The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  3

  "Miss Gladys?" he asked a moment later as he re-entered the living room. "May I speak to you in private, please?" For a street urchin, he had surprisingly good manners. He viewed them as a tool. He found that a properly placed please or excuse me could work wonders. Of course, there was nothing that would beat a teary-eyed, thank you to elicit a second pull from a mark's wallet.

  Miss Gladys, however, was not inexperienced at the game. "I'm pretty sure that you're safe to speak in front of your new family members."

  "But it's kinda personal."

  "We will leave you two alone," Miss Feanor said, and without saying another word, she and the children left, quietly.

  Curt noted this as well and his sense of foreboding increased. He prided himself on his ability to move without making any extraneous noises. It was something that he practiced diligently, since it was life's wish to be a world-class thief. But they, as a group, had been as he quiet as he alone. Where he had walked slowly, making sure to feel the floor as he did so, they glided. Each never lifted a foot, instead slid on their stockinged feet, however it wasn't a great obvious slide, just a quick movement. This was impressive, at least to him, but again, also very odd.

  The hushed and subdued nature of the house and its occupants worked on Curt's subconscious. He slipped over to the couch where she sat and said to Miss Gladys in a voice far lower than his usual quiet one, "I just don't think this will be a good fit, and you know, due to my history, I think it would be better if I was placed in a different home."

  "No, I'm sorry," Miss Gladys replied quietly. At least for her it was quiet, but to Curt, who felt as if ears were listening in, the words were a loud sound, and they grated on him. She continued on in the same noisome manner, "This is going to be your new home, whether you like it or not."

  "But," he floundered, looking for a workable argument. "Don't I have rights? Don't I have a say in any of this?"

  Miss Gladys became roused and moved closer to him on the couch, her weight, demonstrating the force of gravity he had seen in science books at school, pulling him in to her.

  "There are no other choices. You've burned all your bridges and no one will take you. Now if you would ever stop stealing and running away, that might change."

  "Shouldn't you be worried that I'll run away from here..."

  "No, I am most certainly not," she replied heatedly, interrupting him. "If you run from here, it'll be Juvenile detention for you next. And besides, Miss Feanor is a good foster mom. She's been one for fourteen years and has had over a dozen kids come through here, and according to the paperwork, she has never had a runaway."

  Juvenile detention wasn't the terrific fear for him that Miss Gladys thought it to be, but at the same time, he wanted to avoid it if at all possible. Like all foster children, he had heard the stories and rumors concerning juvie, fights and bullies, things of this nature, but these were hurdles he faced everyday on the streets. Where he roamed, danger was only a misstep away, but he was adept at avoiding confrontations when he wished.

  The thief in him, however, wanted to test his growing skills against the security of the facility. Over the last year, he had begun attempting low-level B&E jobs on homes and downscale businesses. Without a proper mentor, he read voraciously everything concerning burglary that he could find, but it wasn't as if there were how-to books on breaking and entering, therefore he was forced to rely heavily on trial and error.

  So it was that complex locks and alarm systems were well beyond him, but he could climb like a monkey, and entering through upper floor windows where the locks were quite simple was where he excelled. He had no fear of being apprehended, at least not by the police. Due to a combination of sheer bad luck and poor planning, he had been caught twice breaking and entering, but a few tears and an embellished sad story had kept him out of juvie both times.

  With his quick mind and even quicker hands, Curt was rapidly becoming an accomplished thief and was always on the lookout for a good challenge, and when Miss Gladys used the words, has never had a runaway, she inadvertently ended any argument from Curt as to whether he'd stay or not. He nodded his head sadly, disguising the eager machinations of his mind. He'd give Miss Feanor a lesson in running away that she would not soon forget.

  Of course, if his caseworker was correct, running this time would certainly end the possibility of foster-care and without it as a winter fallback, he knew he would have to leave the vicinity of Pittsburgh. He felt a pang of guilt or perhaps it was sorrow at the thought of leaving the city where his mom lived. Still it was only a slight pang, and he offered Miss Gladys a small shrug indicating he would prefer to stay in the foster home, rather than go to Juvie. She patted his knee and gave him a warm smile, happy that he came to the right decision. After struggling her bulk off the couch, she crossed to the doorway, her great weight sending vibrations throughout the room, and called down the hallway.

  "Miss Feanor?" Her words were very loud, and they disturbed the still air of the house, setting him further on edge. She stood facing down the hall and continued, presumably to Miss Feanor. "I have some paperwork that needs signatures."

  There was near silence from the hall, but now that he knew about the sliding, he cocked an ear for it, and sure enough, there came a gentle swish from that direction. A second later, Miss Feanor and the other children slid into view. She gave Curt a long look, before she turned toward the social worker.

  "I'm so sorry, but I'm getting a tremendous migraine," she said in a near whisper. "Can I come by your office tomorrow before Curt's check up and fill out the paperwork then?"

  Miss Gladys' eyebrows shot up, and finally pitching her voice low, she answered, "Of course you can, don't worry about it. I'll get out of your hair and let you two get acquainted." She then turned to Curt and her face became stern, "You be good now."

