Published: 17 Feb 2022
Drew
By the beginning of August, Aaron and I had begun our meetings at the elementary school for the upcoming new semester. We were also setting up our classrooms for the new semester, actually Aaron’s first semester at our school. There were the usual recaps of the previous school year, updates to school policies, and updates to the school’s internet system. The setups of our rooms were the most fun; we had the boys help us with that. Tom joked that they ought to get extra credit for doing that, and we both just laughed at them.
We had received notice that all the old landlord’s obligations had been met, and he only had to successfully get through the next ten years in a state prison before his release. Unfortunately for him, his lawyer never told him how to get along with others in his cell block, and he was brutally murdered after going on a rant in the prison shower room about all the queers in there. No one was ever charged for this.
All four of us went over to the property, and Tony and Bert let us go through the whole house, from one end to the other. Tom told them that they kept the place up better than he had, and the three of them chuckled about that. Aaron and I wondered if Tom was going to reveal another hiding place, and we didn’t have to wait long for that to happen. Right in the entry, there was a closet, and the back wall of that closet had a magnetic latch on the rear panel, and there was a small space behind that panel, where Tom told us he could hide from his parents if they were particularly abusive. In there was a pillow and an old mason jar, empty, that he said he used to pee in if he was in there too long, and an old flashlight.
To lighten up the mood a little, I asked him what he thought about opening up the living end of the ranch, and just leaving walls and doors around the two bedrooms and the bathroom, and maybe the closet and the back wall of the kitchen where the upper cabinets were hung. He said that all sounded nice, but would it be worth the money spent on doing that? When I explained that an increase in the sale price of at least 20 or 25% would be expected, he did some quick calculations and said that we should go ahead and do it.
Aaron had gotten word that Billy’s old home had had a small bidding war on it and the current best offer on the property was for $249,000.00; he told Billy. He remarked that the figure was almost $50,000.00 more than what they had expected, so they agreed to accept that offer, the closing would occur at the end of August. By the 20th of August, Ollie had packed up and moved to Florida, and Brent and Tony had moved out of Tom’s house and into the barn apartment.
On the 22nd of August, the boys and Aaron and I were back in school, and by the end of August, the college boys were also back at school. We had handled changing the boys’ names at the elementary school while the boys were helping Aaron and me setting up our classrooms, so they had a pretty easy transition into Mrs. Wilkins’ fifth-grade class. Yes, her classes were set up just about the same as Aaron’s were, but there were times when the boys needed to ask Aaron a few questions. Still, I got the feeling that they were just asking to make Aaron feel he was, in some small way, being involved with their learning, just like when they asked me how to spell a specific word, or to help them with a question about a math problem they said they were having a problem with.
All in all, it was shaping up to be a good Fall semester for everyone. The college students had arranged their class schedules so that most of their classes started well after their morning chores were completed. They were home in time for the evening feedings, but the boys knew how to do those, so if they were going to be late, one of them would call Tom, and he was always glad to help out, with his brother Billy at his side.
I spoke with Mrs. Wilkins in the staff lounge a few times about our boys, and she laughed and told me not to worry, just as she had told Aaron, our boys were at the top of her class; she just wished she had a room full of students like them. Aaron and I were having lunch one day when one of our principals at the school sat down with us. He was eating his own brown bag lunch and talking to us about general things, but he mentioned that we had some admirers in the school. He went on to explain that he had broken up a squabble between two boys in the second grade out in the playground during their recess period. The bigger eight-year-old was taunting the smaller one, teasing him about being grubby and wearing last year’s clothes.
The smaller boy was telling the bully that his aunt couldn’t afford to buy him new clothes and feed him right, like those older boys Tom and Billy that those two nice teachers had taken in and adopted. He had yelled at the bully that if his parents had still been alive, he too would have new clothing and have time to get cleaned up every morning, and maybe he’d even be able to eat right, too. Mr. Lewis, the Vice-Principal, told us that the anger had left the smaller eight-year-old and he was sobbing by the time he had reached them, and he told the bully that he had detention and he took the smaller boy to his office and calmed him down enough he could tell Mr. Lewis his story.
