novel excerpt

 

    Johnny and I were waiting to be picked up, straightening out our bills after another pass-out of our merch, only a few things remaining. A boy, which you could tell had been beat upon, came circling round. He had remnants of a black eye and a large fading bruise on an arm.

    “Hey what’s up buddy?” asks Johnny.

    “Nothin.’”

    “C’mere, let me give you something.” He took off his money belt, which still had a few different Olympic pins, and spread it on the bench next to him. The boy came near. “Which one you like best?” Johnny asks.

    “I don’t have money.”

    “It’s OK, I just want you to have something—which one of those you like best?” The boy moved closer to examine them.

    “That one,” he said.

    “This one?” Johnny asks, pointing to one with the Olympic Rings set in a silver oval. The boy nods, Johnny removes it and hands it to him. “What happened to you? Looks like you got beat up.”

    “I don’t know,” the boy says.

    “I wanna tell you something,” Johnny says removing his sunglasses. “When I was your age I used to get beat up. And what you need to know right now, right here, is that it’s not always gonna be like this. You’ll get older and you’ll be able to escape anyone who is being mean to you—OK?”

     “OK.”

     “You just gotta hang on and get old enough to take care of yourself, OK?”

     “OK.”

     “I want you to keep that pin a secret—don’t show it to anyone; it will be your secret, and when things get rough, you find it and hold onto it real tight, knowing things will get better and one day you’ll get free. OK?”

     “OK.” Just then we all heard, “Ronald! You get your ass over here this minute!” It was the mom some ways away.

     “Go now,” Johnny says, and the boy ran off.

     “Wow, that was most impressive man,” I said.

     “You get beat up as a kid?” he asks.

     “Yeah, my mom was bi-polar; when you came home from school, you didn’t know if there would be cookies comin’ out of the oven, or the belt comin’ out of the closet.”

     “All the stuff you’re saying about knowledge and truth, what’s the answer there?” he asks.

     “There’s a book titled Drama of the Gifted Child, in it the author lays out the idea that from birth to five years old is when a human’s foundation of self-esteem is set. If you have a parent who is narcissist—meaning someone who, when they feel good everyone around them is good, and when they feel bad, everyone around them is bad—and introduce that dynamic to the parent/child relationship, it fractures the child’s self-esteem, and that person often goes on to be narcissist too, perpetuating the whole mess.”

     “That’s it, isn’t it? A four year old craps their pants and gets hit for it, when all they were doing is being a little kid.”

     “Yep. Why? You get beat up too?”

     “Yeah, a step-dad.”

     Just then Marcus showed up, and off we went to the next town.