Penance

by Rick R. Reed

  Richard hurried from the room.

  *

  The little digital clock on the nightstand next to Jimmy’s bed clicked. 3:17. Jimmy lay, staring up at the clean white ceiling, tracing the progress of a crack from the light fixture to the wall. He wished he could sleep, wished he could just go to sleep, dreamless, and never wake up. But the man was there when he closed his eyes. He was there with his tray of rotten food, there waiting to hurt him like no one ever had before.

  He was there, waiting to kill him.

  Outside, a full winter moon had risen and its light illuminated the room with silver. Kind of like one of those old black and white movies. Jimmy looked around.

  The room was the cleanest he’d ever slept in. It wasn’t so bad. He wondered what his friends were thinking, Little T and War Zone, wondered if they’d even worried about him. He was only thirteen, but Jimmy already had run away seven times and gone away for periods of weeks with tricks who wanted to see what it felt like to have him “live in.”

  Shit. They probably hadn’t given him a second thought. They were out there, picking up guys at Super Powers, the arcade at Broadway and Granville, hustling at the supermarket. Spending their earnings on pot, crack, Scotchgard, whatever they could get their little hands on.

  Jimmy had never used drugs. Not much anyway. He always told people he needed to be sharp, on his toes. He was gonna get out of this fuckin’ neighborhood, with its hillbillies and rusted-out cars, with its cockroaches and trash in the street, with its dour faces on their way to the Welfare or to fuckin’ minimum wage jobs that didn’t even pay the rent.

  And look at him. Sharp? On his toes? Fuck, he was the one that got caught…two steps outside death’s door, his asshole ripped open.

  What was he doing?

  Outside, it was quiet, the traffic slowed to a lonely car every five, ten minutes or so. Jimmy felt his eyelids getting heavy. No, no sleep, I’ll dream again. I don’t want to ever dream again. He turned on his side and looked out the window. Across the street, there was a grey two flat and Jimmy tried to see into the darkened windows, imagining the lives going on in there.

  Anything to stay awake.

  Anything not to dream.

  He jerked, his body thrown into a brief, but powerful, spasm. He was walking down the front steps of the two flat across the street and was just beginning to fall on the ice.

  The jerk brought him back to wakefulness, but only for an instant. He sat now on the steps of the two flat across the street. It was day. Little T and War Zone were on the street in front of him. War Zone was wearing neon pink spandex shorts, no shirt. The hot pink was a wild contrast to his black skin. Little T, with his curly red hair and freckles, looked all of twelve (he was fifteen) in his cutoffs and Iron Maiden T-shirt. Summer air heavy with humidity. In the distance, the heat shimmered off the asphalt. War Zone and Little T tossed the Frisbee. War Zone jumped up and snatched the Frisbee out of the air, interrupting its high flight. He stopped and looked at Jimmy.

  “Ain’t you gonna play?”

  Jimmy just stared at his friend in response as he heard the door behind him opening. As Jimmy turned, the sky darkened and a chill kicked up. Wind sent papers and cans scurrying along the street.

  “It’s time to come in now, son. It’s time to come in.”

  Jimmy turned and looked. The man was there, holding a candle and smiling at him.

  Jimmy screamed and screamed.

  *

  Richard Grebb awakened from a fitful sleep to hear the screaming once more upstairs. He hurried to find a robe to cover himself and took the stairs two at a time.

  Good Lord, what had caused this boy to be so terrorized? What horrors had he seen?

  When he got to the bedroom, Jimmy was already awake. He was sitting up, staring into the pale darkness of the room, his thin chest looking white from the wan light. The thin gold chain he wore around his neck glinted in the moonlight. Richard stayed near the door. Even from this vantage point, the priest could see that the boy’s breath was coming in pants and he was sweating. “Are you okay, Jimmy?”

  The boy stared at him. He struggled to sit up, leaning against the headboard.

  “Jimmy, please. Are you all right? Do you need a glass of water…anything?”

  “I don’t need nothin’.”

  “Wanna talk about it? Bad dream?”

