by Mike Walsh
Table of Contents
The Runaway
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Chapter 1 – Starting Out June 1951
Chapter 2 – New York
Chapter 3 – New Jersey
Chapter 4 – Baltimore
Chapter 5 – Akron
Chapter 6 – Terre Haute
Chapter 7 – Terre Haute Revenge
Chapter 8 – Arkansas
Chapter 9 – Big Spring, Texas
Chapter 10 – Midland, Texas
Chapter 11 – Odessa, Texas
Chapter 12 – Salt Lake City
Chapter 13 – Reno
Chapter 14 – Hollywood
Chapter 15 – Hollywood Jail
Chapter 16 – L.A. County Jail
Chapter 17 – Whittier
Chapter 18 – California Youth Authority
Chapter 19 – Fitting In
Chapter 20 – The Train Home
Chapter 21 – The Bus Home
The Runaway
A Novel by Mike Walsh
Published by Old Pueblo Books
2420 N. Conestoga Ave.
Tucson, Arizona 85749
This is a work of fiction. Although the locations may exist, the people and places in this story are not real and any similarities are coincidental. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. — The Author
Copyright © 2012 Mike Walsh (George H. Walsh)
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
eBook Edition
Jacket and book design by Jay Walsh
Cover photograph by Mike Walsh
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Andrew Vachss who was generous with his encouragement for me to finish this story, and for his never ending battle to right the wrongs in this world we live in. My thanks to Chris Acevedo, owner of Clues Unlimited mystery bookstore in Tucson, Arizona, for her help in editing and advice.
My daughter, Pam Smith, was most helpful in getting this story readable with her editing. And of course, author Lee Harris who read this book and proclaimed it publishable.
And thanks to Zane for turning the page.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my beloved wife Carol Walsh for her patience, support, and encouragement in completing this story, and my Mom, Bella Young, who has put up with me in all the prior years.
Please read this encounter from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy in 1951.
Chapter 1 – Starting Out June 1951
Within the hazy blue light an arrow of streaming white light spun around and around like a clock gone haywire. It spun in groups of three spins, a slight hesitation, and three spins again. Michael came awake, having set his mental clock to three in the morning.
• • •
With no watch or clock, he was confident of the time. He came out of his sleepiness, sliding out of bed carefully so as not to wake his two brothers deep in sleep. Michael O’Hara was a tall, skinny kid with plenty of hair. Some said he was a good-looking kid. He was fifteen, just turned late that June, when he decided to go against his promise and run away for the last time. Truth be told, the Providence Police Department had seventy-one yellow sheets on him. This would be number seventy-two. But if he stayed, Michael O’Hara was going back to reform school. He could live without that.
The Rhode Island Training School for Boys, as it was formally known, was called Sockanosset by some guys in the know. Memories of the place came back to him often. Mr. Harmon, the emphasis on Harm, slapped the kids so hard they pissed their pants. And if a kid didn’t, he’d slap him again until he did. He was called in whenever a major infraction of the rules occurred. And it didn’t need to be much to be major. He liked his work.
Michael’s turn had come when he was standing in line to go upstairs to the dormitory. Michael was thirteen at the time and big for his age. A tall skinny kid about fifteen grabbed Michael’s butt and rammed his fingers into Michael’s ass-crack. It happened so fast he couldn’t believe he did it, but Michael’s elbow swung around and connected with the kid’s nose, blood spewing everywhere backwards, along with the kid. Michael grabbed his hand by the fingers on the way down, grabbed his wrist with his other hand and slammed it backside across his knee. When the kid hit the cement floor, he rolled and rolled, flopping his arm and screaming in pain.
Michael just blended in with the other kids, now all milling around making comments like, “good for you,” and “finally that bastard got his.” The cottage father came running to the kid’s aid and the house-mother got on the phone, presumably to Harmon.
Some people had come by and removed the kid, still able to walk, but not able to stop crying. Harmon didn’t come by right away and the kids were all sent up to bed. The cottage parents were not allowed to dish out punishment or even determine who had caused any kind of problem. This was Harmon’s area of expertise. Harmon liked to get right to the kid that was the culprit and not waste time listening to others and their lies. It also gave that culprit time to tremble and make up a ridiculous story full of holes that made him look guilty as hell. Michael didn’t make up stories. He just kept his mouth shut. The most he ever said to the cops when picked up for running away was, “I don’t know.”
