Courage and Passion
By FreeThinker

   
Chapter One
Brooks of Sheffield

    "'You’ll never take me alive Brooks! By this time tomorrow, I’ll be sipping champagne on the Riviera!’

    ‘Not so fast, Porkov! You forget the champagne at dinner tonight! I anticipated your betrayal and took precautions!’

    ‘What? No! You… didn’t!’

    ‘That’s right, you Commie! The CIA always gets its man. When you weren’t looking, I put sleeping powder in your glass! Any moment now, you should…’”

    “Robby! Get your ass down here! Now!”

    Robby McDonnell slumped in his chair and sighed. Why did she have to yell at him at this particular moment? He was right at the climax! One more page and his story would be complete and Brooks of Sheffield would once again have gotten his man.

    He placed his black Flair pen neatly in the center of his spiral notebook and looked out the window in front of his desk. From his room on the second floor of the large, old twenties-era house, he could see his younger brother and sister playing some incomprehensible game with several neighbor-children under the giant maple tree. He knew why his mother was yelling for him. She wanted him to go outside and stop “hibernating” in his cave. She wanted him to leave his beloved reading and writing, his only solace in the difficult world into which he had been thrown this dreadful and painful year, and “act like a normal kid,” which meant not writing his stories. She might as well ask him to cut off his right arm.

    “Robby! I know you can hear me! Get your ass out of that room now, before I come up there and drag you out!”

    “I’m coming!” he replied. He closed his eyes with distaste at his mother’s foul-mouth. She had always used profanity and coarse language, but it had grown significantly worse in the last year. With a sigh, he pushed back his chair and gave a wistful look about the room, his refuge from the turbulence of his family life. He gazed at the National Geographic map of the world above his bed, at the framed copy of the Austin Evening Reporter with the first front page story his father had written for the paper. He looked at the shelves of his beloved books, the music stand and his violin, at the neatly organized desk with his father’s college dictionary and thesaurus and… the framed picture of his father standing in front of the historic front entrance to the Austin Evening Reporter offices. He quickly sniffed and turned as his mother bellowed, “Robby! God damn it! Get down here! NOW!”

    As he descended the stairs to the foyer, he heard a woman singing on the television in the living room, strange in that his mother usually watched her soap operas in the afternoon as she did her housework. As he entered the living room, his mother was removing magazines and knickknacks from the coffee table. The Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon blared from the television; that explained why As the World Turns was not on.

“I want you outside,” his mother barked as she sprayed lemon Pledge on the coffee table.  “You’ve spent the whole damn summer holed up in your room and as you’re white as a sheet. I don’t want you going to school tomorrow looking sick and pale. Now get out there and get some sun.”

    Robby knew better than to argue with his mother. She could turn instantly and it could get very ugly. Wordlessly, he turned toward the foyer.

    “And, turn the damn TV off. I can’t stand Joey Heatherton.”
Robby turned the volume knob on the old Zenith until he heard and felt the click and the picture dissolved into a dark green.

    "And, don’t sulk!” he heard as he turned the corner.

 
   Go to Hell, he thought angrily to himself as he opened the front door and stepped outside from the air-conditioned comfort of the house into the late summer heat. Of course, he would never have actually verbalized those sentiments. No, Robby McDonnell kept his feelings to himself. That’s what you were supposed to do. Stay in control. Never let your feelings out.

    As he stood on the front porch, one of Brian’s friends tossed a football at him. His little brother always seemed to have friends at the house. So unlike, Robby, Brian was always cheerful and jovial. Their father’s death didn’t seem to affect him nearly as much as it had Robby. Brian always rolled with the punches and came out laughing. Robby suppressed a momentary sense of resentment at his brother as he reached out and missed the ball. It wasn’t right that he should feel resentment toward his brother for something that was just his nature. Besides, would his father have wanted Brian to be as morbid as Robby?

    The football crashed into the glass of the screen door. The boys laughed at Robby as he quickly picked up the ball and lamely threw it back in their direction. Quickly, Robby sprinted off the porch and across the yard before his mother could appear to vent more anger.

