admin
26 Ağustos 2022, 14:39
Out of the Woods ©2020 by Gamin Paramour Comments are incredibly welcome, and I intend to answer everyone.(ail)
Hello all. The following is a departure for me. Those who have read my stories over the years probably think of them as light, fluffy confections full of happy boys (and sometimes men) enjoying one another in safe and loving relationships. That"s the world I wish we all lived in. This story is far darker, and bad things happen to people just like in the real world we all endure. It isn"t unrelentingly bad, of course. People are resilient and often overcome adversity, although some things are simply too much and sometimes the bad guy wins.
I wrote this originally as a "mainstream" novel, with aspirations (delusions?) of commercial publication, and as such it had no explicit sex in it at all. When I came to my senses and realized that no mainstream publisher would touch this subject matter with a 100-foot pole I revised it for Nifty, dramatizing the sex that occurred "off-camera" in the original manuscript. Be forewarned there are entire chapters without a word of wankable material, but others that will almost certainly get you off the launchpad. If you give this story some time I hope you will become invested in the characters, cheer for their wins and sympathize with their losses, and won"t mind the pauses between erections.
Please note that this is a period piece set in 1988, before the world got whipped into its current and ongoing anti-BL frenzy, and before people saw child molesters behind every bush and lurking in every alley. I apologize for any anachronisms I may have let slip through. If you want to beat me up for mentioning some film or song that wasn"t actually out yet in 1988, feel free.
As always, remember that this is fiction. None of the characters are based on any actual person. Also remember to stay safe in the real world. Let"s keep the bad stuff for our fictional friends. And finally, please donate to Nifty if you possibly can. This wonderful resource is here for us, so let"s be here for it.
Gamin Paramour, March 2020
Chapter 1 Thursday, January 7, 1988
4:38 am Some part of him perversely thought it was sort of cool, getting knocked out cold and everything. He"d seen a million TV heroes get bopped on the conk with a gun butt and drop like a sack of rutabagas, then twelve seconds later shake it off and be back chasing the bad guys without even mussing their hair. Right at the moment it wasn"t shaking off so well.
The out-cold part hadn"t been so bad, as long as he stayed in the ghostly state where the mind was comfortably disconnected from the body, but slowly, whether he wanted to or not, he was rejoining his life already in progress.
He was used to a certain amount of pain and normally would just take it in stride, but this was something more. His jaw seemed loose, like the marionette who said "Just Say No to Drugs" about a hundred times in that video they made the kids watch at school, and he couldn"t feel his nose at all, as if the dentist had shot too high with the Novocain needle. When he finally wrenched an eye open the world was only a soft blur.
With an effort he eventually focused on a familiar crack in the ceiling plaster, the one that sort of looked like Florida after an earthquake or something. This served to orient him in space -- give him a sense of up, down, left and right -- but it wasn"t very reassuring. He was on his back on the cold linoleum floor of the grimy little bathroom in the downstairs hall.
It took three tries to lift his head and look down at himself. He was a mess, but then he usually was after the Old Man got through with him. The scrap of T-shirt that ringed his neck was crusty with dried blood, and he realized that his upper lip, chin and neck were caked with it. He wondered how long he"d been out.
On his bare chest and belly where the shirt had been ripped away were bloody hand prints where his mother had grabbed him to drag him into the bathroom. Mustn"t bleed on her carpet, you know. Apparently she hadn"t bothered to minister to him at all, just dumped him on the bathroom floor and left him there. He would have smiled wryly at the very thought of his mother if his ruined lips had cooperated.
The best he could say about his mother was that she couldn"t hit as hard as the Old Man. But then, she usually got it pretty good herself when the Old Man was really on the rampage. Maybe it had been all she could do just to get him to the bathroom.
The boy struggled to his knees, then to his shaky feet, using the toilet and sink as supports. The room rotated from the effort, but he managed to hold on. He recoiled at his own reflection in the mirror, looking like something out of one of those cheap slasher movies the Old Man was always renting. He hoped he"d clean up better this time than the last bad one, so that people wouldn"t make a big deal of his injuries. It only made the Old Man madder to have teachers asking questions about his cuts and bruises.
A new source of pain elbowed its way to the foreground as he noticed a ragged piece of skin hanging from his badly cut lip, which gaped a sickening, oozing red eighth of an inch. The blood still flowed from there and down into his mouth, and he spit a crimson glob into the sink.
Funny how you get used to the taste of blood.
He pressed his tongue against three newly loosened teeth and reluctantly concluded that this was not the ordinary black eye and bloody nose he had long since learned to clean up for himself. This was one of the bad ones that meant staying home from school a few days until he healed up a bit, time that would be spent rehearsing some unconvincing story his father would invent.
Much as he resisted the idea, he needed his mother. She usually cleaned him up at least the bare minimum, complaining all the while that the boy was always the cause of trouble. She hadn"t done anything this time, and now he noticed that, except for the marching band tuning up inside his head, he could hear nothing in the house. No complaining, no fighting, no sign of life at all except his own soft groans. It took a will, but he hobbled out of the bathroom and down the hall to peek carefully around the corner.
The Old Man was face down on the couch, dead drunk. Even from this distance the boy could see the angry whitish-pink scar that zagged across the back of his neck, a souvenir of the worst of his many bar fights. He often wondered what life might have been like had that broken bottle penetrated sakarya escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/sakarya-escort) a half inch deeper.
