PEG BOY (26 page)

Santiago
serviced three more men before he was allowed to return to his room alone to
sleep. The noises in the parlor and from the other rooms quieted as the night
wore on. His senses were sufficiently dulled to allow a rest uninterrupted by
the phantoms of his dreams.

A week passed.
Santiago was asked to see two to three men each night. Some returned within the
week because they were charmed by the boy’s aura of innocence and a lack of
hard character, so predominant in child prostitutes. And in that week Santiago
came to know the brothers more intimately as they began coming to his room to
talk. McIntyre was aware of the boys’ interest and he made sure they were
provided with enough opium to fill their needs and desires.

One morning
Santiago was awakened by a persistent knocking at his door. When opened, he
found a weakened Kim bracing himself against the wall, tears in his eyes, his
face filled with fear and anguish.

“What is it?
What’s wrong?

Santiago
pulled the shaken boy into the room. The child could not stop trembling and his
sobs were deep, making it difficult for him to speak. Kim collapsed at
Santiago’s feet, his shoulders shaking with the crying of despair. Santiago
knelt and took the boy by the shoulders and shook him.

“I can not
help you if I do not know what is wrong. For God’s sake, get a hold of yourself
and tell me what it is!”

Kim raised his
head and looked at Santiago for a long while. The words could not come however
he tried. Santiago stood and pulled the boy with him.

“Is it
Michael?”

Kim nodded,
his arm stretched with finger pointing to their room. Santiago ran to the
neighboring room and found it in darkness. The light from the hallway was not
enough for him to see in it clearly. He returned to his own room for a lamp.
Kim was sitting on the bed, legs crossed, moaning to himself as he cried.

“Put those
clothes on...,” Santiago ordered, only now realizing the boy’s nakedness,
“...and stay here.”

With the
lantern in hand he entered the boy’s room and found an empty bed and Michael
laying on the floor beside it. Santiago ran to him but as soon as he touched
the boy’s shoulder he knew he was dead. The flesh was cold and the body lay in
a pool of excrement. He brought the lantern closer. Michael’s face was twisted
to the side, his mouth crusted with vomit and saliva, his eyes open. Santiago
was suddenly repulsed by the sight of the twisted face, Michael’s eyes staring.
He pulled sheets from the bed and covered the body, so small and frail, and
returned to his room.

“You know...,
your brother is dead.”

“I know.”

The answer was
an acknowledgment of the horrible truth.

“What
happened?”

Kim tried to
collect himself to speak. It was difficult to stop the tears. Santiago
refrained from further questions and sat on the bed beside the boy and held him
tightly, feeling the heavy sobs racking the young child with overwhelming
grief. The crying continued for some time and Santiago stayed with the boy,
rocking him gently until the sobs subsided to deep sighs of exhaustion.

“Now tell me,”
Santiago urged. “Do you know what happened?”

“No,” The boy
answered through sniffles of a running nose and swollen eyes. Santiago took the
edged of the sheet and ordered him to blow his nose into it.

“I came back
to the room only a few minutes ago. I found him on the floor. He would not talk
to me..., he will never talk to me!”

“You were not
with him?”

“No. The man
who bought me wanted me all night. We used one of the other rooms.”

“Then you were
not with the same man?”

“Yes earlier,
we were with the same man together. Then McIntyre said another man wanted me so
I went with him.”

“No one knows
about this yet?”

“I don’t think
so.”

“We need to
tell someone. Stay here. I’ll get McIntyre.”

Kim began to
cry again. “I want my brother...!”

“Stay here
until I return, I’ll be right back.”

Santiago left
Kim still rocking and sobbing. He ran down the hallway at to the parlor below.
Chairs and tables had been piled and the old Chinaman was cleaning.

“Whuang...,
where is McIntyre? I must find him.., anyone..., quickly!”

The Chinese
man seemed unnerved, recognizing an emergency.

“No McIntyre
here..., boss gone.”

“Who is here
then? One of the twins is dead. Get someone!”

