Late summer, 1964. Abruptly, life in the Cushman household started to change; the way the look and feel of the outside world will change after the sun clears its noontime hurdle and begins its decent into evening. The shadows grow longer, you’re aware that darkness is close at hand. I couldn’t help but feel some sort of heyday had been passed, and now we’d begun a losing battle, at first slow, then increasingly frantic, to keep things the way they’d used to be. It was a lot like putting makeup on an aging face: eventually the wrinkles will show through, the skin will sag, no matter what.
For reasons never shared with me, Larry and Charlotte suddenly had next to no money. Larry took a job moonlighting as a laundry delivery driver, mornings, after his nighttime police shift, so it wouldn’t interfere with his afternoon coaching. But it wasn’t enough. Soon he was forced to sell his red Jeep, then his coveted Falcon Sprint, which he’d owned for less than a year, to eliminate monthly car payments. Then he bought from a wholesaler a ’59 Ford Fairlane with a blown engine (but a decent body), and spent the next several weeks—and a big chunk of his and Charlotte’s savings—rebuilding the motor in the garage. Until he finished it, he drove an old ’53 Ford pickup truck, which he bought from his cousin in Lemon Grove for two hundred dollars. Ugly, scratched-up, canary yellow, and with a large crack in the windshield, it smoked like it was on fire (it needed a ring job, Larry said), but it ran well enough to at least get Larry to work or to his various coaching jobs and to say we still had two vehicles. He parked the thing on the street in front of the house when he got home mornings, and Charlotte, who liked things around her home to look a certain way, seemed to go into a slow burn whenever she opened the drapes and saw it. And still, there wasn’t enough money. Finally, in September, Charlotte put on a skirt and blouse and dabbed perfume behind her ears, and walked up to the shopping center a few blocks away and got a part-time job at the TG&Y dime store, next to the Food Basket. She would work half days during the week, while Butchie was attending Kindergarten, and all day Saturdays.
Larry was becoming more and more moody. And distant. He slept little. He seemed constantly on the go. He coached all year long. In the fall, he managed a Pop Warner football team over in the Lake Murray area. In the spring, during afternoons and on weekends, he coached Little League over in Point Loma or Pony League Baseball down in Mission Gorge. He even taught swimming Saturday mornings during the summer at the Mission Beach Plunge. Evenings, after slamming down a hurried dinner, he worked on his car alone in the garage, listening to his horrible country and western music on the transistor radio, until it was time to stop and take a shower and put on his uniform and head into work.
I knew something was wrong when Larry started touching me less. He rarely offered to let me drive anymore, which on the one hand was a relief, but on the other hand I took it as a signal that me he didn’t want me. I agonized over whether it meant he didn’t love me anymore. When I thought too much about the situation with Larry, I felt the same sort of ache inside me as when I thought of my current unrequited love interest, Cheryl Buksas. Charlotte noticed it. One day she asked me what was wrong, I hadn’t been acting quite right lately. Before I thought about what was coming out of my mouth, I found myself asking her, “Why doesn’t Larry touch me anymore?” She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I wondered if she really hadn’t any idea what I was talking about. “Larry’s got a lot on his mind lately,” she said simply. She suggested I go out to play with one of the neighbor kids, get some fresh air, maybe that would make me feel better.
A few months later, after ball practice, Larry brought home a dark-haired, wiry kid named Robert to have dinner with us. Robert was from Lake Murray, out in the east county. He was a pitcher on the Little League team Larry was coaching there. Larry seemed to like him quite a lot. Larry said he just wanted to bring Robert around to meet us; he was really a neat kid. He didn’t offer any more details. Larry introduced him to me and Butchie, and then to Charlotte. He was very polite. He squeezed my outstretched hand hard enough that it hurt and said to me, “How ya doin’?” He called Charlotte Mrs. Cushman, and waited to sit down until he’d been shown where to sit.
