The Birth Of A Dragon Slayer.

Chapter One...
195?

Shaun Kinny Jr, for all intends and purposes grew up in a

catholic boys school named: Maryville academy. The place had been
built on orders of the head of the CHicago discess, cardinal
Cody. The good cardinal lived in a twenty room mansion off
Chicago's gold coast and is reputed to have seen "boys Town "
once too many times. It was after one of these viewings that he
sent his minions to Desplanes Il, a burg that was a good distance
from Chicago. (Far away from his mansion. Afterall, good
intentions were okay, but not in one's backyard) to create a
place for wayward boys. So from the dust and sands of this
Chicago Suburb, long before the word suburb had been coined,
buildings arose. Four in all. Each was of red brick and was four
stories high. All this is reputed to have taken two days. The
cardinal heard of this and said it was good. Then beds and what
not were installed in the buildings. This took two days. The
cardinal herd of this and said it was good. Next two priest came,
one blessed with an extra dose of mean and the other blessed with
an extra dose of nice. Which is to say that one was old and the
other was young. Together they blessed everything. This took one
day. The cardinal head of this and said it is good. Next the nuns
came, bringing a supply of guilt. They sprinkled it to and fro,
but took extra care to sprinkle an ample amount on the beds where
the childern would be sleeping. This took a half day. The
cardinal head of this and said it was good. Next the childern
came, sleeping in the beds of guilt. This took a quarter of a
day. The cardinal head of this and said it was good. Then he
watched 'Boys Town' for the last time. Then he slept the sleep of
a righteous man.

The above is just rumor, but with cardinal and popes, one
can never be sure.
 Chapter five...
Maryvill.

Note: Show his anger, display his fury, it and show his
swallowing it back. Maryville was a dictership based two divne
princables: a religuous boy is a strong boy. Other kids give him
greif about imginary freinds.NOte; Further back. He never goes on
a dragon hunt agina; at least not after the firest one. He wants
to and has to keep putting it off, because of this and that.

NOte: He was now in real danger of forgetting his imgeinay

world.

Shaun was a few months shy of his seventh birthday when he

arrived at Maryville. He brought three things with him. His
favored Teddy bear, his colloection of imgiray friends and his
sprit, as yet unbroken. Upon his arrivel, Shaun was brought into
Father O'Mallys office. The office was done in shades of
darkness; walnut panels; a single stainglass window that allowed
for very little light and a huge wooden desk. Behind the desk on
the wall was a curafix of Jesus. He stared out at all who
entered; pain in his eyes. Father O'Mally sat behind the desk,
half sloutched, yet looking ram-rod striegfty simpy by virture of
his black priest outfit. He was of medium height, a bull like
neck, bloustious face, and dark penatratig eyes. His eyes now
rested on Shaun, studying him, the way Shaun slouched, held his
eyes, and his overall demonor, as they had every boy who was
frist brought to Maryvill. He was suddenly struck, and sudden is
the right word, as he felt a jolt shoot thougt him, that this
boy, unlike the hundreds of others, had the shiney new look of
innacensts about him.

Shaun was not itimaated by all this. He had made the long
jourany to Maryvill acphomped by his enitre kingdom. As he stared
back, not defienty, just self-assured that whatever this strange
man in a black suit and a white collor had in store for him was
no match for him and his knights.
 Father O'Mally knew that Shaun was almost seven by his
reconds sent to the school by the and attribed his shiny
innacentcs to his age. He searched his mind, trying to recall if
he had had a younger child then Shaun at Maryville. He could
think of none, mused the court was sending them younger younger,
then sighed. Age didn't matter. The courts, for what ever their
reasons (He susspected money was the motive behind many of his
charges, but never pursered the notion.) sent Shuan to him. His
jop was to tame roudy childern, even childern with black and
white knights at there disposel. His methods were somethings
cruel. But he was not an unkind man, although many of his charges
would argur otherwise. He knew the pain they were feeling at
being ripped away from their familys and friends. He knew the
pain well. So he did feel, if not compassion for the one hundred
and fifty boys under his command, then certinly a feeling of
commradite. He, like them, was serving a sentance at Maryvill.
He, unlike them, was serving a life sentance. As a kid in Back
of the Yards Chicago, O'Mally had listned to his father, a hard
drinking iron worker, spell out spellbinding stories about
ireland. When he had first become a priest, he dreamed of
heading a pharish located amongst the rolling green grass of
Ierland. This was but a dream now. He'd serve out his carrier
right here. He had been there since the very begining, hand
picked by someone in Cardnell Cody office. Not because the good
Cardnell likeed him. And not becasue the good Carndell had
disliked him. The good cardnell didn't know he exisited. He was
there because he had slighted somebody and what that slight was
was unknowen to him, knowen only to the person he had slighted.
But because politic ruled the cathloic church, as politics ruled
everywhere, the slighted party had whispered in sombodys ear.
Promices were exchanged: You do me this faver and when the time
is right, I'll do you a good turn.

He'd dealy like to know who that somebody was...or maby not.
Then he'd lose sight of the fact he was a prist and kill the
bastard.

He thought of all this as he continued to studey Shaun. He

always thougt of this when a new boy was brought before him, as
if somewhere in the dark tunnels of his brain he was thinking
that his being there was this new boys fault. His voice gravly
from the three packs of camel stgrights he smoked each day, and
the fitht of Irish whiskey he consummed, but always at night away
from prying eyes, he explined to Shaun what was expected of him.
The rules were few, but strictly carried out. Shaun had to
address the priests as 'Father Such and Such.' He had to address
the nuns as 'Sister Such and Such.' If he raised his voice to a
nun or a prest he'd be servrely punished. If he hit another boy,
he'd be servrely punished. If he talked out of turn he'd be
serverly punished. If he did'n finish all the food on his plate,
he'd be sevrely punished. He had to go to mass evey morinng and
thank the lord for his blessings if he did not he'd be...

Shaun thought: Severy punished.

Without explaining what 'sevrely punished' ment, Father

O'Mally paused and asked in a hard voice."Do you understand."

Shaun did not. He nodded to show he did.

Jason

Father O'Mally handed him over to Sister Gretchen. She

stooped over and bore into Shauns eyes. He drew back at the sight
of her. She was a hag in black drag. Her pock marked face held
hard cruel eyes, eyes that were a mirror though whitch crulity
poured in, and in turn curity poured out. She was what she
appaered to be: A curel woman. She never told anybody, not even
whispering it to God at night, the filthy things her father had
done to her when she was young. Gretchen's Father had been a lay
preacher, who after preaching to his flock the rightious course
of life, had had lain her from the time she six years old.
Smelling of cheap bathtub gin, he invaded her every orafice,
ripping and tearing at her young flesh. He laid her twice on
holadays, whispering in her ear as he groped at her young breast,
pea pods realy, that his dong was his chrismass present to her.
Sandwitched between a refridgeion truck and a garbage truck while
crossing the street, he had passed away when she fifteen. She
greived a nought and joined the sisterhood right out of High
school. She had hated men, and boys fit into her spree of hatred,
ever since. She had nursed that hate, and over the years it had
filled her every pore, consuming her.

"Your mine,"she crackled and took his head.

She jerked on his hand, pulling him unwillingly along with

her. He struggled, but she she frimed up her grip on his wrist
and dragged into a ashen brick building. He stumpled as they went
up three flights of stairs and into a huge room. Shower room was
etched across the wall at the far end of the room. Bunks, side by
side, filled the room. A armey stily foot locker sat at the foot
of each bunk. The bunks were the orginely bunks and the guilt the
priest and nuns had brought with them long ago had become part of
the beds, actually crusting on the springs and foot-boards.

She pulled to a bunk."This is your bed,"she commanded.

His look said he was both firghtened and confussed. What he

had thought was going to be a jouery filled with dragons and
other exciting things was turning out to be a nightmare. He
wanted to cry out he wanted to go home. Wind, the unacorn
whispered in his ear: That's what she wants. Look at her face.
Look at how the muscles are tensed up all ready to spring with
happyniss at the sound of your tears. He saw in her face that
Wind was right and although it took an effort, held his tears.

Wind had been right, and she breathed out a guttrel sound
when she realized he was not going to cry. She explained her
rules, her hard cold voice punerrtng every vowel. He had to wash
and brush his teeth every day, and cleanse his hair and body once
a week. He had to work in the kitchen five days a week. He'd go
school every day between the hours of nine and three. He'd do
homework every night. If he broke any of these rules he'd be
servrly punished. Did he understand.

He did not, but nodded to show he did.

She took no plesure in his nod. She stooped over and grabbed
him by the shoulders. She held him tight, as she squinted into
his eyes. She was sure she saw a bed wetter back there. She hated
bed wetters. She had divided the her charges into two catagorys.
Bed wetters, and none bed wetters. She hated the latter only
margly less then the former. Every morining she checked (Afterall
a well made bed was the sign of a ordley boy.)to make sure that
every bed was made properly: Pillow fluffed out and at the head
of the bed, corners of the blanket tucked tight and the blanket
itself stiff. Occasionally she would run a hand under the blanket
and onto the sheet, checking to see if the boy in question had
wet his bed. Whenever she found an afending sheet, she would pull
her hand back, holding it away from her body as not to
contaminate her habit and shriek: "You nasty boy." Then the
blanket and sheet came flying off. Clutching it, she rubbed it in
the boys face, screaming: "filth,filth."

"There is one more rule young man. You have to kneel at the
foot of his bed in the morining while I check your bed to see if
you have wet it."
 He had never wet his bed in his life, at least not since he
was two, which was as far back as he could remember. So he spoke
for the first time since arriving at Maryvill, confdnece in his
voice."I am a big boy and do not wet the bed."

"We will see,"she crackled.

She streightened up and told him to store his possiens in the

foot locker. He had been told that his clothes and other
estnecys: Toothbrush and what not, had been sent ahead of him and
was not surprised to see this stuff already in the foot locker.
He gingelry removed his Teddy Bear from the brown paper bag and
lay him atop his clothers. Sister Gretchen sneered at the sight
of the Teddy bear, but said nothing.

"Now you just sit on your bed and wait for the other
childern to return from school. Don't move from there, hear!"

He nodded as she walked away, disapering though a door at the

far end of the dormatory. A whole lot of time, by his reckoning,
passed, before the other kids returned. He thought of many things
during this time: His home, his sisters; who he had never
appratrched, his bed; which he missed trebbliy, but most of all
about his mother. He felt no resentment toward her, but he did
now feel like she had abandoned him. He had neather a deep well
of life expeariance nor a shallow well of hate and dispar. So in
the end he axcepted his fate, a tiny shrug of his shoulders as
the other kids came in the only indcation of his confussion.

Finely the other childern returned. All were around his age,
and although shy of heart, he rose, hoping to find a freind in
one of hem. They all gave him a strang look, as if he had
lebpsery, then ignored him as they all gathered around their
beds. His hope for a freidnly smile, or at the very least a nod
vanished. Sister Gretchen yelled at him to sit down. He did so,
his lonlyness almost overwelming him. Gosh, was he ever going to
see a friendly face again?

He thought the answer and turned away from it, quite unsure
of himself or the answer. An hour later he followed, in a single
file, the other boys out of the buidling to the mess hall. The
room was about twice the size of his dormatory and was so brighty
lite vie ceiling to wall furlostte lights that he found himself
squinting. He followed the boy in front of him and sat down at
one of fifteen long battle ship gray metal tables that filled a
room about twice the size of his dormatory. He watched with
intrest as older boys ran about setting dishes on the tables;
fifteen plates to a table. Next food was quickly laddled onto his
plate, next milk was poured out of a metal picture into a metal
glass in front of each boy. The whole affear didn't take more
then ten minutes. Sister Gretchen, as were the other dormatoy
nuns, sat at the end of each table, each responabe for the
behavir of their charges.

The tables were postioned so Father Fox or Father O'Mally

could survay from their table at the front of the dinning room.
Both sat at the table, and when the last of the food was laddled
on the last plate, and the food carts and what not wheeled out of
sight, Father O'Mally, by virture if is being the senor priest,
rose and tapped his silver spoon on his crystel goblet to get
the boys attention. What ever noise was evadnet in the room, (Not
much.) came to a halt.

Father O'Mally said."We have a new charge with us tonight. I

want you to all give a hardy welcome to Mr. Shaun Kinny. Shaun
stand up."

Shaun did so, embarresed. A few more mecinelnay seconds

later, Father O'Mally hushed the claps by raising his hands.
Sister Gretchen whispered for Shaun to be seated. He did so
gladly.

"Now we will say grace."said Father O'Mally.x

Everybody around him had bowed their heads and clasped their
hands. For Shaun this specitale was the last straw. He paid no
attention to the boy, and weahter the boys intntion was hostel or
frendly, he didn' know or care. He was strung taunt. He cared a
nought for the food that sat before him. He just wanted to go
home. He was sure he was in a mad house and any second now a
dragon, perhaps the big dragon he had made litte, was going to
pop up and devore him.

"SHUAN."Sister Gretchen whispered vivioulsy."Clasp your hands

and say grace."

That He was expected to perform grace, was lost on him. He

looked bewildered. He had never received a smidgon of reliouge
training, or indoraion at home. Donna had been dead set aginist
it, as was Nanna. So grace was not a big deal in his home. He
started to protest, but Sister Grethch scroled at him. But he was
frightened and imatated the boy next to him. His hands quivered
as he clasped them toghetter. Next he bowed his head over a
plate of mashed potatos, peas and meatloaf. He mumbled, without
any true meaning or feeling, along with the boy next to him:
Thank you lord for this bonuty you have placed upon are plate.

As soon as grace was finihsed, the boys at his table

attatched their food. A few of the other boys at his table
scrowled at him, but he paid them no mind and picked at his food.
After dinner he was swept away in a sea of activities. First they
were marched back to the dormatory. Then they were told by Sister
Gretchen to strip. That done, they lined up gleaming white
buttock to glreaming withe buttock out side the shower; except
for the fifth boy in line who was black. His buttock shone out
like a black moon rising out of a white sea. The line grew
smaller one at a time as a boy disapeared into the shower,
comming out a few minutes later, his hair wet, a white towel
wrapped around his lower extremtites. When the last boy had
showered, white pjamas were handed out. At last they all knelt at
the foot of their respected beds and preyed. Shaun kept his head
low as he mimiked the boy next to him. At last, a deep sigh
rippling though the dormatory, all the boys, as on cue, dropped
into bed. "If one kid makes waves, then we all get it,
understand."

The day was done. So with relif that boardered on hystraa,

thougt Shaun. He was wrong. As soon as the lights went out
thrwoing the domaory into a frightning darkness, an act that sent
his settling heart racing, the boy in the next bed over his spoke
to him in a low whisper. "If one kid makes waves, then we all
get it, understand."

Shaun did not, but the venmom in the boys voice stung him.
Still the boys voice surprised him. He had tried to speak to
sevrel of the boys after dinner and while standing in line for
the shower, but they had ingnored. Cyrstline tears formed at the
corner of his eyes. He started to shake uncontrollably. He
thought over and over: Why is everybody being so mean to me.

His thoughts turned into a repatiscle serous of 'woo is me'

as he lay, listineng to the dark breathing of the boys next to
him. He was depressed and lonely, but frought aganist this and
with some diffaclty, made the transformation to his enchanted
forest. He was to drained to go on a dragon hunt and just sat in
the comforable glow of his friends. He was happy at last.
Everybody was quite, inculding the chripy Easy, and the dark
mornfull Black Knight. Why even Vince who was always reading this
book or that, lay his books aside, his soft eyes staring at the
hurt that surrouinded Shaun.

In this way he fell asleep.

His last thoughts before falling asleep were that things had
to get better. This was just a dream. His mother, who surly loved
him, would take him away from all this. Wouldn't she?

He was wrong, and the next day began a wirlwind of horros

for him. And like everything at Maryville, he was not offerd a
reason, or an explantion for what was happing to him. He was
simply to learn while doing.

He was jared out of sleep at an ungodly houre (Five A. M.)

and still half asleep, he was hearded, along with the other
boys, into church about the size of the mess hall. All this was
done very quickly, as if God couldn't wait. As he knelt on the
pew, he turned bleay eyes on his surroundings. He had never been
inside a chruch and was awed by the majustic sweep of the
cathridell ceiling; the gold gilded curtins; how the stainglass
windows, specks of the new born sun sparkling though the red,
greens, blues and milky whites. If all this awed him, then it
could be said, he was mystryfied by the statues of the Virgin
Mary and Joasph. He saw Mary's face as benvolent and this he
liked, Joasph's face was indiffernet, thus so was he to Joasph.
But it wasn't unttl his eyes swept across the great expanss of
the chruch and rested on the giant cross hanging behind the
alter, that he was truly awstruck. Jeseus face was covered with a
shied of pain, and this preplexed him.. He wonderd why somebody
didn't take Jesus down from the cross he was nailed to. (He knew
Jesus was nailed because in the soft lighting of the chruch, the
nails looked like huge railroad spikes to him.)

As he knelt, the harsh oak pew biting into the soft skin of
his his knees, he listened to Father O'Mally speak about a preson
called God. The good father said: God was this, God was that,
God was ever mighty. God loved all. God was meercfull. God was...

Shuan assumed that God was the person on the bed of Nails
and thought: If this priest loved God, why was he letting him
rest on a bed of nails. He thought this naturely, much like he
did when he spared the little flutterin and scared dragon. As he
thougt this, everybody in the chruch muttered: A men. This was
sort of a revernd sound, hanging over him like the soft hushed
breath of a night willow. He twisted his neck to see where the
sound was commng from, then realized all at once that the sound
was comming from everbody in the church....everybody excpet him,
of course.

Sister Gretchen leaned across sevrel boys and slapped him

across the face. He had never been hit by anybody in his life,
and as he sat bewildered by this assualt she said."lower your
head and pray!"

He held back the sting of his tears and lowered his head.
When the boy next to him said: Amen. He said: Amen. When the boy
next to him said: Are father who...He said, trailing a few words
behind: Are father....When the boy next to him circled his hand
across his face, making the sign of the cross and saying: The
father, the son and the holy ghoast, he did like wise. Such is
how he learned about this great benavelt God.

As if he and all the boys were sheep, as soon as the servive

was over, he was herded to the dinning room for a breakfest of
cold and lumpy oatmeal. Then he was herded back to the dormatory
and told to stand at the foot of his bed; the other kids were
doing likewise. His mind was still reeling from the events of the
morinng as Sister Gretchen walked down the row of beds, occasnely
shoving a hand under the blanket. She did this when she came to
his bed. She immendly pulled her hand out, and screamd."Flith,
FIlth."

Shaun was stunned by this implacaton that he had wet his

bed. He had not. But the empty socket stares of the other kids
told him it didn't matter. All that matterd was that Sister
Gretchen was saying he had wet the bed. Befor he could consider
this further, she slapped him. He grabbed her hand in prostest
and she slapped him agian. He just stared at the floor, the other
childern laughing at him. He felt defeated and when she dragged
him by the hand to Father O'Mally's office he offered no further
restance. Father O'Mally sat behind the desk. He was drunk from
nipping at the servic wine and nodded somemly as Sister Gretchen
explained that Shaun had not only wet the bed but had grabbed her
hand.

"Horrors of Horrors,"Father O'Mally mumbled, but to low for

Sister Gretchen or Shaun to hear,"He grabbed your wetched old
liver spotted hand. Must of gave you a thrill."

Shuan gathered up his energy and started to protest that he

had not wet his bed."She's not telling the turth."
 Father O'Mally nodded at him as if to say he had head that
story before. He said." So sad, so sad, now bend over the desk.
Shaun didn't understand. When father O'Mally brought out a thick
leather strap that looked to Shaun like a tree trunk, and forced
him to bend over the desk, he suddenly understood. He didn't
utter a peep as the strap seared across his buttocks.

He was shunned by the other boys that day, and the next, and
the next and for many others. Those days dragged by as if
attatched to a ball and chain. At night he tried to escape into
his imginary world, but such was his frustation, he could only
conjor up a medrow. And at that the medow was painted all wrong.
THe birds in the trees had only one wing. The grasshoppers one
leg. The sun only bruned arond the edges. The finely indigenty
was his inabilty to summon up his knights, Vince, Easy, or
Sparrow. He could hear their voices, but couldn't create a mental
picture of them. He was devastated by this and sunk into a deep
depression. During this time he did what he was told, much like a
robert. He ate, went to school, kept to himself during play
periosd, did what-ever cleaning the dormatry caption asked of him
without protest. This lasted for many days, and it was only by
chance that he came out of it before sinking into insanty. After
the complation of Sunday mass, and breakesst, all the boys were
allowed two hours of free play time. Maryville was self-scusnet
insofar as it had a daiy farm on the premsseds. By accadint, and
more becasue the other boys still were shunning him, he wandered
into the cow pasture. He narlay missed falling into cow patties
as he mendered his way across the pasture. As he reached the end
of the pasture, he came across a small pound. Beside the pound
was the sketlion of a barn. He was tired and sat by the bank,
staring out at the water. The day was warm, hot realy, and dragon
flys hovored along the marshy waters edge. He sat like that for a
long time, his little mind locked in the thros of depresson.
Quite by accadent, he found himself in his medow. A feeling a
peace engulfed him and felt a oneness with the cockyed life
arond him. The one winged birds, the one legged grasshoppers, the
little sun that was trying to be more, so much more. He, like
them, was flawed. Once he realized this, his depression lifted.
As if by magic, his knights appeared. So did Vince, Easy, Dawg
and Wind. He now felt a oneness with them. They all started
talking at him at once. Sir Lanclett and the black Knight was all
for slaying sister Gretchen and the Prests. Dwag rather liked
this idea also, but then he was a cat and nobody paid any
attention to him. Sparrow was all for fleeing. Just fly away. Out
there was a big world. There had to be kindness and goodness out
there somewhere. This was rejected. Shaun was to little to scale
the fence that surrounded Maryville. Wind suggested going into a
prolouoged trance and stay in his forest permitnly. But that had
been tried at school and Mrs. philsbury had woken him from his
trance. So it was left to Travis and Vince to come up with an
idea that would save Shaun.

"Avoidance," said Vince.

"That about covers it," concerred Wind."That's how unacorns

have survived amongst mankind for eons."

Shaun was confused by the word Avoidance and said so.

Vince started to explaine. But the black Knight stilled him

by raisng a gloved hand. The black Knight had been stooped down
on his hunches. He sprang up, withdrewing his sword in the same
movment. He raised his sword to the sky thretenly."I say slay
them all."

"Your problem," Wind said matter of factly,"Black Knight is

that you don't realize you lack any basis in realty."

The black Knight was so incenssed by Winds comment, his

armor glowed a crimson yellow. He advanced on wind, puffs of
grosmor anger ringing his footsteps.

"Oh' sit down Black Knight,"Vincent said." As you full well

know, Wind is an immortel and even you can't kill an immortal.
Only Shaun can do that, or mankind. And besides, Wind is right.
You do lack any basis in realty, as do we all excpet for Shaun.

A preplexed frown shone thought his helmot, as if the

thought was too much for him to comperhand. He shook his head and
lowered himself onto his hunches, his mind still working over the
proplem. Once the Black knight was seated, Vince turned to Shaun.
He didn't speak for a long time, but when he did his voice came
in a whisper."Shaun my lad, it is time for you to learn the ways
of the big people. You must do as they say. You must listen to
what they preach. You must learn their letters, read their books,
swallow their God."

"Yes that is true,"Wind added"And as you learn these things

your magic forest will be lost to you.

Shaun was surprised as he asked in a calm voice."Forever?"

 "Maybe,"Vince said, his voice grave."But it is a risk you
must take."

"Is the risk worth it."Travis asked

"It is the only way."Wind said."He is young and his mind must
iether concintrate on us, or the lessons on the big peoples
world. He can not do both. Since he must live in the big peoples
world, then he must learn their ways. Or he will surly perish."

"And here-in lies the key for your survienl.

Avoidance."Vince said."To survive the big peoples teaching, you
must avoide there rath, there anger if you will. You must at the
same time be in their presence, yet remain invisible to them.
What the big people can not see, they can not hate, and what they
can not hate, they can not change or destory."

Sir Lancolet had been quite up unitl now, but now stood, the
brightness of his armoe almost blinding all."What if in their
teaching he becomes like them."

Vince answered. "That is...

Wind added."A danger...

Vince continued."That must be taken. He will ither maintain

his innacnets, or become a robort, a part of the mass, a non-
thinking cog of the wad at large."

"Scary thought,"Wind said.

Silence filled the modrow as they all contalapted what had

been said. It took Shaun a while, and the pain of delaying his
long sought planned great dragon hunt at first seared his heart,
then at long last he understood that Vince was saying he had to
give up his frieds to exsict in the real world. He cried out:
NOOOOOO. PLEASE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I am sorry,"Vince said,"That is what mest be."

Still Shaun cried out: NOOOOO. As Vince contined talking in

a soothing voice, Shaun, the dragon slayer, stilled his heart
wenchig cry. The faces of Vince, Easy, Dawg and the knights
faded. Not all at once becasue even to the bitter end, Shaun
refused to relignish his hold on them. At last they faded
altogheter.

He cried for a while, just a little sobbing voice under the

protative covering of his blanket. His cheeks puffy, he drifed
off to sleep, and awoke to the still like darkness of the
dormatory. The sound of husked breath was all around him. He
repeated the word avoidance over and over until his eyes were
heavy and he was once agian asleep.
 Chapter Five.
The years go by...

As it is with all groups, there is a price to become a

member. Such was the case at Maryville and the other boys in his
dormatry sought to indoncet him into the fold, as each of them
had been indocrated. The sword to be used was dipped in meaness
and curelty. At first they were subtle, gueisong their snike
remarks in playfull banter. Always prefrecing: Hey want to play,
with an ending taunt of: Shorty, or stuped, or When the other
kids saw that sister Gretchen had no intention of interfering,
and in fact was encorging them by turning a deaf ear, they became
more bold. In the morining, they stripped the sheets from his bed
and yelled: Flith, flith. At bed time they made fun of his Teddy
Bear, then progersseed to grabbing it off his pillow and tosssing
it back and forth between them, teasing him to try and catch it.

Shaun was so tramtized by losing his imgnay world and his

friends that he was a fist class zombie, a mechanely walking,
talking, eating, sleeping boy. At mass, he mimiked the boy next
to him, never gaining any real knodage from the service; At
meals, he forked food into his mouth, tastless food; at night he
cried himself into a fitfull sleep and woke up only to start a
repatation of the previous day. This Zombie state served to
protect him from abuisve indortation that insured. He was aslo
sheilded from their insults by the very things that prompeet the
othres kid to single him out. His encoumbed heart, the binds of
which were only now starting to tighten; and his unwavering fath
and innacents, of which only now was a coating of tarnish dulling
the shinning finish. The fact that Shaun didn't react to their
taunts, only made the other kids more frustated. They wanted, and
this inculded almost all of them, wanted to do more then just
shout insults and toss his teddy bear around...they wanted to
beat him up, make him bleed, make him cry out, make him
beg...drive him to his knees! Like they themselvs had been
driving to their knees by Maryvills combined forces of nuns and
priests. But the holy nails used to hold them to the cross, were
also the nails that bound them, and their condicnting stymied
further action.
 Shaun came out of this robtic state quite by accadnet, and
this coincided with the boys in his dormatory giving up on their
hassmet of him. The boys ceased theri hasment, not out of a sence
of guilt, or realzation that what they were doing was wrong, (As
one would hope, considering their cathloci teachings.) but more
of as sence that becase Shaun didn't understand, or care, then he
must be plain dumb. That was it. He was plain dumb. The dormatry
caption, and cheif arcateich of the harrsemed of Shaun summed in
up best. "O'h leve him alone. Besides, summer is in full bloom,
and who-the heck wants to spend time picking on a dumb kid who
dosn't unerstand he's being picked on. As for me, I'm going to
play basball and marbles."

He found himself at the pond on the same day that Steve

Sayer made his announmnt to the other kids in the dorm. He was
one of the few kids who went to the pond and had gone there
often. It was there he tired to conjor up his forest, always
giving up in frustation, his little fist clenched at his sides,
the sheen of tears in his eyes.

He sat there on this day and for the frist time he didn't
attepmt to summon his forest. The sun was bright on the water,
and dragon flys fluttered overhead, the sliver-blue of their
wings a blinding sparkle to his eyes. The longer he sat, the more
he became one with nature. The chriping of the crickets
conincided with the ticking of his heart. The vneree of his
frustated and sadden laden thoughts strpped away with the rolling
easy rippling of the water. With a start, that wasn't a start at
all, he found himself in the same state of mind he was in when in
his forest. So there he just sat, enjoying the serine peace of
all that was around him.

A thougt naturay came to him: Avoidance.

He suddnly knew, without knowing why, that he couldn't

exsisst in the state he was in. To do so would be akin to giving
up. That was what the big people wanted. He couldn't do that.
Dragon slayers never gave up.

After a long while, long after the sun had folded up it's
brilance and was tucked behind the earths crust, he rose. He
waved a tiny hand at the water and said a silent goodbye to
Vince, his Kinghts, Easy, Wind, Dawg.

As he mendered his way though the cow pastre, niftly

avoiding the knee high cow patties, he slipped on the damp earth
and fell knees frist into a soft mush of a cow pattie.

He was acceptted into the dormatoy group without queston,

his dumbness overshadow by the shared haterd, but silenty so, of
sister Gretchen and the rivery between their dormatoy, which was
called dorm b, and th boys in dorm A, C, and D. So he never knew
that the other kids had been hrsmiing him and just accepted the
fact that his was how life was. He did learn that comroie had
it's advnages. When a boy from one of the other dormatorys called
him a name, the boys from his dormatoy ralled to his defense. He
did likewse. When sister Gretchn or Father O'Mally disapoaned him
for what he felt, and was often true, an imaginery wrong, the
others boys comforted him.

The years passsed swifty, summres, fall, winters and springs

came and went. Shaun proved the old adage: You become what you
own. He didn't so much forget his imgianey forest and his friends
as put them on the back burner of his mind.

At last he took Vinces and Winds advice and quickly learned

the tricks in avoiding Sister Gretchen. He was smaller then the
other kids and did this by uterlizing his size. He took to
sitting at the farthest end of the dinner, hidden from Sister
Gretchens viewing range by the height and borader shoulders of
the other kids. He did like wise at church, scruching down in the
pew so when she looked at the row of kids, he apperaed invisable
to her. He applied this same prinable while in school and sat in
the middle row, drawfed by the kids in front and behind him. He
also avoided Father O'Mally, blending into the backround whenever
he was around.

As he accepted his fate, his destany so to speak, and change

came over him. He relaxed in every way and became more social. He
had a curious mind and lively mind, and as quickly as new things
were interduced to him, he sponged up the information, then moved
on, his apetite hungry for more. As the years passed, he grew in
mind and body. Like all childern he soaked up, as if his mind was
a sponge, everything that was around him. He made friends,
imatating there actions so he would fit in. He played baseball,
marbles, and other games. He was always carefull during these
games not to make anybody angry. He became an alter boy, ever
mindfull of what Father O'Mally expcected of him. He excelled at
school to such an extent that he made the honor roll his last
three years there. He in-effect became such a modle child, that
even Sisiter Gretchn begrdgneong had to admit that if there was
such a thing as a good child in this world, it was him. In time
his life became so full, that during his stay at Maryville, he
never did try to enter his forest again while there. THese things
did not so much replace his forest, as serve as as a cheap
subasutte. His forest was always in the back of his mind.
Maryville could not wipe that out. He simply put it on the back
burner, waiting for the day when he was released from Maryville.

Alough he received visits every two weeks from his mother,

none of his relitives came to see him. Donna always brought news
of home and always left feeling guilty. On Christmass, she
brought presents warpped in bright paper and fancy robbons. On
his birthday she brought presents wrapped in bright paper and
fancy ribbons. She always spent more on him then the girls, and
told herself this was because he was away from home. But she knew
she did it to assauge her guilt.

He never harbored any resentment toward her. He did feel

sadness if she was late for a visit or late to pick him up for
his trip home. He felt the same sadness when the visit was over.
But the feeling never stayed. For him, and this can certainly be
atribebed to his youth, the feeling of sadness was the same as
when eating a piece of candy. THere was excitement when
unwrapping it, joy while sucking on it. A sense of loss when it
was gone. Then something new would take it's place, and the candy
would be forgotten.

He did, much to the chargin of sister Gretchen. She felt that

when a boy was alone he was doing something wrong. During his
alone time, he sat at the pound, sometimes in his cocklyed
imginary medow, sometimes fishing, or just sitting and watching
the water ripple, or a dragon fly hover, or just about anything.
Once he caught a small catfish and nailed it's dead body to a
pole. The next day all that remained was a skeleton. This made
him feel sad so he never did it again. To get to the pond, he had
to go through the cow field. More often, then not, he would step
in a cow pattie. Also more often then not, the pattie would each
his knees and he would struggle out, his arms pinwheeling over
his head to keep from falling in the patter. Ever-aware of sister
Gretchen, he'd wash his pants in the pond. It was on one of these
excursions that he had his first sexual expierance. It happened
as such: One of the older boys came by as he was washing his
pants. He pulled Shauns jockey shorts around his knees and had
him lay over his knee. In this way he rubbed a palm over Shauns
buttocks. When the older boy was done, he made Shaun promise not
to say nothing. Shaun didn't understand, but nodded, more
concerned about washing his pants then anything else. On
interesting sidelight here is that the older boy was having a
sexual affair with sister Colbart, one of the younger nuns. The
older boy told the nun what he had done and that Shaun had
enjoyed it. (This was fantasy on his part) The nun conjured up an
idea that playing with a little boy would be fun and sent for
him the next day. Sister Gretchen, despite his protest that the
younger nun had sent for him, resticted him to the dorm for some
imaginary wrong.

Shaun explained this to Sister Colbart the next day. Her

face twisted into an angry smirk and she dismissed
him...regretfully so. She felt that Sister Gretchen was a nosey
bitch, and she couldn't take a chance on the old hag wondering
what she wanted Shaun for.

He was elven when two events occured that triggered the long
jourany back from blind obedeance to self-thought advacated by
his great grandfather, Thomas. The first event occurred his final
spring at Maryville. He was number two alter boy during sunday
mass. As was the custom, number two alter boy had the ungrateful
task of holding the gold tray under the chin of the people
receiving holy comuinion. This was done by walking backwards and
bowing slightly while the priest dipped the host in the chalice
and placed it on the tongue of each person. This done the priest
would mutter: DOmeisg, no bisco and move on to the next person.
This usually went quickly, as the priests were not given to
dallying. So Shaun backed-up, pausing only long enough for a host
to rest on a person tongue. As he came to the second to last
person, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the priest bring the
host down. So he pulled the tray back, and took a half step to
the next person. At the same time, the person receiving the host
bought his tongue into his mouth, the priest released the host,
mumbling: Doms no biso so. (The body of christ.) Thats when the
body of christ fell to the floor and a loud gasp echoed from the
church.

SHaun instinctively reached down and napped it between two

fingers. As his hand rose to hand the body of christ to the
priest, he noticed that Father O'Mallys face had gone pale white.
The father snatched the host from Shaun. QUickly finishing up the
mass, he dragged Shaun into the rectory and gave him the wipping
of his life, shouting as he did: "Only the blessed can touch the
body of Christ."

That night in bed, his young mind, now five years older then
when he had arrived at Maryville, excalmied the teaching of Jesus
CHrist according to the catholic church. He did not do this in
the way that an adult my look at therlgly. Which is to say there
was no intellectual baggage tied into his thoughts. He used pure
reason, unhampered by such garbage as learned intelligence. He
reasoned that the bible said all people were created equal. If
that was true then how come the priest could touch the body of
christ and he could't. He then questioned if it truly was the
body of christ. Or was it simply a piece of bread. It had to be
the later, otherwise christ was had to have been a zillion feet
tall and weighed a jillion pounds. He questioned other teachings
in the bible: That the meek shell inherit the earth. If that was
the case, then why was always being hit and told what to do by
stronger and more powerful people.

He fell asleep without finding an answer to his questions.

But he felt good. It was the first time in his young life that he
had actually questioned. Always before he had just reacted to
whatever was happening to him and around him.

The next event happened a few days later. He and a group of

other boys were playing softball. He was playing center field and
a white kid from his dorm was playing right field. A black kid,
the only black kid in the school, was playing left field. Things
were going badly and the score was eighteen to zip in the others
teams favor. The other team was up and had been at bat now for
forty minutes. He and the other out-fielders had missed the last
eight fly balls hit to them. All three outfielders agreed that
the next one of them to miss a ball would be hit by one the other
outfielders as punishment. The black kid missed the next ball.

Shaun, without any thought of racism, balled his hand into a

fist and punched the kid in the mouth. As fighting was strictly
forbided at the school, this was first kid Shaun had ever hit. He
didn't know what he expected to feel or see. But Surprise covered
his face as blood squirted from the boys lip, spraying Shauns
shirt. The boys face screwed up in pain, but he said nothing and
went back to his position on the field.

The next fly ball came Shauns way. He pumped his legs up to
his knees, then brought then down and back-peddled, his head
pushed back against his neck, his eyes following the arch of the
softball. The ball looked very large coming at him and he closed
his eyes. The ball skimmed the edge of his glove and cadanced to
the grass. He knew had missed the ball and his heart went thimp,
kinda like a sleg-hammer against a rock as the black kid ampled
toward him.

"Go ahead, hit me." He said weakly.

The black kid just shook his head and went back to his
position on the field. He senced something in the way the boy had
refused to hit him. He knew instantly it wasn't done out of fear.
But he couldn't put his finger on what it was he scensed. So he
replaced what he felt with shame. And that was the first time he
had felt shame in his young life. He would next remember that
shame the day Marten Luther King died. On that day he would knew
that the kid had acted with dignity.

As spring filled the air, Father O'Mally sent for him. When
he left the priest office, he went to the pond and stared out at
the water. He didn't attempt to enter is imginary medow, or
attemept to converse with Vince or the others. And it was just as
well. He was too distaught to acheive the serinty needed to enter
his medrow or converse with his freinds. He just sat there, a
saddness taking root in his heart. At last he waved a tiny hand at
the pond and went to his dormitory and packed his meager
possessions. He put his bag of marbles in the bag last.

He returned to the priest office and waited for his mother.

