Chapter Three
posted in Novel |
Good morning — I hope you’re all well. Here’s the next chapter of Lost and Found. Thanks again for all the great comments.
Be well — be in peace,
Ron
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Most of the kids that worked at the bowling alley were street-wise and tough. I was the youngest one working there and still the only one who didn’t smoke or hang out with a gang.
The next day after that beating my father gave me with his fists, the kid that worked the alley next to mine kept staring at me. I figured he was curious about the bruising and swelling on my face. He was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old—definitely older than me. He had long, dark brown hair that was usually hanging down in his eyes. He was always squinting because of the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. You could tell he was poor like most of the kids that worked there because his clothes were old and either patched or torn. Even though he was taller than me, he was still small enough to set pins.
When I first started working there the boss assigned him to teach me how to be a pinsetter. I noticed how he rarely ever smiled and most of the other kids seemed to give him a lot of room. After a while I learned that he was one of the toughest kids working there and really knew how to street fight. I didn’t know his last name at the time, but everyone called him Billy.
“Hey kid,” Billy yelled across the gap between our alley pits, “what’s with the beat-up face? Who’d you get into a fight with?”
“Ah, I didn’t get into a fight with anybody,” I replied, “My old man beat me up last night.”
“What’d he beat you up for?” he asked.
I really didn’t have any idea of how to answer that question because I had no idea what motivated my father to do this.
I decided that it wouldn’t be smart to try and bullshit Billy, so I replied, “I don’t know why he did it. He just comes home sometimes and is all pissed off and decides that I need a beating. It doesn’t matter if I’ve done anything wrong, he just does it anyway.”
Billy didn’t say anything for quite awhile and the lanes were getting pretty busy. About an hour later there was a little lull in the action. Billy was sitting on his shelf having another smoke.
“Is your old man a drunk?”
“Nah, he’s just the opposite,” I said. “He’s a real churchgoer and wouldn’t drink if you paid him.”
“Is your old man a big guy?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s a whole lot bigger than me. There ain’t no way that I could fight him back—he’d beat me a lot worse than he did last night if I even tried.”
“I was just wondering how big he was. My old man used to pop me once in awhile when I was younger, but he wasn’t much bigger than me. After I got a little older and learned how to fight, I started thinking about what it’d be like to pop him back sometime.”
Billy sort of snickered to himself, took a big drag off his cigarette, and then looked up as though he was remembering something. “Anyway,” he went on after a couple of minutes, “about a year ago, he comes home drunk one night and starts in on me. He’s kind of swinging at me and I’m dodging him and he’s swearing and yelling at me to stand still”.
Billy started to chuckle and dance around like he was pretending to be his old man. “Then he comes at me with this big swinging fist and misses me, and that’s when I hauled off and hit him with everything I had right in his gut”.
Billy took a big swing with his fist to demonstrate. “You should-a seen him, he must have had quite a few beers, because he doubles up and starts moaning and groaning like mad.”
Billy got a huge grin on his face — the first time I had ever seen him smile. He took another drag off his smoke and said, “Then off he goes to the john to puke his guts out. He thought about coming after me a couple of times after that, but he never did it again.”
“Were you scared when you hit him?”
“I didn’t even think about it. I’d been in some pretty good street fights with people a lot tougher than my old man. I knew I’d win if we actually got in a fight. Nah, I wasn’t really scared.”
“I don’t think I could do that, I’m still just a kid. But I sure would like to do something so he wouldn’t beat me up any more.”
Billy just looked at me for a couple of minutes. Then he asked, “What’s your name again?”
“It’s Rollo, Rollo Van Buren,” I said.
“Where do you live, Van? You live around here?”
I told him that I lived over on Russell, but about then the lanes picked up and we got too busy to talk anymore.
Later that afternoon when we got off work, Billy came up to me and said that he knew this kid who ran away from home because his old man and old lady were always fighting and would punch him around sometimes.
“This kid’s been away from home for a couple months now,” Billy said. “He’s a little older than you, but he’s still on the streets and the cops haven’t touched him. Maybe you could do that too.”
“I don’t have much money, and I wouldn’t know where to go to hide out,” I said without much hope in my voice.
Billy and I were waiting for the boss to come and pay us for the day. He looked around to make sure no one was around and he said, “How about if you sneak in here just before they get ready to close up for the night? I’ve worked here plenty at night and I know the boss just counts up the money and leaves. He doesn’t clean the alleys or get stuff out of the stock room until he comes back in the morning. If any of the guys that work here at night see you sneaking in, they won’t say anything. They know to keep their mouths shut.”
“Yeah, but then I’m locked in here, right? Won’t he find me when he comes in the next day?”
“Nah. Just sneak in the back way and hide in that little empty space over in the corner.” Billy turned around and pointed to a corner behind us. “It’s real dark back there. The boss don’t show up until about nine in the morning and you could get out the bathroom window before that. The lock on that window’s been busted for a long time and you’re small enough to slip out that way, easy.”
We looked over and saw the boss coming toward us, so Billy quickly added, “You wouldn’t have to sleep outside and you could even sneak some food. There’s always stuff in that big icebox in his office and there’s crackers and pop too.”
