by Pepper Pace
He nudged Blue. ‘Was she trying to give me AIDS?’ Someone yelled for them to shut the fuck up.
‘Who knows?’ Blue murmured. ‘Maybe she just wanted to get off.’ Troy lay there quietly and thanked his lucky stars that he’d found Blue.
Blue had been on the streets pretty much all of his life. He always bragged that he could get off the streets but he would rather have a hustle then a job. He taught Troy where to shower and how to eat and to always stay away from the cops.
In the beginning he had asked Blue if they ever ate out of garbage cans and Blue had been fit to be tied. He told him HELL no and explained that there was too much food around if you knew how to look. Thus came his lesson in stealing.
Troy was not good at stealing. The stress of stealing could trigger a seizure, he had the trembles and bad tics which made him not the most stealth individual, and since he also wasn’t a very fast runner, he would almost always get caught by the person that he robbed. Getting caught normally resulted in a beating.
The first time that he got beat up while on the streets happened when he pulled the wallet from the back pocket of some fat man’s pants. He was surprised to learn that even a man fifty pounds overweight could outrun him! The man punched him in the face several times and once he’d retrieved his wallet kicked him in the gut for good measure.
It was one of the reasons that Troy preferred to just work odd jobs in exchange for money or for food. At night he would go to one of the Chinese restaurants and offer to mop the floors or clean up the bathrooms for a few dollars. More then not he was taken up on his offer.
His favorite place was the bakery. He watched the guys there expertly making up the daily pastries, cakes and cookies. They always gave him free stuff because they really appreciated the fact that he would do all of their cleaning, leaving them to make tons of mess while they focused on baking.
It was the one and only time he ever felt homesick, because the smell of baking bread made him think of family. It had now been three months on the streets but he had no intentions of returning home. His new friends were beginning to feel like family to him; for instance, when Blue first discovered that he had debilitating headaches, he watched his back.
He had gotten one at one of the house parties that they were using as a crash pad. The music, the movement and the crowd overwhelmed him and soon the headache was on him full fledged so that he was unable see or hear. Blue had led him outside into the cool blackness and sat with him in the dark until it was day and he was under no risk of being accosted while alone.
When he could bear the pain, Blue asked him why he didn’t take medicine. He could get medicine for it at the free clinic.
It took him a long time to answer without becoming emotional. ‘Because, without medication I have a few episodes of discomfort and inconvenience and with it there is a lifetime of being a zombie. Which would you choose?’
‘I see what you mean.’ Troy looked at his new friend. Maybe he did know. If not, he would learn as the weeks went on. Anything could trigger a headache or a bad stuttering spell, but worse were the seizures. Troy didn’t have grand mal seizures where he would fall out and lay on the ground in the throes of a fit. No, but people understood those seizure more then they understood his.
His spells left him staring into space and semi-conscious. If he was lucky he was with Blue or one of his other friends when one hit, if not he’d come back to consciousness robbed, beaten, and once he even woke up to some guy trying to pull off his pants. Never much for fighting, Troy’s immediate rage drove him to beat the man bloody, delivering a well placed kick between his legs before he hurried off to the safety of one of the crash pads. It was the first time that he’d ever hit another human being, but it would not be the last.
Troy liked the streets, if for no other reason than the fact that he had people that he could consider friends. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t judged because of his condition. They’d all be sitting around laughing and then the world would turn sideways. He’d fade away into a seizure and when he woke up a minute or two later they would still be joking and laughing and they’d nudge him and fill him in on what he’d missed. They never made a big deal out of it; if they even noticed it happening. But his family had always made his seizures seem like a distasteful act that they had to turn their heads from; as if they were waiting to wipe a toddler’s ass after he took his first dump in the big toilet.
The months moved fast and soon it was his eighteenth birthday. He had told Blue about the social security checks that he’d been getting for years. He would need to call home in order to get the money and that was something he wasn’t up for.
‘So you got all of this money just sitting in the bank?’ Blue had asked incredulously.
‘Well in a Trust. My parents just banked it since I lived with them.’ Now he’d take the money and get a place, find a job, get off the streets, help his friends with a place to crash.
Blue had given him a funny look. ‘You’re going to go home, get your money, and come back here?’ And when Troy had nodded to the affirmative Blue had given him an even odder look. ‘Your parent’s aren’t going to give you that money…even if they haven’t already spent it up on their own. You don’t take your medicine, you don’t do what they want, so they’ll just have you committed as soon as you get home. You don’t need to go back there. Call them and make them send it to you.’