It seemed that when the boy’s parents had died (the boy did not know what they died of, no one ever told him how) his aunt had moved in with him. She was a lot different than his parents had been, she never held him, she never kissed him, she didn’t make meals, she bought them in a bag, and she was never awake in the mornings. A lot of the time she wasn’t home when he got home from school, and sometimes she wasn’t home when he went to bed.
Mr. Lewis explained that after that talk with little Ben he had made some inquiries and he found out that the parents had died of drug poisoning. The Medical Examiner had determined that they were not addicts or anything, but somehow, they had ingested orally some kind of homemade pills and both had died from the high amounts of methamphetamine in the pills. He had told Mr. Lewis that there had been a spate of overdose deaths in the neighboring town’s college communities (there were three large colleges in that town) around the same time, but neither of the couple had anything to do with the college community up there, the father had worked for our town’s post office, and the mother was a stay-at-home mom, attending to little Ben.
Mr. Lewis looked at me and asked if I would please call Tom’s former caseworker and report all this, as he stated that I had more experience with the DCFS than he did. He then looked at both of us and asked,” Don’t you two have a couple of extra bedrooms in that house you have?” He left us then, with a big smile on his face, and Aaron and I started to talk about poor little Ben and the situation he was in. We agreed that his situation should be reported, but wasn’t the first step to report it to the police? Well, teachers are mandatory reporters for situations involving child abuse so I told Aaron that I would call Miss Lyons and find out the correct procedure, and Aaron told me that when we got home, we would have to have a talk with our boys, then we could find out when we could take in Ben. I guessed that answered what was going to be my next question!!
We did get to talk to the boys sooner than we had thought. We talked to them in my classroom before we all went home because Miss Lyons had asked if we were ready for a short-term placement, usually not more than 30 days, as she was sure just from what Mr. Lewis had told us that Ben would be at least temporarily removed from his aunt’s care by the end of the day. Aaron and I agreed to take Ben in under those terms. Officers, accompanied by an investigator from DCFS and Miss Lyons, went to the house Ben lived in shortly after school was out and were there when Ben arrived home.
The aunt was not home. But Ben welcomed all his visitors, although he was a bit nervous about all these strangers at his house. Miss Lyons took him aside and talked to him about what was going on, they all wanted to talk to his aunt, did he know where she was? He said he wasn’t sure, but he named a bar about a mile down the road and the two police officers went to see if she was there, after looking at a picture in the living room and Ben pointed her out in it. Ben told Miss Lyons that it was the only picture he had that showed his parents and him, all with his aunt, his mother’s sister, their only family as far as he knew.
Miss Lyons then explained that Mr. Porter and Mr. Clark from school wanted Ben to come to stay with them for a while, and Tom and Billy wanted him to come to stay with them on their farm, too. She asked him to show her his room so they could pack some things up for him to take with him, and by the time they had packed up his few meager bits of clothing and a few schoolbooks, the officers were back from the bar with the aunt, who was handcuffed in the back of their cruiser and more than a bit drunk.
The investigator for DCFS had searched the aunt’s room and had a good idea exactly what had happened to Ben’s parents, but he still had some things to investigate, so for now, the officers were going to charge the woman with public drunkenness and hold her overnight until she was sober enough to face the additional charges of child neglect and child abandonment in the morning in court.
Miss Lyons drove Ben over to our place and we were all waiting for him after the gate alarm sounded and I pushed the button on the remote to let her drive in. We were all outside by the driveway when they pulled up in front of the porch. She introduced Ben to each of us and Ben seemed a bit shy around us, but Tom and Billy soon had him all settled in his room and out to the barn to meet the animals there, and as expected, it was the ponies and the dogs he was most taken with. Aaron and I followed along as the slightly older boys showed Ben around and the three of them seemed to be getting along really well.
Ben admitted he had never been in a pool before, but he said his father used to take him and his mom to Forge Pond and he had learned a little about swimming there from his dad. Aaron had him in the shallow end and Ben really did a good job of swimming from side to side, but Ben agreed to use the smaller life jacket for the time being, after all, it was now September and there were just not that many outdoor swimming days left in the year. We did our tuck in routine with all the boys that night and Ben seemed to like that a lot. It was going to be hard to let him leave if the DCFS found a relative who could take him in.