  “My life is a bad dream.”

  The priest breathed a sigh. The boy was finally beginning to talk. Maybe he could find out now what had happened, or at least find a way to help this boy. In his mind, he asked God for strength and then asked Jimmy, “Would it be all right if I came and sat next to you?”

  “Why not?”

  Richard made his way to the bed and sat down. The boy emanated heat; his sweat had a sour-sweet odor. In the morning, the boy would have to take a bath.

  “You’ve been having a lot of bad dreams since you’ve been here. Wanna talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sometimes they seem kind of silly when we talk about them. We see how stupid our fears are. Why don’t you just tell me what the dream was and then maybe you won’t be so scared.”

  “What do you know?” Jimmy scowled, rearranging the sheet covering him.

  “I know a lot, Jimmy. More than you’d think. I know a little about dreams, too.”

  “Yeah, well talkin’ about this one won’t make it any less real. Understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand, Jimmy. Maybe you could tell me…”

  “The fuckin’ bad dream was no dream. It was a memory. Somethin’ bad happened to me.” Jimmy twisted away from the priest, curling into a little ball, sinking into the covers until just a shock of his blond hair was sticking out. Soon, the form underneath the sheet began to quiver.

  The priest watched, hearing the boy sniff, trying to hide the fact that he was crying. Do I touch him? Do I let him know I’m here for him?

  Oh, God, Richard wondered, can I trust myself?

  “Hey, it’s okay if you want to cry, Jimmy. I’m an old man and I still cry.”

  The form beneath the sheet stiffened. “I ain’t cryin’.”

  “Talk to me, Jimmy.”

  The priest waited for ten minutes and still got no response from the boy. He laid a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Whatever happened to you, you’re safe now, Jimmy. Dreams can’t hurt you and I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Richard squeezed Jimmy’s shoulder. “I can help you, if you let me.” Richard made his voice soft and reassuring, kneading Jimmy’s shoulder.

  There was a shift under the sheet as Jimmy’s hand grabbed hold of the top of it and lowered it to his neck. He turned his face to the priest.

  Richard took in, even in this wan darkness, the red eyes, the lighter lines where the tears had washed away the dirt on the boy’s face, the snot below his nostrils.

  “Jimmy, what happened to you?”

  “It was a trick that done it. A trick hurt me.” All at once, Jimmy was the little boy he’d never had a chance to be and he sobbed. “He hurt me bad. Real bad.” The boy then said, without much conviction, “But hey, I’ll get over it. It wasn’t much. I seen worse happen to other guys. I just got careless. You know, man?”

  “I know.” Richard stretched out beside the boy and took him in his arms, letting him sob into the heavy terry cloth of his robe. He squeezed Jimmy tight against him, trying to well out the hurt, whatever it was, that this boy should never have experienced. Stroking his hair, he whispered in Jimmy’s ear. “It’s okay now. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

  The boy’s sobbing became more intense and his arms went around Richard’s back, squeezing him so tight it hurt, pressing their bodies together. The crying continued, in spite of Jimmy’s obvious efforts to rein it in, to not let this lapse in the facade show, and Richard ran his hand up and down Jimmy’s back, hoping this mere physical touch would help ebb the pain, help the boy to open up to him so he could help.


  Richard could feel how frail the boy was, and small. He felt the naked body under the sheets, the young limbs pressed against him. And dammit, damn everything to hell, he felt himself growing excited. The harder he tried to force the feelings down inside him, to squash them, the more intense they became. Part of him screamed: Move away, move away. Another part rationalized: Stay, the boy needs this, needs your love.

  His penis was hard under the robe and the boy was squeezing against him. Please stop, Jimmy, please, the priest thought but did not say. Maybe just for a moment…Maybe it won’t hurt, just for a few seconds…

  Suddenly the boy stiffened in his arms. He sniffed and seemed to be getting in control of himself. He sat up, moving back from the priest, and for a moment Richard Grebb didn’t move.

  Didn’t move for long enough for Jimmy to turn on the light. Didn’t move for long enough for Jimmy to smile at him and reach under the robe.

