Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (19 page)

“So then we moved down here to get the school board to take action to take back our schools from that lunatic. She’s run roughshod over everything for years, and they need to grow a pair or two and do something about it.” She turned and pointed at several men who were standing nearby. “And there they are, so why don’t we ask them what they intend to do?” She didn’t wait for an answer from the reporter but just turned and marched straight up to them.

“Gentlemen. Good morning. What are you going to do about the travesty conducted in the name of the school board, expelling a student who did an incredibly brave thing in standing up for a friend? He stood up against violent behavior. And this is the thanks he gets? Expelled? Okay. She told us it would take an action of the school board before he would be readmitted. You’re here, so act! Overrule that crazy action. And reinstate the principal as well.”

The men clearly were exceedingly uncomfortable being confronted like this in front of the news cameras. They were not accustomed to being in the middle of a controversy, and they were not accustomed to having any power or even voice in the school board deliberations. The president had ridden herd over them for so many years that they rarely, if ever, got a chance to speak.

But now they were the focus of attention, and they had to do something or look like the idiots they were. One man whispered something to another who whispered to another. Each in turn nodded. The first man simply said, “The expulsion is overturned. The student is readmitted. The principal is reinstated, effective immediately. Now, can we get these students into school so that they can learn something?”

My mom led the crowd in an unbelievably loud cheer. She hugged me. She hugged Bill. Bill hugged me. Everybody was hugging everybody else. She was bouncing up and down so much I was afraid she was going to hurt herself. I don’t ever recall seeing her quite so excited before in my life. It looked good!

The reporters all vied to get closest to her and get an exclusive. Our normally quiet end of the country, which never had any excitement, was going to be all over the news today.

After all that, after the stressful evening, after the night with bad sleep, after the early morning, after the protest, after being shot at and all of that, after all that my mom made us go to school. I couldn’t believe it. Bill and I wanted nothing more than to go home and go to bed (together). But when I thought about it, I supposed it wouldn’t look very good for all of us to have fought so hard to get Bill readmitted to school and then have him not go. So we went to school.

It wasn’t our most productive day, it wasn’t our most focused day, but we went to school. And I would not be lying to you if I told you that that afternoon when we got home, Bill and I lay down to fool around and both ended up simply falling asleep. We were both exhausted from the high-wire act we’d been performing recently.

I’m glad to say that nothing more happened that day or the remainder of that week. There were no insults. There were no whispered comments (that I could hear). There were no pushes or shoves or tripping in the hall. It seemed, for the moment, that life had returned to some semblance of normal. And, for all intents and purposes, I was now the only student at the school who was somewhat “out”, whether he wanted to be or not. And, in case you can’t guess, I’d have preferred to be “in” rather than “out.”

While no one said anything or did anything, I knew that someone someday would say something or do something stupid or rude or cruel or painful. My outing did not lead bunches of others to come out of the closet to live an out-loud-and-proud life. No. I was the only one. Everyone knew that no matter how quiet it was at the moment that being out did not come without cost. And while they might have supported me personally, they did not want to pay those costs themselves. They would stand with me, but would not go all the way to come out and stand beside me. So for now I walked that road alone.

M
OST
of the people who were removed from abusive situations were women and children. Bill was certainly not a child. Bill was a full-grown man. His presence in a safe house could well have been taken as threatening to some of the other residents. Also, I wanted him with me and he wanted to be with me.

My mom set up two meetings between Bill and his mother. Each time she drove Bill to a neutral location that wasn’t at the safe house, and someone else drove his mother there to meet him. The first time my mom and I stayed with them. We were concerned that we were preventing them from talking, because they sat and looked down, neither of them talking with anyone, especially not with each other.

The second time they got together we drove Bill and then we sat out in the car to give them some privacy. We were able to see them through the windows of the fast food restaurant where they were meeting this time. It appeared that our presence or absence was not a factor one way or another in their talking. The two sat as still and quiet as they had the first time.

A week later, just before they were due to meet again, my mom received a letter from Bill’s mom. She read it and then sighed and sort of looked deflated, like someone had just let the air out of a balloon. “Oh, no.” She pulled herself back together and then walked to Bill in the next room, handing the letter to him. She sat down at the table opposite him and watched while he read the letter.

He finished the letter, put it back in the envelope, and returned to what he had been working on before the interruption.

“If you want to talk…,” my mom started.

“No need to,” he said very matter-of-factly. “This is the way it’s been for more years than not.”

“Would one of the two of you like to fill me in on what’s happening?”

Bill remained silent, so my mom explained. “Bill’s mom left the safe house. We don’t know where she went. She wrote to say good-bye.”

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“Not really,” Bill said. “I didn’t know her these last ten or twelve years. She lived her life. He lived his life. And I lived my life. The only time they all intersected was bad. So she’s gone. So what? She’s been gone from my life for a long time.” And that was that. He said nothing further and considered the conversation closed.

W
E
STARTED
to learn a bit about Bill’s father and what drove him. How my mother learned all of this I have no idea, but she and her network were good. It turned out that one of the contributing factors that made Bill’s father so cruel to his wife and only son was that he was in desperate trouble. We never got all the details, but it appeared that the man had a serious gambling problem that had, over the years, gotten totally out of control. He had wiped out all of the family’s cash, all of their savings. He had mortgaged the farm, and then mortgaged it again. He had sold off farm equipment. He had done just about anything he could to raise cash, but he was never quite able to do enough to dig himself out the hole he had dug himself into.