  Though he would never term it in such a way, Curt was a cynic of the highest order, an atheist, a non-believer when it came to the concept of good. His life and everyone in it were shadowed in varying shades of grey evil. This was true of every person he had ever met and no matter how nice they might seem on the outside or how diligently they tried to hide it, their dark side would eventually show itself.

  Miss Gladys was a fine example.

  Though she had spoken only a few hundred words to him, there was no denying that she was at the very least tainted with evil. He didn't need to look past her job to know this. The foster care system was a complete joke, adding to and extending the misery of all involved. It was rife with abuse and a haven for burned out and slovenly social workers and though Miss Gladys might have begun with good intentions, she was now an enabler of this.

  And a conscious enabler at that.

  She knew Curt would run at his first opportunity, taking with him anything he considered valuable, yet she had flat out lied to Miss Feanor, telling her that he was looking for a stable situation. Not only that, she had lied to him as well. She had told Curt that Miss Feanor ran a good home and that he would be happy there, when clearly, no one was happy there, not even Miss Feanor as far as he could tell. The children were all wearing identical looks of sham contentment but beneath that, was an edge of nervousness, which was impossible to miss.

  But despite all of this, he liked the big black lady, she had a motherly air to her. So he lied to her as she wished him to. "I'll be good," he promised.

  "See that you are." Miss Gladys relaxed her face into a commiserating sad smile and turned to Miss Feanor, "I'll see you tomorrow. Feel better."

  When she left, the other children ghosted away and there was silence.

  Not an awkward silence as one might expect, but a silence filled with anxious expectation. It lasted many seconds and during that time, he and Miss Feanor only looked at each other. Unlike her foster children, she at least dressed halfway decently, wearing a plain white button-down blouse tucked into a pair of navy blue slacks. Her face was stern, set in hard lines, and she seemed to be appraising him, while he, on
the other hand, kept up his attempt at invoking sympathy, by looking as if he were afraid of his surroundings.

  It should've been mostly just an act on his part. This was his ninth foster-home placement, and he was too much of a veteran of the system to be afraid of a new home, or even of a foster mother as cranky-looking as this one was. He was sure that she would have a mean bark, but she was just five foot three inches tall and not very physically imposing.

  All the same, he had a fear that he couldn't quite name. It felt as if it were in the air, or perhaps was the air. He hadn't noticed it at first, but once he was alone with Miss Feanor, he became attuned to it immediately. It was as if the air had been gradually awaking since his arrival in the home and that with every word and sound, it had begun to take on a charge. He wouldn't have been surprised if the hairs on his arms stood straight out, but he didn't dare look.

  After all the noise and movement generated by the mountainous Miss Gladys, the air hung about them heavy, thick with energy, like the moments before the grey-green clouds of a particularly nasty thunderstorm were about to break loose and Curt felt the need to remain absolutely still.

  Miss Feanor acted as if she sensed it too.

  When the social worker had left, she hadn't moved anything but her head, and this she only turned in the slightest. Curt suspected that she was warning him to keep still and quiet by the way she held her eyes on him, and so he did. For seconds, they only stared at each other, but gradually he lost the ominous feeling that had gripped him, as the air seemed to lie back down, flattening like the surface of a pond after a rain. At length, he shook his head and blinked. The odd anxious sensation of a few seconds before was gone, and he wondered if it had all been in his head.

  At his movement, Miss Feanor gave him an unusual smile; it showed too many of her teeth. With two simple gestures, she told him to follow her and be quiet about it. He watched as she slid down the hall and imitated her exactly. However, the action wasn't as effortless as it looked, and his slides invoked much creaking from the hardwood floors and more than once her shoulders tensed with irritation.

  They made their way to the kitchen, and she directed him to sit before she leaned in close. "Would you like a spam sandwich?" she asked him with surprising sweetness. Her words were like a gentle summer breeze, a zephyr that carried only as far as his ear.

  Curt found spam repulsive, and even though he had swallowed much, much worse during his time on the street, he felt it would be a good time to test his boundaries. His whole life, people had been saying that he was just testing his boundaries, so much so that now it became a conscious act on his part.

  "I would like to have orange jelly on toast, instead...if you have any." He had seen the orange marmalade in the refrigerator on his first trip to the kitchen and it had been one of the few things in there that he cared for.

  Miss Feanor pulled back from him, her eyes involuntarily narrowing before she realized it. But quickly she recast her features into her odd smile.

  "Sure, that would be no problem."

  Odd, but interesting, he thought. It was like she was two separate people. As he watched her, he wondered about her being a schizo, however his ruminations only went so far, since his knowledge on the subject was limited to playground gossip. He thought it had something to do with having more than one person living in you, but he generally just assigned the label to anyone he thought of as weird.

  She moved to a cupboard low and near to the nook, and she pulled out a new jar of orange marmalade and a half a loaf of bread. He wanted to mention the open jar in the refrigerator, but that would've required him to raise his voice and as well, it would let on that he had been snooping, so he kept quiet instead.

  As he waited on his toast, his head began to pound where the janitor, earlier that day, had hit him and he rubbed at the spot gently, feeling a slight swelling there. Nothing seemed to be broken, but the side of his head was very tender.

