A Stab in the Dark

Is this a dagger I see before me?

Since I didn’t go away to college, I never experienced the raging independence that folks crave in their late teens. But here I was, 20 years old. I had a good job on a newspaper, the money was okay, so why shouldn’t I splash out for a swinging bachelor pad?

I made myself a list of cool features. A great view, a rooftop pool, a hot tub, a doorman, a gym… 

Sweet!

Then I went out and got a place I could actually afford, with not a single one of those amenities. It was a furnished efficiency apartment in an old house in an iffy neighborhood, near the art school in Indianapolis.

My place was so tiny I could sit on my bed and reach things on the kitchen counter.

The bathroom was down the hall, shared with two other apartments, Not a feature I would necessarily recommend to everyone, by the way.

My rent was $12 a week, paid in advance to the landlady, who lived across the street and watched the place like a hawk. She frequently reminded me I wasn’t allowed to entertain women there.

I had to laugh at that. I didn’t know any women who would have been caught dead in that place. I thought about asking her for some names.

There was no television. I couldn’t use my record turntable because the walls were too thin, and there was no telephone. The lamp wasn’t bright enough to read by, so how did they expect me to pass the time? In solitary prayer?

I was getting ready for work one morning and found that one of my very classy neighbors had barfed in the shared bathtub during the night. From the empty rye bottle on the floor, I shrewdly pieced together the likely scenario.

That was when I decided I needed to move to a better address.

I chose a place half a block away, leaving behind my $12 a week digs for an extravagant $65 a month place. It had a real kitchen and a private bathroom. Also, plenty of cockroaches, so I didn’t need to bring my own.

Something to keep in mind is, if my first apartment was in a bad neighborhood, and I moved just half a block away from it, there was not a lot of improvement.

One night, a couple of months after I moved in, I was walking to my apartment building when I saw a group of teenage boys coming up behind me. That’s my last vivid memory, because one of them hit me in the head with a brick, or with something that would have to do until a brick came along.

I felt them grabbing for my Pentax camera, my only luxury in life, and I wasn’t going to let them have it. Somebody else went for my right back pocket, but I’m left-handed, so they couldn’t find my wallet, and now they were pissed.

There was a good deal of flailing about with my fists. I don’t know how long it lasted, but suddenly they swooped away into the darkness, empty-handed.

Confused, I wandered until I saw a patrol car and flagged it down. The officer asked if I needed to go to the hospital, and while my head was bleeding, it didn’t seem too bad, so I asked him to take me to a friend’s house a couple of miles away.

I was in total shock and I was the very last person to judge whether I needed medical help. Anytime you decide a bleeding head wound “doesn’t seem too bad,” maybe you should get another opinion.

My friend’s mother answered the door, I showed her my head and said I was okay.

“Then, where is that coming from?” she asked, pointing to a small puddle of blood at my feet. Suddenly I was aware of a crimson trickle coming from under my peacoat and dripping onto my white sneakers, not normally a good sign.

It became clear that a knife had gone through the coat, my shirt, and into my abdomen. Time for the emergency room.

I got stitches in my gut and in my head. There was a razor slit up the back of my coat, but the lining probably blocked it from going all the way through, the doctor said.  

They called my mother, who arrived just as I was getting checked out. From her questions it was pretty clear she thought I had been in a car crash.

I sought to comfort her: “No, Mom, it’s nothing like that. I was just stabbed!”

You can see why I never pursued a career in crisis counseling.

I awoke the next morning – at my mother’s house – feeling drunkenly macho. My wallet, my camera and my pride were still intact. I had survived a street assault that could easily have gone the other direction.

My mother wanted me to call in sick for work, but I was having none of that. I was sporting a head bandage the size of a parachute, and dammit, people were going to see it.

When I got to the newsroom, my editor took one look, sent me back to the photo lab to get some pictures, and told me to write a deadline story about it.

“Words Become Real For Reporter Attacked by Gang,” the bold headline declared, which only served to enhance my giddy bravado. This was going to impress everyone, or at least all the folks who had nothing better to do than read a Saturday newspaper.

Today, reading the story I wrote back then, it holds up pretty well until the last couple of paragraphs, which sort of resemble a Joni Mitchell song. There was something about how what I would really like to do was talk to the kids who did this.

Did I really want to do that? I must have, or I wouldn’t have written it. I’m a little proud that I felt that way, just 12 hours after the attack.

Would I feel the same today? I don’t know. Maybe a Zoom call with them would be okay.

A postscript: A couple of weeks later I was on a campaign bus full of volunteers heading from Indianapolis to Milwaukee to work for a 1968 presidential candidate ahead of voting in the Wisconsin primary.

A clean-cut man recognized me from my story, came up and scooted into the seat beside me. He said he was a youth adviser at an inner-city church, and that he knew the kids who had attacked me.

He said he had read them my article, including my offer to sit down with them, and he asked them if he could arrange such a meeting.

Not one of them was interested. But I’m still glad I was.