That same night before we went to bed, Aaron and I went on-line to search out what type of pool enclosure we might be able to get in our area, so we could use the pool and it’s patio surround year round. We decided on one that looked like a huge greenhouse, but this one had shatter proof double paned windows in it and we could get a solar powered heater for it that would enable us to use it even if the outside temperature was in the 20’s. We also spent a lot of time talking about Ben.
The next day was a Friday. Ben had a shower in the morning before school, and clean clothes to wear. He looked so cute I almost wanted to keep him in my class for the day! Aaron must have felt the same because he wanted to know what time Ben’s class went out to recess, and both of us showed up to watch him play outside with his class, and the other two 3rd grade classes, and our 4th-grade and 5th-grade classes joined them. Our own students were not used to going out an hour earlier than they usually did, but we told them that it was a new Friday treat for them. Mr. Lewis had given his approval for this. He even joined us for a few minutes, and he pointed out the bully to us, who was getting an ear full, from a happy Ben as we stood across the playground watching them. It turned out that both Billy and Tom had told Ben a few things to say to the bully for them.
When Ben saw us outside on the playground he came over to us and we both got a kid hug from him before he went back to playing with his classmates. Of course, some of our own students saw that and we had a bunch of questions to answer when we all went back in for the remainder of our classes, but all in all our students thought it was cool we had taken Ben in, even if only temporarily. Of course, all three boys went out to eat at Antonio’s with us that night. Ben was going to just order a slice of pizza, but the other two showed him some of the other menu items and helped him pick out…what else, Veal Parm. He loved it just as much as the rest of us did.
On Saturday afternoon as we were all grooming our horses or ponies, Ben got a little quiet during all the bantering back and forth going on, and when I asked if he was OK, he said he was, that he was just sad that he was going to miss us all when he had to go home again. He had really taken to pony riding, and now with four more experienced riders helping him, and two college guys teaching him how to ride and take care of the pony he had used, he acted like he was in heaven.
That afternoon, as Aaron and I were preparing dinner, the boys were watching something on TV about wildlife in Africa when the house phone rang, it was Miss Lyons. Once we had told her how well Ben was doing with us, she told us to make sure we saw the local evening news tonight, but don’t let Ben watch it if we could. I told her the boys were watching PBS, but Aaron and I could watch the news together in our room. She told us to enjoy the rest of our weekend, and we wished her a good evening, too.
We waited about 20 minutes, putting the finishing touches on our dinner, and then went up to watch the news. The lead local story was about a woman who had not inherited as much as her sister had when their parents had died, and she took out her anger at her sister and her husband by poisoning them. She was being held in a local jail and was to be brought up in court on Monday to face murder charges as well as the charges already filed with the court for child neglect and child abuse as well as the public drunkenness charge from earlier in the week. Except for a 9-year-old nephew the woman had no other relatives, living or dead. So, we might just have a chance to keep Ben with us after the temporary guardianship period of thirty days were up!
Aaron was so excited about it that we called Miss Lyons back and asked her what she thought, and she told us that since our recent adoptions had gone so well, basically, that she didn’t see any reason why, with some updated visits to our home and a few talks with Ben and our boys, we should have no problem adopting him into our family. She told us that maybe it was time to get our lawyer involved.
We did just that on Monday, right after school, Becca was pleased to hear from us again so soon.
We faxed Becca the 30-day temporary guardianship the DCFS had given us and she told us she would start to prepare for our permanent guardianship and adoption, and if we were lucky, maybe both could be handled at the same time, hopefully before Thanksgiving.
Tom
Drew and Aaron sat us down in Drew’s classroom and explained to Billy and me about Ben, and the way he was living with his aunt as his “caretaker” and how she wasn’t doing a good job of it, and how they thought that with some help from us, we all could provide a safer home environment for Ben. Billy was all for going to get him right away, but the dads explained that there were some legal issues to be dealt with and that Ben would be brought to our house by Miss Lyons later in the afternoon. Our chore, once we got home, was to take one of the two unused bedrooms and get it ready for Ben.
Neither Billy nor I had ever had any siblings, so this was going to be something new for both of us. We had it easy, becoming brothers. We had been best friends since we first met in first grade, but now we would be having a younger boy coming to live with us and the dads, but it felt so right to be able to do this for someone who had had a rough time of it since his parents had died. We’d help him, just like our dads helped us.
