The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

  “Your preliminary hearing is scheduled for July eighth at nine at the courthouse,” Mr. Dean said from the porch. “The prosecuting attorney will present his evidence so far to the judge. We’ll try to refute it and move for the charges to be dismissed. The judge will turn us down. The prosecution will move for your bail to be revoked on the grounds that you’re a danger to society and a flight risk. The judge will turn that down too. Then everyone will go home.”

  “You’re still my lawyer, then,” Peter said slowly.

  “Your parents haven’t told me I’m not.”

  “Is there going to be a trial?” Peter asked.

  “We hope not,” Mr. Dean said. “It wouldn’t go well. The prosecution will paint you as a rich, spoiled brat who committed murder and got away with it. Juries hate spoiled brats.”

  “Peter isn’t spoiled,” I said hotly.

  “The jury won’t see it that way,” Mr. Dean said. “Our best hope is that sometime between now and the actual trial, we can find evidence that proves you innocent. Just stay away from the press between now and then, especially about your relationships. This is a deeply conservative town, and if the prosecution can add gay to spoiled brat, it’s over for you.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Peter said through tight teeth.

  “That doesn’t matter in court,” Mr. Dean said. “All that matters is what the jury will think of you.” Then he handed Dad a thick envelope. “Mr. Devereaux, I’m mainly here representing Scott and Helen Morse. It’s come to their attention that you don’t own this trailer or the land it occupies. Nor do you pay rent.”

  Dad hesitated. “That’s right. We’re housesitting for a buddy of mine.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Peter said in my ear. I took his hand.

  “This… buddy of yours is one Daniel Treckman, who is currently serving time in Jackson State Prison for assault and armed robbery.”

  A chill went over me. How much did the Morses know?

  “What about it?” Dad said.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Morse made Mr. Treckman a generous offer for the land, the trailer, and its contents. He accepted this morning.”

  The chill turned to ice. I couldn’t breathe. Peter’s hand became a ghost in mine. Mr. Dean’s other words swirled around me in a polar whirlpool.

  “You and your son can either vacate the premises within forty-eight hours or sign the lease enclosed in that envelope and agree to pay rent in the amount of one thousand dollars per month.”

  “A grand a month?” Dad spluttered. “For this hellhole? You’re shitting me!”

  “Or…,” Mr. Dean said.

  Peter stepped forward. “Or I can go home and be the good little straight boy, is that it?”

  “There’s a clause in the lease stating that if Peter Finn Morse vacates the premises and agrees to remain at least one hundred yards away from young Mr. Devereaux at all times, the rent will be forgiven,” Mr. Dean said.

  Dad said, “You can shove your forgiven up your—”

  “May I remind you, Mr. Devereaux, that if you do not provide your son with adequate shelter, you violate a number of Health and Human Services regulations. If HHS learns of the problem—and the Morses have instructed me to tell you that HHS will definitely learn of the problem—your son will be removed from your care and placed in a foster home.”

  Wet cement filled my chest. Air wouldn’t move. I staggered backward into the hot living room. Blood thudded in my ears. They wanted to take me away from Dad. They wanted to throw us out. Dad was going to be homeless, and I would have to live with strangers.

  “Is this why I can’t find work?” Dad’s voice was sandpaper. “Did those two kill my name around town?”

  “I’m not able to comment on that,” said Mr. Dean.

  Peter’s face was white. “Leave, Mr. Dean.”

  “Mrs. Morse also wanted me to repeat that her earlier offer of a foreman position in Toledo is still open,” Mr. Dean said. “You have forty-eight hours to decide.”

  He got into his car and drove away.

  “Jesus.” Dad dropped the envelope on the table and sank to the couch. “Jesus.”

