The Fixer

Chapter 2

Jaxon was staying with me for the present. He had a problem and didn’t have a clue what to do about it. I didn’t either. But Jaxon’s immediate needs were for food and shelter. Any 16-year-old needs those, and at that age most have no idea how to survive without assistance. A boy of 16 needs to feel safe, too. I could provide that. And Clancy would have a blast having someone in the house to hang with who had more energy than I could muster. I’d puzzle over Jaxon’s problem in my head; I was pretty sure I’d come up with something; I didn’t know when, but I had a pretty good track record.

Jaxon’s story wasn’t that unusual. He was gay and had a rigid and intransigent father. No way was his dad going to tolerate having a gay son; what would people think, for crying out loud? If his son refused to give up this let’s-pretend game he was playing about being gay, that would be it for him. He needed to say he was into girls, he needed to agree he was not interested in boys, and unless he did both those things, he was no longer welcome in his house.

Jaxon told me all about it in the time we had driving to Ontagua, before I’d decided to give him a place to stay. “I held off telling him I was gay as long as I could,” Jaxon had explained. “But he did not like me much anyway. I have had one doctor tell me I have Asperger’s Syndrome and another who has told me I am a high-functioning autistic. What those labels mean is that I cannot do some things as well as most other kids, but I may be able to do some things better.

“My father has always hated that; he wanted a normal son who was like every other boy in town. One who acted like a son should act. I am not that kid, I am different, and he cannot stand that. I cannot help it; I am just me. My existence embarrasses him. He hates how I am. He hates me.”

I felt awful listening to Jaxon tell me that. He was dejected but didn’t show it as I’d think most boys would. I could hear it, though, even as he told me, and he spoke in a way which wasn’t as one would expect. He wasn’t emotional. I knew he felt emotions, though. They were in his voice if I listened carefully. They were subtle but there. I persuaded him not to get out of the bus when we arrived. “You don’t have anywhere to go here in Ontagua, Jaxon. I have room for you in my house. When we return to Corson, come home with me. Stay with me. Stay in my house until we figure something out. I don’t know how we’ll fix this, but with both of us working on it, I think we’ll come up with something.”

He’d agreed to stay with me, and I was happy to have him but knew it wasn’t a long-term solution. I found it difficult to tell if he was happy about that or just what he felt. His normal facial expression was a total blank and unreadable. Most boys in his situation would be over-the-moon happy if they suddenly had a safe place to crash when only moments ago they’d had nothing. Jaxon? You’d never know how he felt about it, about much of anything, by the way he looked and the way he sounded.

The road to Ondagua had remained empty except for my bus. What I didn’t hear, Clancy did, because he put a paw on Jaxon’s lap and showed him his huge, passionate eyes. I’d asked Jaxon, “Why did you tell your dad you were gay? You said you knew how he felt about gays.”

“I do not lie; I do not like lies.” Jaxon looked away but continued his answer. “I think it is part of my autism. Other kids lie all the time. They live their lives lying to avoid the trouble the truth would cause them. It is difficult for me because I cannot tell what is true and what is a lie from their voices or facial expressions. Because of this, I accept everything anyone says as the truth. This causes me problems. I hate lies, and I do not tell any, even if I know one would help me at times.

“I told my father about me when he asked me if I was gay. He said he’d read that autistic kids were three times more likely to be gay than other, non-autistic kids. After reading that, he said, ‘I always knew you were peculiar. Are you gay, too? Maybe that’s part of why you are so strange.’ I answered him, and I did not lie.”

Saying that caused Jaxon to stop for a moment. He seemed to want to think about it. I gave him some uninterrupted space to do that. Eventually, he continued. “He told me I had to stop being gay and start dating girls. He said I was making it up in my head that I liked boys, and he would give me a week to change. I had to stop acting like I was something I was not. Then, at the end of that week, he asked if I was still going to pretend I was gay. I said I was not pretending, and he told me to get out of his house. That was tonight. I had no idea what to do. I had the clothes I was wearing and no money. I only have one friend I could ask to stay with, but I could not ask him. I just started walking. I had no plan. I just began walking. I did not know what would become of me. I still do not know.”

