—and all because of Mr. Pierce, Ronnie’s supervisor in Cell #5.
Mr. Pierce did things to Arlene that he wanted to do with his wife, but his wife thought they were “sick” and “perverted,” so he found himself a ree-tard, a sped who never talked much anyway and who had no friends and he did these things to her. He put himself inside her, in her mouth, between her legs, “doggy-style,” but there was more; objects, ropes, belts, marks he left on her that she had to cover up (Ronnie always wondered why she wore long-sleeved shirts, even in summer) and other things that involved peeing and pooping and for a moment Ronnie couldn’t take it anymore, he let go of Arlene’s hands and stepped back, trying to force the Hurting away from him, and for a moment, just a moment, Arlene’s eyes looked directly into his and he Knew that she knew that he Knew, and it was real confusing because this had never happened before, but he didn’t look away from her—nothing could have made him look away from her—because this was the first time in over a year (since Mr. Pierce had started “visiting” her, or taking her along during “special errands” during regular workshop hours) that she’d felt any real connection with another person, and Ronnie wasn’t going to deny her, so he pulled in a deep breath and stepped forward and took hold of her again, more firmly this time, because he wanted to share as much of her Hurting as she was willing to show him, and Arlene held nothing back, she couldn’t, everything flooded out of her and into Ronnie and she started crying and lay her head on his shoulder and he held even tighter to her, no one was going to pull them apart, not yet, and after she’d shown him every moment of her Hurting, everything that had been done to her, everything that she’d tried to hide from the world, Ronnie let himself go the rest of the way and see what her life was going to be like if he didn’t take the Hurting away—
—and something new occurred to him, something that might have been there all along (or maybe not, it was kind of hard to tell): except for what Mr. Pierce had done, was doing, and would continue to do to her, Arlene had a good life, with parents and brothers and sisters who loved her, and friends who came over a lot, and nobody else had hurt or would hurt her; if it weren’t for Mr. Pierce, she’d be just as happy as Vicki Flowers.
Ronnie staggered a little bit with the realization that he wouldn’t have to kill Arlene; he could take the Hurting away by killing Mr. Pierce.
He could save her.
He wanted to save her.
He would save her.
And looking into her eyes, he also realized that she’d shared his every thought since the moment they’d touched; his guard had been down, he’d made a connection with her that he’d never made before (or maybe he had and just didn’t know it…it was still confusing), and Arlene wiped her eyes and then actually smiled at him.
“You can’t never tell anybody,” he whispered in her ear.
“I promise, R.J. Cross my heart and hope to die, I promise.”
R.J.
She’d called him R.J., just like he’d always wished someone would.
That was all he needed. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, then, once the song was over (it wasn’t such a bad song, after all, he thought) he escorted her back to her chair just like a gentleman was supposed to, and she was smiling and laughing, and because she was smiling and laughing another boy came over and asked her to dance, and she said yes, and seeing her out there with another boy, laughing and spinning to the music, Ronnie felt something in his heart that he hadn’t felt in years, if ever.
Hope.
Vicki came out of the restroom and he took her hand and they danced for two more songs, then the DJ announced a five-minute break and then he’d be back for the last three dances of the night, all of them ladies’ choice.
Vicki went over to sit next to Arlene while Ronnie made his way over to the punch bowl. He wasn’t thirsty but he needed to be someplace where he could see the whole room. Mr. Pierce was here someplace—had, in fact, driven the van that Ronnie and several other boys had ridden in from the group home—and Ronnie was going to find him.
It took less than thirty seconds. Ronnie spotted Mr. Pierce going out one of the side doors that emptied into the parking lot. He was probably going out for a smoke. Even though people were allowed to smoke inside, the supervisors had made it clear that no one was to smoke in the ballroom because the smell would get into everyone’s clothes and some of the clients had spent most, if not all, of their money on their dance clothes. So it was agreed that anyone who wanted to have a smoke had to go either to the hotel bar or outside.
Ronnie scanned the ballroom to make sure no one was watching him.
He put down his punch cup and began to walk in the same direction as Mr. Pierce, then suddenly turned and headed toward the bathrooms.
Suzanne had told him to do this.
I don’t want you to do this, Ronnie, but if you’re going to anyway, then I don’t want you to get caught. Go to the bathroom and climb out one of the windows. That way, everyone will think you were using the bathroom.
He made a point of saying hello to a couple of the workshop supervisors on the way, going so far as tell one of them that he’d “…had way too much punch” before going through the doors that led to the bathrooms.
Suzanne had been right; two of the toilet stalls had windows high up on the walls inside, and it was easy for Ronnie to open one of them and climb through. It was pretty cold outside, so he hoped that no one else came in and found the opened window while he was gone. He lowered it just enough so that he could get his fingers underneath and open it from outside, but it was still pretty drafty.
Then he decided that he didn’t care.
He walked quickly around the side of the building leading to the parking lot, and there was Mr. Pierce standing next to the van, smoking.
The sidewalk and parts of the parking lot were pretty icy (winter always came late to Cedar Hill) so Ronnie was having a hard time getting over to the supervisor, what with his new shoes and their smooth soles…and then he realized that he could use this.