I watched Robert at the dining table. Larry and Charlotte were talking almost exclusively to him, asking him about school and his family in Lake Murray. They seemed to hang on his answers, the way I remembered them listening to me when I’d first come to live with them. I guessed they knew all there was to know about me, there really was nothing left to ask. I was inclined to not want to like Robert; there was something about his shifty gray eyes and the fact that he wiped his nose occasionally on his shirtsleeve. Maybe it was the fact that Larry kept looking at him with a smile in his eyes that had been noticeably lacking over the past few months—along with the idea that this kid, and not me, seemed to be the one who had put the smile back. Larry also made a point of mentioning that Robert was quite the scrapper, that he wasn’t afraid to take a swing at somebody if he thought they deserved it. In fact, Larry said, grinning at the memory, just this last batting practice, Robert had accidentally bounced a pitch off of another kid on the team, and the kid called Robert a name. Before anyone could stop him, Robert had practically flown the distance to the plate and damned near ripped the poor kid’s face off. Larry laughed and shook his head as he told the story. Robert looked both embarrassed and pleased by Larry’s obvious approval.
Later that night, after Larry had taken Robert home and came back, he told us Robert’s home life was a sorry mess. His mother was a perpetual drunk who beat him and his two brothers unmercifully with sticks or belts or baseball bats, whatever she could find. Robert’s father was apparently in prison for something Larry couldn’t remember, something like bank robbery or even murder. “I’m worried about him,” Larry said. “There’ve been some hoods hanging around at the ball field during practice, looking for trouble, and I’ve seen Robert talking to them as if he knows them. It doesn’t look good. He’s already been in trouble with the law. Petty theft. Vandalism. The kid needs a father.” Larry shook his head. He looked at Charlotte, who wore a concerned frown. She nodded. Something seemed to pass between them.
Gradually, however, and despite my earlier misgivings, I grew to know Robert, and to like him. He always had a strong opinion about things, whether he knew what he was talking about or not. He had lots of energy. Larry said he had spunk. Piss and vinegar. I noticed he fidgeted a lot. He was always banging on something with his hands. Someday, he said, if he couldn’t be a jet pilot, he wanted to be a drummer for a rock and roll band.
Robert came over to our house quite often over the next several months. I learned he was a lot like me. He told me he’d stolen things from stores, and from people’s houses. He said he’d never admitted as much to Larry, and made me promise not to tell him. He said he figured a policeman wouldn’t let him get away with it; he’d have to arrest him or something. I was flattered he would tell me these secret things.
Once in awhile, on a Friday or Saturday night, Robert would spend the night, and we’d make ourselves sick eating tacos and refried beans—Robert’s favorite meal. We’d play rummy or Casino or Yahtzee with Charlotte and Larry, until Larry had to go to work. After Larry was gone, Charlotte would fix Robert up a bed on the living room couch with a sleeping bag, and kiss him on the forehead goodnight. More often than not, though, he’d sneak into my bedroom later, when all the lights were out, and put his sleeping bag on my floor. We’d talk, sometimes until two or three in the morning. We talked about baseball. About girls (which didn’t particularly interest him, as yet). About his dad (who had robbed a 7-11 for a whopping sixty-three dollars; he’d been sentenced to twelve years because he’d got mad at how little money there was and hit the clerk with his gun). But he wouldn’t talk about his mom. Ever. As soon as I brought up the subject, Robert would change it and start talking about what he wanted to do when he grew up. I figured then I couldn’t tell him what I already knew about his mother, what Larry had told us. I figured Robert must have told Larry about his mother in confidence, and if he’d wanted me to know, he’d have said something. So, we talked about what he wanted to do when he grew up. Like me, he wanted to be a fighter pilot. And then an astronaut, so he could fly farther from earth than any other human ever had. Of course, he still wanted to be a drummer for a rock and roll band, maybe when he got back from the moon.
One day in late November 1965, I came home from school to find Mr. Kemp, my probation officer, sitting on the couch with Larry and Charlotte. His hair, I noticed, looked thinner and whiter than I remembered. I wasn’t particularly surprised to see him; Mr. Kemp came around every few weeks as a formality to check up on me, to make sure I was healthy, fed and clothed, and that Charlotte and Larry were doing what they were supposed to be doing as foster parents. Mr. Kemp once said they were getting a hundred and ten bucks a month to take care of me; the County just wanted to make sure it was getting its money’s worth.
