I CRIED FOR A LITTLE BOY
WHO ONCE LIVED THERE ©

CHAPTER  THIRTEEN

The Bullets Flew and I Couldn't Understand,
For I Was Only A Runaway

RAINBOW
    As soon as I had returned from the hospital, I had ran away again.  If I wasn't in the hospital or knew I was going there and it was a warm day, I wasn't too much interested in staying around the juvenile home.
    During the day when all of us boys were out of the cottage, Mrs. Urquhart would sit by the back door of our cottage and watch us boys down on the ball field.  But I noticed from time to time she would go into the cottage not returning for several minutes.  I knew those were the times of my opportunities to "take off."
    Several times they had asked me how I was able to slip away so easily and quickly.  I would be there one minute, when they looked again I would be gone.  I would never tell them and they never found out.
    On the far side of the ball field there was a ditch about three feet deep that ran east and west.  At the east end of the ditch was a fence but at the bottom of the fence, down in the ditch, I had broken several of the wires making a hole large enough for me to crawl through.  Once through the fence, I would always pull the wire back in place, closing the hole off so no one would ever notice it.
    Whenever I was going to run away, I would go to the far side of the ball field and sit on the bank of the ditch under a large cottonwood tree.  All of the other boys would be playing out on the ball field or talking in groups on the far side of the field.  When I felt no one was watching me, I would lay down and roll down into the ditch.  On my hands and knees I would crawled east through the fence towards the institution's dairy.  When I had crawled several hundred feet in the ditch I came to some bushes and trees that sort of ran in a row towards the south, the direction I wanted to go, passing the dairy well to the east of me. Getting to the bushes I would get to my feet and run to the south following the trees.  Once past the dairy I would run as hard as I could with the intent of making it to the railroad yard about two miles south of the juvenile home.
    That summer after my twelfth birthday I had ran away several times, about six or seven times they had said, that wasn't counting the two times I had taken off from White Hall and the first time I had ran away from Turner Hall.  A total of nine times for that year.  Each time I had ran away they had caught me, put me in Isolation for two weeks and then Mr. Urquhart would always come with his board.  Then I would be on restrictions for a few days, then I would be gone again.  Yes, gone again, back to the railroad yard to catch a freight train.  I didn't really care in which direction it went, I would always try and catch the first freight train out.
    This one time in the latter part of June, about a month after my twelfth birthday, I had caught a freight train that was slowly moving west as I entered the railroad yard.  I didn't see any open box cars so I jumped up on the ladder to a gondola car and climbed inside of it.  The gondola car was loaded with flat sheet steel and the car had sides and ends about three or four feet high and no roof.  At one end of the car, down between the sheets of steel and the end wall, was enough room for me to lay down and hide under some wrinkled up paper, where if anyone should look into the car they wouldn't see me.
     The train had traveled for over an hour before it had come to a stop, not moving all night as I slept there under the paper.  The next morning though I was awakened by a railroad employee who had seen my leg sticking out from under the paper.  Taking me to a shack there in the railroad yard, he told me how lucky I was the car had not been "humped" for if it had, I would have been crushed by the shifting steel.  Many times I have thought, with a shudder passing through me, what those sheets of steel would have done to me.
    As it turned out I was in Maxwell, Iowa.  A town about sixty miles west of the juvenile home.  Not far from Ames, Iowa, the town I was born in.  Only about ten miles from Nevada, Iowa, a small town my grandparents lived in.  But then I didn't know how close to home I was.
    At the shack, the railroad man asked me who I was and where I was from.  At the time I didn't know where I was but I had told him my name was "John" something or another and I was from Nevada, Iowa.  He didn't believe me and asked me to write my first name.  So taking a pencil I wrote, "Jhon."  I was nervous for I didn't know how to spell "John" but I had tried not to show it as I gave it my best shot.  After looking at what I had written he told me I had spelled "John" wrong and he thought I had ran away from the Iowa Training School for Boys at Eldora, Iowa.  He had said something like, "I know you have run away from the reform school for the clothes you are wearing is the kind of uniform the boys in the reform school at Eldora wear."  Since I had gone to Turner Hall I no longer wore coveralls but khaki shirt and pants with a web belt and brown shoes.  In fact a uniform.
    I started to get scared for there was no place on this earth I feared more than the training school at Eldora.  I sure didn't want to be sent there, thinking if he took me there they would keep me.
    "I am from Nevăda, Iowa, my grandfather and grandmother live there."  I was crying as I tried to convince him, for I was scared, thinking I was all but in the reform school.  I was almost to the point of telling him where I was really from.  As bad as the juvenile home was, I felt it was a lot better than the reform school.  They beat boys to death there.
    I don't know how I knew my grandparents lived in Nevăda.  Maybe I had remembered it all of those years after I had left there.  I knew they lived there but I didn't know where my mother was.  I thought if he took me to my grandparents they would keep me and I wouldn't have to go back to the juvenile home.
    He didn't take me to my grandparents but to the sheriff in Nevăda, just a few miles from where we were. The sheriff for some reason knew who I was, though we had never met before.  But there would come a day we would both know each other a little better.  Not to the likes of either of us.  That day though, I was twelve years old and only a runaway from the juvenile home, from that he had judged I was some sort of a bad boy.
    He had made a couple of phone calls, one of them to the juvenile home telling them he had me, then he took me to my grandparent's and let me visit with them until Mr. Ladd came and took me back.  It was my first memory of ever seeing my grandfather but I remembered my grandmother from the time I lived in Nevada, before they had taken me from my mother.  I liked my grandfather.  Well, I liked both of them but my grandpa was a man.
    We had a nice visit while the sheriff sat there.  I had asked them to let me stay but they had told me they couldn't take care of me.  They didn't know where my mom was, "just somewhere out west."
    It seemed each time I ran away, I was getting further and further away but each time I was always caught and taken back, only to wait for my next opportunity to run again. But this time it was different, I had made it all of the way home to Nevada, the place I always called home.  So as Mr. Ladd and I were leaving Nevada to return to the juvenile home, I said in a sad and somewhat resigned way, "Well at least I made it home this time."
    I looked at running away a lot differently than adults did and I guess what I had said to Mr. Ladd had been the wrong thing to say, for it had made him mad and he told me, "Don't be a smart aleck, if I hadn't told the sheriff it was all right for you to visit with your grandparents you wouldn't have seen them."  The rest of the trip had been very quiet.  At least I didn't say anything.
    After two weeks in Isolation, Mr. Urquhart came with his board.  Each time he came he was more angry, each time the whippings were getting more severe.
    By that fall Bobby, my best friend in White Hall, had turned twelve and was transferred to Turner Hall.  The first I knew he had been transferred was when Mrs. Urquhart had told me I was not to be seen with Bobby.  They knew he was my best friend and they didn't need him running off with me.  It seems he hadn't ran away since the last time he had ran away with me.
    Even though we had been told to stay away from each other, we did manage to get together from time to time.  We even set up a secret code between us.  If one of us was planing on running away, he would sing, "Over here, Over Dell, we're going to hit the dusty trail."  Then we would meet down by the old cottonwood tree.