He was going home. For good. That's what the old priest had told
him. His mother had gotten fed up with the social workers and
hired a lawyer to get him back. She had recently gotten remarried
and felt it was time for him to come home. Shaun knew about the
man his mother had married. Several times when she had visited
him, the man had come with. His name was Fred Sagmo. He was a
tall man, six two, and weighed in at two-hundred and forty
pounds. He toiled as a carpender all day and was solid muscle.

Fred had taken to Shaun, telling him stories about hunting

and taking him fishing at the pond, showing little tricks like
how to put up and set the hook, or gently tug on the line to
entice the fish. Shaun didn't know they had gotten married. He
didn't know what marriage was. Or that a man and woman got
married and had sex. He saw Father O'Mally as a Priest. Fred as a
freid of his He had never considered his mother as a woman, much
as he had never considered Sister Gretchen a woman. He knew what
his mother was. She was his mother. Sister Grethen was a nun. Sex
was never discussed at Maryville, not even in a joking way.

As he stood back in the priest office, waiting, he didn't

consider the above at all. He hid away his fears and imagined he
a great knight. That's when he thought that he was a man. He had
arrived. That must be it otherwise they would not be letting him
go home.

He would think that same thought, that he was man now, or

that he had finely arived, or that he knew the answer to all his
question, many times in his life, mostly after an earth-
shattering movement had forced him to reconsider his life. But
this would be the first time he thought it and it was with the
wonderment of youth, not the cynasesen of age. All the demons,
all the bad things, all the scary things, all things he did not
like were soon to be gone: Sister Gretchen, Father O'Mally and
Father Fox. All these and more. God was truly smiling on him.

He guessed that was a reward for going to mass everyday for

the past six years. He held that thought, clutched his bag
tighter and puffed his chest out. He was a man.

He didn't know it and wouldn't for years, but the sum totle
of what he was going to be had been formed in the past thirteen
years. First was his strange, yet comical walk. He'd hate this,
then learn to fall in love with it. Next was his abilty to
withdrew into the explotes of his imginarr freinds. He'd redefine
them and add to their list, at one point dispoing of them, then
re-finding them keeping them througout his life; seeking their
asstance whenever he was in need. Next was his anger and
subswquent avoidence of authorty. In his early years, anger would
come first, then avoidance. In his later years, avoidence would
come first. Failing that he'd turn the full force of his anger on
the authorty figure bothring him. It would become a chilling
expearacne for many people. Next was his incessent curiousty and
his serch for the dignty he saw in the black boys face. This
would bring about resolve to live his life with that same quite
dignty. He'd look for it in everybody and finding them, or
himself lacking, withdrew further into his own little world. Last
was the his first sexual expearance. This would cause him many
sleepess night, sexual speaking.

He'd need them all to mantain his sanity and survive the
road that lay ahead

As he drove away, just a tiny figure in the rear window of

his step-fathers car, Father O'Mally felt a burst of pride at the
boy. He had set out to tame Shaun and he hath...failed. The only
time he had failed.
He thought: Maybe there was hope for the world yet.
 Prologe II
Chicago

The year that Shaun got relaesed from Maryville, was 1961.
Althrough I am lough to give a short history of the neighborhood
that he was throwen into, I feel I must. Chicago's Uptown
distract was, during the roaring twenties, the in place to life.
Stretching from the northern boundary of Bynmare to the southern
boundary of Montrose, the distrait was built off the shores of
Lake Michigan. Mansion's that riveled the grandeur of Beverly
Hills could be found on Castle Drive and Sheridan road. The
former ended at the park and the latter faced the lake itself.
Further inland, six flats, so called because the building held
six six room apartments, were a Uptown staple. The area boasted
of many fine hotels, but the edgewater Beach hotel, a garish pink
stucco building, was the crown jewel. Nightly, the wealthy dined
in the hotel. From there they went to the Aragon ballroom and
danced a few steps. Then they went down the street to the Uptown
Thearter and took in a movie, before retiring to home.

That was when the late night action took over, bringing out
the gangsters and the groupies that followed them, all
gravatating to any of a thousand cocktail lounges and gambling
halls of the area. The strong of heart and the real gangster went
to the Green Mill lounge, a garish place that was built by Al
Capone. Aside from the piano bar, a stand-up comic, a murder a
night was part of the entertainment at the Mill. The gropies,
most of whom were girls still wet behind the ears, would watch
these nighty murders with a detatched fastantion. That was until
it happened to them, then their fasanation would turn to wonder,
which in turn was what the conrner found on their face.

By World War Two the area had declined. The mansions on

sheridan road had been torn down or turned into centers for
service men on leave. Those with real money had moved to places
called Kennelworth and Wilmat, joined privet clubs and contined
they way of life. The petty gangster went to jail. The more
successful went to the graveyard. Those with fake money moved on,
settling here and there. The Edge hotel hung on, bravely offering
the same services that it offered in it's heyday. The once proud
lesser hotels and six flats were turned into rooming houses. The
Airagon was shuttered. The Uptown theater resorted to playing
second run movies. Families just down from Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mississippi and other southern states migrated to Chicago and
other northern cities looking for work in the war factories. They
moved into the rooming houses, sometimes five or six to a room.
The new-comers, most down from the hills, or poor ruael
flatlands, had never seen a flush tolite, or garbage cans. These
were clean enough people, but nobody bothered to show them how to
use these services, so they wrapped their human feces up with the
garbage and tossed it out the window. Their childern didn't go to
school because their parents couldn't read or write. Thus a
vicious circle came into being. To go to school a child had to be
regersterd by their parent. To regester a child, a parent had to
be able to read and write. The american Indians followed the
southern whites, carving out four block section that boardered
Wilson Av and Braodway. Next southern blacks came, staking out a
block of land on Leland and Broadway. With them all a new kind of
pray moved into Uptown. These people, men mostly, bought up
buildings, opened up cheap bar and liquor stories and reaped the
profits. By nineteen sixty- two, the year Shaun was released from
Maryville, an article in Life magazine declared Uptown the most
dangerous neighborhood in the country. On a good saterday night
the american indians and the southerns would declare war on each
other, filling the streets and gutters with blood. The blacks,
ironically, did not take part in this weekly richrrel. On
weekends they bolted their doors and prayed.

The blacks, tired of being prayed on, wouldn't stay that way
for long.
 Chapter Six.
Camlot...

Write at night. Then go for a walk. It is the only way your going
o finish this. Signed: GOD!

He made freinds with Paul. Paul taught him of the streets;

How the verus street gang members dressed. The black stone rangers
were the largest, and they raised their fists high and pounded
their chests.
He dreassed in his jeans, ranging all over te city, his hair
diryt, notunlike a street urchen. Shaun was restless his first
weeks in his new home. He often went out and stood on the
sidewalk, his hands stuffed in his pockets, a forloun shadow on
his face.

NOte: HE talks to Vince. Calls him grandfather. Says he sorry

for forgetting about him. Vince says thats okey. There are
toghetter now. Can not summion forest? Can?

Note: He had never had a gornep up play with him, not the
nuns or the prists. He sits at bar starry eyed.

Fright. Scary thoughts. His home was slipping away on the

road behind him. He suddenly didn't want to go. He didn't hate
O'Mally, or Sister Gretchen. He loved them. Or did he. He wasn't
sure.

Such were his thoughts as Maryvill loomed in the distance

behind him. Soon it was gone all toghetter. Except for the
furative glances that Donna and Fred passed between each other,
then at Shaun scruched up like a lost puppy in the rear seat, the
ride to the city was done in silence. Shaun looked at everything
thay passed with a gaslty, I'm a fixing to die, look on his face.
After what seemed like an insufalbe and frighting twenty years,
twenty minutes from the time Shaun and entered the car, the car
stopped.

Fred parked his powder blue sixty-one chevy, his pride and
joy, with a jerk and quick slaming of the shifter into park.
 Shaun looked nervously outside the window; his eyes resting
on the buldings; a neat row of yellow bricks that seemed to
stretch all the way down the block, and the lawns, all knited
into each other, forming a long stretch of qulited green,
occasonly brokened by a patch of burned out yellow grass. If this
expanse of bricks, pavement, and green was heaven, as Donna had
said in the prest office, then he longed for the hell.

It was here that his nervnouss took hold of his heart and
when Donna leaned a hand over the seat, brushing his legs, said
they were home, an aduble peep escaped from his closely pressed
lips. But from there on he silintly followed Fred and Donna into
a yellow brick building. As he entered the apartment, none of his
relatives were there to celabrate his arrive. (Unlike when he was
in the hospital, or had left for Maryville.) The family, as he
had expearened it before is departure for Maryville, had, those
who hadn't moved to greener pastures, split into waring
fractions. His anunt Tail was not talking to Donna becasue she
had moved away from little Itlay, his Aunt Eithel was qureling
with Tail over a hundred dollar loan, His uncle Tom had taken the
unborn fetus of his twin bother and moved to Pittsbrg. Bobby had
taken his gangster talk to San Quinten where he was doing five to
ten for armed robbery, and his Grandma Nanna wasn't tallking to
anybody but God...she had gone senile. And on it went.

So there was nobody to comment that he had pricing eyes, or

that he was a strange child, or that he had grown. And he had
grown, more then just in mind, but in body and the man that was
to be was straing and pushing at his skin, striving to break
free. He was now the not-so=forbading height of Five foot even.
His wieght was a even hundred pounds. His hair, once a sandy
bloud, was now dark brown, alomst black, and wavy almost to a
fault, even when cut short by the Sister Gretchen. His once baby
face was starting to drain of baby fat and the appearace of high
cheekbones, a frim, but not a jutting chin, and dark-all-seeing-
eyes, was becoming appearent. He still had the funny walk, a
strut realy, that he had manafactured while learning how to walk.
In short he was the spitting image of his great Grandfather,
Thomas Fragale. But even had he been accorded a heros welcome,
none of the family had known Thomas Fragale, excpet for Vince,
and he was alive only in Shauns mind. So even had the whole famly
welcomed him home, and had Nanna taken time out from talking to
God, this resmeblncd also would have gone unnoticed.

He had a few more things that wern't so readly apperaent and

these would also go unoticed by all. He was as pure as the driven
snow and was void of the every day hapits that normel people
accepted as routine. Things like listening to the radio, watching
T. V., going to a grocery store, taking a shower or bath, were as
forgine to him as living in a dormatory, or going to mass
everyday, or eating dinner at a table with two hundred other kids
in attendace was to the wad, the mass's at large. What was an as
normel as scratching an itch, or rubbing the sleep out of their
eyes, was a mystry to Shaun. But Shaun truly was a unnige child
insofar as he no prdjusres, or preconeived notions about life. He
had lived such a secluded livestyly his whole live that he truly
had no idea who the presadent was, who was on a dollar bill, what
sex was, who played what music, what blue collor was, or white
collor, or pink color, what black people were, what whiskly was;
what a naked women looked like, who his new sisters were, and who
Fred was, or who even after six years of forced religious
indocaation who God was. Were somebody to have asked him about
any of these things, he'd of shurrged his shoulders in ivousr
ignroacne.

The only people to greet this young dragon slayer, as he

still saw himself, (And this didn't bother him, as he had no real
bond with of any of his reltives.) were his new sisters. They were
all lined up, dressed to the nines in there best going to meet
the girls or boys dresses, in the living room. A seemingly mile
of pepsdenot white teeth shone as they all smiled at him all at
once. He offored them a polite perfunary smile, then followed his
mother as she showed him the bedroom he'd be sharing a bedroom
with his sister Joann.

As Donna showed him his dresser, she talked about how

wonderfull it was to have him home, a parentel look of love
pasted on her face. He listened, but said nothing as he half-
heartly and unpacked his meager belongings that he had carried
from Maryville: His battered and torn Teddy bear went under his
pillow, a baseball signed by all the kids in his drom ent atop
his dresser; a good luck card signed by Father O'Mally was placed
next to the baseball. And that, aside from a few clothes was the
sum totle of five years of Maryvill.

Donna had did two things before bringing him home. She had a
long talk with the girls, explaining that Shaun would be uncomale
at first and it was up to them to make him comforable...So no
mean brother names, or nasty tricks. She had also sat down with
Fred and discussed Shaun. The gist of this was that Fred would
give Shaun time to get used to him as a father. She was as
concered as Fred was that Shuan and Fred hit it off. Freds worry
was that he was a stepfather, not the boys father and that Shaun
would resent him. Donna didn't feel that was a problem. She had
also talked talked to Father O'Mally before taking Shaun. He had
advised that she give him a few days to adjust and to show him
around the house, explaining things like how to work aplances
such as the stove, shower, and T. V.

As soon as he finished unpacking, she took him around the

house; explaing how the gas stove worked, how the shower or
bathtub worked, how all the light switches worked.

She might as well have been explaining the chinnes alapet.

He followed her around silenty, most of her instructins going in
one ear and out the other. When this was done, he obently
followed her to the living room where along with his sisters he
was served milk and cookies. There was a bored milkyness in his
sisters eyes as they asked him silly, but obltory questons. Each
of his sisters wanted to get this over as quickly as possibe and
the first queston came from Marty. She was now seventeen and in
his abscense had grown into a striking black haired beauty. "Was
the prest nice to the kids."

Ruth didn't give him time to answer and immidelty followed

with a question of her own. She was now sixteen and was as pretty
as Marty, but had features more like a Barbee doll and thus was
cuter."How was the food."

Joann, feeling like she had to out do her sisters, or at the

very least keep pace, jumped in with a question of her own. At
fourteen, she still had pimples, and a touch of baby fat here and
there (Puffy face, hips, arms, legs,) and was considered by Donna
to be the ugly ducking amonst girls. (She never said this aloud,
just thougt it.) "Did you makes lots of Frends."

At one point, Marty asked him if there was any girls at

Maryville. She received a instint reproching stare from Donna.

As he sat on the sofa, almost swalloed up by the hugeness of

it, he answered their questined polity, as he had been taught,
never offering more then a perfuncary comment. Soon the queston
petered out. They each hung on the edge of their seats, expecting
him to ask silly queston in return. He asked none. His silence
was dunning and after a while, everyody grew uncomable. Donna
gave a barly perceptle nod of dissmisle and Ruth and Marty, with
relif evadnet in their hurryed departure, went to their room to
talk about that new boy who moved in down the block...Wasn't he
the coolist, I mean couldn't you just die when he looks at you,
and he has such a neat....

Joann still wasn't sure if boys were for talking to or

punching, and went outside to worry over this problem. Her
sisters could have helped her, but both figured they had figured
out the question themselves, and so should Joann. They both
reached their grand concluson on the taboo and forbidden
exploration of sex in the back of a fifty-seven Chevy. They had
let the Selleck brothers touch their breast. But only though
their blosues, and only a fleeting crass. But in fleeting moment,
O' how great it was. They were now women of the world. Not only
sisters, but now soul sisters. And wasn't that neat. Boy, they
new all about sex now. That was it. Boy they were the coolist and
most knoagble girls in school...

At last only Shaun, Donna and Fred filled the living room.
Shaun just sat there for a long while, quite unsure of what was
expected of him. He despartly wanted to go into his room and
excamed his feelings, of whitch were torn asunder, splaying every
which way. It took Donna few minutes before she realized he was
waiting to be dissmissed. With relief, she told him he could go
to his room...if he desired. She stressed the: If he desirred.

He went glady. As soon as he was gone, Fred, who had

listend to all this from the comforable silence of his favoert
easy chiar, the one that noboy, absolletly nobody, was allowed to
sit on but him, commented he was a very polite boy and all he
could ever ask for in a son.

Shaun sat in his room all day. He assured himself he'd be

okay in a day or two.

He slept fitfully his first night at home, his dreams awash

with frighting imigaes.

The next few days he made a sincere effort to adjust. As He

was freeed of household chores; the mudane tasks of taking out
the garbage and what not, (unlike his sisters who grumbled about
this injustace incessaty.) because Donna felt he needed time to
adjust to his new suroundings, and freed of the skull drudgery of
school, by viture of it being summer, he had plenty of free
time to explore and to adjust. Yet, his fear left him free to do
nothing. He quickly fell into a rotuine of wandering around the
house, distubing everybody with his sad moon like face. His
sisters stopped treating him as a curisty peice and started to
snicker behind his back. Fred, who had tried to spend as much
time with him as possable, was now working overtime and was busy
spending his nights at the corner bar, had little time for Shaun.
As for Shaun, he was shy around Fred, who to him looked as
forbading as any dragon he had ever imingend. He was plolite to
his mother, who found him underfoot...littelry. At meals he
waited for the others to start eating before doing so himself. He
started going to bed at ecalty eight o'clock, the same as in
Maryville. He never turned his lights off, he waited until his
mother did so. He let his mother pick his clothes out for him,
same as sister Gretchen did for all the boys. At night he
imagined Father O'Mally in his dreams. Sometimes Sister Gretchen.
He kept expecting Sister Gretchen to pop out of his closet in the
morning and check his sheet for pee stains. Or for Father O'Mally
to beat the heck out of him for an imginary or real wrong.

He knew he could go outside, but didn't and for the life of

him didn't understand why not.

He began to worry about everything. When he wasn't seeing

Sister Gretchen or Father O'Mally, he wished he was seeing them
and missed them. He began to miss his friensds at Maryville, the
comradie of haveing them there, somebody to talk to, somebody to
play ball with. He finly reached a point when he spent hours
lameting: If only they'd send him back to Maryville. Didn't they
know that he didn't belong here.

He didn't know it, but he had in effect, even with his free
flowing imginaton, become an instunized robot. Wind him up, he
moved, pulled the string that hung from his back and he talked;
giberish realy, lay out his clothes and he dressed, set food
before him and he ate, ask him to stand, and he stood, ask him to
sit and he sat.

He had been home for three weeks, moping like this when
Donna, dispite the constent chores of feeding a family of five,
washing clothes, and what not, found time to take him aside. The
girls were complineing about him, and soon she knew they'd be
snickering behind his back. She sat him at the kitchen table and
gave him a cookie from the cat shaped cookie jar. As he muched,
crumbs lining his lips, she knelt down." Whats wrong honey"

He shrugged his shoulders and said nothing and went to watch

some inane show like Jackie Gleason on T V, or Bandstand. He
alwyas watched these shows becasue this is what his sisters
watched and he was not allowed to change the channels. Stubid
shows, stubit sisters. Sutdet world.

He wished he was back in Maryville.

His resarection from this rogotic state came from Fred. Fred
made an innacnet obsevaton about Shaun behavels and it was a
telling one about Freds own persnaty as a paernt. This came one
night as Fred and Donna sat at the kitchen table, both nursing a
cup of coffee, the monthy bills piled up in front of Donna.
Theirs was a simple houshold, baised on the prinible that Fred
brought home his paycheck to Donna, who in turn doled out enough
for Fred to live on outside the house, keeping the remider to pay
the household bills with. Fred picked this night to mention
Shaun.

"Shauns a great kid," he said, paying no attention what-so-

ever to her as she wrote out checks."In fact he's the quitels
boy I ever met. And Polite too."

Donna looked up over the check
dealer for the Sixty-One-Chevy they
goten married. She brifey remebed
Maryville. He was so full of spunk,
her thoughts."Yes, but he seems a bit
she was sending to the CHevy
had brought after they had
the Shaun that was before
life. She replied deep from
out of sorts."

"I think he's great. I wish the girls..."Fred let the rest
of what he was going to say trail off. His lips returned to his
coffee cup.

Donna just said,"MMMMMM," and returned her attention to the

task at hand.

Fred peered at her over his coffee cup, a shy, nervious

peer. He had been honset abuot how much he liked Shaun, but realy
wanted o talk about the girls. He had seen them parade aronduh in
thier bra and pantiels on sevrela occasons, and althis he did
feel a string in his grons, he pushed it awya, embarsssed at
this. He now saught to defrse the sitereon, as the hought of
having sex with one his now daughers was as grotugw to him, as
having sex with say as billy goat, or a sheep.

He waited until after Donna had written out the last of the
checks, sealing them the apoate envolope. At last she looked up
at him. She was surprised he was still sitting there. Uselry
after dinner, he went to the corner bar to have a few beers and
talk to his friends. He appritched what was on his mind gigerly,
which is to say he used a slegehammer to open an egg, and blurted
out that there had to be rules governing how the girls dressed
around the house.

"This is not for me you understand."It's for Shaun. He's

almost at the age." Fred blushed, and stuttered. "Well you
know...don't you."

Donna knew excitly. She was a livey person and had had menay
lovers over the past six years. The pure fact of the matter was
she enoyed sex, enjyed having a man inside her, and had probley
used her knodale of sex to trap Fred, althoudh she wuold nver
admti it to anybody.

"Yes, and I'll inform the girls that out side there room
they have to wear a bathrobe. Also, I think Shaun should have his
own room, seeing as he's a boy."

Fred nodded readly at this idea. The six room apartment they
had rented contained three bedrooms and as it was now Joann was
sharing a bedroom with Shuan and Marty and Ruth another. He and
Donna had the master bedroom.

"I am glad that's settled,"he said and ment it.

Donna similed blissfuly at this, a smile that had been

engraved on her face ever since her and Fred had gotton married.
She was in bliss heaven. She had finely aschieved her dream.
All her childern in the same house; a husband who if she didn't
love, certainly liked. Love, in her mind, was unacheivable. She
had had many boy friends the past six years; even loving a few of
them. But none of them were willing to settle down to raising
four childern; especially another mans childern. She'd settle for
like. The word like had a mature ring to it. The word like was
easy to say. And like could grow into love. Not the kind she
expearanced with Shaun Sr. That was a young love, an inflauratein
born of lust. Like could become a deep satisfying love: The
warmth of another body at night. The security of a mate when the
going got tough. She'd make this like grow into love.

"There is one more thing, dear,"she said." Shaun has been

spending too much time at home. I think it's becasue he's afrreid
to go out on his own. Could you take him out, show him the
nerbohrood. Wet his feet, so to speak."
 Fred was so happy about the girls, that he agreed readly, not
that he would have anyway. He had always wanted a family,
escpeical a son.

Donne infromed the girls of this conversaton of the disison

to give Shaun his own room and move Joann into Marty and RUths
room. Marty and Ruth met announcment with goraning thearchs,
waving hands, shouts of immediate susacide, and finley, their
shouders slumped, their faces reasighend, gruding acceptance. The
next day she took Shaun out to the store. He was aperhensive at
first, the crowds of people, and the rows of merindise amazing to
him. But soon he was running around the store like a bull in a
china cabient, touchiing everyting. They came away with a Elvis
Presely poster for his room, a Davy Crockett Coonskin hat and a
radio. Shaun barly had time to survay his new room, when Fred
marched into the room, westled him down to the bed and declared
he was taking Shaun out with him to the corner bar he went to
every night after work.

He dusted himslef off and followed Fred out the door. The
humid heat hit them as soon as they exited the house and Fred
commented on this. Shaun nodded, even tho he had no idea what
Fred was talking asbout. As they walked up the sidewalk, Shaun
taking extra long steps to keep up with Fred, severl people
passed them and Fred said hello, then interduced Shaun as his
son. Each person patted his head and said what a fine looking boy
he was.

Shaun beamed at this. Except for when he had gone shopping

with his mother, he had not been out since comming home. And he
althougth he had looked out the window to the street and the
people there, he found being amongst them both exciting and
frighting.

They finely made it to Bill's Tap. Shaun stared at the

illimnated Hamm's that hung high up on the side of the buiding.
He found himslef fasanated by the bugs that buzzed against the
both the Hamm's sign and the neon Shultz on Tap in the window.
There seemed to be millions of them, all buzzing frantilvy, all
hugging the plastic sign or the window.

"Why do they do that," he asked Fred.

"The lights atracts them," Fred replied and pushed though

the door.
 Bill's tap was a family bar, and this was evandet the moment
a person entered the bar. The place had the comforable smell of
home cooking to it. This was because Bill's wife cooked the
little extras for the customers to munch on while drinking.
Boiled eggs could be brought for a nickle, pickled herring cost a
dime and a huge chunk of homemade bread polish bread went for a
dime. She made all this herself at home. She also made homemade
polise saguses, quite possible the best polish saguss in the
world, although this was said in every polish bar from Chicago to
Warsaw. The saudsfes were big plump things and it was they that
pugmented the air, filling it with their sweert aroma.

From the moment Shaun enterd, he was asulted by so many

smells and things he did't know what to key in on first. The bar
was dark and smokie and a contines hum of voces, not-unlike the
buzzing of the bugs, filled Shaun ear. As Fred lead him to the
bar, aknoging hellos and handshakes from freinds, it seemed to
Shaun that all the people in the world were in the bar, and every
one of them knew Fred.

Fred finely found an opening and in a single rapid fire

movement, lifted Shaun onto a stool."This here is my son,"he
announced proudly.

Shaun felt a burst of pride well up in him.

"Sure feel sorry for that kid," a rough, but gentle voice
yelled good naturlly.

Shaun didn't understand. When the bar erupted in laughter, he

understood and grinned. They were funning.

"Well a boy this big dererves a Coke."

Bill himself had spoken this and Shaun swevled on the stool
and stared up at him. Bill was a big man....all over. He was six-
four and depending on how many shots, beers and his wifes
homemade polish saguss, he consumed, his wieght fluctorated
between two sixty three hundred. At one time he had been a
Chicago fireman and the walls of the bar were littered with
firemans caps and stations house flags. Bill was as prowd as
punch by his memotnos of his firemen days, but his pride and joy
was the brass fire bell hanging at the end of the bar.

As if by magic Bill placed a firemans cap atop Shauns head,

(Shaun loved it and immedialty wondered if it was his to keep.)
Then placed a tall glass of coke on the bar, then produced a
bottle of shultz for Fred. Shaun nerviously sipped on the coke,
sill very unsure of all this. A loud cheer rang out. By consense,
it was decided Shaun was now an honery fireman. Shaun reveled in
the attention and was now won over, these men could do no wrong.

Soon the attention shifted to Fred. Shaun didn't mind, as he

now saw Fred as his hero. These were all hard living men and met
every night after work to let off steam. As soon as Shaun settled
in, still nervsily sipping on his coke, men, each smelling of
beer or whiskey, crowded around Fred. Every night they each came
into the bar to talk, and mindless of Shaun, talk they did. They
each took a turn, each bragging, or telling a story. Each story
centered around the one thing they knew best...their jobs. Their
stories often boardered on the sexual. They did this because it
turth, they were sexless creatrer, and like Fred, afreid of sex.
They had no idea of what sex was all about beyond that a dick
hung between their legs, and that they wanted to insert it every
now and then inside a woman, or get liad as they were wont to
say. Yet for all theri bravode, they were jitterish aruond women,
afred realy. Thay had none of the contrived gentlmass of the
upper middle class.

As they talked, the beer flowed freely.

Bill hadn't slept with anybody but his wife in forty years,
but this did not deter him from speaking first and the loudest.
Since the bar was his, the others defered to him. He never
missed a customer request as he talked, his arms swinging over
his head, highlighting his story. His voice a loud ciggrett
scarred stacio, he bragged about the people he saved, how he
climbed up ladders and pulled people from burning buildings.

He paused dramitly, two bottles of Hamms clutched in his

massave hands. His voice took on an irish broghe."I recall a time
when I saved this socity dames cat. She spoke in O's and Ah's, as
she thanked me. She was tall and statulgee. And my boys, she was
blound. As blound as the noon sun. Her skin was like hand churned
cream. Her eyes ocean blue.

(Hands covered bored yawns that indacated each hand had

herd this about the bloud before.)

He continued, unruffeld by the hands."She took my fire hose

and..." In deferance to Shaun, he delated the rest and let an
mistivious upturned eyebrow finish for him.
 Suskie's turn came next. He was a tall swede, hands like
hammers, eyes like marbles, and a face like a bull-dog. In his
youth, he had been a boxer. His handle at the time was: The
battling Swede. Unforginely, his his face showed map of scars,
indacating he not the other guy often bore the brunt of the
battle. He also had a crystel chin and after his legs turned to
rubber once to often, his manger took him aside and explained the
facts of life to him. All during his caarrier, he had been a good
boy, which is to say he never balked at laying down for a fight.
So the boys with the cigars rewared him with admitace into the
plumbers union. (The big boys always took care of their own.) So
he was now a plumber, and mindfull of the few women in the bar
and Shaun, bragged in code, saying things like: I screwed my pipe
into a warm socket. Meaning he had fucked a customer wife."That
makes number three hundred and fifty pipes I'v serwed."

"There arnt't that many pigmys in the world,"Bill Coberson

laughed in reverance to the size of Sookies dick. He was a mover
for Pickens-and Kanes and was so big that he could hoist two
refridgerts effortelsy on his shoulders. He never told stories,
he just listened. He had been with the allied solders when they
had liberatied Dacu. He saw the bodies piled up. Men, woman,
childern. His mind snapped. There was a town a few miles from the
camp and it was there he went. He wasn't looking to hurt anybody.
He wanted sombody, anybody to explain. He was sure there was an
explanain. The people in the town just gave him a bored sleepy
look that said what happened in the camp wans't their fault.
Didn't he see that. It was the goverments fault. Didn't he see
that. He did not. He lined up the town leaders in a row. There
was six in all. He then went from house to house and headed
everybody onto the street. He had the town leaders strip naked.
As the leaders stood shiveing in the cold winter air, he asked
the assembled town if wanted to say anything. Shamefully white
silent faces stared out, but nobody said a word. He made them
repaet after him: Doing nothing is the greatest sin of all. He
then shot the town leaders dead.

That was why he never told stories. After Dacu, he had lost
all intrest in tall tales. Afterall what could be a taller tale
then slathering six million people.

Steve talked next. He was little man, barly five-foot six. He

layed bricks for a living, and sang along to opras, vie the
record player at night. He sang in a high voice, in a low voice,
but always in a beatfull voice and it was often siad in the bar
that he should've been a tenor insead of a brinklayer. But he had
five childern, an aged mother, and an decrept grandmother to
support. So his dream would remain a dream that was only played
out late at night. He offten wondere had he been born in
diffenrnt place and time...

Such was his nature, he talked about laying bricks. How

intrict it was. How a brick had to line up excitly. How an expert
brick layer could create a colage out of bricks. How brack laying
was fast becomming a lost art. Bored hands covered yawns.

Freds turn came next and he talked about hunting."Gonna get

me a queer next time out."

The boys often went queer hunting and last time out the pray
had taken one look at Fred and high-tialed it, his legs carrying
him swiftly down the street. The boys had been riden Fred ever
since and tonight was no exceptiong. As he talked his
conversation was peppered with good-narued ripping.

From Sookie. "Can't out run a Fag, Hu,"Fred.

From Bill."Hey leave him be, that queer was flying. I mean
poor old and feeble Fred didn't have a chance."

From Steve."Maybe Fred was afred to catch him. I hear being

close to a queer is contaginsu."

From Bill Coberson."I have noticed Fred has been walking with
a swish lately."

A good laugh was shared by all and the conversation moved on

echnic jokes. As each man was from a different ethch backround,
each took a beating. Slurs like, Dumb policks, Shanty Irish.
Stuped Dagos and Slow-witted Swedes, were bantered freely back
and forth. Fred was of Finnish desent. As useal, nobody could
think of anything dergltory to say about the Finns. And that in-
itself was dergoatoy. When the conversaton moved on to Blacks,
the mood became serious. Fred said," Niggers were okay to work
with, but that was as far as it went."

"Ay, ay,"Steve said.

Shaun didn't know what a niger was, nor a queer. He never

considered asking. He had learned at Maryville that asking big
people too many questions made them angry. So he listened in
silence, amazed by the men his step-dad knew, and listened with
peaked interest as they talked amongst them self's. The newness
of it all fasanated him and for the first time since leaving
Maryville, nay since arriving at Maryville, his imagnating took
hold of his heart and he saw himself as one of these big men,
broad shoulders, and loud bloustiius voices. He imgined himself
screwing a pipe into a warm sockett,(A big metel pipe, all shiny
and new.) or giving a tall blound his fire hose, (He would evne
atupgrahi it for her. She could then keep it on her mantle.) or
laying bricks, (This was the most exciting of all to him.) or
going queer hunting (He assumed queers were some kind of bird.),
or working with niggers (They were after all good to work with,
didn't Fred say so.)

He was still day dreaming when Fred lifted him off the
stool. He was sleepy, and did't notice that Bill had lifed the
fire hat off his head. He lay his head on Freds shoulder, and
waved at all in the bar. The next thing he knew, he was home, in
his bed. The house was silent and he guessed, correctly so, that
he had fallen asleep and Fred must have carried him home and his
mother had put him in bed. As lay in the dark room, his mind
caught between a sleep state and a dream state, he replayed the
evening. He felt an excitment ribble though his body. Slowely
the years of living in Maryvills shadow lifeted. When the house
was silent, even the floor boards quite, he enterd his imginary
world. He did this efforteys. Jason
Beautfull. Vince had made changes. Tells him to be carefull, they
be Dragons out there, then goes away.

NOte: TIghten up meeting Gary Lehto and playing cards.

A few days later at the bar, he met Gary Lehto, a pudgy kid
of twelve. He was there with his Eleen, his mother, a stringy
frightened women of thirty-seven, and Paul, his father, a hulking
man who spent his days working at the foundry as a blast-furnace
operator, and his nights beating on his wife and son.

As the men drank, talking about this and that, Shaun and
Gary fed dimes caged from the men at the bar into the bowling
michigan, zinging the metal puck at the plastic pins. That soon
got boring. They went outside, sitting on the stoop that lead
into the bar. They found a common interest in baseball.

"I carry my cards with me,"Gary said, stretching his legs

out so he could reach a hand into his trouser pocket. He quickly
pulled out a fist full of Baseball cards, the corners dusted with
lint, the edges crinkled and broken.

"Yeah, me too,"Shaun answered and repeated the moves Gary

had made, pulling out a much bigger fist full of cards then
Gary's

Gary's eyes got circle wide at the cards in Shaun's

hand."Wow, you got Mickey Mantle."

"Sure do,"Shaun answered proudly.

Gary trapped his tongue between his lips, and asked

shyly."Want to trade for...

"I have two you can have one."Shaun said.

So it came to pass that Shaun had made his first friend in

this strange place outside Maryville. They became buddies and
Gary. Gary

Note: He made freinds with Paul. Paul taught him of the streets;
How the verus street gang members dressed. The black stone rangers
were the largest, and they raised their fists high and pounded
their chests. taught Shaun how to play pinner, a form of two man
baseball that was played without a bat, or a stick even, as in
stickball. The game involved hitting a rubber ball on the ledge
of a building or the edge of a curb and arching it high over the
heads of the other player as he stood in the street. imaginary
men were used for running the bases and the rules for this was:
If the ball arched over the car parked on the other side of the
street, it was a home run. If the ball fell in the middle of the
street, it was a double. If the ball was a grounder, and the
other player fumbled it, it was a single. Such is how imaginary
men moved around imaginary bases.

Shaun had a keen eye for hitting the ball at the right place
on the ledge and soon became very good at pinner. His keen eye
could be accounted for a game that was played at Maryville that
involved cutting a hole in the lid of a shoe box just big enough
for a marble to fit through. The principal here was for a boy to
stand up-right and try to drop a marble through the hole of an
opposing boys shoe-box. For every marble that fell into the box,
the boy got an marble from his opeant. If the Marble didn't go
in, then his opeint got the marble. While at Maryville Shaun had
won a great deal of marbles.

Shaun showed Gary the marble game.

Gary showed Shaun his secret route for getting to the

Northwestern Railroad tracks. Once there he fished out a penny
and placed it on the tracks.

Shaun looked at him, preplexed.

"This is how I make money grow."

Soon a train came, rolling over the penny, the engineer

waving at Shaun and Gary as they stood off to one side on a rocky
incline, their shoes dug into the dirt.

No sooner was the train past them, Gary retrieved the penny.
It was now flattened to three times it's normal size, poor Abe's
face streathed tight, as if he had just set on a hot poker.

"See, money growth.

Gary showed Shaun how to sneak into the Wanzer dairy truck
and liberate a quert of chocolate milk. At first Shaun was
retacent, the thought of stealing troubling him. Gary explained
it wasn't stealing, it was liberating. The slogan on the milk
cartoon read: Wanzer on Milk is sterling on Silver. They didn't
understand what this meant, but laughed at this, as they passed
the carteen between them.

"What is liberating,"shaun asked.

"I don't know, but it's what my father dose when he beats
me. He says he's liberating me."

Shauns eyes brightened."I know what that kind of liberating

means."

He explained how the priests and nuns liberated him in

Maryville.

Shaun interduced Gary to all his imaginary friends. At first

Gary was surprised by this. He had given up his imaginary friends
years ago.

"Aent't we to old for make-believe friends."

 Shaun had never considered this, much in the same way he had
never considered there was no Santa Clause. He did so now, but
only for a second."No."

Gary excepted this with resorvaton."Okay."

Note; Gary not very good at this. His imginaain. Dose not see
the forset, or expearance the fight as Shaun dose. But he depends
on SHuan and SHaun, a born storyteller....

The railroad tracks was the most secluded place to be, so

each day they went there, always taking Gary's secret route.
There, they conjered up scary dark forest, the trees and the
branches dark and forbading. They hunted Dragons, big fire
breathing beast that swooped throughout the sky, their red eyes
aglow as they hunted little boys and little girls. Shaun and Gray
rode white steeds, carried long black lanecs. Always a freice
fight ensured, always the dragons head reasted on either Garys
lance or Shauns.

As the weeks passed, he adjusted to his new found freedom

and spent less and less time at home. When he wasn't with Paul,
he would listen to a song on the radio and try to figure out how
a group singing a song on the radio could manage to be at another
radio station minutes later and play the same song.

Or He'd walk on the railroad tracks, awed by the mysterious

of the track vibrating, or why when a penny was put on the rail,
it would flattened out to the size of a quarter after the train
run over it.

Or He'd walk aimlessly for hours, entranced by the endless

specter of the buildings, and truly awed by the ones in the
distance that were tall enough to touch the very sky. Altho the
skyscrapers were in the Chicago's Loop, their majestic peaks
seemed a far journey away to him. For that reason he imagined
himself a bird. Along with Dawg and his other friends, he'd soar
high and far, he investigated the skyscrapers. He did this while
walking, or sitting on a stoop. But the city was full of people
and always people would interrupt him, breaking into his
daydream. So he would walk on, nodding at the sky and the
skyscrapers, as if to say: "Someday I will touch higher than the
very sky that you touch."

