The Gruesome Event
Two days after he lost his latest night job, Dad was in a strangely good mood and wanted to go fishing again, this time to someplace closer to home. It was only about a thirty-minute drive...on the other side of town.
I intentionally "pretended" to bait my hook, then tossed the bait away when he wasn't looking and hurriedly cast my line so he wouldn't see the hook was empty.
He caught a fish, and I didn't, which made him happy and gracious. Things were going fine until he decided it was time to go home and "fry these babies up!"
As we were walking back toward the car, we were stopped by a park ranger who kindly reminded Dad that this was a "catch and release" location only and proceeded to release his catch AND fine him four hundred dollars for using barbed hooks, which in the catch and release places is illegal.
"It's okay, Dad," I said as soothingly as I knew how. "I've got some lawn mowing money. I can buy us a fish dinner at Harvey's Diner if you want."
Oops.
Instead of making him feel better, it pissed him off. It somehow translated to "their fish is better than yours, anyway" and he started hollering at me.
I tried to talk him down, but he smacked me around a couple times until my teeth felt loose and stalked off.
This time I didn't wait. I just started walking. Granted, that thirty-minute drive (mostly freeway speed) meant I wouldn't make it home tonight or probably not even tomorrow unless he came back for me, but we weren't that far from the outskirts of town, and I knew a couple places I could rest along the way.
What burned was I'd miss school. I hated missing school. School...doing well in particular...was my ticket to freedom. College was out of reach unless I got a free or mostly free ride. And it meant being away from Dad for six whole hours to boot.
But he never came back, so I walked as far as I could before stopping at a bus station. Luckily, I had my backpack and happened to have a clean shirt and light jacket in the bottom, because my t-shirt was gross with sweat. I pretended to be waiting for a late-night bus and curled up on a bench with no one the wiser, my backpack wedged between the back of the bench and my body so nobody could steal it.
Imagine my surprise when I returned to our trailer...or what was our trailer and found the front door missing and stuff inside singed or burned or...worse.
Dad's room next to the kitchen was sooty and smoky and a little burned.
There was a hole clean through the kitchen floor where the stove had been, and the fridge was gone, too.
I guess the fire started in the kitchen.
Dad was nowhere to be found.
My room and the living room smelled terribly of smoke, and the TV looked melted. The books in our board/cinderblock bookshelf were, if not singed or burnt, they were water-logged.
I checked out the set of two old lockers that served as a closet and took a couple things that were in decent shape but smelled like smoke. I searched his room for cash and found his wallet hidden under the mattress. One hundred and twelve bucks. I searched the little that was left, but other than some medicines in the medicine cabinet: aspirin, cold meds, allergy meds, and a tiny first aid kit, there was nothing else. I took all that stuff and what was left of the toilet paper since I had no idea what I was going to do or...where I was going to go. Literally and bathroom wise, too.
I wondered what to do. I couldn't live here. Did I want to turn up at the police station and ask about Dad? Would they think I'd done it if I wasn't here when it happened??! Would they stick me in some home or in foster care until I turn eighteen?
I didn't want that. I had a few friends who'd been in foster care and had nightmare stories about it. And the group homes, they said, were worse.
His car was gone, which was odd. I wondered where to go on $112.
My mind circled back around to the bus station. I could go there, maybe. Get a bus to someplace else. But I worried. $112 wouldn't go far, and when it ran out, what would I do about things like food?
I searched his dresser and found my birth certificate in a folder in the bottom drawer. That and the state issued ID I carried both ratted me out as a minor, but maybe I could figure something out.
I took off on foot and didn't look back.
I ended up on the rich side of town. When I was too tired to walk anymore, I stopped at a bookstore with outdoor seating and bought a cheap dinner from a food truck stationed in the parking lot. Suddenly feeling lonely, I asked a total stranger if I could sit at her table and eat if I didn't bug her while she was reading.
She spared me barely a glance and didn't look around to notice the other tables were empty.
"Sure," she said and kept reading.
I figured it also kept anyone from wondering about me. Just in case they were. I sat and ate and wondered what to do next.
