I pulled away from the curb and accelerated. When I passed the street Jim had turned down I took a quick glance but couldn’t see his car. He was possibly going around the block. I doubted he’d be gone long. But he wasn’t there right now, and I was home free. I took the next left, then the next right, and made my way back to the first major street I came to, Oxford Boulevard. I drove north more than a mile past commercial buildings, shops, apartment houses and pizza parlors. When I saw an empty place by the curb ahead not far from a street light, I pulled into it and cut my lights off.
The boy hadn’t said a word. He was fairly small and looked about 12 or 13 to me, but I wasn’t a good judge of that. The thing was, I had very little feel for boys’ ages, so he could have been older or younger. From what I could see, even in the state he was in, he was a good looking kid with messy hair, blond in some lights, reddish-brown in others, clear skin and handsome features. Not only was he silent, he wasn’t looking at me, either. He was staring straight ahead through the windshield. He was trembling.
“Okay, we need to talk,” I said in a soft voice. I moved away from him as far as my seat would allow, pressing against my door. I thought the distance might help reduce his fear. “I’m here to help you. I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m not even going to touch you. The only reason I picked you up was that I was following the guy who had you in his car, and when he let you out, I decided to see if you needed help. So that’s all I’m trying to do: help you.”
I stopped and we just sat a moment. I wanted him to think about what I’d said. Sometimes, if you’re scared, it takes a moment longer than usual to process what you’re seeing and hearing. The kid seemed sort of dazed to me. Maybe he had been doped.
I waited. Waiting is one of the things I do best. When the silence had grown to a minute, he took a quick glance at me. I smiled a gentle and hopefully nonthreatening smile. He quickly looked straight ahead again. I’ve been told that sometimes, my friendly smile looks like a hyena’s with a zebra in sight. I’d never believed that before.
“The thing is, I don’t know what to do right now. I was expecting the person who got out of that car to be a young woman. I was going to see if she was all right and if she wanted to stay with Jim or not. Maybe she’d want to go into some other line of work instead, or maybe back to her parents. Some women don’t want to engage in the services that Jim was encouraging her to provide. I guess I can ask you the same thing. What would you like me to do? Would you like me to drive you back to your parents? I don’t think I should drive you back to his apartment.”
He kept looking through the window, and then I saw tears start trickling down the cheek facing me. Almost immediately, he was crying full out and brought up his hands to cover his face. So much for my clever repartee.
I’m not good with kids. The things I’ve learned to do to get along with people are all geared towards other adults. You have to act differently with kids, and since I never dealt with them, I didn’t have those skills. I’m a big guy and am in a business where I am often dealing with tough guys, thugs and criminals and other low life, and with cops, too, who tend to be as tough and crude and insensitive as the thugs. I don’t have much need for looking safe and friendly, not much reason to be tactful and engaging; kids aren’t part of my world.
I like being good at what I do and with kids, I wasn’t good, so didn’t particularly like being with them. Sitting next to me was one of the reasons why.
He kept crying. He wasn’t making a sound, but his shuddering and the water running through his fingers and down his wrists made it pretty obvious. Something inside of me seemed to be insisting I reach out and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but I’d just told him I wouldn’t touch him, and I wanted him to trust me.
Maybe talking would help. It hadn’t so far, but I didn’t seem to have too many choices and couldn’t think of anything else.
“Hey, look, things’ll be okay, kid. I’m here to help you. But I need you to talk to me so we can figure this out. I’m a good guy. You aren’t going to be hurt, and I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. You want to cry? Go ahead. There’ve been times I’ve felt like that, too. So just go ahead, and when that’s over, maybe you can talk to me. We’ll sit right here. I’ll wait. When you’re ready, maybe a good place to start is with names. Mine’s Briar. I’d like to know yours.”
The kid wasn’t shaking now at least, so maybe he wasn’t crying as hard. He still had his hands over his face, so it was hard to tell. I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and waited. He’d probably need it when he was ready.
It wasn’t long before he slowly dropped his hands to his sides. He didn’t look so scared anymore. Just very sad. Defeated. Lost.
I handed him the handkerchief, he looked at it, then took it and wiped his face. He did a thorough job, then folded it and handed it back. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“You’re welcome. Now, what’s your name?”
No hesitation this time. But no life, either. “Dustin.”
I tried to be positive. “Well, Dustin, I’m Briar, as I said. Am I right in thinking you didn’t want to do what Jim, the guy you were with, told you to do?”
Dammit! That brought tears again. At least they didn’t last as long this time but did require further use of the handkerchief.
While he was wiping, he was also shaking his head. “No, I didn’t,” he finally stuttered.
“Okay. I didn’t think so. Well, you won’t have to. So, what about home? Tell me about that.” The last time I’d asked, it had brought on the waterworks, but I needed to know what was what, so I had to ask.
This time he was able to handle it. “My mom died about six months ago. I never did get along too well with my dad. Without her there, insulating me, well, it got pretty bad. Finally he threw me out. Just a couple of days ago. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was sleeping in a doorway downtown when Jim found me. He took me to his apartment, and I slept there the past couple of nights. There was a woman living there, too, and the next day after he got me, he told me what the woman did, and that I had to do that, too. He said I had to, that he’d really hurt me if I didn’t. He said if I told anyone about him, or tried to get away, he’d find out and catch me and kill me, but only after hurting me really badly first.
