The shortest fight in Polkton history had not been Big Lip’s finest hour — that hour occurred some years before.
It was in the fall, on registration day for Miss Myra Lockhart’s seventh-grade class. Having reached the age of emancipation, her hold-overs came by to say they would not endure the seventh grade for a second or third time. To graduate was no longer in view, but to quitu-ate was.
Before Big Lip left the classroom for the last time, he came over to the big windows where James and I were longing for the free world along the Ansonville road. One quitu-ator had been trying to scare us to death with stories about Miss Myra.
“That old woman’s going to kill YOU,” he laughed.
“That’s a lie!” Big Lip observed.
“What?”
“You ain’t dead are you?”
“No,” the other boy said. Then he stroked his smooth chin with thumb and index.
“Lip, are you calling me a lie?” he wondered as he slapped his fist against his open palm.
Big Lip turned his palms to the ceiling, and shrugged his shoulders. Some of the other first-timers began to pay attention. This could turn into a fight.
“’Cause I ain’t never told a lie,” the agitator said, punctuating his words with slaps of his fist.
Big Lip was not intimidated in the least. “You told one just then,” he shot back.
When those words sunk in, the whole class laughed and laughed; even Big Lip and the Liar joined in. That laughter broke the tension just in time, because Miss Miss Myra walked into the room and all bricka-bracka ceased.
As the quit-uators gave her their tidings and departed, and we answered the roll for the seventh grade, I kept thinking about what Big Lip said. I knew that to tell the truth is noble, and that a stable society depends on doing so. But I had never heard lying condemned so quickly and so well. The words made me realize that I, too, fell under Big Lip’s condemnation. It was his finest hour.
After I graduated, I remembered his words, but I forgot about Big Lip himself. The situation didn’t change after I moved away, but when I moved nearby 28 years later, he came to mind again. Big Lip was nowhere to be found. I asked around about him and learned that Big Lip had disappeared some 10 years after the two-lick fight. When folks realized he was truly missing, they formed a search party. The party found him lying dead just east of Polkton, in a field by the railroad tracks. He had not been run over by a train.
I never learned what really happened to him. But had already learned, and will not forget, the words spoken in Big Lip’s finest hour.
I’m sorry he’s gone.
Leon Smith, a resident of Wingate who grew up in Polkton, believes the truth in stories and that his native Anson County is very near the center of the universe.
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