We Were Brothers by Barry Moser Page B

intellectually curious boy and a better athlete, my experience there might have been more rewarding. But despite the privilege and honor of going to Baylor, and despite the fact that it was eminently more stimulating than Sunnyside, I was neither intellectually curious nor athletically gifted. And neither was Tommy. Neither of us
caused
trouble, at least not intentionally, but both of us got into trouble from time to time. Nothing serious. We went where we were told to go. And we usually did what we were told to do—except for things like reading assignments and homework.
    MOST OF MY MEMORIES from that time have the visual qualities of dreams: the images are slightly out of focus and dissolve at the edge. The palette ismuted and nearly void of color. However, a few of those memories are clear and stand out in my mind’s eye in full, lucid color, like photographs. They are sharp and crisp to the edge of the memory and beyond, vivid and salient dioramas, like my first day.
    OUR FRONT YARD was in its usual morning shade from the large sweet gum tree that stood in the corner of our neighbors’ front yard next to our driveway. Chickadees and sparrows flitted about here and there. It was about seven o’clock.
    The grass in the shadow of the tree was wet with dew. I was apprehensive, and proud, as I stood on the front porch with Mother and Tommy. I was holding Pinocchio, who had just come back from one of his random scoots. Mother had dressed me as if I were going to the doctor’s office—clean underwear and fresh socks with holes in neither, neatly pressed slacks, a freshly ironed shirt, hair parted and combed and held in place with Vitalis hair tonic. She was worried that Pinocchio was going to get my shirt dirty. I would get my first uniform in two or three weeks along with all the other new boys, except that mine was a used uniform and would be tailored to fit me well by Nap Turner. Tommy was wearing his uniform, as all old boys were required to do on the first day unless they had good reason not to.
    The bus pulled up in front of our house, a small courtesy extended to new day boys on their first day of school. It was an International Harvester, I believe, painted battleship gray with the school’s full name, THE BAYLOR SCHOOL FOR BOYS, lettered on the sides in red ten-inch-high Gothic letters. The folding doors squealed when the driver cranked them open. Mother stood watching, holding little Pinocchio in her arms. She might have been crying.
    Tommy and I walked quickly across the wet grass, alert to fresh turds that the dog might have left behind. Tommy got on first. I got on after him, and seeing no familiar faces, I took the first available seat, which was behind the driver.
    The hard leather seats were lumpy, cracked with age, and listed forward from years of use and misuse. Tommy didn’t sit with me. He was as uncomfortable at Baylor as a whore in church and I think that this day I added to his discomfort. I embarrassed him, his little brother in his clean civvies and his Vitalis-stiff hair.
    BAYLOR WAS ON THE other side of town, ten or eleven miles away from our home, and given all the starts and stops picking up students and the occasional staff member, it was about an hour’s ride down McCallie Avenue toward town, across the river on the Walnut Street Bridge, on into North Chattanooga, through Stringer’s Ridge tunnel, into Red Bank, and finally turning left off of State Route 8 to the lush and verdant Baylor campus. When the bus doors clanked opened, I stepped down onto the paved quadrangle of The Baylor School for Boys, and my life changed for all time to come.
    NEITHER TOMMY NOR I was a stranger to the school. We had been campers at the Baylor Summer Camp, so we knew the campus as campers would, we knew a few older boys who worked as counselors, and we knew a few faculty members who oversaw the counselors and supervised various activities.
    As a first-year day boy, knowing the campus and some of the older