He made himself fall down; not too hard, but enough that, from where Mr. Pierce was standing, it would look like it hurt.
“Ronnie?” called Mr. Pierce from beside the van. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Pierce,” Ronnie called back, making his voice sound as weak as possible. “I think I busted something. I’m sorry.”
Pierce sighed loudly, took a final drag from his cigarette, and carefully began making his way over to where Ronnie lay on the ground. “Jesus Christ, Ronnie—what the hell were you thinking, coming out here, anyway? It’s cold and—”
He was bending down to help Ronnie get to his feet when Ronnie’s right hand shot up and clamped around Pierce’s throat. Ronnie was very strong, had perhaps the strongest grip of any client in Cell #5. Even using both of his hands, Mr. Pierce couldn’t loosen Ronnie’s grip.
Ronnie rose to his feet while simultaneously pulling Mr. Pierce down toward the curb, face-first. When the supervisor was flat on the ice, his mouth pressed firmly against the cement curb, Ronnie stood up and pressed his foot against the back of Pierce’s head.
“You don’t get to Hurt Arlene anymore,” he said.
And pressed down with all his strength.
Pierce made a sound somewhere between a groan and a scream that was muffled by the ice and the pressure of Ronnie’s foot, and then his teeth began to shatter and fly backward down his throat, but Ronnie didn’t stop there, he pulled back his foot and this time stomped as hard as he could right on the crown of Pierce’s skull, directing the force toward the supervisor’s jaw, and Pierce spewed blood from his mouth and face and ears, and Ronnie knew the third one would be the last, and he smiled as he came down even harder than before and pulped the back of Pierce’s skull while at the same time separating the man’s jaw from the rest of his head.
God, was there a lot of blood. And several bits of shattered teeth. And something that looked like a chunk of the man’s tongue.
>
Ronnie looked around and saw no one else in the parking lot, and then knelt down and took Mr. Pierce’s wallet and the cash in his pockets, as well as the keys to the van. He ran back to the opened window—making sure to step in a puddle to get any blood off his shoe—and climbed back inside, making sure to close the window behind him.
He walked over to one of the urinals and flushed it just as the door opened and another male supervisor came in, and the urinal (this made Ronnie so happy) overflowed onto his shoes.
“Oh, Ronnie,” said the supervisor, Mr. Ireland, “step back before you ruin your new shoes, why don’t you? Here, let’s get some paper towels and see if we can’t save them, okay?”
Ronnie smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Ireland. I sure don’t want nothing to happen to these.”
“Don’t want anything to happen to them,” said Ireland, correcting Ronnie’s almost always-questionable grammar. “Here, let’s wet down a couple of paper towels and see what that does.”
* * *
The last twenty-five minutes of the dance were among the happiest of Ronnie’s life. For the last dance. Both Vicki and Arlene picked him, and they made a circle and held hands and spun around and around and around to “Gonna Fly Now,” all of them laughing as they got dizzier and dizzier, the multi-colored lights soaring around them like something out of a dream.
When it was over, both Arlene and Vicki kissed him goodnight, one taking each cheek. His face turned so red it looked like an apple.
* * *
Mr. Pierce’s murder was a shock to everyone and Big News for several weeks. The police came and questioned everyone who’d been at the dance, but no one had seen anything. The Cedar Hill Ally ran a long obituary with photos mourning the loss of this “…compassionate community member who served his country, as well as the less fortunate.”
Everyone from all the workshops and group homes attended the funeral. Ronnie and Arlene kept looking at one another and smiling—but not too widely, not so that anyone would know or suspect.
No arrest was ever made in the robbery and brutal murder of James Leonard Pierce.
* * *
What was never made known about Pierce—not even by his wife, who knew some things for a fact and suspected several more—was that he liked to drive to Columbus every few weekends and frequent brothels, both high-class and low-life (his sexual tastes were, to put it mildly, extremely varied). He had, in fact, been planning such a weekend the night of the Valentine’s Day dance (Arlene was beginning to bore him) and so had nearly two thousand dollars in cash on him at the time of his death.
Ronnie was very careful to hide that money because he knew he was going to need it.
There was no way he could stay in Cedar Hill much longer, not after this.
* * *
Ronnie’s mother died unexpectedly a week after Pierce’s funeral. She had a heart condition that she never told Ronnie or his father about; her death, if it can be said of any death, was as peaceful and painless as it could have been, coming in the middle of the night, in her sleep, deep in the “wee hours” (as she liked calling them). She simply kissed her husband and her son good-night (this was a weekend when Ronnie was staying at his parents’ home), went upstairs, fell asleep, and stayed that way.
Her funeral was well-attended, and Ronnie couldn’t stop crying; he never realized that his mother had so many friends.
He didn’t even bother going back to the house afterward. He walked downtown, bought a bus ticket to Indianapolis and, once there, quickly vanished into the city.
It took his brothers, sisters, and father several hours to notice that he was missing.
