I CRIED FOR A LITTLE BOY
WHO ONCE LIVED THERE ©

CHAPTER SIX

11 Years Old

The Orphanage, The Last Weeks.

RAINBOW
    After being caught in the window, it was over a week before I could get up enough nerve to run away again.  I had wanted to run away right after the whipping but I couldn't, not the way I was feeling.  The next day when I seen all of the bruises on my legs, I didn't want anyone to see me.  In a way, whenever I had bruises on me from a whipping I felt ashamed about them.  I didn't want anyone to even talk to me about them, boys or adults, for it would only make me feel worse.
    This time when I "took off" was sort of my "Waterloo" as far as the orphanage was concerned.
    Sometimes I would go to the chapel during the day when no one was about.  I would go in and lay on the floor between the pews so if anyone came in they wouldn't see me.  When no one was around it was one of the most peaceful places in the orphanage
    I would lay there talking to God.  I guess I hadn't been praying, it was more like just talking to him.  I never asked him why the things were happening the way they were in my life.  In my mind, I never questioned those things.  I accepted things as, that was the way life was.  When I complained to anyone about the beatings, I wasn't complaining because I thought they were wrong.  I was complaining because it hurt so much and I wanted someone to help me and make them stop hurting me.  If I had asked God for anything, it was to stop the beatings, send me back to my adopted dad and to try and find my brother for me.  It is strange but I never asked him to send me back to my mother.  Maybe I thought that was too hard for him to do.  I guess I had accepted the fact I would never be with my mother again.  I did a lot of crying there.  It was the only place I could be alone and no one would see me cry.  I didn't want the other kids seeing me cry.  At times I would cry at night when we went to bed but then all of the other kids were asleep.
    I had been in the chapel and as I came out the front door, I could see my cottage across the campus.  I knew it was close to supper time and I was suppose to be there getting ready for our evening meal.  But that day I had cried a lot in the chapel and I didn't feel as though I wanted to go back to my cottage.
    In the other direction, to my left, was a six foot fence.  Beyond that was the street which passed along the front boundary of the orphanage.  On the other side of the street was the city cemetery.  Once over that fence, I was out-of-bounds and a runaway.  In less than a minute, I was over the fence, across the street and into the cemetery.  I ran well into the cemetery before I turned and headed south towards the railroad tracks which would take me to the river.  From there, across the Mississippi was Rock Island, Illinois.  I was very careful as I approached the Arsenal bridge so I wouldn't run into Mr. Guold again.  In my mind I was determined I wasn't going to let anyone take me back.
    For the next two weeks I stayed across the river, just inside of the state line, at the very edge of my world.  At first I had slept in the bandstand in Spencer Park, across the street from the Fort Armstrong Hotel but I only slept there for about the first two nights for I had woke up one night and seen a man coming up the steps of the bandstand.  His face was horribly scarred and it had frighten me so much I took off running.
    The next day I had told a man in the park what I had seen the night before and how it was so horrible it had scared me.  The man told me, the person I had seen had been a painter once and how while he had been working one day he had been burned when a flammable material had exploded.  He also had a brother who was badly burnt in the resulting fire.  After I had learned how the man had been so horribly burned, I felt sorry for him.
    My days were usually spent in a five block area of downtown Rock Island.  In the mornings I would be at the Cony Island restaurant, near the Riveraira Theater on Eighteenth Street, begging for food at the Cony Island or begging for money out in front of it.  Near noon though, I would be in Spencer Park across the street from the Rocket Theater waiting for the theater to open.  If I had enough money by the time the theater opened I would pay my way in.  There were a lot of times though I didn't have enough money.  Those times I found if I begged the cashier enough she would let me in. If there was a good movie at the Riveraira, I would go there after seeing the one at the Rocket.  I always had to be sure to have enough money though for I never could beg my way into the Riveraira.
    This going to the movies every day meant I would see the same ones over several times.  Movies didn't change but a couple of times a week.  Another thing about going to the movies during the day and evenings, it kept me off of the streets and helped me from being caught.
    There were many times I was able to sleep in one of the theaters all night, leaving them by the exit door early in the morning before people came to clean the theaters.  One night, while sleeping in the Riveraira I had diarrhea real bad.  Even though I had tried the best I could in cleaning my jumpsuit I was wearing at the time, it had sort of messed it up.
    When I couldn't sleep in one of the theaters all night, I would go to a vacant lot behind The Rock Island Savings Bank building and sleep behind a billboard sign.  There were some old boards scattered about the lot.  I had stacked them into a pile, leaving an opening so I could crawl into the center of the pile.  When I had finished it looked like a pile of old lumber and not the hide-out of some runaway orphan boy.  It wasn't weather proof but it did sort of conceal me as I slept.  Even then, I didn't feel all that safe.
