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February 15 - February 21, 2019
I didn’t think Pablo knew how to smoke pot, but he seemed to fall right into the groove. I was beginning to feel like the odd one out when he tapped my shoulder and passed me the joint.
Are you from L.A.? I began to like them as they described how they had packed up and left Kentucky to go to San Francisco.
Crystal and Moon smoked pot like a smoker smokes cigarettes.
It was like we were all going to die really soon.
I began to doubt my desire to stay with the hippies. It made me seem even crazier than Pablo told me I was, and to be overheard telling me how crazy I was made Pablo nervous.
“God made dirt. Dirt don’t hurt.”
sitting on the sidewalk and homeless people shuffling along haplessly, pushing all their worldly goods in shopping carts.
But the telltale sign was how Pablo’s mother lay almost lifeless on the couch, oblivious to the world around her. I related to that most of all. My own mother had laid exactly the same way
wanted out of there so bad. It was the first time I’d ever been locked up in a room that I couldn’t get out of.
I was not one of them. There was nothing at Boys Town for me to cling to, and I started looking beyond the gate.
“You don’t ask for a ticket in a bus station,” he said, “and not be trying to go someplace.”
“Them white folks wasn’t treatin’ you right, huh?” “Not all of them,” I said.
had felt cast out from any sense of normalcy. I had suffered so much at all the other places, but I could see now that they were just holding stations. As I was on my own, the turbulence in my mind had begun to settle. Now I wanted to keep being alone so I could get used to it.
I liked being on the road. I had shelter and something to do. I could sleep, wake up warm and safe, listen to my radio, and sit on the porch steps in my mind, gazing at everything passing by. I hoped it would take hours—the whole day and all night—to get there.
Whenever I spent the night away from a bus station, I slept in a Laundromat or looked for the first unlocked car on a dealer’s lot. There was always at least one. I’d
The longer I stayed out on my own, the more I knew it was not just Boys Town I had run away from, but the whole system. Alone on the bus, I felt safe. Traveling was all.
No longer could anyone say I had nowhere to go. I had found a home on the Greyhound.
The dormitory had two rows of steel-spring beds with an aisle between them.
Once we set our pace, I really liked running around the track, but the extra mile would mean a shorter shower and colder breakfast before we reported to the recreation room, which was also our classroom.
the smell of my burning flesh made me jerk away. The way
or had been deemed weak, were being dragged outside in the middle of the night, beaten, tied to trees, and left until morning. In that moment I realized these rumors might be true.
There was blood everywhere. I tried to mop it up, but the mop spread the gluey blood across the white tile floor like a paintbrush. I had to squeegee the blood into a corner to trap it and then use the mop like a sponge. The water in the bucket quickly turned red.
I could forgive those who had called me names, broken into my locker, and peed on my bunk,
standing in the doorway, wondered aloud if Buck had been hitting me “a bit too hard?”
Daydreaming, I saw myself back on the Greyhound bus. I longed to peer out that window again, alone with my radio, traveling from town to town, sitting close to my true self.
and other cruelties—like forcing us to kneel for hours or dragging boys out of the dorm at night and tying them to trees as punishment for less than snoring.
lost unto ourselves. We didn’t even know if we needed permission to turn on the lights.
For the next few weeks the staff were mysteriously nice to us,
and crawling under their bunks at night with lighters, trying to set one on fire before the smell could wake us all up.
When I wrapped my arms around them, I knew they really were my brothers. I felt a strange new happiness.
and my experiences had aged me beyond my years.
leaving me there with only a promise.
the only new boy they’d seen since first grade.
A few blocks away, I dropped the box cutter in a garbage can. Looking down at it shining among the banana peels, I knew there was no way I could ever cut anyone.
“Just look at ’em, the way their eyes want to cut you into tiny little pieces.” I did, staring back like my eyes could cut them into tiny pieces.
feeling the heat of the booze climbing into my nose. It was nasty, oh, so nasty! It stunk like brewed sardine juice.
She had his massive body in a headlock, all four hundred pounds of him. Even as he was telling her to stop messing around, I saw the love between them.
When my mother said good-bye, I could tell that she’d truly been home.
It hurt to realize that I wasn’t as strong as a man was supposed to be. I was already thirteen, and I thought my crying years were behind me.
seen the bright flame of every shot had found and recognized my mother.
Because of all the equipment, I was afraid to touch her; if I broke something, she might die.
After my mother was well enough to be transferred to another part of the hospital, you almost needed a ticket to get in to see her.
Finally I decided to get permission from my parole officer for a one-week visit with my family. I figured this would make everyone happy, including me. How much trouble could I get into in a week? I boarded a Greyhound bus and stared out the window as it headed south.
We embraced. We cried for all the times we’d ever wanted to cry,
complex, I couldn’t help wondering if Gladys still lived in that house.
“Honey,” she said to him, “you givin’ this child a bad heart. Now, go on, put that gun you got up. You hear me?” She looked back at me and said: “Son, you can go take a seat on the porch here, if you need to.”
I put my arms around her and hugged her. There were only a few people in my life who had meant as much to me as Gladys, and I still needed all of them. Those who had passed didn’t disappear from my thoughts.
A young man stopped, reached into his pocket, and gave the man money. The beggar looked at the money and brought both of his hands together in a prayerful sign of gratitude.
the bottom of the cart and tied the other end around a mailbox as if the cart were a horse to tie up before he went inside the saloon. Then he walked into the store. This homeless person was exactly
reach very deep inside to find any reason to hold on.