  The boy squeezed the priest’s erection.

  “You fucker. You fuckin’ prick. You’re no different from all the rest. No fuckin’ different. I heard about you. I shoulda known better.” The boy said each word slowly, smiling at him all the while.

  “I’m safer on the fuckin’ streets.”

  Richard watched silently as the boy moved to the closet and began taking out his clothes. Richard said nothing as the boy dressed and left.

  Said nothing as he heard the door slam downstairs.

  Then he turned his face into the pillow and added his own tears to the ones already there.

  Chapter 7

  Julie crouched under the dashboard of the Toyota, trembling. Earlier, she had tried to signal a pedestrian on a street corner. The creep driving had brought out a revolver from somewhere and slammed the butt down on her head. “You little fuck!” he had screamed. “You’re just like all the rest…ungrateful little sleazes.” He had pushed her off the seat, forcing her down into an almost fetal position on the floor. He had whispered, “Ruined my life.”

  Now, the gun rested between the guy’s legs, pointing upward, ready to use. All Julie could think of was Nana, and how much she missed her. How much she just wanted to go home. She chewed her fingernail.

  This man was crazy.

  Was he going to rape her? Was he going to kill her? Furiously, Julie began whispering, “Please God, save me. Please God, I’ll be good. No more pot. No more sex. Church every Sunday. Please, please, please just let me live.” She said the simple prayer over and over until the guy heard her and whacked once more on the back of her head.

  “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  The engine throbbed. The truck seemed to be going too fast, taking the curves with squealing tires. Julie was thrown against the carpeted floor as the truck screeched to a halt.

  “Fuckin’ old people. They should all be taken out and shot. Can’t drive their fuckin’ cars, they shouldn’t be allowed on the fuckin’ road. Driving’s not some right, it’s a privilege. Damn shrivels…make the roads unsafe for everybody.”

  The man continued to mumble to himself and it made Julie shake even more as the truck began to accelerate once again.

  *

  The girl cowering on the floor reminded him of his daughter, Becky. Same sniveling attitude. About the same size. Except this one wasn’t retarded. Aunt Adele told him when Becky was born: “Somebody’s being punished, son. I know it isn’t you. Probably that damn woman you insisted on taking up with.” He remembered his wife saying to him long ago, “Dwight, you’ve got to show more interest in her. She cares about you. She really does. And you’re never here for her. Never.” Remembered his wife hurrying away from him in tears.

  He was never there for his daughter because of human garbage like the little tramp on the floor beside him. They were always calling to him, calling to him. Forcing him out of the La-Z-Boy and down here, where they taunted and tempted him until he had to do something. He just had to do something. It wasn’t like it was his fault or anything.

  He couldn’t help himself.

  But now he was going to clean up this area of Chicago. Take out the garbage, so to speak, and start life over. And he would be helping the kids, too. If there was one thing Dwight Morris learned growing up, it was that punishment could cure you, could make you whole again.

  The traffic around him seemed to fade.

  *

  “Pray with me now, boy,” his aunt Adele was saying.

  Ten-year-old Dwight tried to snuffle back the tears. Standing in a corner of her bedroom, he wanted to shrink into the walls. She had made him take off all of his clothes, and his bottom and the back of his legs still stung from the beating she had just given him. He imagined how the red welts would look in the mirror, raised lines of red fury, tender to the touch, making it impossible for him to sit or even lie comfortably in bed. He knew these pains well.

  “Boy, you don’t come over here and take your medicine, you’ll never get well.” Aunt Adele was wearing a black and white checked dress, a “shift” she called it. The curls in her hair were so tight Dwight thought they pulled her eyes up. She lit a cigarette and this simple act caused Dwight to cringe. Angrily, she exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. “Now, dammit!” She gestured to a place to her right on the floor.

  Dwight swallowed and moved toward his aunt. What had he done, after all? What was so bad about looking at some ladies in their underwear in the Sears catalog? “I…I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Aunt.”

  “Get over here.”

