IN THE SUMMER of 1966, when I was eleven, my family moved to a rented farmhouse in southwestern Ontario. Since they’d adopted me the previous May, we’d changed homes three times, and I’d never gotten a chance to really put my feet down anywhere. As I stood on that farmhouse porch for the first time, seeing the empty fields around me, I felt lost and scared and as empty as those fields.
But once we’d gotten settled, I was free to wander. There were fifty hectares on that farm in Bruce County, a mix of fallow field, hay crop, wheat and pasture. There was a wood at the back and a stream that led to a marsh, a creek and a dam a kilometre away. That land became my playground, and I spent every day out there.
I tramped the fields. I started a creature journal, in which I recorded all the animals I saw and drew pictures of them. I fished the creek and the splash pool below the dam. I watched birds. I sat in the arms of mighty trees and gazed across those wild stretches of farmland and dreamed or read or sang songs to myself. It never occurred to me to feel alone. The world was my companion, and I felt at peace.
But the thing about farms is that you never get to meet other kids. My adopted brothers were either working or uninterested in exploring, so I was left to my own devices. Although I revelled in that, by the time school rolled around I had no buddies, no peer group, no connection to any other kid. I went out to meet the bus awash in apprehension and worry.
My teacher that year was Mrs. Lorraine Fricke. She was an older woman, nearing retirement. She had grey hair, glasses and a kind smile, and she dressed in old-fashioned skirts and blouses. I’d never had a grandmother, but Mrs. Fricke fit the image I carried in my mind. That first day, she seemed to know me already. When she saw me enter her classroom, she walked right over, smiled and led me to a seat beside the window to the right of her big wooden desk.
“So you can look out at the trees,” she said.
As it turned out, there was a bully in that class named Jim. His family owned the jewellery store in town. Jim was also a hockey star, which made him a big thing in that small town. Bullies always find lesser cohorts, and Jim had four other boys who supported him in his meanness. The five of them were unavoidable on the playground.
There was also a kid in my class named Dennis Edwards. Dennis was short, with big ears and around face, and he struggled to keep up with the work. He used wacky, off-beat humour to try to wrest some acceptance from the rest of us. I found him funny, and his attempts to fit in resonated with me.
When I showed myself to be a bright student, Jim targeted me. At first it was the usual name-calling and spit-balling in class. Then it was tripping me in the hallways and bouncing balls off my head at recess. The intimidation progressed to punches on the shoulder and slaps on the back of the head. I took it all without any thought of striking back or getting revenge. I didn’t want to make any waves.
But then the bullies went after Dennis Edwards. Jim took umbrage at Dennis playing hopscotch with the girls. He called Dennis a sissy. He called him a little girl. Then he shoved Dennis, and Dennis shoved back. The rest of the pack descended on him instantly. I’d been walking in the playing field when it happened, but I saw Dennis’s bleeding nose, blackening eye and tears when the bell rang.
Dennis was my only friend in class. I wanted to stand up for him. But there were five of them. I sat at my desk and listened to them bragging about the beating. When other kids joined in the laughter, I was incensed.
Sometime that afternoon, Mrs. Fricke called on me to do a problem on the board. As I stood with my back to the room, I heard the bullies grunting and talking like movie Indians. An eraser hit me in the head. I turned, picked it up and looked at it in my palm. Then I walked to Jim’s desk, all the way at the back of the room, where he sat with his four friends around him. No one said a word, not even Mrs. Fricke. Everybody watched me and waited to see what I would do.
I put the eraser down on Jim’s desk. He sneered at me. When he stood up, the rest of the bullies stood, too. As I took in the five of them in the silence of that room, I felt incredible heat in my cheeks and a huge knot in my belly. I was shaking, and my voice wavered when I spoke. “I’m not afraid of you” was what I said. The bullies laughed and catcalled as I walked back to my seat, but they never bothered me or Dennis again.
That day after school, Mrs. Fricke asked me to stay a minute longer. She had something for me, she said. Once all the kids had gone, she handed me a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a man of peace, she explained, and he was guided by a vision of how life could be if people were truly courageous. She said what I had done in class exemplified everything Reverend King stood for. Then she hugged me.
I read everything I could about Martin Luther King, Jr., after that, and I became an even better student. I did extra homework, helped neaten our classroom and showed Mrs. Fricke the stories and poems I was beginning to write. She brought me books to read about my people and my heritage, and we discussed them. My home life was a shambles, filled with incredible friction and pain, but in Mrs. Fricke’s class I felt accepted and understood.
I got A’s and B’s on my first report card. On the bus on the way home, I noticed that Mrs. Fricke had written in the space for the teacher’s comments, “Richard is a very honourable boy.” I never forgot that. When my adopted parents read out this comment at the dinner table that night, they said she must have been referring to some other kid. I never forgot that, either.
Mrs. Fricke left school halfway through that year for health reasons, and I never saw her again. Her replacement was a disciplinarian, aloof and cold, and my marks tailed off sharply. That caused me difficulty at home. My adopted parents considered good marks a direct indicator of worth and a measure of the family itself. They revoked my privileges, including being allowed to go out on the land.
I kept the picture Mrs. Fricke had given me in one of my drawers. Whenever I felt afraid, I’d take it out and look at it, and I always found strength. Two years later, when Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, I was living in a city far away from that farm. I mourned his loss, and I remembered Mrs. Fricke.
The angels in this life arrive when we need them most. They don’t come in resplendent white or shining glory, but in the simple dress of an old-fashioned school teacher or the anonymous face of a stranger. In the realm of the spiritual, we are all angelic if we choose. It is, my people say, the choosing that grants us wings.