  Peter was already on his phone. “Dad? What the hell? You think screwing up Kevin’s life will make me come home?” Silence. “Don’t lie, Dad. If you really cared about Kevin and his dad, you’d offer him a job here, not down in Toledo.” Silence. “No. I’m leaving their house right now. I’ll stay in a hotel until I can find a—what?” Silence. “Then I’ll commute from Vine City. Even you can’t rent every apartment in Michigan. And if you ever say anything to Mr. Devereaux about rent, I’ll go straight to the networks and tell them all about myself. I’ll tell them you threw me out of the house, and I’ll tell them you stole my money.” Silence. “You can do that, Dad, but it’s like you always told me, ‘If you’re explaining, you’re losing.’” Silence, longer this time. “Then take the company public, Dad. Look, I’m not talking about this now. Leave Kevin and his dad alone.” He hung up.

  “Jesus,” Dad said again from the couch.

  “I think I fixed it so they won’t throw you out,” Peter said slowly. “But I need to leave. I’ll get a room somewhere until I can get an apartment.”

  “Peter Finn,” I said, “you don’t have to—”

  “Yeah,” Dad interrupted. “He kinda does.”

  I turned, surprised. “What?”

  “I can’t lose you, Kevin.” Dad wouldn’t look at me. “You know how many times I’ve waited for HHS to knock on that door? Every time I can’t put enough food on the table, I worry they’ll take you away from me. Every time I sign that damned free lunch form for school, I worry. Every time you go outside with knots in your shoelaces, I worry. I’m a felon out on parole. You have any idea how easy it would be for them to decide I can’t be a dad? Especially if the all-powerful Morses tell them I can’t?”

  His words punched me in the gut with cold fists. I dropped into the chair, my throat thick and heavy, suddenly too tired to fight. “What about Earnest? I have to stay in the play because of probation. And you have the lead, Peter Finn. You can’t drop out now.”

  He knelt next to the chair and put his arm around me. “I’m not dropping out.”

  “Mr. Dean said you had to stay a hundred yards away from me—”

  “One thing I learned from being around lawyers all the time is that everything is negotiable,” Peter said, “including the name at the bottom of the contract. Don’t sign that lease, Mr. Devereaux. You’ve got legal rights as a squatter, actually.”

  “Until I leave the trailer,” Dad said. “Then your parents can swoop in and change the locks.”

  “I’ll go home and talk to them,” Peter said. “I have to check on my sister anyway. Don’t sign the lease and don’t move out. If worse comes to worst, I’ll pay the rent.”

  “Peter, I can’t accept—” Dad began.

  “Yes, you can,” Peter said. “This is my fault, and you can let me help. Unless you’ve got some gold buried in the backyard.”

  “Don’t I wish.”

  “They’re going to pull more rug out from under you if you don’t do what they want, Peter Finn,” I said. “They’ll take the car away—”

  “I’ll buy another one.”

  “And your phone.”

  “Phones are cheap.”

  “And your lawyer,” I finished dully. “What if they cut loose your legal people?”

  That stopped him. He thought a long minute. “They wouldn’t do that,” he said at last. “I think. It would tarnish the Morse name and hurt the company if I went to jail. Look, I have to go. I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow. Text me.”

  He packed up his stuff and left, leaving a swallowing darkness behind.

  “Hate to say it,” Dad said after his car was gone, “but he is kind of spoiled.”

  I rounded on him, angry now. “What do you mean?”

  “His parents throw him out, but he still figures on having money and a lawyer,” Dad said. “It’s a l
ittle setback. So inconvenient, looking for a hotel and buying a new phone. You and me? We’re on the street. Our family broken up.”

  Hot anger made my eyes scratchy. “Being accused of murder isn’t just a setback.”

  “When his parents get angry at him, they take it out on us, Kevin,” he said, “not on him. The Morses don’t care who they hurt, and Peter’s a Morse. He’ll hurt us too. He might not mean to, but he will.”

  “He left, Dad. He left to protect me. Us.”

  “I know. But he didn’t say he’d stop seeing you. If he really wanted to protect you, he’d—”

  “Shut up!” I bolted to my room, slammed the door, and hurled myself onto my bed. I wasn’t going to cry.

  Robbie stared at me from his picture frame. I drew back a fist to smash the stupid thing but then made myself stop. Carefully I rolled over to face the wall and lay there. Peter was gone. I might not see him again. If I didn’t have Peter, why had I told anyone I was gay? All that pain for nothing.

