The Year the Lights Came On by Terry Kay Page A

out,” Freeman yelled gleefully, as he threw bodies aside and pulled Wesley away from the pounding. I could tell by his voice that Freeman was proud of my fighting style.
    “Let me alone,” Wesley commanded and Freeman dropped him.
    Freeman laughed. “Hey, boy. We got us a fight on our hands.” He hit Ted Prichard and Ted fell in a lump. “Where’s R. J.?”
    Wayne clubbed at me with his fist and I wrapped my legs around him and started squeezing. His eyes crossed and he began to slobber. I heard someone yell, “Colin. Sonny’s got a rock.” I looked up and saw Sonny standing above me, saw the hammer swing of his arm, and I felt something cracking against the back of my neck. I released Wayne. The sky turned black, then scarlet, then silver. I could feel blood running down my neck. I could hear Freeman directing R. J. and Otis and Paul, like a general: “Hit ’em! Hit ’em!” And then I heard Wesley’s pained cry: “That’s my little brother…”
    The sky turned black again and I saw someone running inside the corridor of a long, blinding-white building. The muscles of my legs tried to lift me, but couldn’t. I fell forward on my hands and the running figure in the corridor of the long, blinding-white building flashed into focus: I was that running figure and I wondered where I was and why I was there. The blackness rolled into my head like a tornado. There was a thunderous, deafening sound, then no sound, then a frightening, loud, sustained whistle. I could feel the blood circling around my shoulder, and then the familiar touch of a familiar someone, and I knew Lynn was on her knees, cradling me, rocking me in her arms, and crying. “He’s gonna die. He’s gonna die,” she sobbed, swabbing at the stream of blood with her dress.
    “Shut up, Lynn,” I whispered through dry lips.
    The terrible blackness returned and, for the first time in my life, the thought of dying was real—clouds enveloping me, lifting me effortlessly. Yes, I thought, that’s what The Anderson Independent meant when it printed that Death Takes So-and-So in its obituary section.
    “He’s gonna die,” Lynn repeated. I believed her. Lynn was amazingly perceptive.
    “He better get up and do some fightin’,” Freeman ordered, dropping Seymour Hillary with a knee to the stomach. Freeman did not know I had been hit with a rock, and for some ridiculous reason I wanted to laugh. I loved Freeman Boyd. He was incredible.
    “He’s been busted with a rock, Freeman,” Lynn screamed angrily.
    Freeman turned quickly toward me. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, and turned back to the fight.
    I rolled on my shoulder in Lynn’s arms and looked through a blood-blur screen. It seemed every boy in school was fighting, grade one to grade nine. Otis was pounding on Edward Roach; Freeman was rearranging Dupree’s facial features; R. J. and Jack had five younger kids backed up; Alvin Bond, the tallest boy in school, was slapping at anyone in reach; and Wesley was straddling Sonny on the ground. He had Sonny’s arms pinned and was spitting in his face.
    I had never seen such a fight. It was fantastic. Beautiful. Kicking and swinging and pinching and tackling. A haze of red dust was ankle-deep, rising like early morning fog over a river of years of antagonism and frustration. The fight we’d waited for, prayed over, talked about, was finally taking place and I could not join the battle.
    Suddenly, teachers appeared. They were everywhere, pulling, pushing, threatening, demanding—until the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side was separated and glaring, group to group, from across ten feet of clay basketball court that somehow perfectly symbolized the difference we had known: they were in the freethrow lane and we were out of bounds.
    Wade Simmons was away for the day, attending a meeting in Athens, and the only male teacher present was Dewitt Hollister. He was a cranky old man who thrilled at the thought of administering punishment. It was a sickness with