Lean on Pete (23 page)

I ate lunch and nothing happened but at dinner a kid started saying things to me while we ate. I didn’t say anything back, I just looked at him. He was part Indian and he was a lot bigger than me and he had tattoos on his hands. I thought he was going to want to fight but nothing happened and I went back to my cell. The next morning came and I was told to get back in my own clothes and they drove me to a group home where I was to live with six other kids.

The place was in a suburban neighborhood. The house was white and two stories high. I went inside and was introduced to an old man named Skip. He had a gut that was so big it hung over his pants, nearly reaching his crotch. The driver handed him my file and left. Skip took me to a room that had two sets of bunk beds in it and I was shown a bottom bunk and was told it was mine. He showed me a dresser that was assigned to that bed and he gave me a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a towel. He took me to the basement where they had boxes of clothes. He found me a pair of jeans, a few shirts, and five pairs of underwear and socks. Then I was led outside where three other kids were mowing the lawn and weeding and I was told to help them.

For dinner we all sat at a long table with Skip and his wife Charlene who was overweight as well. She had long gray hair pulled back in a bun, and wore an old-lady sort of dress and made us hold hands while she said grace. After that we got to eat. There were six kids in all. A couple were younger but most seemed around my age. We ate macaroni and cheese mixed with hot dogs and there was a big bowl of mixed vegetables that Charlene told us we had to eat. There was a pitcher of red Kool-Aid and a loaf of white bread and I ate until I couldn’t eat any more. Afterwards I helped clear the table and do the dishes. There was a big living room with four separate couches and we all sat around and watched TV until it was nine, then we were told to go to bed.

As I lay there that night I could hear the other kids talking. Some of it was about their various jobs or about girls and then they started talking about a kid named Weston who had my bunk before me. He was released and sent back to his foster parents. It seemed like everyone there hated him and they went on and on about it. They didn’t talk to me so I didn’t say anything and I felt alright. I didn’t care. I just wasn’t hungry and the bed was soft and the sheets smelled good. I lay there and listened until Skip came by and banged on the door and told them to cut it out.

That night I dreamt about Pete. He and I were walking by a swimming pool and we stopped and he drank from the water but the water was so full of chlorine and chemicals that it was smoking. I tried to make him stop. I yelled at him.

“Pete, don’t,” I screamed. “For Christ’s sake, Pete, please.”

I pulled on the lead rope and when I did he spooked and reared and fell into the pool. But the pool had no bottom and he couldn’t get out and he couldn’t stand or rest. He just trod water and tried to hang on. I ran around looking for a way to get him out, but every time I tried to think my mind would freeze. It seemed like it all went on for hours and days, through sunlight and darkness. He was sinking into the water. He was getting tired. I tried my best to hold him up but I wasn’t strong enough and then he just disappeared. He was gone.

At seven o’clock Skip came in and told us to get up and by seven thirty we all went down to breakfast where we ate cornflakes and orange juice and toast. Skip told four of the kids to hurry or they’d be late for work and he told me and one other kid to be back by five o’clock or he’d call the police. Charlene gave us each a sack lunch and we left.

Me and the other kid walked down the street together. His name was Kevin Sheraton and he was younger than me. His face was covered in acne and he was the skinniest kid I’d ever seen. He had black hair and it was shaved down like he was in the army and one of his ears was smaller and deformed, like it never grew from when he was small. He told me his mom married a born-again Christian and they kicked him out of the house for smoking cigarettes. After two months they let him move back in, but then they said he’d tried to finger his little sister.

“But it ain’t true, man. I’d never do that. My sister’s seven. My mom’s husband hates me, that’s all. He’s the fucking pervert. He’s the one.”

We walked around downtown and both ate our lunches and then we went into a hardware store and looked around. When we came out we went down near this canal where there were shops and restaurants and people walking by. I followed him until he sat down right near the water. He took a tube of glue out of his pants pocket.

“You didn’t even see me do it, did you?”

“You mean the glue?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You took it when we were in the hardware store?”