    I had found the theaters to be the safest place to sleep.  Not only from people who might harm me but also the police.  The police had picked me up several times before so they sort of knew me.  During the day I could watch for them but at night when I slept behind the billboard sign I was always waking up, fearful the police or someone else might find me.
    I guess I had really got people upset this time.  A couple of days after I had ran away, Mrs. Nichols, Superintendent of the Children's Division of the Board of Control, of Iowa State Institutions, in Des Moines, Iowa was notified I had ran away again.  That had started a massive search for me.  One that intensified as the days passed.  A search was made for my mother.  They had visited places she had been known to have stayed at while in Des Moines.  They had sent juvenile officers from Des Moines to Ames, some thirty miles north of the capital, a town where I was born.  There they found my mother had moved out west to California.  That had intensified the search as far west as California, to see perchance if she had taken me.  They had even sent the sheriff of Woodbury County with a county probation officer to see my adopted dad in Leeds, to see if perchance I was there.  They knew he hadn't wanted to give me up and they thought he may be hiding me.  That was why they had sent the sheriff with the probation officer.
    About four days after I had ran away, I made a long distant collect telephone call to my dad.  I had ran away on the Twenty-ninth of June and I had called him on the Third of July.  I had told him I missed him and I wanted to come home to be with him and live there.  He lived over three hundred miles away and I had no idea in what direction I would have to go or how to get there.  I didn't know anything about hitch-hiking, or people sometimes traveled that way.  I knew I could go on a bus but I didn't really know that much about buses either.  Where I would get on a bus or which one I should take.  I didn't have any money to buy a ticket.  But then, I didn't know you needed a ticket.  I didn't know of anyone with a car who would take me.  So the only way I would have known to get there would have been to walk but I didn't know which way to go.
    I had tearfully told him where I was, hoping he would come for me.  He didn't tell me on the telephone before I hung-up he would come for me but I felt he would be there in a few days to get me.  I was sure he loved me as much as I loved him and he wouldn't let anything stand in his way of getting to me.  I had felt better after I had called him for I felt it would only be a matter of days now and we would be together again.  This time I wouldn't let him go.
    The days had passed and he never came.  I had told him I was usually in Spencer Park, near the Rocket and the Fort theaters.  Each day I had watched for him.  I had watched for him until it was time to go into the theaters but he never came.
    I guess by the time I had been gone a week, Mr. Daines had become very unhappy with me.  He had wrote to Des Moines on July Seventh and told them what a problem I was, running away and all.  He had told them things in his letter that weren't true.  How I stole things, played with matches and knives.  How I would always take other boys with me when I ran away.  None of that had been true.  I guess he was mad at me but all I had done was run away and that had always been alone.  To me, he had done a job on me, an eleven year old orphan who couldn't defend himself, to cover up what they were doing to me.
    I guess it was on that same day, July Seventh, I met a man in the park I had seen several times there before.  I had never sat and talked with him as I had with several other men.  All of those I had talked with had been adults.  I never did see any kids around.  It wasn't that kind of park.  It was only a place in the center of town where people sat around, talked to others or just relaxed.
    As a rule I never told anyone I was a runaway.  For some reason though, I felt I could trust him and I told him I had ran away from the orphanage across the river. When he found out I was a runaway he showed me a place where I could hide and sleep at night.  It was only a couple of blocks from the park.
    The place he took me was on the second floor of an old building in the eighteen hundred block of First Avenue, a stone's throw from the river.  We had to climb up some large shipping crates which had been stacked near the building where the stairway had once been.  We had climbed up the crates and through a doorway, the door itself had long been gone, as were all of the windows.  The section of the building we went into seemed to have been abandoned.  There had been signs about the room where someone had been sleeping there, cardboard boxes, paper and such.  He had showed me into the room and then he took me into another room that looked much the same as the first room did.
    When we got into this second room he had me take my clothes off.  He had even helped me undo the buttons on my coveralls.  When I had ran away I wasn't wearing shoes so I didn't have any shoes or socks on to take off.  I hadn't been wearing underwear under my coveralls so when I took them off I was completely naked.  Once my clothes were off he told me to lay on some cardboard that was laying nearby on the floor.
    I had barely turned eleven by a month and a half, I had no idea why he had wanted me to do as he said.  From many things I had been very well protected.  I had been so isolated from the real world I had never been allowed to even read newspapers.  I didn't even know WW II had been on during those years until well after it had been over.  The boys I associated with didn't know any more than I did.  The question of me taking my clothes off, was not why he wanted me to take them off but because he had told me to do it.  Then, I had no idea of sexual things.  No one ever talked to me about sex, in the sense no one was to touch me in certain places nor to do certain things to me.  At the age of eleven the word "sex" was not even in my vocabulary.  I had been fondled at the orphanage by a man, a little over a year before.  Ms. Gruber was doing that most every time I had to take a bath.  I didn't know any of that was wrong.  That part of the treatment towards me, I had no feelings one way or the other about it for I couldn't see where any of that was hurting me.