He’d said that with no emotion in his voice. No emotion! That had been when I told him he could stay with me till we figured something out. He’d hesitated, thinking about it, and then agreed. He didn’t seem overjoyed, but then, he hadn’t seemed despondent over being homeless, either. I guessed that was one of the symptoms of his condition, the lack of, or at least, no display of his emotions. That and the relatively metronomic pattern of his speech were the two things I noticed more than anything else. By appearance, by the way he moved, he was simply a normal kid.

I asked him about his mother, and he told me he’d never known her. I didn’t ask anything more about her. It seemed she wasn’t a factor in his life, and that was that.

It was summer. I wondered what would have happened if Jaxon had been thrown away in winter. I had wondered for a long time how some parents could be so heartless with their kids. It was something I would never understand.

It was later when we were back home that I had a chance to learn a little more about him. “Who is your friend?” I asked Jaxon. I’d showed him the room where he could stay. We were in the kitchen now. He hadn’t eaten dinner before his dad had kicked him out. I’d made him a mushroom-and-sausage omelet. He seemed very much like a normal teen to me in many ways. The way he put away that omelet, he looked to be very capable of eating another one or two of them when he’d finished the first one. And it had been substantial.

“Cooper Beal,” he said after swallowing.

“I know Cooper!” I said. “He was in the last class I taught. He’s, uh, I’m not sure I should say this, but he’s really cute. All the kids call him Coop. He’s very popular. Seemed very nice, too.”

I expected him to blush. He just looked at me with the same blank countenance he always wore. At least he was mostly meeting my eyes now. Progress. His words, too, showed some emotion.

“I call him Cooper. He is my boyfriend. I love him.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard this degree of emotion in his voice. It wasn’t much, but it was there.

“Why didn’t you ask him for a place to stay?”

He shook his head, and I thought he almost looked sad, but it was probably my imagination. “Cooper says his father hates gays as much as mine does. They go to the same church. It is a church that teaches Old Testament values, where women are considered beneath men and homosexuals are abominations who should be put to death. Cooper’s mother left his father. Maybe my mother did that, too. My father won’t talk about her.”

“If it’s all right for you to say, can you tell me this? Is Cooper gay? I always wondered.”

“Yes. His father does not know this. He does not know we are boyfriends, either. I am afraid now he will know. I think he will hear it from my father. My father will probably tell him he kicked me out and why. If he does, I will lose my job. Maybe I will lose Cooper, too. Mr. Beal is a man’s man—he owns a hardware store, for example. I am sure he will not allow me to work there once he knows I am gay. He will not let me see Cooper any longer, either.”

“You work for Mr. Beal?” I was breaking my own rule for how to talk to teens to maximize responses, but I’d never been in a situation like this before. I was surprised at how willing he was to talk. But, with his lack of emotion, it seemed to me I felt worse about this than Jaxon did.

“In his hardware store, yes. That is how I got to know Cooper; he works there as well.”

“This is only during the summer, though, isn’t it? Or is it in the school months as well?”

“I work there all year. Cooper does, too. But it is only part-time work when we are going to school.”

“Do you like working there?”

“I love it. Cooper told me I am the best employee that they have ever had working there. He said I learned all the stock and where it is kept faster by far than he did. He said I can tell a nine-sixteenth-diameter, two-and-a-half-inch-long bolt from a half-inch one that same length just by glancing at it. He said no one else can do that. And it is the same with much of the rest of the stock as well.”

“Is this due to your autism?”

“Perhaps. I do not really know. I just know I can do it. I know telling everything apart and knowing where it goes is easy for me. I can tell the customers where things are and what they cost, and I do it even better than Cooper can.”

“Maybe Mr. Beal won’t fire you then. You’re probably valuable to him.”

“I think I am a good employee but do not think he will allow a gay boy to work there. Cooper is even afraid he will find out he is gay. He thinks he may be kicked out, too.”

“That’s not legal! It wasn’t for you, and it wouldn’t be for him.”

Jaxon looked at me, right in the eyes this time, and said, “My father thinks his church’s laws are more important and superior to the laws of the state. Mr. Beal might think that, too.”

I shook my head. “Well, I guess you’ll find out tomorrow if you’re fired. You do work on Saturdays, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Every day in the summer. Only a half day on Sundays.”

“Those many hours are not legal, either, for someone your age.”

“I like working there. Mr. Beal is nice to me, but then, he does not know I am gay. Or that Cooper and I love each other. One thing will have to change if I stay: he has been giving my pay to my father. I will have to tell him to give it to me.”