12 Years Old, In the Toledo, Iowa State Juvenile Home.
Late Autumn during a rare visit with my mother.
A few days before I had ran away and road a freight train to Belle Plaine, Iowa.

    One of those times, I guess it was the first time Bobby and I had ran away together after he came to Turner Hall, we had met down by the cottonwood tree at a prearranged time in the evening after supper.  When we felt no one had noticed us we laid down, rolled into the ditch and headed south towards the railroad yard.  Getting to the railroad yard we laid down in the weeds near the tracks and waited for the first train to move out.  We didn't care which direction it went, we were taking the first train out.  We didn't have long to wait before a train started moving slowly to the east.  We seen a boxcar with it's door open and we had ran for it and climbed in.
    There was some old cardboard laying near one end of the car.  The cardboard  had been used in shipping the last load the car had carried.  We got under that until we were well out in the country.  Once out in the country we sat near the door for about an hour, watching the fields go by.  By then though it had started to get dark and chilly with the wind blowing past the car.  To keep warm we had decided to sleep close together under the cardboard.  Soon after we had laid down, we could feel the train slow down and come to a stop.
    When we woke it was late at night or very early in the morning for it was still dark. Because it had been warm when we had left the juvenile home we didn't have jackets on and we had been dressed in light clothes.  But sleeping together under the cardboard we had stayed fairly warm.  What had woke us up, was someone standing outside of the car door and yelling in through the open door, "All right you guys, come on out of there."
    I had whispered in Bobby's ear, "Don't move, he can't see us."  Thinking the man was yelling that way in all of the open boxcars.  We were under the cardboard and I couldn't see how he could possibly see us.  Not even with the flashlight he was using.
    Sure enough, when he didn't get an answer he started walking west to the next car.  We laid there for a couple of more minutes and then got up and went to the door.  Peeking out, we seen we had stopped in a railroad yard and it had snowed.  Looking in the direction the railroad man had gone, we could see he was several cars down from us.  As we watched him we saw him turn and start walking back towards us.  I turned to Bobby and said, "We had better get out of here."  Without another word we both took a running jump from the boxcar.  When we hit the ground we were both running at full speed, heading north out of the yard.  We hadn't gone more than twenty or thirty feet when I heard the man yell, "Hey you.  Stop!"  I didn't even look back as we kept on running.
    We hadn't gone more than another twenty feet when I had heard the first "Pop."  I didn't know what it was and I had kept running.  There had been a second "Pop" and I still didn't realize what it was.  Then there had been the third "Pop," as I ran around the end of a boxcar.  I saw sparks fly off of the boxcar coupling, only inches from my right arm.  It wasn't until then I realized he was shooting at us.  It was a shock to me, he was trying to kill us and I couldn't understand why, we were twelve years old and only runaways.  Even though I realized he was shooting at us, I didn't stop.  In my mind, if I stopped he would come and kill me.
    No, I didn't stop.  If I had been running at my top speed, my fear forced me beyond that.  For with a burst of speed I went around the end of the boxcar and north out of the yard, not stopping until I came to a small farm on the outskirts of the railroad yard.
    In our mad dash to get away, Bobby and I had been separated.  I didn't know what had happened to Bobby but I suspected the worst.  I thought he had been shot and was laying dead somewhere back there among the tracks in the cold, snow covered railroad yard.
    The first building I came to was a corncrib.  I opened the door and then quickly closed the door behind me.  As I laid on the corn I was cold, tired and very afraid, for I thought at any moment the door would open and the man would come in and kill me where I laid.  I had laid there the rest of the night, not sleeping, shivering in the cold and listening for sounds of anyone approaching the shed.  I must have been numb from the cold or maybe I was half asleep for at dawn I was brought up with a start. The door to the corncrib was open and there was a man standing in the doorway yelling at me. It was the farmer who owned the farm and it seemed he was mad at me for being in his corncrib.  I think at first he thought I was a bum but when he noticed I was a small boy he came into the crib and grabbed me.  He quickly brought me to my feet and then half dragging me he took me to his pickup truck.  Then he took me to town, which was about a half a mile to the west of us.