  Jesus, this was messed-up. Peter was still in trouble with the cops, and his parents were coming after me and Dad. I was still on probation after, and Les had… had….

  Shit. I’d said the word to Wayne, but I didn’t want to think it. My eyes were still dry and scratchy. I was such a loser. Nothing. Nobody would want me. That was why Peter had really left—he couldn’t stand being with someone who’d been wrecked and ruined.

  Dad left me alone, and when I dragged out of bed in the morning, the living room smelled like stale whiskey. I looked in the kitchen wastebasket. The empty bottle lay at the bottom. It had been more than half-full when he’d given me some a few days before. Jesus.

  Feeling worse, I tiptoed into Dad’s room. It was dog hot in there, but he was snoring hard on his bed. The whiskey smell was strong in here, too, but mixed with a nasty kind of sweat. I stood under a rock of guilt, and last night’s anger faded beneath it. It was me. I’d pushed him into drinking like that. Did Dad still have the nightmares about that guy he had punched going over the edge? I hadn’t thought about that. He was scared of losing me, and I—

  I couldn’t think how I’d handle it if I lost him. Last night I’d been so freaked at Peter leaving and what Dad had said that I hadn’t thought too much about being taken away from him. The idea stole my breath and tightened my skin. I’d already lost Mom, and Dad… Dad had helped me, even when I was shitty to him. And he hugged me when I said I was gay while Peter’s mom had chased him out of the house. He let me go to Pride Fest while Peter’s parents made him hide from it. And he let Peter stay here with us and stood up to Detective Malloy for me. Peter had his lawyers, but I had Dad. Which one of us had it better?

  I watched him sleep. God, when was the last time I’d told Dad I loved him? I couldn’t remember. What a shit. I’d been mad at Dad for leaving me, but that was before I knew about his nightmares and how scared he was about losing me.

  Les had hurt me, and I had tried to keep that to myself, but how could I keep it now? Les was hurting Dad. He was hurting Peter. He was hurting everyone.

  Maybe I could stop it. If I was brave enough.

  Les laughed at me in my head. Little pervert. You like it. You love it. You won’t ever tell.

  Dad shifted in his sleep. I slipped out and went back to my own room, where I paced up and down. You won’t ever tell. I’d already told Peter. And Wayne. What was one more person?

  I got Les’s phone from under my mattress and called up the text messages again.

  son of a bitch

  I hate u

  u should die, fuckwad

  These could point the police toward other people, toward the real killer, and I was holding on to them because I was afraid of telling what Les had done to me.

  Well, yeah. Telling Peter about it had set off everything bad. If I had kept my mouth shut, Peter would never have gone to Les’s house and beaten him up. No one would have seen him or his car, and the cops wouldn’t have found bruises on his hands. Telling was a disaster, a coward’s way out.

  You told Wayne, said another little voice.

  But he was like me. He wouldn’t tell anyone else. And I hadn’t meant to tell him. It had just happened. Now I would have to tell someone who didn’t like me.

  I started to sweat, and my stomach twisted into a knot. Oh god, I was going to throw up. I ran to the bathroom and stood over the toilet, breathing deep and trying to hold my stomach down.

  Little pervert.

  At last my stomach stayed put. I splashed some cold water on my face and stared into the mirror. My reflection was pale.

  You won’t ever tell.

  No. No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t handle facing everyone after they knew how filthy I was.

  But again I thought about Dad. How much this was hurting him. What would happen to us if this went on? Dad had been brave for me, and now I needed to be brave for him. I would be brave for him.

  I marched into the kitchen and scribbled a note to Dad. Out for a bike ride. Then I hopped on my bike with Les’s phone heavy in my pocket and pedaled away.

  ACT III: SCENE II

  KEVIN

  THE LOBBY at the Ringdale Police Station had cranked up the AC, and the marble floor sucked the heat out of my bones as the automatic door whooshed shut behind me. My teeth chattered a little, but it wasn’t from the chill. The sergeant on the other side of the bulletproof glass gave me an eye. I didn’t recognize him, and I had no idea if that was good or bad.

  “Help you?” the sergeant asked.