I shook my head. This was a lot to think about. How could I help? I wanted to, but realistically, this was something I could have little impact on. “It’s time for bed for me, Jaxon. What time do you go to work tomorrow? I’ll get up and fix you breakfast before you have to go.”

“The store opens at nine. I go in at eight-thirty.”

“Breakfast at quarter till eight, then. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight, Jaxon.”

Over breakfast—eggs, waffles, syrup, bacon, milk and orange juice—I asked Jaxon about his relationship with Cooper. Perhaps it was his autism, but he was much more forthcoming than I expected. I’d just been interested in how they’d gotten together.

“I have trouble becoming friends with boys my age. They get impatient with me, and I do not laugh a lot or understand sarcasm, and I do not get embarrassed where they do, and so they think I am odd. I am easy to tease because I do not understand innuendo, either. I do not fit in with the majority of boys. But with Cooper, first off, he is very nice. He is patient. Second off, he had to train me, and he saw I was smart and could do some things very well. He was not jealous that I could do some things more easily than he could.

“We spent all that time together, and he was touching me a lot when I put my hands in the wrong place to do something, and I became very attracted to him, and as I said, I am gay. After not very long, when he was touching me, I would get hard. You know, down there. And he saw it and he giggled, and then I saw he was hard, too.

“I told him I was gay but he could not tell anyone. He told me the same was true with him. And then he kissed me. Right there. Right in one of the aisles of the store. The one with all the kinds of light bulbs we carry. I know where they all belong on the shelves and how much each one costs.”

Jaxon didn’t pause. He just kept talking. “We could not do anything we wanted to do because neither of our fathers would have let us have a sleepover with another boy and it was too risky in the store. We have kissed when we have had a moment alone and touched each other over our clothes, but that is all we have done. We both want to do more.”

I took Jaxon into work, which he could easily have walked to, but I wanted to be there to pick him up if he came right back out, having been terminated. He might not evince his emotions openly, but I was sure he felt things, and he’d be badly hurt being fired. He hadn’t been, I assumed, as he didn’t come back out, and so I went back home and took Clancy for a walk. So far so good for Jaxon, but it seemed possible his job could end pretty quickly. Their fathers might talk after church on Sunday.

I had plenty of room for Jaxon. The house had four bedrooms. I’d wondered now and then after Margaret’s death if I should sell the place. I certainly didn’t need a place as big as this one. But I didn’t want to leave it. The house had been Margaret’s to decorate and keep up, and she’d loved the place. Everything in it reminded me of her, but that was good. Good memories. It was unnecessarily large for me, but selling it would mean losing my garden and the home I’d had for years. I didn’t need the money, so why sell it? There was much to do keeping it clean and tidy, but I solved that by hiring a cleaning service to come in every other week. They kept the place such that Margaret would still be proud of it.

As with a lot of small-town properties, my yard was large, about a third of an acre. Plenty of room for my garden and my well-kept lawn, bushes and flower beds. We’d never been blessed with kids, but the house had been purchased when we thought we’d have several. Its four bedrooms had been unused for years. They were furnished, though; Margaret had a decorator’s touch and the whole house was comfortable but still had a touch of elegance. We didn’t have kids and so used the money that would have been spent on them to make the house ready for them even when it was obvious that the time for child-bearing had passed; now they were guest rooms that were never used. We also had decent investments. With my pension, we’d known we’d be fine when neither of us was still working.

Jaxon was now situated in a room of his choice, I’d be able to feed him, and if he stayed long, probably take care of any new clothes he needed. For the moment, my intention was to go to meet his father and collect Jaxon’s things. If he’d thrown them away, then he could pay for new ones. I knew a lot of people in town from being on committees and through my work at the school. If Mr. Mapes balked at providing for Jaxon’s care, he’d be in serious trouble. He had a legal commitment for his son.

That was the first thing on my agenda. I didn’t know Mr. Mapes at all, and I guessed he’d probably be at work during regular working hours, but this was Saturday. If I went to his house early, there was a good chance he’d still be there.

I didn’t know where he lived but did know people in town. I knew many, and I knew one who would make this easy for me. I called Janice Baker, an administrative aide at school. We’d been good friends for years. I called her at home and asked her for Jaxon Mapes’ address. It took her less than a minute to get into the school’s records and find what I wanted. Good to have friends in high places—or at least the right places. The school did have privacy regulations, but I had good relationships there.

