Eddie Versus the Natural World
Eddie Rollier lived across the street in a one-story frame house with his mother, father and older sister. Because of his proximity, it was natural that he was the first friend I made when my family moved to Latoka, Illinois, population 500. He and I were nearly the same age, but Eddie spoke with a severe impediment and he suffered from the tragically common cycle of abuse at home and failure at school. Eddie’s father, Rick, was perpetually angry and I’d seen him beat Eddie with such frequency that he seemed to feel comfortable doing it in my presence. He knew, as I do now, that his particular brand of discipline was pretty much sanctioned by the town. So, Eddie and I never spent much time around his house.
Instead, we had a backyard that extended for thousands of unbroken acres. Eddie’s home sat on a narrow strip of land that faced the town on one side and opened into endless fields on the other. My family had moved to Latoka before I had started school, but we got older, Eddie and I began to extend our explorations of the fields. By the age of eight, he and I were spending whole afternoons out of the range of our mother’s voices. We would fill our canteens with water that never lost that fresh-from-the-hose-flavor and strike out through the soybeans, past the junkyard and deeper into the unknown.
We were looking for Bigfoot. In the mid-1970’s there had been a rash of sightings in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and television was giving us every indication that this thing was legit’. Bigfoot menaced Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man and was shamelessly inserted in countless comedy sketches. The entire country was, as Leonard Nimoy would report, in search of Bigfoot. Eddie and I took it upon ourselves to check out central Illinois.
On a bright, warm summer morning, Eddie and I collected our rations and headed for the fields. It was a clear day, and we had a good four hours of searching ahead of us. Bigfoot could be anywhere; sleeping under an abandoned truck by day, feeding on chickens and stray dogs by night. The ground was covered in a stunted canopy of half-grown soybeans which we would eat from time to time. The beans were still soft and bitter, but it seemed like the kind of thing you’d do when you’re living off the land.
By 2:00 we had reached the drainage ditch beyond the junkyard and still no Bigfoot. The ditch opened into a shallow pond where it met the railroad tracks. This was our farthest established outpost, and Eddie and I would go there to chuck rocks into the water and watch the trains. We knew Bigfoot wouldn’t be found at the drainage pond, it was infested with Copperheads. (Every snake we saw, at that age, was a Copperhead. This took a terrible toll on the local Garter Snake population. Garter snakes, in fact, are very beneficial.)
We threw rocks, we listened, we at our cheese sandwiches and that was that. We had not found Bigfoot, and it was time to head back. Looking back on the whole thing, I can’t remember the walk back. I can’t say with certainty that it actually happened. All I know is that we, seemingly instantaneously, found ourselves at the edge of Eddie’s property standing in the tall weeds that divided yard from field. The weeds were every bit as tall as we were, but Rick had recently built a tool shed and he had piled unused sheets of corrugated tin haphazardly throughout the overgrown area. These piles formed tiny islands where two kids could rest, finish off their canteens and check for ticks.
The first bee arrived without fanfare. It was one of those huge, bullet-shaped bumble bees. The very type that must have first inspired aeronautic engineers to scratch their heads and ask, “How in the hell does that thing stay in the air?” This question is made all the more pertinent when the bee is fully laden in pollen.
I began to take notice with the second bee. Still, bees work the weeds and fences endlessly and two bees are no big deal.
With the third bee it was unanimous. They weren’t simply working the weeds. We had not simply gotten in their way. Something was wrong. These boys had a focus and it involved the real estate Eddie and I were taking up. Could it be that, in the months since Rick finished the tool shed, the bees had finished an addition of their own beneath the very sheets of tin we were standing on? Yes. This realization came in an instant and that concluded any further direct involvement on my part. I didn’t argue. I didn’t ponder. I ran away.
Looking over my shoulder, after several paces, I was surprised to see that Eddie had not followed me out. Between the two of us I had always been the big brother — he should have followed. Instead, Eddie picked up a stick and began thrashing and swinging in all directions. It was the kind of display that might instigate a much larger discussion of man’s defense of the exclusionary principle. Eddie had chosen to take a stand. He would face the bees, plant himself firmly on the corrugated tin, and defend the family stake.