Altho he was warned by Donna and Fred to stay away from

Uptown and the people there, he soon got bored within the
confines of his alouted area. It was on one of these trips, he
descovered the Upown Theater, a garish movie palace built in
Uptowns hayday; three stories high; terr cotta pillers; and a
giant stainglass window on the upper facade that mesured four
feet round; the scene in the window was pastorel. Like the rest
of Uptown, the theater had fallen on hard times: Pidgons now
roosted withen the terr-cotta of the pillers; On sunny days,
light snaked through the hols in the stainglass and the marquee;
once ringed with nine inch light bulbs, now had but a few, their
lonly light a dim memory of what once was.

Upon descovery, his eyes got wide and he stared at the movie
poster of John Wayne holding a carbine. John stood staring out at
him, his stance brave and tall, his eyes ready to take on the
world. The movie was the Alamo. He ran home and got a quarter and
went back and watched, his seet, glued to the seat, his face
mesmorzed, John Wayne bravely stand up to the bad guys at the
ALamo. Long after the movie had ended, he sat in the darkened
movie palace. He decided that after he touched the very sky, he'd
go to Texas, become a cowboy and live next to the Alamo.

For the rest of the summer he built a neat little world,

alternating between going to the movies, playing pinner and
exploring Uptown. He enjoyed the way the southerns talked: Y'all,
or missy, or Billy Bob, come on home. The black dialect seemed
the same to him, but toward the end of the summer he noticed
sudital difference's: Instead of Y'all, they'd say Ya,al. He
started to compare the way they talked to the Scandinavian lisp.
How they said yaaa, stretching the a out endlessly, for yeah. Or
the German man who ran the butcher shop. His Ja, short harsh
sound that fell hard on the ears: Ja, yos mother want some
winershinzerl. Before to long he had incorporated the several
dailects into the catholic dilic he had learned at Maryville.
Thus his imaginary heroes took on german, southern, scandinavian
and black identities. Together they went off on quests, one day
fighting at the ALamo, the next King arthars knights riding off
the save a fair maiden. The one thing that disturbed him were the
american indians he saw walking around Uptown. They were mostly
fat, their faces red and blouted from acoulael. Not at all like
the indians in the movies, tall lean men who braved danger at
every step. Thus he had no heroes who were Indians.

Thus one day he considered this. It didn't seem quite fair.

The Lone Ranger had Tonto. So he took stock of his imingary
frineds. He now had elven. That seemed like quite a few to him.
Adding another would make it more diffacult for him to remember
all there names. He pondered this delima and in the end zapped
Sir Lancolat and added Brave Eagel.

That night, alone in his room, he held a funnrerl for the

Lancolet. He was saddend by this so he resurected him. Then he
summoned all his frineds and went in serch of a dragon. The
dragon got poor Lancolet. He hald another funerel, this time
befitting a hero. Then he slept, pleased with the way he had
worked that out.
NOte: Anythng under this is extra text. Do not use, or earse.

NOte: The years had also wrought many changes for Donna. The
dreaded black poplation had long since broken thought the
invisible barrier seporating them from the Itilain enclave in
little Italy, scaring the be-jeasued out of the itiainans there.
The ones who could afford to move did so, fleeing to surburbs
named: Cicero, Beryenn, Highwood and others. The Itialnians who
could not afford to move, or were simply too stubborn, stayed,
watching with increasing horror as they propety vulses declined.
Becasue of this Donna had made the decision before she had met
Fred to move out of Little Italy. She based this decision on the
fact that most of her family had scattered to americas far
corners. Her brother Bobby had moved to New Orliens, her Sister
Tale, had moved to Tuscon and a few othres had moved back to
Pitsburg. So when she married Fred she had let him chose what part
of Chicago to live in, tursting his judgement in this matter, and
most others, as that was her way. Fred was relieved by this, as he
didn't hold Itilanas in high esteem, a fact he never told Donna.
So he chose an area germetlye opasite the south side area little
italy was nestled in...opsiste by twenty miles. The area was on
the far north side of Chicage and was known as: Swedeish-Ville.
Fred had chose the area because it was decindly blue color and
filled with people of scandinavian decent: swedes, norwegian, Fins
and Danes. A few Germans and Irish also lived in the area and were
tolorated. Most if not all were: Plumbers, brick-layers, movers,
elictrictens, and the like. Fred was both; finnish by decent and
carpenter by trade. THese were hard working, no nonsence people
who worked with their hands, never afred to get their pants dirty
or burse a knuckle, or crack a rib. They played as heard as they
worked, smoking the harshist of ciggertt, and drinking beer and a
shot, beer and a shot. They also loved hard, taking their woman
like a woman was ment to be taken--no mollycolling; quite unlike,
as they imginaed it, the ritzy set were lived in sky high
buildings dotting the lake front.

NOte: Before you copy disk, get the rest of this about Louie's
mother. snoring husband. Years of abuse and humiliation clouded
her brain. With one thought on her mind, she got a butcher knife
from the kitchen and stabbed him seventy-two times. She collapesed
upon the blood soaked sheet, her marrow seeping fury, and reched
for the phone. The police officer had a hard time making out her
whispear. She repeated, her voice heavy with a greek accent: I a
stapped my husbun.
 Chapter seven

Fall came, the leaves turning brown. On a warm day in

September, he was enrolled in St. Itas, a catholic school. The
school had a dress code: White shirt. Navy blue trousers and tie,
and black shoes, polished to a gleam. Donna took him shopping,
buying all the nessary items. Fred took him to the barber shop,
where Ollie, a hulking swede, sat him in the proclind barber
chair, pumped it up so Shaun sat high in it, and cut his hair.

"An inch around, no longer, no shorter." he repeated as he

worked," Jut like your pappa hair,"

It made no difference weather he was cutting an adutls hair

or a childs. he always sang this, snipping the hiar within an
inch of the scalp. This was the only way he knew how to give a
haircut.

The morining of this great event in his life, his first day
in an outside school. He was thrilled. There would be no nuns
herding him across the expase of Maryville and into class. He was
on his own. As he stood before Donna, dressed in his is new
clothes, she stepped back, appreasing him. He stood ram-rod
streight, his chest puffed out, a phote like smile on his face.
He filled the suit out nicely. She thought the suit made him look
like a young man. He had grown two inches since leaving
Maryville and was now almost five-foor-two and weighed nintey-
nine pounds. She thougt he was growing into a fine figure of a
man.

"Okay, young man, off you go."

He smiled bravely, much as John Wayne had done in the

Alamo, kissed her on the cheek and left, closing the door gently
behind him.

She watched him from the window as he went up the street,

his book bag in his hand. She felt a twinge if sadness. She had
the family she wanted, but soon they'd be all grown up. All too
soon she added out loud, then sighed, and went to get the girls
ready.
 The school was eight blocks away, and he hummed all the way
there, even saying hello to the people he passed. Such was his
cheer, that the contagiousness of it affected all he passed. Once
at the school, he hung around the primter of the playyard,
watching kids play. He wanted to join in, but was to shy to
approtch them. When the bell rang, singelning the start of
school, he followed behind the other kids. As insturcted by
Donna, he stopped at the office and found out what room he was
in. With tipness, he enterd the room. The other kids gave him a
quick appresel as he took a seat in the middle of the room. Next
to the blackboard, a statue of the Madonan smiled out at the
students.

He was nervious and shy as he sat in class. The room was full
of kids, each sitting upright in a wooden desk, their book bags
stufed under the desk. There was a mixture of girls and boys and
all it seemed to him looking at him out of the corner of their
eyes. He knew this because he was looking at them out of the
corner of his eyes. He wished Gary was here. A friend would make
this frightening expearance less so.

He sighed, his hands folded on the desk. Gary was enrolled

in the public school, called Trumbell. Gary had showed him the
school a few days earler, and the building, a yellow four story
structure, had looked forbding, much like the forest in his day
dreams. Gary had told him that Trumbell had served as a prisneor
of war camp during the civel war, and Shaun well beleived it.

As a nun and a prest entered the classroom, a stern look on

their face's, he sat up, his attenton rivieted on her. His name
was Monseiger Mitchell an he told the class much, intercing the
sister as Sister Formosa. Her name was Sister Formosa, and she
indacated such by writing it on the blackboard. She was sixty-two
years of age, and had joined the sister-hood (Such as it was
called) drectory out of high school. She had one rule of thumb in
teaching: Spare the rod, spoil the child. In twenty years of
teaching, she had never been acussed of spoiling a child.

Tourtureing, maybe.

But that had been dismissed as pure poppycock by the

monsinger, father Mitchell, His motto: Spare the rod, spoil the
child. He believed in this so much that he took delight in
putting an offending child over his knee, pulling down the little
girls panties and spanking those young, frim, delouices, inviting
buttocks. That he saw the bittocks as being young, firm, delouise
and inviting, never bothered him. That he got an erriction during
these times never bothered him. That he relived himself vie late
night encounters with Sister Formosa never bothered him.

He was, as he often thought, a priest afterall, and a prest

had needs, just like other men. It was best to releive thsee
needs, lest they get out of hand.

Out of hand.

Frimm buttocks.

Out of hand.

Delouce buttocks.

Hand.

His plams were sweaty as he left the classroom, his gaze on

a little girl in the forth roll. Her name was Connie Mascone. She
had round eyes, a upturned lip, and dimples in her cheeks. She
saw him boring into her, and lowered her head.

Sister Formosa waited until the door was closed behind him,
then turned the full force of her attenton on the class. She
hoped to catch one of the students smiling, but only grim faces,
most as white as their shirt or ruffled bouse wrorn, stared out
at her.

"I want you all to write my name down."

Hands moved, fingers picked up pencels that rested in the

pencels and pen tunnels atop the desks. In unsion pages turned,
and the sound of squiubbling filled the room. Sister Formosa, her
black laced shoes tapping, watched over this for severl minutes,
then coughed. All, excpet for one lone boy in row five, last
desk, lifted their pencels.

"Young man," she said, addressing him."Put the pencel down."

The boy she was addressing continued writing, his pencel

moving very slow across the paper, as if each letter was a
struggle. It wasn't until he felt the other students eyes on him,
that he paused and looked up.
 "Put the pencel down,"Sister Formosa said.

"But..."

"But nothing, put the pencel down."

"But."

She scooped up the ruler resting on her desk and marched,

as if she was in formation, to his desk."Stick out your hand."

"But."

Wack, the ruler slapped across his head.

"But."

Wack, again the ruler slapped across his head.

"But."

Once again, wack.

The boy, his hand frantlsy rubbing his head, finely managed
to gush out more then but."No companda."

The boy had spoken the two words of spanish the other
students knew, mainly from hearing them spoken on the Cisco Kid.
They tried to hold in sinckers, includiing Shaun, but a steady
SSSsssss, filled the air, as the force of air escaped all mouths.

Formosa spun on her heels, glaring at the students. She was

greeted by silance; each student's hands foled prayer fashion on
their desk.

Except for Shaun. He had one hand covering his mouth.

"So young man you think this is funny, do you?"

Shaun knew instintly she was talking to him and he lowered

his hand, clasping it withen his other."No ma'm."

She rested her hands on her hips, her foot tapping, her
black nuns gowen quvering. At last she turned back to the boy,
whose name was Gomaz, so quickly, her black habit sweriled around
her, sweeping the floor. She spoke to him in spanish, then
ushered fowrad, her black nuns gowen once again riding the floor
as she made her way to her desk and sat behind it. She stared at
Shaun for a moment, pegging him in her mind as a trouber maker.
At last she rotated her gaze, holding it for a half second on
each student. When she had finished, she instructed them to open
english books.

Shaun did so, his face burning with embarsment. He thought:

Good going, idiot.

He made it through the day without further incident. That

night he told Gary about it, and they both had a good laugh. Then
he went home and started on his homework, hoping to get a jump on
it before supper, so he could watch Maverk on T. V. SHe had given
the class a paper to do on english, and he struggled, trying to
understand the relation bewteen verbs, vowells, and conjuction.
Frustated, he rose, and went to the kitchen and told his mother
he was conufssed. Donna put aside her cooking and patietney
explained what he was doing wrong. By the time she left the room,
going to answer a knock at the door, he was once again confussed.
He heard Sookis voice in the front room. He was talking to his
mother.

"Mom," he yelled.

"Just a second Shaun," she answererd.

He waited, his foot nervsoly tapping. Still she talked on

with Sookie. Than Fred came home, and he heard laughing in the
front room. A few minutes ecsarting minutes later, Donna, Fred
and Sookies came though the dinning room and into the kitchen. He
looked up at them hopefull, but they just smiled at him, Sookies
pausing long enough to ruffle Shauns hair.

Shauns lip turned up in resanation. Adults were like that,

he thought. He quickly went over the paper, repeating the meaning
of the words to himself. Still nothing, it was as if his mind
had shut down. The harder he tried, the more frustated he got.
His anger boiled over and he flung the pencel against the wall.

He sat and glared at the english book, his breath raspy

though his nose. Donna called him for dinner, and he closed the
book.

He worried over his homework all night, tossing and turning

in his bed until the covers were a tangled up mess. He didn't
understand what he was doing wrong. He never had this problem in
Maryville. It was as if he was suddenly stuped. In the morining,
he went to school and turned in his paper, putting it at the
bottom of the phile that was on her desk. He sat very tense, as
Sister Formosa, her face explesonless, read though the papers one
by one. He averted her eyes when she came to the last paper, his.

"Well, Mr. Shaun Kinny,"she said without looking up."What do

we have here."

"I didn't understand, mamm," he said, more out of something

to say, than a defense.

She rose, scooped up her ruler, resting it in the plam of

her hand, one end prouding out and marched to his desk. Wack,
wack, wack, across his knucklers with the ruler, then a march
back to her desk and pondness of her huge ass setting down in the
wooden chiar, a finel creaking of the chair's springs.

"Because of Shaun's lazeness class," she said, her head

bowed as she streightened the papers on her desk, her hands
worrying the papers, as if the act alone would dispell her
seething anger." I will be asigning extra homework tonight."

His face burned, not from pain, but from the scornfull
stares of the other students. He felt humlated and endured their
scorn for an hour, his body deflating in relief as the bell
singeling recess rang. He moped around the far side of the school
yard, well away from the other students. His heart tore apart in
his chest as he watched the kids play. Recess was only ten
minutes long, but the wait for the bell to ring singleing the
return to class, seemed like eternty. When it finely did ring, he
sat at his desk waiting for the bell to ring singleing the end of
the school day. When that bell rang, he shuffled out, his head
held low. Once outside, John O'Brion, who sat in the seat behind
him, yelled out."Hey Shaun, you piss head."

John stropped off his tie and shirt tossed them in a pile on
the ground and advanced on Shaun. Unknown to Shaun, John, a head
taller then Shaun, and ten pounds hevery, was a bully. He took
joy in pummeling other kids until they cried uncle and was feared
amongst his classmates. He craved this adoraltion from the other
kids, not because he was a dumb kid, as bully's are often
portrayed, or because his parents were mean to him. His father
was an accontein and his mother a gentle women, who never had a
bad word to say about anybody. In his mind, therein lied the
problem. He felt his parrents were wimps. Most of his freinds
dad's were constrution workers and he wanted to be just like
them: Hard drinking men who took gruff from nobody.

As he advanced on Shaun, he rolled his tee-shirt up to his

fourarm. His young muscles bulging, he taunted him."Piss head,
piss head."

The other kids in the school yard smelled blood, and foramed
a circle around Shaun and John.

"I just want to go home," he said, worrried about getting

his school clothes dirty.

John laid his hand on Shauns chest and pushed him backwards.
He stumbled into a kid. The pushed forward, almost knocking him
into John.

"Just want to go home."Shaun repeated.

John again taunted." This boy is yellow."

The faces of the kids forming the circle grew very tense as
lips stretched across teeth. They wanted a fight, wanted to see
this new kid get the tar beat out of him. They wanted blood, just
as they had bled at the hands of John.

"Yellow,"they chanted.

Connie Mascone was the lone exception. She had been in the
same class as John for four years. She had never hated anybody in
her life, but thought that John came close. She was a timed girl,
and her hair was cut so it almost obscured her eyes. She stepped
forward, her hair flaying back, her eyes blazing."John, your a
bully. Just a rotton old bully."

Johns sneakers squeaked on the pavment as he turned to face

her. He wanted to lash out at her, but the defirence in her face
arrested his anger. She was girl, and there was nothing he could
do.

"See, this piss head needs a girl to stand up for him." he

yelled, more out of a need to asert his authory, then bravodo.

Shaun wasn't so much scared as he was preplexed by this.

That he was expected to fight, was evadent. Why, was not. Except
for the time he had hit the black kid in Maryville, he had never
hit anybody. If Shaun did not know why, then John did not know
this was his lucky day. The God's that be were smiling on him.
Had the girl not interfered, had he fought Shaun, he would have
got the, in the minds of the other kids, tar beat out of him.

But that would have to wait, for another day, and another
kid. On that day, John would suffer three broken ribs, lose two
teeth, and expeacne, for the first and last time in his life,
such a crushing defeat, that the memory would hound him for
years, affecting his entire life, and those around him. Twenty
years later, after his wife had seen the movie the burning bed,
he'd wake up, his bed burning around him. He survied this and
spent the rest of his life in a convelasset home, his face a
charred wreck, his mind screaming for death.

But for now, Shaun just said, his head low,"I just want to
go home."

The other kids, their voices pitched to a high C-note,

chanted: He just wants to go home. He just wants to go home.

Connie grabbed hold of Shauns elbow and steered him though

the circle, her eyes burning at the chant. Shaun just followed
along, the pain of their chants burning deep into his heart. Once
they were well clear of the school yard, he disenged his elbow
from her grasp.

They walked, each silent, for many blocks. Other then his
mother and sister's, Shaun had never been this close to a girl.
He liked it.

Connie broke the ensring silance." What school did you go to

before St. Itas."

"Maryville,"he said, not offering further elboration.

So they walked some more, their feet padding on the pavment.

"It's in Displanes."he said.

Connie had no idea where Desplanes was."That sounds far."

Shaun waved his hand in the air."It's out there somewhere.

About an hour by car."
 She smiled, then stopped."I live down here. See you tommorw,
okey?"

"Yeah, sure. Tommrow. See ya."

He stuffed his hands in his pocket and shuffled home. He

changed clothes, hanging his school clothes in the closet. He
went out and found Paul. Over a game of pinner he told Paul what
happened.

"Should have beat him up."

Shaun said nothng and aimed the ball at the ledge, still
mlystfied by everything. Two days ago, he was estical about
starting school. Now he didn't want to go back.

He viciously flung the ball at the ledge."This isn't fair."

The ball skidded down the block and rolled under a car. Paul
retrived it."Tell you parnets you want to go to Trumbell."

Shaun stuffed his hands in his pocket and gave this some
thought."Yeah, then we'd be toghetter and I wouldn't have to
worry about creepy old nuns and big mouth boys."

Shaun had little trouble doing his homework, as unlike

yesterday's english, the bulk of it was fractions and math. Over
dinner, a meal of mashed potatos, peas and meatloaf, he aprotched
Fred and Donna with the idea of going to Trumbell.

"Why,"Donna asked. He avoided her eyes as he ate, not

wanting to tell her the real reson." I don't know anyboy there.
And besides, Paul goes to Trumbell."

Fred laid down the paper he was reading, took a swig of beer
and looked at him."No."

"Why not?"

"No."Donna said, sideing with Fred.

"Why not,"Shaun insisted, his voice raising.

Fred flung the paper down and stood."Go to your room."

Shaun was startled."I, I..."

 "Now!"Fred screamed."And don't ever back talk you mother
again!"

Shaun looked at his mother for help. She shook her head.
Fred's anger boiled over and he grabbed Shaun, lifing him by this
shirt and dragged him to his room, Shauns heels dragging on the
hall carpet."You're to stay in that room until morining."

Joann and Ruth were doing homework and came out to

investgate what all the rackett was about, open books grasped by
fingertip and fingernails as they stood in the hall. They saw
Fred slam Shauns door, Ruth, somewhat older then Joann, saw the
red fury of madness shine in Freds eyes as he returned to the
kitchen. She dragged Joann into the room and with delibert
softness, closed the door.

Joann protested."Wa.."

"Shhh..." Ruth said, her ear presssed against the door.

She heard her the high whine of her mother's voice as she
agrued with Fred. Then angry foot steps, contruved thumping on
the hall carpet and the unmistakable slamming of the front door,
idcating Fred had gone out.

She went over to the varnished desk in the far corner of the
room. The cluttre on it: Papers, pencels, paperclips, make-up,
lipsitck, disguested her. She burshed all this aside and spred
open the book in her hand. Her fingertips ached from holding it,
and she rubbed them on the softness of her flannel night-shirt.
She was seventeen and her one wish was to get out of here. She
reafrimed the wish as she continued studying.

Shaun fell rag like into the bed, tears of frustation

streaming across his face. He lay like that, his lungs surging,
deflating, surging, as he cried. In his misery, all he thought
was: Such a simple request.

A short time later, Donna came into the room, sitting on the
edge of the bed.

She spoke soothenly." Shaun, honey."

He shifted closer to her, huddling withen the saftely of her

smell and touch."Mom."
 "Don't be mad at Fred," she said." He's a little old
fashion, but he means well."

"But..."

She laughed, a joyish sound that filled her eyes with

meryment. She rememberd her own youth, the many times she had
utterd: But.

"But there's a new bike in the basement for you to ride to

school."

His head came up abutly, all forgotton, except the meaning

of her words.

"New Bike?" he asked caioustly.

She smiled down at him.

That night he slept soundly, a cool evening breeze comming

from the open window. Ruth and Marty, who was eighteen and had
stayed out late, sat and talked in the shadowly darkness of the
room, as Joann, her pink blanket pulled over her head, slept. In
hushed whispers, they both reafrimed their dislike for Fred, both
aching for the day they could leave.

Fred came home to a dark house, and made his way to the
bedroom. Drunk, he fell into bed, his clothes still on, and
quickly fell asleep.

In the morning, Shaun consumed his breakfast in under ten

seconds, skipped down the battleship gray steps leading into the
backyard and the basment and gazed upon his new bike. It was a
Shwinn, and he set about touching everyting on it: The handlbars,
the seat, the spokes in the wheels, then set about riding back
and forth across the basement: From the sheds along side the wall
to the washer and dryers at the oposte wall. Excitely, he
flipped open the kick stand and dashed upstairs, throwing
himself around his mom, who was standing by the stove, and
hugging her waist.

"It's the neatest."

"Fred picked it out,"she said.

 He ran over, his P. F.'s barely touching the linilime, and
hugged Fred's neck."Thanks"

Fred gave him a perfuninary hug back, gently squeezing his

back. Shaun dressed quickly, only pausing long enough for Donna
to give him a kiss on his cheek in approvol, before dashing to
his bike. Once at school, he parked the bike against the fence,
gatherd up his books and went to class. Connie smiled at him as
he enterd, and after again placing his homework on the bottom of
the phile on the desk, he chose the desk next to hers, iqnoring
the hostel stares of the other students.

"Hi," he said shyly.

"Hello," she answered back shyly.

Further conversaton was halted as sister Formasa came into

the room, sat behing her desk, and read though the homework.
Shaun held his fingers crossed when she came to his. He felt like
crying, resasnation in his eyes.

"Mr. Kinny, your math is fine, but your english paper is

atrouius."

He had no idea what atroucious ment."Yes Mamm."

"Come up here."

He took that long walk from his desk to hers, feeling like a
raccon stuck in a hunters trap. When he stood before her desk,
she had him hold out his hand. Wack, wack, came the ruler. She
pointed a crook'ed finger at his desk and he took the long walk
back, his downcast eyes notizing the laughter on the other
students faces. Once agian, he waited for the resese bell to
ring. When it did, he took Connie out to see his new bike. She
was impressed, and showed this by touching his shoulder and
exclaiming." It's a wonderfull bike."

His pride showed by the simple movemnet of raising his

shoulders so he stood a little taller in her eyes."Go for a
ride?"

She was heasatent at first, then threw caution to the wind

and climbed onto the handlrbars, one hand holding her skirt so
the wind wouldn't blew it up. Thay went like that, Shaun
pedeling, going in cicules, Connie, her hand holding her skirt,
her head held high, a wind washed happyness on her face. All too
soon, the bell rang, indecating the return to class.

He was in bliss heaven, his eyes frutativly glancing at

Connie all during class. He saw her as a firend, not as a girl,
or an object of sexual desire. Although in turth, he did feel a
sexual stiring. He just didn't have an idea what that was, and
attribed the pounding of his heart, the tiny heat in his groin,
to finding somebody who like him. The lunch bell rang, and he met
her outside. He gave her a ride home, promising to see her after
class.

He was on cloud nine as he rode his bike to Marty's Hot Dog

place. At lunch, his world shattered. First his bike was stolen.
He had parked it in front of the hot-dog stand. While he was
inside, the hot dog in his hand aiming toward his mouth, he saw
a boy ride off on it. He so was stunned that he stapped himself
in the left eye with the hot-dog. The mustard stung his eye and
and he dropped the dog and ran outside, running for all he was
worth, his legs pumping up to his chest, in the drction of the
boy and his bike. The boy was a good half block ahead of him, his
feet pedeling for all he was worth. Severl times Shaun's legs
stumbled and he pitched forward, flying and splaying on the
pavment, ripping his trousers, skinning his knees. Althought
blood now trickled freely from his wounded knees, still he ran.
Slowley his bike disapeard before his eyes, until it was gone.

He pulled up all at once, his hands on his knees, his mouth

dry and raspy, his breaths whisltling in and like a air though a
reed. Angry hot tears streaming out of his eyes, ploperd on the
sidewalk. He tried to reason out what had happened, but no where
in his mind could he relate to what had just happened.

After a while, he stood and began the long dejected walk

back to school, his little feet shuffling one in front of
another. His face was tear-stained as he took his seat in class.
Connie glanced at him, concern on her face. Sister Formosa saw
his ripped and torn clothes, marched to his desk and demanded to
know what was wrong. He just shook his head, still trying himself
to figure out what had happened. His atuade infuriated her and
she drew her hand back, bought it around in a arch and slapped
him so hard that his head rocked back. The other students had
been looking at him, but after she slapped him they all, and in
unison, shifted their eyes to their books. A fury that had been
kept at bay by the priests at Maryville filled him and he lashed
out, not with brute voice, but with vocal anger." Leave me alone,
you witch."

Sister's Formosa's face turned the color of her habit and she
stuck him again. Anger boiled within him and by force of will he
kept his head from rocking back. She went to the head of the
class and stared at him definitely. Before he could check
himself, he sprang up, lifted his desk in his arms and heaved it
at her. His aim, which for him was unusual, was off and the desk
carrened off the edge of her desk, cadanced off the wall and came
to a rest next to the blackboard. A look of horror spread across
Sister Formosa face. Before she could react, Shaun ran from the
room, his fury carrying him out to the street.

His fists clenched against his sides, he roamed the streets,

muttering to himself, things like: "Why couldn't the old witch
leave me alone. Why did the other kids keep picking on me. Why
did the kid have to steal my bike. Why couldn't they all just
leave me alone."

He walked so long, that eventually his anger subsided and he

tried to reason out what had happened. With a shock, he realized
that by running out of the classroom, he had left all his
troubles behind him. Not at all like at Maryville where the only
place to run was to the dormitory and the vivious arms of sister
Gretchen.

As he walked, he forget about the nun hitting him, his bike

and school. Instead he examined this new thing in his life; the
power to control his environment and the freedom that came alone
with it. He did this simplicity, more from the heart then from
the mind. As he did a feeling of euphoria came over him. The
sounds of the traffic heightened and the breeze striking his face
was like a soft wash-cloth, one that wiped away years of bondage.
He knew he was alive, but didn't know why he knew that. Like many
things in his young life, he had nothing to equate this feeling
with.

After a while he went home, not thinking that there would be

a reaction from his parents to his actions at school. Such is how
wrapped up he was in his young self in his new found freedom.

As he closed the door, he thought: The apartment is

strangely quait. Usualy one of his sisters was playing the radio,
or watching T V. Or his mother was banging pots and pans around
in the kitchen in preparation for supper. An animal sense told
his something was wrong, but before he could react, Fred's shadow
darkened over him, his arm reached and his hand closed aruond
Shaun's neck, lifting him off his feet.

He dragged Shaun to the living room and started beating him

on the head and shoulders with his fist. Shaun struggled under
Freds weight, trying to squarm away. That infuriated Fred and he
beat Shaun harder, hitting him on his face. Shaun curled up in a
ball and stopped struggling. Blows rained down on him, striking
his back, buttocks and sides. Somewhere in the distance Shaun
heard his mother scream. Still Fred beat on him. Shaun heard a
voice that sounded like Freds mothers. But still the blows came.
As quickly as it had all started, the beating stopped. Fred stood
over him, his fist clenched at his side, his breath coming in
rasps.

" Go to your room without supper."he groweled.

Shaun craweld on his hands and knees to his room and hosited
himself onto his bed. Later he found out from Joann that Fred had
only stopped hitting him because Donna had called Freds mother,
who in turn had run over from her house a block away and pulled
him off Shaun.

He lay in bed nursing his aches, thinking all sorts of eval

thoughts. He could hear his mother arguing with his Fred in the
kitchen. Several times his name was screamed out. The voices
stopped and he heard the front door slam. After a while, his
mother came into the room and sat down on the bed next to him.
"Shaun honey, are you okay," She asked.

He said nothing, perffering instead to make a tiny squeaking

noise that came out a blurred,"Yes."

The sound tugged at her heart and she ran her fingers
through the hair of this stranger, her son. As she did so she
wanted to tell him she loved him, that he was her favorite child,
if only because he was so much unlike her three daughters. But
that that was okay, that he was like her grandfather, his great-
grandfather, a man with ties to roality in Italy and who had
been kicked out of Italy by the catholic church for laying with,
then marrying a peasant girl. He had come to america and become a
prespatieran preacher. He had also written poems, mostly Dante
stanza against the catholic church, and stanza proclaiming his
love for his wife. He had once told her, a year before his death,
and two months after his beloved Catherine had died, that it had
been that way his whole life. That he had never fit in anywhere,
even when he came to america with his new bride.

These things she wanted to say, mostly because there were

his and her family legacy. But she knew he was to young to
understand. She also wanted to tell him about his real father.
After leaving the family, he had become a skid row bum, drinking
cheap wine and sleeping in flop-houses. But she doubted that
Shaun remembered him at all. But she had to tell him something,
if only to explain what had happened. So she told him about Fred.
That he was a good man, that he had hit Shaun for his own good.
And that sometimes he didn't know his own strength. When she was
finished, he again made a squeaking sound. She sighed and left
the room, feeling that as a mother she had failed him.

She sat at the kitchen table, nurseing a cup of coffee and

brooding over why she had married Fred. She sipped on the
coffee, the warm liquid filling her mouth. At last she put the
cup down, sighing loudly. She had married him becasue of Shaun
and the girls. Marrage was the only way to get Shaun out of
Maryville. And the girls were getting older and needed a father.
At that moment it occured to her that Like could turn in
loathing.

She sighed at her thoughts and rose, going to the sink to

wash the cup. Life was a curel joke, she thought.

Shaun listened to the sounds outside his room for a while,

his sisters talking to each other, his mother on the phone, then
drifted off to sleep, a part of his mind trying to remember what
his father looked like. He had a singular image of him, one that
he often summoned up at Maryville when the other boys were
talking about their fathers. The image was blurred at first, then
he saw a man kneeling down in front of a little boy that was him.
His father had a strong face and over the lip was a mustache. In
his fathers hand was a pack of Wigrelys spearmint gum. He handed
Shaun the gum and walked up the street, not once looking back at
the little boy, his son, standing there. Donna know not of this
and Shaun had not said nothing at the time. He resolved to keep
it to himself.

The memory warmed him and he fell asleep.

Fred had gone to the corner bar. By the time Shaun had fallen
to sleep, he had drunk eight bottles of Shultze and was drunk. He
loathed himself for what he had done. He was thirty-eight years
old. There were many things he didn't understand, or care to: Why
he hated blacks. Why he went queer hunting. Were he to examine
these things he'd guess it was because his friends hated the same
way. If a shrink were to tell him it was because the hate made
him feel supior, he'd be surprised. But he knew why he had beat
on Shaun. His father had done the same to him, beating him into
submission whenever he had gotten into trouble. Years ago, he had
promised himself that if he ever had a son, he would do things
differently. His only excuse for what had happened was that his
anger had gotten away from him.

He drank one last bottle of beer and stumbled home. He fell

into bed, reeking of booze. He touched Donna, wanting to make
love, but wanting more someone just to hold. She shook him off
and turned her face andxxody away from him.
 GO GET THEM SLUGGER!
Chapter Six...
Home is where the heart is...
Note:Mertle.

Note: Show Shaun thinking about way he gets mad. Can't hold
in his temper. Show Donna thinking he has resorted back to what he
was before Maryville. Shaun thinks after each beating, that he's a
bad boy. Show his stutter. Show how it comes up from his diapharm,
gets stuck in his vocal cords comes out garbled from his mouth.
Show him at school, Kennndy getting killed. Show years.

Fred awoke with no memory of what had trasproed the previous

night. Like all mornings, the sun shinned on him though the
bedroom window. He moaned, then proped up on one elbow and
dragged himself out of bed. He was shakey on his feet as he made
way, using the walls for support, to the kitchen. As soon as he
sat down, his hands automaticlaly turnig on the Zenith Radio,
Ruth and Marty excussed themself from the table, gave him an evel
stare and left. Donna, with such force that the table shook,
placed a plate of Ham and Egges before him.

"Thanks."he offered.

She returned to the stove, her back to him.

He picked up on none of the hostely. He had a haggerd look

about him as he sat at the breakfest table: His eyes drobbed,
his hands shook, and he felt weak as a kitten. Twice during the
night, he had risen and, the sicking grons of it ringing though
the still and quite house, heaved his guts into the cold porclion
of the tolite bowl. The thought of eating the ham and eggs that
rested before him made his sick to his stomach. Bile rushed up,
and he rushed off to the bathroom only to find the door closed.
From behind it, water slapped against the shower tiles.

"Hurry up,"he shouted., banging on the door.

He heard Joann mumble something. He rested against the wall,

keeping the bile back by force of will. As he did, he wondererd
why he felt so weak. He immedietly rejected the booze he hd drunk
last night. He had been drinking every day of his life since he
was forteen. Not once during that time had he suffered a
hangover, a headach, or even a qreasy feeling. He settled on the
flue. He had the damn flue.

Joann flashed him a hostel look as she came out, a towel

wrapped around her. He rushed in, knelt down and hung his head
into the tolite. As if the priclen god he was praying to wanted
an offering, giant heaves racked his body, and bile spilled out
from his open mouth, splattering the bowel. As the last of it
trickled out, he rested his head on the bowels rim, a dog like
moan escaping his lips. Then he rose, turned on the cold water
spiget, cupped his hands, and splashed water on his face.

He came out feeling much better. He sat at the kitchen

table, next to Shaun. Shaun was stone guiet, his bruised face
hanging over a bowel of oatmeal to a point that his hair flouted
in the milk.

"Don't hang your head like that over your food,"he

commanded.

Donna stood at the sink, her hands buried in soapy dish

water."Leave him be!"

All of a suddon, what he had did to Shaun last night filled

his mind, forcing him to slump into his chair. He forget about his
sickness, and focused on yesterday. The image of Shaun skurring
away, much like a wounded dog, was too much for him to bear and
he retuned to the bathroom. The bathroom was his refuge, and he
stayed there for an hour, his eyes reading the paper in his
hands, his bowels straining to shit, and his mind hating himself.

When he came out Donna was flinging a comforter over the

bed. He attempted to talk to her, to explain.

"I don't want to hear anything,"she answered, her voice ice

cold.

Seeing all else was furtile, he said."I'm sorry about last

night. Let me take Shaun to work, sort of make up for what I did.
He'll enjoy that."

She said nothing, tears crysline in her eyes. He took that

as a yes and told Shaun to get ready. Soon they left, a slump in
Shauns shoulders as Fred drove. The day went quickly and he was
extra nice to Shaun, taking him out for ice cream and candy, then
taking him to the construction site. Shaun was skittest at first;
paranoid of Freds bulk. Fred showed him how the cranes and
tractors worked, allowing him to fiddle with all the knobs and
spin the steering wheels. As the day progressed, eventually
Shauns fear of Fred fear gave way, much in the same fashion it
had at Maryville when he first got hit by Father O'Mally.

Fred was elated. He vowed never to hit the boy again.

Shaun felt that Fred was trying to be nice to him and a week
later, when enrolled he was enrolled in St. Gregorys catloic
school, vowed to do better, to make Fred proud of him. Donna was
worried at first, but he seemed to settle down, bringing home
homework: Math, english, and history. He breezed through this
without asking for anyone help. English, as it had at St. Itas,
eluded him. She took extra time to help, explaining vows, verbs
and sentence structure.

He still didn't get it, the vowels and verbs having no

meaning to him what so ever.

Note: Slow this down. Fred spenidng more time in the batroom.
Getting drink more often. SHuan mentions BIke. Sisters spending
less time at home.

She had taking to thinking about Shaun's beating, as the

incident, and had finely banished it into the: It will never
happen again, part of her mind. During this time, she set about
doing the things that eluded her as a single working mother. She
redecorated: Painting all the rooms, buying the right color
drapes, then the right color furniture for all the rooms,
including the girls room and Shauns. The girls helped in this and
after a month of this, Donna pronounced the house done.

She was not giving to praying, but that night, she said a
prayer, asking not for more, but that things stay the same. Then
she slipped off her robe and made love with Fred for the first
time since the incident. They were both hungry for each other and
made love several times before falling into a exchused sleep.

The next day she xed the incident from her mind entirely.

As fall breathed it's last gasp: the trees shedding their

leaves; the wind coming off lake Michigan no longer warm, but now
chilly reminder of what was to come; the family fell into a
routine. Fred went to work every day, each night night aftter
work stopping at the corner bar for a few hours. Donna cooked,
cleaned and kept an eye on the kids. Shaun reminding himself
daily of his vow to make Fred happy, narrowly avoided trouble at
school.

He asked Paul one day, what he did to stay out of trouble.

"Keep my mouth shut,"Paul answered readily.

Shaun thought that was good advice, one that he had followed
at Maryville." But what do you do when your know your right and
an adult is wrong."

"Keep my mouth shut,"Paul said.

Shaun didn't presue the matter. He liked Paul, but at times

he thought that Paul was a bit simple.

At the end of November, winter came all at once, bringing

snow and icy winds, leaving the people in Uptown (And other poor
neighborhoods) shivering in their under-heated, or unheated
apartments, and freezing many older residents to death.