A nearly empty Wild Turkey bottle lay on the carpet a few inches from one massive hand, the one that sported the big gold class ring from Inter-County High, Class of "76, twelve years and a thousand dreams ago for the Old Man. The boy would have bet his lucky bottle cap -- the one that got flattened by the freight train -- that the square corner of that ring perfectly matched the gash on his lip.
The place looked like the house trailers they showed on the news when the tornado went through Wichita Falls. Furnishings and knickknacks were everywhere, if not broken then overturned. Pictures hung askew on the walls and a curtain panel from the bay window now half-covered a table lamp on the other side of the room. Apparently the Old Man had used even that as ammunition.
The front door stood ajar and a cold January wind came in, causing the boy to shiver, and worse, threatening to rouse the Old Man. Limping to the door, the boy noticed the family"s beat-up old station wagon wasn"t in the driveway. He had an impulse to shout out for his mother, but a glance at the sleeping giant made him think better of it. Instead he leaned his weight against the door and silently pushed it closed.
He literally crawled up the stairs, lacking the energy to climb them in the normal fashion, and leaving smears of blood to mark his progress. Every light on the second floor appeared to be on, except for his own room. The bathroom was first at the top of the stairs, and he found it empty and nearly as trashed as the living room. He staggered into the master bedroom, where the lights were also on and the closet doors and dresser drawers stood open.
"Mom?" he tried to whisper, but it came out a muffled gurgle through his torn lips, and the pain made him abandon the effort.
Silence. No Mom.
The bedroom was in such disarray that he wondered if they had fought up here as well as the living room. They had fought in every room of the small house at one time or another, but usually one room at a time. Had she gone for a doctor, or maybe the police? Why hadn"t she used the telephone?
A light metallic tinkle caught his ear, and it was then that he noticed the open closet door and the bare wire hangers twisting against each other and making a wind chime sort of sound that might have been pleasant if its implication had not been so horrific. Open dresser drawers stood empty, too, and the cheap brass vanity no longer sported the familiar cosmetics and hair brushes. Tears welled up as his aching brain put it together. She wouldn"t take her clothes and makeup to go for a doctor, or to the police. You don"t take everything unless... unless...
His shock gave way to emptiness. Though she had beaten him, cursed him and belittled him, he never would have dreamed that she would desert him, and even now he couldn"t believe it. She was his mother, and there was some kind of a rule, wasn"t there? Salty tears ran into his cuts and burned, and he wept all the harder. She cared more for her hair curlers and blue jeans than she did for him, and he wished he didn"t care right back, but he just couldn"t help himself. All he wanted was for his mother to come home, but he knew she wouldn"t. She"d taken everything -- everything but him.
He sat on his parents" bed and stared at the wall until he couldn"t see it anymore through his tears. Even so, he had the presence of mind to keep quiet, lest the Old Man hear him. The only thing worse than being without his mother was being alone with his father. It was too much to even think about, especially since he knew he"d somehow be blamed for the loss of the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.
Mom had taken off and left him to take the brunt of the Old Man"s anger, and he knew his smartest move would be to do the same. He"d thought of running away a hundred times but never came close to actually doing it. Only a month before he had gone so far as to pack up an old cardboard suitcase with a pair of jeans, a couple shirts and whatnot, along with whatever cookies and apples he could steal from the pantry without getting whipped, but of course he"d chickened out again. That suitcase was still hidden behind some old lumber in the garage where he"d stashed it for a quick getaway, if the rats hadn"t chewed through it yet to get to the food.
Leaving sure sounded like the right idea, but he barely had the strength to climb the stairs. How could he run away? He needed sleep, but he knew the Old Man would soon wake up with a monstrous hangover, and if he was going he"d damn well better be gone before then.
The boy jumped when he heard the thud of a drunken body rolling off the couch and hitting the floor. He froze, his heart drumming in his chest.
"Goddammit," came the slurred, gravelly voice from downstairs. "Annie Jo, where the hell are you?"
The boy edged silently toward his room. The blood still poured from his lip, he could barely stand, and the hammering in his temples was deafening.
"Annie Jo Barnes, you get your ass down here and clean up this mess! You hear me, woman?" The Old Man was shouting now, his rage untempered by the hours passed out on the couch.
The boy crept into his tiny, unkempt room and quietly shut the door, slowly and silently turning the lock. He knew the Old Man could splinter the door like it was made of saltines, but he hoped the price of a new door would hold him back. He considered hiding under the bed, or in the closet, and was still deciding when the next bellow came from downstairs.
"And you bring that miserable little fuck Andy down here to earn his keep, too! I swear I"ll kick his sorry ass for the mess he made!"
The boy"s knees buckled, knowing without doubt that it was not an empty threat. His thoughts swarmed like bees, and a small whimper escaped his damaged lips. Adrenaline coursed through him, the raging pain took a back seat to his terror, and before he had a chance to think about it he was through the window and leaping for the ramshackle garage.
He hit the tarpaper garage roof on his elbows and one knee, and the agony that speared to his core jolted him back to the reality of his injuries. He couldn"t fight through the pain, and he rolled slackly down the sloped roof and plunged eight feet to the packed dirt drive. Pain raced up his spine like electricity, and he wanted to scream his torment to the sky but he dared not. He had no breath for it, samsun escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/samsun-escort) anyway, able only to lay twitching and panting.
