The Indiana Kids.

I'm putting up this post in two chapters. It's all one post, but two chapters. It was the easiest way I could make something both entirely true and chronological into something that made sense.

By the way, everything in this post happened, exactly as I wrote it. That may be why some stuff seems out of place. Sometimes real life doesn't fit in nice and neat.



Chapter One.


Halloween was on a Monday this year. I didn’t even get a costume, knowing that I wouldn’t have any plans. But as always, at the eleventh hour, I called my friend Jen. "Put on your goofiest 80's clothes and let’s go somewhere!"
"Where?"
"I don’t know."

I had on a cut-off sweatshirt and mini-skirt with a side ponytail, sky-high bangs, caked-on magenta blush, polka-dot earrings, and my high-top L.A. Gears. The perfect 1987 mall whore. I stopped to get gas on the way to Jen’s house.

The trouble with over-the-top 80's outfits in public is that few people can tell the difference - is she in costume, or is she seriously stuck in 1987? Is she just from out-of-town? You get a lot of weird looks, like the one I got from the young kid walking out of the gas station and towards the rickety Mercury sedan. He stopped short halfway back to his car and walked over to me. "Here we go," I thought. "And no I am not giving you my number."

"Do you know where Route One is?" he asked. He was very thin, with pale, spindly arms sticking out of the sleeves of his T-shirt. He looked about 19.
I softened. "Yeah, just go down this road to the next light, make a left–"
He interrupted. "Uhhh, y’see, ma’am, we’re not from around here. I don’t know where the next light is." He pointed to the red Mercury with Indiana tags and I could see another skinny, sunken face staring out the back window, framed by a black baseball cap. "Me an’ my brother, we’re just tryin’ t’get back to the Pin-Del. It’s on Route One."

I knew the Pin-Del. Everyone in Laurel that was old enough to have been a child once had been warned by their mother about the Pin-Del Motel, and the less-than-savory goings-on inside. I had heard the name whispered in slurred conversations between drunks and crack dealers at the honky-tonk I worked at years ago, and read it in the police blotter. Driving past, I always felt sorry for the people who used it as a permanent address.

I said, "Well, I’m trying to tell you where the next light is, just follow me, okay?"
I meant "listen to what I have to say". He thought different.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, that’s awful nice-a ya!" He pulled his keys out of his pocket and ran back to the Mercury, telling the ghostly face in the back, "Hey, she’s gonna take us down to the motel!"
"I am?" I thought.

Five minutes and two left turns later, I flipped a U-turn in the parking lot of the Pin-Del and rolled down my window to talk to the kids. "Here you are."
"Hey, thanks a lot," the driver said, looking suddenly forlorn. "What’s your name?"
"Jessica."
"I’m Mike and this is Joey. Do you wanna hang out?"
I didn’t, but "No, not really" wasn’t a very nice answer.
"Well, I already have plans with a friend. Let me see what’s she wants to do and I’ll call you, how about that?"
"Oh, well, we don’t have a phone."
"Okay, then I’ll call the motel room phone."
"No, we don’t have a room here."
"But you’re gonna get one now, aren’t you?"
"No!" They giggled. "Look at it!"

I turned to look at the motel, set back far from the street, and saw that it was completely gutted for construction. There were no lights, no windows, and piles of lumber stacked all around. I must have looked confused, because Mike said, "We’re here workin’ on it with our dad, but we can’t find him. He’s an awful drunk and he took off somewheres with our pay. We were suppose’ta get a room somewhere but we ain’t got no money, so we’s just come back here’ta sleep in the car."
They both gave me sad puppy-dog eyes. "Please? Will you hang out with us?"

I knew all about being out of town, sleeping in my car and loneliness in a new place. I had an inner struggle for a few seconds – they sounded like pure drama, through and through, but I wanted to take them under my wing, sort of pay it forward for all the people who had done the same for me.
"Maybe," I answered. "Let me go pick up my friend and see what she wants to do. And if she’s cool with it, we’ll come back."
"Okay! We’ll just be here throwin’ the football!"

Driving to Jen’s house, I just kept thinking, "Well, this’ll be an interesting sell: ‘Hey, Jen, would you like to go hang out with two random kids of questionable hygiene that I just met in a gas station parking lot? They have an alcoholic father, no money and no phone, but they do have a football – whaddya say?"

