We had been living on the farm for two weeks when the farmer had given Bobby and me some money and driven us back across the river to Sioux City, Iowa.  Shortly after we had arrived at the farm, Bobby's parents had brought some of Bobby's clothes over for us to wear, seeing he and I were the same size.  We had thrown our uniforms away so when we went back to Sioux City I was dressed in some of Bobby's clean clothes.  The farmer had dropped us off in front of a theater and told us he would be back after the movie and pick us up.
    The movie had been called "Frankenstein."  I had liked the movie so well I wanted to stay and see it again.  Bobby hadn't wanted to stay and see the movie again so he had told me he would meet me outside of the theater after the movie had showed the second time.
    After I had seen the movie for the second time I went out and stood in front of the theater.  Even though I had stood around for some time, neither Bobby or the farmer came back.  It was getting dark and I didn't know how to get back to the farm.  I knew I needed to find a place to stay for the night.  Some place where I wouldn't be seen by the police or anyone else.  So I started walking, looking for a place I felt would be safe enough for the night.  I don't know how long I walked that night or how far it was before I came to the fairgrounds. (It could have been an amusement park for I had seen a roller coaster there.)  One of the first things I noticed outside of the fence from where the roller coaster was, was a billboard sign.  Quickly checking out the sign I found tall weeds behind it which would give me cover.  I was satisfied it would be safe enough that night for me to sleep there for I didn't want to look further for I was fairly tired.
    The next morning when I woke up I was hungry and still somewhat tired for I hadn't slept too well among the weeds, laying on the ground with nothing to keep me warm.   The weeds and my clothes were wet from the dew, my clothes smelled from sleeping outside all night.  There had been nothing I could do about that, at least not until I could find Bobby.
    I didn't know where to look for Bobby.  I knew this was his home town and unlike me he knew his way around.  I had thought he may have even stayed with his parents that night.  I didn't know where his parents lived so I had started walking back towards downtown where I had last seen Bobby.  I had walked all day looking for him.  I had seen a lot of kids but none with the coal black hair like Bobby's.
    It had been about dark when I had remembered, when I had been eight years old I had been placed for adoption on a farm somewhere near Sioux City.  Somewhere just north of the city.  I knew the farm wasn't far but I didn't know just where it was.  I had enough money left to make one phone call but of course by now I had forgotten my foster dad's phone number.  So finding a pay phone I looked up R. H. Potter.  Calling the first number I found I was in luck for it was my foster father.  Telling him were I was he came and got me and took me home with him.  It had felt good to be home again with my dad.  I must have been talking a blue streak telling him how happy I was to be home with him again.  In the little time it had taken us to drive home I had tried to tell him everything that had happen in my life in the last three and half years since I had last seen him.  I had felt everything would be OK now that I was with my dad.  This time I wasn't going to let him go.  Not ever again.
    Dad had remarried and his wife was the sister to a girl about my age I had always felt was my first girl friend.  He also now had a son about a year old of his own who he had named after himself.
    When we had gotten home his wife had fixed me something to eat for I hadn't eaten since the previous morning before Bobby and I had left the farm to see the movie.  After eating I had taken a well needed bath, then Dad showed me where I would sleep.  It was well past my bed time so I had crawled into bed and Dad had covered me up just like the old days.  I had felt very good about life being there with Dad, him sitting on the bed talking to me until I had fallen asleep.
    The next morning when I woke up I found my cloths had been washed and were hanging over the back of a chair at the end of the bed.  I had slept well and I could smell pancakes cooking in the kitchen, so I had quickly gotten dressed and went into the kitchen.
    As I walked into the kitchen I was again talking up a blue streak.  It seemed like I couldn't say everything I wanted to say fast enough.  I was laughing again, something I had very seldom done in the last three years.  Everything was wiped out of my mind.  The juvenile home, Bobby, the last three years since I had left Dad, it was all gone.  I was home again and I didn't ever want to leave.
    Dad was siting there at the left hand end of the table as I had walked into the kitchen, his wife (who by now I felt was my mother) was at the kitchen stove on the far side of the table cooking pancakes. Dad seeing me come into the kitchen said, "Jessie you can sit down there."  It had felt good to be called "Jessie" again.  As he had spoken to me he had pointed to the chair facing him at the other end of the table.