Everyone looked serious. I wondered if there was something I’d done to make them so unhappy. Surprisingly, however, I wasn’t the subject of their conversation. Robert was.
“Robert’s gotten himself into a bit of trouble,” Mr. Kemp said to me. “He was arrested two days ago for burglarizing a store along with three other kids. He’s in Juvenile Hall. In fact, he’s on the ward next to where you were, Billy.”
“Robert’s mom called me this afternoon and told me about it,” Larry interjected.
“And Larry called me to talk about the situation,” continued Mr. Kemp, “which is why I am here.” He looked at Larry and Charlotte and said, “Shall I tell Billy?” Charlotte looked nervously at Larry. Larry shrugged and said, “Sure. Now’s as good a time as any, I guess.” Mr. Kemp smiled and said, “Your folks here have petitioned the County to let Robert come live with you as one of their foster sons.” Mr. Kemp looked at me and his smile grew broader. “Isn’t that great?”
A couple of weeks after Mr. Kemp’s bombshell, while we were still waiting for San Diego County to decide on Larry’s and Charlotte’s petition, my sort-of friend Ronnie Rinden from up the block invited himself over to play. I say, ‘sort-of’ friend, because I wasn’t entirely sure I liked Ronnie. His voice was unnaturally high, even for a seventh grader (he was slightly older than me, but I was a grade ahead), and he was pretty arrogant about his playing in the Little League Majors, and now, Pony League, at such a young age. Worst of all, I hadn’t forgot the time nearly a year earlier when he’d put a stick through my bicycle’s rear wheel, breaking half the spokes. I’d chased him on foot for nearly two blocks, fully intending to beat him up for it. But when I’d finally caught him and dragged him to the ground, all I could do was sit on his chest and glare at him. He’d laughed at me, knowing I could never hit him, and called me a pussy. I still don’t know why I didn’t just tell him to go to hell and leave me alone. I just couldn’t: he called me his friend. Anyway, he’d come over to look at the Mustang model slot car I’d got for last Christmas. After eleven months, it still needed a hand controller (I hadn’t been able to save enough money to buy one myself). He’d brought one of his own controllers with him, thinking it might fit my car and we could take it up to the indoor slot car race track in the shopping center next to the TG&Y and try it out.
Larry overheard us, and offered to drive us up to the racetrack in his pickup, so long as we didn’t mind going first to one of his assistant coach’s house to pick up a playbook for the football team he was managing.
Ronnie looked over at me and said, sure, anything for a ride.
Larry said to Ronnie, casually, “I’ll even let you drive, if you’d like.” He picked up his keys and wallet and walked out the door.
Ronnie looked over at me saucer-eyed. “Wait a minute. Did he just say he’d let me drive?”
I looked at Ronnie, then glanced at Larry through the living room window as he went to the garage and pulled open the door, then disappeared inside. “Yeah, well, I think there’s something you ought to know about Larry,” I said to Ronnie. “He’s gonna want you to sit in his lap, and he’s gonna want to—um—play with you.”
Ronnie looked at me blankly. “What do you mean?” he said.
“You know.” I grabbed my crotch and fiddled with it. “Play with you. With your dick.”
Ronnie’s eyes stretched open even further, as did his mouth. I thought for sure he was going to bust out laughing. He looked out the window, where Larry was coming back out of the garage holding a duffel bag full of footballs, and a clipboard. He closed the door and, gesturing to us through the window, headed down the driveway to the ratty-looking pickup. Ronnie chuckled, then, and shook his head. “You are so full of bullshit!” he said. Then he grinned at me. “Hey, this wouldn’t have anything to do with me breaking all your spokes last year, would it? I said I was sorry.”
“No,” I said, “I’m serious. He’s gonna try to whip you off.”
Ronnie gave me a get the fuck out of here look. I knew he didn’t believe me. “C’mon,” he said, “your dad’s waiting!” He walked out the door and headed toward the truck. Larry was already inside with the motor running and the passenger door opened wide.