Inside the house the Old Man thrashed and crashed in impotent fury, and though hot shards of misery sliced through the boy his fear was even greater. Somehow he regained his feet, and he stumbled as if drunk into the garage where his little cardboard suitcase waited like a lifeboat. He grabbed it up and struggled off across the neighbor"s field as fast as his battered little body would carry him.
The boy found the well-worn path through the woods and raced along it, his joints exploding with agony at every step. He never looked behind him even once, too frightened to even entertain the thought of his father following behind. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed, the suitcase banged against his legs but still he ran. Suddenly the ground rushed up to him and he was tumbling over, the suitcase flying and his face burying itself into the leaves and mud.
He lay there panting, desperate to get up again and run but his body just wouldn"t obey. He tried to turn his face away from the ground but he lacked the strength even for that and he had to breathe through a screen of dirt and leaves against his lips. The pain was a dull throb that encompassed his whole body, and it pulsed through him in waves that kept three-quarter time with his pounding heart.
It took long minutes for him to feel anything but unreasoning fear. He thought of his father coming after him, and the beating he would get if he were caught. No monster hiding under his bed had ever frightened him as much as that thought, but as his pulse slowed so did his thoughts, and soon he realized that the Old Man would assume he had gone with his mother, and would not follow the path into the woods.
He was sweating from his run, and the cold wind chilled the bare skin of his back, an unsentimental reminder of reality. He managed to roll over and lie there, chest heaving, staring through the branches at the pinpoints of starlight. As he caught his breath and the chaos in his brain subsided he began to try to sort through things in a grown-up, rational way. There had to be answers. All he had to do was ask himself the right questions.
He was away, and that was the important thing, but now what? Where would he go? He didn"t know anyone who wouldn"t put him right in the car and bring him straight back home. Everyone his family knew in this town was either drinking buddies with the Old Man or scared of him, not likely to help the boy escape in either case.
He couldn"t go to school friends. He didn"t have any he could trust, for one thing, and anyway their mothers would surely call the cops just as they did when Richie Culver ran away. Richie was free a grand total of six hours, and finally showed up at school more than a week later with a cast on his arm and a lame story about falling out of a tree.
Cops were useless, most of them the same white trash, laid off foundry workers as the Old Man. And nothing the boy had done so far would piss off the Old Man nearly as much as bringing the law into the picture.
There was no getting around it: He had no one to turn to, no one at all. If he was to get away from this town it would have to be by himself, by his own wits.
But what would he use for money? He rarely got his allowance, and they kept him too busy with chores at home to earn anything with dog walking or any of the few jobs available to eleven-year-olds in the boondocks of Missouri. In his fantasies he stole money from the Old Man"s wallet while he was sleeping it off, then hopped the first bus for Anywhere But Here, USA, only he didn"t have anything remotely like the guts to pick the Old Man"s pocket, drunk or not. His mother took care of the welfare money and the food stamps, but now she and her purse had taken off for parts unknown. Besides, it was too late for any of that now that he"d run away. He"d just have to get a job, that"s all, and seeing that he didn"t have a cent in his pocket he"d better get one soon.
OK, so he"d have to hit the road alone. But where? He had no relatives except in Memphis, and that uncle was the Old Man"s brother and just as shiftless. Billy Dekker had moved with his mother to Chicago after a divorce, and he and Billy had always gotten along. That would be as good a destination as any, but he couldn"t hitchhike to Chicago in his condition, and certainly not before morning. He"d need food and sleep long before he could get any distance between him and the Old Man. He needed someplace to hide around here. New tears rolled down his cheeks, hard as he tried to stop them. It seemed hopeless.
Andy jumped when something rustled the leaves a few feet to his right. Pain momentarily forgotten, he scrambled to his feet and took two steps before he saw the small gray house cat nosing around his suitcase.
"Go on, get!" he hissed, shooing the cat with a kick he instantly regretted as pain shot through him, but at least he was on his feet. The wind whipped around his bare midriff and he wished he had grabbed his coat. The winters in north-central Missouri could get a whole lot colder than this one, and at least there wasn"t any snow on the ground to deal with, but it was still no night to be running around half-naked. With a sigh the boy took up the suitcase to resume his trek to nowhere.
The "woods" was really just a strip of undeveloped land running between two cheap subdivisions on the edge of town. Andy knew from eavesdropping on his parents" many arguments that they had lived in a dismal plywood and wallboard cracker box somewhere around here when he was in diapers, though of course he didn"t remember. Apparently his mother had bitched so long and loud that the Old Man had finally broken down and mortgaged himself to the armpits to buy the equally dismal but slightly larger home Andy had known all his life. He also gathered that was when the Old Man had started to drink, though he couldn"t even imagine him any other way. In Andy"s earliest memories his father"s drunken binges were already commonplace.
There had been that one time, only once in his short life, when the boy dared to hope he might have a Dad after all. Something was going well for the Old Man, something outside a child"s understanding, and whatever it was the boy could only hope it would last. A full, happy two months passed without a single beating, and the Old Man even arranged to take him hunting over his ninth birthday weekend.