The truth of those words made him rethink everything. So instead of going home, Troy called his parent’s for the first time in eight months. Dad demanded that he come home. Troy had never stuttered so much when he told him adamantly no. The streets weren’t always easy but here he at least made his own decisions.
‘What did we ever do, Troy? We tried our best-’
‘You don’t listen! Eve-ev-even no-now you d-d-DON’T he-he…HEAR me!’ His Dad stopped talking. And he calmed a bit. ‘I don’t w-w-want the me-me-medication. I just w-w-…WANT to b-b-be norm-normal.’
‘You can’t be normal without the medication, Troy.’ Troy closed his eyes. His Dad really believed that.
‘Dad…I’ll c-c-call you back t-t-tomorrow.’ Troy hung up the phone. But he didn’t call back. Blue took him down to the Social Security Administration and he began the process of getting the checks sent to himself directly. The other money would just have to stay in Trust.
With no address he had to have his social security checks deposited into an account. Getting social security then made things both better and worse. Now he had money to blow on pay by the week motel rooms and food for him and his friends. But the money marked the end of his friendship with Blue.
He started getting robbed all of the time; several times each week. He would go into the motel and the TV would be stolen, his clothes disappeared. He had to lay down the law and keep people out of the room except when he was there.
But then one night some people jumped him and forced him to a teller machine at knife point. They cleaned out his account of the last forty dollars that he had. He never had much money after paying rent, buying food and necessities for everybody. Someone would need razors to shave for an interview, a girl needed feminine products, someone needed diapers. Money went super fast and Troy wondered how they dealt with those issues before his social security checks appeared?
The night he had been jumped, he was already on his way to the ATM machine since he’d just used his last buck to buy a cup of coffee. Someone grabbed him roughly by his long hair and pushed him forward. ‘Where’s all the money in that trust?!’ Another guy demanded and he stuck Troy in the side with the knife when Troy told him that he didn’t have access to the trust. That’s when he knew the truth of the robbery and the break-ins; Blue was behind this. He was very happy then that he had left the money in the trust under his parent’s watchful eye; very thankful.
When the robbers didn’t get the money they beat him up and ran off. He sat for the rest of the night with his back against the shop where the ATM machine was loca
ted. People who approached it would see the bloodied, battered young man and hurry off to find a different machine.
He didn’t go back to the motel to get his things. They were just things. Things came and things left…And so did Troy. With not a penny in his pocket he left Columbus and headed south. He walked some, went to truck stops and caught a ride with truckers when he could. At the truck stop diners he’d ask if he could mop or clean the bathrooms for food and they would just give him a sack of burgers and a cup of coffee and send him on his way. Sometimes the truckers would ask him to give them a blow job but he always said no. Once a trucker begged him to show his dick for fifty bucks. It was a lot of money just to show his dick so after he got the money—the trucker only had twenty on him--he showed his dick. The man tried to touch it and he jumped out of the truck and ran away.
He wouldn’t get another social security check for several more weeks but he had learned his lessons well with Blue and found places to sleep in abandoned warehouses and buildings. He avoided the shelters unless absolutely necessary. Blue said that men only got a cot and some things in order to shower in the morning, but all of your shit will be gone the first time you close your eyes; even the shoes off your feet.
When he got his next check he got a motel room for the week but discovered that the mattress had bedbugs. He switched rooms, but they all had bedbugs and the motel owner wouldn’t give him a refund. It was a waste of one hundred twelve dollars. It was too much for week by week anyways. He might be able to find an efficiency for less than that…well if he had a job, credit references…
He walked to the train station scratching at the bedbug bites on his arms and feeling like they were crawling in his hair. He knew that he looked like what he was; a bum. But the train station during the day, was a place to stay warm, so that’s where he sat. A kid looked at him. He wasn’t with anyone and he was holding a backpack and looking lost. He walked towards Troy, half scared.
‘Where do you go when you’re hungry?’
Troy thought about all of the things Blue had taught him.
‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen.’
Troy had seen lots of teenagers on the streets. He sighed. ‘You go home, kid. That’s what you do.’
He was only eighteen. Who was he to call him a kid? But he felt years older. Troy sat there on the bench and tried not to scratch and he shot the day away in a place that was warm. But once it got dark security ushered him on and he went back to his motel room and slept in the shower. Only the roaches got him there.
With the motel as his address he did get hired at a fast food restaurant; until someone saw a bedbug in his hair. Fired. He went to the free clinic and got some medicine for the bites and then kept on moving to another town. Ohio was a big state, but since it was winter he considered getting a bus ticket to Florida or California where he could be a beach bum in shorts and t-shirts.
That was his new plan and then he met Kelly.
