I started picking up my junk and stuffing it into the cardboard bag that looked like it might come apart at the corners. Good thing, I thought, I ain’t got much. I fastened the two straps and, taking hold of the handle, I opened the gate onto the faded red brick sidewalk of Wishbone Street. Closing the gate behind me, I headed out toward Main Street, five blocks to the east. Young grass sprigs bulged up between the bricks. Just like me, starting a new season, a new life. What would it be like. Although tears stung my eyes, I had to smile.. Getting that son-of-a-bitch step-father out of my life had an upside and a downside. My life now belonged to me, but I lost my mother in the deal. It would be a long time before she and I spoke again. The next time I saw her, I stood gazing down into her casket
---------
The traffic was pretty normal for late afternoon. Not many cars. I noticed a couple of school buses heading out to the countryside with farm kids. One thing, for sure, I wouldn’t be going back to any classroom anytime soon, if ever. We were in the middle of World War II and only folks with a special rationing sticker on their windshields could get enough gasoline for anything other than going back and forth to work. Of course, my mother’s holy-roller husband knew somebody at the control board and managed extra gasoline for “religious purposes.”
He called me a queer. Hah. That didn’t stop him from trying to corn-hole me any time Mom went to Moline to visit her older sister. I could have told my mother plenty, but what would be the use. She’d believe him. She always did.
My mother changed when she hooked up with that bastard. She used to be lots of fun. I enjoyed watching her getting ready for a date. Her hair and nails had to be just so-so. She loved going to dances and to dance. Sometimes she’d go out three or four times a week. I once asked her why she married a man so mean and she said, “Oh, honey, he’s not so bad. He just has his ways. Besides I need a man to take care of us. I have you to support and that’s gonna take more than I’ll ever make. I want you to get a college education. Somebody in this family needs that. You’d be the first.”
“Not likely to happen, mom. He hates me.”
“No he doesn’t. He just wants you to be a good boy. Go to church and live a Christian life.”
I laughed to myself. If she only knew. A professed teetotaler, he had a bottle hidden in the garage and every chance he got, he’d tie one on. I never told her about that either. He would have beat the hell out of me. Spare the rod and spoil the child. With all the beatings he gave me, I should have been a saint.
-------
Funny how things run through your mind when you’re homeless. By the time I stopped at the drug-store soda fountain for a coke, it came over me like a sudden storm. I was homeless at fourteen.
The guy sat down on a stool next to me just as I tossed ten cents down next to my drink. “Put your money away kid.” He turned to Joe, the young man behind the counter. “It’s on me. Give him whatever he wants.” Then, to me, “You hungry?”
“No, thanks.” Actually I was starved. I skipped lunch to meet a friend.
“Come on now. I never saw a boy your age that wasn’t hungry. Anything you want. I mean it.”
He insisted, so I ordered a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and some French fries, which I gobbled down.
The guy laughed. “See, I knew you were hungry.” He looked down at my suitcase. “You going somewhere?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Got your bag and you’re not sure? Come on now. That’s not much of an answer.”
“Truth is, I really don’t have anyplace to go.”
“You got a home, haven’t you?”
“I did. That is, until after school today.”
I could see he figured something wasn’t making sense. “Did it burn down? I didn’t hear any fire engines and I got good ears for a siren.” His warm smile disarmed me. So, for
some unknown reason, I did something I’d been warned not to do all my life - I opened up and dumped the whole story on a total stranger. He was a good listener, hearing me out without one interruption. His friendly manner loosened my tongue.
“You sure do ask a lot of questions,” I said. “Am I supposed to know you? Are you a friend of my parents?”
He shook his head. “Kicked out into the street, no place to go. Poor little lost soul.”
I sent him a half-hearted smile. “About right, I guess. But,” I tried to assure myself as well as him, “I’ll be all right.”
Draping his arm casually around my shoulders he said, “You bet you will. I just happen to have an extra bedroom in my house. I live alone and I can use the company. How’s that sound?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know this guy. He might be Jack-the Ripper. Before I could answer, he said, “It’s settled. I won’t take no for an answer.”
--------
In his car he began to tell me a story about his life. Said his name was Jake, that he’d been married and divorced with two kids, now grown. “I’m done with women. They’re a pain in the ass, if you know what I mean.”
Yeah, I knew what he meant. I was young and gay. He was older and horny.
Jake appeared to be in his fifties, the executive type. Three piece suit, black wing-tipped shoes and a diamond solitaire on his pinkie big enough to knock your eyes out. A very impressive guy. His aura was that of a well-educated man from a good background. Why wouldn’t I trust him? He reminded me of a local business men I’d had sex with. By nine o’clock that evening he was screwing my brains out. Nothing is ever free. I figured I’d be back on the streets the following morning. That’s not the way it turned out.
-------
As far as my family knew I’d dropped off the face of the earth. I quit school. Just never went back. For several months I enjoyed my relationship with Jake. He treated me like the last bon-bon in the box. I never left the house in daylight. Sometimes we went to the drive-in theater in a nearby town. I always stayed in the car. If I wanted anything from the concession stand, he got it for me.