The man raised
his hands to his head and wailed as he ran from the room. Santiago paced back
and forth until Whuang returned with one of McIntyre’s men.

“This crazy
old coot says somebody’s dead? Do you know what he’s talking about?’

“Yes. Come.
One of the twins, Michael..., he is dead in his room.”

Santiago
followed behind the two men as they ran up the stairs and stopped at the twin’s
door. Santiago looked beyond the men into the dimly lit interior. Kim was
sitting on the floor with his brother in his arms, rocking him. His tears fell
on his dead brother’s face so that both boys wept. Kim clung to the body and it
took all the strength of the two men to pull them apart.

o
n
a Sunday in June, Michael Simmon’s body was sewn into a cloth sack and taken
out to sea. Kim and Santiago had been isolated from the others and told of the
consequences of a loose tongue. McIntyre spoke threateningly to each of the
danger of the news leaking out about the death. If exposed, all of them would
be jailed or sent away to terrible places and none would ever be free again.

When Kin
gained courage to ask about the cause of his brother’s death, McIntyre
attributed it to a drug overdose. He blamed it fully on Michael’s greed,
suggesting that the boy had either obtained extra drugs from another boy or
more likely had stolen some. McIntyre asked Santiago how much of what he had
been given, remained. He looked beneath a pile of clothing where he hid his
supply and found all of what he had left, missing. Also hidden with the stash
of opium had been a sum of money he had been saving; little extra gifts left by
customers like Bolen. All of it was missing. Santiago reasoned that if Michael
had come into his room to steal, something of what had been stolen would still
be in the twin’s room. After McIntyre left them alone, Kim helped in the search
but they found nothing. In fact Kim told Santiago that a small cameo that had
belonged to their mother was not where it had been hidden. This raised the
suspicion that the boys’ room had been searched along with Santiago’s and put
into question the veracity of McIntyre’s story and of his being behind the
entire affair?

McIntyre told
Kim his brother had been buried in a cemetery some miles from the city. Perhaps
soon, if he was not troublesome, he would be taken to the grave and their room
was rid of everything that could point to the boy’s existence. In truth the
death had been directly due to the excessive sexual practices by the man who
had last been with the boy, combined with the indiscriminate ingestion of
opium. The Doctor asked to look at Michael and found the major cause of death
to have been from internal bleeding of a ruptured intestine as a result of the
insertion of a large object..., perhaps a fist.

The
elimination of the second brother had been suggested by several of McIntyre’s
men. They argued that his dependency on the dead boy would likely lead to
additional trouble. But the Doctor who had examined Michael refused to be a
party to any further intrigue and threatened to disclose the entire affair if 
Kim was harmed. McIntyre found the Doctor’s sense of propriety and outrage
misbegotten, considering his own duplicity in being the examiner of all the
boys to keep them disease-free and of his own use of them at will. He decided
to abide by the Doctor’s wishes for the time being and began to think of how
the man might himself be eliminated and be replaced with someone more
cooperative.

Santiago Cali
was deeply touched by Kim’s sadness. From the moment his brother had been torn
from his arms, Kim had stopped speaking. His heart went out to him and he
understood the loneliness and desperation of losing a friend and brother. He
visited the boy in his room or invited him to come to his own. He urged the boy
to come with him for meals when Kim stopped eating. The boy spoke to no one. He
stared through vacant eyes and seemed to move through the house without purpose
or intent. He continued to function in this capacity and serviced every man McIntyre
sent to him, but he did not speak. Yet he continued to go to Santiago or McIntyre
for his daily dose of opium. He lost weight. McIntyre decided to withhold the
substance until he began to eat again because the customers started to complain
that having sex with the boy was like fucking a corps.

It was
Santiago who finally broke through to Kim one morning as he took him by the
hand and dragged him into his room and closed the door.

“Are you
trying to kill yourself?”

Kim sat
silent, his eyes darkened and sunken, his face having lost its childish look It
was more like that of an old man’s, long in suffering. Santiago saw the
prominence of the ribs and the thinness of the arms and legs. What blush the
boy had once possessed, was lost. The once-lustrous hair was now dry and
matted.