Shaun explored into Uptown every chance he got. Usually he

did this alone, as Paul was afraid of the people in Uptown. He
knew nothing of the people in Uptowns plight; Hunger, cold, slum,
were words that he didn't understand, neither littrelaly or
figurativetly. One day he asked Paul how he knew all the people
there were bad people.

"Because my parents said so."Paul answered.

Shaun thought: Fred says the same thing so must be true.

December came and he awaited Christmas with a growing

excitement. He still believed in santa Clause, a fact that amused
his sisters who teased him relentlessly. He weathered their barbs
and tried to be as good as possible: Taking out the trash,
cleaning his room, and not talking back to his mother. As that
day approtched, the house took on a brisk hustle and bustle:
Lights were strung up, a tree was erected, and with much fanfare,
decorated, and presents were brought with much teasing as to who
was getting what. Shaun reveled in this, his first christmas away
from Maryville. Finely the day arrived, bringing with it all the
relatives. Grandma Nannna, who he hadn't seen for several years,
said" I knew it, the boy has pieceing eyes."
 Donna just smiled. Grandma said that about all boys.

His aunts and uncles, including Aunt Tail, who he had tried
to push out the window years ago, all said, what a big boy he was
becoming, then they all ruffled his hair, and dismissed him,
telling him to go play.

He rattled all the box's under the tree. The women worked on
dinner, as the men congerated in the living room, fast at work
talking about their cars, football, and snickering about the
women. After dinner presents were exchanged, Shaun getting a
portable radio that was just like the one Fred kept on the
kitchen table. The radio was a Zenith. It had a fake leather case
and was AM&FM. Fred didn't allow anybody to touch it. The radio
was his pride and joy. "After all," He said time and time
again,"The quality goes in before the name goes on."

Fred presented it to him, saying: "For you."

Shaun was estatic and hugged Fred to his chest. Then he

started in right away playing with the knobs.

Joann, Ruth and Marty each got dresses. They held them up in
front of themselves to show everybody how they looked. Then they
exchanged dress with each other and held them up again. Donna got
a mixer and Fred received a coffee cup that said: Forever
hung-over.

An hour later the relatives left. Donna said she was too
ehuasted to wash the dishes and would do them in the morning.
Marty and Ruth snickered at this. Joann looked preplexed,
wondering what her older sisters were snickering at. Donna shooed
them off to bed. She took Freds hand and led him to their bed. He
had drunk non-stop all night and was a little titzy, all right he
was a lot titzy, and folled along meakly. As she stripped off his
pants, then his boxer shorts, she murmured she had one last
present for him. She fell to her knees, fondled his flacid penis
and said:" Do you know what it is."

Before he could answer, she closed her mouth around his

penis. She had never done this to him, and he almost jerked away,
but her mouth, all silky and warm, her tongue all furry little
brushes, stilled the urge and he moaned out loud instead.

Shaun slept with the radio next to his ear, secure in

knowledge that Fred did after all love him. Two days later, while
at Goldblats, a department store, the radio got stolen from him.
He had put the radio down while leafing though a stack of records.
When he turned around to pick up his radio, it was gone. He took
this latest theft in stride, telling himself that this was the
way of the city.

"It must be so,"He explained to Paul that day,"Because my

bike got stolen in the same way."

Paul explained that all the kids bikes in the neighborhood

got stolen."Don't you know anything. We steal each others bikes."

Shaun was amazed by this. He thought: Truly this must be the

way of the world.

That day he stole his first bike, taking it from in front

of the same hot-dog stand his was stolen from. He thought to
himself at the time that if this was the way things were done,
then he was learning. Two days later he stole another, then
another. In his basement, he exchanged parts on the bikes. In the
end he had a bike that was unrecognizable from the original
three. He took what parts he had left and traded Paul for a lock
and chain. Donna and Fred never questioned where he had gotten
the bikes from and he never vollentered information.

He rode his new set of wheels all over the north side of
Chicago, exploring every nook and cranny of his neighborhood.
Whenever he left his bike, he secured it to a street-pole or a
tree with the lock and chain.

In the weeks that followed, he and Paul stole a grand totle

of fourteen bikes. They took the bikes to Shauns basment and
dismantiled them, canobloizing the parts and traded them to other
kids in the nergbohood for handle-bar streamers; bells, and on a
few occasnons, black cat firecrackers. Their fingers stuffed in
their ears, they set off the firecrackers in the ally behind the
house, packing them in empty Campells soup cans. Always the can
shot up-ward, the bang echoing.

Shaun felt that his live was coming together when, a few day
later, he got into his first fight. An older boy at school had
called his mother a name and Shaun pushed him. The other boy
pushed back. Shaun was afraid, but refused to back down. He
pushed the boy again. A crowd of boys gathered around both
fighters and shouted encouragement to both boys. By this time
Shaun had the other boy down, and was on the verge of pinning his
arms, when the kid jumped up and kicked him in the balls. His
first thought as he saw the arching foot was that the kid was
fighting dirty. That thought was gone in a instant as pain
exploded in his groin, raced up his rib-cage and burned his ears.

Enduring the taunts of the crowd he struggled up-right ran

home, tears streaming down his face. Once there, he asked his
mother to look at it. She was confused at his use of the word it
and shook her head to indicate such.

"It," he screamed.

"Calm down and tell me what it is," she soothed.

He started to answer that 'it' was the name they gave his
pee-pee at Maryville. But he couldn't say pee-pee, because that
was a bad word. He tried to use other words, but was stuttering
so bad that nothing came out. In frustration, he pulled his pants
and jockeys down and pointed at his penis. A neat little stream
of blood trickled off his penis.

She was flaborgasted. Not so much that he had gotten into a

fight. But at the realization that Shaun didn't know anything at
all about sex. She lead him into the bathroom and had him stand
in the tub. As she washed his penis, she was struck by two
thoughts: Fred had better tell the boy about the birds and the
bees. And: My son is thirteen, and already he is well hung. This
last thought came forth in pride, not pirversty. Still she was
ashamed and pushed the thought away.

That night in bed, she mentioned the incident to Fred. He

told her not to worry. The boy would learn on his own."In fact
you'll know when he gets his first girl. His pimples will go
away."

Donna scrowled at this and he laughed.

After the holidays, things moved forward at a rabid pace,

both the weather, which had the city locked in virtual freezer:
Temps at 0, with wind chills of forty below, and at Shauns house.
Fred got laid off as his job as a carpenter and spent most of his
time at the corner bar, or on the streets queer bashing. When he
was at home he was in a foul mood. Everything annoyed him. The
girls talking on the phone; Shaun slamming the door. Donna
spending money.
 To all these things he yelled,"dammit, dammit,"

After that, he'd storm off to the bathroom and read the
daley paper while chain smoking Pell Mells.

Shaun was having troubles of his own. He was apporhensvie

over turning in a spelling paper. Twice before Sister Anderson,
his teacher, had ridiculed his spelling. As he entered class, he
laid his paper on the desk, looked to see if Sister Anderson was
looking at him, saw she wasn't, then rearranged the papers on her
desk so his was on the bottom. A couple of his classmates giggled
at this. He ignored them and took his seat.

Sister Anderson, her hand holding his paper, her eyes

holding flames, stared him as he adjusted himself in his seat. "I
saw what you did, young man."

She quickly scanned the paper, keying in on the many

spelling mistakes. She raised her eyes to him." Dummy, dummy."
She taunted.

He tried to explain that he was trying as hard as he could,

but to no avail. She made him write on five hundred times on the
blackboard and in front of the whole class: I em stupid because I
can't spell. He couldn't spell Because and left out the A, in
Because and Sister Anderson, a smirk on her face waited until he
had finished writing the sentence five hundred times. She turned
to him and said." Now write: I can't spell: because. Dummy."

He stared at her confused, not understanding what she was

talking about. She pointed a half bent finger at the blackboard
and he realized what he had done.

"No, I won't," he said. But he didn't really. He was

stuttering so badely that the words wouldn't come out.

So Sister Anderson heard nothng. She saw a boy sitting at his

desk, his bottom lip quivering, his face locked in defiance. She
stomped over to him and took hold of his bottom lip, pulling him
out of his seat. He spit on her. Not a great big wopper, just a
little spray that barely reached her face.

He was suspended and sent home.

Fred tried to hold in his anger. He went and got drink. When
he got home the sight of Shaun was too much for him to bear. He
fell on Shaun, beating him until once again Donna had called
Freds mother.

Shaun took this second beating in stride, figuring it was

his own fault. A week later, after being enrolled in another
catholic school, he was again suspended. The nun, again for a
spelling error, made him sit in the coat room for two hours.
While in there he ripped up her coat. Again he was enrolled in a
new catholic school. The Nun hit his hand with a ruler. He
grabbed the ruler and broke it in half. Each time he was
expelled, Fred beat on him. His mother wailed, and his sisters
cringed. Always Donna had to call Freds mother before the beating
stopped. Always Fred would go out and get rip-roaring drunk after
beating on Shaun. Always Fred came home smelling of cheap booze
and try to make love to Donna. Always she'd be turned away from
him. He began to blame this coldness from his wife, on Shaun. At
first he told himself that was ridiculous, but eventually, and
thought by thought, the idea wormed it's way permitted into his
mind. Once he accepted this, he knew it was true. after all it
wasn't his fault. It was Shauns. The little bastard hated him.
That was it.

Shaun had developed a stutter during all this. With each

beating, his stuttering got worse. As he sat on his stoop with
his friend Paul, they tried to make sense out of what grown-ups
did. Paul said that his father beat him once a week, whether he
needed it or not.

"My dad says it's good for me."

Shaun looked at his friend. Pauls face held a mask of

sadness.

"I suppose,"Shaun answered.

From that day forward, Fred started beating him once a day,
whether he needed it or not. Always afterwards, he'd go to the
bar and get drunk. During one of these epososdes, he realized he
didn't like himself very much. That night, he lowered his head
over his beer, more so the other people in the bar wouldn't see
him and cried for the first time since he was a kid. In the
morning he was ashamed at crying and blamed the tears on Shaun.
If only the kid would listen, non of this would be happening.

Shaun began to except these beatings as his due. And

strangely enough, a bond developed between the him and Fred. He
blamed himself for Fred beating on him. He reasoned that he must
be a bad kid. So he tried harder to please Fred: Shining his
shoes, washing the car, going to the store for him. Once he ran
to the paper stand three blocks away to get Fred a a paper. The
run took five minutes and Fred asked him what had taken so long.
So next time he made the run in four minutes. Fred still was not
pleased. So he made the run in two minutes, his little lungs
burning for air and feeling like they were going to burst. Fred
said nothing, he just took the paper from Shuns hand.

By the time spring was in fine tune, the birds singing, the
squirrels roaming, he found himself in Trumbell, a Puplic
School. Donna had decided, thinking that after spending so much
time at Maryville, maybe Shaun hated nuns, that Shaun would be
better off at a puplic school.

Shaun was pleased by this. But only becasue Paul was in the
same school. The school itself made little difference to him. By
this time he was stuttering badly, especially when Fred or a
teacher spoke to him. To offset this stuttering, an afliction
that only served further to lock him into himself, he withdrew to
the point of only finding comfort in the little world that was
built up in his mind. despite, or maybe on account of all his
troubles, he became a voracious reader, reading every book,
fiction and otherwise, he got his hands on. One night, late when
everybody in the house was asleep, he pulled the blanket over his
head and turned on his flashlight. He did this so Fred wouldn't
see the light shining from the crack in his bedroom door. When
Fred said lights out, he meant lights out. On this night, he was
looking up words in the dictionary that he had written down from
books he had read.

He searched out the word: Respect. After some difficulty, as

spelling was the one subject that was difficult for him, he found
it. The dictionary read: Respect: To consider worthy of high
regard. To refrain from interfering with.

He closed the book, turned off the flashlight and lay back.
The word stayed in his mind as he fought sleep. That was what he
wanted, he thought. To be left alone. To be respected. Not beat
on every time he did something wrong. As he thought about this,
it seemed to him that he had been beat on for as long as he could
remember. After a while an idea came to him, one that seemed
assured of Freds respect, the teachers and everybody else in the
whole world.
 He fell asleep, a smile on his tiny lips.

The next day he left for the Alamo.

Before everybody awoke, he got up and quickly dressed: clean

jockey shorts, pants, shirt, socks, shoes and his warmest coat.
This done, he creeped into his parents room, then fell to his
hands and knees and crawled to where Freds pants lay. The
rustling of the fabric seemed very loud to him, so gingerly he
ran a hand into the pocket and withdrew a five dollar bill. His
eyes got wide when he saw how much it was. He had never had more
then a dollar at one time in his life and all he could think was:
Five dollars, Five dollars, gee that was enough to go to the
moon.

He stuffed the bill in his trousers and backed out of the

room on his knees. His heart was pounding in his chest as he
opened the front door to the walk. The door hinges cried out a
squeak and his hand froze on the knob. A half second, that to him
seemed like a week, his step-dad mumbled in a sleep filled
voice." Who is that"

Shaun bolted out the door and was a half block down the
street, his little legs pumping up and down, before he realized
all this was happening in his head. He was, in realty, still at
the front door, his body shaking with fear. Fred mumbled again,
this time saying in a loud irritated voice."Is that you Shaun."

"Yes," he answered automatically.

"What are you doing up at this hour!"

Shaun stood at the door, unable to say anything. Had it not

been for the sheets rustling and the sound of his step-dads feet
hitting the floor he'd of stood there for ever. When the floor
board creaked, indicating his step-dad was now walking toward
him, he screwed up all his courage and bolted out the door, this
time for real.

He ran for two blocks before he realized it was still dark

outside. He slowed to a walk, wrapping his arms around his body
to ward of the chill he felt, which was due more to fear, then
the brisk wintry morning. His shoes scraping, more then stepping,
over the pavement, he watched as shadows, big and grotesques,
played off the trees and buildings. It was four A. M., but he no
idea of this. All he knew was that his heart vibrated in his
chest, much like the train track did before the onslaughting
train.

He stopped walking. The wind blow, rustling his hair, the

shadows from the streetlights danced at his feet. Suddenly he not
just afraid, he was very afraid. He considered going back. The
thought of Fred loomed larger then his very afraid fear and he
took a step, unsure at first, then another, and another.

As he walked he firmed up his resolve to go on. That's when

it hit him that he didn't know where the Alamo was. He knew it
was in Texas. But where the heck was Texas. Which way. He
pondered this for a few steps. His mother had always told him
that when lost, he should ask somebody for directions. That's
what he decided to do.

He stopped at an open Standard station on Broadway and asked

the attendant. The attendants name was Bob, which he had proudly
stitched across the front of his shirt, right under: Standard
Oil. He had done this, not because the boss had requested it, but
because the day mechanics had their names on their shirts. He had
came up from Kentucky two weeks ago and his dream was to be a
mechanic. Which is why he took the job at the station. His boss
was a man given to reading other men by the way they talked and
walked: A man talks with a drawl and you know he's stupid. He
walks funny and you know he's stupid. Bob walked and talked like
a southern hick and he read Bob as being double stupid. So he
gave him, what he liked calling, the stupid shift. This was
because a person had to be plane dumb to work nights alone at a
gas station, especially in Uptown. The day crew each pitched in
buck into a pool, each person choseing the day when some some
nigger, or injun packing a shot-gun blow him away. The last fella
working nights had lasted ten days.

A years later, the owner would die of a massive corenary

while eating breakfast. He fell face over into eggs over easy,
his open mouth resting on a yolk. His wife would comment that
even in death, he couldn't bear to waste food. Bob had lived a
simple life and had saved most of his earnings. After the
funeral, he approached the widow about buying the station. She
said: Shit yeah. Two thousand down, a thousand a month for four
years.

He agreed and she moved to florida. Nobody ever claimed the

pool up, each employee fearing for their jobs. So the pool, which
was twenty-five dollars, went unclaimed, and to this day sits
under a pile of rotting tires.

Bob had a lazy right eye, so when he looked at Shaun, only

one eye actually rested on the boy, the other seemed to stare off
into space. For a second he wondered what this kid was doing out
at this hour. But he came from hill folks, and kids being out at
all hours of the night wans't unusual, so he dismissed the
thought and considered Shauns question on which way Texas was.

"Texas, hu kid," he asked.

Shaun just nodded back solemnly.

He scratched his head and said,"Well, I recken you take the L

train south to the end of the line and walk south."

As the man said this, fear struck Shaun. He knew that the L
was a train that ran on electricity. He had been warned not to
walk on those tracks. That people who did got electrician. He
never had, always walking on tracks by the house, the ones that
regular trains ran on.

"Can a person ride on the L without getting elictrucuted." He

said, managing a, so it came elecauted.

Bob laughed good naturally, "Sure. Say why you wanna go

Texas?"

Shaun answered instantly, his face alive." See the Alamo and
become a cowboys."

Bob recignized in the boys face the same feelings he had when
setting out for Chicago. He laughed and started to say that the
Alamo and Texas was a long way off for a little boy. He held what
he was going to say, distracted by a Ford pulling up to a gas
pump. The driver leaned out his window and yelled,"Fill er up
with reg."

Bob ambled over and inserted the pumps nozzle into the car,
then looked up for Shaun. He saw the boy was heading for the L
and shouted," Have a good trip." He yelled and returned his
attention to the task at hand.

"Thank you," Shaun yelled out.

 As he headed toward the El station, crossing broadway,
passing the Uptown theater and the Green Mill lounge before
cutting into the Learance, he started to weave a fantasy of
cowboy and indians in his head. At the train station, he asked
the man in the ticket booth which train went south.

"Jackson Park," the guy said, pushing Shauns change from the
five dollars at him.

By the time he got comfortably seated on the El, he saw

himself on a horse. It was daylight where he was at and stretched
out before him was a thousand-million acres of land, a million
zillion cows, and zillion, trillon indians. Oh'yes he had three
friends with him: Dawg, Brave Cloude and John Wayne. He felt
ready for anything.

As the El pulled out of the station, gaining speed with each

second, the rumbling of the wheels shook the car and his fantasy
evaporated. His fear of being elacuted returned and he looked
around the car. There were several people seated, and his fear
gave way. If adults were on the train, he reasoned in must be
safe. So with a curious heart he looked at everybody and
everything: A bum, a bottle of thunderbird cradled in his arms,
smiled a toothless grin at him. A women, her purse clutched in
her hand, scrowled at him. Two men, hard hats on their heads,
nodded, then when back to talking.

He offered each a shy smile as he inspected the inside of

the train, first running his hand over the seats to see how they
felt, then gazing at the metal bar running the length of the
ceiling and the advertising poster strung above it. He saw all
this with a childs eye, basking in the wonder of what the bar was
used for, curious as to all the products for sale on the posters.
But the thing that awed him the most was how the lights in the
car flickered off for a second, then crackled, before burning
brightly once again. The first time this happened, his heart sped
and fear rose up from his sneakers. But after the second time, he
realized it was all part of the great sceem of things that made
the train run.

As soon as he understood that, he quickly got bored and

looked out the window, the buildings wizzing by, the people on
the platform getting on, the cars on the street. All these things
peaked his curiously. It was at this point that the specter of
the tall buildings, the ones he had viewed from afar all these
months, loomed ever closer and closer. His mouth fell open, and a
Wow, escaped his lips. Then the train desended into a darkness so
dark that it swallowed up the whole train.

He tried very hard to be brave: he crossed his fingers, his

toes, said a quick ejaculation, then another. But the train
rumbled on, the darkness deepening. The lights in the car dimmed,
like a candle in the wind, then they went out, throwing him and
all about him into darkness. The train let out a teribble
scratching sound, kinda like jackals howling. His bravely
faltered and he thought god was taking him to hell for running
away. At that moment, he saw outside his window, a row of lights
that elumanated a tunnel that led strieght down.

He was now sure he was headed for hell.

He screamed. He didn't know he screamed, not consciously. He

just felt this tearbble rush of air escape from his mouth.
"MOmmmmmmmey."

He screamed this over and over. He kept on screaming this

even when the train pulled into the Chicago, av. station. The
screams were such that everybody on the car acted accordingly:
The wino awoke out of his drunken stupor and believing that he
was expearancing D. T's. ran out the door, leaving his bottle of
Thunderbird behind. He didn't stop running until he reached
Dunning state hospital for acaholeic. Once there, he checked
himself in for a prolonged stay. The women sat on her purse
protectively and glared at Shaun. Steve Zimbrouskie the older of
the two construction workers, rose and went over to Shaun. His
parnter, Rich McClain followed.

"What's wrong, guy,"Steve asked. In fits and sobs,

Shaun explained why he was screaming. They, each taking a turn,
explained that the the train had entered a tunnel, not hell. And
that this part of the route was called the subway. Then they
asked him his name. When he told them, Steve said."Why you'r
Freds Sagmo's step-son. Arent you."

Shaun nodded and Steve explained to Rich that him and Fred
had worked a job a few months back. Fred had showed him a picture
of his new wife and childern. After that a conference was held
between the two men and it was decided to take Shaun home. As
afraid as Shaun was to go home, he went along gladly, deciding
that he had explored enough for one day.

During the ride home, they took turns explaining the

workings of the El and subway system to Shaun. He listened
attentively, memorizing every thing they said. After this they
asked him where he had been going. When he said the alamo, both
men laughed.

The sun was out as they got off the el and headed up
Winnemac. Rich leaned against a parked car, cuped a match and
lite a smoke as Steve walked Shaun up to his door, wanting to
say hi to Fred.

As the door was opened, Fred was waiting there, his hands on
his hips, his mouth flared in hatred. He didn't see his Steve,
all he saw was Shaun before him, his head held low in shame.

" So you're a thief now," Fred sneered.

Shaun stuttered as he tried to explain that he wasn't a

thief, that he was going to Alamo so Fred would respect him. But
Fred kept taunting him: thief, thief. Shaun kept stuttering, his
bottom lip quivering as he struggled to get the words out. This
infuriated Fred and he flung the boy against the wall and started
beating on him, using his fist on Shauns face. He struck Shaun
time and time again. Shaun curled up in a ball and Fred kicked at
him repeatedly with his feet.

He yelled: THief, as he worked.

Donna was horrified. She had put up with the other beating;
knowing in her heart that Fred would stop before really hurting
Shaun. But this wasn't a beating. There was a crazed glare in
Freds eyes. She senced this beating was edging close to murder.
She looked away, helplessness growing in the pit of her stomach.
She knew she wasn't strong enough to stop Fred so she stared at
the Steve, her eyes pleading."Please."

He shook his head, and grabbed Freds arm. Fred was lost in
his anger, and he turned on him, ready to strike out.

"Don't try it Fred," the guy said, contempt on his face."

I'll kick the shit out of you and enjoy it."

Fred held his ground, his gaze thretening, then his anger
fled, and his body deflated in until he was sagged over. He
stared down at Shaun. Already red welts colored his face where he
had been hit. Fred bent down to pick the boy up, but Shaun
wimpered and crawled the few inches to the door. He stared at
Donna, his eyes pleading for understanding. She stared back at
him coldly. She would have stared at him like that forever, but
the Steve brushed by Fred and scooped Shaun up in his arms as if
he were a bundle of rags. She motioned to her bedroom and he
carried Shaun there. She followed, giving Fred a look that said
that things would never be the same between them.

Fred watched them attend to the boy for a minute, then left
the apartment, going up the street to the bar. Although he had
beat on Shaun before, never with such viciousness as today. With
every step he attempted to pound his feet into the pavement,
hoping to drive away the dispare he felt. When he got to the bar,
he put down two quick shots, telling himself before each one that
he hated himself and wanted to die. An hour later, he made up his
first excuse for what he had done. By closing time he was up to
excuse number 99. By the time he got home and was in bed he had
decided it was once again Shauns fault. The little fucker was
bad, bad, bad. He nursed that thought as he fell asleep.

Donna lay next to him, once again facing away. She had been
thinking about what happened that morning for a long time and had
decided to leave Fred. The decision had not been made lightly and
the weight of it kept her awake until the wee hours of the
morning.

Shaun slept restlessly, waking up every hour from pain. He

didn't know it, but already he was beginning to touch peoples
lives, although how he touched the people in the train would, as
would most of the people he touched, remain unknown to him: A
few hours later, the women with the purse was robbed.

"Give me your purse Momma," A black guy had screamed at her

in the same tone of voice Shaun had screamed in.

This proved too much for her and she gave it up willingly.
As frightened as she was by the robbery, she talked about for
years, adding a bit of excitement to an otherwise bored
exsistance.

Also unknown to Shaun, the wino expearaced many visions

during his withdrawal from cheap wine. In one of these visions,
he saw a huge pink eliphent that he took as being God. The
Elaphent told him to go out amongst the people and save them.
Upon his release, he took up preaching, eventuality working his
way up to a T V minaster in Louisianan. Millions of dollars and
years later, his pants down, and a women nuzzling his crotch, he
received another vision, this time in the form of a giant dick.
It told him that he just got fucked. That's when a flashbulb went
off.

Also years later, and also unknown to Shaun, the older

construction worker got crushed under a crane. His last thought
before a final death rattle of air escaped his body was of Shaun
and how frightened the little boy had been this day. Yet how
brave he had been on the train. He thought: Going to Alamo. He
died with an amused smile on his face.

When Donna woke up the next day, she knew it was late:
Instead of traces of daylight mixed with night coming from the
bedroom window, the sun was shining high up in the sky, throwing
bright streams of light through the bedroom window. She never
slept late and that was the first indication that something was
wrong with her. The second was the greasy feeling in her stomach.

She sat bolt up-right in the bed and thought:I'm pregnant.

She didn't pursue the thought. She had had five childern, one
dieing at birth, and knew the feeling as well as the back of her
hand. So she sat their, feeling trapped at the cruelty of fate.
She couldn't leave Fred, not now. She didn't have the energy to
start from scratch again, not after all these years.

After a while, she got out of bed, checked on Shaun. He was

still sleeping, his pajamas bunched up around his knees. She
paused and stared at him for moment, wondering what would become
of him. Then she checked on Ruth and Joann. They were not in
their room, presumably gone to school, Marty, she knew was out,
probably at her job as a waitress. She went to the kitchen and
put the coffee on.

That night, Donna told Fred she was pregnant and he was
elated. He attempted to make love to her, but she pushed him
away.

" Don't ever touch me again!" she said in a cold voice."

Ever!"

He turned over onto his side of the bed, not saying

nothing. This too was Shauns fault, he was sure. But in the end,
Donna would see he was right. She would see.

From that point forward, he never again considered the

thought that he was wrong about Shaun.

Despite spring deepening; the days warming, the trees

blooming, a coldness was evident in the house in the days and
weeks that followed. Fred had been called back to work, much to
the relief of everybody. Donna went about keeping house, and
attending showers for the unborn baby, but with a detached
movement, adding no thought or feeling to her chores, or offering
the expected joy at the showers.

Joann, Ruth and Marty were wrapped up in their own lifes:

Namely worring about boys. Marty solved her boy problem by
getting married, on the sly and at city hall, to a greek fella
she met at her job as a waitress. His name was Louie. He was a
bus boy and had litlery swept her off her feet. She litterly
became pregnant. This Surprised everybody and Donna confronted
her the moment she found out. A yelling match ensued, both
trading barbs at each others expanse.

"I hate you," Marty screamed a final retort and slammed the
door on the way out. She only went as far as the basement
apartment in the building. Her and Louie had rented it that day.
There she went about cooking supper for her new husband, fuming
at the injustice of life.

Ruth and Joann, knowing that with Marty gone, there would be
more space for them in the room, were pleased by this latest
development. Then Ruth got engaged to Goerge, a boy she had been
seeing for several months. A late June wedding was planned, as
Donna had had enough with Marty sneaking away to get married.
Upon hearing this Joann was elated, soon she would have the room
all to herself. Her elation lasted excelty one day, then she
discovered that when she looked in the mirror she had pimples and
thus was ugly. Donna told her she was just growing and that they
would go away. Joann nodded, not believing her and brought a tube
of CLearsell and smeared it on her face.

A few days after Ruths announcmen, Donna locked herself in

her room and cried. The family she had dreamed about was slipping
away from her.

As was his way, Fred said nothing about all this. The girls
were Marges responsibility. His was Shauns. He had been watching
the boy,investigating his every actions. He had kept a list of
many things Shaun had done; fourmost the bike parts in the
basement. This would prove the boy was a thief. Then Donna would
allow him back in her good graces.

Shaun had become more withdrawn and snapped at his sisters

for every little thing. He steered clear of Fred, and didn't say
much to his mother. After school, He and Paul went out, sat on
the stoop and talked about their parents. This became a daily
session and Shaun looked forward to it. Paul was the only person
who seemed to understand what was going on inside of him.

In mid Aparl, Paul moved to the other side of town. A place

called Evergreen Park. Shaun, nor Paul know where this place was
at, but seeing as it started with Evergreen, in sounded far away.
They made a pact, each sticking their baby finger with a pin,
then clasping fingers, to be freinds forever.

Shaun watched the moving truck take Paul away. He waved long
after the truck was out of sight. Suddenly felt isolated. He had
nobody to talk to.

He went to school that day, a sadness in his every step. As

had been the case for many weeks, his art teacher used him as the
modle in class. As he sat on the chair, he looked out over the
kids drawing. He hated sitting there, ramrod stright. He hated it
with a passion. He flet like a bug under a mirscrope. Slowly,
Angre grew in him. He told himslf that Mr Daling, the teacher,
hated him. Otherwise He'd use some other kid as the model.

He was right about the teacher hating him. Mr. Dalang had
been teaching for twenty-years. In that time he had taught
thousands of little brats. Male and female. He hated all kids and
reveled in humating them, especily kids who he deemed had a
little gumption, and especialy girls. He liked to have the girls
stand by his desk while he touched their bodys, pointing out to
the rest of the class the flaws." Look at her fat hips. Look at
all those pimples."

He realy liked touching their bodies. Realy.

He saw them as waffles. He hated waffles. They stuck in his

trouht. They tasted dry. When his wife made waffles, which was
every week becasue his fucking son liked waffles, he gagged
eating them. But if he didn't eat them, his wife would make life
missable. In that vein he had dedacated his life to making kids
lives missable.

But he realy liked touching their bodies.

 Shaun slid off the stool and left the classroom. Mr. Daling
ran after him, grabbing his shoulder.

"Take you hand off me,"Shaun said.

Mr. Daling didn't heastate. He dropped his hand imedanlty. He

hated kids, but was quite aware that he himslef was a waffle.

Shaun went home. Donna asked him why he was home so early. He
told her, adding that he wasn't going back to school. He had had
it. Donna told him that was part of art class.

"Yes,"He answered, stuttering,"But he hated me." Donna

had spent the the last few weeks worring about the wedding, the
baby and Shaun. She dragged out all her energy and went to see
the the principal. He told her that Shaun was anti- social,
lacked concentration and disrespected authority. He suggested
sending him back to Maryville, if only for the boys own good.
Then in a moment of rare candor, he admitted that his teachers,
although fine people, were products of the system. As such they'd
simply pass Shaun from grade to grade. In the end he'd have a
diploma, but have learned nothing.

He ended this with:"We'r just not equiped to deal with a boy

like him. Maybe in twenty years, or maybe never. Sorry."

She thanked him and on the way home decided not to send Shaun
back to Maryville. She had done that once and the guilt had
almost destroyed her. Shaun would have to simply sink or swim in
the sea of life.

That night she decided that the realty of the sicturation was
she no longer could deal with Shaun.

Shaun went back to shool the next day. He had achived a minor
victory. Mr. Daling didn't use as a modle. Mr. Daling never even
akondgeed he was in the class. Mr. Daling, late at night, had
vision of Shaun cutting his throut.

A week later, Shaun compelty lost control. He was joking

with, Goeroge, Ruths fiance. Goerge was telling him a knock knock
joke, and punched him on the arm to illastate a point. Shaun
jumped away from him, grabbed a butcher knife and threatened him
with it. Goerge, a peaceful man who never lost his temper, took
the knife away from him. Then carried him to the bathroom, turned
the shower on cold and held him under it. Shaun squarmed, trying
to get out of his grasp. But Goerge held tight. Shaun started
screaming obscenities he had herd from the other boys at school.
Still Gorage held tight. Finely he carried Shaun to the back
porch and locked the back door. Shaun punched out the window,
screaming as Ruth and Geroge went out the front door.

Donna came home, saw the window, listened to Ruths story and
asked Shaun why he broke the back window. He shrugged his
shoulders and went outside. She didn't press the issue. Her house
was becoming a battle ground. Ruth, already angry at Shaun for
little things he had done, was now furious with him. She had to
put a stop to this, but how.

She locked herself in her room once again and cried.

After leaving Donna, Shaun had drawn a batters box in chalk

on the brick wall behind his house and thats where he went. He
considered his mothers question, as he aimed a league ball at a
circle within the batters box. He admitted to himself that he
liked Geroge, then let go of the ball, smacking it just above the
circle. Goerge played baseball with him, George helped him build
a model ship. Geroge was nice. As the ball rolled back to him, he
thought: But Geroge had touched me.

That was the real reason.

He had decided after the last beating that he would never let
another person hit him again. He had made this decision strictly
based on a line he had read in the book: The story of Davey
Crockett. The line read: Be sure your right, then go ahead. If it
was good enough for Davy Crockett, it was good enough for him.

When Fred came home, he was incensed and demanded to know

who had broken the window. Fearful of a reprisal of the last
beating, Donna told Fred that she had broke the window. Fred was
so thankful that she had talked to him, that he didn't question
this. That night, she gave into Freds advances and fucked him,
silently urging him to pump harder, hurt her. In the end she
cried out: Hurt me.

In this way she begin to see herself as a martyr.

The next day Fred added another item to his list: One broken
window.
 As his mother prayed for Fred to erase the guilt she felt by
hurting her, Shaun lay in bed and played with his penis. It
sprang up, ram-rod strigth, only arching at the tip. He touched
it, his fingers barely fitting around the head. almost
immediately, his whole body tingled and semen squirted out,
spraying his chest, face and pillow.

He was amazed by this, as he had been the first time it had

happened. Once again an awe stuck look covered his face and his
heart pounded in his chest. For the hundred time, he pondered
what had just happened. For the hundred time, the answer escaped
him, just like the first time it had happened.

The first time had been two weeks ago. On that night, he had
woke up, his penis more then ram-rod straight, the damn thing was
throbbing. He had woken up like this before and always it was
because he had to pee. He found himself in a quarnderly: If he
went back to sleep, he'd wet the bed and Fred would be mad. If he
went to the bathroom, which was next to his parents bedroom, then
the floorboard would squeak and Fred would be mad. He solved this
by wrapping his hand around the head of his penis and squeezing,
hoping drive the urine back to where it came from. Five things
happened simatainelsy: His vision clouded over so he could barely
see the room and the ceiling; a bolt of lightening exploded in
his head, turning everything there into a white nova; a roaring
filled his ears; his heart speeded up; a warmth spread through
his body and red hot white liquid spilled over his hand and ran
down his wrist. He was too awed by the feeling that had spread
within him to be scared. That would come later. For now his penis
kept throbbing under as he held on for dear life, the hot
liquid coming and coming and coming.

He was ashamed by this and tried to push the event out of his
mind. The next day it was raining and he took the bus to school.
His penis got hard, strainig against his pants. His stop was
approching and he pressed his eyes tight, trying to will it soft.
Still it bulged, seeming like it was going to tear our of his
pants. His stop came and went, but still his dick bulged. He
thought about God, Jesus, his mother, his sisters, baseball,
marbles, but still his dick bulged, the fabric stroking him.
FInely he ejaculated into his jockey shorts and his dick went
soft.

When he got to school late, Mr. Daling scrowled at him, but

said nothing. He offered no explnatin for being late.
 June was but a few days away, when Shaun maverled at another
discovery. This was the frist time in his young life he
consicnley thought that mabye the adults were wrong. Mabye people
wern't bad simply becasue Fred or Pauls dad said they were. He
was in class when the kid in the next seat leaned his way and
whispered."Did ja hear that a jew boy is joining the class
today."

Shauns face turned confused and he shook his head: He

thought: How could they let a jew in class.

He had heard the men at the bar talk about jews. Filthy
things, is what they said. He had talked about Jews with Paul and
other classmates. It was decided they were all ten feet tall, had
horns lie saten and ate childern for dinner. Shaun was even more
confused when the jew boy walked in the class. (everybody knew it
was him because he was a new face.)The teacher interduced him as
Larry Katze. Shaun had heard Fred talk about jews, and knew that
like niggers, they were to be hated. (although he didn't know
why, except in the case of niggers, who were black or brown.) But
like him, this boy was white.

This troubled him for weeks. Finely Larry was accepted and
he put this out of his mind.

On the day school ended, and as promiced by the principle,

his teacher handed him his report card. Written right down the
center and next to each subject were five F's. On the bottom of
the card it said: Student passes into high school. His face was
ashamed as he showed it to his mother. She nodded sadly, as if to
say: It's okay, then told him to go out and play. With a heavy
heart she hid the card under a hat box on the closet shelf of her
bedroom so Fred would't see it.

Fred found the card and added another entry to his growig
list: Report card.

The next day Shaun turned fourteen. A birthday party was

thrown and all the family came: His grandmother, his aunts,
grandfather. He blew out the candles, making a wish that he kept
to himself, despite incessant questions by his sister Joann. He
received ten dollars in cash, a sweater, a Jan and Dean record
and eight kisses from his sisters, grandmother and aunts.

A week later he lay in bed, the dawns early light spreading

throughout the sky. He thought: He would do it now.
 His heart raced in his chest at the thought.

It was now or never.

His heart raced faster.

He wrapped his penis around his hand. It throbbed and he slid

his hand up the stock once, then semen squirted out.

Now.

He left for the Alamo.

It had been ecilty a year since he had left Maryville.

 Chapter four.
This land is your land.

NOte: Describe more things: Bathroom, train, etc. Graffette. What

not. Describe Shaun's hieght, clothes. DEscribe as such' He came
to an underpass; Tom loves sue, etc. A picture of a penis; thinks
looks like his; walked long highway, car zooming by, pay no
attention to him; scales wall, now in Indeaan.