* * *
Though he never did—as the doctor predicted—grow to beyond the age of eleven years old emotionally, he was nonetheless a smart and exceptionally resourceful eleven-year-old. Armed with the two thousand dollars he’d taken from Mr. Pierce, he found it easy to find inexpensive rooming where no one asked any questions once they saw the money up-front. He ate only three meals a day, no snacks, and took great pains to make sure he got full use out of the various clothes and toiletry supplies he had to purchase.
Once the two thousand began to run low, he took to hanging out in front of temporary employment agencies where every morning around four, several trucks would pull up, a man would open the passenger door and stand on the running board, his eyes scanning the dozens of men who stood patiently enduring this often-degrading inspection, then the man would begin pointing to certain individuals—“I’ll take you…and you…and you over there…”—until he had his quota of workers (usually a dozen), and Ronnie, who by now was big for his age and quite strong-looking, would always be picked. He’d then climb into the back of the flatbed truck with his other co-workers for the day and they’d be driven to a field to pick fruit, or dig ditches, or help with landscaping projects, or sometimes to just haul trash or bricks or old furniture from the sites of demolished or condemned buildings.
It was always hard work, and Ronnie was exhausted by the end of the long days (fifteen hours was the average on-job work time), but the jobs paid in cash at the end of the day, and the trucks always drove the men back to the front of the employment building when things were done. The money wasn’t as much as he would have made if he’d gotten a regular steady job, but Ronnie didn’t have any official identification—and, besides, he didn’t want anyone to know his real name, anyway, just in case one of his brothers or sisters had reported him to the police as missing.
He also discovered the fine art of poolsharking, albeit by accident.
After a particularly long day hauling railroad ties for a huge private landscaping project, some of the men decided they wanted to go “…grab a few brews…” at a local bar, and Ronnie—without being asked—came along.
He was feeling sad and sick because the night before he’d had to take the Hurting away from a seven-year-old boy he’d found lying beaten and bloody in an alley not far from the motel where he was staying. He’d been coming back from the previous day’s work (railroad ties, all week long it had been the same landscaping job with the railroad ties) when he heard a trash can bang up against another one and turned to see a small arm flop out into the mud.
The alley had only a single source of light—a dim bare bulb suspended over the back kitchen door of a Chinese restaurant—so at first Ronnie was uncertain if he was seeing a real arm if it was just piece of trash from the restaurant that looked like an arm.
You should take a look, Ronnie, whispered Suzanne.
For a moment he just stood there, staring down into the dim, dank, dark alley, not wanting to move any closer.
What is it?
—It’s been so long, Suzanne. Almost a whole year. I dunno if I can…if I can…
Shhh, there, there…maybe it won’t be anything.
—Maybe.
But you’re my Ronnie, aren’t you? You love me, you love all of us. Our Ronnie wouldn’t just walk away, now, would he?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, held it, and then released it in a slow, steady stream. Sometimes—not very often, just sometimes, every once in a while—it really bugged him when Suzanne said those kinds of things, We all love you…Our Ronnie…You’re my Ronnie…We all know we can depend on you to do the right thing…—but he’d never let her or the others know that. He never wanted them to feel bad or guilty for having to sometimes give him a little push to Do The Right Thing. Still, sometimes, like now, right now, it did make him feel guilty, because he was never sure if he was doing it because he knew it was right, or if it was because he didn’t want to disappoint Suzanne and the others or if—
—oh, well, darnit! Who was he kidding? The truth was it had been almost a year since he’d last had to take the Hurting away from another kid, and in all these months Ronnie had been sleeping better than he could ever remember. He’d been getting out of bed every morning looking forward to the day, not dreading what might happen If.
But that was selfish, wasn’t it
?
Yeah, it sure was.
Ronnie?
—Huh? Oh, sorry.
And he walked into the alley, pulling his flashlight from his jacket pocket. He’d discovered after the first week that it was a smart thing to carry a good flashlight with you in the morning. It made it easier to see all over the field or big yard or building site where you were going to be working when you first got there, and also because a lot of the guys brought along newspapers to read during the ride but there wasn’t a lot of light to read by at four-fifteen in the morning (the streetlights were spaced too far apart to be much good, that’s what one of the guys told Ronnie when he asked to borrow the flashlight), so a flashlight went a long way toward making Ronnie fast friends on those rides.
He turned on the flashlight but cupped his other hand around the front so that it didn’t make a great circle of light—a big old spotlight might attract someone’s attention, and Ronnie had become very good at not attracting attention to himself—and walked slowly forward, guiding the light to the spot where he thought he’d seen—
—and there it was. A child’s arm; bruised, with a few streaks of blood running down the forearm, the hand turned upward with its fingers curled like some kind of claw.
Take a deep breath, Ronnie. You know what to do.
—I love you Suzanne, I love all of you…but could you maybe please not talk to me for a minute or two? I’m not mad or nothing, but…you know…
The reply was silence.
Looking back over his shoulder to make sure the street behind him was still empty, Ronnie moved toward the arm, pointing the flashlight’s beam at the muddy ground. He came around the row of trash cans, stepped over the one that had been knocked over, and then knelt down, taking care to upright the overturned trash can in order to hide himself.
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