He ankara sarışın escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/ankara-escort/sarisin-escort) had a crystal memory of sitting with his father at the kitchen table, the Old Man laughing and telling stories of his own boyhood while cleaning and oiling an old Remington .22 rifle that was to be the boy"s on the anxiously awaited trip. It was borrowed, of course; the family had money for only one rifle, even when the Old Man was working, and there was never any question of who would get it. Still, just sitting with the Old Man cleaning the borrowed rifle was enough to thrill a boy who couldn"t remember the last time his father had smiled at him. The Old Man pulled him close, a big arm around his slender shoulder, and was showing him where to apply oil for the trigger mechanism when the phone rang.
As the phone call progressed the boy heard a quaver enter the Old Man"s voice, then saw the shock, disappointment and, finally, anger come into his eyes. He could hear only half of the conversation but it was obvious that something was terribly wrong.
"They can"t do that!" the Old Man shouted into the phone. "It was all set!" He listened for a long time, then bellowed, "Goddammit Hanson, I need that job! We all do!" He listened a few more seconds, then with a sarcastic, "Yeah, right!" slammed the wall phone too hard into its cradle and it fell loudly onto the linoleum.
The Old Man paced the kitchen floor, ignoring the phone"s squealing "off hook" signal and muttering swear words that the boy had long since become accustomed to hearing. His mother waited for the right moment then slipped behind him to hang up the phone.
"What is it, Jimmy?"
"What is it?" the Old Man repeated angrily. He turned toward the woman and she edged warily out of striking distance. "It"s goddamn fat rich bastards screwing the working man again, that"s what it is. The fucking deal fell through. National Plating isn"t buying the foundry."
This was virtually meaningless to Andy. "The foundry" was just another name for the mysterious place called "work" that the Old Man went to every morning. He had supposed it was something like school, only for grownups; a place you had to go even though you didn"t want to, but which really wasn"t so bad once you got there. He knew vaguely that the Old Man"s paycheck came from there, but he had never considered the possibility that it might someday stop. Money was just something grownups had a lot of and kids might have a little of, and it was somehow just there, so he didn"t understand why the Old Man was so angry. All he really knew for sure was that the happy time with his father was over.
The week came and went without mention of the hunting trip. The Old Man was unapproachable and his mother little better, with verbal skirmishes flaring up but, thankfully, no beatings. With his birthday only days away he still harbored secret hope that things would return to that brief idyll; that the trip would still be on and his Dad would smile again, but deep down he knew.
The borrowed .22 leaned in the corner of the hallway, untouched.
There was no problem the first two days after the foundry closed. The Old Man didn"t come home. The day he did was the last time the boy thought of his life as anything worth the bother. The Old Man"s drinking became a nightly ritual, and the beatings a common outcome.
Eventually the boy stopped even listening to the drunken tirades. It didn"t matter what any particular rage was about. It really had nothing to do with him or his mother, or the dirt he tracked into the house or the money she pissed away or the chores that were done a minute too slowly. It was something inside the Old Man, in whatever passed for a heart. He beat his wife and child because he could, and didn"t need a reason. The boy had always felt strangely embarrassed about it, too, as if it was his fault his father got drunk and beat the hell out of his family. For a while he decided he was simply unlovable, and spent a full year doing his damndest to be the perfect son, but no matter what he did he couldn"t please the Old Man, and finally he gave up trying. Survival was the best he could hope for.
He always went along with the lies he was ordered to tell to the outside world, explaining away the cuts and bruises with imaginary bike accidents, and falls from the swings or monkey bars. This was only partly to avoid further beatings -- he knew those would come whether he lied on command or not. He did it mostly because he didn"t want people to think of his father that way. He told the kids how his "Pop" took him fishing and hunting, and over to St. Louis for a ball game, but of course none of it ever happened. The Old Man wouldn"t give him a look unless it was to smack him, and that sure happened often enough. If the boy was lucky he would get away with a few bruises and soreness for a few days, but sometimes it would be particularly bad, like this one. This time his luck -- like his mother -- had run out.
The trees in the woods were really just saplings not nearly thick enough to block the view of the houses on each side, especially now that they were bare of leaves. The sky was brightening to a cold gray above the housetops, and Andy knew that if anyone spotted him bloody and torn in daylight it would surely mean hospitals and cops and the eventual ride back home. He had to find a hiding place before the town began to awaken. Presently the sun peeked over an eastern hilltop and bathed Andy in an orange light that made him look even bloodier than he really was. The sun warmed him a little, but he was so nervous about being seen that he wished it had stayed behind the hill and minded its own business.
A sudden noise froze the boy in his tracks. Then it came again, a hollow "clink", almost musical but out of tune. Andy scanned the row of tacky houses. In the driveway of one of the better-kept homes a slim, slightly graying man was loading cases of empty pop bottles into his trunk. There were several cases still to be loaded, and the man worked quickly, whistling softly once in a while. As the man hefted another case of bottles into the trunk Andy finally got a good look.
He knew the face from somewhere. It had been a while, but he knew this man somehow and the memory was pleasant. As Andy stared and tried to remember he felt drawn closer. The cardboard suitcase slipped from his hand and he shuffled weakly through the trees toward the neatly landscaped back lawn. Then he noticed the jagged scar on the man"s left forearm, and he remembered.
Next time: Charlie.
If you enjoy my writing please let me know by emailing me at ail and I will do my best to reply quickly.