    I still didn't know where I was but as I got out of the truck and started walking towards the building the farmer was taking me to I seen a sign above the door, "Belle Plaine - Town Marshal."
    This had been the town where the doctor had stitched up my head some two and a half years before when I had tried to jump out of the car on the way back to the orphanage from my adopted home.  This was the town we always went through on the way to the University Hospital in Iowa City.  I was saddened when I found out were I was, for Belle Plaine was only about thirty miles east of the juvenile home.  We entered the building and went upstairs to the marshal's office, with the man holding my arm all of the time.  The marshal was sitting in a chair at his desk when we entered his office.  I was told to sit in a chair, then the farmer told the marshal how he had caught me in his corncrib.  You would think I was trying to steal his corn the way he was talking.  As the farmer was telling the marshal how he had caught me, I noticed several wanted posters on the wall.  Most of them were of kids who had ran away or were missing.
    When the marshal asked me who I was and where I was from, I wouldn't tell him.  I stared down at the floor and wouldn't say a word to him.  It wasn't I was trying to be a hard case or anything like that, I didn't want to help him in any way to get me back to the juvenile home.  The way I looked at it, there was no point in running away if in the end I was to help them to get me back as soon as possible.
    After asking me several times and not getting an answer out of me, he said, "Well I think I know who you are and where you are from.  I have a friend of yours in the back room.  I think he will be happy to see you."  He had gotten up out of his chair and told me to go with him into the back room.  The back room took up more than half of the top floor of the building.  There against the back wall, I seen Bobby sitting in a room made out of bars.
    Even under the circumstances, I was happy to see him and to know that he hadn't been killed back there in the railroad yard.  The railroad man had caught Bobby and he had been in the warm cell all night. Bobby wasn't like me, he had told the marshal who he was and where he was from.  The marshal had called the juvenile home and found out who the other boy was who had ran in the railroad yard.  So since the marshal had already called the juvenile home, the juvenile home knew that they had at least one boy to pick up so they were on their way.  I wouldn't have long to wait.
    Bobby had told me he had thought they had shot and killed me for he had seen me fall not far from the edge of the railroad yard.  What he had seen was me going across a ditch.  That would have been about the time I heard the forth shot being fired.  The one I had thought might have gotten Bobby.
    I don't know why it was but again I was considered the ringleader.  It is sure hard for me to under stand why they would feel that way, out of the nine times or so I had ran away that year from the juvenile home, this was only the second time I was with someone else.  Maybe it was, the other boys never ran away unless they were with me.
    When I had gotten out of Isolation I was again told I couldn't associate with Bobby.  I was told something like, "You are always getting other boys into trouble."  Yet the only time I usually got into trouble with other boys was when I ran away with them.  They had told me I couldn't sit, stand, nor even walk near Bobby.  If they caught me I would be going to Isolation.  They had even made me sit alone in the dining hall.  Without Bobby I was really alone.  I guess all of the other kids felt if they were around me they would get into trouble too.
    It was near winter time so I pretty much stopped running away for that year.  Oh I still got into some trouble from time to time but it never cost me any Isolation time.  I think most of my troubles stemmed from not being able to understand what I was told.  I tried to do the best I could in listening whenever an adult spoke to me.  At times though it had appeared I had ignored them.  They not realizing I hadn't heard them and thought I wasn't going to do what I was told to do had gotten me a resounding slap.  A lot of times, I could only catch some words they said and I would have to fill in between.  I did a lot of that, it wasn't always a good idea to ask them to repeat themselves.

RAINBOW
Have You Ever Been Lonely
MIDI By the courtesy of the MIDI Picking Harry Todd The best on the NET.

Chapter  Fourteen