Mr. Mapes lived on Hawthorne Road, which was across town from me, so I drove. It was a small house and didn’t look like the man spent much time on his property’s upkeep. The grass needed mowing and the house itself could use a fresh coat of paint. The windows appeared so grimy that I wondered if they’d ever been washed.

I knocked on the door.

There was a short wait, then a middle-aged man wearing a wife-beater undershirt and a pair of jeans that looked like they hadn’t been washed in either his or my lifetime opened the door. He was a large man, considerably bigger than I was, who had thick arms with bulging, weight-lifter biceps. His grooming could be best labeled as indifferent; he’d not shaved anytime this past week, that was for certain.

“Yeah?” he said. He had a gruff basso voice with a nasty aggressive tone.

“Hi. I’m Neil Davidson. I used to teach at the high school. Your son Jaxon needed a place to stay and is with me temporarily. I’ve come to get his things.”

“Fuck you,” he said and started to close the door.

I wasn’t going to be foolish enough to stick my foot in it. Having a broken foot wouldn’t help Jaxon much and me even less. I used my mouth instead.

“I’m calling the police,” I said as the door was closing.

It was jerked open again, and the man stepped forward, closing the space between us bringing his unwashed smell with him. He was counting on his size and demeanor to intimidate me. It worked, but I didn’t let him know that.

“I’m good friends with Chief Meyers,” I said, refusing to back away. “I’ll just call Dan and tell him you threw your son out of the house. That’s illegal. When they arrest you, they’ll probably search your house. Standard operating procedure. No problem, though. I’m sure they won’t find any controlled substances.”

He looked at me, opened his mouth, closed it, and I took the opportunity to speak again. “I only came to collect his things. You don’t want him here, and I don’t suppose he’s unhappy leaving. What in the world do you want with his clothes? He needs them; you don’t.

“You can throw him away if you do it legally, but even then you’ll still be responsible for his upkeep till he’s of legal age. I’m housing and feeding him. I’ll come in, get his things, and I’ll expect you to pay for his food. I won’t charge you for the room he’s staying in. I could. I won’t. I will keep track of what he eats, and I’ll send you a weekly bill. Pay it promptly or Dan will be hearing from me. He hates deadbeat dads. Be warned.”

Mr. Mapes didn’t know what to say. I was sure he hadn’t thought any of this out when he’d dumped his son. I said, “Let me in,” and stepped forward into the half-inch space between us.

He stepped back. I entered the house and asked to be shown to Jaxon’s room.

The house was filthy except for Jaxon’s room, which was tidy; that almost certainly had been done by Jaxon. I took all the clothes from his closet and dresser and laid them on the bed. Then I gathered everything else in the room I thought he’d want. There wasn’t much. A few books, a radio; no computer, no sound system, no TV. I checked in the excuse he had for a desk and found his social security card, birth certificate and school ID and put those in my pocket.

“Do you have any large trash bags I can put this stuff in?” I asked Mr. Mapes, who’d been standing in the doorway watching me.

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll have to call someone to bring me something. Chief Meyers probably has a patrol car in the neighborhood that can be here in only a minute or two. They’ll help me haul this stuff out. That’s probably the best way to handle this. If they ask why I’m taking the stuff, I can just tell them you threw your underage son out onto the street with nothing but the clothes on his back. They might find that of interest.”

He was giving me a deadly stare, and I simply met his eyes. “If I were you, Mr. Mapes, when the guy or guys come to the door, I’d let them in. Otherwise, you’d be tacitly telling them there’s stuff in here you don’t want them seeing.”

“Wait,” he said, and went and got three large black plastic trash bags and threw them at my feet. I put everything I was taking into them.

“Are there any of Jaxon’s things anywhere else in the house or in the garage?” I asked. He looked like a powder keg ready to explode. He hated me being in his house. He hated that I wasn’t acting afraid of him. It looked like what he hated most was that he couldn’t hit me. I had to wonder how Jaxon ever was able to live in the same house with this man.

He shook his head. “Now get out!”

I picked up the bags and left after reminding him he’d be getting a bill from me each week and it was in his best interest to pay it promptly.

“I’m impatient. Don’t make me wait.”

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