He stuffed his Davy Crockett book in his back pocket and

snuck out of the house, this time going out the back door. He had
on his P. F. Flyers ( Other wise known in his neighborhood as
Porter Rican fence climbers) and scaled the fence in four moves,
jumping to the ally below. He took the backallys to the El on
Lerance. He gave the same teller as before his ten dollar bill,
and pateionty waited, not hearing the teller mutter: Same kid
fucking. The teller thought about a new fishing rod he had been
eyeing at Sears. The fare was a quarter and the teller gave him
back eight dollars change, keeping a buck seventy five for
himself. He thought satisfyingly: Get me four old ladies with
Tens and that rod is mine.

Without counting his change, Shaun stuffed the bills in his

pocket and rushed to the platform and the waiting train. Unlike
yesterday, the train was filled with commenters; most bleary eyed
as they held newspapers before them. He sat next to a large man
whose ass was spread out on a seat and a half, squeezing into the
seat. The guy gave him a perfunctory glance, one of those checks
that city dwellers give to be sure the person next to them isn't
a mugger. A few other people did likewise, before returning to
his morning paper.

He took in a sharp breath as the train moved. When the train

dived under the tunnel, his heart raced. He reminded himself of
what the constrection workers had said. His heart slowed, but
just a little, still pounding in his chest. The train made many
stops, each terminal a new expearacne to him. People got off and
on, shoving and pushing at each other, their faces contorted in
momentary rage, the rage fleeing as they reached the open
platform or the comfort of a seat. Of the people who got on, some
even stood, their knuckles white as they held onto the rail above
them. He thought: If only I could do that.
 Then as if by magic, the train came out of the dark tunnel.
Sunshine poured in, sparkling off the windows. His eyes got wide
in surprise. The construction workers hadn't told him about this.
Before he could think about this development, the conductor
yelled. "Jackson park, end of the line. Everybody off."

He was on the south side of Chicago, a pedromlty black

section. He loitered on the platform, unsure of what to do now.
Fear and confusion grabbed at him as people rushed about him,
most of whom were black. The clackty, clack of trains arivving
and the blaring of horns blowing on the street below added to his
confusion. He considered going back. But which way was that!
After some time, he approatched a conductor, a big burly black
man.

"Which way is SOuth," he asked.

The conductor stared down at him, wondering what a white kid

was doing here at this time of the morning. But fate, or luck, be
it good or bad was with Shaun for at that moment, the conductor
train was getting ready to pull out. So he dismissed his
thoughts; much later telling his wife about the kid, and lifted a
big hand, pointing at the street." That there is South Blue
Island BLvd. Just follow that."

WIth that he waddled onto the train.

Every time he was lost, he asked: which way is south. slowly

his fear gave way, and his imagination took over. He pictured
himself as a giant bird, rocketing on the air waves, looking down
at all below, seeking out eval. In this way he rescued a boy
drowning, halted a runaway train, distignested a forest fire. The
bird gave way to a white horse, a lance and a dragon, it's mouth
sprewing flames at a fair maiden. He rushed the dragon, darting
and japping, fainting and rushing, taunting and screaming. At
last he screamed: Die you evel beast, driving his lance through
the dragons lone eye. The fair maiden kissed him on the cheek and
he blushed, surpressing a: Yuck.

It was in this way that four hours later, he made it to

Hammons In. Before him the coke plants and the pertroleim plaints
that dotted Hammond. He stood on the shoulder of the road; his
tongue trapped between his lips; his hands clenched and at his
side; his gaze fixed on the imenseity of what lay before him:
Smoke curled out of chimney that scraped the sky; Behind fences
and for blocks were storage tanks with Standard Oil; Clark Oil,
and other names painted on the them. A sickly gassy order, of
which he compred to a dragons breath, was in the air. Far away,
but close enough to feel the heated air, touches lite high above
brick towers, blasting flames up from the coke furances to the
clouds themselves.

His gaze fell on a sign attatched to a pole alongside the

road: Welcome to Hammond, In.

He continued walking, his tired legs pumping up and down,

one eye on the furnace plants, sure that that was where bad
dragons were made. He didn't stop staring behind him until he
got into Hammond itself. The picture of a Grayhound on the sign
outside the bus station caught his attention and he went inside,
sitting on the front bench so he faced the ticket agent. He
studied the destination board behind the agent, trying to
assertain which way south was. But places like Topika,
Bloomington, NOrmal, seemed eveyway and far away to him. So he
went over to a man playing on the pinball michgian in the corner.

"Mister, which way is south,"he asked.

Tom Jenkens was startled by the voice and took his eyes off
the sliver ball, placing them on Shaun. The ball bounced off a
bumper, the miighna added up thirty points in rabid suscisson,
then the ball carrened to the no-return lane, falling into the
abass of the michigan.

"What?" Jenkens asked, paying no attention at all to the

game.

Shaun repeated his question, his attention on the game. He

had played acade games, but never pinball. At the time they were
illegal in CHicago.

Tom prussed his lips, as if he were considering the question.

He nodded slowly at Shaun, then pumped a dime into the game."Why
don't you play a game while I think about that."

Glee filled Shauns face and he moved over in front of the

game. Guiding Shauns hands, Tom showed him how to work the
flippers. At Shauns inexpearnce, the game went quickly. Tom
laughed, saying he'd get the hang of it and pumped in another
dime.

As Shaun played the second game, his fingers frantically

working the flipper buttons, his tongue trapped between his
teeth, Tom studied the him, the youngish lines of his body, his
buttocks looking like two halfs of a perfect perl. A heat rose in
his gorin and he couldn't believe his luck. He had been coming to
the grayhound station for a little over two years. In that time
he had picked up two boys, but they were older and expearanced,
much to his displeasure. Shaun, he was sure, was a virgin. This
last thought excited him more and he subconsciously rubbed a hand
over his crotch, thinking: Untouched, untouched.

"South, hu," he said, his voice husky.

The game had ended, but Shaun banged away at the flippers as
if he was still playing."Yes."

Tom pumped in another dime and said."I'll be right back."

Shaun nodded, his attention on the silver ball zooming off

the bumpers. Tom went over to the ticker agent and checked the
departure board. He saw that a bus was leaving for Lafeitt IN, in
thirty minutes.

"How much for Laffeatt,"he asked.

The ticket agent, an old guy with coke bottles for glasses,
raised a finger. His eyes squinted behind the glasses as he tried
to make Tom out. Everything was just a blur to him. His finger
shook and his voice quivered." Four dollars."

Tom's hands trembled as he counted out the four dollars for

a one ticket. By the time he returned, the game was over and
Shaun was once again banging away on the flippers, his hair
bouncing over his forehead. He took Shaun hands, holding the
ticket in his other, and lead him to the bathroom. Making sure
the bathroom was empty, he went into a stall, closing the door
behind them. The stall door was well over six feet high, but had
a one foot opening at the bottom. He had Shaun stand on a stool,
so if anybody came in they would only see one set of feet beneath
the door. He explained to Shaun that the ticket in his hand went
south to a place called Laveatt,IN, but before he gave it to him
they had to play a game.

Shaun stared at the ticket, confused. When he realized that

the guy was being nice to him, he tried to speak, but found he
could only stutter. He nodded thankfully instead.
 Tom unsnapped Shauns pants, pulling them and the jockey shorts
around his ankles. He ran his hands over the smooth whiteness of
the thighs, brushing his fingers over the buttocks, seeing them
as two preal drops; perfect and without a blemish. His hand
quivered as he touched SHauns penis. Like a cobra uncoiling, it
sprang up and he gasped, undoing his own pants.

"You're not afraid, are you."

Shaun had been afraid at first, thinking that this grown-up

might hurt him, like the teachers at school, or his step-dad. But
the mans hand felt good on his penis and he shook his head,
fascinated by the man's penis. It lay flacid and was all winkley.
It seemed to him to be smaller then his own and sort of grungy
looking. But it was similer to his and he felt a kinship, his
first with a adult.

"You ever play this game before,"he asked, stroking his and
Shauns penis.

Shaun had nothing for comparison, except for the time the
boy at Maryville had pulled his pants down so he once again shook
his head. Tom's head quivered in a nod as he wet his lips with
his tonque, moving his mouth a few inches from Shauns penis. He
continued stroking both peins, his tonque ready, his mouth
hungrey for the prewl drops of white innacnets that woud soon
spill from the boys penis. His face was intense as he flet his
onrushing orgasem and for a second, he closed is eyes, then felt
Shauns sticky seman spill over his hand. He plunged his mouth
over Shauns penis, but it was spent and nothing more came out. He
realased his own load onto the floor. His breaht came in husks,
his thoughts on how badly he had wanted the person seman, as he
and he fought back tears.

Shaun looked down at the man, scenseing more then seeing the
wave of saddness that was on the mans face. He didn't understand
why, but he had enjoyed the game and felt a saddness for the man.

"Is something wrong,"he asked, only stuttering slighty.

Tom looked fondly at Shauns flacid penis, ran a hand over his
buttocks and shook his head. For a moment he considered licking
the semon off the boys hand. He decided against it, spun some
toilit tissue off the holder attached to the stall wall and
handed it to him. As Shaun wiped his hands, He instructed him to
pull his pants up, then took him out to the bus loading area. He
explained that the bus would arrive in ten minutes. He didn't
bother telling Shaun not to tell anybody about the game. That
wasn't nessasry. The boy was going. For a second, he intertained
taking him back to his apartment and giving it another shot. But
that was to risky. So he gave him five dollars and left.

Shaun spent twelf cents on a superman comic book and sat

down to read. Twenty minutes later, a man yelled out: All aboard
for Laefyatt and Indalnspas. Only a few people were on the bus
and he chose to sit by himslef, in the rear. He was no sooner
seated, when the bus pulled out of the station, bellowing great
big clouds of sooty smoke from the exchust as it sped out of
Hammond. The driver, his voice horse, informed them they'd be in
Laferett, in four hours. Indy, in six.

Shaun looked out the window at the Indeana landsacpe, his

thoughts on the man. He was lucky to find such a nice man. His
groin felt warm as he recreated the mans mouth on his penis. He
remembered what had happened on the bus going to school and
pushed the thought away. He yawned, stiffling it with an up
raised hand. Still he yawned again and lay his head back, closing
his eyes. The hum of the tires, a sound he knew was talking to
him, but didn't know how to artrlate why, lured him to sleep.

Tom went home that day, kissed his eldery mother, declined
supper that was waiting for him: Streak and potatis, and went to
bed. He masterbated five times that night, each time summioning
up an imagineary picture of his mouth reaching Shauns penis in
the nick of time, each time his tonque savreing the prewl drops
of white innacents. The next day he went to work; a solatary job
which involved opearting a two color muti-press at A.B.C.
printing in Chicago. He masterbated five times at work, again
imginaing his mouth reaching the boys penis in time. That night
he again masterbated, and the following day, and night.
Masterbating and imigninge Shauns penis eventurly became an
obsession that lasted ten years until his hand devolped
artrites. After that it became painfull for him to masterbate, so
he purchesed an elctrinc masterbating micjhinga that he saw
adervtised in an x-rated magiize. This worked fine for while, but
then one night the minchgna shorrted out, going wild. Elictracy
shot through his dick and he flopped on the bed like a fish on
the pier.

"Mother! Mother!," he yelled.

By the time his mother, who by then was pratcily bedridden

with arthrites and took an houre just to walk a foot, reached
him, his dick was a shrivled charred trig. The doctors saved what
was left, joking afterwards to his colleages that their was just
enough to fuck a ant. A very samll ant. Tom still masterbated
after that, but he had to use tressers.

He didn't know it, and would never, but because he had

touched upon Shaun life, he was touched by the mystyce that
followed him.

Shaun awoke hours later from a prone position to sitting

streaght up, as the driver yelled," Indy. End of line. Everybody
off the bus. If you're going further, check the connection routes
on the board in the station.

He rubbed a fist against his eyes, thinking the driver was

mistaken. He was going to Laffetta, Not Indy. He shrugged
indeiffenty and followed the other passengers off the bus. The
sign in the lobby said welcome to Indinapllous.

He stood their looking at it, his lips held tight as he

puffed air into his cheeks, blowing them up, then speming the air
out. It didn't take him long to figure out that the driver had
not woken him at Lafettt, assuming he was going to This place. He
continued puffing his cheeks out, as he contapalted what to do
next. To the people walking by he was a lone figure; a kid; a
funny kid who was puffing his cheeks up, them speming out air
with a PSSSssssss. Aside from a amussed smile, they said nothing
to him.

He was still contaplating when Police officer Willems walked

up to him. He was asigned to the station to check on possable
runaways, and this kid, no baggage, nobody waiting to pick him
up, looked like the apitmy of a runaway.

"Going home are ya," Officer Willems asked, his voice

nonchalnt.

Shaun looked up at the officer. The unaform reasured him.

Afteral police were their to help.

"No, I am going south, but am not sure whitch way to go from

here."

"I see," Officer Willems said,"well you just come with me and
we'll get you there. By the way where you from."
 Two hours later, he was on a plane for Chicago.

He was awed by the plane and spent the entre trip staring out
the window at the clouds. He didn't look upon the trip as a
failure. He had come a long way in short time. Just wait until he
told his frinds about this.

He thought: Wow.

He held that thought as the plane landed at O'Haira field.

Jenny, the head Stredeess, had been keeping an eye out on him at
the request of the police and sat next to him during the landing.
SHe liked him; the way he slurped down coke after coke, never
taking his eyes off the clouds. When the plane landed, she wrote
her number on a piece of paper and told him to call; they'd go to
the zoo. THen she deliverd him into the arms of his waiting
parents.

"Don't be to hard on him,"she said to Fred, noticing his

anger,"He's just a boy, a very curious boy."

Fred said nothing, prefering instead to grab Shaun by the

arm and pull him through the turmel. Shaun rewarded Freds harsh
look, by staring at the ground as they went to the car. Donna
kept saying things like: " How could you. Don't we provide a home
for you. Why must you be this way."

Once in the car, Fred turned to her, his hands draped over
the wheel.

"I told you,"he said sumgley,"But you wouldn;t listen."

"I don't know. Mabye you're right," she answered, lighting a

ciggerett."All I know is I can't take it anymore, not with the
baby comming."

She blew smoke angrey at the window and that signlened the
end of the conversaton until thay got home. Fred had showen her
the list he had complied. She knew about the window and several
other things, but was surprised to hear about all the bike parts
in the basement.

The drive home was done in silance. Shaun sat in the back
watching the heads of his mother and father. In his heart was
fear. They had no sooner entered the apartment, when Fred
backhanded him. The force of the blow carried him down the hall
into the dining room. Donna's face contacted in pain, but she
held her voice, thinking half-heartly that mabye this was the
only way.

Shaun scrembled up, his hand pinweeling over his head to

keep from falling back down. Fred advanced on him, his teeth and
fist clenched, his steps pounding on the hall carpet. Shaun would
never know why he did what he did next. As Fred came toward him,
he looked around frantilcy for a wepon, saw the iron on the iron
board and grabbed it. Donna had left it on in her haste to leave
for the airport and a part of Shauns mind realized it was still
pluged in and very hot. He yanked, jerking the plug from the
sockett, the cord sailing in a loop over his head.

Fred saw this and smiled a sickening grin that filled his
face with hate, rage and satisfaction. He halted his onward
steps." So the little theif, the liar, the runaway wants to
fight. Ca'mon, you little theif. C'mon."

As he talked, his hands sparng out, urnging Shaun forward.

Shaun took a step.

"Comn you little prick coward."

Shaun took another.

"Com yo.."

Freds words caught in his thrugt as Shaun advnced, at first

heastently, then with determation. What Fred saw in Shuans eyes
that day, he never told anybody. Maybe it was his destany, or
mabye it was the realazation that the little boy in front of him
was going to fry him like a french fry. What ever it was, for
every step SHaun took, he took a step backwards.

Still Shaun came.

Fred took two quick steps back, almost tripping over his
ankles.

Still Shaun came, the iron held out before him, the cord
trailing behind him.

Fred took another step, backing out the front door. Shaun
fainted and lunged. Fred stepped back. He tittered on the top
stair, almost falling backwardsd. Donna screamed, her hand
covering her mouth. Freds hands fraled up over his head as his
shoes balanced on the top step, rocking him backwards, forwards,
his body unsure of which way to go. He dug his toes into his
shoes and pushed up. For a second he allmost corrected his
balance, then his torso seemed to roll backwards, followed by his
legs, then with a rush, he tumbled down the staris.

"Ahhhhhhh," he screamed.

"You ever touch me again, I'll kill you." Shaun said. His
voice seemed to come from far away, as if it wasn't his own. It
was a voice without remorse, just blind determation.

Donna looked at her son, the iron hanging in his hand. Below
on the stairs, sat Fred, his left left leg warpped over his neck.
He was moaning, a soft puring sound that sounded like a wounded
mouse. The scene was so comical to her that she didn't know
wheather to laugh or cry.

She did neather. Her face stoic, she took the iron from
Shauns hand. He offered no resistance. She saw that the fury was
gone from his face. Tears streamed from his eyes, running down
his cheeks and falling on his ripped and dirty shirt. She
thought: I have to sew that shirt before he leaves for school in
the moining. Then she collected her scenses. School was out. And
there might not be a morining.

"Go to bed,"she said.

He tilted his head up and she tilted hers down and he kissed
her on the cheek. He avoided looking at Fred as he went to his
room.

Outside his room were voices; his sisters, his mother and
Freds. He lay on his bed, the darkness around him his only
freind. He waited, fear choking his every breath for his mother,
his step-dad, or one of his sisters to come into the room.
Hurting Fred had placed a trebble weight on his soul. Fred was
his father. Fred was the protector of the family. Fred was in
charge.

He had done a trebble thing. Must worse then throwing the

desk at the teacher, tearing up the coats in the coat room, or
getting angry at Ruths feancee, Goerge. His temper had gotten
away from him during thoses times. But tonight, he had not been
angry when he picked up the iron. He had been...

He thought: I don't know. He nusrsed his feelings as he

wanted somebody to come, talk to him, ask him why he had did what
he did. He wanted to tell them that he wasn't a bad boy. That he
had ran-away for them. To prove that he could do something right.
Then They could even slap him, lock him in the room without
supper for a week.

All he wanted to do was explain.

But nobody came.

So he fell asleep,

alone.

He awoke early early, darkness puring through his bedroom

window. As he dressed, his lone thoughts were on Texas, the Alamo
and cowboys. He had to go now. The teachers were right. Fred was
right. It must be so. He was a bad kid. He had noplace in this
world.

He took what he needed and left. He was so obsessed by the

thought that he was a bad kid he didn't remember making his way
to the Learnce el. The platform was crowed with people, and he
stood off by himself, waiting for the train to arrive. To the
other people waiting, he was a tiny figure watching the lake turn
crimson, as the promic of a bright sunny sky squeezed out over
the blue waters of lake Michigan, filling, red drop by red drop,
the grayish-black sky with light. Sevrel people scnesed a curious
satisfaction in him; his eyes actually appearing to reach out to
greet the sky. These people mistook this as youth and were
jeilous; each remembering that they had once had that same
fasanation at the start of a new day. Each considered
approatching him, each rejected it. But were somebody to have
laid their morining paper aside and ask him what he saw, he'd of
answered: Emptyness. If pressed further, he'd answer:Because that
is what he felt inside; emptyness. If pressed further yet, he'd
cry, mumbling:Nobody wants me. My step-dad, my mother. Nobody. So
I'm gonna go and become a cowboy.

But nobody stepped forward.

He wasn't giving to feeling sorry for himself and by the time

the train arrived, he had locked his feelings deep inside
himslef. Now formost in his mind was what the police officer in
Indealpous had told another police officer while they drove him
to the airport:You can allways tell a runaway you know how. No
bags, nobodye to meet them and they always look lost and hungry.

He didn't intend on making those mistakes again. He had a

brown bag, two peanut-butter sandwhices in it, three candy bars
and a clean shirt.

Note: Don't be afreid. Be happpy

Chapter

and causing his underarms to sweat. This annoyed him so he kept

tugging at the shirt to keep it from sticking to his body. He
retraced his previous route to Hammond In, playing the same games
he had before: Dragons and maidens; super hero and super bad guy.
As he walked, he had re-worked and re-worked his plan in his
head, bouncing ideas off his imaginary friends. At the grayhound
terminal, he screwed up his shoulders and his courage and
aprotchig the counter. Mr Krazan didn't see him standing there,
barely tall enough to see over the counter. One reason was he was
penceling drivers names in the log book, squinting as he wrote.
The other was of course, his eyes. They hadn't improved any in
the last twenty four hours.

Shauns brow tightened in concintration as he studied the

names of the town on the departure board. Somehow, places like:
Normal, Decater, Madison, Wi, Rockford, and Joilet, had a
displeasing ring to him. His face screwed up and he thought:
Yucky names, Yucky towns. Still he looked at the names again,
thinking he had to pick one. Then he realized the board was
placed such, that the bottom names trailed off, hid by the ridge
in the counter. He raised himself on his tip-toes and looked past
the counter at the last few names of the towns on the departure
board. The forth one down was Greenup Kentucky. He knew that
Kentucky was south, that was where horses came from. And Greenup
sounded like a nice name: Up green. Green Up. Green is up.

He liked all that.

"Greenup, one way,"he asked in a tiny voice that stuttered

on the two ee's in Greenup so they came out in a low drawn out
tone, but snapping out the up, making it whole thing sound like
Greeeeeeeen..UP!

Aside from bad eyes, Mr Krazan was also heard of hearing,

due, he liked to think, to ten years of listening to his wife
scream things like: PUT THE DAMN PAPER DOWN AND SHOVEL THE DAMN
WALK. PUT THE DAMN COFFEE DOWN AND RACK THE DAMN LEAVES. So he
continued to pencil in the log, his only aknowledgment that he
might of heard a voice, a slight up turn of his eyebrows. But
then the brows turned down as he thought about his wife at home,
his long breasted wife at home, his so long breasted wife at home
that every now and then she mistaked what was on her dinner plate
as food, stabbed her fork at it, and yelped, as she stuck her
breast. His writing became furious and he thought about the (Ever
so young: sixteen) small breasted girl at the drug store.

Shaun knew none of this as he screwed up his courage for

another attempt." One way to Greeeeeeeeeee..UP!"

Mr Krazan heard this as he might a fly buzzing next to his

ear. He looked up, annoyed at having to give up his daydream
about the small breasted girl at the drugstore. And to think he
was just coming to the good part. Her panties down around her
ankles, her soft, but every so small breasts, inviting. Her
tongue reaching out toward his...

"Yes", he said, his voice strained, his eyes seeing

absolutely nothing at at all before him. Not because of the
glass's, which was reason enough. Everything was cloudy because
he just had an orgasm in his boxer shorts. This was a common
occurrence and he kept a box of cleanax under the counter. Right
now he longed to reach them, his semen, at first hot and
delicious against his skin, was now jelling, and running down his
leg in a cold fury.

Shaun repeated his request."One way to Greeeeeeeen..UP!"

Mr Krazan worked furiously writing out the ticket as he

wiggled and churned in place, hoping to keep the semen from going
beyond his upper calf. But to no avail. A glob of semen had
reached his knees, filled the ridges in the his kneecap and was
headed for the hairy forest that was his lower calf. Last time
that had happened, the damn shit had hardened. He spent two
painful hours pulling off semen balls and hair. That in turn
caused a rash that itch so bad he put calamne lotion on it. Which
in turn made the remaining hairs on his legs fall out. His long
breasted wife took one look at that and screeched: Fruit.
Foreginely, the hair grew back.

He slid the ticket across the counter and barked," Eight

dollars. Bus leaves in half hour."

Shaun dug deep into his pockets and folding each bill flat
with the palm of his hand, counted out loud: One dollar, two
dollar, etc; eventually laying down eight dollars. Mr Karzane
squirmed during this, thinking: The bastard is taking for ever.
As the last bill was laid down, he shoved the money into the cash
dewer, then darted for the wash room. That night his wife took
one look at his legs and said"Fruit."
 The next day she packed her curling iron, her rollers, her
earrings in the shape of a hair dryer, and her cloths and left
him. Over a course of time, his hearing improved and sight
improved. He got drunk one night and went to see Sue's parents,
the girl who worked in the drugstore. They were poor folk and had
nine other youngin, so when he proposed to marry their daughter,
slobering that he loved her dearly, they arranged it. In five
years Sue grew two hundred pounds. He looked over his morning
paper at her and thought about a fourteen year old girl who
worked at the grocery store.

Mr krazen never knew it, but he was a victim of himself.

Shaun felt a flutter of fear as he stuffed the ticket in his

pocket, then went and fed the pinball game four dimes. He was
thrilled that the first part of his plan had worked so well. But
scared when he thought about the second part of his plan. As he
played, his fear gave way and he became so enthralled by the
game; the silver ball zooming off the bumpers, the bells ringing,
that he almost didn't hear the voice boom over the loudspeakers:
All aboard for Greenup.

His fear returned as he boarded the bus, the driver taking

his ticket. This bus was more crowded then the last and he
avoided the other passengers eyes as he made his way to the back
seat and sat, staring at the seat in front of him. His plan was
simple. When the bus got to Greenup, he'd pretend to be asleep.
He'd do the same at the next stop, and next, taking the bus as
far as it went.

As the bus rolled over the road; the blacktop once again
singing to him, he nibbled at his sandwiches nervously. As the
bus entered Greenup, stopping with a screech of the brakes at a
rundown gas station; next to two pumps and a boy sucking on a
piece of straw standing out front, he lay on the back seat
pretending to be asleep. Such was his fear at being caught, that
his body quivered in fright as the driver announced: Greenup. Two
youngs kids got off, screaming at the kid standing next to the
pump: Ha, ya, Jimmy Jo.

The bus's doors whoosed shut and the driver guided the bus
back to the highway.

Shaun made it to the bathroom and threw up.

From there the bus stopped at many small towns. Always, it

seemed to him at a gas station with two pumps and a man or boy
standing out front waiting for somebody to exit the bus. Although
he feigned sleep, he always peeked out the window, staring at the
person waiting. Occasionally nobody got off the bus and he'd
sense their disappointment, their loneliness, relating both to
how he felt. As soon as the bus was back on the highway, the
loneliness became his own. At these times he thought about his
mother, his sisters and Fred. He realized he missed them. Missed
them a lot.

By nightfall, the bus was in Tennessee. A few hours later,

the driver announced they were stopping at the last schulded rest
stop before Nashville, adding that the passengers had a half hour
to eat or stretch their legs.

It was here that he almost got caught.

As the bus guided past a weather-beaten sign that read:

Jims' Esso, Shaun scootched down in his seat. He stared out his
window and saw a dinner and twin pumps. A neon sign crackled
above the diner, but two letters were burned out and he couldn't
read the name. Beyond that was a row of semi-trucks, fumes
spraying from the overhead exhust next to the cabs. He was tired,
yet energy seemed bottled up within him, aching to get out. And
he was more then lonely, he was beyond missing his mother,
sisters and Fred. He was frightened.

So he waited until almost everybody had gotten off the bus.

The last person off was a tall thin black man, and he trailed
behind him, trying to stay within the mans frame so nobody would
see him. He followed him into one of the doors that lead to the
diner. The place was divided into two parts, both with a counter
that faced each other. Two waitresses worked between the
counters, both pouring coffee and joking with customers. The
waitress working his section of the restaurant was a middle aged
women with straw like red hair named Annie. She fiddled with the
string on the apron tied around her waist, staring at him
strangely as he sat at the counter next to the black man. He
peered up at the menu board attached to the wall. He skipped past
the sandwiches on the board and keyed in on the logo: Everything
goes better with Coke.

He still had a sandwiches left and it would taste better

with a coke.

"Get out of here boy," she snapped, not to unkindly, yet

with authority.

His eyes got confused as he stared at her."All I want is a

coke,"he stuttered defensively.

"This section is for colored only,"she answered, softening

her tone."Go around to the other door."

He blinked repeatedly, having no idea what she was talking

about. All he wanted was a coke. So he repeated his request.

She felt herself becoming flustered as her face reddened. "I

said,"she started to say, then looked over her shoulder at the
white faces behind her."Say where's your parents at. Don't they
know any better."

She had spoken loud enough so that attention at both counters

was directed at her and Shaun. The nine black customers looked up
at the same time as the ten white customers. They stared at each
other, anger in their faces for the face across from them.
Suddenly the place became very quiet, even the rustling of spoons
in coffee cups had stopped. Annies fingers twitched over the
apron string. This was a dangerous situation, she knew. Ever
since that up-start Marten Luther King had started stirring
things up in Alabama and Geroga, the colored had become restless.
Not that she agreed with this bull shit separated seating. She
didn't but...

Now, boys,"she said, still fiddling with her apron strings.

But still they stared at each other, white face on black, black
on white.

She looked directly at Bill, the bus driver, her face

pleading. He looked at Shaun confused as to where he had come
from. Next to him at the counter reserved for whites, sat Mrs
Chesak. When the commotion had started, she had been thinking
about her daughter who she was on her way to visit in Nashville.
She put her thoughts on hold and smiled at all this in an
amusing way. A younger version of herself would have snickered at
the absurdity. All the boy wanted was a coke, it made no
difference to him if it was served over the white counter, or the
black counter. Which in itself was absurd. But at sixty-five
years of age, of which forty of those years were spent teaching
history and philosophy 101 at Harvard, she knew better then to
argue with the system, especially one as entrenched as John Crow.
And especially in a roadside dump filled with rednecks of both
color.

She held her dress as he slid off her stool, beckoning to

Shaun with crooked finger, a mannerism she had perfected as a
teacher. She pointed at the door, indicating for him to go out
and come back in. He did as he was instructed and she turned to
the waitress."Northern boy," was all she said.

Her action defuised the tension and the blacks and whites all
breathed a sigh of relief, the sounds of forks hitting plates,
spoons stirring coffee once again filling the diner. The bus
driver thanked her with his eyes, shrugged and went back to his
coffee and talking to the other waitress.

He had been hitting on her for two months and she was
breaking down. Whoever this kid was, let the old broad take care
of him.

When Shaun came back in, she looked down at him, thinking: My
what a cute little boy. She paid for his coke, added a slice of
apply pie (This is what happened, so shoot me.) then lead him
back to the bus. She insisted he sit next to her. He offered no
argument, his mind was on what had happened in the restaurant. He
was confused and thought that the waitress was singling him out,
much like the teachers at school. Maybe Fred was right, maybe he
was a bad boy and the waitress could tell that.

He pondered this, not saying a word as he sipped on his coke

and ate the pie. A few minutes later the other passengers came
aboard and the bus was back on the highway. He stared out the
window at the hypnotic shadows that played across the trees,
stretching over the road itself before retreating under the
onslaught of the bus's headlights. Mrs Chesak continued to read
her book, occasionally glancing at him. She assumed he was going
to Nashville and that relatives were meeting him.

"Why couldn't I sit there," he asked at last, the straw

slurping at the bottom of the cup.

She had been expecting the question and put the book down.
Shadows covered his face and the soft rustling of a snore
filtered out from behind her. The question reminded her of her
late husband. She smiled. Her face was a soft gently face, and
the smile made her appear even more so. Her husband, a arcatech
for a New York firm, had died of cancer six months ago. He was a
gentle man and had seen the ashes in the ovens at Artshwish. From
that day on, he had spent his live asking why. As much as she had
wanted to, she had never been able to answer him. She wasn't sure
she could do so now.

"Why do you think,"she asked.

Her voice put him at ease and he replied readily, without

thought or hesitation."Because I'm bad."

Her eyebrows raised into an inverted V. She wasn't so

surprised by his replay, as the innocence nature of his voice, as
if he was trying to satisfy himself. She took her time in
answering, knowing that his young mind would feed on what she
said. At length she decided to put the answer on hold.

"Why do you think that?"

He squrimed in his seat for a second, then words spilled out

of him, as if he was confessing to a priest. He told her about his
desire to go to Texas and become a cowboy, about sneaking on the
bus, about Fred, how he was always saying he was bad and how his
teachers always singled him out.

She listened attentively, never interrupting when in his

excitement he stuttered, nor helping when he stumbled over a word
he didn't know. For his part, he sensed for the first time he had
an attentive adult audience and put emphases on the hurt he had
carried with him. She felt his pain, especially when he talked
about Fred and wished she could reassure him that Fred was
fighting his own demons. She wished even more that she could
shake Fred by the shoulders and say: Wake up. Wake up. She also
recianized that the hurt would pass and that some of the hurt was
his own fault, due to his inexperience in life. The old adage that
time heals all wounds was never more apearnt to her. Especially
in the young, she thought.

In the end he said. "So I guess the lady knew I was bad."

"No, your not bad." she said, digesting what he had told
her."A bit precarious maybe."

Precarious sounded like a big word to him and his eyes,

rounded at the corners as they looked at her, said as much. She
saw this and said."curious and energetic."
 He sucked on his lips and nodded. His face light up and he
asked."Why could't I sit there."

From her years spent teaching, she knew that question was
coming back around, but she laughed anyway, tickled by the thirst
for knowledge in his voice. She had taught thousand of kids but
only a handful seemed to have that thirst, that search for the
truth. Excepting for himself, never had she seen it in one so
young as him. She subscribed this, and if fact had published a
paper on same, to planned medeocity, taught and foisted on the
populace by politicians, edacation and parents. Society depended
on a ladder system, each member occupying a rung. The higher a
person was, the better. The problem, as she saw it, was that
nobody bothered asking the people on the bottom what they
thought.

But she couldn't tell him all this, his young mind was
unable to assimilate such. So she took an extra moment to answer,
trying to phrase it so he'd understand."Because you are white and
in some places whites and blacks don't sit together. It's a rule
that stupid men made up to feel important."

"Why." was all he said, not understanding at all.

"Lets try this. Lets say that marbles are the most important
thing in the world. I have two and you have one. The other kids
see this. They also see that my marbles are shiny yellow cat eyes
and that you'sr is chipped and faded, worthless really, at least
as far as marbles go. Who do you suppose they will like more, you
or me."

His eyes light up as if a light had gone off in his

head."You"

He's seriously interested now, his fist on his chin.

"Right, now suppose that I, the person with the marbles is

in charge of the school yard. I make all the rules. Who gets to
stand where. What kids gets to play on the swings, what kid gets
to push other kids on the swings."

"You understand so far."

He nodded gravely, his fist on his chin, as if he was deep

in thought.
 "Good. Now, I, being the person with two marbles and the
person in charge, don't like you. Actually I am a little afraid
of you. You know why."

He shook his head, his eyes locked on hers.

"Because you are smart enough to at least have a marble,

pitted and cracked as it may be. The other kids don't have marbles
and will follow anybody who has them. So I have to make sure you
don't get more marbles. I do this by making you eat at the other
side of the school-yard, away from everybody else. This way you
begin to feel inferior, you lose the will to want new marbles.
Understand."

Shaun made a way face and said." Why don't I just go to the
store and buy new marbles. Only cost a quarter."
She laughed and patted him on the head, knowing that what she
had laid out would eventually sink into his mind."Why not indeed."

They talked some more. She about her daughter, he about

cowboys. When the bus arrived at the Nashville terminal, his
voice got low and he said he had to go hide in the back seat.

"Nonsense," she retorted.

"But," he persisted.

"But nothing,"she said."Your coming home with me and in the

morning you can continue your trip."

He thought about this for a second."You won't send me back?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."she promised.

"And stick a needle in your eye."He added.

"I won't go that far,"she said and ruffled his hair.

He laughed as she took his head. She collected her luggage

and he helped her carry it outside, dragging the biggest suitcase
to show he was strong. A light drizzle fell and she shooed him
under an awning, then waived her hand for a taxi. Several passed
them before one stopped. The driver, a short rotund man wearing a
straw stetson that thrilled Shaun, put the bags in the trunk,
then said in deep southern drawl." Where to mam?"
 Beth gave him her daughters address, then preceded to point
out the sights to Shaun. Whatever lingering misgiving he had
about the incident at the dinner evaporated as the cab moved
through the city. As was his way, he jumped from window to
window, even going so far as to press his lips against the glass
as he stared at everything she pointed out, his neck twisting and
craning. When they came to Elvis Preseys mansion, he was awed by
the flood lights streaming onto the white mansion, giving the
house a earer glow in the darkness. awe showed on his face as his
eyes got as big as silver dollars."One person lives there."he
exclaimed.

"After a fashion,"she replied.

At her daughters house, a rambling two story strutcher with

half moon shutters on the windows, Beths daughter, a slim girl of
twenty-two, flaming red hair and a zillion freckles on her face
and arms, took to him immediately. She interiduced him to Boots,
her furry feline roommate, then laughed as they both ran around
the house, first one chasing the other, then the other chasing
the one. An hour later, he was digging into a dinner of fried
chicken, mashed potatoes and black eyed peas, interested only in
the food he was spooning into his mouth. Beth was seated next to
him, listening to her daughter, Peg, punctuate every word with
enthusiasm, as she rambled on about the black people her school
group had sighed up for the voters registration drive.

Beth was understandable proud of her. She reginized that a

movement was underway in the country; a shifting of the way people
looked at things: Black and whites; nuclear arms, WOmens rights.
It was still a fledgling movement and would need brave people to
carry it forward. She was too old, her day had come and gone and
in that time she had always taken the unpopular road. But it was
time to pass the touch. Peg seemed ever to willing to accept that
challenge. She was studying Social science at Vasser and had
decided one night after hearing him talk on T. V. that John F
Kennedy was right: Ask not what your country can do for you but
what you can do for your country. So with zeal, she had canvassed
her friends to undertake a voter registering drive in Nashville.
despite a few friends laughing at her and saying things like:
Nigger lover, or trouble maker. She had convinced eighteen
people.

It was the blacks she talked about as they took coffee in

the living room. She was distressed at the squalor that was known
as' Coon Town.' The area was littered with two and three room
shacks; most without running water and or indoor plumbing. Yet
she was humbled by the residences hospitality, ever to willing to
share a scrap of food, or offer a tid-bit of information about
their roots or family history. Last, but not least, she was
furious at the quite dignity of the people in 'coon town.' They
seemed to accept there lot in life, believing almost one and all
that God would take care of them. Peg ended this rambling dilogue
by saying," I am going to 'coon town' tonight to try and register
up an elderly couple; the man is a decon in the local church. If
I can convince him, then I am sure that many others will follow
suit. Want to come with?"

Beth studied Peg, the echo of her voice ringing in her ears.
She wished she had an easy answer to her questions, just as she
wished he had an easy answer to Shauns questions on the bus. But
there were no easy answers, she knew.

"Love to,"she said.