We chose the bedroom next to Billy’s for Ben’s bedroom. It had its own shower bathroom, and it was about the same size as our bedrooms were. There was a big double bed in there just like Billy and I had, and Dad told us that they would get another desk to put in here for Ben to use. Billy and I made up the bed with fresh sheets and pillowcases, and we used blankets from the linen closet out in the hall. We took some shower gel from there and placed it and a new toothbrush, along with a tube of toothpaste in Ben’s bathroom. We dusted and vacuumed in there and by then Drew got a call on his cell and we were all down in front of the porch when Miss Lyons pulled up in front.
Billy nudged me and whispered to me to look at Ben’s face. We had seen him around school, but we didn’t really know him at all, just that he was a cute kid who seemed to be going through a rough patch. The look on Ben’s face as they pulled up in front of us all had a look of wonderment on it. His eyes were just about bugging out and he kept turning his head to look at the pasture with the horses and ponies in it and then back and up to this big house and then staring at the four of us standing by the driveway, his look was one of total and sheer joy at seeing us.
We all introduced ourselves and shook his hand when he exited the car after Miss Lyons turned the car off. But Aaron did something extra, he reached down and picked up Ben, hugging him, and Ben returned the hug. Dad Aaron then handed Ben to Dad Drew and the hug continued. Miss Lyons was getting some bags from the trunk of the car, so Billy and I went to help her and we exchanged greetings with her as we did, then we led everyone into the house to show Ben his bedroom. I guess we did a good job because Ben looked like he really liked his room, but maybe it was that Billy and I had placed some of our old toys and books in there for him.
We got him settled in while the adults did stuff down in the family room, then we showed him around upstairs where he got to see our bedrooms and the dads’ bedroom and the home office. We then took him downstairs and gave him the tour of the place so he would know roughly where everything was. After Miss Lyons left, Billy and I took Ben to the barn. You’d of thought it was like Christmas morning when we went in the barn and Ben was introduced to all the horses, and then the ponies, which he really, really liked, and of course the dogs had to get a few sniffs in, and Ben loved it when they licked him when he scratched their ears. By now, later in the afternoon and about 2 hours ‘til dinner, we were discussing all the tack needed to ride the ponies, when Tony and Bert returned from the college and we introduced Ben to them and they even started Ben on a lesson without him even knowing what was going on, but in the end, a pony was saddled in front of him, and Billy and I were mounted on ours. Tony said that maybe they should come and ride with us and Bert brought over two saddled horses and off we were, riding around the pasture next to the barn at first, but Ben was doing so well, and trying so hard, that Bert offered to ride next to him on a trail, but Billy and I told Bert that we were riding ponies the same size as Ben’s, so we would ride on each side of our new brother.
Bert said that sounded good, so we all took off for a ride on the shorter trail and then helped each other out when it ended, and we were grooming the ponies before their evening feeding. Once they were back in their stalls, we all pitched in to help with their feeding, and then we were off to the house to see what we were having for dinner. The dads told us to settle in the family room for about an hour or maybe a bit longer as they were going to have to do some “homework” before dinner, but it would be in the oven and almost ready when they were through. Billy and I looked at each other and smirked, but we didn’t say anything. Ben was a bit too young to know what we did about our dads, plus he wasn’t living here permanently, yet. We wanted him to, he was a neat kid, and even if he was two years younger, he was going to be fun to hang out with here at home, and Billy and I had talked, and we would make sure that no one messed with him at school.
The next day was Friday and we all rode with the Dads to school. Ben had been woken up early enough to get in his shower before he got dressed in his now cleaned clothes. We all had pitched in last night after dinner to do his wash and now he looked like the neat kid we remembered from the school hallways. He was going to need some new clothes though as we all noticed that what he had was just not exactly the right size on him, but he looked good in whatever he had tried on and he was so proud to go to the office with the Dads to get his address changed and his contact information changed to the Dads’. Billy and I told our group of friends what had happened yesterday, and that Ben was now living with us, and they all said they too would watch out for him around school.
