The Bully

For a moment the face staring back from my computer seems vaguely familiar and strangely disturbing.

Then I recognize him: the schoolyard bully from my days in England, a guy I’ve not seen in 30 years, but whose aura looms large in my subconscious.

It’s a recent photo, but the eyes give him away: shark-like and beady, tucked into the fleshy, bald head of a hard-looking man with an expressionless face, and wearing a neck chain thick enough to beat a man to death with. And he has a fresh knife wound in his face, the result of a recent pub brawl.

I’m reeling. My old bully still gets into pub brawls? Maybe I was lucky to get out of England alive.

My mind races back three decades. I’m the brand new kid, fresh meat for the bully. Six years in northern Scotland have left me pale and unsure of myself in my sprawling new urban English school.

As bullies go, mine’s a hall-of-famer—certainly not as ruthless as some, but relentless, physically imposing and ready to pounce on any exposed weakness. Big beyond his years, he strides around campus in black trousers, Doc Martens and an unkempt schoolboy tie, a monstrous junior executive on the prowl for hostile takeovers.

I ignore him taunting me in the locker room after P.E. class, but he keeps pressing into my space until I shove him off me. It’s the response he wants, and he grins.

Here’s the thing: If someone were to throw a HoneyBaked Ham at your head, you figure you’d duck out of the way, right? Not so much.

The bully clenches a ham-fist somewhere down around Cornwall, heaves it up through the Home Counties, whisks it up through the London metro area and then pounds it square into the center of my forehead.

I drop like noodles al dente, dazed, gasping for air. Where am I? “You’re in England,” I remind myself. It’s worth noting he chooses not to deploy his Doc Martens for an old-fashioned English kick-about, which is his sovereign right as an English bully.

Within minutes we’re waiting outside the office of the headmaster, a cunning Welshman who instantly destroys my case with arid Welsh condescension.

“Shawlee” he drawls at me, “you’ve dawn something to triggah this attack, yesss?”

Like the ham-fist, the whole episode makes a permanent impression in my head, all of which leaps back to life on this recent morning staring at the e-mailed photo.

There’s a news account with it: He and a pal got into a bit of agro with some geezah down at their local pub, during which the geezah stabbed the bully in the face. The bully’s friend pinned the attacker to the pub floor until the police arrived.

But now I take no pleasure from reading about his stabbing, no shadenfraude. The article hints at a tough life—he has a heart condition that keeps him from working, and he takes care of his invalid mother.

Illusions of revenge evaporate, and with them old fears, which now burst and sag harmlessly on the cold, sharp facts of life.