The Runaway

by Jo Barney

  “Only problem is,” Shelly continues, “it’s a public phone, used by any number of renters. The bill goes to the Housing Authority.”

  Inside the building, the same old guy who wanted to bulldoze the park is yelling into the phone as Matt approaches. “Yeah, a murder. Probably drug wars. It’s hell here, Bobby.” He listens for a moment, eyes downcast, and Matt hears him add softly, “Are you sure? I wouldn’t be any trouble.” Then, “Okay, then.” The hand that hangs the phone back in its cradle trembles. The other hand clutches a spray can of disinfectant and a washcloth. He sprays and wipes the phone, turns and sees Matt.

  “I do this every time, before and after. Just to make sure. You never know who’s been using this thing.” He rubs the cloth over his hands and shuffles toward the elevator.

  No fingerprints. No way of finding out that way who the woman is. “Just a minute,” Matt calls. The elevator doors ding and open, and he and the man step in. “Were you near the phone or in that hall an hour ago? We need to know who used the phone about that time.”

  “Police, huh? No, but as long as I got you here, explain to me why the park is allowed to…”

  The doors open and Matt escapes. The doors close behind him, and he spends a few moments exploring the hall. Judging by the numbers on the doors, there are maybe thirty residents on each of ten floors. Impossible. Maybe forensics will be able to identify the kid, get word back to whoever is still thinking about him, worrying about him.

  Matt heads back to the station, signs out, says, “Great” when Shelly asks how Collin is doing. Matt hesitates at the door, pleased that she has bothered to ask.

  Collin graduates this week from the Academy. He’ll always be a little different, but his difference has become okay—in fact, better than okay. He’s almost a genius at computers. He makes Matt laugh. He has taught Matt what love is. Matt smiles at the thought. Then a boy’s face, almost buried in oak leaves, a kid just about the same age as Collin, comes into focus. That unknown boy most likely taught a parent what love was also. And now he’ll teach that parent what sorrow is.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jeff

  April 2000

  Yes, there are other Rogers up north in Green River, quite a few, Jeff is relieved to discover after the first uneasy weeks of learning the ropes in the large city lounging on the bank of a lazy, tourist-blooming river.

  Finding a place to sleep isn’t difficult if Jeff and Danny want to spend their nights in the bushes of a park or on a bench near the city center. At least they are safe from the cops who are looking for two almost-murderers. No one could find them in the muddle of transients wandering the paths, lying on the grass, sleeping under rough wool blankets in the midst of the parade of friendly or frightened or astonished mid-western visitors, their arms full of souvenirs from the boutique shops that line the streets.

  Then they get beds in a shelter and food in a youth agency that offers them showers and advice to get their GEDs. That lasts until they decide, high on crystal meth, that they dislike the attitude of a snoring bunkmate and pull him out of bed and would have maybe killed him had the night counselor not heard his yells.

  On the street the next morning, they know two things: meth makes them mean, and they need money.

  * * *

  Jeff finds a clean pair of pants in his pack, lifts the collar, Brando style, of his leather jacket, and is turning a trick in a gray Volvo fifteen minutes later. Danny learns that meth is the drug of choice in the parks, buys an ounce, sells it in eight balls for twice as much as he paid, to businessmen in suits on the sidewalk in front of the Y and scabby teenagers on benches in several parks and lots of folks in between. The partners begin to bring in enough money to pay the rent on a furnished room over a storefront. The bed isn’t bad, and they eat fast food and support their need for pot-enhanced munchies with Cheetos and chips. Life seems okay.

  Their room becomes a gathering place for kids they meet on the streets, and some nights four or five teenagers sink back into the old sofa and chairs, smoke, laugh, drink 40s, and tell stories. These evenings have rules. Jeff, aware of the need to protect his and Danny’s new life, enforces them. Noise down, arguments civil, fighters will be thrown out. “Bring your own stuff, but no meth, no tweaking, no out-of-control behavior. This is a safe place,” he says. He likes that word. Reminds him of his first meeting with Grandpa Jack, how good safe felt, at first.

