He wasn’t able to discuss the situation with Tyler until they headed to bed that evening. As soon as the door to Tyler’s bedroom was closed, Brandon urgently whispered, “What the hell am I going to do?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? Don’t worry? How can I not worry? I’m in a town where I don’t know anybody and I have no way to get around. Everyone else I might call isn’t available. I’d say that qualifies as a time to worry. I need your help. Please!”
“Hey, Bran,” Tyler said, kissing him quick to distract him. “I’m going to leave you my house key so you can get in and stay here just like you have. And you’ll have my car keys so you can drive yourself to and from work each day.”
“But what about after that? You heard your father. He said it’s been nice having me visit. They don’t want me here. They think I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk with them while we’re driving. We’ll have plenty of time to get it all worked out. By the time we get back, I’ll have him prepared for you to be back with us.”
Brandon sighed and sank to the floor, sitting with his back against the wall.
“Hey,” Tyler said. “Don’t worry.”
“Please stop saying ‘don’t worry.’ I don’t see how I can do anything but worry.”
Brandon watched Tyler pack the clothes he needed into a suitcase. Since the travelers were making an early start of it in the morning, they all went to bed early that night.
THE FOLLOWING morning did not get off to a good start. It was profoundly not good. Even though they had gone to bed early the previous night, they had lain in bed talking, plus doing a few other things, and had been awake quite late. Somehow they didn’t hear Tyler’s alarm when it went off at five and overslept so that Tyler’s dad had to pound on the bedroom door to wake them up.
“Come on, Tyler, we’re leaving in five minutes. Get dressed and get into the car.”
Brandon was up like a shot, but Tyler was clearly having a harder time waking up. Brandon quickly threw on his clothes and dragged Tyler out of bed. He pushed Tyler along since Tyler’s dad was waiting, none too patiently, for Tyler to get into the car. Out of habit, Brandon grabbed his backpack as he pushed Tyler out the door. Tyler’s dad closed and locked it after them. Brandon got Tyler pointed toward the car and then watched the car back out of the driveway and head off down the road.
And then it hit him. Tyler hadn’t given him keys. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh holy fuck. Brandon didn’t have any way to get into the house—the house where all his clothes were, the house where his wallet was, the house where his cell phone was. Oh fuck. Oh holy fuck. What the hell was he supposed to now? He didn’t have any money, and he didn’t have any access to the house. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
And then there was the issue of the car. The car keys were with the house keys, which were probably in Tyler’s pocket or in his backpack, or maybe they were lying inside somewhere. Who knew? Why hadn’t he gotten the keys last night when Tyler brought up the idea? All that mattered was that Brandon didn’t have access to anything. Without those keys, Brandon had no place to go, no place to stay, and no way to get anywhere. Without those keys, Brandon realized that he now truly was indeed homeless.
Chapter 16—The Boy under the Bridge
WITH NO alternative, Brandon walked from Tyler’s house to the farm produce stand. It was several miles, but he didn’t have any other options. Plus the early hour gave him time to make the trek and not be late to start work.
Despite being completely preoccupied with his concerns about where in the world he was going to sleep that night—or any of the nights Tyler was gone—Brandon worked his full day. His job didn’t require a lot of intellect. Muscles were the prerequisite for what he did. He needed to be able to lift and tote, and that was precisely what he did all day.
He hauled customer purchases to their cars, especially the big orders, like bushel baskets of apples or tomatoes. When business was slower, he hauled things out of the cold storage in the back and restocked bins and counters with fresh produce. The owner also asked him to walk through and spot check the produce already out, removing any that didn’t look fresh and pristine. Brandon was glad that it was a busy day that day since he needed to have something to take his mind off his problems.
When business slowed later in the afternoon, though, his mind kept going right back to his number one concern—what was he supposed to do at the end of the day when the stand closed? Everything he had, all his clothes, his razor, his toothbrush, everything that he needed was in Tyler’s house, in the house to which he did not have a key. He had no way to get to what he needed. His only option was to break in and there was no way he was going to do that.
When he checked to see if he had any cash, the only things in his pockets were his hands. He hadn’t worked there long enough yet to receive a paycheck. When they started to close up the stand for the day, Brandon worked up his courage and asked the owner, Marge, if she could do him a favor.
“Marge, I hate to do this, and I wouldn’t if I didn’t absolutely have to, but do you have twenty dollars I could borrow until I get paid?”
“Don’t you have any money?” she asked in her brisk, responsible fashion.
“I do, but my wallet is back at Tyler’s house—”
“And they just left today for that funeral,” she said, nodding.
“Right,” he said, hoping she understood his dilemma.
“All right. I just wanted to be sure you weren’t gonna drink it up or something stupid like that.”
“I don’t drink, Marge. Drinking would interfere with my training. I spend too much time training for swim meets.”
“You keep it that way,” she said as she handed him a twenty-dollar bill she had pulled from the register.
