by Gene Gant
She grabbed her keys and shoulder bag, I grabbed the luggage, and I followed her into the garage. She popped the trunk on her Ford Taurus. I understood why she wanted to take her car. Dad tended to get a little heavy-footed behind the wheel of his Mustang. Plus, he was very particular about where he parked that thing. He wouldn’t leave it under a tree, lest a bird decorate it, and he wouldn’t leave it near any other vehicle, lest the sides get dinged. Once he found a parking spot that suited him, he usually wound up walking farther to get to his destination than he drove.
“I stopped off at the supermarket on the way home from work today,” Mom said as I hefted the luggage into her trunk. “The kitchen is fully stocked for you.”
“Mom, you forgot the Gatorade.”
“No, I didn’t. You drink too much of that. I think you need to take a break from it.”
“But… what am I supposed to drink?” I closed the lid on the trunk.
“How about water?”
It was going to be a long weekend.
Dad came into the garage with his and Mom’s jackets draped over one arm. He was fumbling around, trying to cinch a leather-banded watch around his wrist. “Where the hell is my silver watch with the stretch band?” he complained, mostly to himself. “I can’t find it anywhere.”
“We’ll have to look for it when we get back, London.” Mom put her shoulder bag on the trunk of her car, took her jacket, and held it out to me since Dad was still struggling with his watch. I helped her into her jacket. “Thank you, Jericho.” She turned around and kissed my cheek. “Stay out of trouble.”
“I will.”
Mom handed her keys to Dad, grabbed her shoulder bag, and slid into the front passenger seat of her car. I waited as Dad finished securing the watch on his wrist and got into his jacket because I wanted to hug him good-bye.
He looked at me. “What the hell are you standing there for? Get the hell out of my way.”
I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Bye, Dad. Have a good time.”
I stood in the open garage bay, waving at them as they drove off down the street. Once the Taurus was out of sight, I let down the garage door and went into the kitchen. It was officially dinnertime. I grabbed a bag of cheddar cheese potato chips, a little canister of sour cream onion dip, a box of chocolate chip cookies, and a can of peach soda, went to my room, and noshed in grand style while I watched the latest episode of Real Housewives of Mayberry.
THE scratch came at my window just after nine o’clock that night.
To say that it scared the hell out of me is putting it mildly. I think I actually went wee-wee just a tiny bit in my boxers. It was dark outside, my parents were several hundred miles away, and I was lying across my bed in my jeans and T-shirt, thumbing like a robot at the controller and losing badly at a video game because I was slipping by slow degrees into a coma. That sound brought me upright and fully alert in an instant.
Oh God! Somebody’s breaking in! My heart was banging so hard in my chest, I could barely breathe. Run! What do I do? Get one of the guns! Call 9-1-1! Scream! Put a bullet through the window! Don’t pass out! Don’t panic! Scream! Run next door and call 9-1-1! Scream! It took about two seconds for those thoughts to go through my head, not necessarily in that order.
Before I could do anything else, however, the sound came again, this time followed by a muffled whisper. “Jericho?”
Even as recognition hit me, I grabbed the cord at the window and gave a yank, raising the blind. Hutch peered in at me.
I put a hand to my chest, trying to calm my heart. “Hutch? What the—”
He cut me off. “Let me in, Jerry. Let me in….” His face looked weird, but it was hard for me to pinpoint what was wrong with it because he was half hidden in shadows. “Come on. Open the window.”
“No, go to the back door. I’ll meet you there. It’s okay, my mom and dad are gone.”
I let the blind drop and rushed through the house to the kitchen. I unlocked the door and yanked it open, expecting Hutch to be there, but he wasn’t. I stepped out onto the porch into the yellow glare of the porch light. “Hutch?” I called quietly.
He appeared from around the side of the house, moving slowly, pressing one hand against the wall to steady himself. It was very cold out; I could see his breath condense in the air around his head, like puffs of white smoke. He was wearing only a jersey and jeans, no jacket. As he got closer, I could see that he didn’t have on any shoes, just a pair of thick gray socks. Once he stepped into the light, I gasped.
