At Our Lady of The Holy Innocents Elementary School, Jesse was adrift in an ocean of children. Seventh grade teacher Sister Clementia managed 56 children in a classroom built for
30. Jesse learned his lessons seated at
a small desk in the middle of an overheated room. He ate lunch with two hundred other children
in the cellar lunch room that doubled as an air raid shelter, squeezed in among
a legion of uniformed girls and boys.
Afterward, he marched to the bathroom and lined up with other boys at a
bank of urinals, together pissing gallons of chocolate milk down the sewer, and
sometimes down Jesse’s pant leg from the boy next to him. Although he did not yet have the intellectual
power to describe the weight produced by all of the crowding, his heart could feel it and his soul took
notice.
At home, he endured three generations of family stuffed into
a railroad flat. Gram and Gramps had the
back bedroom, Mom and Dad the front. In
between, Jesse and two brothers occupied a small bedroom stuffed with three
beds, dressers, baseball equipment and all the artifacts of boyhood filled to
the ceiling with the lives of three boys.
He was seldom by himself. In the
center ring of a circus going on around him, Jesse was unable to get away from the
eyes of others. Nor did he escape their opinions. He was
the youngest and the most often corrected.
He awoke in the morning to the arguments of his brothers and longed to
be away somewhere by himself.
All winter he had been reading accounts of explorers in the
arctic wastes at each end of the earth. He
spent weeks devouring every arctic adventure book he could find. The nun who ran the little library at school
suggested he might like to broaden his literary interests. But Jesse ignored the look of concern on her
face. He was quite happy to stay on the topic
of his choosing and continue to read of solitary men who braved the snow and
ice and cold, men who followed no one’s direction but their own.
In his favorite daydream, Jesse was dropped by parachute at
the South Pole. Equipment and a tiny
house followed him out of the sky from the belly of a transport plane that
would return for him the next year. On
the southern ice, he would have a place for himself. He could read to his heart’s content and
maybe learn to play the guitar and stay up all night to watch the moon rise
against a black sky as he sat by his tiny window. Alone with no brothers or grandfather ordering
him around, he would be invisible to the rest of the world. Gone to where no one could follow. Where nobody could see him. Where he could do as he pleased.
At the end of March in 1956, Jesse played The Game for the
last time. He walked home from school in
the final heavy snow of the winter. Sheets
of snow slashed furiously across his path and the winds buffeted the boy as he
fought his way over sidewalks that were quickly disappearing under a blanket of
white. For a twelve year old, it was a
perfect day. His mother might worry for
his safety until he arrived home, but Jesse hadn’t the slightest thought of any
danger. After all, he was on the streets
of a small city, and only a block from the local hospital.
When he reached the gate to Murnane Field, an outdated
complex of ball diamonds and a cinder running track, Jesse detoured from his
route home. He hung his book bag on the gate and stepped through the wrought iron entrance, now almost invisible
in a covering of wet, sticky snow.
In summer, he sometimes walked here from home and paid ten
cents admission to a men’s’ softball game.
He would buy a bag of peanuts for a nickel and climb up to the very top
of the decrepit old bleachers. He sat alone and watched the sun go down, eyeing
the game occasionally, though he had no interest in sports. He would gaze over the long expanse of green
grass and lift his eyes above the dreary neighborhood to the far off clouds on
the horizon, golden clouds against the pale blue sky, a sight that could hold
one’s heart forever. It was so beautiful
over there, he thought, and he wondered why a person couldn’t live in a sunset
like one could live at the South Pole.
But today, at the end of winter, a deep snow lay on the
ground, and more was falling from the sky.
As he entered the field, Jesse was immediately enveloped in a swirl of icy
wet crystals beating against his face and piling up on the front of his
coat. Blinded by the snow, he stood
there, absorbing the beauty of nothing but white. Today would be excellent.
The first part of The Game was to walk as straight as
possible and not miss the field house up ahead.
He could see nothing, but he knew there were 74 steps to the
building. At step 65 he put his hand straight out in
front, ready to touch the front wall of the field house.
Now his feet began to slide
carefully forward through the snow, to avoid tripping on the front steps
in the unlikely event he arrived at the exact center of the building. Touching the brick wall at 78 steps from the
gate, Jesse felt his way around the
building. When he reached the rear
corner, he walked 40 steps across the back to stand in the exact middle of the
building. He put his back against the
wall and faced outward. He was now
oriented to the entire field, but in the driving snow he could see none of it. It had never snowed as heavily and he was
elated to see absolutely nothing but snow everywhere.