If you"re a glutton for punishment you can find my archived stories here on my Prolific Authors page.
Hello all. The following is a departure for me. Those who have read my stories over the years probably think of them as light, fluffy confections full of happy boys (and sometimes men) enjoying one another in safe and loving relationships. That"s the world I wish we all lived in. This story is far darker, and bad things happen to people just like in the real world we all endure. It isn"t unrelentingly bad, of course. People are resilient and often overcome adversity, although some things are simply too much and sometimes the bad guy wins.
I wrote this originally as a "mainstream" novel, with aspirations (delusions?) of commercial publication, and as such it had no explicit sex in it at all. When I came to my senses and realized that no mainstream publisher would touch this subject matter with a 100-foot pole I revised it for Nifty, dramatizing the sex that occurred "off-camera" in the original manuscript. Be forewarned there are entire chapters without a word of wankable material, but others that will almost certainly get you off the launchpad. If you give this story some time I hope you will become invested in the characters, cheer for their wins and sympathize with their losses, and won"t mind the pauses between erections.
Please note that this is a period piece set in 1988, before the world got whipped into its current and ongoing anti-BL frenzy, and before people saw child molesters behind every bush and lurking in every alley. I apologize for any anachronisms I may have let slip through. If you want to beat me up for mentioning some film or song that wasn"t actually out yet in 1988, feel free.
As always, remember that this is fiction. None of the characters are based on any actual person. Also remember to stay safe in the real world. Let"s keep the bad stuff for our fictional friends. And finally, please donate to Nifty if you possibly can. This wonderful resource is here for us, so let"s be here for it.
Gamin Paramour, March 2020
Chapter 1 Thursday, January 7, 1988
4:38 am Some part of him perversely thought it was sort of cool, getting knocked out cold and everything. He"d seen a million TV heroes get bopped on the conk with a gun butt and drop like a sack of rutabagas, then twelve seconds later shake it off and be back chasing the bad guys without even mussing their hair. Right at the moment it wasn"t shaking off so well.
The out-cold part hadn"t been so bad, as long as he stayed in the ghostly state where the mind was comfortably disconnected from the body, but slowly, whether he wanted to or not, he was rejoining his life already in progress.
He was used to a certain amount of pain and normally would just take it in stride, but this was something more. His jaw seemed loose, like the marionette who said "Just Say No to Drugs" about a hundred times in that video they made the kids watch at school, and he couldn"t feel his nose at all, as if the dentist had shot too high with the Novocain needle. When he finally wrenched an eye open the world was only a soft blur.
With an effort he eventually focused on a familiar crack in the ceiling plaster, the one that sort of looked like Florida after an earthquake or something. This served to orient him in space -- give him a sense of up, down, left and right -- but it wasn"t very reassuring. He was on his back on the cold linoleum floor of the grimy little bathroom in the downstairs hall.
It took three tries to lift his head and look down at himself. He was a mess, but then he usually was after the Old Man got through with him. The scrap of T-shirt that ringed his neck was crusty with dried blood, and he realized that his upper lip, chin and neck were caked with it. He wondered how long he"d been out.
On his bare chest and belly where the shirt had been ripped away were bloody hand prints where his mother had grabbed him to drag him into the bathroom. Mustn"t bleed on her carpet, you know. Apparently she hadn"t bothered to minister to him at all, just dumped him on the bathroom floor and left him there. He would have smiled wryly at the very thought of his mother if his ruined lips had cooperated.
The best he could say about his mother was that she couldn"t hit as hard as the Old Man. But then, she usually got it pretty good herself when the Old Man was really on the rampage. Maybe it had been all she could do just to get him to the bathroom.
The boy struggled to his knees, then to his shaky feet, using the toilet and sink as supports. The room rotated from the effort, but he managed to hold on. He recoiled at his own reflection in the mirror, looking like something out of one of those cheap slasher movies the Old Man was always renting. He hoped he"d clean up better this time than the last bad one, so that people wouldn"t make a big deal of his injuries. It only made the Old Man madder to have teachers asking questions about his cuts and bruises.
A new source of pain elbowed its way to the foreground as he noticed a ragged piece of skin hanging from his badly cut lip, which gaped a sickening, oozing red eighth of an inch. The blood still flowed from there and down into his mouth, and he spit a crimson glob into the sink.
Funny how you get used to the taste of blood.
He pressed his tongue against three newly loosened teeth and reluctantly concluded that this was not the ordinary black eye and bloody nose he had long since learned to clean up for himself. This was one of the bad ones that meant staying home from school a few days until he healed up a bit, time that would be spent rehearsing some unconvincing story his father would invent.
Much as he resisted the idea, he needed his mother. She usually cleaned him up at least the bare minimum, complaining all the while that the boy was always the cause of trouble. She hadn"t done anything this time, and now he noticed that, except for the marching band tuning up inside his head, he could hear nothing in the house. No complaining, no fighting, no sign of life at all except his own soft groans. It took a will, but he hobbled out of the bathroom and down the hall to peek carefully around the corner.
The Old Man was face down on the couch, dead drunk. Even from this distance the boy could see the angry whitish-pink scar that zagged across the back of his neck, a souvenir of the worst of his many bar fights. He often wondered what life might have been like had that broken bottle penetrated sakarya escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/sakarya-escort) a half inch deeper.
