in.  Until then, our only companions were our cousin Buckwheat and two black kids who lived in one of the other houses. So, were thrilled to learn that the family had four kids close to our ages. 

As hard as social isolation was for us, it may have been harder for my mom.  At least we had school five days a week for most of the year.  When mom moved back to Louisa County in 1972 with four kids in tow, she had just turned 29. It was just a matter of time before the father of those four kids, Theodore “Ted” Marcum, would become my mom’s lover.   Eventually, when Ted and my mom began dating, he would sleep over, which made all of the kids very uncomfortable. There was not a lot of privacy in a four-room house with thin walls.  To be honest, I hated it when he slept over.

Although my memory is not great, I think the story was that Ted had just separated from his wife and had moved from West Virginia to Louisa to find work at the Nuclear Power Plant at Lake Anna.  The Plant was still under construction and was providing lots of jobs. As a result, people from all over the east coast, and from all walks of life, were moving to Louisa County – from blue collar laborers to Ivy League educated scientists and engineers.

Ted was a very proud West Virginian.  He was also a big man, standing over 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighing nearly 225 pounds. He had boxed in the army and wanted everyone to know it.  I remember he had huge, scarred up hands and liked to chew and spit tobacco.  Boxing was his sport and he was committed to teaching it to his kids.  His oldest son was a year older than I was and a very good athlete.  His daughter was about my age and skinny as a rail, but almost as strong as any boy.  His two younger boys were closer in age to my sister Paula and my brother Keith, who were two and three years younger than me.

It was not long before Ted had built a makeshift outdoor boxing ring with a dirt floor and ropes tied around trees.  He also had put up a heavy bag and a speed bag.  And it was not long after that he began giving the Franklin kids boxing lessons. I think he wanted competition for his own kids.  As a result, he would get us in the ring for three round matches of three minutes each.  Boxers are not only athletic with incredible hand speed, but also have endurance. A three-minute round can feel like 30 minutes.  If a first round had been incredibly active, we would sometimes just stop after the second round. Ted hated that and would call us Pussy Cats, but without the “Cat.” Yes, he had colorful language, even in front of his daughter. 

Because I was the only one really old enough and big enough to box his oldest son, I unfortunately had to get in the ring with him and would proceed to get my butt kicked.  I did get better and learned how to stay in the ring with him for almost two rounds.  I don’t think I ever made it past the second round though. To be honest, I think his oldest son hated it.  He seemed like a good kid, and although we never became buddies – the Marcum’s did not stay long enough for that – we got along ok.  I don’t think he liked his dad dating my mom any more than I did. 

Here was the problem.  There was a big gap between his oldest son’s ability and the rest of his kids.  When Ted would put me in the ring with his daughter, who was my age, I would kick her butt.  Obviously, I was too big to box his other two sons.  So, I was stuck boxing his oldest son.  However, as a result, I became a pretty good boxer.  Thankfully, I only had to use my boxing skills once.  However, during that fight, which occurred because of a disagreement during an outdoor basketball game, I bloodied my opponent pretty badly.  I was in high school at the time and was dating Elizabeth.  The rumor around school after that fight was you do not want to mess around with Johnny Franklin.  In fact, some of Elizabeth’s male friends told her that she might want to think twice about dating me because I had a bad temper. 

Unfortunately, I was not the only one with a bad temper.  Ted, all six foot three inches of him, was a walking keg of dynamite that could explode at any time.  He was also a bully. Because I was of average height and build and did not play sports, he thought I was a push over.  He failed to realize that West Virginians are not the only ones with tenacity and grit. So, it pissed him off that his daughter was not able to beat me in the ring.

One day his ego and male bravado got the best of him. So, he challenged me to a 100-yard dash.  In some ways, this was comical.  Here we were, an overweight 40-year old lining up on a country dirt road to race a skinny 12-year old.  To be honest, I did not know if I could beat him, but I was willing to try.  And I started thinking, “How is the heck did we get to this place?”