“Thank you, Marge. You are a lifesaver.” Brandon gave her his biggest smile and in this case it was heartfelt. While there were still many unsolved problems, at least he now had some cash with which to buy a toothbrush, if nothing else.
Brandon threw himself into his work for closing and managed to get everything moved inside and got all of the doors slid into place and locked, and it only took him an extra fifteen minutes. He was proud of that achievement, even though it was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
Since money would be a rare commodity until Tyler got back, Brandon knew he needed to make the twenty dollars last as long as possible. To deal with that, Tyler had an idea that had come to him earlier in the day as he’d been sprucing up the fruit on display. A lot of what he was ordered to discard was basically good, with just relatively minor bruises or blemishes in one spot.
After Marge had gotten into her truck and headed off toward home, Brandon walked around to the back of the stand where the dumpster resided. He couldn’t believe he was reduced to this, but he flipped the lid of the dumpster up and reached inside to pull out some of the produce he’d been ordered to remove earlier. He retrieved some carrots, a couple of apples, a peach, and anything else he thought he could eat. Brandon shoved his dinner into a discarded plastic bag and set off walking the two miles to get back into town.
His first instinct was to say to himself that he was walking home.
But, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t home and he didn’t know where he was going to call home that night, or any of the other nights Tyler was away for that matter. But then he had a flash of inspiration.
The one place Tyler had taken him in town, other than work or the pool to practice, was the place where Tyler had gone to practice before a pool had been built in his community. The town had grown up at the point at which two good-sized rivers came together to form one large river. Tyler had told him that before the school had added a swimming pool a few years back, he had used the river for practice. Depending on the current, it could be a vigorous workout trying to swim upstream. Neither river was a raging torrent, so the current was always manageable.
Tyler had taken him there by a little-known pa
thway that could very easily be overlooked. The path took not quite a quarter mile of walking, ending directly at the smaller of the two rivers. Where the path ended, he had two options. Option one was to step into the river, and option two was to turn around and leave. There were huge bushes on both sides, most appeared to be loaded with big thorns that looked like they could do some serious damage.
The river was relatively shallow at the moment since it hadn’t rained in quite some time, so Tyler stepped directly into the slow-moving water and walked along the center of the riverbed. About twenty-five feet from where the path dumped him into the river, the river went under a bridge. Large concrete slabs rose at forty-five-degree angles from the riverbed up to the underside of the bridge. It wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t going to be comfortable, but Brandon could at least draw comfort from the fact that he had found a place where he could sleep for the night.
Underneath the bridge was littered with debris of various sorts. Some of it was trash, a few pieces probably deposited when the river was higher than it was right now. And of course he found a variety of used condoms. It was clear from the debris scattered around that couples had used the space as a rendezvous spot, if the number of discarded condoms was an accurate indicator. In addition to the debris, though, there was a great deal of graffiti of all sorts, some quite artistic, more that could be best described as editorial in that it gave the artist’s opinion about a particular issue or person.
Basically tossing a coin in his head, Brandon picked a side and made his way out of the river. He climbed about halfway up the concrete incline, found a relatively nondisgusting area, and sat down. He made a mental note to bring some cardboard boxes with him the next night. They weren’t much, but he could at least break them down and lie on them. Any cushioning was better than no cushioning.
Since his shoes were wet from trekking through the river, he slipped them off so they and his feet could dry overnight. Looking around he found a couple of pieces of old, weathered cardboard. They weren’t too disgusting, so he snagged them to serve as a pillow for the night.
Dinner consisted of the bruised fruit he’d rescued from the dumpster. It was all he had, so it was as filling as it was going to be. The main problem he had was simple—there were still a couple of hours of daylight left and he had absolutely nothing to do. He didn’t have a book to read, he didn’t have a newspaper, not a magazine, nothing. Of course there was no TV or radio or anything to listen to besides the sound of cars passing overhead and the water flowing past his spot. He would have killed to have a big thick paperback book to read. He had all this time undisturbed, and it was going to be utterly wasted, not to mention boring as hell.
“Now what the fuck do I do?” Brandon asked himself aloud in frustration. He lay back, but he quickly found that boring—and hard. He raised himself up on his elbows and looked first left and then right. To the left he saw the gentle, flowing, low-level river, which was actually more of a stream at the moment because it had been so dry for so many weeks.
When Brandon turned his head to the right, though, he saw the river widened. Leaning forward, he spotted the other river and saw where the two came together. The second river was still a fair distance away but even from where he was, Brandon could tell that it was significantly bigger. Both wider and he would guess deeper, the other river looked more substantive in every way.
Obviously there was no way swimming was possible in the part of the river near Brandon, so clearly it was time to do a little exploration. He expected slipping his feet into wet sneakers would be awful—it proved disgusting.
It was still quite warm, bordering on hot and humid, so Brandon decided to dispense with his T-shirt. He stripped it off and tucked it into his back pocket, then returned to the riverbed to continue walking beyond where he was going to set up camp.