“I could tell he meant it, and I was scared, but he didn’t care whether I was or not. He said I’d have to learn how to do tricks. He said the woman would tell me what to do and how to do it, that she was an expert.
“She did tell me what she did. She got naked and I had to also. Jim was there watching, and I was too scared not to do what he wanted me to. She did some things to me that she said she did with the men. I hated it, but Jim was there and I couldn’t do anything. I’m not brave. I didn’t want to be hurt. I balked once and he hit me.
“I could tell the girl wasn’t comfortable, doing these things with me, but she couldn’t insulate me. She was afraid of him, too. Then, she didn’t come home last night, and so the guy told me I had to start tonight.”
“That’s kind of what I thought,” I said, while thinking to myself, what the hell? What kid uses a word like ‘insulate’? Or ‘balk’? Or says ‘hurt me really badly’ instead of ‘real bad’? I continued speaking to him while wondering about that. “The reason the woman didn’t come back was that I took her away from Jim, and she’s back with her parents. I got her away to safety and am going to do the same thing with you. Tell me about your father. Why did he throw you out?”
Dustin didn’t answer. He looked ahead, then quickly at me, and back ahead again.
“Come on, Dustin. I need to know if I’m going to help you. Please. You can trust me.”
He just sat looking through the window. I hoped he wouldn’t start crying again. He didn’t. After not too long, he turned to me. “I’m gay,” he said. “My father couldn’t handle it. My mom was okay, she didn’t mind about that, and she’d protected me from him, but he hated it that I was his son and I was gay. I guess he thought that made him look bad. He’s big and strong and, well, he hates gay people. Anyway, he kicked me out, then called all the dads of the boys I knew and told them about me. He didn’t let me take anything but the clothes I was wearing. He told me if I went to the cops, they’d bring me back to him, and he’d make me really sorry that I’d come back. Then he’d throw me out again. There was nowhere I could go, nowhere. I tried to go to the library. I like libraries. But they kicked me out when they closed. I ended up on the street.”
He was looking right at me as he said this. Steadily, not shifting his eyes to me and away. And his voice wasn’t as soft as before. There wasn’t any defiance or anger in it, but he wasn’t acting quite so defeated. That made me feel a little better for the first time since he’d got in the car. There was at least some spirit in the boy after all. The first I’d seen. It might have been tamped way down in him, but it was there.
“Okay. I don’t care about the gay thing. I’m not. I like girls just fine. But I’m me, and everyone else is everyone else, and if they don’t mess with me, why should I mess with them? Who turns your crank is none of my business. So, you like boys; I have no problem with that. Your dad sounds like an asshole to me.
“But, what’s next here? What am I to do with you? We have to decide that. I guess you can come back to my apartment with me tonight. It’s too late for anything else, and you must be exhausted. Is that okay? My apartment? Or would you rather we do something else? I don’t want you scared that I’d do anything to you in my apartment. All I’m going to do is give you somewhere to sleep while we try to figure things out. This is your life, and you need to have some say in it. I can take you to a police station if you want.”
He looked at me and said, “I’ve never decided anything important before. An adult always does that. My father criticized everything I did, every decision I made, and so I stopped making them. I have to now. I guess I trust you. You seem okay, and you got me away from Jim, and you could do anything you wanted to me without asking my opinion. I do want to go to bed. Now that I’m not scared any longer, I am exhausted. And hungry. Jim said he wouldn’t feed me before we went out because he didn’t want me throwing up on anyone when they wanted a BJ. You know what that is? The woman showed me. Having to do that to some man in his car . . . ” He shuddered.
I heard how disturbed he sounded. I gave him a quick glance. “Yeah, I can imagine. I don’t think being forced to do that has anything to do with being gay. Anyway, you’re too young to have ever done anything sexual with anyone before.”
He nodded. “I’ve had crushes on boys at school. I’ve even thought about what he said I had to do. You know, BJs. But it’s a lot different, you know, thinking about doing something like that with a boy you know and like . . . ” There was a pause before he continued. “I told you, he made me undress in front of the woman, and she undressed in front of me. The man watching a while, but finally left us. He took my clothes—he told me I needed to get used to being naked, letting people see me. She stayed in the room with me. She touched me because he insisted she do it. She also told me what men like. The man had told her to do things to me so I knew what they felt like and saw how to do them, but after he left she didn’t do anything but talk to me. She could see I was hating all of it. She seemed empathetic. I liked her for that.”
‘Empathetic?’ Who was this kid?
“I think she felt sorry for me. She told him later that I’d need a few days, learning and getting used to the idea of what I was going to be doing. He told her to make it fast, that no way was he waiting that long.”
“How old are you, Dustin?”
“I’ll be 14 next week.” And then I saw tears starting again.
I turned my lights back on and pulled away from the curb. I idly wondered what Jim had done when he’d found Dustin gone. Probably hadn’t driven around, looking for Dustin. Probably just waited for the john to bring him back. Expecting that, certainly.
He’d have a long wait. I smiled, thinking about that.