  So, nightly, kids stoked on pot brag about how they ended up on the street, how they manage to survive, and sometimes, how they will escape. Everyone has a story and everyone has a dream, and those dreams intrigue Jeff. He has a few dreams of his own, always has had. Dreams separate us from the animals, Grandpa Jack used to lecture, and Jeff likes that idea. He asks questions, encourages these ragtag visionaries. Danny just listens, mostly.

  “I been hustling two years now,” a thin, almost-handsome red-haired boy, Squirrel, tells them. “Escorting, I call it. I need money, like everybody, and it comes easy now.”

  “Bareback?” Jeff asks.

  “For enough extra.”

  “A little dangerous, isn’t it?”

  Squirrel shrugs. “Maybe. Who knows?” Squirrel closes his eyes and sucks on a roach someone hands him. “I don’t worry much anymore,” he adds, his voice thin, not quite convincing, holding smoke and worry inside. Jeff nods. He’s been there.

  A girl’s voice interrupts. “I been prostituting a year and I’m thinking of getting out. An acquaintance of mine got Hep C shooting up, and she’s still working.” Her brown breasts wobble between her shoulders and her waist. She presses them against her knee as she slips off her shoe, a metallic gold stiletto. “I don’t think that’s right, do you? Being sick and giving it to other people?” She sits back up and looks at Jeff.

  He points to the tracks on her arm. “How about you? Are you sick?”

  “Just the usual. I get looked at every month or so at the clinic. My pimp insists on it. This is like a job to me. I’m careful.” As if her story might not be believable, she goes on: “You know, I don’t get off with a john. While he’s busy, my mind is somewhere else, and my eyes are on his wallet.” She bends her arm, hides the scars. “And I don’t shoot up anymore, either. Like I said, I’m looking for a way out of here.” She leans forward again to pat the German shepherd dozing at her feet and to recover her shoe. “But for now, I got to go to work,” she says, rising up, adjusting her heavy boobs, sending a grin to the circle of faces around her.

  Jeff likes this girl, Kitten. She is tough enough to live her dream, with a little luck. But not with her best friend, the dog that has kept her from being able to escape into one of the shelters in town. No animal is worth that; Jeff would off him in a minute if it meant getting a regular bed and a shower. Kevin the Dog stirs as if he knows what Jeff is thinking, then lumbers up and follows his mistress as she teeters toward the door.

  The two girls sitting next to each other on the floor release the hands they have been holding to let Kitten and Kevin get by. Then they share a bottle of beer, one chugging and then handing it to the other. Queers. The label bothers Jeff. He doesn’t think of himself as queer, but maybe bi if he had to give himself a label. He does get off with most of his clients. But he also likes to think about women sometimes. Kitten, for instance. He isn’t sure he’d hold a man’s hand or anything else if money weren’t involved. A drag on his pipe subdues a familiar rush of anger. Unless it is his grandfather, and he is ten years old again. Unless something more than money is involved.

  “Kicked out,” one of the girls explains. “There’s lots of us out there.”

  “And some who claim they’re lesbians so they don’t get raped where they’re squatting.”

  “That’s not us.” They connect hands again and lean into each other.

  Danny has been quiet all evening, watching and listening as usual. “It’s good to have some friends,” he says, when everyone is gone and he and Jeff are picking up the bottles and cans and cleaning out the c
ereal bowls they used as ashtrays. They both are a little high, and Danny does not pull away when Jeff slips an arm over his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” Jeff says. “I’ll be your best friend no matter what.”

  He feels good when Danny grins, says, “Sure. Me too.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sarah

  September 2009

  I stop on the bottom step. “Wait,” Ellie calls again. I turn around, run up the two flights, dragging my bag behind me, to where she stands, hands on hips. I don’t expect a hug, although I’d like to give her one.

  “If you’re going to be staying a few days more, we have to go to the food bank,” Ellie says as she lets me in the door, like nothing special’s happened.

