Elton Jones had just moved to Lubbock from Louisiana. He talked with an acute cajun accent that was hard for my West Texas ears to catch up with. I would soon discover that he not only looked like a good athlete, but was one. I had chosen wisely. Elton would be not only my first, but also my best friend in junior high.
Over the next three years we spent the night at each others' houses nearly every week. We shot baskets, went on trips, smoked Swisher Sweets, drank Kool-Aid (man, that Kool-Aid), threw eggs at passing cars, won three or four city championships, and "macked on" girls together. He was "Big E" and I was "Little P". And together we were a dynamic duo.
As we passed from junior high into high school, however, something happened to Elton and I. Elton started hanging around more with other black kids. I would invite him to do something, but he would have other plans. Then, when I got a truck and started giving Elton rides home from football practice, he was less grateful than I thought he should be. I can't really say things happened consciously, they just began to feel different. We remained friends, but we grew cooler and less trusting of one another.
I tried to make sense of why Elton and I were drifting apart. I had no language of my own to describe what was happening so I borrowed my father's language. It was a language that he had borrowed from someone else as well. It was the language white people always ended up using when blacks disappointed them. "Elton was a good black," I thought, "but he is becoming a N-Word."
To be completely fortright I am just now beginning to wrestle with the meaning of that word in my life. What does it mean for me, my family, and my work as an agent of reconciliation? All I can say is that I long for a day when there will be a great cleansing. Come, Lord Jesus.
But do not miss the real story. The expletive at the end of my statement was just a symptom of a much deeper force at work. Elton and I were actually being initiated into the cult of racialized manhood. He was undergoing his socialization into blackness, which meant he was beginning to question and take exception to the fact that all the white kids had trucks and all the black kids were left to bum rides. I, on the other hand, was being socialized into whiteness and thus assuming my mantle as one authorized to say who was a "good black" and who wasn't. In my characterization at the time, Elton was the only one who was changing. The reality, however, was that we were both undergoing a change. I was entering into a world of white privilege and he was entering into a world of black anger. In other words, we were both entering into a world fallen.
When I loaded the bus with the boys of LHS we brought that fallen world with us. At sixteen or seventeen their eyes had been opened for long enough to know that a chasm existed between us. And at 21 I was no longer naively expecting them to fall over themselves thanking me for the opportunity to just get out of Lubbock. We all knew that suspiscion and mistrust had boarded the bus with us.
And that is why camp is so important - not only for blacks and white, but for all people. Camp digs you up out of the crusty, hardened earth and replants you in new soil. That means that no matter how strong and invulnerable you were at home, at camp you are in jeopardy of dying.
I've seen it happen. I've seen tough kids, I mean mean dudes, melt to tears when faced with that first faithful step over the rappelling ledge. And I've also seen geeky kids become heroes when they get chosen to act out all of Hamlet in two minutes or less. But the best is when everybody - black ghetto kids and white suburbanites - by the nondiscriminating call of the square dance.
That's when you know that camp is working its magic - when everyone is all turned around in some giant Gordian knot. And that's when the camp speaker has it so easy. She just steps onto the stage and says, "You know, life is like that. We're all turned around in one giant mess. And there ain't not a one of us who knows enough to get out. And so we pray to God for help."
I think that is what happened between me and the boys of LHS. Only it was the horses and not the square dancing that did it. Young Life has this cool way of keeping everything you are doing a secret. You know that like everybody else you are going to rappel, and you know you are going to do a ropes course, and you know you are going to drive go-carts, and you know you are going to ride horses. But when you are going to do that is a total mystery right up until go time. And it was go time with the horses that everyone was dreading.
We were dreading the horses because the horses - we were pretty sure - we could not control. And control is everything isn't it? Control is what this whole white versus black manhood thing is about anyways. We even said it outright when I was a kid. We would say so-and-so was a great coach because he could "handle the blacks." And when "good blacks" rejected being handled? Well, you already know what we said then.
But here we were with the horses and not one of us knew how to handle them. And because we were all out of our element - planted in new dirt - we didn't feel the pressure to lead on like we weren't scared.
So that's how it happened. It happened with a giant admission that we were afraid of not being in control. And the admission came from a young kid named Duck (Duck is the third guy from the left in the photo shamelessly cribbed from Glenn Austell) in a prayer he volunteered to give on the last night of camp.
It was evident that this kid had been to church. He brought out a giant bass voice from somewhere deep inside his chest. "Lo-ord," he started off, "we thank you for all thy many blessings. . ." I just wasn't ready for this. I had to bury my head into my pillow to keep from laughing. I heard snickers from all across the bunk beds. But funny as it was, there was no doubting the fact that this kid was a preacher. "And we are grateful for this Young Life camp, Frontier Ranch, a great blessing to us all." "And we are thankful for our leaders bringing us to this wonderful place in the Colorado Mountains. We are glad to get out of Lubbock."
The prayer went on. I quit laughing and began to pray along silently. Then, after several minutes, at the tail end came the word from God.
"And Lo-ord," Duck concluded, "if we ride horses tomorrow, I just pray I don't get a crazy one. Amen."
It was out of our control. It was in God's hands now.