    He also took off his clothes and laid down with me.  I did everything he told me to do, not knowing what he was about to do to me.  He had me turn over on my stomach and spread my legs then he laid on top of me.  He had been heavy.  That day I had learned the pain of being sodomized.  I cried, it seems I had even screamed.  I begged him to stop but he had held me down until he was satisfied.
    Even then, when he had gone away, I hadn't known he had broken any kind of law.  I didn't even know what a "law" was. "Rules?"  Yes, I knew a lot of those.  But what he had done to me wasn't against any rules I knew.
    I again seen that man in the park the next day.  He wanted me to go back to those same rooms with him again.  He had even said he would give me some money if I would but I wouldn't go.  I later learned he had lived at the rescue mission only a half block from the park.
    On the Ninth of July, exactly two weeks after I had ran away, two days after I had been raped, the police found me sleeping in the early morning hours in my hide-out behind the billboard sign.  I was taken two blocks to the police station.  It had only been a formality to ask who I was and where I was from for they had been searching for me for the better part of two weeks.  I don't know why they hadn't found me sooner.  Except for at night and when I was in the movies, I had been fairly visible all of the time.  During the day when I wasn't in the movies I had watched for them and took off in the other direction whenever I saw a policeman.  So I guess I had a lot of luck.
    When they took me to the police station I was crying for I knew they were going to send me back.  They always had before. This time though I told them what they were doing to me at the orphanage and asked them not to send me back.  I wasn't complaining because I thought what they were doing to me was wrong, as though there might have been a law or anything like that against it.  I wanted someone to help me.  To make them stop what they were doing to me.  At the orphanage my life was so hurtful, not only in pain but in so many other ways.  In ways I couldn't even understand.  I hadn't told them about the man who had raped me a couple of days before.  I didn't know what he had done to me was wrong.  He was only another adult who did something that had hurt me.
    In all though, even after I had been raped, I would have much rather lived on the streets of Rock Island than to be returned to the orphanage.
    Their attitude was to buy me a "Coke" and talk to me until I calmed down some. Then they locked me alone in a room.  The room was a cell to hold adult prisoners. It had ceramic tile walls, a solid door with a small reinforced glass window, so high I couldn't see through it.  The room was bare of all furniture.  There was nowhere to sit but on the floor.
    After being locked in this room, I was to wait at least an hour before Mr. Guold came for me.  An hour to think about what was going to happen to me when I got back to the orphanage.  There wasn't a thing I could do about stopping what I knew was in store for me once I was back at the orphanage.  It seemed no one would help me and that made it all that much worse.
    I was sitting in the cell when I heard the heavy key in the lock of the door.  It opened and there standing with the jailer was Mr. Guold.  I had been scared sitting there alone in the cell.  I had been sobbing most of the time I was in there but it had been sort of a quite, calm fear.  Seeing Mr. Guold though had instantly brought my fears to the surface.  I was shaking when he had stepped into the cell and took a hold of my arm. The jailer had helped Mr. Guold drag me from the cell.  They had fought me, screaming and crying down the short hallway to the front area of the police station, where another policeman had helped them to get me outside and into the car.  They had stood there by the door of the car as Mr. Guold had walk around it and had gotten in on the driver's side.  I had found the door handle was missing on my door, so I could only reluctantly resign myself to my return to the orphanage.
    When Mr. Guold took me back to the orphanage, instead of taking me up to the dormitory of his cottage, where I feared was my first stop, he parked the car on the south side of the hospital.  He got out, walked around the front of the car, coming to my door he opened it and told me to get out.
    This was unusual him taking me to the hospital when bringing me back after I had ran away.  I had asked him, "Why are you taking me here Mr. Guold?"  This was something out of the norm and it was frightening to me for I didn't know what they were going to do to me here in the hospital.
    He had replied, "Any time a boy runs away and is gone as long as you were, they have to be examined to see if they are carrying any bugs on them."  Even then, I was still frightened, for all of my experiences in that hospital had not been good.
    I must have been very dirty, sleeping on the ground in my coveralls most of the two weeks I had been gone.  I had diarrhea that one night while I slept in the Riveraira theater and even though I had tried the best I could to clean myself that was still in my clothes.
    While Mr. Guold stood and watched me, I took a bath in a tub.  Even though Mr. Guold tried to hurry me, I was taking the bath as slow as I could, trying to delay whatever it was that was about to happen to me.  Once the bath was over with I was taken, still nude, into an adjoining room.  In the room along two walls were counters with cabinets.  In the middle of the room stood the examining table.  Mrs. Lefevere, the nurse was standing at one end of the table.  Dr. Ott was standing slightly behind the nurse at one of the counters.  Both of them had white gowns and surgical gloves on.