He nodded. He opened the glue and put it up his nose and inhaled as hard as he could. He did that a few times, then he handed it to me, but I told him I didn’t want to do it so he put the tube back in his pocket. We sat there for a long time, then we got up and I showed him where I slept by the river.

“That’s rough, man,” he said. My blanket was still there along with the shirts I had. He pulled out the glue and stuck it up his nose again. “At least the house is better than this. Skip’s alright but it’s Charlene who’s the real bitch. I’ve lived there two months now. You’ll see. She’s the worst. She’s got a real temper and she’s mad at me right now. But it wasn’t my fault. Skip, all he gives a fuck about is watching TV. That guy can sit in front of the TV all day. The problem is he always picks what we watch and all he likes are hunting and fishing shows.”

“How come they just let us out all day?”

“What else are they gonna do? We ain’t fucked-up enough for juvie. We can’t get jobs ’cause we’re too young, and they don’t want us wasting their lives back at the house. You just can’t be late, man. If you are they get seriously pissed and then you’re fucked.”

We sat down in the bushes and talked for a while, but it was hot out so we both stripped down to our underwear and went swimming in the river and the day passed. When it got near five we got dressed and made our way back to the house.

Skip was washing his car when we got there so Kevin and I helped him. We dried it and waxed it and then we helped him rearrange the garage and sweep the driveway. That night for dinner we had Hamburger Helper and a bowl of mixed vegetables and a loaf of white bread. There were two pitchers of red Kool-Aid and we all held hands and said grace again, then we sat in silence and ate. Since Kevin and I were the only ones without jobs, Charlene had us clear the table and do the dishes. A couple of the other guys went upstairs and the rest followed Skip into the living room to watch TV.

The next morning it was the same thing, toast and cornflakes and juice. We left with the same sort of sack lunch we had the day before and Kevin and I went downtown and walked in and out of stores. Then we went to the river and ate our lunches and went swimming.

When we got back that evening at five Skip had Kevin and I vacuum the carpets and mop the kitchen and bathroom floors and then Charlene came home. She put two pounds of ground meat in a pan and had me stir it around, then she threw in a bunch of onions and added a gallon can of spaghetti sauce. She boiled two big pots of water and threw in the spaghetti. The whole time she didn’t talk or say much of anything.

We all ate together and afterwards Kevin and I did the dishes again. When we’d finished, Charlene told me to stay behind. She took me into a back room that had a desk and a couple chairs and a computer. We went inside and she shut the door and told me to sit down.

“I’ve done this for over ten years,” she said. She was sweating and you could see it leaking through her dress. She moved her big body behind the desk and sat. On the walls in the small room were two religious posters. One had a picture of a bird flying through the sky. It said “Jesus loves you” and the other was a picture of a green meadow and it read “With
His
gift you will be set free. With
His
gift you will finally be.”

“I have certain rules and if those rules are broken, then you’re gone. It’s the way I’ve run my home since the beginning, and it works. There’s no discussions or second chances here and I told you that when you arrived. Del, you’ll be leaving us.”

“Me?”

“We found a tube of glue, a baggy with what looks like marijuana, and four cigarettes in the back of your dresser.”

“In my dresser?”

She nodded.

“I don’t even have anything to put in the dresser but the things you’ve given me.”

She just sat there sweating, looking at me.

“I don’t smoke anything and I don’t stick glue up my nose,” I told her.

“We’ve never found anything like this before with any of the other residents. That’s the truth. You arrive and suddenly there’s marijuana, a tube of glue, and cigarettes in your dresser. I called your assigned juvenile magistrate and she remembered you. She looked in your file and made a call and tomorrow you’re being sent to the Idaho Youth Ranch in south-west Idaho. It’s a year-long residency.”

“A year?”

“A year,” she said. “It’s on a five hundred and fifty-acre ranch and is a more intensively structured living situation than this.”

“But none of that stuff is mine.”

“Then whose is it?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know anyone here.”

Her face didn’t change or make any sort of expression.