I grabbed my slot car and followed Ronnie out, pulling the front door shut behind me. By the time I got to the truck, Ronnie was on the bench seat, in the middle, next to Larry. I got in and slammed the door shut. And waited. Ronnie looked at Larry and said, “So, you’re saying you’ll let me drive? How do we do this?”
Larry sort of slid his right leg out a bit. “You’ll have to sit in my lap,” he said. “I’ll work the gas and the brake pedals; all you have to do is steer.”
Ronnie glanced back at me for a second, grinning as if to say, watch this, then slid over Larry’s leg and settled on his lap in front of the steering wheel.
“Okay,” said Larry, “put your hands up here, and here.” He put Ronnie’s hands on the wheel. “I’ll do this”—he pulled down on the gear shift and the truck moved away from the curb—“and off we go!” He added a little gas, and a moment later we’d rounded the corner onto Zion Street. Ronnie’s grin was stretched so wide across his face I thought for sure it had to hurt. We drove the three blocks down to Waring Road, which was a faster road, and headed north. Ronnie had his hands glued to the ten and two o’clock positions, concentrating with all his might. I could almost hear him thinking to himself, I’m driving! I’m driving! Wait until Mom and Dad hear about this!
We passed through Del Cerro and started down the hill toward Highway 80. Larry’s far hand had been resting idly against Ronnie’s thigh. Now it began lazily traveling up and back on his leg. It turned inside toward Ronnie’s groin. With one smooth, quick motion, the fingers unbuttoned Ronnie’s loose jeans, then pulled the zipper down and burrowed into the white underwear.
Ronnie’s mouth and eyes flew open, as if Larry had just stuck a cattle prod up his rectum. But outside of a slight, high-pitched whine, he kept quiet. He jerked his head down, and in the light of day I was sure he could see everything Larry was doing. He shot a glance at me, then back to his groin, then to me again. I looked at him as if to say, see, you stupid idiot, I told you. Larry looked straight ahead the whole time, as if he somehow thought he was alone in the truck, was unaware of the astonished Ronnie sitting there between his legs, of Ronnie’s head bobbling up and down and back and forth, of the silent, frantic dialogue that passed between us.
Two days later I was gone, though I had no idea why. It was this quick: something had happened. Something terrible, though no one would tell me what. Where was Larry? It was early morning. A white car was parked outside the front window, in the driveway, a San Diego County seal on the door. Two people I didn’t know, dressed in dark suits, waited for me in the living room. I heard papers being shuffled. A few minutes earlier, when they’d first come to the door and rang the bell, Charlotte had clomped from her room to open it, still in her white terry robe. I heard strange voices, then Charlotte saying, Come in, I’ll get him. She walked into my room and turned on the light. She was holding a cardboard box. “I’m sorry, Billy,” she said when she saw I was already awake. “There are some people here, some county people, and they’re saying you have to go with them. I’m sorry.”
“Go?” I said. “Go where?”
“Back to your mother.”
“My mother? Why?”
“You need to get up and get dressed,” she said. She took the box and started filling it with clothes from my closet. Something in my chest drew tight, and tears welled up in my eyes. I got dressed, and watched as Charlotte threw shirts and socks and underwear from my dresser into the box. Then she was hurrying me into my jacket and handing me my pet hamster cage, my hamsters George and Gwendolyn—who was due to have babies soon—standing on their hind legs and sniffing the air. Charlotte held my head for a second and kissed it. Then she led me into the living room, and the two men waiting for me stood up. “This is all I can do for now,” she said apologetically. “I’ll get the rest to him later after I’ve sorted everything out.”
“Where is Larry?” I cried again. She didn’t seem to hear. I walked out with the two men, and she stood at the door for a second until I was in the back seat of the car, George and Gwendolyn in their cage next to me on the seat, looking up at me from their cedar bedding. Charlotte looked down on the front porch with her hand over her eyes, like she had dropped something and couldn’t see it for the brightness of the sun. Then she turned and stepped back into the living room and pulled the door shut. I watched through the window as she walked quickly across the room without another look and disappeared into the shadows of the house.
The man driving started the car and backed it out of the driveway. I watched Arlene Stanfield’s house, Cheryl’s house, Ronnie Rinden’s house, all disappear behind me. In minutes we were on the highway.