    “Hey, Brainiac!” his brother called out to him, holding the football. “Wanna play?”

    “Naw,” he replied. “Thanks, anyway.”

    “Aw, come on. You never wanna do anything ‘cept write your stories and read.”

    Robby smiled at his brother and shrugged before turning and walking on toward the sidewalk. Brian shrugged and tossed the ball to Megan, their little sister.

    He had to admit that it actually was a beautiful day. It was like Austin. It reminded him of his "childhood,” or what he thought of as his childhood, the time before he lost his father. The heat felt good as he walked down the sidewalk toward the school at the end of the block. He didn’t know where he was going, but a walk was probably the best way to get some sun and escape from the rigors of his family.

    Most of the houses along Sycamore Street were similar to his family’s, old, large, red brick with wide porches, small yards, and huge trees looming protectively over them. Roots from the trees had pushed up the sidewalk in places, making it dangerous to stroll down them if one didn’t pay attention, which Robby wasn’t. He tripped over one of the broken slabs of concrete that was sticking up a few inches, tearing the front of his right sneaker. Well, he thought ruefully, yet another reason for his mother to yell at him.

    As he recovered his balance, he saw, out the corner of his eye, a bicycle passing by on the street. Great, he thought. I always have to have an audience when I make a dork of myself. However, the guy riding the bike, a teenager, probably fourteen or fifteen years old, just gave a good-natured grin. His longish strawberry-blond hair blew in the breeze across his forehead and Robby felt a strange feeling. He blushed and smiled and then looked down at the concrete as he walked on. The teenager rode onward then turned east at the corner.

    Robby looked to the south at the long red edifice of Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School. The following morning, his summer vacation would end. He would enter the sixth grade and join nine hundred other students lamenting the end of their freedom. Actually, Robby was almost looking forward to the start of school. It would be an escape from home and a stimulation to his mind.

    As he approached, he saw a boy sitting on one of the concrete benches in front of the school that circled a small flowerbed in the middle of which stood the school’s flagpole. The boy was just slightly chubby, in Bermuda shorts much like his own, and a yellow pullover similar to his own green shirt. His thick hair hung to the top of his ears and swept across his forehead. It was almost as impossibly blond and his skin was pale. He held a thin paperback, but he wasn’t reading it. He was staring off into space, possibly gazing at the dogwood across the street. Robby fought an urge to say hi and introduce himself. He could count the number of times in the three months since his family had left Austin and moved to Sheffield that he had ventured out of the house, and not once during those few forays into the outside world had he met anyone his age. He knew no one. It was such a change from the previous summer. He had to admit that it would be nice to have a friend, but something stopped him from waving at the boy. Perhaps, it was the way the boy seemed oblivious of his existence.

    Robby turned onto 18th Street and started walking west, unprotected by any trees and, thus, in full exposure to the blinding sun. He knew very little about the neighborhood to which they had moved. Indeed, he knew very little about Sheffield, other than what he had picked up on his family’s few trips to visit his grandparents here. They lived a mile to the west, in the hoity-toity part of the city.

    Up ahead, a couple of blocks away, was Providence Avenue. Perhaps there was something interesting there.

    As he approached the corner at Richmond Avenue, he heard a violin. It wasn’t a recording. He could tell it was live and it was very good. Robby loved the violin and had played it for several years, ever since their neighbor in Austin, Mr. St. Charles, had introduced him to it in Kindergarten. He paused at the corner and leaned his seat against the red fire hydrant, listening to… what? It was cheerful and… Russian sounding. Well, that was a contradiction in terms, cheerful and Russian. It had to be something by Dmitri Koronov, his favorite composer and creator of one of his favorite works, the Dance of the Ice Prince, a beautiful ballet he had once seen performed on the PBS channel back home.

