Jack: Book One in the Trilogy, the Battle Begins

A Dirty Trick Part 13

When Mike took Jimmy Swanson out on the path to see his tree house the same day that Jack stole it Jack said it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. But that wasn't spur-of-the-moment stuff - that was pure malicious planning. That was the other side of Jack. He liked to bait people and then trap them and watch them squirm before finally letting them loose. He always let them go so they'd know they were beaten. That's what he really wanted. He loved to beat others. He had to win no matter what. He was the most competitive person I'd ever come across bar none. Not even Mike could hold a candle to Jack when it came to competing.

Well, on that day we followed them into the green forest off to the side of the path, and behind them just as Jack planned, sometimes crawling and listening. We did all the planning at our secret fort across the river, at what was Mike's tree-house. Jack was true to his style - he wasn't going to tell anyone where the fort was. He talked about it to kids in mysterious ways as though it was way out on the frontier with wild Indians but that's as far as it went. He teased a boy's imagination and the girls too when he had a mind to. Jack had asked Jimmy to ask Mike that day to show him his tree house. That was part of the trap. Mike wanted Jimmy's bag of licorice so he thought it was a good idea to take him there. We followed silently, listening to Mike tell Jimmy what a neat tree house it was but that he could never tell anyone its location although everyone knew where it was. Jack said we had to be as quiet as Indians because we couldn't reveal our presence no matter what. So that's what we did.

When we crawled the last twenty feet and settled behind a big yellow pine, we saw Mike's baffled expression. Jack started rolling on the ground, red-faced, tears of laughter coming from his eyes, trying as hard as he could to suppress it. We watched with fascination. Mike was looking up at the tree, then down and around, then up again and around again, and saying to Jimmy:

"I know this is the place. What the beJesus? Who was it? Where'd it go? My tree house!"

"Who was what?" said Jimmy totally confused. Jack held his hand tightly over his bulging red cheeks and tears were rolling from the corners of his dark eyes he was overcome so much with amusement. It was the happiest I'd ever seen him although I suspected he wasn't really happy because it was a mean thing to do and I think he knew it. But it was kind of fun in a secretive way and Mike deserved what he was getting anyway after holding up all those other boys so to speak.

At school Jack and Mike would try to get one another in trouble. It became an ongoing contest and nothing the schoolmaster did could stop it. For instance Jack would whip a raspberry at the master's back when he turned to the blackboard, staining his white shirt and then blame it on Mike. Or Mike would try to copy Jack's illegible-enough handwriting and write a note to master with no signature telling him he was an idiot who couldn't teach because he didn't know the first thing about children.

They hated one another during our school years even though they sometimes hung out together, usually when I was present. So they grudgingly played together sometimes. But usually they were sworn enemies, never giving the other any respect. It was as though they had hated one another so long they didn't know how else to act when the other was around.

And neither wanted the other to see any sign of weakness by giving any concession to friendship between them. That lasted until the end when Jack made the first and greatest concession I'd ever witnessed.

It was at Gettysburg years later when Jack, seeing a Yankee leveling out his musket to shoot Mike in the back, jumped between them and took the bullet. Mike was spared because some instinct in Jack refused to let Mike be shot in the back without his ever knowing it. In a way, it was Jack's final victory over Mike because now Mike could never repay the deed and would always be in Jack's debt.

At least that was how I chose to see that dreadful event. I recalled the earlier mischievous days when they constantly taunted one another, ever since the first day of school, and I realized that those seemingly harmless pranks of childhood had connected the three of us deeply and they could never be repeated. And when Mike - who still held a deep resentment of Jack - saw his childhood enemy sprawled and bloodied on the ground, having jumped into the bullet path in an instinctual move to protect him, he bawled like a little boy.

The three of us had seen many shot by Yankees and sometimes even by our own by accident. But this was different. This was like family. We naturally had protected one another through campaigns like Bull Run. We were almost like the same blood because we came from the same little corner of the earth where we shared our childhood with its joys and pains. So the pranks seen in retrospect appeared not malicious - which in fact they were, partly - but golden times when young boys act tough and try to make their mark upon the world. They talked bigger than they were and they acted more ignorant than they should have done but they were still golden times.