And then again: “Well.” She smiled.
She had no explanation as to how he escaped polio’s near-paralyzing grip. Neither did the doctors. But Stan explained his recovery to himself like this: he knew someone was watching as he was being picked on. He knew that anyone who might’ve been watching would know that he, John Stanley Parker, ought not to be beaten up anymore. He never used crutches or leg braces again.
• • •
The following year, 1953, John James found work welding on oil rigs around San Antonio, Texas, and Stan entered the second grade. His teacher was a cruel woman. As the son of an itinerant ironworker, Stan, and indeed the entire family, was used to displays of disdain by local residents they met in each town. But his teacher took the cake.
In class, she referred to Stan as “gypsy-carnival trash” and “Dumbo” because of his large ears. For no reason that he could think of, she made him stand in the classroom corner with his nose touching the wall while wearing a cone hat made of newspaper. When the hat slid down on his head, his ears stuck out even more. He tried but could not fully comprehend the depth of her cruelty or its source. It mystified him.
And then his body rebelled against him once more: he contracted rheumatic fever. Often fatal in children and damaging to heart tissue, he survived without apparent side effects after a three-month convalescence. When he returned to school, his teacher made him stand in class while she warned the other students not to get too close to him, for fear they’d catch his “cooties”—her name for rheumatic fever. On the playground, the attacks by some of his classmates became ritualistic. The older boys grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, then reached in and punched him, and when he was on the ground, they kicked dirt on him. Stan wondered who was watching him now and figured, well, nobody.
His father proved him wrong. He announced that he was going to help his son end this terror. He instructed Stan to play along with the bullies the next time they approached. One day, Stan stood at the merry-go-round and started spinning it, ostensibly happy to entertain himself. He then announced to the other boys that if they really wanted to make him sick, they should make him ride the merry-go-round and spin it as fast as they could.
One boy, one of the older ones, liked this idea and walked up for a closer look, which is when Stan shoved him forward and slammed his head into the spinning bars, knocking him unconscious. Stan was escorted to the principal’s office and suspended from school for one week. It was his first lesson in the pleasure—and the cost—of seeking revenge. He was also glad to be out of his teacher’s torture chamber. A few weeks later, when his father found new work in Little Rock, Arkansas, they moved away. He was free to begin again in a new city, with a new life.
Thus began a dizzying series of cross-country trips, to Minnesota, New York State, Texas. Often Stan returned from school to find the mobile home already hooked to the family’s double-wheeled truck, the big engine idling. His mother had duct-taped the family’s TV to the legs of the kitchen table and sealed the end of the trailer home’s sewer hose, carefully securing it to the floor. She had stowed the kids’ bikes in the back of the truck, among John James’s welding tools. The only thing left was to lift away the trailer steps and place them in the truck.
On the road, the boys read maps and helped navigate as their father drove. John James was also eager to detour to see anything of historical or social significance. As Stan’s sense of the vastness of the United States grew, so did the closeness of his family. Of the boys, Helen Laverne demanded obedience and she was vigilant about their behavior as they grew up in this fluid, ever-changing environment. Swearing was not tolerated and was answered by making Stan and his brothers wash their mouths out with soap.
No matter how much trouble he got into, though, Stan felt that his mother and father loved him unconditionally. His mother often met him and his brothers after school, no matter where they’d unhooked the trailer, with a piece of pie in one hand—and in the other, a list of household chores. In fall 1955, when Stan was almost nine, they fetched up in the pine woods and on the freshwater beaches of St. Ignace, Michigan. Stan’s father had gotten a job on a project building the Mackinac Bridge, then the world’s longest suspension bridge. This would be some of the happiest times of his nomadic boyhood.
• • •
The Mackinac Bridge spans the Straits of Mackinac, joining Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Stan and his brother roamed the beaches, pretending they were at Normandy, storming German troops in World War II. At his new school, no one knew him as a kid with any problems—no crutches, no illnesses, no history of being picked on in class. He began watching after other kids less fortunate, those terrorized by others.
One day a classmate pushed a girl down in the snow. Stan helped her up and confronted the bully. Without warning, the bully socked him right in the nose. Stan woke up watching the school yard swing set come into focus. A few weeks later, when the boy pushed the girl into the snow again, Stan didn’t take any chances: he walked up and hit the kid squarely in the face. That settled the issue. The girl quickly told her friends that Stan Parker was a “real Prince Charming.”
The idea that such behavior could be perceived as heroic was a revelation to him. His father taught him how to stare at an opponent when facing him down, unblinking, a skill that Stan started practicing when he talked with people, even as a young boy. His father also imparted secrets about the sweet science of boxing. (They agreed not to mention these lessons to his mother.) On top of this, his father was building America, bit by bit. As a union ironworker, the elder Parker would climb skyscrapers in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas. He worked on B-52 Stratofortress hangars in Texas, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and along the East Coast. He helped build a dozen coal-fired power plants across the plains and mountain states. He built bridges in Colorado and Mississippi and across the St. Lawrence Seaway.