    This was something new, something with which he was unfamiliar, yet the style was unmistakable. Who was playing this? He guessed it was someone fairly young as there were a few mistakes, minor and probably not noticeable to someone who didn’t themselves play. The music stopped and then repeated. Yes. Someone was practicing. Robby wished, suddenly, that he were in his bedroom, playing his own violin. There was something soothing about getting lost in the music, in concentrating on the playing, in working on the style, in trying to imagine what the composer was saying and how you could express it in your own way.

    The same piece started over a third time and Robby decided to continue on with his walk. He would remember the house, though. Perhaps, there was a boy living here who could be his friend, who would understand him and sympathize with him, who could share his love of music and beautiful things. Or, maybe it was just a girl.

    He came to Providence Avenue and looked up and down the busy thoroughfare, waiting for a break in the traffic so he could run across. Up the street, six blocks to the north, he could see the huge looming hulk of Sheffield Central High School, where he would probably be going in three years. To the south, at 24th St. rose the towers of St. Luke’s Hospital and the Sheffield National Bank. He could see several firemen in the intersection, probably collecting money from the people stuck at the lights for the Telethon. A helicopter whoop-whooped overhead, flying toward the hospital.

    He waited, the heat of the sun on his pale skin, a few strands of red hair blowing across his forehead and tickling his skin. When a break opened in the traffic, he sprinted across the street to Lake Windermere, a park consisting of a green space at both ends and a small lake, a couple of blocks long and one block wide, in the middle. A chain-link fence surrounded the lake, which was lined with a number of old-fashioned light-poles. A large fountain in the center of the lake threw several streams of water into the air as dozens and dozens of ducks circled around, lorded over by two magnificent, regal swans. The houses around the park were even bigger and fancier than those in Robby’s neighborhood on the other side of Providence Avenue. The boy walked over to the fence and watched as several ducks, all different in coloring and size, swan toward him and quacked expectantly, waiting for Robby to toss them the bread he hadn’t brought with him. Robby grinned and quacked back at them, doing his best to imitate Donald Duck.

    He became lost in thought as the ducks circled around before him. Realizing there was no food to be had from the strange boy by the fence, a number paddled away, quacking irritably at each other as they returned to the fountain in the center. Robby watched several turtles sunning themselves on the large, flat boulders that lined the lake. A fish jumping in he water several yards away awoke him from his reverie as an ambulance roared past behind him on Providence.

    Slowly, he strolled along the walkway that lined the fence and the lake, gazing at the huge, fancy homes across the street. As he ambled on along the walk, his mind began to imagine what might be happening inside those respectable mansions, what types of people would live there, what kinds of challenges they would face, what joys they would have, what tragedies they would endure, what stories they could tell. Perhaps, he could find a plot for his next story in this setting, a story about the banker in the colonial house who murdered his wife and dumped her body in the lake, or the woman in the art deco house who embezzled money from the charity she ran, or...

    Robby stopped as he came to the western end of the lake. There was a large green space here. A moving van was parked in front of a house opposite, but that is not what caught his attention. In the very center of the green space, between two large oaks, sat a boy about his age. That, in itself, was not cause for attention, but the fact that his thick blond hair was long and that he seemed to be meditating was.

    The boy was wearing only what appeared to be cut-offs. No shirt or shoes. Well, it was summer, for another day, at least. His body seemed tanned and built, not overly muscled, but he wasn’t exactly skinny, either. His thin eyes were closed and his puffy pink lips formed a slight smile as he sat with his legs crossed in what must have been an uncomfortable position. The feet were inverted upward, rather than the normal downward. He was sitting up, his back straight, arms outward with his hands on his knees. Very strange.

    He was obviously a hippy. A little young to be a hippy, but he was definitely a hippy. Probably one of those jerks who protested against the war every Saturday over at the college.

    Robby suddenly hated him. He looked at the boy with absolute disgust, sitting there with his long hair and his hippy shorts and meditating. Probably some weird Eastern religion, instead of being a good Christian.

