“STOP SCREAMING!” screamed Buzz-Head. “For gawdssake, DICK! Pull his HEAD back IN!”
Beau felt like he was dying. He was spinning and woozy as they slung him around, and his head was splitting. Also, he was thirsty. But they were getting farther away . . . all the noise was . . .
“. . . don’t feel good . . .”—Beau slurred—“go . . . home.” He shut his eyes.
“I don’t know, cream puff; can you?” Buzz squalled nastily. Beau just kept his eyes closed. No point. He remained on his side across the backseat of the cop car. This, too, shall pass....
“It’s not like we don’t have your best interests in mind, pal,” continued Buzzy, trying a new tactic. “We just don’t want to see you ruin your life.”
“Yeah, or your parents’ lives. It looks bad on them too,” added the Terminator. “It’s not just your choice.”
They waited to hear how Beau would take this wisdom. When there was no reply, they resumed.
“It’s pretty selfish.”
“Even if you do have those . . . impulses . . . you can get help.”
“Yep. There are places that can fix you. Or at least stop you, before you turn other guys gay.”
Far away . . . through translucent lids, Beau dreamed of a better place. One where the only cops were good cops, and clowns couldn’t wear uniforms . . . far away . . . then there was an earthquake as he heard them shaking someone.
“Hey!” (Shake!) “PETUNIA!” (Wham-wham, shake-shake!) “HEY! Don’t pass out on us here!”
“Okay, let’s get him home.”
“Or the hospital. Whadaya think? Should we take him there?”
“No, that’d look bad, like if we thought he needed to go to the hospital why didn’t we take him there right away?”
“Yeah . . . okay. Hey, kid—sit up!” The Terminator shook him again.
“Make him wake up.” Buzzy’s voice was worried.
“Yeah, duh; I’m trying—hello, kid?! Hey! Suck it up, Buttercup, and tell us where you live!”
Beau managed, eventually, to remember his address, and they pulled up beside his dad’s car. Beau, who was lying on the seat of the patrol car, struggled to sit up, and as he did he saw the curtain open and shut. His dad had seen.
As they hauled him out of the car, Jason opened the front door and stood impassively in the threshold.
“He belong to you?” asked Buzz.
“What’d he do?” asked Beau’s dad.
“Got himself noticed—in the wrong way, I’d say,” Buzz answered, as the Terminator nodded.
“Okay, I got it from here, officers,” Beau’s dad said brusquely. He put some stink on the word “officers.” He was pissed at their smirks.
“Hope so,” the Terminator responded, as he and Jason exchanged hard stares.
Jason didn’t reply, just reached out and grabbed Beau as he tottered onto the porch.
“Get in here.”
“Good luck, Daddy!” the cops chorused infuriatingly, as Beau’s dad slammed the door in their faces.
Once inside, Beau clung to a doorway. “Dad, maybe I should go see a doc—I—”
He never saw the first punch. It spun him around and finished knocking him to the floor.
“Dad!” Beau gasped, trying to get up, trying to see his father’s face, blind-sided by his own fresh blood.
“Shut up! Shut UP!” Jason screamed, beside himself. “You little SISSY! WHY did you have to be like this?! Huh?! I stuck around! I showed you man stuff! WHY?! I tried to be there for you, so your mom couldn’t turn you gay! It’s not my fault! WHY wouldn’t you listen?! WHY do you keep acting like this?”
The WHYs were accompanied by a closed fist clout to whatever part of Beau he could reach. Sucker-punched, Beau sank and started crying out loud. He put his hands over his raging head and wept, and even though he had done a pretty good job throwing punches a little while earlier, he did not lift his hand to his dad, as his father sobbed and beat and even kicked him.
But in Beau’s heart a rage ignited, and it brightly burned all the tortuous rejected love Beau had always felt for his dad away into the atmosphere . . . clean away forever. Beau sensed it leaving, as he huddled, broken and weeping with despair, wondering if there would ever be a better land.