  Besides the day-old bread and canned beans on the shelves, the bins bulge with bags of potatoes and ears of corn, their tassels brown and wilted. “They’re still good,” Ellie decides, after she’s pulled back the husks on a couple of them. “Maybe we can find some butter in the cooler.” We do, and we also find a thawed turkey that needs to be cooked fast.

  “I love turkey,” I say.

  “That’s good, because we’ll be eating it for a week.” Ellie unloads the cart and counts out the food stamps in her wallet. Then we get on the bus, glad to find a couple of empty seats. We don’t talk much, just hang onto our bags when the bus leans around corners.

  That night we have an early Thanksgiving feast and eat it sitting on the davenport, watching the news. During a commercial, she catches me eyeing the picture of the good-looking guy on the table, but I don’t say anything.

  “He’s my son,” she says.

  “He has a nice smile.” Maybe her smile if she’d ever smile. “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-eight. I haven’t seen him in a long time.” She doesn’t explain, and I can tell that’s all I’m going to get. She’s just the opposite of me, a mother abandoned by a child, not vice versa. Probably it feels the same.

  “Starkey is twenty-eight,” I say, trying to keep the conversation going.

  “The camp guy?” She puts her fork down.

  So I describe Starkey, how his chin is covered with a short, neat beard, how he wears a gold earring in one ear, and how he knots a bandanna around his head like a pirate. “Pirate eyes, too,” I add, “like he can see what we’re thinking.”

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “Nine of us when I was up there. One of the girls, Lila, hangs with Mouse. She looks Chinese or something, tiny and pretty; he’s black or maybe half black, quiet except when he’s talking to her. They’ve been together for a while. Owl, the other girl, is slow and stays by herself mostly, except when one of the guys teases her. Then she yells and hits back.” A trickle of sad makes me blink when I think of those kids, especially Leaky and Jimmy.

  “Leaky’s gay. You know that the minute you meet him. And Jimmy makes everyone laugh, but he’s pretty brave, like the night Peter and him saved me. He gets teased because he’s fat, like Leaky does because he’s queer, and Peter stood up for both of them.”

  It feels kind of good to talk about Peter, how we shared a sleeping mat and how we whispered half the night about our lives. Sometimes I would massage his back, my fingers pushing into the rough scars that crisscrossed his shoulders as he talked about leaving home, about his adventures the year he was on his own. One night he told me about the attack in a camp under the bridge. The scars, he explained. He didn’t tell me everything. He just said, “This place is better, especially with you here.”

  And I told him my story. I told him everything, and when I cried, he would touch me, too.

  Ellie hands me a Kleenex. I blow my nose.

  “Starkey?” she asks.

  * * *

  Now that I’m away from the camp, I have trouble believing that those fire-flicked scenes were real. But when I close my eyes, I can see and hear it all. I keep talking and remembering.

  * * *

  Starkey leans back into the canvas chair, looking at us through the smoke, smiling in a kindly way, his hand in his lap, fingers moving a little.

  “How old were you, Leaky, when you realized you liked it in the ass?”

  “I don’t remember.” Leaky’s soft voice floats above the cinders in front of him.

  “Really?” Starkey answers. “I remember that moment quite clearly. I bet you do, too.” Then he turns to Lila. “Stepfather, right? What did he like?”

  Lila looks down, mumbles a few words.

  “Speak up, girl—I’m asking about your stepfather. Has nothing to do with you.” Starkey raises his chin, turns his ear toward her.

  “Sometimes he went in. Other times he wanted me to suck him.”

  “Swallow?”

  Lila nods. “Yeah. He said it was good for me.” Her face didn’t move, except for her eyelids, which lowered then widened, sending her dark gaze into the trees.

  * * *

  I’m getting to the bad part of this story. I can’t look at Ellie because her face has folded into misery. She holds her hand up to stop me. She says she needs to take a break, and she gets up to pour hot water over instant coffee. She brings me a cup. When she sits back down, she looks into her coffee and asks why anyone would share secrets with a pirate.

  “Because he shared his secrets with us,” I answer, relieved to be sent on a different track.

