Editor's Note: We're proud to republish this story from John Paul Brammer, who, since it originally appeared, has gone on to publish the LGBTQ+ advice column ¡Hola Papi! as well as essays, short fiction, illustrations, and a memoir. Looking back on this piece, Brammer writes: "This is the first story of mine that I ever held in my hands. It was printed in This Land in 2014. I see in it a young writer newly fascinated with the magic of publishing: That a story from memory could be turned into something tangible, shareable, holdable. Of course, reading it now over a decade later, some sentences make me wince, more because of the writing choices than the subject matter. But that's growth! What hasn't changed, though, is my appreciation for how words take shape."
Mr. Smith was an old-fashioned cowboy. He wore tight Wranglers with a circle burned into the back pocket where he kept his snuff, and a big, shiny buckle on his belt. He was rarely seen without his hat and boots. His hat was usually white because he was a good guy.
Mr. Smith was my math teacher at Cache Middle School. I had him in the class right before lunch.
Cache, if you’ve never heard of it, is a small town not too far from Lawton. A single road runs through it. Its heyday has long gone, but you can still see the bones of old-fashioned ice cream shops, arcades, and pizza parlors—all shut down since Lord knows when.
Every day after Mr. Smith’s class, my classmates and I would head over to the high school cafeteria. We’d walk all the way past the old gym that looked like a rusty half-buried aluminum can in the ground. Eighth-graders got to eat with the big dogs.
But one day, I stayed behind in Mr. Smith’s classroom.
I stayed because I remembered a story he’d told us on the first day of class.
“I remember there was a group of kids pickin’ on a guy,” he’d said in his grizzly country accent. “They got to pushin’ him around and all that. Well, one of the boys in the group stepped up and stopped ‘em. You know what he said? Said, ‘Hey! You leave him alone!’ You know who that boy was?” He’d pointed at himself with his thumb. “That boy was me.”