FOR NEW READERS:

Welcome to my autobiography.

LAST TIME:

After begging money from an unknown stranger in the parking lot of Wally World, he buys me lunch.


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A giant inflatable greeted customers as they entered the restaurant. For a fleeting instant, I had the sinister thought of how the switchblade knife in my pocket could pop Ronald, but thought better of performing the act. Still, I was curious what kind of loud noise the air suddenly escaping from the balloon would make?

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." These were the first words Dusty West spoke to me after we'd placed our orders at the counter, received our Egg McMuffins, and located a far corner table away from the hubbub of other customers scattered around the dining room.

"What?" I innocently asked him.

"Don't what me," he said, "you did not do so, but, I could tell by the gleam in your eyes as we entered McDonald's you had something on your mind pertaining to that balloon outside. When I saw that, I almost turned around and walked away. Destroying someone else's property for no reason is not the proper way for you to behave."

Busted, I stared back at him but did not say a word.

As I unwrapped my sandwich, and sipped a swallow of Pepsi through the plastic straw in my paper cup, he asked me, "What I'd really like to know is what a kid like you is doing on the streets? I mean, here you are with no money, nobody with you, and that's a good way for you to get yourself killed. Where did you come from anyway? What, are you a runaway? Your Dad got on you about something, you didn't like it, so you ran away from home, didn't you?"

I realized he'd have about a million questions he'd expect answers for. I swallowed my food and replied, "Hermitage Hall, that great big pie in the sky."

Before I could say anything more, he replied with, "From what I hear, and read about in the Nashville Tennessean newspaper, that's a good place for boys who have nowhere else to go."

I scoffed and more than slightly rolled my eyes.

"What?" he questioned me looking surprised by my response, "Tell me what I'm missing?"

Staring straight at him I remarked, "Only the fact they treat us worse than criminals."

"Three square meals a day. A warm, comfortable, bed to sleep in at night. Activities galore. What more could you want?" he asked me as we sat there and talked openly about whatever came to mind.

I recalled my recent encounter with King Tubbo's lethal reform school strap and stated, "Somebody who doesn't whip us for every little thing we do wrong would be a good start."

The remark seemed to catch his attention. I divulged all the gory details of my recent experience and commented, "So, you see, I can't go back to Hermitage Hall. I'm gonna get it again. Only worse!"

I expected him to say I was blowing the incident way out of proportion. He did not. He wasn't sure what to tell me except, "Perhaps you should have considered that option before you ran away again. The rules are the rules and they are in place for a reason."

I wasn't totally sure I liked much of what this man told me. Perhaps a little more sympathetic understanding on his part would have been more appropriate to me.

"Tell me, Brett, how did you end up at Hermitage Hall in the first place?" he wanted to know.

"Eight months ago my Mother died of cancer," I started answering his question, and finished with, "they had an empty room, I filled it."

"Sorry to hear about your Mother, that has to be tough on you" he cut me off, then asked, "where's your father?"

"That insane psychopath?" I responded, "Six feet in the ground from what I've been told. That's a real good place for him, too."

"That's not nice to say," he reprimanded me.

"He was never there for me," I retorted.

"Why not?" he asked me.

"Because he spent nine years in prison for armed robbery," I responded informing him, "that's where he got killed by another inmate one day."

"That's not good, " he commented.

"I don't care," I replied, and I truly did not care.

He could tell I did not want to further discuss that particular subject and we changed the topic again.

"When you're twelve-years-old some people kind of frown on you being on your own," I began.

"When you're twelve-years-old you have no business being on your own," he corrected me sharply, "it sounds like you've been knocked around some in your short life time. Join the club, Tonto."

"But, don't sing the blues to me because I don't want to hear them," he continued his comment, "the streets are very dangerous, Brett. There's a lot of treacherous people out there you're not even aware of."

"I can handle myself," I proudly boasted.

"Do you know what a pedophile is?" he asked me.

"A guy who likes little boys in ways that he shouldn't like little boys," I answered him, then asked a question of my own, "who doesn't know what a pervert is?"

He paused a moment to reflect on my answer, then said, "Many dangers lurk in the shadows too. You never know what they may be. Is any of this getting through that noggin of yours?"

Unfortunately, it was sinking in deeply. He wasn't saying anything I wanted to hear, but bells rang loud and clear. I took another bite of my sandwich.

"That's why I carry a switchblade knife," I remarked, "you see, a boy in my position does not have much to cling to."

"A switchblade knife?" he responded caught off guard by my admission, "You'd better be careful you don't get hurt on something sharp like one of those." Then he muttered under his breath, "If you were my son..."

I heard what he whispered and curiously asked him, "If I were your son, what?"

Very parentally he stated, "If you were my son, and you told me you carried a switchblade knife, I'd pluck every single one of your tail feathers one at a time until they all disappeared you little banty rooster."

When will I ever learn to see foreshadowing? A couple of months down the road that's exactly what he did when he confiscated my switchblade knife. But, that's jumping the gun.

The more we talked, the closer I listened to what he was telling me. All the time I wondered to myself, 'How is this guy breaking through your wall of defenses when no one else can?'

He wasn't just breaking through them, he smashed them to smithereens!

A couple hours flew rapidly by as we talked, and talked, and talked. I reached a reluctant decision that cut against every fiber of my being. I commented, "I wish you could be there when I go back to Hermitage Hall."

He shook his head. His response was "no". His action reassured me my request was not going to happen.

"That's something you're gonna have to be brave enough to face on your own," he told me saying, "you made your bed now you're going to have to lay in it."

On my own. The story of my life.

"I can handle what is waiting for me when I get there," I boldly stated and pushed my chair back away from the table.

He looked at me but did not speak.

"I know I'll never see you again, so thanks for the lunch. It was good," I graciously told him.

Fighting back a tear in the corner of my eye, I scurried out of the restaurant as fast as I could move leaving him to clean up our mess. I wasn't about to let him see me cry.

'What was this strange stranglehold this guy had me tightly in?' I asked myself once safely outside the establishment.

Although it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, compared to exiting that McDonald's, and leaving Dusty West behind, returning back to Hermitage Hall was a piece of cake. Maybe I'd allowed my overly vivid imagination to run wild? Maybe I'd wanted more out of that situation than what was actually there? And, maybe, just maybe, rocks got in my head.

Upon my arrival back at Hermitage Hall, I walked into the Superintendent's Office and announced, "Mr. McClellon, I'm back." (Did you notice my changed attitude and I did not refer to him as King Tubbo?)

He looked up from the folder in his hand and laid it down on the top of his desk. He simply replied, "You're back."

Then, I saw him stand up and reach for his strap that hung on the wall.

Slowly, I unbuckled my belt.