“Someone will be here by nine tomorrow morning to take you. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. You can watch TV with the rest of the boys or you can go to your room and get your things ready for tomorrow. Okay?”

“I swear it wasn’t my stuff.”

“You have two options tonight, Del. You can go watch TV or you can go to your room and get your things ready for tomorrow.”

“I don’t have any things to get ready.”

“Then you can watch TV. Okay?” She turned on the computer. “You can leave now.”

I shut the door to her office and went up to my room, lay on my bunk, and tried to think. I couldn’t sleep. Kevin and two other kids came in at nine and they talked for a long time and I just lay there with my eyes closed. I waited until they were sleeping, then I got up and found my clothes and dressed as quietly as I could. I took the sheet and blanket and rolled them up like a sleeping bag, then lay back down and listened as hard as I could. I didn’t hear anything so I got up again and walked over to Kevin. He was in the lower bunk across from me and was sleeping on his back. Looking at him in the dim light made me see red. I don’t know why he’d do that to me. I’d gone over and over the two days we spent together and it didn’t make sense.

I put my hand over his mouth until he woke up. His eyes got wide when he saw me and I hit him as hard as I could in the stomach. Then I took my hand off his mouth and grabbed his throat to hold him down and hit him two more times in the guts. He hit me back once in the eye but it didn’t hurt. I hit him again. He cried out that time, but I knocked the wind out of him so he just lay there out of breath looking at me. I made my way downstairs, went to the front door. The alarm went off when I opened it, but I just ran down the street, turned a corner, and kept running.

Chapter 25

I made it to the freeway and walked alongside it for a couple miles until I was outside of town. It was still dark out. Cars and trucks rushed by and none stopped and I didn’t see any police. I kept walking until I saw a truck stop in the distance. I got off the interstate and went towards it. There were tractor trailers going in and out and there were dozens of them parked in the lot.

I sat in the dirt across from the main building and waited out the rest of the night. Just past dawn a pickup stopped for gas. A man got out and filled the tank, then drove over to near where I was and stopped. He got out, opened the hood of the truck, and leaned over and began working on the engine.

I could hear him talking to himself and then he stopped, took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, and lit one. He looked out and saw me sitting there staring at him.

“You much of a mechanic?” he yelled out to me.

“No,” I said and got up and walked over to him.

“It would be alright if you were,” he said and smiled, and when he did you could see he was missing his front top four teeth. He was young, maybe twenty or so, and he wore a white T-shirt and jeans and boots. His hair was brown and short and it looked like he hadn’t taken a shower in a while.

“What are you doing here, sitting in the dirt?”

“I’m hoping to catch a ride,” I told him.

“Where you going?”

“Wyoming. Where you going?” I asked him.

“Grand Junction, Colorado.”

“Can I get a ride with you?”

“Grand Junction ain’t on the way to Wyoming, man,” he said.

“That’s okay. Anywhere is better than here.”

He looked at me.

“Alright, but don’t give me a hard time if we break down going over the mountains.”

“I won’t,” I said and got up.

“I got to haul ass too.”

“Alright,” I said.

I walked over to him and introduced myself, and he told me his name was Lonnie Dixon.

“What’s wrong with your truck?”

“It’s just old, and I shouldn’t be making this sort of trip in it. The top radiator hose is bulging so I duct taped the shit out of it. I got an extra but I’d have to wait until it cooled down to change it and I don’t have the time so I’m gonna chance it. The alternator belt’s loose too. Its been howling for a while so I went in there and bought a spare and tightened the old one. It’ll be alright, I hope. I go through about a quart of oil an hour and it’ll be a miracle if the tranny holds. I’ve been running this fucker all the way from Tonopah, Nevada.”

I looked at the engine. The battery was sitting on a makeshift wooden platform and circled with wire to hold it in place. I could see where the hose was duct taped. There were other hoses that had duct tape on them, too, and the whole engine looked rusty and where it wasn’t rusty it was covered thick in dirt and oil. He started the engine and came back with a screwdriver and began adjusting the carburetor. He did it for a long time.