The cottages at Sockanosset were two story gray stone buildings with a basement. The stone with the sculptured design looked medieval, as did the whole building. There were five or six of them plus two churches spread around several acres maybe one hundred feet apart. The churches were Catholic and Protestant. All the kids had to go to one or the other. The first floor was used as classrooms and the top floor the dormitory. A low stone wall ran along the road a few hundred feet from the buildings. It was only a couple feet high and if you took off running you could get over the wall and down the road or into the fields pretty fast. But you could see forever and no one ever made it, so far as anyone knew. One of the buildings housed a mess hall and the food was pretty good. Michael learned to march right because if you didn’t, you got a whack on the back of your legs. Some men did the marching back and forth picking the kids up from the cottage couple and turning them over to the mess hall people. They had the right to dish out punishment and didn’t hesitate to do so at all.
Everyone was sound asleep when they were awakened and ushered downstairs quickly and lined up. Most were yawning and trying to keep their eyes open. It was after midnight and everyone was groggy and some kids had their eyes closed. Michael was wide awake, having not slept at all. He was scared of what might happen, though.
They were told to stretch out their arms, nice and straight, as far as you could reach. Harmon walked down the two lines, staggered so he could look into everyone’s eyes.
Harmon was a short, heavy man with a square face and five-o’clock shadow. He always had his hat on, the brim pulled low. His wire glasses made his eyes look bigger than normal. As he walked along the line, he smacked under their hands with a stick he carried if he felt they were not high enough. He used it a few times. Michael was near the end of the line in front and saw the evil in Harmon’s eyes. Michael would never forget those eyes, and he vowed someday to track him down and smack him in the face with a baseball bat.
Harmon passed to the end and came back and stopped right in front of Michael. His out-stretched arms almost touched the short man’s face. He stopped and stared right into Michael’s eyes, not blinking once. Several minutes went by and arms started wavering, but Harmon never left his stare. When Michael’s arms finally started downward, Harmon jerked them down, took a step forward and smashed a good one from his weaker left hand to Michael’s face.
Michael recovered and saw that he had not pissed his pants and started straining to pee. Not soon enough
. Harmon’s right hand came around so fast he couldn’t duck and knocked Michael into the kid next to him. Nineteen pairs of eyes were wild with terror, figuring they were next. But as Michael straightened out with the piss running down his pajama legs, Harmon never wavered or moved on, just kept staring into Michael’s eyes.
Finally, in a crackling, almost falsetto voice, Harmon asked, “Why did you do it, boy? You know you broke his nose and three fingers, right at the knuckle? Tell me why you did it!”
He waited, seeing Michael think it over – speak or not speak – finally speaking, “He rammed his hand in my ass-crack, sir!” He said it loud so everyone could hear.
Harmon maintained his eye contact and this time Michael didn’t blink, just stared at him till he backed down and walked down the line, up the stairs and out of the building. Everyone stood there until the house mother finally lined them up to go back to bed.
Michael climbed into his bed, smarting from the beating, thinking about why he was there. He knew why, but he didn’t know who had sent him there. He didn’t think his mom had, although she could have, him being nothing but trouble since he was six when his father took off for the last time. It could have been the court or one of those psychiatrists that probed at him constantly, always finding him normal.
He was there for only three months when an aunt and uncle bailed him out to come live with them on their farm for a year. Michael never knew why they volunteered to take him but he was more than grateful.
He loved this aunt and uncle and their four-year-old daughter. They had thirty-two acres in Massachusetts, not far from Providence. About half was in corn, peppers and tomatoes. They had lots of apple trees and a huge grape arbor. There were white ducks everywhere, who ate sand mixed with chicken feed, and were delicious when his aunt cooked one for a meal.
Michael worked the weeds for fifty cents a row, the rows looking like a mile long, and helped with the planting, picking, grading and feeding the chickens and ducks. He especially liked going to the market before sunup to sell the produce in the city. All the small and big stores came to the farmer’s market to buy fresh produce every day. Michael lived with them and went to school there for a year, and then went home to his mom and brothers and sisters.
Now he lived with his mom, two brothers and two sisters in a small beach community on the bay where they had moved while Michael was at Sockanosset. They lived year round, as did so many others, more than two or three rows back from the water. Most were on the poor or struggling side, as were the O’Hara’s.
Michael’s father split when Michael was six years old, and all he remembered was the bad times with him. Like ducking a thrown shoe that went through a window, and then being blamed for it, “...See what you made me do?”
His crime for the shoe was serious, but of course blocking the sound waves from the radio was far more serious. And the time he spent six hours cleaning the hot basement and was not allowed to come up out of the thick dust. Michael still could not stand any dust and sneezed at the thought of it.
