Considering everything the boy had been through, I suppose it was pretty impressive he was as happy-go-lucky as he was. His father sent off to prison when he was seven–dumb as boy a mine, I’ll take credit for that one. Never…quite knew how to be a good father, you know? The fuckin’ babe just pops out, and it’s not like you have a damn instruction manual. Yeah, his dad was a lout–drunk, unemployed. Got busted cooking meth with a buddy, ended up shooting a dang cop! He’s gonna rot away in there, and serves him right. Still, Mikey’s mom didn’t hang around for much longer–she needed her fix, after all. She ditched him on the steps of my trailer, just some kid I barely knew–it’s not like my son brought him around to see Gramps very often. Then she hopped on the back of a motorcycle, driven by some fat fuck with fewer teeth than her, somehow, and she hasn’t come back. I doubt she ever will. Wouldn’t matter anyway–court’s given me full custody, and I resolved to do better with this generation than the last.
Still, I owe a lot of it to Mikey–he’s a real good kid, you know? Not like his father ever was, at least, or maybe I just have a bit more patience now. Helps that I stopped drinking, and the church helps us out too, of course. Gives us a some structure. And now, here he is–seventeen and almost a man, not that you’d really know it, looking at him, or maybe I just see him that way since I raised him. He still looks fourteen to me, his bright eyes, chubby face. Barely has any stubble anywhere on his body, and he’d rather be down in the forest catching crawdads than chasing girls–which is a better occupation in my book. He doesn’t have the grades for college or anything, but he’s already got a job helping out in the kitchen at the roadside diner down the road from our trailer park–he’s got a real talent for cooking, not that you’d know it, looking at the beanpole. He’s put a few pounds on me though, with his food at the diner! Things were going great–until things suddenly weren’t going so great.
It was spring, I remember that–just finishing up his junior year. Now, Mikey had never been very good at making friends. He just…had a hard time trusting people, and opening up, I think. He was always a quiet kid, and I don’t think he’d ever invited anyone over to his house, and had rarely gone anywhere else to play. It was usually just him and the forest until he came home at dusk for dinner. Then, one day, he wasn’t on the school bus when it rolled by. I assumed he’d just missed it, which happened on occasion if he got hung up by a teacher. I was getting ready to drive to school and pick him up, wondering why he hadn’t called me to tell me. I went outside, in time to find some mud crusted pickup, spewing fumes, roll into the trailer park, stop, and a moment later, out came Mikey, laughing and smiling at the other boys in the truck, gave them a wave, and then walked over to me and came inside.
I asked him who they were, and he just said they were some kids from his class who’d offered to give him a ride. He smelled of smoke and…something else I couldn’t place. Something a bit musky? His quietness had changed as well–before he’d been happy to talk about anything once he got talking–but suddenly he was clamming up, dodging questions. He excused himself and went to his room–odd since he usually preferred the woods after school, and he didn’t come out until dinner, and when he came out this time–he still reeked of smoke and that musky smell again…and I realized what it was. He’d been masturbating.
Now, like I said, he hadn’t shown really…any interest in girls, or sex at all for that matter, as long as he’d been in my trailer. So this was odd, to say the least. Now, I’m religious, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a guy busting a nut now and then. Hell, I jack off plenty myself, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite, so I just let it slide. I figured he’d get over it, or if it became an issue, we could talk about it.
Well, it wasn’t the masturbating that became the issue, it was the smoking. From that day on, he stopped taking the bus–instead, he caught rides with those new friends of his. It took me days to pry their names out of him–Apparently the ringleaders (that is, the two who drove the truck the rest of them rode around in) were Dale and Rick Pearson–twin brothers in the same grade as Mikey. Everytime, he smelled like smoke, and he insisted he wasn’t having any of it, and I believed him–until I found the lighter and the pack of reds in his room! I threw them out, and we had a long talk–well, a long argument at least. He was pissed I’d gone through his room, and I can understand that, but I didn’t want him smoking. He didn’t see anything wrong with it–after all, Dale and Rick smoked all the time! It didn’t end well–I sent him to his room, which was where he wanted to be anyway, and…he stayed mad at me for a while. I knew he was still smoking, but I couldn’t prove it, and I blamed those two twins, for coming between us. I hoped that this was going to be the worst of it, but it turns out things were only going to go downhill from there.
Bracken's Corner 