  “Uh… maybe.” I had to work to make the words come out. “Is Detective Malloy here? I need to talk to her. About a case.”

  “Your name?”

  I gave it. He picked up the phone and told me to have a seat like I was at the dentist’s office. I sat on a plastic bench and stared down at the knots in my shoelaces. Would Detective Malloy notice them and use them to take me away from Dad? I’d run away first. I’d—

  “Kevin?”

  Detective Malloy was standing in an open door. I swallowed, nodded, and stood up. My heart was beating hard, but it was heavy too. I needed to go to the bathroom.

  “Come on back,” she said.

  I followed her into an area with a bunch of desks and computers. It was the same place I’d been taken in the spring when I was arrested for beating up Robbie, and both times I’d wanted to climb on my bike and bolt for the Rocky Mountains. Last time the handcuffs on my wrists had kept me from doing that. This time I stayed because of something stronger than steel.

  The big room hadn’t changed. Most of the desks were taken up by men and women typing, some in uniform, some not. A few had nonpolice people sitting near them. Most of those people wore handcuffs. I tried not to look at them, but the cuffs made me feel sick. Phones rang, keys clicked, and voices chattered. Smells of stale coffee and burned microwave popcorn hung in the air, and harsh overhead lights glared down at us.

  “Have a seat,” Malloy said beside what I figured was her own desk. “Can I get you something? Water? Can of pop?”

  I shook my head and sat down while she took up a squeaky chair at the computer. She wore a sharp blue suit jacket with a crisp red T-shirt under it, and her hair was pulled into a french braid like it had been before. My heart beat faster. This was the detective who had arrested Peter and interrogated me. She didn’t like me. She thought I was trash. I was trash.

  “The sergeant said you wanted to talk to me about a case,” she said expectantly. “Is it the Les Madigan case?”

  I nodded. My words had gone away. I was a mouse in a roomful of slit-eyed cats.

  “Shoot, then,” she said. “What do you have for me?”

  I started to speak, then stopped. Fear clutched me in a fist of ice and squeezed all the words out of me. I couldn’t think of Peter or Dad or anything except getting out of there.

  Little pervert.

  Detective Malloy must have noticed. She said, “If someone is scaring you, Kevin, we can go somewhere more private. We can protect
you. It’s what we do.”

  “You can’t protect me from this,” I said in a small voice. “It already happened.”

  “What happened, Kevin? Did someone hurt you?” Her voice was full of sympathy now, and it almost broke me. Stupidass tears gathered behind my eyes. I didn’t want to do that there… or anywhere. Instead I pulled the phone from my pocket and set it on the desk in front of her.

  “Here,” I said.

  She didn’t touch it. “What is it?”

  “It’s Les Madigan’s cell phone.”

  Detective Malloy reached into her desk, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and picked up the phone. “Where did you get this? It’s okay, Kevin. I’m not going to arrest you. You can say.”

  I stared down at my knotted laces again, fighting for words.

  Little pervert.

  But I had to help Dad.

  “A couple nights before Les was killed,” I hunched over, and my words were slow as quicksand, “I was on my way home after rehearsal, and I stopped in the park by the golf course. But Les was there too. He followed me. He grabbed me and he… he….” Hot tears dripped from my eyes, straight down onto those stupid laces. I gasped for air. “He….”

  “Kevin,” Malloy said. “Did Les Madigan sexually assault you?”

  I stared at my damp laces a moment longer.

  You won’t tell.

  For Dad.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  A small pause. Then just like Wayne, Detective Malloy said, “I’m so sorry.”

  I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, and a pink Kleenex appeared in my line of vision. I looked up. Malloy was handing it to me. I took it and blew my nose.

  “It was brave of you to come down here and tell me that,” Malloy said. “Really brave. You should be proud of your courage.”

  I just shook my head. I felt a little better. I had told a stranger and hadn’t died. But I still didn’t know what was going to happen.

  “Have you told anyone else, honey?” Malloy continued.

  “No,” I said. “Well, yes. Sort of.”

  “Who have you told?” Her voice was always quiet and gentle, like she was talking to a rabbit that might bolt away any second.