Danny Malloy, Samurai on Pawselin Prairie

Danny Malloy Danny loved the Ninjas, the Ninja turtles. He saved the plastic action figures in a box buried under his bed: Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo. Danny dreamed of being a super hero with his own mask. In his dreams his mask changed colors: black, brown or yellow but never purple, orange, red or blue. Donatello wore a purple mask. Michelangelo wore an orange mask. Raphael wore a red mask and Leonardo wore a blue mask. Danny liked Leonardo the best of the anthropomorphic turtles. Leonardo used two katanas, best known as the Samurai Sword. He shopped for the turtle men with his own money that is when he didn’t need smoke sticks. Danny took his box of turtles with him when he was sentenced to the Hamm School and Farm for Juveniles. There the guys made fun of the turtles and made fun of Danny for his hero worship. The Hamm guys were beyond Ninjas and into stuff like tattoos, cars and motorcycles. Several guys had done burglaries, more serious than borrowing stuff and skipping school, Danny’s crimes. After one night of teasing Danny buried his masked turtle men behind the Hamm barn. Even though they were buried, Danny remembered Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo. They were more colorful than the black-garbed, green-faced Samurai. He liked to watch Ninja movies but he chose to learn about the Samurai, real warriors, stronger, wiser and not made up, not like the Ninjas. Jenny, Danny’s probation officer, could have been a Samurai. She was strong, quick and had earned several levels of black belt. She told stories about Musashi Miyamoto, the most famous Samurai of all. Miyamoto set a goal to be the best swordsman in his world and was never defeated. He lived to be an old man and wrote a book. Jenny told other tales about the Samurai. After they conquered all their enemies, the people of Japan lived in peace. To be Samurai was to be one of the elite. Many of the warriors became the artists and writers of their culture. Jenny, bless her heart, wanted Danny to live in peace. She praised him for being smart—not just street smart but intelligent. He could grow up to be a writer like Laird and Eastman, the guys who invented the Ninjas. Danny’s thoughts about being intelligent made his legs itch. He didn’t want to be intelligent, he didn’t like the itch. Itching made his legs jiggle. Jenny nagged Denny to set goals to go home. During the time Danny lived at Hamm, he set goals to be good, not to get angry when the older guys razed him or tugged down his jeans. He even learned to clean the Hamm barn without choking on the smell of manure. He set a goal to go home and live with his mom. Jenny said the first step in achieving this goal was to live in a foster home, follow their rules, be pleasant and not run away. She likened living with the Nowells, his new foster parents, to being Samurai and learning the lay of a new land to conquer. Jenny made him think up haikus. She said he must learn to use his brain when making choices.In addition to goals and haiku, Jenny taught him meditation, to be quiet and clear his mind. She called it ‘listening to ants’. Listening to ants was a way to pay attention to goings on in real time, to remember what’s said, and to understand his feelings. She told him, “Be Samurai; learn to watch, to wait, to listen and to get along with the natives.” When Jenny left him at the Nowells, his fifth foster home, he planned to run away. They were old. Mrs. Nowell had silver gray hair and bright blue eyes. She wore jeans, tennis shoes and danced in her kitchen. However, Danny soon discovered she made the best pepperoni pizza. Her husband, Mr. Nowell, stood tall and straight as if he still wore a uniform. He was a retired Marine, wore cowboy boots and grunted. Their house sat close to the edge of a river bank overlooking the Mississippi River. The nights on the river were spooky, too quiet and the stars too close. He felt naked and scared some alien in a spaceship would scoop down and seize him and do strange things to his body. Besides the quiet, there were no street corner lights, no horns, no sidewalks and too many birds: owls, crows, egrets, herons, bitterns and wrens. After a few weeks on the river, he learned to listen for the beavers slapping out their warnings or fish jumping for May flies. He could recognize the mating songs of the Chorus frogs, the Leopard frogs and the Spring Peepers. He buried his fears like they were Ninjas. Now he likes living in southeastern Minnesota. During Danny’s first few weeks at the Nowells he did lots of moogling, thinking up haikus. He fought an inner war in both his mind and his belly to stay or to run. He wondered if Miyamoto had ever written a haiku.