No one had ever shown me the love and respect I received from Jake. Not a day went by that he didn’t tell me how important I was to him and how much he loved me. My own mother hadn’t used the word love to me in years. When I was a small child she would tuck me in bed at night and before turning out the light and going to her own bedroom she always said, “You know I love you, don’t you?” I’m not sure when it happened but the time came when she no longer tucked me in and the I love you’s became a distant memory.
Jake became a father-lover to me. But it never felt like an incestuous relationship. Sex came with the deal. I knew that. But it didn’t matter. When you are young sex is for fun. I never saw it as a responsible act. Later, on the streets of Chicago, I met dozens of teenagers with the same attitude. It was okay if they paid or if you were in love (or at least thought you were in love). Jake talked to me, not down to me. If I’d been able to spend more than a few months with him, my whole life might have been the better for it. He could have educated me. Taught me about the finer things in life. But - and there is always a but.
-------
About three o’clock one morning we were jolted awake by a crashing noise. I sat upright in bed while Jake reached for the small lamp on the bedside table. He never quite made it when all hell broke loose. Five or six plain clothes cops barreled into the room. One switched on the overhead light from the wall switch and the room lit up like downtown on Saturday night. I was so scared I trembled. Jake said, “What the hell....”
He never got to finish his sentence. The leader of the pack weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds with the fat inside his shirt hanging over his wide Buster Brown belt. He had the face of a constipated boar hog with a snarl to match.
“Well, I do declare,” he began as he nudged a similar type next to him. “What do we have here? I do believe we just broke up a little love nest. What-a-ya say, Phil?” He gave his runt of a partner a healthy nudge in the ribs with his elbow.
“Ain’t that a pity.” They both made gestures more feminine that mine would ever be.
Before they could say anything else, Jake reached for the phone and started to dial. The fat guy, I never did get his name, snatched it out of his hand. “You’ll get your phone call at the station. So get your faggot ass out of bed and make it snappy. I’m already losing a good night’s sleep because of you.” His equally sloppy looking companions more or less formed a semi-circle around the bed, like maybe we were going to run for the door. I thought they looked funny. Don’t get me wrong, I came close to real panic for the first time in my life, but they did look like the Keystone Kops.
Jake did not panic and he wasn’t amused. “What the hell you doing busting into the home of a private citizen. Where’s your warrant?”
“Never thought you’d ask,” the junior g-man said. He pulled some folded papers from the inside pocket of his suit coat and tossed them on the bed. Read ‘em and weep. Now, get moving.” Turning to me he spit out his words, “You, too queer.”
Three of the cops were left to search the house while fatty and his pygmy-sized side-kick hustled us into the back of an unmarked patrol car. At the station they separated us. A technician photographed and printed Jake who was then hauled off to a cell in the back of the jail. I never saw him again. I later learned that he pled guilty to sodomy and oral copulation in exchange for a light sentence of 12 months in the county jail.
As for me, I denied everything they accused me of.
“Did he screw you in the ass?”
“No.”
“Did you suck his dick?”
“No.”
“Did he suck yours?”
“No.”
“Were you lovers?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell were you?”
“Friends.”
“Some friends, huh?” My interrogator winked at the two-way mirror. “Where’d you meet him?”
I tried to explain, but they weren’t interested in anything I said unless it was an admission that we were in a homosexual relationship.
“My step-father threw me out into the streets and I had no place to go. Jake took me in. What’s wrong with that?”
‘That’s not the story we got. Your parents have been worried sick about you. We might not ever have found you if one of their friends from church hadn’t seen you and him having dinner up in Murphysboro last Saturday night.. They contacted your father and...”
“My stepfather. He ain’t no father to me.”
“I see it different. You got loving parents and you’re just another one of them punk kids running the streets these days. Thinkin’ you’re better than your parents.”
“What’s gonna happen to me now?” I had lost much of my sense of fear and wanted to know if I had to go back home. If I did, I would run away. With everything about me out in the open I could never live there again.”
“Someone is coming to pick you up. You’ll be put in juvie over in Carbondale until there’s a court hearing. That’s all I know. Meanwhile you’ll be in lock-up here. I think your folks talked to a lawyer already.”
“I don’t want any lawyer my step-father would get.”
“Suit yourself. Out of my hands now.”
They placed me in a six by eight foot cell with a fold down cot, stainless wash basin and toilet bowl without a seat. I crawled onto the cot and within minutes I slept the sleep of the dead. I woke up late in the afternoon when a kind of grand-motherly lady with snow white hair came to pick me up.
No one had bothered to handcuff me like they did Jake, and she didn’t either. She had a very soothing voice and kept assuring me, as we traveled down the highway to Carbondale in her 1940 Buick. She even apologized for the car. “You know,” she said, “this isn’t a new Buick, but I keep it in good condition. I understand they won’t be making any more cars, except for the military, until after the war.” I enjoyed listening to her talk. She spoke to me as though I were her only son and we were going on vacation.
“Now you have nothing to worry about, young man. You were taken advantage of. This is not the first time that deviant has been in trouble with the law. You’re going to be just fine. I promise you that.”
I thanked her graciously. I shared the blame, whatever it was, with Jake, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I played the innocent. I knew how to do that. I also knew what I was doing when Jake took me in.