A nearly empty Wild Turkey bottle lay on the carpet a few inches from one massive hand, the one that sported the big gold class ring from Inter-County High, Class of "76, twelve years and a thousand dreams ago for the Old Man. The boy would have bet his lucky bottle cap -- the one that got flattened by the freight train -- that the square corner of that ring perfectly matched the gash on his lip.
The place looked like the house trailers they showed on the news when the tornado went through Wichita Falls. Furnishings and knickknacks were everywhere, if not broken then overturned. Pictures hung askew on the walls and a curtain panel from the bay window now half-covered a table lamp on the other side of the room. Apparently the Old Man had used even that as ammunition.
The front door stood ajar and a cold January wind came in, causing the boy to shiver, and worse, threatening to rouse the Old Man. Limping to the door, the boy noticed the family"s beat-up old station wagon wasn"t in the driveway. He had an impulse to shout out for his mother, but a glance at the sleeping giant made him think better of it. Instead he leaned his weight against the door and silently pushed it closed.
He literally crawled up the stairs, lacking the energy to climb them in the normal fashion, and leaving smears of blood to mark his progress. Every light on the second floor appeared to be on, except for his own room. The bathroom was first at the top of the stairs, and he found it empty and nearly as trashed as the living room. He staggered into the master bedroom, where the lights were also on and the closet doors and dresser drawers stood open.
"Mom?" he tried to whisper, but it came out a muffled gurgle through his torn lips, and the pain made him abandon the effort.
Silence. No Mom.
The bedroom was in such disarray that he wondered if they had fought up here as well as the living room. They had fought in every room of the small house at one time or another, but usually one room at a time. Had she gone for a doctor, or maybe the police? Why hadn"t she used the telephone?
A light metallic tinkle caught his ear, and it was then that he noticed the open closet door and the bare wire hangers twisting against each other and making a wind chime sort of sound that might have been pleasant if its implication had not been so horrific. Open dresser drawers stood empty, too, and the cheap brass vanity no longer sported the familiar cosmetics and hair brushes. Tears welled up as his aching brain put it together. She wouldn"t take her clothes and makeup to go for a doctor, or to the police. You don"t take everything unless... unless...
His shock gave way to emptiness. Though she had beaten him, cursed him and belittled him, he never would have dreamed that she would desert him, and even now he couldn"t believe it. She was his mother, and there was some kind of a rule, wasn"t there? Salty tears ran into his cuts and burned, and he wept all the harder. She cared more for her hair curlers and blue jeans than she did for him, and he wished he didn"t care right back, but he just couldn"t help himself. All he wanted was for his mother to come home, but he knew she wouldn"t. She"d taken everything -- everything but him.
He sat on his parents" bed and stared at the wall until he couldn"t see it anymore through his tears. Even so, he had the presence of mind to keep quiet, lest the Old Man hear him. The only thing worse than being without his mother was being alone with his father. It was too much to even think about, especially since he knew he"d somehow be blamed for the loss of the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.
Mom had taken off and left him to take the brunt of the Old Man"s anger, and he knew his smartest move would be to do the same. He"d thought of running away a hundred times but never came close to actually doing it. Only a month before he had gone so far as to pack up an old cardboard suitcase with a pair of jeans, a couple shirts and whatnot, along with whatever cookies and apples he could steal from the pantry without getting whipped, but of course he"d chickened out again. That suitcase was still hidden behind some old lumber in the garage where he"d stashed it for a quick getaway, if the rats hadn"t chewed through it yet to get to the food.
Leaving sure sounded like the right idea, but he barely had the strength to climb the stairs. How could he run away? He needed sleep, but he knew the Old Man would soon wake up with a monstrous hangover, and if he was going he"d damn well better be gone before then.
The boy jumped when he heard the thud of a drunken body rolling off the couch and hitting the floor. He froze, his heart drumming in his chest.
"Goddammit," came the slurred, gravelly voice from downstairs. "Annie Jo, where the hell are you?"
The boy edged silently toward his room. The blood still poured from his lip, he could barely stand, and the hammering in his temples was deafening.
"Annie Jo Barnes, you get your ass down here and clean up this mess! You hear me, woman?" The Old Man was shouting now, his rage untempered by the hours passed out on the couch.
The boy crept into his tiny, unkempt room and quietly shut the door, slowly and silently turning the lock. He knew the Old Man could splinter the door like it was made of saltines, but he hoped the price of a new door would hold him back. He considered hiding under the bed, or in the closet, and was still deciding when the next bellow came from downstairs.
"And you bring that miserable little fuck Andy down here to earn his keep, too! I swear I"ll kick his sorry ass for the mess he made!"
The boy"s knees buckled, knowing without doubt that it was not an empty threat. His thoughts swarmed like bees, and a small whimper escaped his damaged lips. Adrenaline coursed through him, the raging pain took a back seat to his terror, and before he had a chance to think about it he was through the window and leaping for the ramshackle garage.
He hit the tarpaper garage roof on his elbows and one knee, and the agony that speared to his core jolted him back to the reality of his injuries. He couldn"t fight through the pain, and he rolled slackly down the sloped roof and plunged eight feet to the packed dirt drive. Pain raced up his spine like electricity, and he wanted to scream his torment to the sky but he dared not. He had no breath for it, samsun escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/samsun-escort) anyway, able only to lay twitching and panting.