“If that is
what you are trying to do, then you are playing right into McIntyre’s hand. He
wants you out of the way! That way there will be no one to report your
brother’s death.”

The boy looked
up with interest.

“I have been listening
to what the others have been saying. Everyone knows that Michael did not die by
something he did to himself. Why do you think all his things have been taken?
The only thing of Michael’s that has not been removed is you! Some of the
others are surprised that you are still here. Everyone expected you to suddenly
disappear. But here you are! Wouldn’t it be convenient for McIntyre if you got
ill and died? He would be rid of both of you and have nothing to answer to. But
they say that the Doctor has warned him against hurting you. What kind of way
is this for you to behave? Wouldn’t you want to help find out what happened to
Michael?”

Kim had sat
upright and his eyes had never left Santiago’s face as he pressed on.

“I’m going to
tell you something. It is to be a secret between us. I tell it to you to show
that these things do not need to go un-avenged. I came to this country with my
father. We came to find gold. We joined a group that traveled to the mountains.
We came close to finding a treasure but three men killed my father. They shot
him. For three days they used me like a woman. I waited until the time was
right and cut the throat of the one who was fucking me. He bled all over me as
he was lying over me and I enjoyed the feeling of having the blood run over my 
face, knowing he was dying as it spilled out of him. I finally shoved him off
when there was nothing left. I shot off the heads of the other two men. Then I
made my way back to a town where there was a man who had been responsible for
setting the three on us. I killed him also.”

Kim had
listened. He had observed Santiago’s eyes turning from the warm and soft ones
with which he had become familiar and had come to trust, to those of someone
filled with vengeance. He had seen Santiago transformed from gentleness to
hatred and the passion that filled him was like new life for the boy. It was
promise of power.

“You want to
sit there and feel sorry for yourself? Remember how Michael always stood up to
anybody who threatened either of you? Remember how he confronted the other boys
when you first arrived? Remember how he stood up to McIntyre? What do you think
he would have done if it had been you that died instead of him? Do you think he
would have stopped talking and would have refused to eat? Or would he have
fought and kicked and tried to avenge you?”

Kim’s hands
clenched. His head thrust forward. The blank stare and lack of expression, the
slumped shoulder and depression were replaced by something that spoke of
determination and resolve.

“Well...?” Santiago
hoped the boy would respond.

“I hate
them..., I hate all of them! I hate McIntyre for doing this to me. I hate my
father for leaving us when my mother died. I hate those men who put their hands
all over me. I hate it here. And I hate you because you like it here!”

“Do you think
I like this?” Santiago was satisfied that he had finally elicited a reaction.

“You do...,
don’t you? I’ve seen you. I’ve seen the way you look when we’re called to the
parlor to sit on those fucking stools. You like it! You like having those men
look at you. You can’t tell me your not excited by it because I have seen you
get hard right away. Michael used to talk about it. He said you were born to do
this.”

The words were
like a slap to his face and Santiago sat silent. Was this what the boys had
thought? It had not occurred to him that they would have had that opinion of
him. Was it true? He could not deny the fact that he had had an immediate
attraction to the streets from the first time he had seen the boys there and
had known deep within his mind what they were doing. Then there had been the
statement made by the Captain about Santiago having a gold mine between his
legs. He could not remember a time when he had not had the thoughts of a
maricon
.
And there were his fantasies of being sought, pursued, and abducted. He had
seen the looks from other men and boys that had ignited interest.

“What of it?
What has that got to do with you? Yes, I can not deny that although I dislike
this place, I do like what I do. I will do whatever necessary to live. I have
no one! And I will do whatever I need to keep a roof over my head and food in
my stomach. You would do better to look at yourself and do something to better
your own situation than to criticize what other do!”

Kim’ anger
brought a new life to his expression and some of his color had returned.