When the bookstore clerk came outside to close up the little outdoor library near the tables, I left. I walked around a while until I found a bench outside a salon that was closed for the night. I did the same as at the bus station...wedged my backpack between my back and the back of the bench and dozed off.
The next morning, I discovered a news article right on the front page. It explained how they found my Dad's badly burned body UNDER the trailer (he'd gone through the hole in the floor, apparently). The article went on to read, "He's been identified as forty-three-year-old Drew Tenney, an out-of-work construction worker originally from Boondock, Minnesota. Neighbors said he and his teenage son usually kept to themselves. The neighbor closest said he sometimes heard yelling but "didn't want to get into anyone's business." Police are searching for his fifteen-year-old son, Kyle Tenney, who wasn't found at the scene of the fire and didn't return to the trailer in the hours it took to process the scene. There appear to be no living relatives...both Kyle's father and mother were only children whose parents are deceased. Police are asking for anyone who sees Kyle to contact the non-emergency number and they wanted to stress that Kyle is not a person of interest in the fire...he's considered a minor in jeopardy at this time."
Shit.
Now I had to stay under the radar until I was eighteen, or I'd end up in foster care. I didn't want that. On the one hand, it HAD to be better than life with my dad. Or did it? What if I ended up worse than with him? I had to find a way to enroll in school under an alias.
Great.
In the end, though, I got super lucky. I happened to see the same lady reading outside the bookstore again the following week, and she let me sit with her again. Only this time, she only read for a few minutes before putting her book away.
"You remind me of my son, Matt," she told me with a sad smile.
"Yeah? Is he in high school like me?"
She nodded. "Wherever he is."
I said nothing. I find that's usually the best way to keep people talking. And talk she did.
She was certain his father---her estranged husband---had kidnapped him and returned to his native home in South Africa. "I keep hoping he'll turn up again someday. Maybe when he's eighteen. I know he wouldn't have gone willingly. His father's a terrible person. I worry so much whether he's hurting Matty."
It had been ten years since she'd seen her son. She still had his room exactly as six-year-old Matthew left it, and she prayed every day that he'd turn up. She couldn't sell her house or move back to her hometown. She had to be right there in that house in case he tried to find her.
I told her my story, staring at my plate most of the time. How my Dad would ditch me miles from home and how the last time, he hadn't picked me up like usual...and when I got back I found out about the fire. How I didn't want to end up in foster care. How I wanted to go to school and get a job but I wasn't sure how I could make that happen without the police taking me in and forcing me into some group home.
She shuddered. She actually shuddered. "Those places are no good. I spent time in a few, myself, before I turned eighteen and met my mistake of a husband."
"I just want a chance. But I can't show up and enroll myself in school as ME, or the police will come and get me."
She stared at me a long time. "I'm here every week on Wednesday. Come by next week and see me again, will you? I'll buy you dinner."
I agreed I would.
I developed a routine over the next week. I found, by chance, a vacant lot close enough to the local school to walk. It was overrun with mesquite and other bushes, but it had this old metal gazebo-like thing on it that was sturdy but didn't look all that great after years of rain and hail and even a few snows. There were vines growing off it. I found a path through the brambly plants and decided the gazebo thing would be a perfect spot to hunker down in. Of course, my luck it might also be the place for the local rich kids to party.
I couldn't resist, though. It would be a decent place to shelter from the summer rains.
I sat under the gazebo and counted my money. I was down to $83 after a food truck meal a day and a shower at the pool every third day. It cost $2 to get into the pool. I could try to sneak in but getting caught came with too high a price.
I had to find a way to work. Maybe I couldn't do a real job...but I could collect recyclables, maybe. Sometimes the local science center advertised an offer to pay for certain insect specimens. Other times they wanted rock samples or certain local plants. Maybe I could even dumpster dive once in a while or "curb" shop the rich neighborhoods for stuff to refurbish and sell at the Super Pawn/Consign store.