Lucky for those kids, Jen is cool. Within minutes we were back in the Pin-Del parking lot, cresting the hill to see two gaunt, smiling faces lit by our headlights. They jumped in the back seat, handing me a burned CD. "Can you put this in?" It was a hip-hop love song, the typical, "I-done-you-wrong-but-take-me-back" track. Jen shot me a half-cocked smile that said, "What have you gotten me into?"

I gave her one that said, "I have no idea" and watched Mike and Joey in the rearview for a moment, the two whitest redneck kids this side of the Mason-Dixon singing along to "Girl, Come Back So I Can Freak Ya Nasty", or whatever song it was.
"How old are you guys, anyway?"
"I’m nineteen!" Mike said proudly.
"Seventeen," Joey answered, miffed that he was younger.

"Where do you want to go?" I asked them.
Mike was the alpha-male of the two. He did most of the talking. "Wherever you’re takin’ us!" Joey nodded.
We ended up at Sportsman’s Pub, the same honky-tonk where I’d heard crackhead whispers about the Pin-Del.

We played doubles pool for awhile, Mike and I against Jen and Joey. In between shots, the boys filled the girls in on life in Indiana.
"We’s step-brothers, actually," Mike said. "We was friends when we was little and then our parents started datin’. They got married, like, a year ago. But we been livin’ together fo’longer’ennnat. We use’ta live on the street. We was thugs! We was in a gang–" He was cut off by Joey, pulling up his shirt.
"Got this one when I was fourteen!" he exclaimed, pointing to the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen. On his stomach it read, "THUG LIFE" and looked like it was done with chopsticks. "You got any?"
"Um, I have five," I answered, "but none are gang-related."
"Yeah, mine isn’t very thuggish," Jen said.
Joey continued to give us a tour of his body art, pulling up sleeves and pant legs to reveal crudely-drawn crosses, four leaf clovers and one I think was supposed to be a crying woman but looked like a donkey. "I’ma get that one fixed up," he said.

It was Mike’s turn – he pulled up his sleeve to reveal two girls’ names on his bicep. Kelsey Leighanne and Kasey Elizabeth. "Oh, dude, you should have known better than to tattoo your first girlfriend’s name! Then you have to do it for the next one!" I joked.
His smile slowly melted into a crooked line. His eyes filled with something between sadness and pity. When his voice floated over the cigarette smoke, it was a dull whisper.
"They were my daughters. Twins. They were killed by a drunk driver last year. They were thirteen months old." He rubbed the names before pulling his sleeve back down.
"How old are you?" I asked again, incredulous.
"Nineteen."
We all looked at the floor.

Joey cut the silence by sinking the eight ball. "This town is way big compared’ta ahrs. But people is meaner here." He paused after his shot, as though pondering. "The money is better here, though. When ya get it." Then he stared into space. One thing we noticed about Joey, he stared into space a lot.
Mike addressed Joey in that way that is really meant for other people to hear and be "impressed" by, the way with details between the words.
"Just remember, I’ll have you working for my company when we get back and you can live in one of my houses. (He glanced back at Jen and I to make sure we were listening.) You know I own seven houses. You can have one. I won’t make you pay rent or nothin’. Since I’m the CEO now that Granddad died, you’re covered."

Jen and I looked at each other. Nineteen, we believed. Gangs, we believed. Dead twin daughters,
even that we believed. But CEO? Seven houses?
Mike could see us smirking and tried to explain. "No, seriously, I own seven houses. And five cars. And I inherited my Granddad’s contractin’ business. He didn’t want to give it to my dad ‘cause he knew he was a drunk."
"So instead he gave it to a ‘thug’?"
"I ain’t no thug anymore!"
"Okay, whatever, Mr. President," I said, laughing. "Are you guys hungry? I’m buying."
"Whaddya have in mind?"
"Well, surely not the power lunches you CEOs are used to," I teased.

On the way out of the bar, Jen asked Mike, "So if you own five cars, why are both of you sleeping in a brokendown Sable?"
He didn’t have an answer.