When Stan was eleven, the family moved to Denver, and there young Parker’s life changed in a monumental way: his father told him he was no longer a boy. He told him it was time to be addressed by his real name: John Stanley Parker—Stan, for short. This felt like a matter of initiation to young Stan and thrilled him. His mother objected, but his father prevailed.
By now, he’d lived in twenty-three states and attended twenty schools. He’d been in dozens of bloody fights (and would eventually be knocked out twice on school playgrounds). He felt like a seasoned young man, capable of some self-sufficiency. He got a paper route and started delivering the Denver Post.
Each day on his route, a twelfth-grade student in the neighborhood would tower over him and demand a percentage of his paper route money, threatening to beat him up if he didn’t comply. Stan, though only in sixth grade and almost two feet shorter than his aggressor, didn’t blink. The extortionist, likely surprised by this reaction, didn’t attack Stan.
When he explained the situation to his father, Stan was surprised to hear him say that this would be an excellent chance to “work on his left and right combinations.” They agreed that he would fight the kid and not tell Stan’s mother of the upcoming match. Stan was scared, but he was more scared of the continued harassment. His father insisted that the only way to keep the bully at bay was by confronting him.
One day after school, Stan informed the senior student that he was going to fight him. They set the date for a Friday after school.
The student looked surprised when Stan arrived in a pickup truck driven by his father, and even more so when his father got out and walked over with Stan to where he stood. His father looked at the kid and said, “This is going to be a fair fight. I’m going to make sure of that.”
The senior threw the first punch, pummeling Stan, blackening both his eyes, splitting his lips, and tearing his shirt off his body. The fight was some of the longest twenty minutes of Stan’s life. He figured he’d landed maybe every third punch—a losing battle.
When he arrived home, his mother took one look at his beaten face, his torn Levi’s,
and realized what the plan had been. Stan waited for her to get mad, but she didn’t. She informed him that he was grounded from further after-school activities, and—this surprised Stan and his father—she told his father that his bowling league nights were canceled until Stan made enough money to replace the school clothes destroyed by the fight. His father started to speak, but Stan could tell that he decided better. His father looked sheepish, a rare thing.
“This fighting works for now,” said his mother. “But what about when we move to the next town? Are you going to have him fight every time we move?”
• • •
In eighth grade, the Parker family moved five times, to Carlsbad, New Mexico; Queen City, Texas; Rapid City, South Dakota; back to Carlsbad; then to Grants, New Mexico, but only for the last ten days of the school year. For many other children, the peripatetic nature of this life would have doomed any sense of intellectual discipline. In the rare school conferences that his parents—most often his mother—were able to attend, teachers remarked about Stan’s intelligence, noting that he was quick to read a situation, carried himself with poise, and possessed a nearly photographic memory. His IQ would later be tested as extremely high.
At school, Stan’s social life was improving. He was returning to classrooms in towns where his father had worked before, and students remembered Stan from his previous fights. They left him alone.
In this migratory existence, he faced his most challenging moment in Carlsbad, New Mexico, when he got into a game of dodgeball during eighth-grade gym class.
He had managed to evade the lightning throws of an especially tall and muscular kid, who was growing frustrated with his inability to tag scrawny Stan Parker. Finally, some of the other students jumped on Stan and held him against the gym wall. The kid stepped back about twenty feet—close enough that he would be sure not to miss—and threw a blazing pitch at Stan’s groin. The impact crumpled him to the varnished wood floor. He looked up, trying to squeeze the pain from his body, and saw that both the boys’ and the girls’ gym classes were looking on, including the teachers, who did nothing. Stan, no matter how tough he felt he had made himself, could never really grasp why the world seemed a cruel and unusual place, a place often without justice.
He stood up, feeling wobbly on his feet. His classmates watched as Stan started walking toward the boy who’d thrown the ball at him. He was walking away from Stan, waving his arms up and down, urging on his classmates for even more applause.
Stan tapped him on the shoulder. The boy turned around and Stan enjoyed the look of surprise on his face. He could tell that the kid knew what was going to happen next, and he also knew he didn’t have enough time to react.
Stan threw a right fist that crashed into the boy’s head. He stepped forward, grabbed the boy’s T-shirt, and drove his knee up into the kid’s groin. The force of Stan’s blow lifted the kid several inches into the air. Stan then shoved him, and he went sprawling to the gym floor, groaning in pain. Stan looked at the boys who’d held him against the wall when their friend had thrown the ball. He held their gaze, just as his father had taught him, and told them to step up. They backed away.
Just then, something happened that would change the way Stan felt about his father and forge a lifelong bond between them.
Having watched Stan’s attack on the boy, including the face punch and knee-to-the-groin, the gym teacher ran up to Stan and yelled for someone to get his “board of education.” Stan had no idea what the gym teacher meant. He did sense that some type of punishment was headed his way, but he didn’t imagine what it would be and was sure the boy who’d hit him with the ball would be punished too.