Inside the house the Old Man thrashed and crashed in impotent fury, and though hot shards of misery sliced through the boy his fear was even greater. Somehow he regained his feet, and he stumbled as if drunk into the garage where his little cardboard suitcase waited like a lifeboat. He grabbed it up and struggled off across the neighbor"s field as fast as his battered little body would carry him.
The boy found the well-worn path through the woods and raced along it, his joints exploding with agony at every step. He never looked behind him even once, too frightened to even entertain the thought of his father following behind. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed, the suitcase banged against his legs but still he ran. Suddenly the ground rushed up to him and he was tumbling over, the suitcase flying and his face burying itself into the leaves and mud.
He lay there panting, desperate to get up again and run but his body just wouldn"t obey. He tried to turn his face away from the ground but he lacked the strength even for that and he had to breathe through a screen of dirt and leaves against his lips. The pain was a dull throb that encompassed his whole body, and it pulsed through him in waves that kept three-quarter time with his pounding heart.
It took long minutes for him to feel anything but unreasoning fear. He thought of his father coming after him, and the beating he would get if he were caught. No monster hiding under his bed had ever frightened him as much as that thought, but as his pulse slowed so did his thoughts, and soon he realized that the Old Man would assume he had gone with his mother, and would not follow the path into the woods.
He was sweating from his run, and the cold wind chilled the bare skin of his back, an unsentimental reminder of reality. He managed to roll over and lie there, chest heaving, staring through the branches at the pinpoints of starlight. As he caught his breath and the chaos in his brain subsided he began to try to sort through things in a grown-up, rational way. There had to be answers. All he had to do was ask himself the right questions.
He was away, and that was the important thing, but now what? Where would he go? He didn"t know anyone who wouldn"t put him right in the car and bring him straight back home. Everyone his family knew in this town was either drinking buddies with the Old Man or scared of him, not likely to help the boy escape in either case.
He couldn"t go to school friends. He didn"t have any he could trust, for one thing, and anyway their mothers would surely call the cops just as they did when Richie Culver ran away. Richie was free a grand total of six hours, and finally showed up at school more than a week later with a cast on his arm and a lame story about falling out of a tree.
Cops were useless, most of them the same white trash, laid off foundry workers as the Old Man. And nothing the boy had done so far would piss off the Old Man nearly as much as bringing the law into the picture.
There was no getting around it: He had no one to turn to, no one at all. If he was to get away from this town it would have to be by himself, by his own wits.
But what would he use for money? He rarely got his allowance, and they kept him too busy with chores at home to earn anything with dog walking or any of the few jobs available to eleven-year-olds in the boondocks of Missouri. In his fantasies he stole money from the Old Man"s wallet while he was sleeping it off, then hopped the first bus for Anywhere But Here, USA, only he didn"t have anything remotely like the guts to pick the Old Man"s pocket, drunk or not. His mother took care of the welfare money and the food stamps, but now she and her purse had taken off for parts unknown. Besides, it was too late for any of that now that he"d run away. He"d just have to get a job, that"s all, and seeing that he didn"t have a cent in his pocket he"d better get one soon.
OK, so he"d have to hit the road alone. But where? He had no relatives except in Memphis, and that uncle was the Old Man"s brother and just as shiftless. Billy Dekker had moved with his mother to Chicago after a divorce, and he and Billy had always gotten along. That would be as good a destination as any, but he couldn"t hitchhike to Chicago in his condition, and certainly not before morning. He"d need food and sleep long before he could get any distance between him and the Old Man. He needed someplace to hide around here. New tears rolled down his cheeks, hard as he tried to stop them. It seemed hopeless.
Andy jumped when something rustled the leaves a few feet to his right. Pain momentarily forgotten, he scrambled to his feet and took two steps before he saw the small gray house cat nosing around his suitcase.
"Go on, get!" he hissed, shooing the cat with a kick he instantly regretted as pain shot through him, but at least he was on his feet. The wind whipped around his bare midriff and he wished he had grabbed his coat. The winters in north-central Missouri could get a whole lot colder than this one, and at least there wasn"t any snow on the ground to deal with, but it was still no night to be running around half-naked. With a sigh the boy took up the suitcase to resume his trek to nowhere.
The "woods" was really just a strip of undeveloped land running between two cheap subdivisions on the edge of town. Andy knew from eavesdropping on his parents" many arguments that they had lived in a dismal plywood and wallboard cracker box somewhere around here when he was in diapers, though of course he didn"t remember. Apparently his mother had bitched so long and loud that the Old Man had finally broken down and mortgaged himself to the armpits to buy the equally dismal but slightly larger home Andy had known all his life. He also gathered that was when the Old Man had started to drink, though he couldn"t even imagine him any other way. In Andy"s earliest memories his father"s drunken binges were already commonplace.
There had been that one time, only once in his short life, when the boy dared to hope he might have a Dad after all. Something was going well for the Old Man, something outside a child"s understanding, and whatever it was the boy could only hope it would last. A full, happy two months passed without a single beating, and the Old Man even arranged to take him hunting over his ninth birthday weekend.