This moment had been building for months.  Because of Ted, mom had started drinking.  At first it was just a few beers, but they began drinking liquor, and they would get into heated arguments.  Unlike my dad, who would hit my mom, I do not think Ted ever hit my mom. However, my dad was a skinny 5 foot 8 inches, not a 225-pound 6-foot three boxer who knew how to use his fists.  Ted even bragged that he had once killed a man with those fists. Knowing Ted, it was probably true. But even though he never hit my mom, those arguments were damaging psychologically.  And I hated Ted for it.

I also hated Ted for making me do something that I would regret for the rest of my life.  The memory of the act itself is fuzzy, but not the feeling.  Somehow, a dog had ended up in our yard.  I think it was a beagle or some similar breed.  It may have been a hunting dog that had gotten lost and then had gotten hurt.  It was not unusual for stray dogs to end up in our yard.  However, for some reason Ted thought that this dog needed to be euthanized. Ted had a pistol.  However, instead of performing the act himself, he wanted me to do it.

Now, at this point, I had not been around guns very much.  So, I was scared of guns.  Second, I did not want to shoot a helpless dog.  However, as I said before, Ted was a bully.  And there was no way he was going to let me out of this.  So, we led the dog into the woods between our two houses. Ted stood over me telling me where to aim the gun. As I stood over this helpless animal with a gun aimed at its head I began to cry. Ted started calling me the “P” word. I did not know it at the time, but this was pure child abuse. In some ways it was worse than getting hit. Making someone do something that is morally wrong damages how they see themselves. I already had plenty of shame. This was only going to add another layer.  I eventually closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.  I wished I had never opened my eyes again, but I did. 

Now, here we were – about to race. Ted still thought he was as fast as he was when he was a boxer the army.  And he wanted to prove it.  Although I was skinny, one thing I did have was speed.  A few years later, as a 10^th grader in high school, I would beat one of our high school’s best sprinters in a 100-yard dash in gym class. However, that day I was racing a 40-year old former boxer in the army who believed that time would never catch up.  And he was racing a 12-year old who was chasing time, who could not wait to grow up.  So, when my brother lowered his hand at the finish line as our signal to start, I took off and never looked back.  They said I beat Ted by eight to ten yards.  He never had a chance.  That day was the beginning of the end of that boxer being in my life. 

As the arguments and fights between my mom and Ted got worse, my mom confided in my grandmother.  A few weeks after that race, my grandmother told my uncle Billy.  Billy was a few years younger than my mom.  And I looked up to him.  He had served in Vietnam in special forces and was a bad ass.  In addition, he loved my mom very much.  It was Billy’s wife, Margie, who had rescued my mom from my dad a few years earlier.  Although Billy was only 5 feet 8 inches tall, he made up for his lack of size with energy and bravado.   

One day an argument got really bad between Ted and my mother.  As it escalated, I ran across the dirt road to my grandmother’s house, and my grandmother called Billy.  Billy arrived at our house with aunt Margie.  In addition, word had gotten out and several other relatives showed up.  As Billy approached our house, mom came out and tried to get him to leave.  She said “Billy, I can handle this.” At this point, there was no stopping Billy from intervening.  In so many words, he told Ted to get the hell off of mom’s property and to never set foot in her yard again. As the two men approached each other I knew it was not going to end well.  What happened next was quick.  In some ways, it probably turned out for the best.  Without warning, Ted threw two punches that knocked my uncle out cold.

I thought my uncle was dead. My mom became hysterical and Margie went to the car to get a gun. Mom began beating on Ted. Before Margie came back with her pistol, Ted was gone.  It took a few minutes for Billy to revive. He accomplished what he set out to do – to get Ted out of Mom’s life, although he did it with his chin instead of his fists!

After that incident, mom had nothing to do with Ted. Two months later, Ted and his family left never to return. The irony is that the one man who taught me to defend myself was also the man that I hated even more than my father. And although mom had eliminated one man in her life, another man was about to enter, but this man would be in my life for decades.