    Suddenly, the boy seemed to relax. He slumped down just a bit and opened his eyes. He looked up at the clear, blue sky and smiled before looking around. His eyes fell on Robby, standing by the chain-link fence surrounding the lake. He cocked his head slightly and a toothy grin appeared on his face.

    Robby quickly turned away and faced the lake, leaning on the metal bar along the top of the chain-link fence. He suddenly felt funny, strange, angry. The boy was one of those hippy kids, probably from the area over by the college where all the students and the teachers and the hippies lived. He probably did drugs, too. He hated him.

    And, his dick was hard as steel.

    Robby clenched his fists and gave a last, furious look at the boy. He saw an expression of shock come over his face, but it didn’t matter. To heck with him. Robby strode away along the fence as the walkway curved back to the east and toward his home.

    Why was his dick getting hard all the time, Robby wondered angrily. And, why would it get hard looking at the darn hippy kid? Why would it get hard when he was feeling such anger and rage?

    He stormed up the sidewalk toward Providence Avenue, his mood ruined, his peace and serenity destroyed. He hated the war, the war that had taken his father; but, he hated the hippies even more. His grandparents told him the hippies were helping the Communists who killed his father. Scum.

    Robby was so full of anger at that moment that, as he reached Providence Avenue, he was completely unaware of any traffic as he stepped off the curb. A horn and the screech of braking tires brought him back to reality. He looked in shock at the approaching Ford Fairlane and, when he realized what was happening, he jumped back up on the curb. The driver, an older man with gray hair, shook his fist angrily at Robby as he passed. The boy simply looked downward in embarrassment and shock. Waiting for a break in the traffic and for his breathing to return to normal, Robby consciously tried to calm down until he was able to cross the street.
 

000

    He used to have great tans when he went back to school when he lived in Austin. Everyone had a great tan in Austin. It was always beautiful weather and everyone was always outside. Well, almost always. It got cool sometimes in January or February, but not like it would in Sheffield.    

    Robby sighed. He missed Austin so much. He missed his buddies, riding his bike to forbidden places around town, eating at Threadgill’s, swimming in Barton Springs, watching the bats come out from under the Congress Avenue bridge in the evening. He missed JT and his bluff and bluster, the way he was always trying to sound more impressive than everyone else. He missed the way people spoke in Texas. He missed his Dad. He missed his old life. Things were happy then. Things were the way they were supposed to be. They weren’t supposed to live in a fancy house in Sheffield; they were supposed to be in their old, average house in Austin. His mother wasn’t supposed to be going out to bars and meeting men two or three nights a week; she was supposed to be at home, taking care of him and the kids, like normal mothers. This wasn’t the way life was supposed to be and every time he thought about it, his heart ached and his stomach felt tight and he wanted cry; but he didn’t. Boys didn’t cry. He kept it in.

    But, there was something else, though. Every time he felt angry or depressed or lonely, his dick got hard. Well, not every time. But, often enough  that he noticed a pattern. And, when it did, he would hide in his bedroom or in the bathroom and pull it out and rub it until he got the jerking. And, then, he would feel better. It was a great way to get rid of the stress of life with his family the way it was now. Anytime things got rough or he started feeling badly, he could just rub his dick and, then, he’d be OK.

    Speaking of which, Robby looked down. He could feel that strange, pleasant urgent sensation deep inside him as his dick started swelling and lengthening. He saw the cone peeking out the fly of his green pajama shorts. It was fascinating, (and exciting), to watch his dick get hard. It was start off as this kind of short, thick stub between his legs and then it would start getting long, the wrinkled skin behind the cone smoothing out as it started to get longer and fatter. The thickening would start at the bottom of his dick where it met his lower tummy, them push outward until his dick was straight and stiff as one of those fat crayons he used to have in Kindergarten. Even now, as he watched, it was rising out of the fly of his shorts, getting stiffer and longer and thicker. His heart started beating faster and felt a sense of anticipation.

    Robby leaned back against his pillow and stretched out on top of his sheets, his dick poking rigidly up from his pajamas. It was pointing directly at his face, making him grin. This was his friend, the only friend he had. He had to take care of his friend and let him know how much he appreciated him.