The boys followed us to Denny’s. "What is this place?" Joey asked in the parking lot.
Jen and I froze. "WHAT?!"
"What is this, like a diner?"
"WHAT?!"
"A DINER?!"
"Um, YEAH! It’s Denny’s!"
"I ain’t never seen no Denny’s."
"Dude, you’re making Indiana seem like a Third World country."
Jen asked the boys if they’d ever been to a Dunkin’ Donuts while we waited for a table.
Joey answered. "I passed one once on the interstate."
"Wow," Jen and I breathed in unison.

Nestled in a booth, watching Mike and Joey pore over the menu, I was struck with nostalgia for the road. Except this time, I was the stable one. I was the one treating. How the tables have turned.
"What can we get?"
Ultimately, I didn’t care that they were liars, I didn’t care that they were trying to pass themselves off as empire-owning thugs. The only thing that mattered was that they were hungry. Humanity transcends lies.
"Anything you want."

While we waited for their burgers, Mike tried to prove he owned seven houses by showing us his keychain. Joey stared off into space. A couple times Mike had to shake him to bring him back.
Leaving the parking lot, I pulled my sweatshirt up over my shoulder. I was still dressed like an 80's mall whore and the mini skirt wasn’t cutting it in the October cold. The boys were walking back to their car. "Where are you sleeping tonight?" I asked them.
"Dunno. The car, I guess."
"No, you’re sleeping in my basement. Come on, follow me."

We dropped Jen off, then drove back to my house, "Girl, I Wanna Freak Yo’ Gramma’s Booty", or whatever it was, still spinning in the stereo. The boys knew every word, and belted it with their eyes closed and heads thrown back.

It was midnight. These boys were far from home, broke and alone. But their bellies were full and they were going to get a good night’s sleep in a warm place. I knew then how it must have felt to Earl, to Donna. To Jean and Mike and Larry, all the people who took me in off the street when I was the one hungry and cold. And I knew then that I had given them almost as much as they had given me. What a beautiful feeling love is when you take away the lust.



Chapter Two.


Mike slept in my bed, I slept on the couch. Joey slept in the basement, mostly because his staring spells made me nervous. I wanted him far away from things that were breakable or valuable, lest he start sleepwalking or stealing in the night. I didn’t know that basements were part of what caused his little spells.

I led them into the kitchen, to the top of the basement stairs. Joey gazed emptily at the stairs, and started muttering under his breath. "IneverbackdownfromadareIneverbackdownfromadareIneverback...."
I tapped him. "What’s that, hon?"
His head snapped to face me. "I never back down from a dare," he whispered.
I thought he was playing around. "Joey, you dork, you’re gonna sleep in the basement, okay?"
"Huh?" He giggled nervously. "Basement?" Suddenly it was like talking to a toddler.
"Yes, honey, the basement. There’s a couch down there. Come on, I’ll show you." I grabbed his hand to lead him down the stairs.
"Nononononononononononono......" He balked, snatching his hand back.
Mike stepped in. "It’s okay, I’ll handle it," he told me.
He turned back to Joey, grabbing the boy’s face in his hands. "Listen. You’re going to go down in the basement. I’m going to go with you. I’ll walk in front of you. Come on."
"Nononononononononono...."
"Yes."

I stood there, in my own kitchen, watching two strange teenagers battle over something as simple as stairs. They had gone from step-brothers to parent and child. "Where did this come from?" I thought. Mike started leading Joey down the narrow staircase by the hand. I followed close behind, befuddled. Mike started explaining when they reached the bottom.

"Joey had an accident."
"When?"
"About four months ago. Show her, Joey."
Joey took off his baseball cap for the first time that night. His shaved head was criss-crossed by scars, dozens of tiny dots belying where the stitches had gone. I gasped.
"Some kids in the neighborhood dared him to ride his dirt bike down our basement stairs. Joey will tell you, he never backs down. Not from a dare. So he did, but he flipped over the handlebars before he even reached the third step. His head hit the wall, and the tire hit his head. It was running. It pulled the skin off his head and he got a really bad concussion. That’s why he stares. He hasn’t been the same since."