“Are you
saying I should enjoy doing this and say nothing about my brother? How can I
agree to do something I hate so much? In spite of all the yelling and
complaining and all the trouble Michael caused about being sold and being here,
he was more like you than I. He
did
enjoy what he did in bed. When we
shared the same man I would see him become so involved and excited that it was
almost as though he became someone else..., someone I did not know. I hated
doing what I was doing, and he loved it! I don’t think he ever knew that.”

“Why did you
not say this to him?”

“I don’t know.
I knew he expected me to do what he did. I knew he would be disappointed with
me if I told him how I felt.”

‘What will you
do now?”

“What should I
do?”

Santiago
understood finally that Michael’s function with Kim had been to tell the boy
what to do. Kim seemed lost without his brother. He truly did not know what to
do.

‘You were
starving yourself and making yourself ill. Is that what you want?”

“No!”

“What do you
want?”

“To get away
from here. I want to go home and find my father.”

“Did he not
abandon you?”

“He had no
choice. When mother died he had to return to work in the mines and it was not a
place to bring children. He found a woman in Sydney who was willing to take us.
When the money stopped coming from my father, she sold us to a man who offered
to take us off her hands. That’s when all this began. The man kept us for a few
months and started playing with Michael first. Then he turned to me and I saw
that Michael was not objecting. I said nothing. When he tired of us he sold us
to a ship captain who traded in boys. Mrs. Belle bought us because she felt
sorry for us when she heard we were being sold to a woman in New Orleans who
had a place like this, only much worse.”

“See...,”
Santiago took the boy’s hand and led him back to the bed and had him sit down.
“Maybe you
are
better off than you thought you might be if she had not
kept you in San Francisco.”

“And my
brother might be alive!”

Kim’s words
were bitter, but as softened by Santiago’s touch.

“Would you
accept a poor substitute?”

“What?”

“Would you be
willing to accept me as a substitute for a brother?”

“Why are you
asking that?”

“Because I
lost my brother too. Because I have no one left. Because we are each in the
same predicament and it sounds like a good idea.”

“What will we
do..., I mean what if I say yes? What will we do differently?”

“If I had a
little brother here with me I would be sure that he was eating properly and
taking a bath every day. I would be there to help him when he had problems, and
I would go to him when I had a problem. I would try to help him find a way to
get back to his father, if that was what he wanted.”

Santiago saw
the boy’s interest as amazement came into his eyes, touched with skepticism.

“Kim, I need
you as much s you need me. We can be of help to each other. But you can not be
of any help to me if you starve yourself or continue smoking so much opium. I
wonder if you feel the same way?”

A long pause
was followed by a wave of emotion that swept over the young boy’s face. He saw
internal conflict, sadness memories, pain of previous disappointment, all of
which were being considered in attempt at resolution. Santiago took Kim in his
arms and held him.

“Whatever you
decide,” he said. “I can still be your friend.”

“But I would
rather have a brother!”

Kim looked
into Santiago’s eyes and his own were filled with tears. Be buried his face in
Santiago’s shoulder and wept.

“Everything is
so fucked up! Why does it need to be like this?”

“Kim things
are
like this but it does not mean that they must remain like this! How do you know
that something won’t happen to change things? Maybe if you get yourself looking
better, somebody will see you and become interested in you, and maybe that
might be a way for you to get away from here. Maybe anything...”

“You think
so?”

“I think
anything is possible! If anyone had told me a year ago that I would be working
in this kind of place, I would never have believed it. But look at me now!”

The boy looked
wistful. “I wish I was a pretty as you.”

Santiago
laughed.

“
Pretty
is not something you say to a boy unless he happens to be the likes of
Mariposa. But, you
are
handsome! Not now of course because of how badly
you have allowed yourself to get. But you could be again. You could be very
handsome with more meat on you.”

“You think
so?”

“Yes little
brother, I think so.”

Kim rested his
head against Santiago’s chest.

“Thank you,
Santiago, I will try.”

The two boys
held each other as they lay back on the bed and soon drifted into sleep, a
sleep soothed by the comfort of touch.