David
Memories sometimes pop up in the strangest places. I haven’t thought of David for years but inexplicably, while reading Ernst Junger’s memoir “Storm of Steel’, visions of the man and something he did came back to me.
The line that sparked it all followed the author’s brief description of two small unremarkable soldiers who served with him in his German regiment in WW1. He said of them, “Even so, brave puny men are always to be preferred to strong cowards.”
David’s act of heroism wasn’t performed on a battlefield or in a life and death situation and there were very few witnesses besides myself. It all happened over forty years ago, in peacetime, in a horse paddock in a park near the center of Toronto.
In those days I had a riding school in that park and a large clientele. My students were , for the most part, young women and girls and they often had boyfriends hanging around watching them taking their lessons and working around the stable. These couples were the typical mix of pretty, bright eyed babes and handsome high school jocks but there was one exception. One girl, let’s call her Mary, had a most unusual suitor. She was in her late teens; a buxom redhead with green eyes and a crop of freckles; not the sort to make the high school cheerleading team but attractive all the same. Like fifty or so other girls she spent all of her spare time around the horses; helping with the grooming and mucking out. We lovingly called them “stable bums”.
On the surface Mary and David appeared to be a very unlikely couple. She was robust and athletic but he was just the opposite. He was only a couple of years her senior but looked much older. He was overweight, wore thick horn-rimmed glasses, was soft and jowly and waddled around with a peculiar toed-out gate. He seemed to be sweating all the time and his lower lip was continually moist and drooping. Because of a severe asthmatic condition he had to watch Mary from a distance. Close proximity to the horses or the hay or straw would have him gasping and reaching for his inhaler. He was always dressed in a business suit, white shirt, formal tie and black highly polished shoes. Mary explained that he had been sequestered into his father’s insurance business at an early age and was required to keep up his appearance at all times. His office hours must have been quite flexible because he would appear at the stables at odd hours during the day and evening. He was obviously in love with her but I couldn’t imagine her feeling the same about him. I assumed Mary saw him merely as a friend. I couldn’t picture anything more intimate than a handshake between the pair.
Despite his appearance David was a very intelligent jovial guy .He had become a fixture around the place but in truth I didn’t know him all that well. We only had the odd brief conversation while he watched moony eyed as his lady love bounced around the paddock during her lessons. The term had yet to be coined but in all respects he was a nerd. A hell of a nice guy but a nerd all the same.
I always turned the school mounts out for a roll and a romp in the big paddock beside my barn in the evenings; they deserved it after a hard day’s work lugging people around in the riding rings and on the trails. One day after finishing a late supper I wandered down to the enclosure to make sure the horses were all right. They were not alright. A gang of motorcycle thugs had swept into the park parked their bikes and was staging an impromptu rodeo. Some of the leather clad goons were mounted on my horses bareback while others had the terrified animals stampeding around bucking and kicking. The bikers must have been very drunk or stoned to be doing what they were right beside the mounted police stable that shared the facility with me. As usual none of the cops seemed to be around- you can’t find one when you need one. I shouted and shook my fist at them for a time but my feeble gestures just seemed to egg them on.
When one of the older horses tripped and fell down a large hairy guy in a Nazi helmet started kicking it to get it up.
That’s when I lost it. I clambered over the fence and pounced on him. We rolled around in the sand with fists flailing and, for a while, I was giving a decent account of myself but then the rest of the gang noticed what was happening and stopped torturing the horses to join in the fray. Two or three of them held me down while the others took turns punching and kicking me. I got a few more licks in but I was toast and I knew it. Shortly, I would either be dead or a candidate for traction. That’s when it happened. Something very heavy landed in a splatting heap on our tangle of arms and legs knocking the bikers off me. The impact was such that at first I thought that one of the horses had spooked and stumbled over us.
When I was finally able to break free, give my head a shake and look around me, I saw the bikers high tailing it for their machines. Only one person remained protectively draped over me.
David, huffing and puffing, lifted himself to knees. His hair was tousled; his glasses were askew with one lens shattered. His tie hung loosely over a ripped collar and his jacket and trousers were covered with sand and horse manure. He leaned over and helped me to a sitting position and while we sat staring at each other two mounted policemen appeared over the rise behind the stable and gave chase to the bikers. The cavalry arrived but they were too late to be of any help.
The real hero of the day was David. When I asked him what had possessed him to take on the Hells’ Angels he said he didn’t really think about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
There are many brave men and women in organizations like the military, police forces and fire departments, but that’s what we expect them to be- that’s what we pay them for.
The true heroes are ordinary people like David who selflessly confront the odds when they feel they’re needed. For a moment I thought that he had done what he had to impress his Mary but as I looked around she was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully she already knew what I had just discovered about her boyfriend. I’ve often wondered if they stayed together. I like to think that they did.