  I remember his voice when he explained why he wanted to know about us, our experiences. He leaned forward in his chair, looking us over, capturing our eyes. “I know what you’ve gone through,” he said. “My grandfather called me his poontang, a Southern expression. I thought it meant he loved me.”

  “We laughed because he was laughing.”

  “This Starkey is crazy,” Ellie says. “Laughing about kids getting hurt, himself getting hurt.” She puts down her cup with a thump on the end table.

  I’m not finished. I’m still remembering.

  “Some nights Starkey doesn’t laugh,” I say.

  “‘When I ask you to do something, I expect it to happen immediately.’ Those nights he walks around our circle flapping a leather belt like a whip. It lands on someone who hasn’t brought back enough food or on someone who’s missed cleanup duty, once on me because I hadn’t gathered enough wood to keep the fire going until morning.”

  “A belt! Don’t tell me anymore.” Ellie leans back against the quilt, eyes closed, but I can tell she’s listening. And I keep on.

  “Like I said before, Starkey asked us to prove our loyalty to the family. ‘Courageous tasks,’ he called them. At first they were easy, but then they got harder: stealing a six-pack of beer; robbing a panhandler of his change and his sign; painting mailboxes with penises, maybe; a silver knife slashing into something; a cuss word. Warnings that those blocks belonged to Starkey, just like the woods were his.”

  Ellie opens her eyes, looks at me. “The Mom heart. The one I couldn’t understand?”

  “That was Jimmy’s mark. He misses his mom a lot. She’s in prison, but she’s not a bad person, like his father says every time her name comes up. And she loves him—that he knows for sure.”

  Ellie leans back again. The story oozes out of me, like dirty water from a rusty Dumpster. No way to stop it.

  I tell her how Jimmy was the first to get hit with a fist. He had complained about the smell of the camp, said they should have some rules about where they could piss and all. Starkey swung at him and Jimmy went down. “Who is in charge here? Not you, you fat pansy. Anymore suggestions?”

  Jimmy whispered “No” through the blood and the tooth he spit out.

  “Good. Now go out and dig a latrine since you’re the one who brought it up.” He handed him a big spoon and Jimmy went off to find a good place.

  Then I tell how Lila got it next. She’d been holding out on the stuff she swiped in the convenience stores. Starkey found the wrappers from fruit bars in her sleeping bag. This time he insisted that her boyfriend, Mouse, discipline her, and she just stood there and let him slap her. “
Again,” Starkey yelled. And Mouse did.

  Then Peter got up, stood in front of Starkey at the fire. “This isn’t right. Families should take care of each other.”

  “What a concept! Like this?” Starkey shoved him, and Peter fell into the flames. Sparks flew all over us. Laughing his big pirate laugh, Starkey pulled Peter out, brushed him off, and said, “This is how I learned to take care of my family.” Then we heard a little more of Starkey’s past, the beatings his father gave him for breathing, the broken arm, the bruises his teachers would ask about.

  “I never told anyone,” he said, “because I knew that my father wanted me to grow up tough and ready to take whatever happened no matter what, even when it meant letting my grandfather treat me like a whore. My father had endured it and so would I, he told me the one time he called me from prison. And I did. I learned to respect my old man and still do, wherever he is. He was strong. That’s why I’m tough on you guys. Life‘s going to treat you bad. Already has. And I’m toughening you up.”

  Then Starkey rubbed Mouse’s head and nodded at Lila. “We’re in combat training here. By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be ready to take on whatever you get handed.”

  “Shit,” Ellie says.

  My throat hurts from imitating Starkey’s voice. I take a sip of coffee. I have only a little more to tell, but it’s the worst part. This memory is too real to just be a memory. I arrange my words so that she can see it like I can. I smell the campfire and my stomach squeezes, just like that night.

  “Peter is sitting next to me, his fingers touching mine. Leaky and Jimmy huddle together on the sleeping bag. The other kids look at their feet, glad maybe that Starkey is smiling, his hands open, empty.