He looked as if some giant had used his face to belt a homer out of the park. His left eye was swollen shut, and the surrounding skin—just about the entire left side of his face—was the deep purple of an eggplant. His right eye had a dazed appearance to it. His hair was damp from the misty rain, draped in limp strands over his scalp and forehead. He swayed slightly as he pulled away from the wall. I thought he would keel over and pass out at any second.
I went down to him on my bare feet, giving no thought to the cold, wet, brown grass. My arms went around his shoulders, steadying him. He leaned into me automatically. I had to just about drag his body to get him up the steps and into the kitchen. I yanked a chair away from the table. He dropped into the chair. After closing and locking the door, I turned back, and for a moment I just looked at him. Hutch stared straight ahead through his right eye, unblinking, unseeing. Other than his swollen left eye, he didn’t seem to be hurt anywhere else, but that black eye alone was horrible enough. I grabbed one of the ice packs Mom kept in the freezer for just such injuries, wrapped it in a towel, and pressed it gently to his wounded face.
“Hold this, man,” I said, but Hutch didn’t move. Taking his left hand, I raised it to his face, placing it over the ice pack. “Hold this to your eye.” This time he obeyed.
I smoothed the damp hair from his face with my fingers. His skin was chilled. His clothes were wet and cold. His socks were dirty and soggy, little puddles already forming around his feet. He had to be freezing, but his body wasn’t shivering. He just sat there, staring at nothing, emotionless, unmoving.
It was scaring the hell out of me. “Hutch?”
No response.
I thought about calling Mac’s parents for help, but I didn’t know how Hutch had gotten like this, and I didn’t want to dump any more trouble in his lap than he already had. That college-type guy he rode off with this afternoon could have done this to him. This could have something to do with Hutch being gay, and he sure couldn’t afford to have that get back to his mom and dad.
His body needed warming. I went down the hall to my bathroom and filled the tub, making the water as hot as I thought a person could stand. When I got back to the kitchen, Hutch hadn’t moved an inch. He looked as if he was sinking into zombie-hood. With an arm around his shoulders, I got him up and walked him down the hall to the bathroom. There I managed to get him out of his clothes, kicking them into a heap in the corner. At my urging, he stepped into the tub. If the steaming water was too hot, he didn’t give any sign. He sat down so clumsily and carelessly that I feared he would slip and hit his head even with my hands supporting his body. Drawing up his knees, he sank down in the tub until the water covered his chest, his head resting against the tiles. I grabbed his left hand, which still held the towel-wrapped ice pack, and pressed it back over his blackened eye.
His right eye stared blankly at the ceiling.
“Hutch? What happened to you, man?”
There was no answer. He didn’t move. He was injured and cold and naked. He seemed to have no conscious control of his body at all. He was so helpless, and somehow that made me feel embarrassed for him. I wanted to give him a few minutes of privacy, but I was afraid to leave him. The way he was now, if his head slipped under water, he’d just lie there and drown.
I got a towel, wet it in the hot water, and started gently wiping at his face, careful to avoid touching his injury. There didn’t seem to be anything else I could do for him. I grabbed my shower gel, got the towel all soap
y, and I washed Hutch’s body slowly and gently because I didn’t know what else to do for him. I took the ice pack from his eye and put it aside because I didn’t want to add freezer burn to the injury he’d already been dealt. Then I went to work washing his hair.