So they collected Shaun, who was once again chasing Boots

around the house. As they drove to coon town, Beth thought about
the boy. Of course, she'd have to call his parents. They were
probably worried about him, or at least, if Shaun was to be
believed, his mother was. Fred, his step-father was another
matter. The question that concerned her most was whether he
should be allowed to continue his journey, or be sent back.

She was still grappling with the problem as they pulled up

outside a single story frame house with all but the most
persistent of the once brown paint hanging on. It was pitch black
out side, but in the shadows of the porch she could make out an
elderly black couple sitting on a swing hanging, vie link chains,
from the roof of the porch. As they approtched the porch, the
chains creaked as pastor Green raised himself up. His rich black
lips pulled back in a smile, exposing perl white teeth.

"How ya do'in, Miz Peg." Mrs and Mr Green sang out.

Mr Green was a tall man, lanky to a fault, much like Abeorham

Lincoln was. He kept a picture of Lincoln hanging over his bed
and liked to point out the resemblance every chance he got. Mrs
Green was a stout women with eyes that seemed to dance with an
inner live. They were the children of former slaves and had lived
their life by the simple principle: Be nice to people. He
preached this from his publit at the church and showed he believed
it by living his life such. From the first time he had met Peg,
he had allowed for her youth, her well intentions and his simple
principle. Thus he was happy to see her, despite the fact he knew
she'd be trying to get him to register to vote.

As Peg stepped onto the porch, she answered that she was
fine. She interduced them to her mother and Shaun. They exchanged
greetings; each passing on a mondum of goodwill. Mrs Green
offered to serve coffee. Her offer was graciously declined. Mrs
Green, having raised three sons, two daughters, four orphans, and
two foster kids, took Shaun by the hand and lead him to the
kitchen." Got me some home made nila ice cream, got's to find me
somebody to share it with."

He was more then willing.

Mr Green deferred to Peg and Beth, insisting they sit on the

swing while he stood. Peg, being young and although pure at
heart, stated to protest, more out of concern for Mr Greens age,
then anything else. Beth flashed Mr Green a look that said: She is
young and dose not understand tradition yet. He nodded
understandable as Beth pulled Peg down to the swings seat.

Peg immediately went into her sprel on why he should register

to vote. This took all of ten minutes and Mr Green listened
without introrupting. In the middle of this, Mrs Green and Shaun
had come back from the kitchen; Shaun slurping down a bowel of
Ice-Cream, Mrs Green studying her husband. She was of a mind to
register to vote, otherwise things would never change. Her
husband felt otherwise. If the white people in power proffered to
beat down the black man, thus selling their souls. Then so be it.
He would not do that. She had never openly question her husbands
decisions. And had no intentions of doing so now. Sometimes at
night, just them alone in the bed, she'd offer her ideas, or
outright say she thought he was wrong. Mr Green, for his part,
listened to her arguments, then gave it serious thought, for he
respected his wife. Usually in the course of the night he'd see
he point of view and in the morning give her a peck on the cheek
and thank her. This is what their marriage was based on. Each
oucupiing a place, each willing to defer to the other if proven
wrong without lose of face or mutual respect.

Mr Green saw his wife looking at him and smiled, knowing he

was in for a long night. He was not upset by this. The years had
been good. She to him, him, hopefully to her. Afterall the bible
did say that you took the good with the bad. Thats what makes a
life. Cut out the one, and a person had half a live. He just
wished he could convince the young people in his congregation of
that. Fast cars, biggers houses, younger women, were only half a
life. In the end, all a person had was the person next to them,
old or young, rich or poor. When the seat next to them on the
swing was empty, so was a life.

Beth was thinking much the same as Mr Green as she listened

to her daughter.

Shaun had no idea what she was talking about. All that
concerned him was the ice cream. It was good. It was really good.
It was the best ice cream he had ever tasted in his life. It was
even better then that. It was so good that he moaned to himself
as he spooned up the last bite. As he licked off the spoon he
looked up at them. Peg had finished her spreal. A question that
had bothered him for a long time entered his mind and he blurted
out."What is a nigger."

Everybody acted accordingly. Peg tried to sink into the swing,

her mouth open in horror. Mrs Green smiled, realizing it was a
question, not condemnation. Beth thought likewise. Mr Green just
laughed, a loud bloustrous laugh that he hadn't laughed since the
day his first born had asked: What is a white man.

Shaun's head swiveled from one to another. He wasn't sure what

was going on. An explanation was due and Beth looked at Mrs Green
who deferred to Mr Green. He snagged his thumps in his pockets of
his pants and gave it a moments thought.

"A nigger, young man,"he said in his best father to child

voice," is a person who acts in a low class manner because he
believes he is low class. He, in truth, can be black or white." In
the tradition of fathers everywhere who like hearing themselves
speak, he was going to add a few other words. But the truth in
what he said spread over his face and his mouth hung open. In a
heartbeat his mouth snapped shut and he said." A nigger is me.

except for Shaun, who once again had no idea what an adult was
talking about, an awkward silence fell over the porch. Mr Greed
broke the ensuring silence." I think tomorrow, we go register to
vote."

Peg uttered,"Bravo."

That night, Shaun lay in a strange bed, in a strange room. His

posters of Jan and Dean, the beach boys were, as far as he knew,
a thousand miles away. His sisters and parents were a million
miles way. He was at ease with himself. He didn't know why. And
didn't pursue same. After a while he fell into an easy sleep.

In the living room, Beth and Peg sat facing the fireplace;
the soft crackling of flames a pleasant company for their
conversation about Shaun. Peg, although elated that Mr Green had
decided to register to vote, was mystified by him.

"Afterall he is fourteen." she said," And he didn't just fall

onto the planet. He must of known what nigger meant."

Beth smiled at her daughter."No, he didn't just fall onto

the planet."

Peg nodded thoughtfully, then rose and kissed her mother on

the cheek.

"I'm bushed." she said." Sorry."

"You go to bed, I'll sit here for while."

She waited until Peg had disappeared into the bedroom before
turning back to the fireplace. At Mr Greens house, She made her
decision on the boy. He would go on in his quest. She would see to
that. She though about that now. After a while, she rose and
dailed the number she had coaxed from him. On the second ring, a
young womens voice filled the phone."Who."

"May I speak with Mrs Kinney."she asked.

There was a loud scream: Phone mom. Then a few seconds of

silence, then a womens voice." Yes."

"Mrs Kinny."Beth asked.

"Used to be, I'm now remarried."

Beth smiled to herself, thinking: Of course.

"Yes, of course."she said." I am calling in reforance to your

son Shaun. Don't be alarmed. He is fine. In fact he is sleeping
peacefully."

Donna had been alarmed at first. She took a deep calming

breath, relieved he was all right. The pause was so long that Beth
asked if she was still there.

"Yes,"Donna replied."Ever since he ran away, I'v been

worried. I'm glad to hear he's okay."

Beth scened a heastesty in Donna voice, almost as if she was

afraid to ask where Shaun had ended up. She supposed he had run
away before and was surprised she hadn't thought of that before.

"Has he ran away before."

Donna replied dolefuly."Twice. How far did he get this time."

"Nashville."She said, then explained how she had met him at

thief diner and what had followed since then. She took a pausing
breath and finished with." He is quite a remarkable boy."

Donna found herself chuckling at that." He made it as far as

Indnaplous last time. The police sent him back on the plane.I
can't afford..."Donna caught herself before finishing the
sentence."You must think that is an awful thing to say."

Beth said no and meant it."But I think you should let him
continue. School is out so he won't be hurt there. A few weeks of
traveling should tame the wonderlust in him. Then he will come
home."

There was a long pause as Donna gave what Beth said a

moments thought. One she didn't need. Truth was things had been
quite since Shaun had left. Fred had been more jovial, more like
his old self. The girls, although not saying anything, seemed
less on edge. As for herself, as much as she hated to admit it,
her concern was with the unborn baby. She could use some piece
and quite. Maybe in a month or two, Shaun could come back and
things would be like they were when he first came out of
Maryville.

She was overcome with immediate guilt at what she was

thinking. She fought back tears. An urge to justify herself filled
her and voice husky, she said." Maybe that's best. Him and my
husband don't get along."

Beth senced her discomfort at talking about this with a

stranger and assured her it was the best thing, then left her her
name, address and phone number in Boston." If there is anything I
can do, please don't hesitate to call."
 Donna thanked her for everything, then hung up.

Beth went to bed, her thoughts on Shaun. She hoped she was
doing the right thing. She planned on giving him her address,
insisting that he write her as he traveled. Part of her concern
was selflessness, she knew. She was lonely, which was why she had
come to Nashville to visit her daughter. It had been three months
since her husband had passed away. The fist month she had roamed
around the house touching objects he had used while alive: His
pipe, his typwriter, his favorite coffee cup, the towels with his
name stenciled on them. All this gave her comfort in a small way.
Almost as if he was still with her. She told herself she needed to
get on with her life. So she threw herself into her work, putting
in eighteen hours a day. It was during this period she found
herself crying for no reason. Her fits unnerved the Dean of her
department and he called her into his office. His voice was
caring and understanding as he suggested early retirement.
despite her resistance, he insisted. She went home that night
and packed all her husbands possessions into boxes, seven in all,
and carted them down to the basement to keep company with the
boxes of stuff that had once belonged to her parents. Then she
wrote a damning letter to the regents, ending with a petition for
reinstatement. Forty-seven people, including Hemingway and
Sinclair Lewis, signed the letter. She was reinstated the next
week.

But she needed to be needed. Peg was grown, and didn't need
her, not really. She freventy hoped the boy would relay on her.

She awoke with a start, the sun streaming into the bedroom
window, blinding her. The sun seemed to be on the wrong side of
the window then in her bedroom at her house in Boston and at
first she was disoriented, not quite sure where she was at.
slowly remembrance came to her, and she sat up, stifling a yawn
with her right hand. The events of the previous night came back to
her and she went to wake up Shaun. The bed was empty and she had
a start, thinking he had left. His voice came from the kitchen
and she smiled foolishly to herself.

She washed up, dressed and joined him and Peg at the kitchen
table. After breakfast, she explained to him that she was going
to put him on a bus bound for San Antiono. There was one catch.
He had to promise to write her about his travels. His brow
creased in worry at this." I don't spell very well,"he said.
 She quarried him on this. "Do words on books come out
backwards in your mind."

"I don't know," he answered truthfully.

She suspected that he suffered from a relitivetly new ponomans

that pyshcratic and researchers discovered affected the memorix
patters of the brain. She had recently completed a paper on the
disorder and knew a little about it's symptoms. She went to the
bookshelf in the den and extracted a book. She had him read a
paragraph. He read well, adding feeling to the words. Then she
read the paragraph herself. At last she chose several words,
asking him to penohics spell them. When he couldn't do this, she
asked him to phenicly pronounce them. Again he failed and she saw
that he was becoming flustered. She laid the book down. It was as
she suspected. He saw the words on paper, but when the brain
transmitted the word patters to his mind; vowels and verbs, they
were turned up-side down and inside out.

She felt that this was major cause of his troubles at school.
Teachers, she knew, refused to accept the findings of dislaxca.
The consensus was that deslayxa was an excuse. Students who were
bright learned, lazy students didn't. She made a mental note to
write his mother and explain this.

"Just write the words as you see them,"she said, kneeling

down in front of him."Do that for me?"

"Yes,"he said willingly.

She was struck by his willingness to please her and for a

second considered trying to adopt him. She rejected it
immediately. He had a family and besides he was hell bent on
going to Texas to see the Alamo.

The thought of adopting him lingered as she told him to pack

his bag. It wasn't until they were all in the car that she forced
the thought from her mind. In the finally analysis she was to old
to be a parent.

The ride to the bus station was done in silence, each, Beth,
Shaun and Peg keeping their thoughts to themselves. Pegs silence
seemed to be the most hostile as she kept throwing strange looks
at her mother. It truth, she was beside herself as she drove. She
couldn't believe her mother would do something as irresponsible as
send a fourteen year old runaway to Texas. Despite her pleas over
breakfast that there was laws against such things, Beth had been
adamant. As she pulled into the passenger loading zone, she shook
her head. The hell with it, let the kid go.

"I'll wait in the car,"she said. Then reached over the seat
and hugged Shaun."Have a nice trip."

Shaun found he was unable to speak and nodded. Him and Beth
stepped from the car and went into the station. As Beth purchased
the ticket, Shaun was unable to keep still. It seemed to him that
energy was building up in his body, aching to get out. So he
walked around the bus station; going from the ticket counter to
the carry out resturient at the far end by the exit. He did this
several times before Beth took his shoulder and lead him to the
boarding gate.

At the last moment, she had purchased a: See America, ticket.

It allowed for unlimited travel. She knelt down before him and
explained, pointing out the squared punch boxes that lined the
side of the ticket. "This ticket is good both ways. It will take
you there and back to Chicago, allowing you to get off the bus for
a day and then take a new bus. Each time you get on the bus, you
hand it to the driver. He will punch a box and hand it back to
you. It is good for sixty-days. Any questions."

He shook his head.

She had given him a hundred dollars on the ride to the

station and she asked if he understood what to do in case he
needed more money.

"Yes," he said in small voice." I call you in Boston."

She flinched at the sadness in his voice."Parting is such a

sweat sorrow," she whispered."Remember that."

With that she lead him to the bus. As he boarded, she bite on
her tongue to force back her tears.

She didn't have a crystal ball and didn't know it, but he
would write her for twenty-five years, clinging to her as the
only voice of reason in what he saw as a unreasonable world. For
her part, she would look forward to his letters, sencing his
moods by the first few words. At times she would cry at his
plight, at others she'd shout: Bravo. Toward the end of her life,
she would cling to his letters, much as he had clung to her,
especially when Peg was killed at Kent State. During this time,
he became the one light in her live that carried her through that
turmlosu period.

But that was far in the future. They both had a far distance
to go, over many roads, some bumpy, others peppered with danger.
One thing seemed preordained. They'd never again see each other
face to face.

Note: FOr SHauns part, he took to Beth, the way she seemed to be
genuinely interested in his answers, the way she smiled at him as
of he were a person.
 Chapter Six...
Shaun discovers that:
Parting is such a sweet-
sorrow.

Note: Clothes. SOcks. Makes fort in the back of the bus. Pretends
he's the caption. He looks a comical mess, the t-shirt wrapped
around his feet for socks. His jeans dirty. His hair all matted.
SHerrif buys him socks. Etc.

" The sun is shinning and it's a good day for a bus ride," So
said Jim Plummer, the Grayhound driver.

He had announced that an hour ago over the bus's

loudspeaker. Since then the bus had been speeding along
interstate forty on it's way to Little Rock Arkansas. Jim was a
veteran on this route and relished calling out each towns name;
snapping his voice on the vowels as to make him sound like a
pitchmen in a carnival. Columbia, Tennessee, came out,
ColumbIIIAAA. Jackson came out. JacksOOOOOn. Fancying himself an
entertainer, he did this to entertain the passengers. He also
broadcast the weather as the information came over his C. B. and
told knock knock jokes.

In this manner, the bus sped on, Jim keeping the passengers
in stitches. Such was Shauns sorrow at leaving Beth that in that
time he had not moved from his seat, nor taken his gaze off the
back of the seat in front of him. Even the driver's antics went
unnoticed. He felt alone. But this wasn't the alone he had
expearacned in his walk to Hammond, or when he was crying in his
room at home after Fred had beat on him. Nor was it the alone he
felt at school, the teachers and the other students laughing at
him. This was an alone in a separate category. A new alone, one
that he didn't understand.

As he excamined this new alone, he realized strangely

enough, he wasn't lonely. That was the fist time in his young
life he consciously aware of a difference between being alone and
being lonely. He thought about that, his mind repeating the
phase: Parting is such a sweet-sorrow. After a time he worked out
that leaving Beth was sorrow. But that going to Texas was sweet.

At last he accepted his thoughts and smiled to himself. From

that moment on, he gave little thought to Fred, his mother or
Beth. (And none to his sisters.) This was not done as a grown-up
might; waving off family and friends with a slight of the hand.
He kept them in the back of his mind; his journey foremost in his
mind. And what a journey it was. To him the knights of the round
table had never traveled so far into such a feared and twinkling
unknown. Cowboys, bandanaes around their necks, had never ridden
so far; kicked up so much dust. Pirates, the jolly roger waving
over head, had never sailed the seas he was sailing. Never mind
that thousands, nay millions had traveled the roads the bus took.
Never mind that men and women had given blood sweat and tears to
lay down the pavement. Never mind that before their was even
pavement, settlers had coaxed unwilling horses and rickety wagons
across the earth under the bus's wheels. Never mind that before
their were settlers, Indians followed the seasons, migrating
toward the warmer climate in the winter, and retracing the route
in the spring.

He was the first. Truly in his mind, the towns and the people
were paved with gold. The gold of the unknown...

Jim was telling a knock, knock joke and Shaun moved to the
front on the bus as to hear better. He gave Jim the answer as to
why the chicken knocked on the hen house door and Jim took one
look at him and said loudly." A future bus driver."

Shaun glowed under the prayse.

From that point on, Jim took him under his wing, even going
so far as to let him steer the big bus as they drove...

The hours sped by...

...It was noon, the sun twelve o'clock high, when the bus
stopped for a half hour in Memphis. Shaun clutched a hot dog in
both fists, as he watched a man with a beard singing Elvis's 'you
ain't nothing but a hound dog. The man had a big old hound dog,
floppy ears the size of a Jan and Dean Album, on a leash.
Ahooooooo, The dog howled as the song ended, the tin cups for
donations that were attatched to it's dogs ears, rattling. He
giggled and pressed a dime in the cup. The dog howled
Arooooommmm, in thanks...

...Shadows had began to creep across the road and it was

late afternoon when the bus pulled into Brinkley, Arkansas. He
watched a group of men circled around two fighting cocks. As the
cocks went at each other, feathers flew and the men cheered and
booed. Something inside him didn't like this and he turned away,
going back to the bus. From the window he watched the men...

...An hour outside of Little Rock, Jim got everybody singing:

Old McDonald Had A Farm. The bus was filled to capicity; mostly
farmers and their wifes, so the harmony was a bit husky on the
'Old McDonald' had a cow, and a bit high on the ' E I E I O'
After the singing a jug and home fried chicken was passed around.
An girzzled old guy everybody referred to as Pop, coaxed Shaun
into taking a sallow. The corn whiskey started a fire in his
throat and he gagged choking it back up and spraying it in a
stream at the floor. Everybody laughed, including him...

...It was dinner time by the time they reached Little Rock.
It was here that Shaun was feeling a bit cocky and almost got
stomped on. He saw an old black women, looking like she stepped
off an Aunt Jamima syrup bottle, step off the sidewalk so a young
white men could pass her. It wasn't her color that rilled him so
much as the knowledge white knights always stepped off the curb
for women, or lay their shields across puddles and tipped their
hats. So Shaun thought this was rude. He called to the guy, his
voice carrying:" Hey guy, you should have stepped off the curb
and let the women pass."

The guy, a member of the K. K. K., was suddenly angry. He

spun on his heels, intending to give whoever had spoken to him a
piece of his mind. He took one look Shaun, thought: Runt, and
kept walking.

Jim had seen this and patted him on the head as he ushered
him aboard the bus...

...It was late early evening as they pulled into Pescott

Arkansas. It was here that Shaun got derailed from the bus.
Drivers had been changed and the new guy didn't know that Shaun
was going onward. Shaun was playing pinball game in the terminal
and having so much fun he didn't notice his bus leave. This
bothered him not one wit. He knew that his ticket was good for a
month and could be used at any Grayhound terminal. So he walked
around the town until he got tried. He returned to the bus
station, checked to see what time the next bus heading toward
Texas was leaving and discovered one didn't leave until morning.
It had grown dark out, so he decided to stay around the bus
station until then. He ate three hot dogs, then climbed into the
back of a fifty-six Ford parked in the lot. He was sleeping
soundly, dreaming of Captions and Kings when the roar of the cars
moter startled him awake. Before he could cry out, the car was
moving. He hadn't expected this and was too afraid to say
anything. So he lay there, his heart beating as the car continued
onward. A half hour later, he saw from the rear window that dawn
was inching up over the western part of the sky. An hour after
that, the car came to a halt. Still he said nothing, actually
holding his breath in antisapation of being caught. Then he head
three sounds: The moter coughed once then fell silent. That was
followed by the cranking of the emergency brake being set. Last
was the slamming of the door. He counted to twenty, then sat up.

He was a few miles, as the crow flys, outside the Texarkana

boarder, but he didn't know that. All he saw was a farm house, a
few cows grazing in a pasture and a dog tied to a tree. A big
dog. He slid out the passenger side and began walking on the
highway, one eye on the dog. An hour later he was thinking it was
hot as heck when he came to a cliff overlooking a lake. Trees
surrounded the lake and kids were standing on the cliff, their
bare asses glistening in the sun, their arms raised, as they ran,
propelling themselves over the cliff. A whoosh of a splash as
they hit the water, a scream and they were swimming for the bank,
ready to jump again.

His youth took over and he ran to the ledge, his legs pumping
up and down. Once there he quickly stripped, leaving only his
socks on. The whites of his buttocks shinned like the moon as he
propelled himself over the ledge. Water splashed high over him as
he sank, his socks stripping off his ankles and feet from the
downward force of the water.

He gave this no thought and swam to the bank, ran up the

cliff and jumped again. Splash. Swim to the bank, run to the cliff
and jump again. Splash, run, top of cliff, Jump. It was late
afternoon, and the sun was beginning to peak over the cliff by
the time he grew tired.

He found a old tee-shirt in the weeds and ripped it in two,

wrapping each piece around his feet in place of socks. Then he
dressed, pressed his wet hair back so it was slick and not falling
in his eyes and continued up the road. He was hungry and hoped a
town would emerge over the roads crest soon. As he walked cars, a
few pickups and a school bus passed him, each honking the horn in
greeting. He waved, his walking steady. The highway swooped to a
crest, fell down to a hollow, stretched out for miles, then
swooped up to a crest once again. Fields came and went; cows
mooed and he mooed back. Everyone and then a barn would have an
advertisement painted on. There seemed to be an order to the
advertisements, coming in sequence. First there was Red Man
CHewing Tobacco. Next came KING TUT cotton. Then came: Good Earth
Fertilizer; the mix with D.D.T. Feeds The Earth While it kills
the Boilweavel and Tobacco bugs. He took to reading the
Advertisements out loud, ryming them in squeance. Red man wears
the cotton, Good Earth kills the bugs.

Soon reading the advertisements got boring and he started

singing the lyics to Green Sleeves: Come come to a wondrous land.
But still no town emerged. He soon grew tired of walking, his
legs cramping up. He paused on his hunches, dejected and
frightening by the sounds of crickets chirping in the grass. At
last a big red Buick stopped, pulling along side him. He was
hunched so low to the ground that all he saw was a hand motioning
for him to get in. He did so gladly, pulling the hevay door of
the Buick shut. On the seat next to him was a pair of cotton
panties, the kind his sisters wore. Next to the panties was a
black bra, and next to the bra was a paperback book; a naked
women gracing the cover, her hands covering her vergine.

Shaun glanced at all this with little, or no interest.

The driver, Sue Frtze, looked at him, disappointment in her

eyes. She was a plump women of thirty-six with dull brown eyes
and duller blond hair. When she was younger she had a lively
mouth. But lately she had a permnot pout on her lips, almost as
if life was cruel. And perhaps it was. Ted, her husband was an
over-the-road truck driver, gone from home three weeks a month.
During his absence she got this itch that began a few inches
below the belly button. She fought the itch by furiously cleaning
house; even going so far as to scrub the floor with a tooth brush.
When the itch became to much, she'd flop down on the bed, imagine
her fingers were Clark Gabel and masterbate the itch. But dammit,
CLark never satisfied the itch for long. He just fed the itch a
snack. By then the itch wanted a meal, and she'd give in and
drive around the back roads and highways, searching for men
hitchikings to scratch her itch.

"Oh'shit, it's just a boy,"she muttered, unable to concel her

frustration. Shaun had looked much older sitting along side the
road. But then she was playing with the itch, and really hadn't
given him to good a look.

"Give me a ride into the next town,"he asked.

 She stared at him queerly, her free hand under her dress,
stroking, rubbing, stroking. He saw all this but thought nothing
except his desire to reach a town. So he repeated his request.
Such was the force of her itch, that for a second, she considered
pulling off the road, rolling his pants down and doing it. JUST
DO IT.

She moaned at the thought, something that came out a sigh,

her hand now sticky under her cotton dress. BUT SHE COULDN'T JUST
DO IT. SHE NEEDED A HOT ROD. ONE THAT WOULD POUND AWAY AT HER FOR
HOURS. NOT A YOUNG ROD LIKE THE JERKS IN HIGH-SCHOOL HAD. ONE
PUMP AND A SQUIRT AND IT'S OVER.

She came and her eyes clouded over."Yes, she whispered."I'll

take you into the next town."

At the excitement in her voice, Shaun felt an excitement

pass through him and his penis stirred. His eyes, prevosly on the
road ahead, fell to the bulge her hand was making under her
dress. For the first time in his life he consenoly wondered if a
women did the same thing that he did when he masterbated. He also
wondered if a women had a pee-pee.

The latter confused him as he had never seen his sisters

without underware on. So he contemplated this, his eyes straying
to the naked women on the paperback book for some kind of
conformation. She had big, big, breasts, like his sisters, but
her hand covered her crotch, hiding what lay under there.

As he thought about this, confusing rambert in his head, his

penis stirred and stirred. By the time they got to the next town,
a bulge filled his pants. Sue glanced at him, wanting to ask
where to drop him. She saw the bulge and her eyes perked up, her
mouth fell open and the itch within her stirred. Dammit, she
thought, the beast was back. Now she would have to go find a HOT
ROD after all.

"WHere do you want off," she asked, voice husky.

"Grayhound station,"he said, his mind begging his pee-pee to

soften before he got out of the car. Otherwise it would strain
against his pants, embrassing him.

She brought the car to stop outside a Skelly Station and

pointed at the sign in the window: Grayhound. He thanked her and
stepped out, his body hunched so his pee-pee wouldn't show to
much. She kept an eye on him until he disappeared into the
station. Regeatfully she drove away. With a dong that big she
should have taken him into the woods and fucked his brains out.

She held that thought as she drove. Two miles up she saw a
farmer hitchiking. She stopped and he got in, took one look at
the panties on the seat and smiled a shit eating grin. She pulled
off into a bank of trees, turned to him and grinned like a shark
grinning at a lone bather. Two hours later he stopped at his
local watering hole and gingerly mounted a stool, ordered a Dixie
beer and moaned out loud. "This bitch just about fucked my brains
out."

Shaun knew none of this. Once inside the Skelly station he

fidged, his feet dancing under him, still trying to make his
penis go soft. He stuttered as he asked the old man behind the
counter when the next bus heading toward San Antonal was. The
ticket agent was eighty-six and looked a hundred and six. He had
been catching a cat nap and opened his eyes, peering at Shaun. As
if he was rallying all his stringht, the old guy raised a hand,
scratched his chin, then let the hand fall into his lap. In a
drect monatone, he spoke through a yawn." Only one bus stops here
a day and that be in ten minutes. Heading for Longview Texas. You
can transfer to anywhere you want in the whole Us of A. Fourteen
dollars...One way."

Things were stirring inside Shaun and he just thanked him,

which he knew was rude and without showing him his ticket and
rushed off to the bathroom. He locked himself in a stall and
looked at his throbing penis. Such was the fresh scent of Sue's
animal lust that As soon as he touched it, semen squirted out.

He had no idea of what he was feeling. He cleaned up the

mess and meekly went outside to await the bus. Once he was on and
the bus on the way, he through about the women. He decided there
was more to the opsist sex then he knew. The thought slipped away
into the willo-wisp of his dreams, his eyes folding closed. When
he next opened them, the women and the incident was forgotten. He
was in Texas. He knew this to be true. He didn't know how he knew
it, he just felt it in his bones; a kind of swooning feeling; a
knowadge that he was close to his dream.

He sat up, rubbing his fist against his eyes and stared out
the window as the bus rolled on. After a minute, his heart
beating in his chest, he made his way to the front of the bus.
The driver, a big hulk of a man looked at him quizzenly. He tried
speaking, but all that came from his mouth was a stutter. After
several trys he rushed out in a single breath."Are we in Texas."

The driver, a fan of westerns, reginised a fellow western fan

and wiped a paw across his mouth, and drawled out." Ya know it
pardner."

Shaun was beside himself as he made his way back to his seat.
For the rest of the way into Longview he sat mesmerized by
everything wizzing by on the highway. admittedly, the scenery
didn't look a lot different from Arkansas and he reasoned that
was because they wern't far enough into Texas. Soon, he thought,
they'd be riders on horse back driving longhorns across the
plans. His Texas Journey began when he stepped off the bus
at Longview. Although he hadn't seen any longhorn cattle or
riders on horseback, he was expecting to see horses milling about
outside the station, men with tall hats walking the wooden
sidewalks and a sheriff standing tall, his hands draped over twin
six-shooters. Instead he was faced with pavement and worst of all
men in suites. Sure the men wore stetsons. But Suits.

In that moment all his hopes and dreams came crashing down
around him. His shoulders slumped in, his eyes looked downcast. He
took a step, crushed. He had come all this way to be a cowboy. To
show Fred and the others that he was as good as them.

He sat down on the sidewalk, folded his arms over his legs
and cried.

Across the street an officer eyed him suspiciously from the

window of his squard car. The officer set his burroto lunch down
on the seat and got out of the car. He angled toward Shaun. To
him, this kid looked like a runaway.

"What's up pardner,"the officer said, his Texas drawel heavy

on the: Pardner.

Shaun raised his head, his face tearstained, his eyes

red."Leave me be."

The officer had seen many runaways smiled at this. They all
said the same thing, in the same dejected voice."C'mon, lets go
for a ride, parder."

Shaun was so crestfallen he went without further argument. The

ride to the station was done in silence, as he was unable to bear
looking out the window. The station was busy; men and women
wearing guns that looked to him to be six-shooters, heads wearing
stetsons and voice shouting out orders and asking questions in
long Texas drawels, the kind he was used to hearing at the
movies. This perked him up a bit.

As two juvenile officers lead him to an office, placing him on

a stool that faced a window, he began to think maybe things were
not so bad after all. By the time a popsickle was stuck in his
hand, he had decided to go on.

He thought: Remember the Alamo. Then added: The Alamo or

bust.

He smiled.

Officer Ted Stratton looked up from the report they were

typing. He had SHauns possessions laid out on his desk. ninety-
dollars cash and the bus ticket. Both told him nothing. "Where
you from boy?"

Shaun thought about the question for a second. If he told the

officer where he was from they would send him back just like the
Indnapolis police.

"Not telling,"He said.

"Whats your name then."

"Not telling."

And so it went. Two hours of Officer Stratton asking where

he was from. Two hours of Shaun holding quite. Officer Phil Dodds
had joined in, hoping to play good cop bad cop with Shaun. Thus
Dodds offered another popsickle, while Stratton yelled,"No more
sweets for him. At least not until he talks."

Shaun held fast, saying a minamum of words.

Texas Ranger, John Wesley Harden the IIII had been in the
room going over wanted posters. He was a desended of John Wesely
Harden, the notorious gunfighter of the late eighteen-hundreds.
He didn't usually deal with kids, after all he was a Texas Ranger.
He laughed as the city cops questioned the kid, thinking the kid
was to stubborn for them. Hell, he knew what stubborn was. His
horse was stubborn, his wife was stubborn, his dog was stubborn.
So when he leafed through the last poster, he stood up to his
full height of Six-four. Towering over Shaun, he boomed,"I am a
Texas Ranger, boy. If you don't tell these men where your from,
I'll throw you in the slammer for, why forever."

Shaun's tongue paused on the popsickle he was licking on. Hi

bottom lip trembled at the thought of forever in jail. But he
managed to stammer out,"I won't."

John Wesely Harden the IIII, face darkened. He tried the same
threat again. Got the same response. He tried being nice. Got the

same response. He saw the other two cops were getting a kick out
of his predicament and was sorry he had gotten involved. He had
better things to do. After all he was a Texas Ranger, not some
dim-witted street cop. But he was stuck and knew it. If he didn't
crack the kid, he'd be the laughing stock of the station for, why
forever.

He had a long handelbar mustache and smoothed the corners

between his thump and forefinger. Shaun watched this, impressed at
the sernious of the action. John noticed this and smiled. That
was his intent. The kid was a cowboy fan, he knew that by the
litter Shaun had reveled by asking where all the horses and
cowboys were. By Shauns accent, he reckoned the boy was from
somewhere up north. Pittsburgh; Cleavland, St Louis. Maybe even
Chicago. He decided to take a chance on goarding the boy into
making a mistake.

He circled around Shaun, his head nodding, his thumbs hooked

on is gun-belt. "Well boys, I think this little sawed off runt is
from St. Louis. Yep, that's what I think."

"Em not,"shaun shot out.

"Or Cleavland."

"Em not."

"Or maybe even Pittsburgh."

"Em not."

"Or that cesspoll, Chicago."

"Em not."
 "You a liar boy!"
"If am a liar, then so are you,"shaun shot back, his face
puffed out in anger. Didn't this Texas ranger know anything, he
thought. Why calling a man a liar was the worst thing another man
could do.
John Wesely Harden was a cowboys cowboy and believed the
same thing. He was instently stunned, not instantly his own ears.
In his twenty-years as a Texas Ranger, only one man had called
him a liar and he had shot hit. Shot him dead. He reached over
and and bunched up SHuans shirt in his fist and lifted him off
the chair until his feet dangled a few inches off the floor.

"No man calls me a liar boy."He groweled,"Take it back or am

gonna chuck you out the window."

His feet wiggling under him, Shaun was dully scared to shit.
He looked to the other cops for help. They shrugged, unsure if
John Wesley was playing or serious.

"Well runt,"John Wesley said.

"No,"shaun rushed out in a single breath,"If em a liar then

so are you."

John Wesley Harden slowly lowered him onto the stool, lifted
his right hand and thoughtfully fingered the corners of his
mustache. It was a habit he had gotten into whenever he had found
himself, in the diction of the Texas Rangers, outgunned. All at
once his eyes light up and he laughed.

"Your all right boy. But you're still a liar. Your're from
one of them cities."

Shaun's lips were pulled back in a pout, but he said

nothing. A part of him realized he was a very lucky boy.

"I'll tell you what I'll do,"john wesely continued." You got
grit, so if you tell me where your're from, I'll call your
parents and tell them that your continuing onward, just you and
that go-every-were ticket you have. Deal."

"Got your word on that,"SHaun asked cautiously.

"Sure parnder."
 Shaun again looked at Phil and Ted. They looked back in
amusement. As far as they were concerned, it was John Wesley play
and they were not going to queer it.

Shaun flashed a grin and told where them he was from, even
supplying his phone number. John Wesely Harden was true to his
word and twenty minutes later Shaun was on a bus for San Antoine.
As soon as Shaun left the station, Phil and Ted were on the
phone to every law enforcement officer for a thousand miles. To
each they said." John Wesley done got gunned out gunned.

A legend was in the making.

As the bus sped on, day gave way to night. Shaun stared out
the window, his legs pressed tight to keep them from cramping.
The nights darkness rushed back at him and all he could make out
was the bus's headlights wizzing by the oblique shadows that
played off the tumbleweeds that rested aside the road.

He settled back in his seat and went back to listening to the

Grayhounds tires slap at the blacktop. The sound was a continues
hum, dreamily reminding him of home. suddenly the bus's high
beams came on, opening up miles of blacktop ahead. He leaned
forward, staring out the drivers window. A silver nameplate
glowed in the bus's headlights: Chevrolet Biscayne. Under that was
a flicker of a blue hood, followed by a chrome grill.

He thought for a second that the car was Freds car. His heart
quickened and for a second he was sure his parents were in the
car. The Texas license plates beneath the grill arrested the
thought and he turned away.

He sighed and looked past the man sprewled on the window seat
next to him. A snore burped from the man's nostrils and blackness
glared off the side window.

He started crying, his loneyness to much for him to bear. He

cried himself to sleep. He awoke to the driver announcing they
were in San Antonio.

He was bone weary as he departed the bus. He paid the several

pinball games in the terminal no mind and went outside. He saw by
a lighted clock on a church steeple that it was midnight. He was
hungry and tired, but he had come all this way to see the Alamo
and wasn't about to quite now.
 He started walking, asking question of the people he came
across. His legs felt like lead weights when at two am, he turned
a corner. Before him lay an abode church, a brick fence
surroundings it. His eyes light up and he started running, his
legs pumping up and down. He came to a stop at the gate to the
church, his eyes falling on the sign above him: Welcome to the
Alamo. Sorry closed for repairs.

He was more crestfallen then he had ever been in his life. He

had come all this way to see cowboys, Indeans, longhorn steers
and the Alamo. All for naught.

He fell to his knees, to exhusted to go on, to worn out to

cry, and stared at the sign.

Harry Altmen saw Shaun kneeing there from a block away. At

first he thought it was one the Tex-Mexs was drunk and had
mistaken the ALamo for a church and was praying. He was the
caretaker for the Alamo and had seen this happen on many
occasion.

As he got closer he realized it was a boy. He guessed Shaun

to be about Ten, eleven. He smiled at this, in a wery sort of
way. He had been lonely all week and had gone out crusing, hoping
meet another homosexual man like himself. But nobody had been out
and he had decided to call it a night.

He smiled as he approtched Shaun, thinking the Gods must be

smiling on him."What'ja doing, fella."

Shaun looked up, startled." The Alamo is closed."

"Want to go inside."

"You mean..." Shaun answered, his eyes aglow.

"Follow me."

Shaun fell into step behind him, fidging as the gate was
unlocked. Harry locked the gate and guided him to a brass plage
attached to the wall of the Alamo. The plage told the story of
the Alamo, Shaun read it, his eyes falling on ever word. He
raised his hand in a slaute as he read the names of the men who
had died there: Colonel Travis, Jim Bowie; Davey Crockett.

At last Shaun said,"Can we go inside."

 "Who's your favorite person on the list."

"Davey, Davey Corckett," shaun sang out.

"Want to spend the night in the room he slept in."

Shaun couldn't believe his luck. His mouth opened, but the
words stuck in his throat.

Harry laughed and took his hand in his. He showed him around
the Alamo, pointing out the bullut hole in the walls, where
Colner Travis fell, where Davy, Davey Corcket stood his last
stand and where Jim Bowie gave his last fight. Shaun gushed at
all this, treating everything like it was the shrine at Lords.
Better really, he thought.

