by Jack Tunney
I felt my anger begin to boil. I did not like this man – this bad man – talking about my mama. Had he never learned respect?
“Now Dottie is gone, her debt is due.” Mr. Jackson said, tapping beefy fingers against the expensive leather businessman’s case he carried, his smile widening. It made him look like a chubby cat sneaking up on a poor, unsuspecting field mouse. I was afraid I was the mouse. “Since you can’t pay what your mama owes me, then this land, your house, and everything in it are now mine.”
And just like that, I lost everything.
The one thing I knew beyond a doubt was I was not going with the strange woman. She promised to find me a new family since I had none of my own who could take me in, but I didn’t want another family. I was the man of the house now, only without a home to call my own. I had a big decision to make. There were only two real choices left to me.
I could go with her.
Or I could run.
I chose the second option.
The first winter was rough. I had nothing, but the clothes on my back and what little food I had been able to grab before sneaking out the back before the strange woman realized I was gone. I went north, partly because I’d heard mama mention having a brother who lived up north, although I wasn’t sure exactly where. I also wasn’t aware just how big up north truly was. Old Man Winters had also talked about the north with reverence, although he admitted he’d spent very little time north of the Mason/Dixon line.
I just hoped that no one came after me.
Luckily, no one did.
ROUND FIVE
Chicago, Illinois
Winter, 1943
I’d been on my own almost two years by the time I arrived in Chicago.
It was not an easy journey. Looking back, I sometimes wonder how I survived. All of those daydreams I’d had about exploring unknown places – like the explorers Miss Ellison had taught us about in school – seemed like fantasy compared to the reality of a boy walking from Georgia into the north in the middle of Winter.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to make the trip alone.
Early in my travels, I’d met another boy who, like me, had run away. He called himself Sammy Tate, but something told me that wasn’t his real name. We traveled together for a time as we crossed through the backwoods of Tennessee. At least that’s what he called it. To me, it wasn’t all that much different from Claytonville. Woods were woods and trees were trees, right?
This worked to my advantage because I knew how to work a farm and I took a few different day jobs, helping out local farmers in exchange for food and a warm place to sleep. We met several nice people in our travels, Sammy and me, but none who made us want to stay in one place for too long.
It was Sammy who first told me about Chicago and it’s metal buildings reaching all the way toward Heaven. He’d found a newspaper with a smudged photo of the Chicago skyline, the buildings poking high into the air. It looked like a magical place and I was determined to get there.
Unlike me, Sammy wasn’t too keen on hard work. He told me many times that farming was beneath him. That meant I ended up doing most of the work, but we split the rewards equally. When there were no jobs available, Sammy knew how to keep us fed.
Sammy taught me how to steal.
It wasn’t a hard skill to learn. We started small. Sammy and I would scope out a house with a garden or a shop with fruits and vegetables out front. As soon as no one was looking, we would run up, stuff as much into a sack as we could, and run like the devil himself was chasing us.
We eventually moved up to small household items or trinkets, which could buy us a week’s worth of food. I learned how to drive in a stolen car. Before that, the only thing with wheels I’d ever worked was a beat up old tractor Old Man Winters had bought at auction to help with his gardens.
Our partnership worked well. Sammy knew how to steal, and was a master pickpocket, a skill I never was able to master, but he wasn’t always so good with the getting away part. That’s where I came in. I never forgot the lessons Old Man Winters taught me. I used those skills when Sammy and I found ourselves on the wrong side of the locals in whichever town we were passing through. It happened more times than I could recall, but I didn’t mind. It seems strange to say, but I never felt more alive than when I was fighting.
Lucky for me, I was good at it.
I don’t regret what we had done because we were hungry and had to eat, but part of me suspected Mama was frowning down at me from Heaven. Thinking about her made me sad. Alive or not, the last thing I ever wanted to do was disappoint her. I just hoped she understood.
Sammy and I parted ways before we reached Chicago. We were planning a heist from a baker who had placed some fresh baked bread out on the sill to cool. We each grabbed two loaves apiece and ran for it. The plan was to split up, see what else we could procure – Sammy’s favorite word – to go with the bread.
I hated the idea of splitting up. We worked better as a team than we did solo, but Sammy could be very convincing when he wanted to be and he’d talked me into his plan. Afterward, we were supposed to meet at the abandoned shack where we had been staying all week to see how well we did.
Sammy never showed up.
After three days, I realized he wasn’t coming back. I had no idea what had happened to him. Did he run off? Had the cops put the snatch on him? Did he run afoul of a bad person? Was he dead? Was he alive? For all of the questions I had there were very few answers.
Had he run afoul of trouble, Sammy could have been hurt. He was good at talking himself into and sometimes out of situations, but when things got deep, it was me who got us out of trouble. I had this fear of finding Sammy facedown in a ditch along some back road, beaten to death.
I retraced our steps and asked around as best I could without drawing too much attention to myself. Unfortunately, all of my efforts were in vain. I never saw hide nor hair of him again. Sammy was gone and I was on my own again.
So, I moved on.