Hutch never moved except when I moved him. He never made a sound. By the time I was done with his hair, his skin was rosy all over his body. I got him out of the tub and dried him off with a thick bath towel. Then I walked him into my room. I got him into one of my T-shirts and a pair of pajama bottoms and sat him down on my bed. He didn’t appear to be in any pain, but every time I looked at that huge, dark and angry bruise on his face, it made my own eye hurt. I went upstairs, got a couple of pills from the Excedrin bottle in my parents’ medicine cabinet, and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen. When I got back to my room, I held out the pills to Hutch. He didn’t ask what they were or even look at them. He just put them in his mouth and washed them down with the water.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Hutch probably had a concussion. He probably should have seen a doctor. But some instinct told me not to leave him alone. I lay him down on my bed, and now, when he was warm and dry, he began to shiver. I pulled the covers over him. After turning off the light, I lay down beside him, wrapping an arm around him and drawing him close.
“Hutch?” I whispered. “I’m gonna call your mom and dad.”
“D-don’t…,” he stuttered through chattering teeth, “don’t d-do that.” As if to emphasize the point, his hand tightened on my forearm, fingernails digging into my skin.
“Ow. Okay, I won’t call.” I pried his fingers loose from my arm. “What happened, man? Who hit you?”
He didn’t answer. He took my hand and pulled my arm tighter around him.
We both slept fitfully. Every now and again, his body would jerk without warning, as if he was trying to run or fight invisible enemies. Sometimes he whimpered or moaned. I held onto him through it all, through the night.
Chapter 15
I WOKE up with an urgent need to pee. Something felt wrong. The room was dark, but the first dim light of day was beginning to filter through the window. Raising my head, I realized that I was alone in bed. I looked over and saw Hutch sitting on the floor across from the bed, his back against the wall, head down, arms draped across his knees.
“Hutch?” I said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“No.”
My bladder was screaming for relief. “Hang on….” I scooted off the bed and dashed into the bathroom. The tub was filled with dirty bath water, and there was a pile of dirty, wet clothes and towels in the corner. I’d have to deal with that later. After flushing the toilet, I gave my hands a quick wash and rushed back into my room.
Hutch was still sitting on the floor with his head down.
I flipped on the light. “Hutch?”
“My head hurts.”
“You want some more Excedrin?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll get ’em.” I knelt beside him. “Let me take a look at your face first.”
He didn’t move. I took his head in my hands and gently lifted it. A flinch shot from my neck up to the top of my head, but I tried not to let it show. The swelling on the left side of his face had gone down a little, but it was still bad, and the bruise seemed to be darker than it was last night. His right eye squinted against the light.
“Can you open your other eye?” I asked, afraid it might have been punched out, a distinct possibility what with all the damage to the surrounding area.
The puffed lid of his left eye fluttered, barely opening. From what little I could see, the eye was horribly bloodshot, but it was there. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
I picked up the ice pack we’d left in the bathroom. It had completely thawed. I went upstairs, got the bottle of Excedrin, came back downstairs and went to the kitchen. I tossed the thawed ice pack back into the freezer and grabbed a frozen one. When I got back to my room, I sat down on the floor beside Hutch and shook out two pills for him that he swallowed dry. I wrapped the ice pack in a fresh towel and held it out to him. “Here. Put this on your face.”
Wordlessly, he put the ice pack to his black eye. His face had a sort of blank, defeated look to it.
“Your mom and dad have gotta be crazy worried about you by now,” I said.
“They’re not.”
“Why wouldn’t they be? You’ve been out all night, man. Do they know where you are?”
Hutch closed his right eye and sighed, a tired, empty sound.
“You gonna tell me what happened to you?”
“My dad….”
“Your dad what?”
He answered without opening his eyes, as if not looking at me made it easier to get the words out. “I think my dad got suspicious when I came home late from school on Monday and Wednesday. I told him I had meetings at school, and I thought he bought that, but… he didn’t. He came up to the school Friday. I didn’t see him, but he came up to the school Friday, and he followed me when I left with Neal. He followed us to the gay community center in Benton where the MLGBT committee meeting was going on. After the meeting was over, I went home. I was in my room, doing my homework, when I heard Dad’s car in the driveway. He called me into the kitchen, and he told me that he saw me go into the community center. And then he hit me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and grimaced, shaking my body as if feeling that awful blow myself.