Off to his right, Jesse could barely hear a few cars making
their way through the snow on Burrstone Road. Across that street lay the small Faxton
Hospital. To his left was a dead end
street of mostly two-family homes, and across the other street behind the field
house he was leaning against was a Firehouse, staffed full time by bored men
who sat out on benches in the summer and spoke of nothing but their families or
new cars from Detroit. In front of him, straight ahead in the middle of Murnane
Field was Jesse’s substitute South Pole.
He stepped away from the back wall of the Field House and walked
forward 205 steps, the distance to the exact center of the field, as he had measured
it on a sunny day last fall. As he
reached his destination, Jesse was elated to feel the snow coming down even harder. For a moment he simply stood there, absorbing
the wonderful feeling of being completely alone. Hidden by the blizzard, he was cut off from
the world. No one from his family watched
him, no fellow students crowded him, no nuns with stern looks stood by to
correct him. Jesse
was not just alone, he was invisible.
As the wind and snow drove into his body, Jesse reached up under his coat, loosened his belt and
dropped his pants and under shorts to his ankles, leaving himself naked from
the waist down. After loosening his coat
and shirt buttons at the neck and wrists,
he reached back over his head and with both hands grabbed the collars of
his coat, shirt and undershirt. In one fluid
motion, he bent forward and pulled them all over his head and threw the clothes
behind him. He spread his arms and stood in the middle of Murnane
Field, completely naked except for the pants around his ankles. He took a deep breath and screamed, a shout
of exultation and complete release. As he cried out a second time, a sharp intake of breath hiccupped from his
mouth and a violent shiver overtook him. He was
terribly cold, but Jesse was now the king
of this frozen world. To celebrate, he pissed
in the snow, spraying what he laughingly
called “jet fuel” into the west wind, much of the urine coming back to spatter up
his front as the wind tried to blow him down. Jesse stood his ground. He had not come this far to be beaten by the
wind. He waved his hips left and right
and up and down, hoping to make large yellow circles he could not see. When he finished, Jesse reached around behind
for his clothes. They were gone.
Jesse yanked up his pants, turned and took a step back
toward the field house. He could see
nothing. He plopped down on his knees, feeling ahead in the snow. He reached left and right and then he bounded
forward a few feet, bending over and feeling in the snow for his coat and
shirt. He moved left again, and then
right, and in the process lost his sense of direction. He touched something, and pulled his scarf
back to him. He was now shivering uncontrollably. Remembering from his books that the head lost
a great deal of heat, he wrapped the
scarf around his ears and tied it under his chin. In a few minutes, he knew he wasn’t going to
find his shirt or coat. He believed he could make a beeline in any direction
and quickly be on one of the streets, where he could bang on a door and get
warm. But he hesitated, thinking how
embarrassing it would be to show up half naked on someone’s front porch
and have to explain what happened to his
clothes. Well, he supposed he’d have to
do the same at home.
Jesse had played The Game before, but never completely
disrobed, only dropped his pants and relieved himself in the snow, never taken
off his shirt and coat. He saw the
afternoon was darkening and, now thoroughly frightened, he ran toward a sound
he heard, the whine of slipping tires on a nearby street. He hoped in that direction he would find Burrstone Road,
the street closest to his home.
The next time he heard whining tires they were behind him.
The sound could have been coming from another street, but it seemed more
likely he was moving in a circle. He was
running now, with his freezing hands jammed up into his armpits. He heard a car horn from one direction, and
then a siren from another. He twisted
and turned and ran toward each sound.
Jesse was becoming exhausted. The cold and exertion and feverish state of
his mind were taking their toll of his energy.
He wanted so much to sit down and rest, but all of his reading had
warned against doing so. He was
staggering now. He fell, then got
up. He ran a few steps and fell
again. Forcing himself up on his feet,
Jesse looked up into the sky and screamed in anguish. Then he sat down hard in the snow.
Jesse wondered if it was true that when freezing to death a
person passed from shivering and frostbite into a state of sleepiness and
comfort. He brushed the thought from his
mind. He didn’t want to die. He was only twelve years old. But he couldn’t go on. He was too exhausted. Jesse started to cry, finally, the
frustration howling inside his head.
He couldn’t believe this was happening. He simply could not be lost in the middle of
a field in a city of one hundred thousand people. He must try again, walking only in a straight
line. But it was darker now, and the
wind even stronger. The snow had built
up on his skin during the short time since he sat down on the ground.