The usual Friday night out was continued that night. We told Ben that it was our way of starting our weekend, and the Dads didn’t have to cook that night. Ben said he hadn’t been out to eat since his mom and dad had died, his aunt couldn’t cook, so she usually bought ready-to-eat stuff at stores and at the drive-through places. He seemed to find the menu confusing, so we pointed out a few of the things we had tried, but when the rest of us ordered the Veal Parm dinner, he did too. I told him he wouldn’t be sorry, and he did like it a lot. We all left the restaurant stuffed and happy.
Ben sat between the dads when we all gathered in the family room to watch TV, but about a half hour later he was down on the floor between Billy and me watching with us. After that show was over, we three decided to play a board game that Billy had and we set it up on the kitchen table where we could still see the TV if something interesting was on. By bedtime, each of the three of us had one at least one round of the game and we called it a night when Drew mentioned the time. While going to our rooms Ben asked if Drew and Aaron tucked us in every night and we told him yes, and that it was one of our favorite parts of our day. He just got this big smile on his face and he said it would be for him, too.
Drew
By the end of Ben’s first full week with us, we had all settled into a slightly different routine, but it was mostly that we had to remember we were cooking for 5, we were doing washing for 5, there were three boys to drive to school, three boys to drive home, and 3 boys who would be riding with us, or with Tony and Bert. Our life got a bit more “invaded” those first two weeks. First were the visits from investigators and social workers from the DCFS, the first of several over the next couple of months. They sometimes arrived unannounced, and sometimes they called first. It was basically the same routine, someone would talk privately with Aaron and me, someone would be talking with the boys, and then someone would question Ben about how he was being treated. Oh, and each visit someone would check that the boys actually were using their bedrooms.
But also, in those first two weeks, we sometimes got visits from the two policemen who were investigating Ben’s aunt, as her case was coming before the criminal court near the end of the month and any little bits that Ben might have heard, or seen, or observed of his aunt’s activities could lead them to the proof they needed in court. We adults were told that what they had now was air-tight and would result in some very heavy jail sentences for her the most important of those was the planned murder of Ben’s parents, with the regular pain killer pills she had soaked in poison. One of the officers from the DA’s office said to us that her fingerprints were on the painkillers’ bottle and that the liquid poison was found in her room, stashed on the top shelf of her closet, along with a printout from a website that gave instructions in how to infuse regular pain pills with poison.
When she was found guilty, Becca had filed papers for the parents’ estate to be passed on to Ben, with Aaron and me as the Trust Officers until he was of legal age to be able to handle the funds himself. The sale of the house would be added to those funds left to the aunt to care for Ben. Yes, after 30 days with us, we had been granted permanent custody of Ben, an adoption could happen after the initial 90 days had passed.
Ben’s teacher had asked us once, in the teacher’s lounge, what kind of tutoring we were doing at our home, and we laughed at her question, because most of the time it was Billy and Tom who went over Ben’s lessons and homework with him. We were only called in when it was a question that the two older boys couldn’t answer. She reported to us that Ben’s grades had improved significantly since he had come to live with us. She told us that he was paying much more attention in class, and he participated a lot more. She said he was like a new kid in class, and she had even seen him helping out the former bully of the class while they were doing some math problems just the other day. She said it was interesting to watch and hear, because Ben wasn’t just giving the answers to the bully, he was showing him how to find the correct answer by himself, and after class, she saw the former bully thanking Ben for his help.
So, by the end of September, we were a pretty co-cohesive group, living together, eating together, the boys all working on their homework together, and now that the enclosure over the pool had been completed, we were all playing together in the pool as well as riding trails just about every day. Aaron was snuggled into me as we calmed down from one of our most erotic sessions that next to the last week of September and I asked him if he was happy now, and he told me between kissing me that he had been attracted to me that first night we met at Angelo’s Restaurant, but now that we were married, and had the 3 boys living with us, he was just about the happiest man on earth, next to me that is!!
Tom
Billy and I had been calling Drew Dad and Aaron Daddy for months now and of course, we did sometimes slip and call them by their names, but Ben was younger, and he just started copying us the second week he had been with us. We were home from school one day and we were getting changed into riding clothes when Drew called upstairs to tell Ben he had some clean clothes to put away and he called down to him, telling him, ”OK Dad, I’ll be right there to get them.” Drew replied,” OK Son, the clothes are here on the kitchen table for you.” It just sounded so right, and Billy and I were happy for our dads, just as we were for Ben, that he was fitting in so well.