At eight years of age, one doesn’t always grasp the gravity of serious situations. You may realize that a parent losing their job is a bad thing, but you know nothing about the terms of the mortgage or the monthly car payment. These are considerations that require responsible, long-term thinking. When you’re eight, you live for the moment and at the moment I returned home something happened that completely erased the image of Eddie writhing and slashing at the air from my mind. Perhaps Gilligan’s Island was on TV or Mom had made Jell-O. I would love to be able to report that I alerted someone to the fact that my best friend was fighting for his life against a larger-than-average swarm of bees, but I didn’t. It’s possible that I employed a far too simplistic concept of justice. Perhaps I thought that Eddie had chosen to stay and fight so why shouldn’t he suffer the slings and arrows of a million pissed-off bees? Or maybe I was confident that Eddie would surely follow my retreat before any real damage was done. In any case, I didn’t tell a soul and Eddie wouldn’t cross my mind again for several hours.
Around 6:30 in the evening, when all the good re-runs gave way to primetime mediocrity, I wondered what Eddie was up to. The sun was starting to fade and the day was cooling off as I crossed the road and approached the front door. It was late enough that Rick would be home, so I knocked quickly on the door and prepared a brief, benign request for Eddie. No one answered. Rick’s truck was in the drive and the family, generally, never went anywhere, so I thought I better check out back.
I heard voices as I came around the corner of the house and I immediately recognized Rick, his wife, and Jen, Eddie’s older sister. Rick was standing with two other men, both of whom lived nearby, and the group was laughing and drinking beer. Eddie’s mother saw me just as I caught sight of Eddie. He was laying on a patio lounge chair, fully extended. I knew it was Eddie, but his appearance far from matched the person I had left hours earlier. His swollen, bruised head rolled over and his eyes met mine. “Hi, wu-dee.” He was never able to pronounce “Rusty,” but I could tell that he was struggling just to get air in and out. They had much of his body packed in ice and his neck was blackened and twice its normal size.
I’m sure I called upon my usual supply of stupid remarks and pratfalls in an effort to raise his spirits, and I have no doubt that I was morbidly curious to see if a carcass in such condition could actually generate laughter, but a lengthy discussion of what happened was impossible. I asked his mother what had happened and she was equally interested in getting my side of the story. I explained what I knew. She explained that Eddie continued to fight much longer than I would have ever imagined (previous to witnessing the bloated, bruised results). Eddie had a tremendous threshold for pain and maintained his offensive bravely. Alas, however, the numbers were unquestionably against him and he sought to abandon the offensive and engage the evasive. At that point the primary flaw in his approach was revealed: A failure to consider geography. Eddie’s position on the corrugated tin was a good 300 yards from the backdoor of his home. Bees, it seems, are among the few insects capable of collectively developing and maintaining a grudge and Eddie had inspired a mighty resentment. For this reason, Eddie was not safe when he fled the pile of tin. He was not safe when he passed the newly constructed tool shed. Nor was he safe when he lunged past the swing set or staggered towards the house still 50 yards away.
“It was the damndest thing,” His mother said. “They followed him straight up into the house.” Bees continued to sting Eddie in the kitchen, through the hall and into the bathroom. His mother was stung. His sister was stung. His father was at work and thought the whole thing was, “pretty damn funny.”
There was only one doctor within 30 miles of Latoka, and he was generally reserved for situations involving combines and the loss of limbs. Therefore, Eddie never saw the doctor. After several days the swelling subsided and he was breathing more or less normally. This event did not, in any way, diminish his spirit and in the years to come Eddie would continue to defiantly take on the odds. Rick, however, was never much of a gambling man — bullies seldom are. The very next day he walked out to the tin pile with a five gallon can of kerosene and a lit cigarette and watched as the weeds, tin and bees were reduced to a smoldering, black stain.