With a great effort, his legs wobbling and unsteady, Jesse
stood one last time. He was shivering
badly and was sure if he took a step he would fall. He pushed forward off one foot and came down
on the other, now numb with the cold. He
stayed upright.
He now knew he was going to die here. A great sadness enveloped him and he thought
of Christmas morning almost three months ago.
Jammed into the small flat with his parents and brothers and
grandparents, they had all been so happy.
He looked down at himself and in what little light was left of the day
saw his body covered with snow. “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no.”
Jesse’s mind reeled with the
agonizing thought that it was almost spring.
Tomorrow morning the sun could be shining and the temperatures in the
sixties, as often happened in late winter.
And just a few hours before he would die a freezing death within sight
of the hospital and the bored firemen who would have been happy to rescue him. His family and the police would search all
over the city tomorrow, never thinking to look in the summer sports field. Maybe a fireman across the street from the
field’s entrance would notice a book bag hanging on the gate. The sun might be shining bright and the snow have
melted. On a nearby sidewalk, nurses
and doctors and kids and dogs would be walking and playing, oblivious to the
presence of his corpse only a hundred feet away. Jesse would be lying here dead, half naked
and probably still frozen, like a visitor from an icy planet or a veteran from
the South Pole.
He became angry. He
took one more step and fell flat. He
couldn’t breath with his face in the snow.
With what little strength he had left Jesse pushed himself up to a
sitting position. That’s when he saw the colors.
The cold had made him delirious, and logic said he could not
have seen it. But a flash of light
occurred to his right. He turned his
head and glimpsed a break in the curtain of snow, and through it a momentary
flash of clouds on the horizon, pink and green and turning gold against a pale
blue sky. He pulled himself to his feet
and staggered in the direction where it had been, strength returning to his
legs. In a few moments Jesse bounced into
the tall fence that surrounded the field. Stumbling along it, he came to an
opening. He saw headlights, all in a
row, cars slowly moving along the snow
covered Burrstone Road,
carrying men and women home from a day of work.
Jesse bolted into the road, his eyes blearily fixed on the
lights of the hospital. A driver slammed
on his brakes and was rear-ended by the car behind, both cars sliding off to
the side of the street and into a snow bank.
The boy kept going, half aked with
the scarf wrapped around his head and patches of snow and ice clinging to his bare
skin. A new surge of energy coursed
through his body, but he knew it would soon
end and he must get inside to warm up. By
the time he reached the back stairs of the building, he was beginning to falter. On his
way up the steps, he slipped twice and fell, praying each time he got up that the
entrance would not be locked. It was. He pulled and pulled on the handle and feebly
banged on the door. It was a long way
around the building to the front door and even farther to the Emergency Room,
too far for him now. He slid downward,
his frozen hands coming away from the door handle.
The woman would later tell Jesse she had trouble opening the
door against his legs and was part way through when she found him huddled up
against the pipe railing, almost upright, his arm over the lower rung. On her way home and bundled against the cold,
the cafeteria manager saw a frozen half naked youngster at the edge of the cone
of light provided by the light over the back door. She bent down to touch Jesse, then grabbed
his arm and began to drag him inside.
His legs moved to help. Suddenly
he was up on his feet and running away from her.
Jesse pushed through swinging doors into the main hallway of
the hospital. The warm air seared his
frozen skin, every nerve ending writhed
in pain. He sprinted down the hallway
with no destination in mind. Passing the
window of the Gift Shop, Jesse spotted
them again, turned back and flew through the open doorway. He collapsed into a display of cut flowers,
his arms thrusting out to grab the warm colors of yellow and green and pink, as
he greedily hugged them to his chest.
The doctors said that only a twelve year old could have survived
such an ordeal. Jesse left the hospital
a week later, and was back to school within days of his discharge. His mother took him in the family car each
day for the next week and picked him up after classes. The nuns banned him from the school library
for the rest of the year. Instead, they
sent books to the classroom for him, with titles such as “The Life of Saint
Ignatius Loyola” and “Hobbies For Teens.”
Although memories of that fearful afternoon would always
remain, Jesse grew up to be as normal as most young men. Despite the experience, his love of snow was
not lost completely, although heavy storms made him uncomfortable. Certainly, he was never again tempted to
stand naked in a blizzard. And as far as
anyone knows, to this day his mother believes a mighty wind blew his clothing
off as Jesse crossed Murnane Field in the last major snow storm of the winter
of 1956.
copyright 2009 by David Griffin