    I knew Mrs. Lefevere very well, for she had given me a whipping once with a weeping willow switch when she had caught me up in a weeping willow tree near the hospital.
    Mr. Guold took me to the table.  They were talking among themselves but in my confused state of mind I couldn't really understand what they were saying, all I knew, was they wanted me to get upon the table.  There was a stool by the end of the table. I stepped upon it, then climbed up on the table.  I had sat there on the end of the table for only a moment when Mrs. Lefevere had put her hand on my shoulder, indicating she wanted me to lay back on the table.
    Even though it was in the middle of July, I laid there naked on my back, shivering.  Maybe it was, I was still somewhat damp from the bath.  Or maybe it was, I was so scared for I didn't know what they were going to do to me.  Anyway, I felt very cold.
    After several moments had passed, moments that seem like an eternity, Dr. Ott came to the table and had me sit up, with my legs off of the side of the table.  He started by examining my hair, as though he was looking for something down near the roots.  Once satisfied with my hair, he examined my ears, eyes, nostrils and looked into my mouth. There seemed hardly an inch of my skin he missed as he worked down my body.  Even after he had checked my arms and hands he had raised my arms and looked under them.  After he had listened to my heart and lungs he had me lay back down on the table.  Then he checked me from my waist down even pulling my toes apart.  Once he was satisfied with the front of me he had me roll over onto my stomach.  Starting at my waist he started to work down.
    There had not been much talk as he examined me and I had kept my eyes closed most of the time but as Dr. Ott had spread my buttocks I could sense Mrs. Lefevere move from the head of the table to the doctor's side.  I had been raped two days before and I was still very sore back there.  A moment passed then Mrs. Lefevere asked me in sort of a crisp voice, touching my buttocks with one of her hands, "Did anyone do anything to you back here while you were away?"
    I answered, "No Mam," in a quiet voice trying to turn my hips away slightly so they couldn't see me as well.
    She had asked me again if I had been molested.  I didn't want to talk to her about it, so I had turned my face from her and with tears in my eyes I laid there without saying a word.  I felt if I had told them I had been molested, I would have been in even more trouble than I already was.  It wasn't like something had been done to me but more like something I had done.
    After the examination, I guess because they knew I had been raped, I was given a pair of pajamas and taken to the third floor of the hospital and was locked in a room by myself.
    I was thankful the doctor hadn't done anything to me but put some medication on me where I was sore at.  I had thought they were going to do something much worse to me, something because I had ran away.  Maybe something so I would never be able to runaway again.
    The room was just off of the boys' ward.  There was one bed in the room and except for a small stand near the window the room was otherwise barren.  There wasn't anything to do, no television, no radio, nothing to read.  Nothing to do except lay on my bed and think about what was going to happen to me when I was returned to my cottage.  Something I felt was imminent.
    That evening in the local newspapers, articles appeared and told how an eleven year old orphan boy had ran away from the orphanage and had hid out for two weeks in the downtown area of Rock Island.  One paper had even used my name.
    I think it is understandable after being in the hospital for a few days and nothing more happening to me other than the nurse putting some medication on me, I wasn't in any hurry in getting out and going back to my cottage.  Outside of the chapel, I found the hospital was the most peaceful place in the orphanage.
    I hadn't been back much more than a day though, when Mr. Daines the superintendent paid me a visit.  When he had come into the room I had quickly gotten up and sat on the edge of my bed.  He had asked me why I had told "All of those stories" to the police.  I hadn't said anything about him only what my cottage mother was doing to me.
    He was mad at me.  He did pretty much all of the talking and I don't think he was too interested in anything I had to say.  The way he was putting it I was talking too much already.  According to him I was causing everyone much more trouble than I was worth.  About all I got to say was, "Yes Sir."  "No Sir."  "I'm sorry I caused so much trouble Sir.  I didn't mean to."  I was feeling bad about all of the trouble I was causing him.  Maybe for everyone else too.  It was always easy for them to make me feel guilty.
    Even though Ms. Gruber was hurting me, I really couldn't tell him why I was running away so much.  I had always said it was because of her but it always seemed like it was something else.  She may have been part of it but it was something. . . .  something like a loneliness which came from deep within me and filled my whole body.  It was as though I was very unhappy and I had to do something about it.  I had to go out and see if I could find that happiness somewhere.  As though it was out there waiting for me to find it.

RAINBOW
Please Make The World Go Away
MIDI By the courtesy of the MIDI Picking Harry Todd The best on the NET.

 Chapter Seven