Harry finely lead to his room. He explained that he was the

careteker and that he chose this room because it was where Davey
Crockett had slept.

Shaun pointed at the bed against the far wall."Is that the
same bed?"

Harry was an honest man."No, still Want to spend the night

anyway."

"You bet!"

Harry showed him where the bathroom was, giving him a towel
to dry with after he showered. Shaun said he didn't need to
shower, he had bathed a few days ago in a pond.

"No shower, no sleep in Davy Corcketts room," Harry insisted.

"Oh all right,"Shaun conceded.

Harry smiled, giving him a spare toohbrush to brush his

teeth with."Teeth to."

"Oh all right."

Harry undressed down to his boxer shorts and got into bed,
pulling the cover over him. on the only light in the room. Two
minutes later, Shaun got in the bed and Harry turned off the
light, sending the room into darkness. He saw by the proturusion
in the blanked that Shauns penis was hard and long.

He gasped to himself as Shaun stared at him, embarrsemt on

his face. Harry knew he'd hate himself in the morining, but
touched Shauns penis. Semen spurted out. He realized immediately
that he had a young man who was on the cutting edge of publity.
That he was entering a strange new world of which he didn't
understand.

"That didn't bother you did it."

Shaun thought about the man in the Grayhound station. This

man seemed nice like the other."No,"he said.

Scooting down, Harry placed his mouth over Shauns penis.

Shauns body stiffened and semen spurted out. SHaun moaned. Harry,
racked with moans of plesure, moaned himself. Harry guided Shauns
hand to his own penis. Shaun stroked it, as if it was his own.
Exciement grew within him as Harry's penis grew in his hand.
Harry urged him his to place his mouth on his penis, like he had
to him. Shaun did so, his lips barley big enough to fit over the
head. Harry waited until he was going to come, then pulled out of
Shauns mouth, his penis spraying semen almost to the ceiling.

Harry lay still, his eyes closed, his body narcatized.

After several minutes his eyelids flutterd and he looked
Shaun."Your wonderfull he said."

Shaun beamed, not able to remember the last time an adult

had told him he was wonderfull.

"Come lay next to me and go to sleep."

Shaun curled up next to him, his buttocks resting against

Harrys Penis. Immdeditaly he fell asleep, a soft puring sound
escaping his lips.

Harry strocked Shauns hair, a feeling of love pouring though

him for the boy. He knew the boy was a runnaway by his accent and
wished he could let him stay for a few days. He sighed. That
wasn't possable. They hung men like him in Texas.

He put his arm around Shaun, snuggling close. He was afried

to go to sleep, afreid all this would be a dream. So he stayed
awake, his gaze on Shauns back. The morning light found him still
awake. At ten a few tears escaped his eyes and rolled down his
cheeks.

He brushd them away with a finger and gently shook

Shaun."Let's go fella, wake up."

Shaun stirred and Harry shook him again. Shaun's eyes opened
and Harry filted in, an image of fuzzyness."Hi,"he said.

"Wake up,"Harry answered,"I'll make you breakfest."

Harry took one look at the size of Shaun's penis and knew
that breakfeast would wait.
Shaun was dressed now, seated at the kitchen table, and
spooning oatmeal into his mouth. As he ate, he asked as naturally
as a boy might ask to go to the bathroom, why Harry had pulled
his pee-wee out of his mouth before spraying.

Harry put down his coffee cup, struck by Shauns innacents.

He didn't tell Shaun that once a person got a taste for semen,
they hunted it all their life's, be they male or female. He
didn't know why this was. But for all he knew the boy might be
hetosexual, not homosexual. He silenty wished the former on the
boy. Being gay was too risky, to unsettling "That's something
you'll learn as you grow older."

Shaun accepted the answer and continued eating. Harry asked

him where he was from and he answered readely."Chicago. I came
here to be a cowboy and see the Alamo."

"The cowboys are all gone,"Harry answered wistfully. He had

come to Texas from New York City six years ago for the same
reason. He had thought at the time that being a cowboy, working
on the range all by himself, was the only cure for his desise
called homosexualtty. After kicking around, doing odd jobs for
pocket change, he had taken the job as caretaker of the Alamo. He
had been here for two years and it was during that time that he
had discovered there was no cure and there realy was no reason to
be ashamed. He was only twenty-six himslf and didn't partickly
relish sleeping with young boys. He wanted a lover, same as he
did when he thought he was hetrosexual. His only problem was that
homosexual men were scarce in Texas.

After breakfest, Harry explained that the Alamo was closed

for two months, due to expensive renavation. And that Shaun, as
much as he liked him, could not stay there." My boss would be
upset.
 This was true.

Only for a second did Shaun consider this. He realy hadn't

planned on spending more then a day at the Alamo."That's okay. I
want to see the rest of Texas. There must be cowboys somewhere."

"Good idea,"Harry seconded.

He gave Shaun another quick tour of the Alamo before taking

him to the bus depot. On the way, it was decided that Shaun
should go to El Paso.

"You can't get into Mexico,"Harry explained,"But El Paso is

almost the same and there are some real cowboys there, Mexican
cowboys anyway."

Shaun nodded and Harry checked on the next bus leaving for
EL Paso, then waited with Shaun unitl the bus arrived. He gave
Shaun twenty dollars, wishing he had more. Shaun waved goodbye to
as his bus pulled out of the terminel.

Harry smiled, a tear in his eye as the bus pulled out of the
terminal. He went back to the Alamo. For the rest of the day he
moped around: Dusting, checking on the progress of the
renovations; fielding phone calls on when the Alamo would reopen.
Toward five, he got bored and went for a walk.

An hour later, he found himself at the train station. He

purchesed a ticket for New York City. During his walk, he had
decided he could no longer live a lie. A gaity filled him at
this desision and he danced back to the Alamo and packed his
meager possiens. Two hours later he was on a train bound for New
York.

He thought: I feel so gay.

He was in New York six months when he decided to stop hiding

his homsexualty. He figured there must be thousand of homsexuales
in New York, all hiding and all feeling persacuted like him. He
ponderd this, more out of a sense of lonyness. He decided to
start an orgenzation for homosexual men, the first of it's kind
in America. He remembered the gaity he felt at leaving Texas and
ten seconds later thought of a name for his organzation. He'd
call it: Gay rights. He vowed that the members of his orngaztion
would never sleep with childern.
 He didn't know it then, but he had coined a word that years
later knocked at the very walls of America's conscinness.

He did know that he owed a dept to a little kid who had spent
the night with him at the Alamo. He silenty wished Shaun well
that night, and everynight for the rest of his life. In nineteen
eighty-two he would die of ADS. On his death bed he'd be
comforted by his live in lover and by two thoughts. The first was
that he lived to see his vow realty. According to Time Magizine,
more hetrosexuals slept with childern then gays. The second was
a last thought of Shaun.

Once agian, Shaun knew none of this. He thought Harry for the
first twenty miles of the bus ride. from out of nowhere, a
torernecel rain fell, pounded on the bus's windows. The bus shook
from the wind and Shaun, without fear for he knew nothing about
torandos, imaginied he was a viking. He was Thor, the god of
thunder...

Write like you have been: Afterall this time, he didn't feel
like...Don't worry or be afreid. Be happy...
 Chapter Seven...

...Fourteen hours later, he was a tiny figure standing on

the center line of the highways cold dark pavement. The moon
above dusted him with moonbeams and scary things made hissing and
chriping sounds along side the highway, frightening him beyond
belief.

He had gotten off the bus at El Paso. Immidelaty the sherrif

had stopped him. When he found out that he was the kid who had
outgunned John Wesely Harden, he offered to let Shaun spend the
night in the jail and go on his way in the morining. Shaun was
having none of this and said no so many times that the shierrif
thougt he was hearing a recording. Still, Shaun kept saying no.
The Sherrif got pissed off and said," Fine. I'll just take you
out to the highway and you can make your way from there."

That seemed okay to Shaun.

Then.

Now he wasn't so sure. He thought that maybe he should have

taken the sherrif up on his offer. There were strange things
going bump in the night out there and he didn't like that.
Besides the sherrif had warned him that rattlesnakes liked to
curl up along side the highway at night. They sought the heat of
the pavment is what he said.

He continued walking down the center line, his eyes darting

to both sides of the road. Several times he thought he had
spotted a rattlesnake and started running, not stopping untill he
was out of breath.

He was on the verge of tears when a pickup came down the

road, it's headlights shinning on him. He stood his ground in the
middle of the road and flagged his arms up.

It was midnight and Tom Hitchcock, his reading glass's

wrapped around his ears, wasn't quite sure he was seeing what he
was seeing. He had just seen a vampire movie and for a second
thought perhaps the kid outside his window was a vampire and
having his blood sucked out didn't apeal to him. As he thought
this, the pick-up rushed at Shaun, then it appeared to him that
Shaun, all fuzzy in the headlights, rushed at the turck. He
swerved, running the tires on the shoulder of the road and sped
around him.

"By golly that's no vampire, that's a kid,"he said aloud.

He pumped the brake, then pressed it down, bringing the truck

to a screetching halt along the side the road. Aperhanson clouded
him as he waited for the door to open. It wasn't that he was
afried. He was the county sherrf and often boasted to the boys at
the Lazy K saloon, that he wasn't afried of anything. But
vampires were something else. He felt a sigh of relief swim
though him, one he'd never admit to the boys at the lazy K, as
Shaun opened the door and slid onto the seat.

"What ja doing out here in the middle of nowhere this time

of night,"Hitchock asked annoyedenly.

It was so dark in the pick-up that Shaun had to squint to

make out Hitcocks fethers.

"SHerrif in El Paso left me there,"he replied.

He digested what Shaun said as he pulled the pick-up onto

the road, bringing the speed up to nintey. After a few miles he
laughed, big bloustous laugh that rocked the pick-up."You must
be Shaun McKinny. The kid who shot down John Wesley?"

"Yes." Shaun answered in a tiny voice, afreid of this man.

He saw Shauns fear and said, his voice soft."Don't you know
who John Wesly was. Who Willem Bounty was."

"No,"Shaun said in a voice smaller then before.

Hitchock laughed agian, then explained, his voice gravely

from the three packs of Camels he smoked a day, that John Wesley
Harden was a desended of the famus gunfighter, Willem Bounty was
a desended of Billy the Kid. When he finished, he held his hand
out, a big paw in the darkness of the truck. Shaun shook it
heastatenly.
 Bill saw a way to get back for years of abuse at the hands of
Harden and Bounty. He had a runing fued with Wesely and Bounty.
They were constenly bragging how they were the best lawmen in
Texas, due to the fact they were desened from real gunmen, not a
showman like Wild Bill. "Em Bill Hitchock, a desended of Wild
Bill Hitchcock. And em glad to make the aquintance of any man, or
boy, who can shoot down Harden and Bounty in the same week.

Shaun had no idea what Hitchock was talking about, but

beamed. He knew who Billy the kid was. Ditto for Wild Bill
Hitchcock."Are you realy releated to Wild Bill?"

Bill started to answer: not related, but desened from on his

mothers side. He saw the admirattion in the Shauns eyes and
smiled and said,"After a fashion."

Bill saw a way to get back for years of abuse at the hands
of Harden and Bounty and do the kid a good turn in the precess.
He had a runing fued with Wesely and Bounty. They were constenly
bragging how they were the best lawmen in Texas, due to the fact
they were desened from real gunmen, not a showman like Wild Bill.

"How you'd like to spend the night with me and the misses.
She makes a real fine breakfast?"

Shaun didn't hesatate."Ya!"

Bill nodded and he told Shaun cowboys stories, some made up,
others true as he drove the sixty miles to his forty arce ranch.
Bill's wife Sharh met them at the door. She was wering a lounging
robe and her hair, freshly washed, fell in layers to her
shoulders. She was forty five, but wore her age well, her face
petete, her nose small. Her eyes held the only hint of age: The
glow that she had at seventeen, had long since fled, leaving
behind a saterlight of sadness. She took one look at the boy and
her sad eyes, came alive.

"Well what do we have here?"

"A guest."Bill said."His name is Shaun. Think you got

something in the kitchen for him. He's mighty hungry."

"Is that right,"she asked Shaun.

Shaun bite at his bottom lip, his eyes traveling around the
house."Yes,"he answered.
 She took Shuans hand, leading him into the kitchen. She
watched him put down a plate full of beef-steak before shooing
him into the bathtub. He was disgrunted at this, figuring he had
taken a bath at the Alamo."geee, two baths in the same week. I
don't know."

She laughed, promising him ice cream afterwards.

Bill was a big man, six-four and two hundred and sixty
pounds. He knew two things as well as he knew the back of his
hand. The first was the terrorty he covered as county sherrif.
For twenty years, he had been sherrif of an area that covered
twenty-two million acres. During that time he had convered every
inch of that area, and it was often said that his face had enough
lines to resemble a road map of Sourthern Texas. The second was
hi wife. They had been married for twenty-two years and both knew
each others moods and thoughts like their own.

So when she came into his den, he had a pretty good idea
what was on her mind. He was settled into swive oak chair, his
feet resting on the desk. His eyes folloed her as she sat on the
easy chair opasot his desk. She stared at him for a few minutes,
her foot tapping. He closed his eyes, waiting for her to speak.

"Who is he."

"Told you. Shaun McKinny."

"Bill Hitchcock!"

He brought his feet down with a thud, spinning the chair so

he faced her. He told her the story about Shaun shooting down
John Wesely. He shurgged."All I know is that John called his
mother and she said it was okay. Em sure there's more to it."

Sharh put her fingre to her lip, considering this. He had seen
this many times. She had a heart full of love and spent a enough
on him, he knew. But as sherrif for the county, he was gone long
hours. That left her alone alot. Even after taking care of the
ranch and the two mexans ranch hands, she still had a lot of
unspent love. She needed a child. God knew they had tired for
twenty years. It was his fault he imagined. But She never said
that. Fault was not the issure.

"We could use an extra hand for a while,"She said at length.

 He rose, towerint over her as he looked down at her, a look
that said: Now Sharh.

"Don't give me that look Bill hitchcock. You youself said

the boy has a fasanaton for cowboys. Well he could work the
ranch, digging fence posts, taking care of the chickens. Be good
for him."

Bill had been through this agurment whenever a new ranch

hand had a youngen. But ranchhands were a restless lot,
espeically the Tex-Mexs, who always were a step ahead of
imagration. When they left, taking their child with, Sharh always
gone into a funk, depressed for weeks. He hurt for her during
these times.

His face screwed up into something like a sigh."Ask him. If

he says yes, then it's fine with me. But don't becoming attatched
to him. He belongs to someone else."

She jumped up and hugged his neck, thanking him. Bill, as

always, felt foolish at this. She backed away from him, a happy
smile on her lips as Shaun come trailing out of the bathroom, a
towel wrapped around him. She lead him into the kitchen and fixed
him a bowel of ice cream. As he spooned it up, and she asked
him."Want to work on the ranch here for a few weeks? Get to meet
some real cowboys."

He dropped the spoon, his eyes wide in disbeilf." Yes! Yes!"

She clapped her hands toghetter brought them to her chest and
thought:Thank you God.

After he finished the ice cream, she showed him the spare
bedroom. He leaped for joy at how the room was decorated: Wall
paper, horses and cows designed on it, coverd the walls, a bunk
bed, knoty pine stlye and a matchig dresser, filled the room. She
had decorated long, a baby on her mind at the time.

She handed him a pair of Bill's pajamisa. Then stripped the

buttom bed on the bunkbed, putting on a clean sheat and blanket.
That done she stepped back, staring down at him. He stiffld yawn.
He had rolled up the arms and legs of the pajamos, but still
they hung over, legs curling up at his feet and the arms hanging
beyond his hands. She laughed. He looked lost in the pajaomas and
she made a note to buy him a smaller set tommorw. "We get up at
four. So go right to sleep."

"Can I watch T. V."

Her lips curled into a bemused grin."We don't have a T. V."

"No T. V."he echoed, his mind digesting this."What do you

do."

"Go to sleep, you'll see in the moring."

He stretched out on the bed, yawning. She picked up his

clothes that were piled up on the foor and rearnged his shoes. As
she bent over to give him kiss on the cheek, she saw he was fast
asleep. Her eyes turned turned sad once again.

Bill saw this as she came out of the room, Shauns clothes
hanging in her hands."Em going to wash these."

He nodded thoughtfully, quite unsure he had done the right

thing in bringing the boy here.

The next fews days passed quickly. Shaun was very courties,
speaking very little at meals, or saying nothing at all when
Sharh or Bill showed him how to care for the chickens. When he
did speak, his stutter was so bad that often times he wasn't
understood. Sharh noticed this and resolved to bring him out. She
spent almost every minute of the next few days with him,
encorging him, talking to him and roughousing with him.

The next week went quickly. Sharh told him he had done such a
good job at cleaning out the chicken coop, that he was now in
charg of the chickens. He took this very serously as he went
about collecting eggs and feeding the chickens. He found this
diffacult work at first, but then settled into a routine. He was
amazed to lean that not only were chickens, in the words of Bill,
the dumest things on the face of Gods earth, but they were also
canbolisskt. Whenever he dropped an egg in the coop, which was
often, three hundred mad chickens cawed as they dashed for the
borken egg. Toward the end of the week, a chicken died and before
he could get Sharh, the others chickens had picked the poor bird
clean, not even leaving a bone.

When he wasn't feeding the chickens, Bill taught him how to

build a line fence. Bill, Him and the two Mexen ranch hands
strung out a hundred and sixty wooden poles, laying them two feet
apart. The days blazed under the Texas sun and this was hot work,
tiring Shaun quickly. By the time they each set about digging
holes and inserting the posts into the ground, Shauns tongue was
hanging out. He was on his hunches when they finished with the
first three posts each. Shauns posts stood rickety, bending at
this angle or that. The Mexans laughed at this and Bill took him
aside."You think that's a good job."

Shaun looked at his post, then at the ones the Mexans had
errected."No,"he answered tiredy.

Bill always considered himself a no-nonscense type of guy

and was. He knew every rancher, ranch hand and all their childern
in his county. WHen one got drunk, he locked him up, turning him
loose in the morining. If a rancher was down on his luck, he
pitched in, helping with a few bucks, or the sweat of his brow.
If per chance a person whined about his fate, then, and only then
did he get angry. He supossed this was due to his father, or
always told him that when the going gets tough, the tough get
going...They don't complain or offer excusses.

He hunched down, holding Shauns shoulders gently."We can

leave them like that if you want. Makes no differance to me.
Course, if you come a visting me in say twenty years and you see
them other posts still standing, while yours have long since
fallen...Well."

SHaun hung his head, tired and bone weary he swallowed back
tears. He liked Bill. Liked him a lot. He was ashamed at
disappointing him."Would you show me agian. Then I'll dig them
better."

Bill stood and smiled. The boy wasn't a whiner, he had

grite. "I'd be right happy."

The tired time, he got it right. He stood back, pride in his

eyes as he stared at the three poles her had erected.

Bill stood next to him."I think you got it. I know you got
it. Damm best job of pole placing I'v ever seen."

Shaun beamed."It is isn't it."

Bill smiled down at this.

Shaun realized he was bragging and lowered his head."I

didn't..."

"Don't apliigse. Never apoliges when you do a good job. And

never apoliges when you do a bad job."

"How will I know the difference?"

Bill stooped down so he could look the boy in the eye."Let me

tell you something, Shaun. The world is full of people who want
to tell other people what to do, uselly the one's doing the
telling are pretty dumb themselves. You always do the best job
you can. The very best job you can. If you can tell yourself
you've done that, then the heck with other people and what they
say. Understand?"

Shaun ponderd this for so long that Bill laughed."Comon,

lets go grab some lunch."

THat night, and for the first time since arriving at the
ranch he ponderd all he had learned there. He thought that BIll
and Sharh were different from his mom and Fred. They encourged
him to try things, never yelling when he made a mistake.

From their the summer went quickly. Bill taught Shaun how to
ride a horse. Except for at the movies or on T V, Shaun had never
seen a real live horse up close. At first he was afried and
approtched the stallion that Bill had saddled with caution. His
fear gave way as the horse nuzzeld his shoulder. After taking his
frist ride, he decided that that was: Freedom.

Shaun took to emalating Bill in his manner and speach, even

going so far as to stand taller by putting wads of tolite paper
in his shoes in a furtiel attempt to look taller to Bill. At this
time, his stutter all but disappeared. His ribs filled in from
Sharhs home cooking and his bodye took on a copper sheen from the
Texas sun.

He was doing his chores quicker now and found he had more
time to spend listenig to the Mexans, Manwel and Titto, talk
about thier explots south of the boarder. When he wasn't hanging
around the Mexicans, he drove into town with Sharh, helping her
carry goricers, or helping with filling the five hundred gallion
water tank on the back of the pickup. Water was scarce in and
this was done once a week, a tedious chore that took two hours to
fill, and two hours to drain into the storage well at the ranch.

He enjoyed these outings, as did Sharh. She quizzed the boy

constenly about his life in Chicago. He answered truthfully,
anamating his life with his sisters, making them seem samller
then life and himself bigger, always the cursed one. His only
retacence came when he was talking about Fred. She seenced this
and didn't press him.

Sharh soon found that she was becoming attatched to Shaun

and hatched a plan to keep him. She reasoned this out, justifing
it in the end by telling herself that his mother had her hands
full taking care of her other childern.

Bill scensed this but said nothing. Sharh had come alive the
past few weeks, smiling all the time, singing to herself while
fixing dinner. She had also come alive in bed, ferrouces even.
This new Sharh was the Sharh he had married. He liked this Sharh
and wanted to keep her. But he was a realist. Soon the boy would
go. He hatched a plan of his own.

It was at the end of Augest, that Bill took Sharh aside, his
arm hugging her close."Em sending the boy home."

Her happyness drained from her eyes and the sadness returned
in a instant."Bill."

"Sharh, I know you want to keep him. But he's not a piece of
livestock...

She cut him off."I called his mother. She said...

He hushed her, pressing her lips closed with his."I know.

And it was a good idea, a good plan. But he's..."

"Got to go back,"she finished.

"Yes."

"When."

"Now."

She looked up at him, ready to protest it was too soon. She

said nothing. She knew in her heart he was right. She untangled
herself, her tears held in from force of will. She went into the
house and packed SHauns belongings. She mused that he'd be
leaving with a lot more then he came. She realized the thought
was born of anger at his leaving and put it out of her mind as
she folded his Pajamos, two pair of jeans, four shirts; six pair
of soxs and a windbraker into a duffel bag. When she finished,
she lugged the bag into the frontroom. She sat on the couch and
stared at it.

Bill brought Shaun in and explained he was leaving on the

bus from El Paso, going back to Chicago.

Shaun took in a deep breath, his body deflating. He wanted

to ask why. He said nothing, torn between wanting to go home and
see his mother, who he had been thinking about more and more the
last few weeks, and staying with Sharh and Bill.

The silence between them lasted sevrel minutes and Sharh

broke it by bending over and kissing him on the cheek."Go. Go.
GO."SHe said.

Bill took Shauns hand and lead him to the pickup. As the
truck pulled from the yard, Shaun looked back. He waved at the
Mexans cowhands, said a silent goodbye to the big stallion and
wished the chickens well.

A half hour later he was waving to Bill as the bus pulled

out of El Paso. He was going home. As soon as the bus was
out of sight, Bill put his plan in motion. He picked up John
Wesly Harded and Willeim Bounty at the Lazy K, bar and they
headed for the boarder. He had explained his plan to them weeks
ago and their was no discussion of it as they drove. They crossed
the Rio Grand at a low point in the river, drivng over the river
bed into Mexico. Forty miles inland, Bill turned west and enterd
the town of Mista. He parked the pick-up in front of a single
story abode building. Written over the door was: Canteen.

"You come in in ten minutes, "Bill said.

THey both looked at him, two pair of unsure eyes. They had
been lawmen their whole lifves and had never done anything like
this before.

"Like wild fire,"They both said.

"I just have one question,"John Wesely said."What if this

Mex your going see see's through are little game and calls are
hand?"

Bill sighed deeply."We'll have to play the cards that are

delt us."

WIth that he reached over and the double out shotgun from
the gun rack in the rear window, stepped from the truck and
headed for the canteen. THe day was warm and sweat an down his
back. His boot heels clicked on the ground as he entered the
canteen. The place was dingy, dirt everywhere. A lone bartender,
his forhead glistening with sweat, put down the glass he had been
wipeig and stared at him. He received instent appresel from the
six Mexicans sitting at a table in the corner. He paid them no
mind and stepped up to the bar, laying his shotgun on it."I want
to see Padroe."

As if the whole scene was a move script, Pedro burst from

the back room, where he had been watching, and announched."Predro
me. What you want gringo."

Pedro stood before Bill, his shark-tooth grin reveling three

gold teeth. Bill shook his head and came right to the point,
taking an instint disliking to Pedro."I was told that you have a
two month old male baby for sale."

"See,"Pedroe said in a mock Mex-Americn accent."MOther was

whore, father an american armey sergent. Baby make a fine
american, hey."

"How much,"Bill asked distastefully.

"For you, one thousand american dollers."

"Get the baby."Bill said.

Pedre smiled at his victory and raised a hand. WIthen

moments, the baby was brought to him by a girl of nine. THe baby
was quite, his eyes taking in the men in the room, as she handed
him to Pedreo. He lifted the baby above his head.

"See, gringo. Nice baby. You don't buy, I feed to pigs. Pigs
hungry, hey."

As planned, Williem Bounty and John Wesely Harden came

thrught the door. The sun was at their back and they both
squinted at the patrons in the bar, then at Bill.
 "Got a little problem, Bill."Bounty asked.

"Yeah, this mex crude wants to much for this baby."

"Offer him a buck and lets go,"John Wesely Harden said as he

brought out his service revolver.

Williem BOunty moved to opsie sides of the bar, his hand

resting on his gun butt.

"A buck,"Pedreo said, fenging stubidy. "What that."

"Eather that or his life,"Willim said taking out his gun and
leveling it at Pedero.

Bill laid a dollar on the bar and picked up his

shotgun."What will it be, Pedro."

"You want baby. You take baby."Pedro said and lay the baby
on the bar. As he did this, his hand fell to his side, brushing
the revolver stuck in his belt. Bill pulled back the hammers on
the shotgun and raised the barrel a few inches so it pointed at
Pedros mouth. Pedre eyes got wide and spittle trickled out of his
mouth. His hands raised and he smiled.

Bills heart was pounding in his chest as he wrapped a hand

around the baby and brought him to his chest. It occured to him
that he looked ridickluuous, standing there with a shotgun and a
baby. Slowely he backed out, only turning when he felt the pick-
up at his pack. He got in, started the engine and opened the
door. Will and John Wesely ran out of the canteen and jumped in.
He sped away.

Two hours later, they were sitting in Bill's office while

Sharh was in the kitchen fussing over the baby. They had been
passing a bottle of Wild Turckey between them and talking about
Shaun. The gist of the conversation centered around how socity
drained the charter out of a person until there was nothing left
but a talking shell, a body that went to work, came home, went to
work, came home.

"Hell I see it every day. John Wesely said, passing the

bottle to BIll." Most of the people I lock up have more gumption
then the people I work with."
 "Aent that the turth,"Bill replied."Either you fit in, or
it's by, by."

"Wanna bet whehter the kid makes it."Williem BOutny asked.

"I wouldn't take that bet."John Wesely answered." The

cowards and do gooders will shave him down a little, but he'll
come back. And I have a feeling that woo be to them."

"Well's here's to him."Bill said and raised the bottle.

"And to us,"John Wesely added." For a few seconds in that

bar, we were..."He paused, his mind stumbling for the right
words.

Williem BOunty said it for him."We were Billy the Kid, John
Wesely Harden and Wild Bill Hitchcock...We were men."

As these words were being said, Shaun felt a shiver of joy

pass through his as if his heart sensed what was being said. For
the first time in his life he felt like he belonged and couldn't
wait to get home and tell of his advantures. Fred would be prowd
of him, he was sure and his mother would see him as a man.

He nursed these thoughts as he fell asleep. When he awoke, it

was dark outside. The person in the next seat had the reading
light on and was writing a letter. He rememed he had promiced to
write Sally and borrowed a piece of paper from the man and an
envolpe. He worte: Thank you for being nice and helping me out.
Had a great time in Texas.

He mailed it at the next rest stop. Such is how an aspiouse

begining to a life long friend ship began.

Two days later, he arrived in Chicago. He was bubbling with

joy as he departed the El at Learance. He ran all the way home
and pounded on his door. Fred opened it. Donna stood behind him,
a baby in her arms. Donna's face was stoic, her eyes sad, her
heart tearig apart in her chest. In Shauns absanse, Fred had
cnvinced her that Shaun was no good. He did this shly, as a cat
burgler dose when entering an apartment through a window. Now as
she looked at him standing there, hope on his face she knew that
Fred was wrong. She had given birth to the baby in her arms two
weeks ago and had named the girl Kim. SHe longed to show the baby
to Shaun, tell him that this was his new sister. Before she could
act, Fred stepped in front of her.
 "Go live on the street, you little runt,"he snarled at Shaun
and slammed the door.

Shaun blinked at the door, that simple peice of wood that

stood between him and his family. He screwed up the coruage to
knock again. Bam, bam, bam.

The door stayed closed, staring back at him.

He knocked again, this time so hard that he brused his

knuckls, drawing bood: Boom, boom, boom.

The door, now a formabile obstical, stayed closed.

He knocked agian, this time a light tapping, almost a

scratching: Scratch, scratch.

The door took on a humen shape and laughed at him.

As the door laughed, he stood there, tears in his eyes, his

will to live seeping out of him. With his despart sadness, he
stumbled to the basement. There were storage sheds there and he
curled up in one and cryed himself to sleep.

Write like you have been: Afterall this time, he didn't feel
like...Don't worry or be afreid. Be happy...
 Chapter Eight.
The Wonder Years...

NOte: His stutter.

The sun was high in the sky as he ermerged from the basement
the next day. It seemed to him that everybody in the neiborood
was out: Mrs. Shanoff was picking up paper that was on the front
lawn. Mugsy had his head stuck under the hood of his sixty-one
Chevy; Kids, a few he recanised, were tossing a foot ball back
and forth. The Mertel sisters, hunched over, two shopping bags
hanging from their swollon hands, groweled at him."Keep off the
grass. A few other people walked on the sidewalk, quizenly
looking at him. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was
skuffy, giving him the apearance of a street urchen. He iqnored
them all and climbed the staires to his parnets apartment and
again pounded on the door. As he did so he screamed."Em sorry.
Let me in. Em sorry. Let me in."

There was no answer, and he pressed his ear against the door,
listening for sounds. He head nothing, and thinking Fred and
Donna were in the kitchen, ran down the staires, though the
gangway, into the backyard and up the back stairs. He pounded on
the back door, then pressed his face against the glass paniles on
the door. Vague shapes bled though glass: The kitchen table,
sink, chiars. He finely realized nobody was in the kitchen and
ran back to the front door. He raised both his fists and pounded.

Still nobody answered. It was Saterday and unknowen to him

Fred and Donna had taken the baby and gone shopping. In his
abscense, Joann had taken a jop as a counter girl at a bakery and
was at work. After twenty minutes he left, the despart sadness
from the night before back.

He still had over a hundred dollars and went to the hot-dog

stand on the corner and brought three hot dogs and a large coke.
As he ate, he tried to make sense out of what was happening to
him. But his mind was a shambles and only blackness swelled
inside his head.

He had no real frinds and roamed the streets that day, unable
to think as confusion reniged him in. A part of him wanted to
return to Texas. But his entusamsem for travel was gone. In the
late afternoon, the sun fading in the sky, he made a desion to go
to his sister Martys. When she opened the door, surprise covered
her face. She thought he was still in Texas. She let him. In his
abscense, she had given birth to a baby girl who had named Cathy.
The baby cooed at Shaun and he smiled back sadly. After milk and
cookies, he got around to why he was there.

"Fred won't let me in." "He will in a couple

days,"Marty answered.

"Can I stay here until then," He asked hopefully.

She stared at him. A milk mustach had formed around his lips
and he looked silly. She gave his request some serious thought.
She didn't dislike Shaun. In fact she felt a certin kinship with
him. Aside from the fact that he was her brother, that was. Like
him, although he didn't see things that way, she felt betrayed by
Donna and was still smarting over Donna treating her like a kid.
She reasoned, she was eighteen and certinly old enough to get
married. Besides, she knew that she had a different father then
Shaun and her sisters. This was a deep, deep family secret that
she had been told by her Aunt Grace; accadenvtly on purpose, of
course. Aunt Grace, a partaker of the bottle, pretended to spill
the sercret while drunk. Truth was, she resented Donna and her
childern and had picked the occasion to stick the provable knive
in Donna's back. It realy was just a seady little sercret, one
that had no resaon, excpet in young girls mind of Eighteen. It
seemed that before Donna married Shaun Sr, she had gotten herself
in the family way by another man. The result was Marty.

This was why Marty had gotten married so quickly. She was
angry at Donna and wanted to make her pay for never telling her
about her father. She did not know then, and in Shauns
estamantion, would never know, that hate and anger had a way of
grabbing hold of a person, consuming their entire life. But all
that, for both of them, was far in the future. For now She said
nothing of her thoughts.

"I'm sorry, but you can't stay Shaun."She said and was
pained by her answer. For a moment, her youth, of which was all
of twenty years old and that spent in her mothers care, now
bequested to Louie, was sad at her own words. But she had her own
baby to think of.
 His demnore indacated none of the pain he felt at her
rejection. He ate the last cookie on the plate, swallowed down
the last milk in his glass and forced a smile." That's okay. I'll
go ask Ruth."

She nodded, wanting to say more. For a second she realized

they were both part of a game, but she didn't know what the game
was or what was expected of her. Neather did Shaun. He thanked
her for the cookies and left. She fiddled around the house:
Vacuming the rug, taking out a chicken for supper. After an hour
of this, she sat down and fed Cathey a bottle. For a fleeting
second, she wondered if her mother fed her a bottle much in the
same way when she was young, and did she reject her, Donna's,
brother Bobby, the black sheep in the famley back then. She
started crying, having no idea what her tears were for.

Shaun bore his pain well as he made his way to Ruth's

house. It was an effort, but he made up a fantisy that he was a
cow-puncher out on the range looking for place to spend the
night. Ruth lived many blocks away and it was night by the time
he knocked on her door. He was tired, hungry and the fansty had
worn a bit thin in the end. He put on a happy face as Ruth opened
the door. She was as surprised as Marty was to see him back from
Texas and invited him in. She knew none of his troubles with
Fred. Since her marrage to Geroge, she had kept an aloof distance
from her mother and Fred. Her dream was to move to the subrebs
and widen this distance. She didn't so much dislike her mother or
Fred as feel a need to seporter her self from Donna. She felt,
and had felt it the first day that she had met Fred, that her
mother was selling herself short and had sold herself short for
years. She had vowed not to make the same mistake. She loved
GOeroge, truly and intendied on making a famley that resemlbed
the family on: Father Knows Best.

Her and George had taken a four room apartment on the

northeast part of Chicago, a sextion that was predomelty Jewish,
but was changing rabidly as the Jewish poplution migorated to
Skokie and Evinston. He said Hi to Gorge, who was fidding with
the new stero he had brought a few weeks ago. Georige looked up
and yelled."How was Texas, my man."

Shaun was instintly elated that someone had finely asked him
about his trip and he droned on about the people he had met and
his time spent on the ranch. Goerge listend attentllay, never
interubing, but rasing an upruned eyeborw at the hightlights of
the trip.
 The converston played out, and Ruth, who had kept a cool
distance, lead him into the kitchen and fed her a hamberger. She
figured he was just visting and wanted him gone so she could
spend time with Goerge. She spoke nonclantly as he ate, asking
him how life was at home." Dose Joann enjoy having her own room.
Has Fred gone off layoff. Is mom enjoying the new baby." The
walk had made him hungry and he wolfed down the hamberger,
speaking between bites."Yes. I don't know and I don't know."

She messed around in the kitchen, washing dishes and what

not, accpting his answeres. When he swallowed his last bite he
looked up." I don't know the answers about Fred and the baby
because Fred won't let me in the house."

Ruth was taken aback by this, and almost dropped the dish she
was drying. She realized all at once that he wanted to stay there
and left the kitchen to talk to Goerge.

"Shaun is having troubles at home and wants to stay

here,"she stammered out.

Goeroge looked up from the stero. To him the damm thing was
an Enstine nightmare. Wires were supossed to go in and wires were
suposed to go out. But he was dammed if he knew which went in and
out.

"Fine, I like him."

"But I don't want him here,"she insisted.

Goerge paused in what he was doing to excamni her. This was

a side of her hadn't seen before and was shaken."He's your
brother."

"No, he some kid who I might have spent ten hours with in my
whole life?"

Goerge rose and put an arm around her."He's your borther."

"Goerge, I don't want him or any of them here."

Shaun heard this exchange and lowered his head over his
empty plate. He didn't want to casue Ruth any problems and he
liked Goerge. He slipped quitely out the back door and walked
back to his parents apartment. That night he slept on the roof,
the gentle breeze plesent company for his thoughts. He concluded
that he was burden to everybody. The only thing to do was to
rent himself an apartment. Once this thought took root, he spun
out a fanstye that he was now a man and on his own. He took
comfort in Willems Hitchocks words that a person never complained
about his lot in life.

The next day, a day that was filled with rain clouds, he
made his way to the heart of Uptown. He was looking for for-rent
signs. He had no idea what to look for in an apartment. This was
a new expearance for him. Finely he inquired at a building on
Wolcott and Lewaence. Skip Chevy, a tall thin man, boardering on
the verge of starvton, answered his knock. He was manager of the
building. He had come up from Kentucky looking for work and had
taken the job to run the building. He had nine kids, due to his
own honeyness, which was twnety-four hours a day and due to a
wife who hated sex, but was rasied to have kids. When Shaun
inquired about the room, SKip took one look at him and smiled,
the gaps in his teeth looking like subway tunnels to nowhere.

"Ten bucks a week kid. Got one room left. On the ground
floor.
With that he showed Shaun the room. It was sparsely
furnished: A singel bed, an oak dresser that would be an antique
in a few years and an ice-box that had a bubble on top. The
bubble held the motor. Shaun was elated at the room. He could be
there, exsiste without people telling him to go. This would be
his castle.

"I'll take it,"Shaun said.