The teacher told him to bend over and grab his ankles. Stan did as he was told, fearful of what was going to happen next. As he bent over, he realized just what the “board of education” was. It was the teacher’s paddle, actually a canoe paddle. Someone, maybe the gym teacher, had sawed off the long handle and drilled about a dozen quarter-inch holes in the long, thin blade.
The first swat lifted Stan up on his toes and rocked him forward. He couldn’t believe the pain. The second blow was even swifter, sharper. He felt as if lighter fluid had been poured over his butt and set alight. The third blow made it difficult to breathe; the fifth and final blow made him feel as if he’d pass out.
He couldn’t believe the teacher had hit him five times. The top of his head was on fire. He looked up and around through teary eyes at the rest of the gym class. What bothered him as much as the pain was the fact that the girls in the class were looking at him.
The pain was so intense that he’d been gripping his ankles incredibly hard, practically cutting off the blood flow to his feet. He was afraid he would fall over.
He stood up and saw the other boys and tried smiling at them, thinking that their turn with the “board of education” was coming next. He couldn’t wait for the gym teacher to remove their smirks with the application of his paddle.
But Stan was shocked by what happened next. The gym teacher told the rest of the boys to go hit the shower. He turned to Stan and told him that he had better never cause any more trouble in his class; otherwise, he’d meet the “board of education” again.
Stan hobbled away, each step causing his backside to burn. He gingerly undressed and in the shower leaned against the wall. He looked over his shoulder and was frightened by what he saw. The skin on his butt was raw, and the cool water made him feel like he was burning up to an even greater degree. It took him a long time to get dressed, and then he made his way to the administration office and called his mom. He told her he’d been hurt in gym class and that he was excused to go home early. This was a lie, but the school office didn’t object. He felt he was on his own.
When he got in the car, he had to slide in carefully. He decided not to tell his mother what had happened so as not to upset her. He didn’t want to have to deal with what his father would say about this. His mother, he knew, sensed something was wrong. But they talked about other things, principally the stomachache that he said was bothering him.
That night at dinner, his father asked what had happened to him in gym class. He and his mother shared a look; they obviously had talked about Stan’s earlier behavior. And they looked puzzled as Stan squirmed uncomfortably at the table. Finally, his father demanded to know what happened. Stan told them the whole story.
They stared at Stan in silence, looking shocked. They then asked to see the damage. He sheepishly unbuckled his pants and showed them his backside.
His mother gasped. He was bleeding through his white undershorts.
His father sat there silently. His silence, Stan knew, was a sign of titanic things to come. He announced at the table that he would address this situation in the morning.
Early the next day, his father drove Stan to school and asked Stan to show him to the principal’s office. When the principal emerged, the elder Parker demanded that he lead him to the gym. As they walked, his father explained to the principal what had happened the day before. Stan was following behind and was both dreading and looking forward to the coming confrontation. They walked into the gym, where a class was in full swing.
The students turned to look as the trio entered the gym. The gym teacher himself smiled a moment at the principal and at the man walking next to him. The smile turned to a frown when he saw Stan step from behind the two men.
His father walked up to the gym teacher and shoved him backward onto the hardwood floor. The teacher fell flat on his back and Stan’s father put a boot on his chest and ground down his heel. Then he knelt down, put his knee in the middle of the gym teacher’s chest, and simply stared.
Stan saw that the principal was about to say something to interrupt the proceedings, but Stan’s father cut him off. He told the principal that if he had any objections, he would also find himself on the floor.
The gym had fallen silent. Stan saw that all his classmates were watching, eager to see what would happen next. Stan knew only that it
would be interesting.
His father told the coach that if he ever laid another hand on his son, he would come back and beat him to a bloody pulp.
His father told the assistant PE teacher, standing nearby, to go and fetch the so-called board of education. The assistant handed it to his father. He took it and broke it over his knee and threw it in two pieces at the PE teacher, still spread out on the floor. His father then reached down and pulled the teacher to his feet and asked, “Am I making myself clear?”
The frightened man nodded. But then he couldn’t help himself. He asked Stan’s father if he thought he was up to fighting the entire teaching faculty the next time he walked into what he referred to as “my gym.”
His father looked amused. “No,” he said after a minute. “The only person I’ll be after will be you.” And he explained that if he did come back, it would be with thirty angry ironworkers eager to kick his ass.
“Don’t think I’m kidding,” said his father. He then told the teacher, “If my son ever acts out, you will leave the punishment to me. And believe me,” said his father, “it won’t be light.” He grabbed the principal by his necktie and led him out of the gym.
Stan could tell what the principal was thinking, and so could his father, because he said, “If you’re thinking of calling the cops, go right ahead.” He explained that the gym teacher likely could be arrested for assaulting a minor and that he, the principal, would be arrested for being an accomplice.
He added that his son would be going home early and that his absence would be excused for the rest of the week.
When they walked out the front door, it seemed to Stan that the entire school, teachers and students, and especially the girls, had gathered to watch. Most of them seemed in awe of what Stan’s father had done and the way he’d pulled the principal around by his necktie.
When they got into the car, Stan’s father reached over and wordlessly touched his shoulder.
The young boy felt as if he were floating.