The local pawn shop wanted fifty dollars for a decent army surplus tent. I was too worried about money to buy one yet. It's the middle of summer, but it's getting cooler at night already. Still...this is the desert, not Minnesota. School's not back in session until the end of next month. Maybe I could work extra hard to find stuff to sell and be able to afford one by the time school starts.
I found a few crates and a couple broken pallets outside the grocery store and gathered them, day by day, for several days, until I had a base. I bought a pack of 100 handi-ties from the local dollar store and spent several hours tying the crates together to make a platform out of them. I bought a box of trash bags...the big, black kind, and a giant roll of cotton batting from the pawn shop for a few dollars.
I had a "trash bed". It's lumpy and uncomfortable and I sweat half to death every night because of the trash bags, but it will do for now. I only need it to last about a month. By then maybe I can scrape together enough money for the tent I have my eye on. But it will do...and does...for now.
I go to the pool every few days to shower. I'm going to have to go every day once school starts. I've already seen people give me a dirty look on the street if we pass each other. I know on the non-shower days I start to stink.
Or the gym, but they charge $5 for a day pass. The only reason to go there instead of the pool is the air conditioning and they give out free samples of energy bars and drinks every Wednesday.
Plus, they have a lounge area where you can buy smoothies and sit and watch TV after your workout. I like to sit in the air conditioning and watch a show or two sometimes to break the monotony.
Meanwhile, I hunt down specimens or mow a few lawns. I had to ditch my old cell phone once I found out about Dad, but it was a nameless burner, anyway, so I just replaced it with another one.
When the next week rolled around, I met the woman at the bookstore patio again.
She didn't look up from her book at first, just slid a $5 bill across the table and told me to get what I wanted from the food truck.
"I brought you something else," she said, sliding an envelope across the table. "Don't open it until after I leave. This will be our last dinner together. I'm going to South Africa for a while to see if I can find my son. I've enjoyed talking to you. Most people don't even see me. But then, I don't make an effort to know them, either."
Just as I finished the last bite of my burrito, she looked up and met my eyes.
"It's been nice talking with you, Kyle. I wish you all the best."
And then she closed her book, put it back in the bookstore's little outdoor library, and vanished into the night.
I forced myself to finish the meal she paid for and to return to my hideout in the vacant lot before opening her envelope.
Kyle,
I'm glad to have met you, though it hurts, too. You remind me so much of what I think Matthew must look like today. I hoped when you sat down at my table, I'd learn you thought I seemed familiar, too, and the door to the lost years would open.
Not to be.
I'm going to South Africa to look for Matthew. One of my many private investigators thinks he has some leads there. It was painful ...excruciating, even, waiting for my passport and Visa. I was never a traveler, so I never needed them until now. And I had no idea how long they took to process and receive!
I'd let you live in my house, but I can't afford to do so. I have to rent it out so I can afford to live, myself, while I look for Matthew.
I took the time to get extra certified copies of Matthew's birth certificate, and I'm glad I did. I'm giving this one to you to use to enroll yourself in school...if you can. I will disavow all knowledge of this letter (and respectfully ask you to destroy it after reading.) If you can talk your way into school with just this certificate and this photocopy of what the private investigator thinks is Matthew's photo ID in South Africa, more the power to you. But I will not help you lie your way in...other than the documents. I don't feel entirely right in doing so, but as I know firsthand what a group home is like, I don't feel right dooming you to one, either.
Also...don't you DARE use my son's information to obtain credit or a job. When you turn 18, you can use your own information and your real identity to do that. If you get credit or a job in Matthew's name, I will claim you stole the documents, and if you wind up in jail, well...you were warned.
Maybe someday our paths will cross again. If they do, I'll be happy to buy you dinner again as long as you have stuck to the rules. Or perhaps you'll be wildly successful and buy mine.
All my best. A.
I realized then I'd never learned her name. I knew her silently as Matthew's mother. I wondered what the "A" stood for. Allison. The birth certificate had her name, of course. Allison Benning.
I guess that makes me Matthew Benning.