It was near the end of the month and we boys were just about done with our homework, not that we had that much that night, when our dads sat down with us and after determining that we were all done, told us we had to have a family meeting. Ben started to get up and Aaron asked where he was going, and Ben told him that since we were going to have a family meeting, he thought he’d just go to his room to wait until we were done. Drew looked in his eyes and told him that HE was a part of this family, plus this meeting was about him and he’d be honored to have him stay with us, for the meeting, and forever after. Yep, Drew and Aaron got hugs before the meeting even started, and then Billy and I got ours before Ben sat down again.
Drew explained that while we were in school that day, Ben’s aunt had her day in court. The end result was that she admitted she had poisoned her sister and brother-in-law to get the money they had inherited and how she had expected to get their property and she would make Ben have a fatal accident sometime down the road and get any money left to him as well. She was given a life sentence. And Ben was now available to be adopted and Drew wanted to know how many of us wanted Ben as an adopted member of our family.
Of course, all of us raised our hands, except Ben, he raised both hands!! Drew laughed which started the rest of us off and he said the Yess’s had it and then told Ben that one raised was good for a yes vote. He was grinning from ear to ear, as were we all were.
That family meeting did even more to boost not only Ben’s confidence, but both Billy and I were puffed up to think that what we thought would have an effect on our whole family dynamic, (Drew explained all that to me later that night). The dads told us a few days later that Becca had contacted them with a court date for Ben’s adoption. It would take place on the Friday afternoon the day before Halloween, at the end of October, almost a month away.
Those next weeks we kept reassuring Ben that everything would work out just fine, at the end of the month he would be our legal brother. Everyone tried to keep him occupied, so he didn’t get himself all worked up over it all, and we even saw Drew and Aaron cuddling him on his bed when he woke up all nervous and sometimes even crying during the night, and I admit that I even took him into my bed sometimes and I know Billy did too. The night before the adoption hearing we had another “family meeting” and we all reassured Ben that it would be a piece of cake the next day at the courthouse. The poor kid was so worn out with worry that he fell asleep while we were all snuggled up on that big couch in the family room watching a movie later in the evening, so Billy and I told the dads we would sleep down here with him on the couch, just wake us up in time to shower and have breakfast before we went to the courthouse. They chuckled but they went upstairs and returned with pillows and blankets for the three of us, then they did their tuck-in routine and left us to sleep.
Of course, the hearing the next day went just fine and we had a younger brother in our family by the time we left with all his updated paperwork, and his name changed to Benjamin Porter Clark. That was one seriously happy kid we left the courthouse with, but he did fall asleep in his car seat on the way home.
He was still a happy kid when he woke up, but we noticed as we went for a trail ride later that sometimes he would pinch himself, just to make sure he was really awake and not dreaming. While we were taking care of the ponies after our ride, the dads were grooming their horses when cars started to drive into the lane. Tony was standing at the gate and letting them in, Bert was manning the barbecue pit, and the Dads were chuckling as the three of us kids seemed to speed up so we could see what was going on out there. We soon found out when about six of Ben’s classmates rushed into the barn to see him taking care of his pony. They each congratulated him on his adoption, and he thanked them all and that is how we found out about the adoption party the Dads were throwing for him.
It was a really good party, and they even had a “pin the tail on the donkey” set up which all the kids loved. The next day Ben still had that happy look about him and we soon found out that that would be his future natural look, unless something was really bothering him. That didn’t happen often though, he really was a great kid with a happy demeanor which made our home a happy place to be.
The new school year started the last week of August. Our dads seemed happy with their classes and Billy, and I got along great with Mrs. Wilkins. Ben told us that his teacher was great and that he was learning a lot, and although there wasn’t a lot of homework given to his class, there was reading he was expected to do, and sometimes some math problems he had to solve, easy for us new 5th graders to help him to figure out, plus the dads were often nearby to lend us all a hand if we needed it. His reading and comprehension skills were improving, his teacher reported to the dads and that made them happy.