Quickly then, everything just fell apart for Beau. His dad immediately kicked him out. Gina, who was off at her new place in Seattle, with its stubborn room ready for Beau, didn’t know any of this, and Beau refused to tell her. The truth was that now he didn’t have anywhere to live. The house he and his mom’d been renting had been given up when Beau chose to stay with his dad, so now he was effectively homeless. Beau was not about to tell his mom because he knew she would immediately freak out and fly back if she heard what was happening to him and the awfulness of being the new kid again was just too much to bear right now.
Awesomely, Pete and Jewels offered him a storage room in their basement, but an unexpected wrinkle from their parents called a halt to that. Dave and Barb asked to see him, so he came to their house. They let him in, with no sign of attitude. Then the doorbell rang again, and it was the Rev. He sat down beside Beau, and they began.
Lovingly, they explained that they could help him with his disease.
With sincere and worried faces, they all described the cure that existed for people who didn’t just want to give in to this disease, because they knew it wasn’t a choice, it was an illness, and that no one could explain why some folks were afflicted, but it was very explicit in the Bible that God was not okay with gay, though he always forgave sinners who repented . . . and Beau could be forgiven. Beau nodded appropriately, when prompted, and listened. So they continued convincing him.
Finally, they compared his proclivity to how Bonnie had been born one way, but then, she’d decided she wasn’t going to be that way. And now look at her! She was going to be normal! At that point, Rev slapped Beau’s knee and asked if a little ol’ girl could be that brave, well, couldn’t he?
Beau sat silently. When they asked him if he had any questions, he actually did. One.
“You could fix me, like Bonnie got fixed?”
Yes! They could, and he would go on to live a happy and fruitful heterosexual life in a happy marriage, to a woman, blessed with kids. They had all kinds of info, and they were sure they could get the church to take up a collection for such a good cause.
Then Barb took his hand, softly, like she did, and looked into his eyes.
“Beau, we have to tell you something else, and it hurts us so I will just say it: Even when you are cured and are attracted to women, we have prayed on this and we do not want you to continue to go steady with Julia.”
Beau was taken aback. “Really? You don’t?” But why “cure” him, then?
Barb smiled sadly. “No. And I’m sorry to say that, Beau. But Julia is a bright soul, and we sense, to our sorrow, that you are impeding her path to Jesus . . . we don’t fault you, you were raised so differently that it’s like two different planets. And we are not sure you have given your heart to the Savior. It’s just you are from two opposite families with disagreeing views. But we still very much want to help you.”
Beau thanked them sincerely for their concern. He said he would think about it.
But he didn’t.
Since “tough love” is what his dad was claiming, the upshot was that Beau was officially homeless. This news was also omitted to his mother in Seattle, along with everything else, and for a month in that Indian summer, as the warm weather waned and the days grew shorter, Beau started sleeping in a sheltered area between a tool shed and garage in the back/side yard of the house where they used to live. Even after school started. It was an event he didn’t feel compelled to take part in. School was stupid.
But as the cold winds started to blow, and his hiding place grew more uncomfortable, Beau got frightened. He was sixteen years old, homeless, apparently parentless, and pissed. Now instead of just sleeping in the yard, he started breaking into the house
he used to call his. It was standing empty, but that morning he had almost been caught when a handyman had come to fix something. He’d had to dart out the same bathroom window he was letting himself in by—and had just made it. “His” house had apparently been rented again, and now he had to figure out something else. Options looked awful.
On that September morn, he was sitting on a park bench, looking scruffy and feeling scared, when a soft touch on his shoulder made him jump twenty feet. It was Scoutie Jeff.
“Oh! Hey, whatssup.” Beau squinted up as he settled down again. Scoutie Jeff, their long-suffering leader of the Hurt Patrol, was okay. He’d always been pretty nice.
Well, Beau was hella hurt, now. Scoutie Jeff sat down beside him.
“How are you?” Jeff’s kind eyes were concerned.
“Oh . . . you know . . .” Beau shrugged like he was a tough guy.
Jeff continued, “I hear around town you don’t have a place to stay.”
“You have?! How?!” Beau squawked in outrage.
“Oh, a little bird or two mentioned they were worried you might be having a rough patch. It’s not hard to figure out, Beau. People see you hanging around the library and outside on benches all the time.”