So it came as no surprise when we learned that Bill’s family farm was going to have to be sold, auctioned off by the bank, to try to satisfy some of the many, many outstanding debts the man had accumulated over the years. There wasn’t any cash. There were only debts, debts, and more debts.

When news of this action reached us, my mom and dad were worried that Bill was going to take it hard. But his reaction was entirely neutral. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—he did. But he was already planning on leaving within the year to go to college, somewhere, somehow, and he had no plans of ever returning to the farm and all the hardship that it represented to him.

Still, there were some things that Bill wanted to try to rescue before the house and land were auctioned off in the weeks ahead. So that weekend Bill and I drove my mom’s big SUV to his old house to try to retrieve some things. The bank had locked the front door with a serious lock, but my dad knew the banker and was able to persuade him that Bill and his mom needed to get some personal possessions from the house. We were surprised when my dad handed us the key from the bank and asked if we wanted him to go along. We told him we’d go take a look on our own first, and if it turned out there were more things than we realized we’d call him. He was fine with that, so Bill and I drove to his old house. We planned to get a few things on this trip, but mostly it was a chance to do a little reconnaissance and make a plan. Bill needed to look in the attic, the basement, the barn, the garage, and things like that.

When we got to the place, Bill got quiet, which I should have expected. I couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through his mind to be back where he had grown up, witnessed such trauma, lived in such fear and confusion and frustration. There wasn’t much I could do but simply be there and be close, be an assuring presence.

Inside the house Bill grabbed a few things he knew he wanted. He looked around and said, “There really isn’t much that I want. And I don’t think my mom will want much. There just wasn’t much, and even less with any good memories.”

I gave him a hug because I wanted to distract him from such memories and, well, just because I could. There was no one else around to see, for once, so I could hug him to my heart’s content. And since no one was around… I kissed him. Not a quick peck on the cheek. No. I lifted his face, and my lips found his lips. He responded immediately. Our pants felt a little tighter as things rapidly expanded to take up more space.

Without a word, Bill led me upstairs to his old bedroom. The room wasn’t at all big. It was ultra simple and plain. There was a bed and a chair—nothing else. No desk. No computer. No TV. Nothing beyond a simple old bed and a chair of no significant worth or value or, by the looks of it, comfort.

Bill led me toward his bed, his lips never once leaving mine. He pushed me backward onto the bed, and I fell back as he wanted. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I loved the chance to simply cuddle and be close to the man I loved. He laid his head on my chest, and I simply held onto him. I was hoping that this bit of positive energy was helping to eradicate some of the many years of trauma he must have lived in this same room.

He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were so incredible. I loved looking at his eyes because I couldn’t just look
at
his eyes—I looked
into
his eyes. His eyes were the most amazing things. They were the windows to his soul. I’d heard that phrase a lot over the years, but never knew what it meant until I looked into Bill’s eyes. I could see his soul, I was convinced, or at least I had a glimpse of it. Through his eyes I could see the intensity of emotion, the intensity of feeling he was experiencing. His eyes were wide open and locked onto mine.

“I love you so much!” he said when my face was mere inches from his. I thought he was going to cry—I was too.

“I love you so much!” I repeated back to him, meaning every word.

“I have more happiness with you than I’ve ever known in my entire life,” Bill said suddenly.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. You make me very happy.”

“I was so afraid I was ruining your life.”

“Don’t start that again,” he warned, knowing where I was going. “I didn’t start living until I met you. All I was doing was playacting a part until I could get out of here and make a life of my own. I hadn’t ever been happy here.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. Because I’m happy now—with you—and that’s all that counts. Oh, and just to warn you,” he said with a smile, “I’m never going to leave you now that I’ve finally found you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Good. I’d have to chase you, and you run faster than I do.”

He laughed, which made me laugh, which made him laugh more. It would have continued, but he kissed me again, which was all I needed. We lay on his bed for a few minutes before getting up to get to work. We loaded a few things into the car—a couple of old photo albums that hadn’t been touched in years, a couple of ancient quilts that someone in his family had made before he was born, a book that he remembered his mother reading once many years ago. There really just weren’t that many things in the house. It was more spare and sparse and Spartan than any place I’d ever visited before.

Bill searched from top to bottom, end to end in the house. There was only one thing in the attic, and that was hidden back in a dark corner. Bill couldn’t recall ever seeing it before, and plainly no one else had seen it or opened it in a very long time because it was dusty beyond belief. It was an old-style steamer trunk. They probably got their name because that’s what people packed before they got on an old-style steamship and sailed away to a new world. It was locked very tightly, but something told Bill that he needed to get into it before he could decide if it was worth keeping or not. Together we wrestled the thing down from the attic and out to the car, loading it into the back end. It was heavy, but there was no way for us to get it open there. We’d take it back to my place and get into it later.

The basement was equally sparse, just some ancient looking home-canned goods. They were so old we didn’t dare to touch them, let alone put them in the car. They looked like they could kill us with food poisoning just by looking at them. We were just turning to leave when I spotted something with my flashlight. Hidden back behind the canned goods was a small suitcase, a very old suitcase. I pointed it out to Bill, and he reached around and pulled it off the shelf.