He ankara sarışın escort (http://www.bayanmap.com/k/ankara-escort/sarisin-escort) had a crystal memory of sitting with his father at the kitchen table, the Old Man laughing and telling stories of his own boyhood while cleaning and oiling an old Remington .22 rifle that was to be the boy"s on the anxiously awaited trip. It was borrowed, of course; the family had money for only one rifle, even when the Old Man was working, and there was never any question of who would get it. Still, just sitting with the Old Man cleaning the borrowed rifle was enough to thrill a boy who couldn"t remember the last time his father had smiled at him. The Old Man pulled him close, a big arm around his slender shoulder, and was showing him where to apply oil for the trigger mechanism when the phone rang.
As the phone call progressed the boy heard a quaver enter the Old Man"s voice, then saw the shock, disappointment and, finally, anger come into his eyes. He could hear only half of the conversation but it was obvious that something was terribly wrong.
"They can"t do that!" the Old Man shouted into the phone. "It was all set!" He listened for a long time, then bellowed, "Goddammit Hanson, I need that job! We all do!" He listened a few more seconds, then with a sarcastic, "Yeah, right!" slammed the wall phone too hard into its cradle and it fell loudly onto the linoleum.
The Old Man paced the kitchen floor, ignoring the phone"s squealing "off hook" signal and muttering swear words that the boy had long since become accustomed to hearing. His mother waited for the right moment then slipped behind him to hang up the phone.
"What is it, Jimmy?"
"What is it?" the Old Man repeated angrily. He turned toward the woman and she edged warily out of striking distance. "It"s goddamn fat rich bastards screwing the working man again, that"s what it is. The fucking deal fell through. National Plating isn"t buying the foundry."
This was virtually meaningless to Andy. "The foundry" was just another name for the mysterious place called "work" that the Old Man went to every morning. He had supposed it was something like school, only for grownups; a place you had to go even though you didn"t want to, but which really wasn"t so bad once you got there. He knew vaguely that the Old Man"s paycheck came from there, but he had never considered the possibility that it might someday stop. Money was just something grownups had a lot of and kids might have a little of, and it was somehow just there, so he didn"t understand why the Old Man was so angry. All he really knew for sure was that the happy time with his father was over.
The week came and went without mention of the hunting trip. The Old Man was unapproachable and his mother little better, with verbal skirmishes flaring up but, thankfully, no beatings. With his birthday only days away he still harbored secret hope that things would return to that brief idyll; that the trip would still be on and his Dad would smile again, but deep down he knew.
The borrowed .22 leaned in the corner of the hallway, untouched.
There was no problem the first two days after the foundry closed. The Old Man didn"t come home. The day he did was the last time the boy thought of his life as anything worth the bother. The Old Man"s drinking became a nightly ritual, and the beatings a common outcome.
Eventually the boy stopped even listening to the drunken tirades. It didn"t matter what any particular rage was about. It really had nothing to do with him or his mother, or the dirt he tracked into the house or the money she pissed away or the chores that were done a minute too slowly. It was something inside the Old Man, in whatever passed for a heart. He beat his wife and child because he could, and didn"t need a reason. The boy had always felt strangely embarrassed about it, too, as if it was his fault his father got drunk and beat the hell out of his family. For a while he decided he was simply unlovable, and spent a full year doing his damndest to be the perfect son, but no matter what he did he couldn"t please the Old Man, and finally he gave up trying. Survival was the best he could hope for.
He always went along with the lies he was ordered to tell to the outside world, explaining away the cuts and bruises with imaginary bike accidents, and falls from the swings or monkey bars. This was only partly to avoid further beatings -- he knew those would come whether he lied on command or not. He did it mostly because he didn"t want people to think of his father that way. He told the kids how his "Pop" took him fishing and hunting, and over to St. Louis for a ball game, but of course none of it ever happened. The Old Man wouldn"t give him a look unless it was to smack him, and that sure happened often enough. If the boy was lucky he would get away with a few bruises and soreness for a few days, but sometimes it would be particularly bad, like this one. This time his luck -- like his mother -- had run out.
The trees in the woods were really just saplings not nearly thick enough to block the view of the houses on each side, especially now that they were bare of leaves. The sky was brightening to a cold gray above the housetops, and Andy knew that if anyone spotted him bloody and torn in daylight it would surely mean hospitals and cops and the eventual ride back home. He had to find a hiding place before the town began to awaken. Presently the sun peeked over an eastern hilltop and bathed Andy in an orange light that made him look even bloodier than he really was. The sun warmed him a little, but he was so nervous about being seen that he wished it had stayed behind the hill and minded its own business.
A sudden noise froze the boy in his tracks. Then it came again, a hollow "clink", almost musical but out of tune. Andy scanned the row of tacky houses. In the driveway of one of the better-kept homes a slim, slightly graying man was loading cases of empty pop bottles into his trunk. There were several cases still to be loaded, and the man worked quickly, whistling softly once in a while. As the man hefted another case of bottles into the trunk Andy finally got a good look.
He knew the face from somewhere. It had been a while, but he knew this man somehow and the memory was pleasant. As Andy stared and tried to remember he felt drawn closer. The cardboard suitcase slipped from his hand and he shuffled weakly through the trees toward the neatly landscaped back lawn. Then he noticed the jagged scar on the man"s left forearm, and he remembered.
Next time: Charlie.
If you enjoy my writing please let me know by emailing me at ail and I will do my best to reply quickly.
If you"re a glutton for punishment you can find my archived stories here on my Prolific Authors page.