It was too cold to sleep in the abandoned buildings and he was considering another vermin infested motel when he decided to scope the underpasses of the bridges. If he found another loner then maybe he could get a line on where to hang out at night for warmth. A guy told him about a crack house and they didn’t care who crashed there. So Troy headed there warily.
You didn’t go to crack houses to crash alone but it wasn’t like he had anything worth stealing so he had tried it. It smelled bad and there were people there getting wasted but they were minding their own business and so he minded his. He found a warm corner and curled up and fell asleep.
The next thing he knew, people were running and flashlights were illuminating the room. Cops! He jumped up but was grabbed by two cops within seconds. As his heart pumped in fear he thought about how jail would probably be ok. It would be warm and there would be food. They loaded him into a cruiser with three others. They were practically sitting on each other and handcuffed with strip ties so it was very awkward. One guy had pissed himself so it smelled bad.
The police ride lasted a long time; a really long time. He looked around at the other faces in the cruiser with him. They were quiet and terrified. The cruisers flashers went out and the car turned down a dark road for several miles before coming to a stop next to an empty field.
The cops were quiet as they pulled open the door of the cruiser and hauled the four men out, forcing them to lay face down on the ground. Troy was terrified. He thought they were going to get shot in the back of the head. Instead the cops began beating them one by one.
It wasn’t just the normal beating that Troy had received on the streets before; punch in the nose, kick to the groin, jab at the kidneys. No. This beating put an entire new perspective to the term ‘ass whupping’.
The men were clubbed, punched, kicked, stomped and then once unconscious the strip ties were removed. When Troy could open his eyes again it was bright daylight and he was stiff with cold. He looked around only to see that he was alone. The others had awaken and gone. He checked his pockets…wallet gone. No surprise there. But someone had also stolen his coat, which was pretty messed up.
He pulled himself up and felt a pain settling sharp and deep in several places; his lower back, perhaps his kidneys, his ribs, his nose, and his jaw. He had never hurt so bad in his life. And he was freezing, perhaps if he weren’t so cold he’d hurt more. Maybe he should be thankful that he’d die of hypothermia and not the ass whupping he’d just received.
It took him hours to get back to the road and no one was too quick to pick up a guy stumbling around in the cold gripping his ribs and bleeding from the face; no one but another cop. He saw the flashing lights and tried to run. All he could manage was just a slow limping shuffle. It was pretty stupid. The cop pulled over; big black guy that looked like he had played professional basketball back in the 1970’s but now had gone to pot. He walked over to Troy as he tried to limp away to the nearby field.
‘Kid. Stop running.’ He was walking alongside of him watching him curiously. Troy stopped and watched him with terror filled eyes.
‘I-I promise n-n-not to t-t-tell.’ He said with a plea in his voice.
The cops eyes darkened. ‘Who beat you like this?’ Troy didn’t say anything. He knew that he was going to get another beating whether he answered or not. The cop sighed. ‘You need to warm up in the car. It’s twenty degrees out here.’ He guided Troy back to the car. He was shaking so bad that he thought he’d fall into a grand mal seizure. Instead of putting him in the back of the cruiser he put him in the front. He cranked up the heat, but it was already warm and toasty and his body reacted violently with more shaking.
The giant officer picked up a thermos and unscrewed the top. The delicious aroma of coffee invaded the car and he poured some of the hot liquid into the cup and passed it to Troy.
‘Drink this.’
Troy gave him an appreciative, suspicious, fearful look. But when he took the coffee, hot liquid burned his hands. He couldn’t hold it, his hands wouldn’t cooperate. The cop took the coffee away and glared at his hands as if they were evil and needed punishment. He gripped one of Troy’s wrists and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. Angry welts were there from the zip cuffs.
He looked at Troy’s eyes deeply, but didn’t even ask. He then lifted the cup and held it carefully to the younger man’s lips. ‘Drink. Get warm on the inside in order to get warm on the outside. I’m Kelly. What’s your name?’ Troy didn’t know if Kelly was his first or last name, but he answered him truthfully. It wasn’t like he had anything to hide.
Kelly reached over and buckled him in. Troy started getting scared again. ‘Troy, you got a choice here. I can take you to the hospital. They’ll stitch you up, give you a shot of antibiotics, ask for a police report.’ Here he gave Troy a pointed look. ‘…and then send you on your way. Or I can take you to a church I know. They help guys that are down on their luck. They have a doctor on board that will look you over real good, then they’ll give you a meal ticket and a place in on
e of their boarding houses to sleep. Once you are feeling better they will help you get on your feet.’ He was driving as he talked. The low humming voices coming across the police radio, made a perfect backdrop to Kelly’s deep baritone. ‘Which will it be, son?’