Winter was in full swing by the time I reached the Chicago city limits sign. I thought I knew cold. If I thought the winters back home were bad, Chicago’s below freezing temperatures convinced me just how wrong my belief had been.
The wind blew right through the small jacket I wore no matter how tightly I cinched it. I stuffed old newspapers from wastebaskets inside the jacket for an extra layer of insulation from the cold. It helped, but just barely.
At night I slept on the stoop of an apartment building where the entrance was inside a small alcove. It offered only minor protection from the razor sharp winds, but I took what I could get. Weather like this could – and had – killed men much larger than me.
I had always been skinny, but being out on my own without steady meals had made me even more so. A kind lady I’d met a few weeks earlier had referred to me as skin and bones, which reminded me of my once hated nickname.
One night, I dreamt of howling monsters with razor-like talons chasing me through a hellish jungle made of rocks and bone. When I woke I saw that everything was coated in a thick layer of snow.
Suddenly, the city I had thought of as dirty looked peaceful. As the morning sun reflected off the snow, Chicago looked beautiful, but there was no time to sit around enjoying the view. I moved on before one of the building’s tenants or a beat cop could run me off.
That had happened once before and turned unpleasant when Sammy had mouthed off to the man in uniform. Afterward, I tried to avoid police officers as much as possible. I was sure not all of them were as bad as the ones we crossed paths with, or like Deputy MacPherson back in Claytonville, but I couldn’t take the chance.
Winter was in full force when I finally hit downtown. Even the coldest winter back home had been nothing compared to the biting wind that sliced right through you in Chicago. If I didn’t find a place to warm up soon I was a goner. Staying outdoors was no longer a viable option.
I needed shelter and for that I also needed money. Cash wasn’t easy to come by, espe
cially enough to rent a flophouse cot for a few nights until the storm blew over.
Unfortunately, my pockets were as empty as my stomach. It had been days since my last meal. For the first time since Mama had fallen ill, I prayed God would send me some food. In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting any help. After all, she had told me multiple time He answered the prayers of good little boys. As much as I might try to convince myself otherwise, I was no longer the good little boy she knew.
God, however, must have felt sorry for me because that’s when I saw them.
Two men stood outside of a church. At least that’s what I thought it was. The church was a massive brick and mortar building with spires reaching into the clouds. If not for the stained glass windows and crosses atop the spires, I might have thought it just another building.
Where I came from, church services were held at Calvary Baptist Church, a small building within easy walking distance from the center of Claytonville. It was always hot in the cramped space so the deacons passed out fans at the door every Sunday morning. I had never seen a building as large as the one these men stood in front of, much less ever been inside one. Sammy had been right about one thing – they did make everything big in The Windy City.
The men outside the church shivered as they talked. One smoked a cigarette for warmth while the other blew warm breath into his gloved hands. The taller of the two had an expensive leather case, much like the one that Henry Jackson had always carried. It lay on the first step, which had been shoveled free of snow.
I pulled my thin jacket tight, flipping up the collars to hide my appearance. I lowered my head against the arctic blast and walked forward. If either man noticed me, they gave no sign. Picking pockets was not a skill I came by naturally, but I’d learned a thing or two from Sammy, who was a master at lifting valuables without the target being any the wiser. Unfortunately, I didn’t have his light touch, but I hoped all of the extra layers the man was wearing would work in my favor.
It didn’t.
“What are you doing?” the man shouted, spinning around and grabbing at my hand, which was partway inside his coat pocket. He had a grip like iron. If he hadn’t been wearing gloves there’s no way I would have escaped, but the freezing temps worked in my favor and I wriggled free of his grip, empty handed. I didn’t have his wallet, so I went for the next best thing. I grabbed the leather case and ran away with it.
That’s when something happened that I never would have expected.
Both men chased after me.
Sure, it wasn’t the first time someone tried to come after me or Sammy when we took something, but it was the first time anyone had kept it up for more than a few feet before they realized running us down wasn’t going to happen.
“Hold it!” one of the men shouted, the one who had been smoking, I think. He moved with a speed I didn’t expect from a man his size. I’d always thought that a potbelly made a man slow, but this guy must have been an exception.
I turned down one of the alleys, slipped on a patch of ice, and fell. I got back up quickly, running deeper into the alley, hoping beyond hope it did not lead to a dead end.
There was a low fence halfway down, but I vaulted over it with ease. The small space behind was filled with garbage, bags and bags of it, as well as crates and other tossed odds and ends. Weaving through them slowed me down, but I wasn’t concerned.
Then I heard the crash of the cigarette smoking man landing on my side of the fence. He was alone. His friend, the owner of the case, had given up the chase, but this guy – this crazy fat man – was made of pure stubbornness.
“I’m not gonna tell you again, kid!” he shouted.
That’s when his jacket blew open and I saw the gun on his hip and the badge clipped to his shirt. He was a cop. I was being chased by a cop. Fearing the worst, I poured on the speed. The only thought in my head was putting as much distance between this guy and myself as I possibly could. No matter how warm it would be, the last thing I needed was to spend the night in jail. It wouldn’t take long for them to discover I was an orphan. Whenever that happened, adults had a tendency to start telling me what they thought was best for me. Sadly, what they thought best for me was sending me to live with a bunch of strangers who would pretend to like me. No thanks.