  4

  Ten hours earlier, Curt's day had begun well enough.

  Breakfast consisted of bagels and cream cheese, and this he ate in a relaxed manner, while doing a spot of light reading from a social studies textbook. He partook of his meal in the teacher's lounge at Benjamin Franklin Elementary, his home for the last six months. The teachers were generally big eaters, and there was always something left in the fridge, he just had to make sure not to eat too much. Despite his precautions, however, they suspected a thief was in their midst, but he was certain they weren't looking at him as the culprit.

  No one ever looked at him, if he could help it. The art of blending in, especially in a school setting, was something Curt had mastered years previously. He had found that schools developed rhythms, and as long as he moved in accordance with them, he would be accepted as a student. Strolling the corridors, he was always a part of a crowd, never on its fringes and never in its center and certainly never alone.

  But, if by necessity he ever had to move through the hallways between classes, he made sure to carry a bathroom pass, swinging it with the obvious boredom of a normal student, and he knew the locations of every bathroom in the school, as well as the name of every teacher, in case he was ever questioned. However, this was a very rare thing. He was normally out during the day, roaming the streets, panhandling, stealing, and generally having fun. On occasion, usually when the weather was particularly nasty, he'd make appearances at lunch selling candy at a nice profit or bumming food from the social misfits who would do anything he asked, as long as he stayed and chatted for a while.

  Ben Franklin was a joy to him. On the whole, the children were sweet, it was in a nice neighborhood, and the clothes in the lost and found were generally of the highest quality. He could dress, if he so choose, in latest name brands. However, that day he had dressed for work. There seemed no explanation as to why, but Wednesday mornings were the best day of the week for begging, and he had dressed accordingly.

  After six years on the streets, he had discovered some fundamental truths to the art of begging, and dressing the part was of paramount importance. Many of his fellow street rats were oblivious to this truth and wore clothes in such a poor state that they were practically falling off them. Curt wore relatively nice clothes, but ones that were obviously stained and smelled a touch dirty.

  He had found that if he looked too nasty, like many of his fellow beggars, people were far more apt to circle wide around him. But if he came across too clean, he evoked little sympathy.

  The proper look was for a child to appear new to his current sad station in life. A mark could then feel satisfied that the few dollars he had given would more likely go to feed the child as opposed to going to buy drugs. Interestingly, Curt had found that the number one reason people gave to beggars was that they wanted to feel good about themselves, however, they would give far more freely if they didn't think their money was being wasted.

  Curt became king of the street rats by combining his patented look with the true secret to begging, which was not to beg at all. When he spied a likely mark, he would never actually ask for money. He'd open his mouth to beg, but then close it as if the situation was just too humiliating. Frequently, people would just offer him money at that point, and as always, he'd follow it up with a teary thank you, again a fine moneymaker when done right.

  Now that morning, Curt had made an error in judgment. He had allowed himself to be lulled into complacency by too closely trusting in an established routine, not his own of course, but that of the schools. This routine had been so exact for the last six months that he was totally unprepared when it suddenly changed. None of the faculty had ever arrived earlier than six am before, however just as he was finishing his toasted bagels, somebody did.

  He only heard the heavy footsteps outside the door to the lounge a bare two seconds before it opened, but this was plenty of time for someone as fast as Curt, to dive under one of the long couches in the room.

  "Hello?" He recognized the voice, as that of Mr. Gallarti, the school's jani
tor. The man was oddly protective of his school and always seemed to have an angry streak running through him. He was a vile tyrant who kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk that needed to be replenished every other day, yet everyone older than twelve respected him. For these reasons, Curt had kept his distance.

  Lying there under the couch, he let the remains of his bagel dissolve in his mouth before swallowing. In the first few seconds, his heart beat so heavily in his ears that he feared that Mr. Gallarti would be able to hear it. However, it slowed quickly as the janitor turned and walked from the room.

  "Hello...anybody here?" the man yelled from the hallway just beyond the door. Curt began to calm down. He figured that he'd relax for a while until Mr. Gallarti moved on to his quite literal broom closet of an office. At that point, Curt would speed quietly over to the gym and slip into his lair until enough children showed up for him to become lost in the crowd.

  Under the stage in the gym, in the most inaccessible spot possible, he had fashioned a lair with warm blankets and pillows. And save for the frequent visits by spiders and the occasional school plays, it was a very comfortable setting.

  But there was problem with his plan. Mr. Gallarti didn't leave, he walked back into the room and Curt heard the unmistakable sound of sniffing. A moment later, the boy went stiff with fright as the janitor bent down and peered right into his eyes.

  "Get the hell out of there!" he roared at Curt.

  "Yes sir," the boy squeaked in a high-pitched terrified voice. Curt wasn't exactly scared; now that he had gotten over his initial shock, he calmed quickly and his brain kicked into high gear. Mr. Gallarti expected him to be frightened however, so he acted frightened and shied away from the man once he had pulled himself out from under the couch.

  "What's your name, and what the hell are you doing here so damn early?" Mr. Gallarti seemed excessively irate to Curt, so he treated the situation as he would in the same manner as if he had heard the rattle of a snake; Curt tread carefully.