“Man—I hate small towns! Tell them thanks a lot!” Beau snarled. He was appalled that his private stuff was apparently not at all private. He folded his arms across his chest and fumed.
Jeff nodded. He waited out Beau’s outrage. They sat in silence for a while before Jeff spoke again.
“Yeah, sounds like it’s been pretty bad. So listen. Want to hang out at my house till you get stuff figured out?”
Beau frowned. He was interested, but what was the catch? He spoke gruffly, to keep himself in check.
“Like stay a day or something? Overnight?” He was amazed at how good that sounded. Just to get clean and sleep, deeply, without keeping one eye open. Hope flared in his heart, a little.
“Yeah. This is no good,” said Jeff. “Let’s get something better for you. We can figure this out.”
Beau ended up being there for over a month. That was where he stayed till he came to live with his mom in Seattle.
That was the first thing Scoutie Jeff did when Beau came to stay—he made Beau call her.
Gina was frantic when she heard he’d been homeless and hollered, as usual. “No more, Beau! No way! You are coming to live here! Yes—he has a name, Beau—Matt! Give him a chance! Yes! No! NO! Yes you are, mister! No! No! NO! Nonononoooo!”
That was her end of the conversation. She won. Secretly, Beau was relieved. He would be flying out to Seattle in a few weeks. Until then, Beau stayed with Jeff.
The time that Beau hung out at Scoutie Jeff’s was easily the chillest of that whole year. He turned out to be so cool. Beau found he could talk to him about everything, and that Jeff had a lot to say.
“How is it your fault, Beau?” Jeff asked when they talked, and then paused to listen.
“I didn’t tell her! Or Pete! I didn’t tell anyone. I just let them think whatever! Till it got weird.”
“But you weren’t ‘out,’ you haven’t had a chance to come out, yet . . . and as far as Julia getting so down on herself, I’m sorry, Beau, but that’s on her—”
Beau frowned in disagreement, but Jeff continued. “She could have gotten angry, or she could have talked it over, or she could have laughed it off. It was her choice to internalize it like that.”
“Nuh-uh, she’s right—about how horrible society is to girls, especially if they can get them to think they’re ugly.”
“Yeah. She’s right about that. It’s true, and that’s wrong. Sincerely. But still not your fault.”
Beau thought about it for a while . . . it made him feel better. He still felt like a douche bag, just slightly less of one. He tried to explain why, again. “I just wanted to tag along and not be the mutant for once. It was so cool to have a crew of friends to do things with.”
“Yeah . . . I know. I was always the mutant too. It gets old.” Jeff’s smile was sad. “I wish I could just make it go away.”
Beau smiled. “Right? Me too. We need more magic wands!”
They sat, chilling on his front porch in the awesome light of the early autumn sun. Then Scoutie Jeff glanced over at Beau, his dark eyes earnest behind his horn rimmed glasses.
“See, I think that’s the problem; you guys think you need all these supernatural spells and make-believe.” His mild gaze was surprisingly solemn. “What you don’t realize is that you don’t need magic; you are magic.”
Beau threw him a goofy look, and snorted. “Yeah, right! Magic! Poof!”
But Jeff continued, “You are. You young people are so fearless. Do you understand how important that is? Without courage, all the other qualities don’t count. And we need your nerve. You guys are the future. Our only chance for one. We need you so much. We need you to save this world, not escape to some pretend place. Explore this reality, don’t override it for some dumb screen!”
Beau raised his eyebrows, like, “okay, Scoutie!” But Jeff nodded.
“It’s true. And nobody realizes it. You can move mountains! Right here in real life. Don’t waste your time and power on someone else’s creation—some soma screen! You know what I’m alluding to, right? You read Brave New World—you know what I mean by soma! I mean, I like technology as much as the next guy, but I want it to be my butler, not my boss! Not an addiction. Just consider it, Beau. Don’t laugh, just think about it: Magic is everywhere. Magic is humble. You guys consistently underestimate your power!! You can direct time and events! You see pain, and you can alleviate it. You can deflect the trajectory of sorrow! That’s magic! You can change the future—have it your way. We have a weird idea what constitutes magical, because we ignore the obvious for wishful thinking, but that’s just us being thick; magic is readily available. It’s so easy! All we have to do is reach up and let ’er rip!”