By the 5 daylong Thanksgiving vacation, we were all getting ready for our big meal holiday. Billy and I were shown how to peel potatoes and carrots and Ben and Aaron were baking something different every day, starting with the Monday afternoon before the Thursday holiday. One day was pies, another day was biscuits, then there were a few pans of brownies and a few dozen cookies that had to be created. Drew was kept busy helping us with the vegetables, but he was in charge of the stuffing, a French meat dressing he had heard about and wanted to try.
We were ready for our guests who started to arrive about noon. First to arrive were Bert and Tony, who were spending Thanksgiving with us, they would travel home to spend Christmas day with their families. The next to arrive were the Judge, her son, Brian, and grandson, Ted, and the son’s wife, Becca, our lawyer, and Brian had been Aaron’s lawyer. Ted was a cool guy and Billy and I got along great with him, and now we had added Ben to the group, and we had enough for a trail ride, if we could get an adult to go riding with us. Drew told us when we asked that we would be eating in an hour so the answer was no, for now, but after we all ate, he bet us that more folks would want to go for a ride to settle their stomachs, so we waited. We ate and waited some more, but finally, the adults got up and we all went to the barn and saddled up the horses for the adults and four ponies for us guys and we were off on the longest trail we had.
School started again the following Monday, and although it wasn’t a long vacation, we all had some catching up to do with our friends out on the playground. Our class passed Ben’s class in the downstairs hallway, and we saw him walking back to class with another small boy as we fourth, fifth and sixth graders went out to the playground. Ben had had his arm over the other boy’s shoulders and the other boy appeared to be kind of upset to us. Billy told me we’d find out after school what that was all about, and we did. While we waited for the Dads to finish up their day, Ben told me and Billy what was going on with his buddy, Joe.
Drew
I was just finishing grading the pop quiz from my class that I had sprung on them during our English lesson that afternoon when the boys came up to wait for Aaron and me to finish what we were doing before we all went home. They knew that if they gave us about an hour after classes, then we would all have time to do something together after school. Aaron was doing some grading of his own, but he needed a bit more concentration than me, as he was grading a batch of essays his students had written.
As I said, I was just recording the grades I had assigned to my students when the three boys sat to wait for me, and as they each pulled out a homework assignment Billy and Tom wanted to know from Ben what was going on as he was walking back to his classroom with Joe after their playground hour, and that was when I became aware of their conversation. It seems that Ben’s school buddy, Joe, was having a rough time of it.
All Ben could tell his brothers was that Joe and his dad had a really bad argument that morning. I waited, but there was no more information coming from Ben, and the boys stuck into their homework, and I got back to entering my own students’ grades. But after dinner that night, I got Ben aside and asked him to tell me just what Joe and his dad had argued about that had Joe still so upset, and Ben sat on my lap and snuggled into me and told me about his buddy Joe and his father. It turns out that Joe didn’t have a mother, one had never been present in his life, and the other night his father had come home a little drunk and had told Joe that he had caused his mother’s death during childbirth.
The worst of it was that his dad then started calling him “Killer”. It hurt Joe that his dad was doing it, and then this morning he was still doing it. Joe had asked him to stop it, but his request fell on deaf ears, and he kept taunting Joe until Joe left their house an hour early and walked to school to get out of the house with his father in it. I asked if Ben thought his buddy was going to be all right with his dad when his dad got home tonight, and Ben told me that he had told Joe to put one of the house phones in his room and to go there and call him if he didn’t feel safe with his father that night.
Just about 8 o’clock that night the house phone rang and since Ben was the closest to it, he answered it and then started to run to me with it. He was telling a crying Joe to hang in there and he told me what was going on at Joe’s house. It seems the father had come home and prepared a dinner of sandwiches and then left to go out for a while and returned about a half-hour ago and started calling Joe “Killer” again and chasing little Joe around, telling him he was going to get him, and the man wasn’t playing, he had a steak knife in his hand as he chased Joe around. Joe ran to his bedroom and locked the door and then called Ben. I told Ben to tell Joe to climb out his bedroom window and start to run to our house, I would drive down the road and pick him up. Ben insisted he go with me, and so did Aaron and the other boys. I wasn’t going to take the time to argue with any of them, I had to get to Joe.
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