He was quite surprised that the depth of the river increased rather quickly. “What the fuck?” he said aloud, wondering how that was possible, but then he figured it out. He was about twenty feet from where the two rivers merged. The other river was much more substantial than he had anticipated. There was a significant current to go with the added water, but from where he was standing the current was perfectly manageable. Since he hadn’t been able to swim for a couple of days, the water called to him, and who was he to say no?
Effortlessly and intuitively he slipped his head under the water and started to glide through the water. At the last minute, he remembered his T-shirt and quickly turned around to return it to the side of the river. Since all the clothes he had were what he had with him, he couldn’t lose anything without being in serious trouble.
The current was stronger as he worked his way into the combined river, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He really liked the fact that he could swim for a good long distance, completely unlike doing laps in a pool. Swimming downstream with the current wasn’t so bad, but of course going back upstream took more work. Again it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He felt good putting his swimming muscles back to work.
For an hour Brandon did the equivalent of laps, just on a far grander scale than he had ever known. When his muscles felt like they were about to completely give out, Brandon worked back to the smaller river and climbed out of the water and made his way back to pick up his shirt and return to his camp. The light was fading by this point, so he stripped off all of his clothes so they could dry overnight. It left him feeling a little defenseless and vulnerable, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. At least this way both he and his clothes got rinsed, and he wouldn’t stink the next day.
The next morning was another in a series of nearly identical days. He had a pattern now: walk to work, work like a dog, sweat like a farm animal, snag some damaged fruit for his dinner, and then walk back to his camp to swim, eat, and sleep. With cardboard he brought with him the second day and the third day, he was able to make the concrete feel a little less hard and to get some sleep at night, even if it wasn’t the best sleep he’d ever had.
It rained on the fourth day, so he stayed under his bridge. He was soaked to the bone from walking back in the rain, so swimming wouldn’t have made him any wetter than he already was, but he just didn’t feel like getting into the water that night.
The rain was over by morning so at least on the fifth day he could walk to work and be mostly dry. His clothes had not dried all the way overnight, so he was uncomfortable beyond belief as he walked the two miles to work. He finally dried out somewhat as he worked through the warm morning.
Each morning he would look longingly at one of the muffins or breads that came out of Marge’s small bakery beside the fruit stand. Her things were so good that people came from miles around to get what she made. Each day had a different featured item and each tasty item had its followers. As much as he had tried to be subtle, Marge had seen him drooling and gave him one or two of something each morning, for which he was so grateful. He was even more grateful that she didn’t ask him any questions.
“I had a call from Tyler’s dad this morning,” Marge said while Brandon wolfed down a big muffin on the fifth morning.
“Oh?” Brandon said, suddenly fully focused on Marge and what she was telling him. “Are they heading back soon?”
“They’re going to be delayed in getting back here.”
Brandon’s heart sank at that news. “Oh? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“Not really, but they’ve got to get the house cleaned out so it can go on the market and it’s turned out to be a hell of a lot more work than they bargained on. Sounds like the person that lived there was a bit of a hoarder.”
“Any guesses how long they’re going to be gone?” Brandon asked, almost dreading the answer.
“He thinks maybe another five or six days. They can’t be sure. He said Tyler was upset about missing so much work, but I told him you were doing just fine by yourself. The truth is that you are a much better worker than Tyler. He tries, but you’ve got drive that he doe
sn’t have.”
Brandon couldn’t help but smile at the compliment, and he knew it wasn’t just empty praise. Marge was a tough-as-nails woman who didn’t toss compliments around unless it had been earned. He was happy with the praise but discouraged by the news Tyler would be so much longer in getting back.
Overall, though, the day ended on an up note because it was payday. When he’d finished up with shutting everything down for the day, Marge handed him a white envelope. When he looked inside he was beyond happy to see cash—cold, hard cash. He didn’t care how much it was, he was just relieved to finally have some money in his pocket.
“I owe you twenty dollars,” Brandon said immediately, pulling a twenty out of the envelope.
“Nope, I already deducted it. What you have is all yours.”
He was so happy he could have kissed Marge. He didn’t, but he almost could have. That night on his walk back to his campsite, he stopped by the local grocery store and did something he hadn’t done so far—he bought a roasted chicken and carried it back to his campsite and savored the taste, eating as if he’d never eaten before. Eating “lighter” had been tough, especially when he had started to train again using the river as his training ground. Training always burned up a huge number of calories, and he unfortunately had not been able to replenish those calories as easily as he had before.
With his belly full, he settled down to sleep and was doing much better than he had any night since he’d been there—at least for a while. The unmistakable rumble of thunder somewhere a ways off woke Brandon from a sound sleep. At first he didn’t know where he was, but once he figured that out, he didn’t know what had woken him. A second deep rumble of thunder answered that question for him.
Swimming to Freedom Page 13