"Fine," Skip answered. He gave no thought to inquiring about

his age or where his parents were. He only wished that a few of
his kids would move out. It was getting diffacult to fuck his
wife with all the kids underfoot.
Shaun moved in that day. The first thing he did was stretch
out on the bed, his arms folded beind his head, his shoes still
on. He lay like that for an hour, unmoving, his whole being awash
in the knodage that Fred, Sister Gretchen or anybody else could
order him to take his shoes off the bed.

He thought: I am in paradise.

He slept like a baby that night, snug and safe from harm.

In his parents house, all was quite. Fred was sleeping off
fourteen bottles of Shultz. Joann was dreaming about a Boy she
had met. His name was Ronnie and he touched her breast today. She
was ashamed, excited, frightened and horny all at the same time.
Donna had taken to sleeping in the room with Baby Kim. She did
this as not to disturb Fred during Kim's morining feeding. She
alone in the house was awake. She had been tossing and turning
for hours, her mind on Shaun. She wondered where he was at and if
he was okay.

The next day was Monday and upon waking Shaun discovered
three things, and discovered is the right word for this came as a
shock to him: Thee was no food in his house. No soap and he had
no idea what time it was for he didn't have a clock.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his clothes philed up the

floor at his feet and pondered this. This seemed more enmorise a
problem then going to Texas. Then renting the room. Then life
itself. All his life there had been food. O'sure, he had eaten
out. Even gone shopping with his mother. But he had never paid
any attention to what she brought, except for cereal, cookies,
pop and candy.

He kicked at his clothes and mumbled." Can a person eat out

always."

The thought of Unlimited supply of candy and hot dogs

thrilled him. He dressed quickly. He had masterbated twice before
going to sleep and had used his shirt to wipe up the semon. He
looked at the crusty white cicules on the shirt, shrugged and put
in on. That's when it hit him that he didn't have any clean
clothes.

He mumbled. "Boy, there is a whole lot to living by myself

that I don;t know."

In this way he found a reason to go and see his mother. She

would know the answers. He went out, not bothering to lock his
door behind him. He found out, vie a stranger that it was seven
A. M. He hid in the gangway across the street from his parents
apartment and waited for Fred to leave for work. As soon as Fred
came out and drove away, he dodged across the street and ran up
the stairs. Donna opened the door on the second knock. She wasn't
surprised to see him. He didn't attempt to enter, he just looked
up at her, uncertiny in his eyes.

"Come in and meet your new sister,"SHe said at last.

 His steps were retacent as he entered the house. She lead
him to his old room, which was now a nursery for the baby. The
Jan and Dean records that he had put on the wall were gone, so
was his bed and his comic book collectton. Donna explained that
his stuff was stored in a box on a shelf in the closet. Pink wall
paper was now on the walls and a crib was set up in the corner of
the room. Next to the crib was a double bed, a pink bed-spread on
it.

Shaun's face was crestfallen at all this. Donna saw this and
explained."I packed your stuff in a box. It's in the closet on
the shelf. What else could I do. I didn't know if you were coming
back."

He tried to answer, but the stutter in his mouth that had

gone away, returned and all he could say was:" I, I, I,..."

"Go take a look at you sister. Kim is her name. But don't
wake her."

He did as he was told and apportched the crib. Kim lay there,
a tiny thunb corked in her mouth, bubbles from her breath
foraming around it. For the first time in his life, when he
turned to his mother, their was something other then love in his
eyes. There was a deep sadness, a pity almost. Not for himslf,
for his mother. When he spoke it was in a low clear voice, void
of stutter or feeling. Years later he would think that the voice
had not been his own.

"I love you, you love Kim, Louie loves Marty, Ruth loves
Goerge, who loves me?"

She stared hard at him, thinking he was an adult and had no

right to judge her. Slowely she realized he was just a little
boy. Her little boy. "You don't know what your saying. Go take a
shower."

For second he almost walked out of the apartment. That

second evaproated like a mist in ocean breeze and he was once
again just a little boy trying to understand all that was
happening him. He did as he was told, shuffling past her to the
washroom.

She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee.

Her face was haggard as she sipped, listening to the sound of the
shower, and the pain of her thoughts. When he came out, she took
his clothes from the closet and told him to get dressed. That
done she fixed him some soup. As he sat at the kitchen table, she
tried to explain to him.

"Shaun you have to understand that Fred is my husband. I

just can't go aganist his will. Besides, he is right you know.
Your out of controll. Jesus, you just a boy. What right do you
have in running off to Texas. What right did you have in tretting
Fred with an iron. Jesus you just a little boy. You don't know
anything."

She had said all this in a single sentance and he had

listend, the only sound coming from him, his spoon scraping
against the soup bowel.

"Say something!"she flared.

"Why is he right and am wrong."

"Becasue your just a little boy."

He hung his head over the bowel."But I feel..."

"You feel nothing. Your Just a boy. You feel what we tell
you to feel. You understand!"

Shaun nodded despartly.

Donna raised from the table and put her hands on her hips
and stared at him."Shaun I'll talk to Fred, but you have to
promice to be good. You understand."

He said yes in very samll vocie, one barly heard by Donna.

She didn't tell him that already the neiboroors were

beginging to talk. Mrs Shanoff, the landlord had found his
belongings in the shed and deduced he had slept there. "It may
take a few days for me to wear him down,"she said."And I can't
have you sleeping on the streets."

His face shinned with pride as he looked up at her."I rented

an apartment."

She was surprised at this and her face showed it. He took
this as pride in him and said."Ten dollars a week."
 As if energy was fleeing her body, she folded into the chair
opasist him."An apartment."

"A room realy," he stammered shly.

As she stared at him, many things went through her mind,

formost being: Who In Gods name would rent kid a room.

She rubbed her hands across her face, as if the gesture would
wash away her frustation."Where did you get the money?"

He explained about working on the ranch and the money that

Beth had given him. There again was pride in his voice and he
ended with." I didn't spend very much, saved most of it. Is it a
lot of money."

"Yes it is,"she replied."Give me all but ten dollars and

I'll hold it for you."

He took out three curmbled twenty's and two tens and handed
them to her. He was pleased by this, and imagned he was helping
Donna out. After he finished eating, he offered to take her to
see his room. She agreed, and had Mrs. Shanoff watch Kim.

The day was sunny and she wore a light scarve over her head
to ward off the wind. Once at the room, she smiled at the Fridge
with the bubble on it, ammused.

"My grandmother had one like that,"she said

"Kinda differant, hu,"Shaun answered.

"Yes, it's that."she replied.

She wanted to say more, but there didn't seem to be any more
to say."I'm going. Have to put dinner on."

He wanted her to stay longer and hide his disapoinment."Okay,

see you in the morining."

"Yes," she said and left.

She turdged home, her heart heavy. She fixed diner mecnley,
relying on her years of doing so. Over supper, she gigerly
aprotched the subject of Shaun moving back in.
 "Never!"Fred flared."That kid is bad. Let the city have him."

Donna finished the rest of the meal in silance, never tasting

the food she spooned into her mouth. That night after Kim was put
in her crib, she silenty moved down the hall and climbed into bed
with Fred. Ever since she had taken to sleeping with Kim, they
had shcedled friday not as love-making night. Tonite was monday,
and he was surprosd. His breath caught in his chest as she
stroked his flacid penis untill he was bone hard.

"Fuck me, Fred."

There was no emotion in her voice and this both excited him
and angered him.

"Don't say that word."

"FUCK ME FRED."

"Donna!"

"Comon, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me."

As she spoke she climed atop him, ramming her pussy over
his penis. Viviously she rammed her hips up and down, her blood
washed fingers clutching at the pillow.

"FUCK ME."

The words just burst from him, as they had a mind of his
own."YES I'LL FUCK YOU."

He slammed her over and pounded away, screaming in a hosrse

whisper."Your bad and am gonna fuck you."

A half hour later, she lay staring at the ceiling. Next to

her Fred snored rymatlay. Her thighs were bursed with purple and
red welts. Yet, she felt cleanssed insides, as if she had just
gone to confession. At last she rose and made her way through the
darkened room. At the door she herd Fred's voice.

"He can't stay here."

She smiled to herself. His voice laced convition and in the

end she knew she would win. She had what he wanted.
 In this way, life went on. Shaun hid across the street every
morining until Fred left for work. At night he went home. Donna
fucked Fred every night, and evey night he took her, rouglhy and
without any feeling for her. Things very well might gone on like
this for a long time, had not two things happned but a few days
apart. Shaun had moved his cheap stearo into his room along with
records and some clothes. His third week there he forget to pay
his rent and the manager locked him out. Donna tried to inervein,
offering the manager the back rent, but the manger was adamint.
Shaun had to go. When asked if they could have his clothes back
and the record player, the manager was equealy adamisnt in his
no. He didn't bother telling Donna or Shaun, that he wanted the
Record player for himslef and the clothes for his kids.

That night Donna let him in vie the back door. She made a bed
of blankets on the closet floor for him to sleep on. She warned
him not to make any noise, espeicaly in the morining when Fred
was getting ready for work. He knew she was taking a risk and was
extreamly gratfull for this and his love for her grew.

Donna knew this was wrong, and little by little she began to
dispise herself and hate Fred.

Shaun never once entertained the thought that he was his own
worst enamy. And in turth, maybe he wasn't. In a socity much
differant from the one in withc he was growing up in, his
indiviilat alty would be prized, covered realy. But on the plaint
earth, in america, located smack dap in a city called Chicago,
indilnvaety had to be stamped out, least it lead to: Freedom of
the mind, orgntly of thought and worst of all growth. Mentel and
otherwise.

The second thing happened when his sister Marty learned about
him sleeping in the closet. She was still angry at Donna and
feeling that SHaun was being negleted, made a annamous phone call
to the turnt officer. Mr. Gretchen, turnt officer for SHauns
school distract, had taken the call. He was bored little man who
years age had gotten tired of pushing paper clips around. As soon
as he put the phone down, he called the police and had Shaun
picked up and delivered to Chicago's Audy home. The Audy home was
drealy place for homeward boys: The walls pea green and the staff
made up of edacatioul misfits who saw their charges as subjects
and themselves as kings and queens. In the dorms, the strong
ruled with an iron fist. Older boys, sometimes as many as five,
nighty selected a weaker boy for sex. This always happened after
the lights had gone out. The gurads condoned this and turned a
deaf ear to the crys that rang out nighty. In this bastion of
public consinces, his depression never lifted. Yet, he seemed to
take everyting in stride: The beatings by the gurads, the crys of
the weaker boys being gang raped by the older and stronger boys.
Altorugh he was a scrany kid, Stangely enough, he was left alone
by the other boys. He liked it that way and kept to himself, his
only company his make believe friends.

Two weeks later, a trial was held in famely court. Social

workers reported that Shaun had been living on the street for a
week and prier to that had spent the summer in Texas. The judge
admonished Fred and Donna for letting Shaun roam around, then
orderd Shaun to go home. Fred gritted his teeth, but accepted
this desision.

Fred thought of it as a defeat, but didn't have the corage

to thwart the courts desision. So Shaun moved back into the
house, taking his old room. Fred took delight in teasing Shaun
whenever he got the chance: Runt, queer boy, and other eptaths
became a common occarence in the house. But he stopped short of
hitting Shaun. He toldhimslef he wasn't afired of Shaun. He knew
that was a lie.

Donna said nothing. She continued to sleep with Kim, and

would do so for years. She had decided never to let Fred touch
her again and ment it this time.

So for Shaun, things returned prettty much the same as they

had been before he left for Texas. The main diference was his new
sister. Kim. He took joy in her, more because she was a little
person, much littler then himsself and played with her whenever
he got the chance. He also accexped Freds taunts and resumed
trying to please him, running to the corner for a news- paper,
washing the car and doing whatever chores was asked of him.

When it came time to enroll him in school, he was asigned to

Montie-Forie school. He only had to go on Mondays, Wed, and
Fridays. And then only in the morining. The school was for
throwaway kids, desighned to wharehouse turnet childern. The
school was also on the south side of Chicage and Shaun had to
take two bus's to get there. Still he didn't mind, the teachers
left him alone. Hell the teachers left everbody alone. THe school
was filled with toughs from all parts of the city and was
dangress, for both the teachers, and students. His first day
there, he was cornered in the hall by two black kids. The taller
of the two demaned his bus money.

For the first time since coming back from Texas, Shaun had a
clear thought: Everyplace I go people want to take things from me
or beat on me.

He gave the kids his quarter.

He never went back and to his surpirse, nobody noticed: Not

the teachers at school, who penciled him in as present. Not the
trunt officer, who was still bored with pushing around paper
clips and not Fred or Donna, who were busy hating each other.

He made sure to leave for school on the desanated days and to

stay away until his expected arivve home from school. He passed
the school year in this way, and by summer, had spent so much
time walking around the neiborhood that he knew every crack and
crevice; every shopkeeper; every cop; every news-stand vender;
but still hadn't made any friends his own age.

As he roamed the streets, he searched for freinds. The few

kids he met, shunned him, thinking he was strange for talking to
his imginary friends, and that he wasn't in school.

He bacame very lonely and growen out of that lonelyness, he

sent his dragons, his fair madions, his super heros, and other
friends away. He did this on a cold day, the wind blowing heavy
from the lake. He stood on the rocks, overlooking the water. One
by one he dispatched them, telling each that he loved them.

He went home that night and cried. Donna asked him what was
wrong, but he just shook his head.
 Part Two.
Chapter Nine.
There be Dragons.

The months passed, summer turned to fall, the trees shedding

their leaves; winter turned to spring, the trees growing new
leaves. There were also changes occuring in the land. The war in
Veitnam had esclated and was now the prime topic of conversation
in the bars, barber shops and houses. A little known rock band,
the Beatles, had taken the U. S. by storm and was also a prime
topic of conversaton, both in the barber shops, bars and in the
schools.

In that time the famaly Donna had charshed in her heart, all
but died. First Vince diead suddenly of a massave heart attack.
He had been the rock in the familey, the one who always planned
the picnis and the outings. With him gone, all such events
stopped. Her mother moaned, as only an Itialan woman can: Going
to St Marys chruch three times a day and praying for his imorital
soul; locking her self in her house and kneeling before a picture
of him and four candels and praying for his imortial soul;
kneeling by her bed at night and praying for his imirtie soul. To
Donna it seemed if indeed their was a God in heaven, all the
lobbying her mother was doing on Vinces behalf should garner him
a seat at the round table.

At the same time, she noticed she was losing Joann. In Augest
she had turned Sixteen and believed in her heart of hearts that
she was the provable ugly duckling and spent most of her time at
home, smearing clearasel on her face and bemaning to herself that
the boys at school didn't like her. By Feburay, she had met a boy
five years older then herslef. Donna saw where this was headed
and tried to discorage it. All to no avel. Joann started staying
out late, iqnoring her homework and household chores. Donna
considered talking to Fred about this, but in the end decided
against it.

It was Fred who drove the final nail, so to speak, in the

coffen of her dreams. He had gotten lied off in November and had
not been called back to work. In that time he had taken to
drinking from seven in the morining untill late at night, always
coming home fallen into a drunken stupor. The acoalre had taken
it's toil on him and his cheeks sagged and had a pale rubbery
look to them, his eyes were continusy blood shot and severl times
she had spotted blood on the tolite after he had thrown up. It
was the latter, his throwing up, that bothered her the most.
Before he threw up once in a while. Now he did so every night,
the sounds his guts comming up loud enough to wake the dead.

So it was in late May that she stared down at her daughter

Kim. There lay her last hope, she thought and held her in her
arms.

Fred wasn't the only one spending more time at the bar.
Sookis had gotted laid off. Sven, the local printer, had closed
down his little shop on Clark for lack of bissness. Bill Coberson
had gotton laid off from his job as a mover. Ted had closed down
his buther shop and retired to Long Lake, where he drowned one
cold night. This affliction had affected other men and bissness's
in the nerborhood. The only bissness that thrived, or seemed to,
were the loacl bars. The men flocked to them, each complaining
about the niggers and queers taking over the world. Big Bill, as
he tended bar, listend to their grips, knowing they were wrong.
He had seen the reason for Sven going out of bissness, and for
Ted's butcher shop, and for Louies Hot dogs. And for the men
being laid off. Up the street a giant Jewel food store had opened
up, competing with the smaller gorcery stores and bakrie and
bucther stores. A block away from the Jewel, a place named
McDonalds had opned up and was selling hambergers for fifteen
cents. He told his wife, late at night and every night, this was
the beginging of the weeding out process. The smaller hamberger
joints and hot-dog stands couldn't compete. A few would survive,
but most would go down the drain. As for the men, the unions were
losing their lock like grip, and empoyies were hiring cheap labor
whenever they could get away with it. He let the men talk on,
saying nothing about this. It gave them an outlet for their
frustrations. Besides, he soon planned on closing the bar and
retiring to Stevens Point, Wis.

Fred, bored with all the discussion on unions, niggers and

queers, decided to give him Shaun one last shot to prove he could
be a son. He knew he wasn't in school, but didn't care. Shaun was
almost fifteen. He himself had quite school at fifteen and it
hadn't hurt him any. He imagined he was doing this for a noble
reason; forgiving the boy his past digressions. In turth, and in
the back of his mind, he too had seen the soaped over window of
the hot dog stand, the print shop and butcher shop. He didn't
admit it, but he wanted to, needed to, prove to himself that his
life wasn't wrong, that it would survive after him. The only way
for him to do this was though Shaun. He him took to the bar and
sat him on a stool, placing a coke before him.

"Sookie and I are going queer bashing. I think it's time for
you to go with."

Sookis shot him a queer look. He and Fred had been talking
about bashing queers for ten years, but had never actually done
it."What."

"You heard me."

Sookies eyes widened."Hey, why not."

Shaun wanted to impass Fred and nodded.

"Do you know what a queer is?"

Shaun shook his head.

"A queer is a man who plays with little boys peckers,

understand."

Shaun realized instinety that Fred was talking about sex and
that he had had sex with queers. He stiffiened in the chair, too
afried to tell Fred what had happneed to him.

"Yes,"he answered.

"Good." Fred nodded.

Shaun flet a burning fear grip him when a short time later,
He, Fred and Sookis climbed into Sookies plumping truck. They
cruised the streets, Fred and Soolkies joking between themself.
It was at Clark and Disision that Fred pointed at a tall thin man
walking alone. He instritced Sookies to slow down. As the car
slowed, Fred hung his head out the window.

"HEY FAG,"he yelled,"YOU LIKE LITTLE BOYS."

Carl Lesson quickened his pace, willing his eyes to iqnore

Fred. Carl was indeed gay and had been beat up twice before,
suffering both times a concussion. Sookis kept the pick-up
abreast of him, and he increased his pace until he was almost
running. As he went, he thought: Two blocks to go and I'm safe.
 Fred laughed, a cruel sound
instruced Sookis to stop the truck.
stop, Fred grabbed Shaun arm and
draging Shaun. Carl Lesson saw this
took two long strids and easyly caught
that the wind carried. He
As the truck rolled to a
bolted out the door, half
and started running. Fred
up to Carl.

"HEY FAGGOT,"Fred taunted as he spun Carl around by his

collor,"WANT A LITTLE BOY.

Shaun cringed at this, his mind a blur. The next thing he

knew, Fred was beating on Carl Lesson with his fists. Then
Sookies joined in. He didn't know how long the beating lasted. It
seemed to go on for ever. Then it just stopped and Carl lay on
the dirty pavment, a humming wimper comming from his lips.

"Go on kick him in the head,"Fred ordered.

Shaun gave Fred a confussed look.

"Chicken are you,"

"No,"Shaun defeneded.

"KICK HIM."

"BUT."

"KICK HIM OR I'LL NEVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN, YOU LITTLE RUNT."

Freds voice echoed through Shauns head: Kick him or I'll

never talk to you again. Shaun squeezed his eyes shut and lashed
his foot out, stricking Carl Lesson in the head. He felt a little
squising against his foot and Carl Lesson moaned.

"That's my boy,"Fred said and put his arm aruond his

shoulder. They all walked back to the truck and headed for home.
As Sookie drove, Fred lamented about how proud he was of Shaun.
For his part, Shaun accepted this praise, the first prase that
Fred had ever bestowed on him.

Once at the bar, He declined Freds offer of a coke and went

home. He fiddled around in his room, alternating between playing
the radio and reading Mecanic Iillastarted. He was troupled, and
his feelings were pained. He couldn't get the image of Carl lying
on the ground. As Fred had beat on Carl, he had felt the blows as
if Fred was beating on him. He thought about this for a long
time, trying to reason out why it was right to beat on another
person. In the end he toldhimself that Fred had liked him for the
first time ever and that Fred was beating on somebody else for
the first time ever.

Still troupled, he went to bed.

Bill's Tap was full, as thursday was payday. Fred sat at the
bar boasting to Bill, Mugsy and everbody else that Shaun was
okay. Sookis verafired this, telling an a raspy voice how they
had trapped the gay bastared and beat the tar out of him.

"How'cha know he was gay,"Mugsy asked.

Fred paused, having not realy thought of that. For the first
time he considered this. His stomich sickened for a second, then
he was carried away by Sookie shouting bloustry." We knew."

A round of drinks was brought for Sookies and Fred. Late,

and drunk, he stumbled home, stripped naked and fell into bed.
For a few oblivous minutes he contaplated going into Kim's room
and waking Donna. Once he decided that that was the thing to do,
he passed out, a racious snore filling the room. He awoke, some
short three hours later, to the ceiling spinning before his eyes
and his bladder screaming. He dragged out of bed, and in his
confusison, mistook the front door for the bathroom and went out
it, closing it behind him. He grabbed his dick and started
peeing, the hot spary sponging into the carpet on the staires.
When he realized where he was at, his heart raced as he lunged
for the door. It was locked. He stood there naked, his foggy mind
contplating what he should do. At last he pounded on the door,
hoping to wake Donna. The noise was so loud, that Mugys wife,
Pat, awoke and opened her door to see what all the rackett was.
She stared at him buck ass naked and quiutely closed her door.
Fred was a purtion and sudenly became frantic in his pounding,
least Mrs. Shanoff, or the people on the third floor, come out to
investagate what all the rackett was. Finely he head Donna
whispear,"Who is it."

"It's me,"he whispeared back soflty.

"Who."

"Me."

"Who...I can;t hear you."

 "It's me,"Fred shouted in a whispear.

As soon as she threw the door open and saw his nakedness,
she burst out laughing."What the hell are you doing out there
naked?"

He brushed by her, going drectory to the bathroom. Such was

his nerveness, he threw up in the tolite. Leaning on the cold
procline of the sink, he splashed water on his face.

"I guess I sleep walked,"he said by way of explnation.

"Anybody see you."

"No,"he lied

"Good thing,"she answered."It would have been the fright of

them."

Shaun, wide awake, and giggling under the covers, listened

to their conversation. He had heard Fred go out the door and when
the frantic pounding had started had put two and two toghetter.
He had thought about getting up and letting Fred in, then had
changed his mind. He had toldhimself he was afreid that if he let
Fred in, Fred would beat on him like he had Carl Lesson. In the
back of his mind, he knew it was because of revenge. If he had to
kick people so Fred would like him, so be it. He had deduced that
maybe such was the way of the world. But he didn't have to like
it.

Joann, sound aleep in her room, had not heard a thing. She
had let, Ron Haslip, a boy she had met, touch her vergine that
day. The touch had frightened her, yet had felt good, delious
even.

The next morining Fred didn't say anything about the

previouis night, not about ending up in the hall naked, nor abuot
bashing the Carl Lesson. And hoped Shaun didn't mention the
latter. For some reaosn, and one he couldn't put his finger on,
he wasn't too proud about beating on Carl Lesson. He toldhimself
that he had done it for Shaun. As Donna served breakfast, she
almost dropped the frying pan when Fred announced he was getting
Shaun a job.

"What!" she asked, turning to him.

 "Selling papers."Fred answered."I'll talk to the swede.

She knew he was talking about the driver for the Daily News.
She wanted to ask what brought this about, but held her tonque.
Shaun had been reading the back of corn flakes box, trying to
detemine how many box tops he needed for a tweler, when Fred had
spoken. He looked up, startled."Realy."

"Realy."Fred answered, oviously enjoying himself.

Fred spread open the morining paper and the rest of

breakfest was eaten in silence. Shaun had already decipered the
insruttcions on the back of the corn flakes box, but to imatate
Fred, continued to read the ceral box.

Donna stared at them both for a while, quite unsure of what

had happened, then rose, washed her dish and went to wake Joann
and feed Kim.

Fred was true to his word, and Shaun started the paper job
that day. The swede had been a Daily News driver for thirty-
years. He was a girzzled old guy, a gruff voice, always a three
day old grouth on his face and a flask filled with, as he called
it, Jum Beam, in his overalls. He explained Shauns duties to him,
his voice loud and stern.

"You take dem wire cutters and snip dem bundles. Insert ad
copys, if any, and dem check the route sheet and count out a
stack for each customer. Unersatan!"

"Yes,"Shaun answered.

"Then you grab counted stack and run into the store. Hollor
out how many. If they's any old papers left in the store, brings
dem back. We count dem at de end of the day, dem bundle dem up.
Unerstan."

"Yes,"Shaun answered.

"I pay two dollars a day. Unerstan."

"Yes."Shaun answered.

"Den lets go."

 The first day was rough on SHaun. No sooner would he hop off
the truck, a stack of papers under his arm, the swede would shift
into first gear and start up the street, forcing Shaun to run in
the store, hollor out the number of papers he was leaving, then
bolt out the door, chase after the truck, and grab at the robe
swinging out the rear of the truck. In no time at all he became
adpt at this, and started making a game out of it. The swede,
childlike in his thinking, delighted in this. Usealy, he hired
slowed witted boys, who although were quick on their feet, always
managed to get lost. So by the third day, he had the truck in
second gear, forcing Shaun to run faster. Fortiunly for Shaun,
the truck, even in the higer gears was slow and the swede was
unable to chug the enigne more then a few miles an hour before
Shaun caught the robe and swang on. The Swede ragged him every
chance he got." You miss the truck boy, I leave you behind. Don
wait for nobody.

Shaun never missed the rope.

After work, he spent more time with Fred at Bill's tap. It

was in this way, he learned what the word nigger ment. Fred and
Sookies were talking about niggers, when Shaun looked up over his
Coke.

"What's a nigger?"

"A nigger is a Black man."

"Oh,"was all Shaun could muster.

He thought about this. His hero was Earnie Banks, the

Chicago Cubs Shortstop and he was black." Is Earnie Banks a
nigger?"

"Yes,"Fred answered,"But he a good nigger."

With that Fred went back to talking to Sookies.

Shaun was confussed. For years Fred the other men had talked
about niggers as being bad people. They took away jobs. They were
lazey. They were filthy. If all this was true, and he had no
reason to doupt this, espeical in the past few weeks, what with
Fred being nice to him, then how could Earnie Banks be good.

"If niggers are bad,"he asked,"then how could Earnie Banks

be good."
 "He just is."Sookies answered.

Shaun had been reading in the paper about Marten Luther

KIng and rembered him from his conversation with Clair. According
to the papere, King was in Chicago and was planning what King
called a freedom march in Chicago't Marqutte Park. "What about
Marten Luther king?"

"That bastard."Fred spit out.

Shaun was again confused, but said nothing as he waited for

Fred to continue.

"Hey,"Sookies said."Lets take Shaun to Marquett Park."

Fred shook his head, unsure about taking Shaun. A few day
earler, Sam Parks, the demacratic precent caption for the ward,
had stopped in the bar. He asked Fred and severl others if they
wanted to go to Marquette park and counter march against King and
his marchers. Fred was unsure at the time, not having anything
against niggers as long as they didn't live next door to him, or
take away his job. Then Sam prromiced to get them all jobs with
the city if they went. Fred lunged at the bait. If he could hook
onto a city job, he'd work full time, all year.

"I don't know,"he answered at last."Could get vilent."

"Hey man, the niggers always march peacefully."

"I wasn't thinking about them."

"Comon,"Sookies insisted,"do him good."

Fred ran a hand across his nose and finely consented."Okay."

An hour later, Shaun was cramped next to Fred and Sookis in

the back of Sam Parks Ford Fairlane Five hundred. In the front
sat, Sam, Bill Coberson and Mugys. Sam was doing most of the
talking and the others most of the listening.

"It's not like I have anything against niggers," he said,

sounding like he was trying to convice himself more then the
others. "It's just the ward commitman dosn't want them getting to
upity. If that happens, next thing we know, King and his trouble
makers will be marching in are ward."
 "Far as I'm concened, the niggers can have Marquette
Park."Bill, who himslef was Polish, said."Just a bunch of dumb
bohunks living there anyway."

"Look whos talking,"Sookies said.

"Comon, boys, lets not start ribbing each other. I'm trying
to explain here."

"So explain already,"Sookis said.

"So anyway, Mayor Daley called in all the ward commeintee

men. He instrutched each to send a group of guys from their
wards. We'r just supossed to stand around. You now, let King know
he can't push the white folk around. Know what I mean."

"Yeah,"Mugsy said, a grim grin on his face. He didn't know

why he was going. He operated his own interir decorating bussness
and didn't need a job with the city. He supossed he was going
because he was afreid to show Fred and the others he was afried.
If he had his druthers, he'd have said at the bar that he didn't
give a flying fuck if King marched across his livening room. That
all he cared about was his bissness and downing a cold one now
and then. For a second he had a thought that it was always us
against them. But who was them, who was us and who devined the
two, he wondered. Before the thought could take root, he head
Sookies say his name.

"Yeah,"he answered.

"Is your wife realy pregnent?"

At the question, Sam released a loud bloutous laugh and the

other's followed suit. Mugys wife weighed close to two hundred
pounds. She was so big that the boys in the bar wondered how
Mugys, who looked like a walking winter branch, and his wife,
Helen, managed to have sex. She had discovered, quite by accadent
since she had not had a menstrel preiod for ten years, that she
was seven months pregnert when she went to the doctore for
heartburn.

Shaun laughed along with the other men, more out of a sense
of wanting to be part of the group, which it truth was why the
other men laughed along, then a sense he knew what the hell they
were talking about.
 When Mugsy ansered grimly,"Yeah." Shaun again laughed with
the others.

He was bored stiff and was relieved when the car was parked
across the street from Marquett Park. Due to a ten foot wire
fence, which served as backstop for the softball dimiand at the
far end of the park, the park, about ten acres in all, resembled
a giant horseshoe. A throng of police offices ringed the park,
their cars parked off in the distance.

Fred kept Shaun close, as they marched across the park,

heading for a throng of whites gathered by the softball dimaind.
Some carried picket signs that indenafied them as a particler
group beloinging to a particlaer ward. From about two hundred
feet, Fred saw that allmost every ward in the city was rebasented
by recerts from other wards.

As they reached the fringe of the group, Sookis looked at

Fred."I don't see any niggers, maybe they called the rally off."

Sam pointed to a stretch of street that was Marquett avenue.

At first Sookie thought he was pointing at the brick bunglows
that lined the street. Then beyond the bunglows, he saw a mass of
people walking down the center line of the street. Most were
black, some white, all carried a picket sign or a banner asking
for Freedom Now. Beyond that, he saw a mass of white people, all
dressed in Nazie stormtrooper unaforms and some carrying
Americian Nazie banners, marching down the street. And beyond
that, he saw a larger group of white people, all wearing white
sheets with holes cut out for eyes and some carryng K. K. K.
banners, marching down the street. And even beyond that, he saw a
much larger qroup of white people, most of whom wore dago T's and
dungorees, marching down the steet. They carreid a banner that
read: Marguett park for white resadents only.

Shaun stared at the marchers as they got closer. The scene

remined him of a bugs bunny cartoon.

"I don't march with the Nazies."Bill Coberson declard."I

spent four years of my life fighting them bastards."

He wasn't the only one who felt that way, as their was a good
amount of grumbling going on amongst the groups from the other
wards.
 "And I don't march with the clan,"Sookies said."I hate them
white sheeted bastards."

Sam looked at the faces of his group, gauging to see if they

all felt the same."Okay, let me sign the roll car sheet and we'll
split."

"What about the jobs."

"Hey, no sweat. We were here."Sam said and went over to a

makeshift table that was set up against the back-stop fence.

They were all relieved as they philed back into Sam's Ford,
but most of Fred. Ever since he had bashed Carl Lesson, he had
been depressed. The thought of jeering a bunch of niggers,
seemed to depress him further. On the way home, he blamed his
woes on Marton Luther King.

"If that damm King wouldn't stir things up, bastard."he

bemoaned." Damm bastards."

From all, except for Shaun, there were utters of assent.

Shaun turly didn't understand, he vividly remembered Sally and
how she said that King was a great man. He pondered this as the
car moved though the city. At last he screwed up his corage, but
recalling the beatings from Fred, turned to Mugsy. He didn't know
it, but he had picked the one person in the car who was half way
cabil of ansering his question. But as Shaun would realize years
leter, half a loaf of knowadge is more harmful then none at all.

"Why is Marten Luther King a bad nigger."

"Well,"Mugsy answered thoughtfully."It is not that he's a

bad nigger. You see, he wants to give other blacks jobs and
housing. If that happens, then Fred and people like him loses his
job and maybe his house."

Mugys had answered simply, but the effect it had on Shaun's

young mind was profound. He immidealty related what Mugsy had
said to the white mans struggles against the indians. He suddenly
understood Fred. Fred was just fighting for his family. Fred was
the lone warror sturggling against all odds. He felt humbled at
this thought and turned to Fred.

"We will stop Marten Luther King,"he said.

 Fred, moved by the emotion in his voice, patted him on the
head. As the car moved on, the men talked about King. Shaun
reflected on what he had just learned. Back home, Fred and the
others returned to the bar and Shaun went home to watch the
demastration on T V. He sat, crosslegged in front of the screen,
a hypnotic gaze on his face, as King marched his people down the
street. He related to the surounding on the T V, the park, the
baseball dimand, the bungalows. As King fell down, blood
streaming from a cut in his forhead form a rock, He silenaty
cheered. As the Nazies and K K K, and the boys in Dago T's, pelted
the freedom marchers with stones, he cheered. As the police moved
in, their billy clubs arching toward the K K K, the Nazies, and
the boys in Dago T's, he jeered.

His new freinds patted him on the back and jeered and
cheered with him and for the first time in his life, he flet like
he belonged.

The End.

Note: ANything below this is extra text.

Note: Other kids go to rally. He makes friends. Jop. Etc.

After Job show him making freinds. Or before rally, he makes
freinds. They talk about niggers. Feels like outsider. Wants to
Belong. Put aside his toys, knowdalge on what he learned on trip.

Note: Butch adopts him, kinda like a mascot. Takes him to school
yard. Feels part of a freidship: Pool hall. BOwling.

Note: Fred having troubles of his own.

Note: Shauns love turning into hate. Before he wanted to

please Fred. Now hate. The hate Fred was selling was turning back
on him. But still wants to please him.

Note: Neiboorhood changing: Shops closing, etc. Show more

people at Bar. CHaise Child molster. Cop beats up guy on thrid
floor. Fred pays bribe.

Write like you have been: Afterall this time, he didn't feel
like...Don't worry or be afreid. Be happy...
 Note: From this point on, this part goes into the second part
of the book. A new book in it's own right. It is to be titled:
And, There Be Dragon Slayers. Or just. There Be Dragon SLayers.

Shaun had weatherd the past year well. He had made many new
firedts. But It was a few days before his fifteenth birthday that
he met BUtch Smith. He was in his backyard making all kinds of
racket as he worked on his bike, when a old lady in the next
building over, called dow to him from a third floor porch."Stop
mnaking so much noise!"

"I'm not making any noise,"he screamed out.

He went back to working on his bike. Before he knew what was

happening, a blur jumped over the fence that seporated the two
buildngs and a tall bound haired boy jumped on him and started
hitting him. Shaun didn't so much fight back as he fraled his
arms and legs up to protect himself. The bloud boy, who was Butch
Smith, assumed Shaun was fighting back and pulled off Shaun, not
wanting to get hurt. He looked up at his grandmother, who was
looking down from the porch. Butchs look said: Okay, I defended
you. See.

Butch's grandmothre, satisfied by this, went back into the

house. As soon as Butch saw this, he helped Shaun to his feet.

"Don't call my grandma a bitch,"Butch said, by way of an

explanaion." She is, but then she expects me to defend her. SHe's
nut'so"

Shaun shook his head, unsure of what had just happened."I

didn't call her a bitch."

"You didn't"

"No!"

"What did you call her."

"NOthing!" SHaun said.

"You just move in."

 "No, I'v been in Texas." Shaun said.

"Texas."

"Yeah, Texas."

"What school you in?"

"Not!"

"That explains why I haven't seen you around."

"Yeah,"Shaun nodded.

"Coke,"

"Coke,"Shaun asked.

"Want to go for a Coke."

Thus began the most influtial frindship in Shauns young life.

Note: Butch adopts him, kinda like a mascot. Takes him to school
yard. Feels part of a freidship: Pool hall. BOwling.

Note: Fred having troubles of his own.

Note: Shauns love turning into hate. Before he wanted to

please Fred. Now hate. The hate Fred was selling was turning back
on him. But still wants to please him.

Note: Neiboorhood changing: Shops closing, etc. Show more

people at Bar. CHaise Child molster. Cop beats up guy on thrid
floor. Fred pays bribe.

Write like you have been: Afterall this time, he didn't feel
like...Don't worry or be afreid. Be happy...
 Chapter Seven.
1971...

It wasn't until Januery 16, that Kent State faded from

Shauns conscinse. He settled into school, quite content with
himself. He felt he had put the years of rage, as he had given to
thinking about the years between fourteen and ninteen, behind
him. He expresed his feelings for the same in a letter to Sally.
As usaul, his inscurity with pencil and paper and his fear at
spelling kept his letter short.

Dear Sal...

For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong. The

turmoil that always seems to rage within me, has subsided. Is
this temporay, you think, or is it a sign that the diffacult
years are behind me. I hope it is the latter. By the way, thanks
for the wedding present. The monay was well spent.

Her replay came a week later.

My dearist Shaun...

I pray that you get your wish and that happyness is forever
yours...Love.

He sensed a certine sadness in her words and wished it wasn't

so. But nothing would bring Sally back. He discussed this with
Audrey and it was dicided that time would heal Sallys blues.

Soon he found himself immernsed in school. He tried to keep

above the fray of politics, but inveibe he was drawn into it. Gay
rights, womens rights, black rights seemed to be that catch words
at school and at him between him and his friends.