I clasped the faded old copy of the certificate---she'd clearly kept the newer ones for herself---to my chest and smiled. Tomorrow, I'd try enrolling in school. Surely, I could come up with a story that would work. After her warning in the letter, though, I couldn't bring myself to destroy her letter. What if, for some reason, she someday claimed I'd stolen them, anyway? Like...what if she DOES find Matthew and then she comes back to Lucky Palms with him? She can't very well enroll him at the same school, right? They'd catch that, wouldn't they? And maybe even the whole district will be off limits. What then? I can't have her sending me to jail for her own failure to think things through, can I?
So, I kept the letter. I even "poor boy" laminated it with packing tape on both sides. Then I folded it up and tucked it in my back pocket. I'd always have it on me.
I was so happy and hopeful I crept back out into the evening and decided to try a dumpster dive to see if I'd find anything useful. People threw away perfectly good, working items sometimes, which I didn't understand. Why not give them to a charity?
I found a few paperbacks...it was outside the bookstore, after all. They had black remainder marks on them but were otherwise perfect. Worst case scenario, I could try to read them to stave off boredom. I also found an old desk lamp. It was a little dusty and the metal shade had a tiny dent, but I figured I could get some paint from the thrift store and maybe dress it up a little and re-sell it. My last find was a rickety old dining chair with a ripped and stained fabric seat. I figured I could work on it over time and try to sell it, too, once it looked okay again. It would give me something to do.
I had kept a couple of the bed platform crates facing upward so they could "store" things. I fit the desk lamp inside a spare garbage bag and tucked it away and did the same with the books. The chair got covered in three layers of garbage bags. I had no idea if it would hold up to the summer monsoons or not. I certainly had gotten wet a few times, despite placing the crate bed at the center of the gazebo. I discovered during the first storm that it leaks in a few places. I've since continued to move the bed after each time I get dripped on. I think I've finally found the sweet spot.
School registration....
The next day I paid for a pool shower and washed my clothes at the laundromat, hanging out like a bum in a clean pair of boxers and my pajama tank top, which was old, faded, and torn. I read one of the books from the dumpster until they were clean.
A lady who told me her name is Pansy asked me if I had a spare quarter. I guess she was a quarter short. I hated to give up any money, but it was only a quarter, and I figured doing the right thing would be good karma. Then she asked if I was almost done with the dryer. I looked around and realized the others were all in use.
So, I checked my stuff, and it was dry, so I hurried and folded it.
Not gonna lie. It kinda irked me how impatient she was after I gave her a quarter and everything.
But I held my tongue.
Karma.
After stashing my clean clothes in one of the storage crates, I changed into regular clothes and walked to the high school, planning out my lie.
The lady at admissions had a lot of questions. I sweated profusely the whole time, spinning white lie after white lie. Mom was in South Africa on business for another week and really hated for me to miss any more school. We'd just moved here (she'd given me the address of the house she'd just rented out to use also) and she'd let me have the first week off to help her arrange the furniture and unpack the boxes, but now she wanted me in school.
The woman scrutinized my birth certificate so hard, I'm surprised she didn't pull out a magnifying glass. But after a long, long pause consisting of her fingers clacking on the keyboard, she reached behind herself and yanked a card hot off the printer and said, "Mr. Benning, here's your class schedule. Your student ID will take a few minutes to print out after I get the photo of you, so you'll go down to the student bookstore and hand them this card in the meantime and they'll get you your books and your locker assignment. You can go to your locker and put the books you don't need right now away, then come back to pick up your ID. Welcome to Fallinger High."
I gave her a smile. "Thanks."
Most of the kids at school make fun of me. It's a "richer" school in a good neighborhood, and they make fun of my ratty clothes. I shower every day now...and my money is dwindling fast because of it. But they still sneer that I stink. I don't think I do. Maybe it's just one of those things people say to make fun.
In the meantime, I've been hiding from the late summer rains at the community garden. Its gazebo doesn't leak. Entry is free as long as you work a couple hours a week...and you get to take home 3 lbs. of produce for every hour you work. I do about 3 hours a week. If only they had toilets and showers...