The rental house on the beach they now lived in was two stories with the walls only going seven feet high upstairs leaving the space to the peaked roof open. There was an old garage out back. Michael had a bunk in one bedroom with his two younger brothers. His sisters had the other bedroom and his mom had hers. They had lived there a year or so, having moved from the city and a big three story house. All the kids were pissed because they left their life-long friends behind and were now out in the sticks. Michael’s older sister had no problem making friends; she was pretty with boobs and the older guys from school swarmed around her, including her current boyfriend Tony.
It was that latest boyfriend, Tony, the Italian slob, who got Michael in trouble. Tony liked to break into the summer homes and drink the liquor and steal what he could carry. He told Michael one day to come along, he had some work to do on a house, a job he said. When Tony forced the window to get in, Michael mentioned that was strange. But Tony just said he lost the key and they wouldn’t mind.
After they were in, it became quite clear to Michael that this was a different kind of job. Tony had him carry some silverware back to Michael’s garage and hide it. Michael hid the stuff in an opening in the ceiling. Then they broke into a second row house that Tony said was full of, “good stuff.” Of course, there was nothing of value, and Tony got drunk on all the booze left on the dining room sideboard.
That was in March when it was too cold for the summer people to be there. The cops came in April, when it was warm and the people had come to the house and discovered the broken window.
The cops came right to Michael’s home, figuring he was the only young person in the neighborhood old enough to do this deed. They knew of him, because he had a long record of running away and being picked up. He was never arrested for wrongdoing, but with seventy-one yellow sheets the cops figured, what the hell, let’s check him out. Of course his mom did the interrogating and got the truth out of him right away. Michael did not lie to his mom, although he was known to avoid a lot of questioning.
Michael had a court appearance and testified against Tony, who was twenty-one and had a previous record of B&E. He was sent to prison. Michael had another court appearance due for his disposition. Michael knew what that meant.
His mom thought he should have a new suit for court. The lady next door, Nancy, who had a husband in the Army and just had a baby, left the baby with Michael’s mother and drove Michael into the city to buy a suit for court. Nancy kept talking about having the baby and the scar it left and wouldn’t Michael like to see the scar? She would show it to him sometime.
And she did a few days later. Michael was walking across the side to the front yard and she called him over from her screened in porch.
“C’mon in Mikey, I want to show you something.”
Michael walked up the two steps, opened the screen door that closed behind him on a spring and sat on a bench in front of the chaise that Nancy was reclined on.
“Look, Mikey, see where they took the baby out? Give me your hand. I’ll let you feel it.
Michael’s mouth went dry, he couldn’t say anything, his head went dizzy and his stomach started to ache as she rubbed his hand around her abdomen.
“You like that Mikey?” she kind of purred softly, her eyes seemed to glaze over.
When his fingers felt hair, Michael jerked his hand back and ran from the porch, totally flustered and embarrassed. He ran across the three rows of summer houses to the rocky beach edge and threw up.
“What a coward,” he thought.
Now, as he slipped into his clothes piled on the floor waiting for him, he put all that out of his mind and concentrated on the move ahead of him. He had just decided last night so there was no time for planning. He never planned anyway. He walked slowly and quietly to the door and into the hall.
When he got to his sisters’ door, he remembered that his older sister, who worked at times, had a stash of cash in a box on the dresser. He listened at the door and satisfied both were sound asleep, crept in and rifled the box. Downstairs, in the moonlight, he saw it was twelve dollars. “Thanks, sis. I’ll pay you back some day.”
• • •
Here he was on a nice cool June morning, on Route 1, or the Post Road, as it was known, walking west. He knew he could get a ride with an early morning trucker after the sun came up. He wouldn’t even try to thumb until then. New York was just a few hours away. That would be his first stop. Get some work in a restaurant. Michael felt lifted and free. He had the clothes on his back, twelve bucks in his pocket and nobody to answer to. Life was good.
Chapter 2 – New York
New York was wonderful. He marveled at the lights, the traffic, the people and all the excitement in the air. An old war was over and a new one beginning. People were out living their lives now and who knows what will happen
Servicemen were everywhere, Navy and Air Force, a few marines. Times Square was a hubbub of action. Jewelry stores were hawk
ing their wares at their doors; restaurants and delis had windows full of food, cooked and ready to enjoy. Bars were crowded with people spilling onto the sidewalk.
Music was blaring from everywhere and holy-rollers were screaming the gospel on every corner. And the girls and the women... Dressed to the teeth, walking arm in arm, giving all the sailors the look. Then ducking into a bar when eyes clashed, being followed by the hunters. Military Police were everywhere as well an occasional beat cop; twirling his baton, eyeing the girls and whistling a happy tune.
Michael thought back at how he had gotten here.
• • •
The Post Road was the way to New York. Michael knew it well, having walked and hitched towards New York many times. This time he would make it. Michael had goals, like New York this leg and who knew where the next leg.