“Like how?” Beau asked, in spite of himself.
“Like morale. Just as easy as that!” Jeff replied immediately. It was obvious he’d been saying this to himself for a while. “Like lifting up someone’s morale—and that includes animals. Think back to Camporee. That’s a prime example. Hunter is such a happier guy now. I see him at meetings, and that escapade of yours changed his whole standing with his peers. It’s gotten around and given him status. I was always more than a little troubled by Hunter. He was such a sad kid. But you guys changed that. You changed that, Beau! You, alone, spoke up, and started something big; the kids had been picking on Hunter for years. And by the way, Beau, I know you masterminded the whole fish thing.” He laughed at Beau’s astounded expression. “I always knew even when I was pretending otherwise to that moron and his pinhead patrol. And I’ll tell you another thing: I was so proud of you! Because you guys challenged evil when you saw opportunity—and you won! Those little snots deserved what they got. It’s the only way to be, Beau. To be brave like that.
“It helps with the pain of the human condition. Think about it. When we see cruelty or injustice stopped or something difficult done, it makes us want to cheer. We love Goodness. It’s just how we’re wired. We feel great when a wrong gets righted, right?” Jeff smiled. “That thing that makes you applaud, at the same time as your nose stings—that elation, like in that vid when that guy cuts the plastic off the whale, and then the whale escorts their boat back to shore, shooting out of the water the whole way, dancing with joy?” He grinned like he knew he was being weird, but Beau nodded, caught, and Jeff continued. “We think we have to follow all these rules to find that feeling, but we just have to act with kindness. Not that I have any problem with rules, Beau, I should probably add that, as your Scout leader. I just think you can find magical power all around you, constantly, when you start to use it, by making someone’s day better, regardless of whether you even know them, let alone agree with everything they do.” Scoutie Jeff smiled his self-effacing smile, and added, “And no crazy violent stuff that incites perfectly ni
ce people to kill each other! Words are magic. Very big magic—and we need to realize that and choose them carefully.”
Beau was going to think this over. He was surprised he’d never thought about it before. He thought he might totally agree. He also never thought of Scoutie Jeff as a deep thinker.
Scoutie Jeff patted his shoulder. “So use your magic, Beau! Use your powers for good and not evil,” he said, and then laughed softly. “Though you probably shouldn’t tell anyone I told you to use your magic, or I might get run out of town on a rail! Hahaha!” He hooted. Scoutie just cracked himself up.
When Beau’s done talking, we just drive for a while. Man. I thought I was the one who was bullied. Beau looks over at me.
“So . . . that was that. Then I came here, and then all this crap happened.”
I glance at him. “Well, sounds like Scoutie Jeff came through. Actually, it sounds like he was important in building your character. I guess Scouts did some good, after all.”
Beau looks so wiped, sagging in the seat, that I reach out and touch his hand. It’s like ice.
“Damn, son, yer fingers is freezing!!” I say, goofing, rubbing them briefly.
“Yours too. What’s that saying? ‘Cold hands, warm heart’?” Beau smiles.
I shake my head. Nope.
Not so fast.
“Not me; I haven’t mentioned this yet, but ’fraid I got no heart, pardner. I found out it’s a total liability. No heart, no hurt. Simple.” I look over at him to see how he takes this.
It’s true, the no heart thing. I like the sound of it, tough and cold—nobody getting over on Glacier Girl, here. Clang-ity-clang-clang . That’s my icy innards.
After a while, I yawn and start looking for a place to pull over. Very soon I see a diner. I coast the van into the lot, even though it’s too early and it’s not open. We’ll just nap here in the parking lot till it’s time.
We get cozy and talk for a while more. Beau sings me his patrol song, and we end up laughing so much we almost wake up Leo. I run the heat for a while, and then once we’re warm, I cut the engine and we drowse.
The Hurt Patrol Page 11