I took the corner out of the alley without pause.
“Hi there.”
I was suddenly face to face with the owner of the case, the man whose pocket I’d tried to pick. He casually leaned against the brick of the building, a knowing smile on his rosy-cheeked face.
I tried to stop, to change course, but I slipped on the icy sidewalk again and landed hard on my backside. A jolt of pain ran up and down my entire body as my teeth slammed together from the impact.
“Are you okay?” the man asked, looking down at me. He seemed sincere in his concern and even offered me a hand. “Let me help you up, son.”
It wasn’t until that moment that I noticed the collar. The man was a priest. I had stolen from a priest. It was official. If God hadn’t hated me before, He certainly would now.
The priest’s cop friend barreled around the corner. Like me, he was surprised to see his friend standing there. “How did you…” he started, but his voice trailed off as he gasped for breath.
The priest chucked a thumb over his shoulder. “Shortcut,” he said, pointing to the church’s rear exit where he came out after cutting through the building instead of climbing over fences and dodging piles of trash.
Grabbing me by the arm, the cop forcibly pulled me to my feet. “Come on, punk. I’m running you in,” he said.
“Is that really necessary?”
Both the cop and I did a double take, neither of us certain we had heard the priest correctly or not.
“I beg your pardon, Father Tim?” the cop asked.
“You heard me, Bill. It’s okay. I got my bag back.”
“That’s not the point, Father…” he started.
“Look at him, Bill. He’s obviously cold and hungry.” He looked my way. “Isn’t that right, son?” I couldn’t tell if this was some kind of trick or not, so I figured that the best thing I could do was keep my mouth closed. I simply nodded.
“See?” the priest said.
“He’s a filthy crook, Father,” The cop said.
“Haven’t we all made a mistake or two in our lives, Bill?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
“How about I make a deal with you? The kid… what’s your name, son?”
“B-bones,” I said, to scared to tell him my real name. I still hated the nickname, so no one was more surprised when I said it than I was.
“Bones,” the priest echoed. “You’ve got two choices, and I want you to listen carefully because chances like this don’t come along every day, okay?”
I nodded.
“You can either come inside with me and stay at the church for a few days, enjoy a warm meal, maybe even a bath and a change of clothes or…” he looked at the cop who continued to grip my arm tight. “Or I let Officer Warren take you to jail where they have bread and water on the menu.”
He stared directly into my eyes.
“Your choice, Bones.”
It was probably the easiest decision I’d ever made in my life.
ROUND SIX
I was suspicious of everything those first few days at St. Vincent's Asylum for Boys, but Father Tim turned out to be a man of his word.
He had laid down the rules the moment I stepped inside the giant church building. “As long as you follow the house rules you will get along just fine here,” he told me. “If you can’t follow the rules, then you and I will have a problem.”
I spent most of the first day getting clean, putting on the first clean clothes I’d worn in weeks, and sleeping. Father Tim had put me in a room with three other boys. Space was at a premium, but he also thought I could use some positive companionship. I recall talking with the others briefly, not sure if I should trust them when I felt my eyes drooping.
***
On day three, I went from being a guest to being one of the guys.
My name was added to the chore list and I was quickly put to work. We spent our mornings cleaning not only our living quarters, but also the rectory – polished the pews, dusting the statuary, and sweeping the floors.
It was exhausting work, but I didn’t mind. It was just like being back home working with Mama and Old Man Winters. Like them, Father Tim was a big believer in working to earn your keep. Also, by day three, Officer Warren stopped dropping by just to check up on me. That was progress.
After cleaning up from our evening meal on, Father Tim led the assembled group to the gymnasium. I assumed we were in for even more work, which I didn’t mind, although, I was tired and would have loved to take a rest.
By the time we reached the gym, I was suddenly full of energy. There in the center of the room was an elevated ring surrounded on all sides by ropes. I recognized it from a photograph in a magazine Sammy had found for us a few weeks earlier. It reminded me of the homemade version I had last seen behind Homer Jenkins’ barn.
A boxing ring.
“Are you familiar with boxing?” Father Tim asked me.
“Yes, sir,” I said without taking my eyes off the ring.
“But you’ve never seen an actual boxing ring?”
“No. The men back home did their boxing on the hard pack,” I said. “Dirt,” I added off his confused look. “They had a ring behind Mr. Jenkins’ barn. I used to watch with a friend of mine.”
“But you didn’t fight?”
“No,” I said softly. “They didn’t let kids fight.”
A few of the other boys snickered, but Father Tim ignored them. “Well, you’re in luck then, Bones. This is one of the nicest square circles you’re likely to find outside of professional sports.”
“Square circle?”
He laughed. “Just an expression. I’m not sure who started it, but it’s a nickname of sorts.” He moved his fingers to draw an imaginary square in the air. “You see it’s square, but we call it a ring, which are usually round. So it’s the square circle.”