I looked at Joey, crumpled on the floor next to the pool table. "Stop talking about me like I’m not here," he said.
"Sorry," I mumbled, automatically.
"Where am I sleeping?" Mike asked.
"In my bed," I told him. If he took my bed and I took the couch, I could be right by the door if either of them decided to make a run for it with a TV, or the good China, or anything like that. I felt bad for thinking like that, and remembered when Donna had done the same with me.

"No, you take my bed," she had said, her friend’s voice ringing in her ear: "You don’t know this girl, you don’t know if she’s going to rob you blind or kill your kids in their sleep!" Later, we had laughed about it over beers.

"Well, being pre-emptive never hurt anyone," I thought to myself. "Besides, my bed is much nicer than this dumb old futon. He’s a guest, he can have my bed." .... But really I just wanted to make sure they didn’t steal anything.
I showed Mike my room, the bathroom, the towels, the toothpaste, the customaries. I felt like a regular concierge. We ended up back in the living room; I showed him where I’d be if he needed anything else. Sitting on the little landing between the living room and the kitchen, he told me more about Indiana.
"You really want to know why I came here? Even though I own a business back in Indiana?"
"I don’t believe you that you do, but sure."
"I do!" he insisted. "But anyway, the reason I came here is because my girlfriend’s mom, she won’t let us see each other no more."
"The mother of your twins?"
"No, she dumped me right after they died. She blamed it on me, because I was’sposed to be watchin’em but I was workin’." He said it matter-of-factly, as though he were a news reporter. I suppose after experiencing so much pain, the ability to show pain shuts down.
He continued. "No, my new girlfriend. I wanna marry her. I love her. We was tryin’ to have kids of our own."
"How old was she?"
"Sixteen."
"And you were trying to have babies?"
"Well, yeah," he said, as though I had just asked him, do you breathe oxygen?
"Where are you from again?" I asked.
"Indiana." I forget the name of the town he said.
"Well, you’re certainly making Indiana sound like a Third World country."
"Well, thank you for showing me where the toothpaste is in a First World Country!" We laughed.

But when we went back to check on Joey, I felt like an idiot. We had left him in the basement by himself – "He’ll be fine," Mike had said – but when we came around the corner we found him, standing at the bottom of the stairs, tears streaming down his face, staring. His scars looked were lines of pink, manic runways up and down his head. We bolted the stairs two at a time, Mike first and I followed, and sat on the lowest stairs, grabbing at Joey’s hands.
"Joey?" I said, over and over. "Joey. Joey."
Mike was more commanding. "Joe, look at me."
He wouldn’t; he just started muttering again, "never..from..dare..never..from..dare..."
Joey only had time to say it twice before Mike took control, slapping him across the face.

Joey snapped back to attention, catching Mike’s face with an awkward stare, then mine. When he saw me, sitting there on the bottom step, trained on his every move, his face morphed into a shade of guilt I’ve only ever seen in the mirror. Tears snaked their way down his cheeks as I pulled his gaunt frame into me. "Ssssshhhhhhh", I whispered, like I do when the triplets cry.
I held him for awhile, until he stopped crying. Then I handed him to Mike, who picked him up and placed him on the basement couch, already half asleep. We covered with a warm blanket and headed upstairs.

"Do you take care of him like that all the time?" I asked, when we were safely out of earshot.
"Yes," Mike answered. "You wanna know another reason I came to Maryland?"
"What?"
"Because Joey can’t get a job in Indiana anymore. The only job he could ever keep is with my company and my grandfather said I couldn’t hire him until he had his surgery and rehab. Said that before he died. Joey’ll be better once he has some brain rehab. It’s called "cognitive". But until then my grandfather didn’t want him working for us. Cost us too much money. So the only job he can get is day labor or contract work out-of-town. Can’t drive on his own, and won’t nobody take him ‘cept his brother."
"And you’re his step-brother?"
"Yes, ma’am," he said. "Brothers. Do what we can. I know if’n it was me he’d do the same. I just rented out the houses and hoped no one would steal the cars and hoped for the best. We came here to make money for Joey. He’ll have some experience as long as I can say he showed up on a job. ‘Cause I made him.'"
"What about your job?"
"It'll be there when I get back."


Why do I always learn the most from people I’m initially frightened of?