    He reached up and turned the switch on his lamp, plunging the room into darkness. With only the faint glow from the few yard lights and porch lights along the block, Robby reached down and unsnapped his shorts. His dick pulsed as the top flap fell back, revealing his dick in all its glorious stiffness. He could feel a gentle, warm breeze from the window caress the taut skin of his dick and it sent a thrill through his young body. His breath was jagged as he opened his mouth and gazed downward at his rigid boyhood.

    He reached down with his right hand and extended his index finger. His whole body jerked with the shock of the first contact of his finger with the sensitive tip of of his dick. Quietly, he moaned as his finger traced downward across the sensitive area behind the head of his dick toward the tight, smooth sack around his marble-sized balls. He moved the finger all over his balls, noticing that they seemed more sensitive now than they had a few before when he had first discovered the joys and escape of playing with himself. With a sigh, he cupped his hand around his balls and gently rubbed them.

    "Nnng," he moaned as he sqirmed on top of his bed. He replaced his right hand with his left, gently rubbing and squeezing his balls, as he wrapped his right hand around his boyhood. Unable to wait any longer, he began rubbing his erection, twisting his fist back and forth as he pumped it up and down. Gasping with the feeling, he was twisting and bucking on top of his sheets as he pumped, letting the feeling build, revelling in the joy of making himself feel good.

    His mind began to wander as the feeling built and began find himself lost in the experience. He thought of that goofy-looking guy on the bike that afternoon. That longish red hair was kinda good looking. And, that kinda chubby blond kid in front of school was kinda cute, too. He remembered listening to the violin outside that house down the street from the school and wondering if, perhaps, there was a boy in there who might want to be his friend. Maybe...

    Gradually, all the images that paraded past his mind's eye began to morph into one image, an image that irritated him and made him angry.

    Darn it! Why did that hippy kid but his way into his thoughts? Here he was, laying on his bed, his dick hard as a rock, rubbing away and having a perfectly good time making his dick feel super good and that freak suddenly shows up, with his long, blond hair and those slender arms and that straight, slim torso, and that peaceful, pretty, almost angelic smile. He was sure pretty, almost like a girl, yet there was something totally boy about him. Robby wondered if maybe his dick ever got hard and whether he rubbed it to make it feel good. What did he think about when he rubbed? Did he think about good-looking boys? Did he, maybe...

    Darn! Stop thinking about that! Robby released his dick and pounded the bed in frustration. Why was that freaky hippy boy ruining everything?

    Well, he was kinda cute. Maybe, he did get hard like Robby, Maybe he did rub his dick like Robby did. He wondered what the kid looked like when he rubbed it. What did his dick look like? The boy looked like he might be a little taller than Robby. Maybe his dick was longer, too. And, fatter.

    Robby wrapped his hand around his dick again as visions of Hippykid circled around in his mind, of the tanned, smooth skin, the long blond hair, that toothy grin. Oh, man. That grin was hot. That really made his dick hard. Robby rubbed faster and harder, his dick feeling so darn stiff and so darn good. He closed his eyes as he squeezed and rubbed his balls more and his hand pumped his stiff dick faster. The feelings were growing and Robby was panting, trying desperately not to moan as he pumped his dick.

    Suddenly, the feeling seemed to jump and, throwing his head back, his whole body seemed to explode. He began to buck and writhe about on his bed as his dick pulsed and pumped in his hand.

    And, then, just as suddenly as it started, the jerking ended.

    For a moment, Robby felt the sense of depression, the let down, that it was over. But, after a moment, that was replaced with a relaxed and serene sense of calm. He smiled and closed his eyes, enjoying the wonderful feeling he got after a good rub. Maybe tomorrow, after a day of school, he would see lots of other boys that he could think about  the next time he rubbed, so he wouldn't have to think about Hippykid. Maybe, he'd meet a friend. Maybe the Violin Kid would be cool. Maybe that blond kid would be...