I like to nap on the loungers at the pool. I don't sleep so great in my makeshift bed. I'm saving up for a tent...but so far, I haven't been able to afford it. Too many showers and meals.
Whoa. Abrianna King...of THE Lucky Palms Kings (they own half the town, almost!) invited me over to study with her. She needs help with Algebra...which I am pretty good at.
Her house is like a palace!
Mostly I said yes to have a place out of the rain for a few hours. And maybe she'll let me stay for dinner.
Unfortunately, she didn't, and when I left, I was cold. I mean, I saw on the news this particular storm would be a cooler storm as it was from the Pacific Northwest, but dang! I shivered, wishing I had my jacket. I rushed to my lot and was never happier to dive into my little trash bag bed!
This first week of school has been rough. I still can't afford a tent...namely because we have to wear UNIFORMS at this school, and you have to pay for them. The first week we didn't have to wear uniforms because there was a mix up with the delivery. So, I had to buy a whole week's worth of school uniforms...on a weekly payment plan. TIME TO HUSTLE...or I'll have to skip class if I can't wear my uniform! Worse, if I'm going to do any collecting or dumpster diving, I'm going to have to carry a change of clothes in my backpack. UGH. This sucks.
And...it's cooling down fast...at least at night once the sun goes down. The other night, dreading my trash bed and being cold all night, I went to the library to study. It's always pleasant in there...and quiet.
I feel asleep on a bench in the library courtyard, where they have heat lamps running.
Yikes. Some grumpy librarian woke me up at midnight, though, to tell me the library was closing and to go home. Oh, well. I got a few hours sleep in the warmth!
FALL FESTIVAL!
I was so jazzed when our school gave out free passes to the Fall Festival. My money is scarce these days. After school it's getting darker faster and it's harder to look for stuff to sell to the lab or to dumpster dive. When I heard the only fee at the festival is the ENTRY fee and once in the fairgrounds, everything else is either free or ticket based (and you win the tickets playing free games or doing free activities!) I was so IN! Stuff myself with food all day for free or after earning a few tickets? Sign me up!
I must have taken a dozen walks through the haunted house, earning 1 ticket per visit. That sounds like no big deal, but it is really very scary in there!
I tried apple bobbing. AND, I got to keep the apples I managed to snag. After all, who wants an apple someone else bit?
As it began to get dark, (and cold), I took off my outer jacket, hoping not to get it stained, and tried the pie eating contest because the prize was a hundred tickets.
And...I won! I used the tickets to buy a nice set of wireless earbuds with the full intention of selling them to the pawn guys. I know I won't get much, but then, I don't need much more money to afford the tent. And maybe I can work out a discount on the tent that's more than the cash they'll give me for the earbuds!
On my way out of the festival, I won a free pumpkin in a "pumpkin" walk. It's like a cake walk, where you walk around in a circle until the music stops, land on a number, and then they choose a number, and if it's your number, you win whatever the prize happens to be for that round. They only let you do a round once per hour, and they have your name and photo on a board so you don't try to go more than once per hour. After trying on the hour all day, I finally won. I'm not even bummed that it's a pumpkin and not something cooler.
Or I wasn't, until I found out I don't like pumpkin unless it's sweetened up and couldn't use it for food. I made the lemons into lemonade, though, and carved it up for some cheer on my lot.
Oh! And I bartered with the pawn guy until he let me have the tent in exchange for just $10 and the earbuds, which I know only retail for $15. That's half off the $50 they wanted!
So I carved and lit my pumpkin, dismantled my trash bed, saving the leftover unused garbage bags and crates in my tent, which has room for two people (or one guy and a bit of junk!)
Next up, I need to get a sleeping bag for a proper bed, because even the trash bed was more comfortable than the ground. I had to toss out the cotton batting because I discovered it was getting moldy inside the trash bags. I had to throw the whole makeshift mattress out.
Overall, though, it was nicer in there than on the trash bed! I might go ahead and put it under the gazebo instead of near it. Might cut the chilly fall winds. Maybe?
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