  Dwight moved slowly, his hands and knees trembling. “It still hurts from the last time, Aunt Adele.”

  “Good! That pain’ll make you strong, boy.”

  “But my knees…”

  “No caterwauling!” His aunt glared at him. “Don’t make me come over there and get you.” She drew in on her cigarette so hard her cheeks collapsed, then took it out of her mouth and pointedly examined its glowing orange tip.

  Dwight hurried to the place beside his aunt…the “praying place” she called it. A raised wooden platform covered in coarse-grained sandpaper. Dwight’s knees had already been worn raw from previous “prayer sessions.” The sandpaper would make his knees burn so much it would be hard to get the words of the prayer out.

  Gingerly, he knelt on the sandpaper. His aunt stood above him and pushed him down hard. “Feel that roughness, son. Feel it and remember that pain. It’ll save you.”

  Dwight bit his lip to hold back the cry of pain at the back of his throat.

  “C’mon, boy, you know the words.”

  Dwight began, “Oh, my God, I am …”

  * * *

  Marianne and Becky could go to hell once he finished. He’d show Marianne what she’d lost. Some other woman, some other kids, would reap the benefits of his husbanding and fathering instincts.

  And at least one part of Chicago would be safe from these life-draining little bastards…once and for all.

  *

  Julie knew they had arrived at wherever they were going when he stopped the truck. She could hear a garage door opening in front of them. “We’re here,” she whispered to herself.

  Suddenly, she felt her crotch filled with warmth as her bladder let go. Julie bit her lip, trying not to cry. Would this make things worse? Why did this have to happen?

  What’s going to happen now? The truck rolled into the garage and Julie stayed still as she heard the garage door going back down.

  What’s he gonna do to me? she wondered. The two sat in silence for a long time. Julie finally calmed a little and listened to the man’s breathing, erratic and heavy. What would happen now? Maybe nothing, she hoped, maybe he’ll just want a little sex and he’ll let me go. Sure, she thought, trying to warm the coldness that had invaded her heart and her mind, constricting her, that’s all. It wouldn’t be so bad. It isn’t like I’ve never had sex with someone I didn’t like before. Maybe that’ll be the worst of it.

  But she had the same feeling now that she’d had when she�
��d gone to her dresser drawer not so long ago, wanting to just get high, and found the half-ounce bag gone. Suddenly, there were a million places where the bag could have gone: in her locker at school, with her friend Mira, who sometimes borrowed things without asking, maybe even with Don Hughes, the truck driver from Steubenville who had been coming around again lately… She had told herself all sorts of things, wondering where she could have left it.

  But she had known all along that Nana had found it.

  And she knew now this crazy man wanted more than a quick screw.

  He could have taken that in the truck.

  “All right, young lady. I have this gun pointed at you. We’re going to get out now. I want you to stay in front of me and just go through the white door you’ll see when we get out. It goes into the house. You try any false moves and I plant a round right in your thick little skull. Do you understand, young lady?”

  Julie contorted herself to look at him. “Yes. Please don’t hurt me, okay? I’ll do whatever you want.”

  The man snickered. “Just get out of the truck.”

  The air felt good, cold and crisp, when Julie emerged from the truck. Her eyes went immediately to a row of horizontal windows in the garage door. They were high up, but they gave Julie a small view of the neighborhood. Row after row of neat little brick bungalows. Across the street, Julie could just make out a woman on her front stoop, bundled up against the cold, watching as a little boy played in the snow in the front yard. She was smiling. Cars passed by and one honked in greeting at the woman on the stoop. She waved.

  *

  Everything’s so normal. This can’t be happening. This just can’t be real. Julie put one foot in front of the other and began making slow progress to the white door. This door will lead us inside.

  And what will happen there? Julie bit her fingernail. She wondered if she could make a break and run toward the windows, picturing herself pounding on them and screaming in an effort to get the attention of the woman across the street. Surely, he wouldn’t shoot her, not with the woman right there as a witness, someone who obviously knew who he was, being a neighbor and all.