consciousness.
Bo said, “I’m going to take a piss.”
He left the bus and walked out of the trees to the riverbank. The Mississippi was like a strip torn from the night sky and laid against the earth. Bo could see the glow in the pilothouse of a towboat that was nearing Harriet Island. Maybe that was the sound Otter had heard, the deep thrum of the engine as the towboat had passed. Bo watched the light until it disappeared beyond a bend in the river, and he imagined what it would be like to escape on a barge bound for New Orleans. He relieved himself in the grass on the riverbank, zipped up, and returned to the bus.
Otter offered him a swig from a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Bo declined. “You going to spend the night?” he asked.
“Probably,” Otter replied. “You?”
“Naw. Think I’ll go back home.” He headed to the front of the bus. “Later,” he said.
“Later, Spider-Man,” Otter called after him.
It was going toward morning by the time Bo returned to the apartment in Frogtown. The walk had done him good. Probably the joint, too, and the mellow influence of Otter. When he stepped inside, the place was quiet. He could see that the door to his mother’s bedroom was slightly ajar. An open door usually meant that the man who’d come with her had done his thing and left. Bo went to the doorway and peeked in. He saw the bedding in a jumble and saw the stains, black in the darkened bedroom. He hit the light switch, and he saw the rest-a bloodied broken bottle, and his mother’s skin, once marred only by stretch marks, marred now, and forever in Bo’s memory, by the deep cut of glass.
All his life, Bo would wonder if other people had a moment that clearly divided their lives. There was everything before, and everything after, and between, only one unforgettable heartbeat. Standing at the door to his mother’s bedroom with his hand still on the light switch, Bo had his moment. It ended in a cry that brought the neighbors running.
They never found the man who murdered her. Bo hadn’t seen him nor had anyone else, and there was little for the police to go on. Bo wanted desperately to move back in time. He wanted to protect his mother, wanted never to have said the things he said, wanted never to have deserted her. He also wanted to find her murderer and to kill the bastard with his own hands.
He kept all this to himself, kept it in his heart, which had become a fist. He refused to talk about it to anyone, not his social worker, not the psychologist social services provided, not the foster parents he was sent to live with and from whom he eventually ran away, not even Otter who joined Bo after he, too, split from home. All the time that he and Otter, and later Egg and Pearl and Freak, lived together in the bus in the cottonwoods, Bo never once spoke about what his mother’s death meant to him. What would have been the point? They’d all been wounded. And Bo, like the others, believed that was just the way life was, harsh and unforgiving.
It was Annie Jorgenson who set him on the way to a different view of the world. He appeared before her in juvenile court after being arrested for petty theft. The cops had discovered the bus by the river and had taken Bo’s street family into custody. Bo was prepared for the worst. What he received was something far different, something he would be grateful for all his life. A second chance at growing up.
He was brought into her office and left alone with her. She wore reading glasses and slowly scanned the documents in front of her. She looked up at Bo with her intelligent blue eyes.
“Thief,” she said. “That’s what it says here. You’re a thief. Do you think that’s true?”
Bo shrugged. Let her do what she wanted, he didn’t care.
“I’m not asking if you stole things. We both know you did. I’m asking, do you think of yourself as a thief?”
The truth was that he didn’t. He saw himself as a provider, a protector. Stealing was the means to that end. He was about to offer her another shrug, then changed his mind. He shook his head.
“No,” she said, giving voice to his gesture. “As I understand it, you pretty much took care of-how many was it? four? — other runaways besides yourself.” She glanced down again at the documents in front of her. She nodded to herself, then she took off her glasses. “I see a lot of runaways, Bo. Most of them end up here because they’re being used in despicable ways by other people, usually adults. They’re prostitutes. They’re drug runners. They’re thieves in a den of thieves. In my view, you’ve done your best to keep four other kids out of the hands of the people who would use them that way, and out of my courtroom. I think that’s admirable.”
Bo tried to remember the last time an adult had praised him in such a way. What was this judge up to?
“These other kids, were they your friends?” she asked.
“Family,” Bo said.
“Family.” She nodded. “Family is important.” She folded her hands on her desk and leaned toward him. “Well, Bo, I have a couple of options. I can send you to the juvenile correctional facility at Red Wing. Your family there would be pushers, punks, bullies, some who go on to be murderers. Do you want that?”
No, he thought, but he gave no sign of it.
She locked him in her unwavering gaze. Her eyes were steady, not cold. Patient, not demanding. She seemed prepared to wait him out.
“No,” he finally said.
She sat back. “There’s a place I know that’s a good place. People I know who are good people. I’d like you to spend some time with them.”
“Why?” Bo asked.
“Because there are all kinds of families. I’d like you to experience a good one. If you give it a chance, you won’t be sorry, I promise.”
“Promises are easy,” Bo pointed out.
She nodded, granting him that. “I imagine you’ve been lied to a lot. I imagine people have been a pretty big disappointment to you. I’m a judge. That gives me some power. The promises I make, I’m able to keep. All you have to do is give me a chance, Bo, give these people a chance. We won’t fail you.”
It had been a long time since he had believed an adult, but the woman judge seemed sincere. More than that, she seemed strong in a good way. And what the hell. If things didn’t work out, he could always run.
“All right,” he said.
“A good decision, Bo,” she told him seriously. “I think you’re going to like them. Their name is Thorsen.”
Headlights dashing at him from behind yanked Bo from his memories. The vehicle rode his bumper awhile. Bo wondered why the damn thing didn’t pass him. Then it dropped back and followed at a safe, legal distance. Bo kept glancing at the headlights reflected in his rearview mirror, and he began to imagine them as a pair of glaring eyes watching him.
Thorsen, you need some coffee, he told himself.
He pulled into an all-night gas/convenience store on the outskirts of St. Peter, and the vehicle that had been behind him flew past on its way down Minnesota 169. He didn’t catch the make, but it certainly wasn’t the creature with eyes his tired brain had imagined. After he’d filled the gas tank, he got some coffee and asked the clerk for directions to the street where Luther Gallagher lived.
The address was near an industrial park. Gallagher’s house stood alone behind a wall of ragged lilac bushes. It was a two-story cadaver of a structure. Death by neglect, Bo thought. In the hard, brilliant moonlight, he could see peeling paint and window screens that carried long, open wounds. The yard was a mix of thin grass and hard bare dirt, reminding Bo of the coat of a distempered dog. He walked along a cracked and weedy sidewalk to the enclosed front porch. Five newspapers, still rolled in the cellophane bags in which they had been delivered, lay where they’d been tossed on the steps. Bo took out his penlight and checked the dates. Each was a Sunday edition of theSt. Paul Pioneer Press. There was a mail slot beside the door. Bo mounted the steps and shined his penlight through the dirty porch window. Unopened mail lay in a jumble under the slot on the other side. He was tempted to resort to a little B and E but restrained himself. He returned to his car and headed back to St. Paul.
It was 4A.M. when he parked in the garage of the duplex in Tangletown. He entered quietly, trying not to disturb his landlady, who lived below him. He stripped down, put on clean boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and made himself a cup of Sleepytime herbal tea. He had a lot of questions and no answers, but he needed sleep. He knew exactly what he wanted to do first thing in the morning, and he wanted to be clearheaded.
He sipped his tea and strolled to the living room window that overlooked the front yard and the street