“He hit me so hard, it knocked me out,” Hutch said, picking up his story after a pause. He let the ice pack slip from his hand to the floor. “I don’t know how long I was unconscious—maybe a few minutes. When I woke up, I was lying on the back porch, and Mom was standing there screaming as she threw my stuff out into the yard. She was screaming, get out of her house, get out of her house. I started to get up, and I saw Dad in the doorway. I reached out and grabbed the edge of the door to pull myself up, and he slapped my hand away like he thought I was trying to come back into the house. And Mom kept screaming at me to go.” He opened his eyes then, and he looked at me. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do.” And then his face twisted into a knot of pain, and a sob burst from him.
“Hutch, don’t….” To this day, I have no clue as to what I was trying to tell him when I said that. Don’t feel bad because your father tried to punch your head into the next county? Don’t get upset just because your life’s been turned inside out? He cried in near silence, silvery tears streaking his face, his body trembling. I felt ashamed again, not for his crying but because I didn’t know what to do for him. He leaned against me, putting his head on my shoulder. I slipped an arm around him as my shame turned into rage. How could his parents do this to him? How could they hurt him this way? What the hell was he supposed to do now? Where could he go? He didn’t even have any clothes except what he had on last night. Damn it! “Hutch, stop it. Stop it, okay, man? We’ll figure something out. It will be all right.”
I heard him sniffle a few times, and about a minute later, he stopped shaking. “I’m tired,” he muttered.
“Come on.” I helped him to his feet and guided him to the bed. He lay down, turning his face to the wall. I drew the covers over him. He was asleep within minutes.
I pulled on a shirt, shoved my feet into my sneakers, and put on my jacket. It was still sort of dark when I went quietly outside, but the sun would be coming up soon, and I knew I had to hurry. I rushed along the wet streets to Hutch’s house. When I saw the red brick bungalow with its green shutters, I shuddered. It was hard to believe that I’d actually had fun in that house, that it was even possible for anything like fun to exist in a place where parents so hated their kid.
I climbed over the fence into the backyard. There were clothes strewn everywhere, wet from the rain, along with video game cartridges, the football Hutch and I used to toss around, the trophies Hutch won when he played baseball at Holy Madonna, and his backpack. I gathered up the bac
kpack and as many of the clothes as I could carry and tossed them over the fence. I looked back at the house, and for a second I was tempted to knock on the door and ask Mr. and Mrs. Hutchison if they were proud of themselves for ganging up on a kid. Mr. Hutchison is a big man, weighing in at two hundred and fifty pounds, if not more. I knew if I knocked on that door, the only thing I was likely to come away with was a black eye to match the one on Hutch’s face.
Feeling helpless and angry, I turned away and climbed back over the fence.
HE SLEPT until almost one o’clock.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up my homework, when I heard Hutch’s footsteps behind me. The rain had moved out, and the room was bright with afternoon sunlight. “Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey, man.” I tried to make my voice sound cheerful. I suck at sounding cheerful when I’m miserable. Turning to him, I smiled. “How’re you feeling?”
The smile and the question were stupid. Hutch stood in the doorway looking exactly the way you’d expect a person to look after getting punched in the face and thrown out of his home. His black eye didn’t seem any better than it had the last time I saw it. His face was tired and drawn, and he looked weak and unsteady on his feet. “I’ll live, I guess,” he mumbled. He stretched gingerly, flinching at some ache that announced itself suddenly. “Where’re your mom and dad?”
“In Louisville. They’re spending the weekend up there. I’ve got the house all to myself.” I stood up. “You want something to eat?”
He hesitated, as if he had to think about the question. “Yeah.”
“I made some chicken noodle soup for lunch.” Okay, it came straight from a can, but I’d added some frozen mixed vegetables, so technically I did make soup. “Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah.” He moved to the table and sat down.
I got a bowl from the cabinet and filled it from the pot on the stove. “You want some peanut butter and crackers to go with it?”