    If I was to sit there I would have to walk straight into the room turn towards dad then pull the chair out and sit down facing him.  Sitting there would have put my back to the door and the window overlooking the driveway.  Because I wanted to sit next to Dad I had disregarded his instructions and went to the chair on his right hand side of the table, which was the closest side to me.  Standing on the left hand side of the chair, almost at Dad's right hand, I turned away from Dad towards the chair to pull it from under the table.  As I was about to sit down, still facing away from Dad, something had caught my attention through the window that overlooked the driveway.  Maybe it was some sort of movement outside of the house.  I hadn't been looking out the window not until something had caused my glance to shift that way.  Sitting in the driveway was a white police car with two men siting in it.  I had still been laughing when I had spotted it.  I wasn't completely seated when I had jumped up and cried at Dad "Why did you call the police?  If you didn't want me I would have gone away."
    The laughter was gone now.  The feeling of well being was gone.  Everything was gone.  Tears had come quickly and were freely flowing down my cheeks for I had been hurt so badly by the only person in this world I thought loved and wanted me.  I had cried and I had screamed over and over again "Why Daddy, why?  If you didn't want me I would have gone away."  If he had tried to answer me I wouldn't have heard him for my senses were shutting down trying to block everything out.  I didn't see Dad's face nor did I hear anything he may have said as the police had dragged me from the house.  By then all of my senses had essentially seized to function.
    Everything seemed so unreal, the police rushing in the back door taking a hold of my arms, I resisting them as much as I could, still screaming and crying "Why Daddy, why? If you didn't want me I would gone away."  They had to fight me as they dragged me from the house kicking, crying and screaming over and over again, "Why Daddy, why?"
    By the time they had put me in the police car I wouldn't have been able to have heard anything for by then I had retreated into my own little world.  In an instant my life had made a drastic change.  At one moment I had everything in life I wanted the next . . . .  Now I felt weak, exhausted, betrayed, unwanted, unloved and oh so alone.  I had felt Dad no longer loved me and I couldn't understand why for I had loved him so much.  I felt he had lied to me when I was nine years old when I had to go back to the orphanage.  He had told me then he wanted me and he would come for me.  At first I had watched for him but he never came and I could never understand.
    The police had taken me to an office in the police station where I was told to sit in a chair.  While one policeman stayed with me the other one had left to find the person whose office we were in.  As I sat there I was aware of what was going on around me but I didn't want to be part of any of it.  Even when the other police officer had returned with the man whose office we were in and he had called me by my real name I really didn't want to talk to him.  He had told me he knew Bobby and I had ran away from the Toledo Juvenile Home for the juvenile home had notified them that we had ran away.  That we had been gone for two weeks.  He had asked me how we had gotten to Sioux City.  Where we had been staying for those two weeks.  Where we were getting food at.  All of his questions had only been answered by my silence as I sat there staring down at the floor.  I had only broken my silence when he had asked where Bobby was and I had told him I didn't know where he was for we had been separated a couple of days before.
    He had told me to go with him and he took me out to his car.  Opening the back door he told me to get in.  I found once the door was closed I couldn't get back out.  He had got in, then backing the car out of a parking space he told me we would drive around and see if we could find Bobby.  It seems he knew Bobby from two or three years previous but he wasn't too sure if he remembered what he looked like and he wanted me to tell him if I saw him as we drove around.
    Bobby was about my size with coal black hair.  Bobby had grown some in the last couple of years since the police officer had seen him but he did remember Bobby's hair for it was unusually black.
    We had driven around what I presumed was Bobby's neighborhood for about an hour.  Every now and then the police officer would ask "Is that him?"  Each time I would say "No."  In that hour he had asked me that same question several times and the answer had always been the same.  Then I spotted Bobby walking down the sidewalk in the same direction we were going.  His back was to us so he didn't see us.  When the man again had asked me "Is that him?"  I again calmly said "No" with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.  By the time I had answered him he was already pulling the car up to the curb by Bobby.  He had rolled down the passenger side window and called to Bobby, "Are you Robert Archer?"
    I had been sitting directly behind the police officer when Bobby had glanced back and saw me, so when the man had leaned over the front seat to speak to Bobby the man couldn't see me shaking my head telling Bobby to say "No."  By now Bobby had walked over to the car seeing me in the back seat and not understanding me he told the policeman he was Robert Archer.  The man told him to get in the back seat with me.  Then he took us both down to the police station and put us in a cell together.  Later Bobby said he had been so shaken up when he had seen me in the back seat of the car he hadn't understood what I meant when I was shaking my head.
    Even after we had been in jail they had tried to find out how we had gotten to Sioux City and where we had been staying.  They were sure someone had helped us.  All we would tell them though we had hitch-hiked and that we had been sleeping outside.  Because we wanted to protect Bobby's parents from getting into trouble we had gotten together with that story in the back seat of the police car as they had taken us to the police station.  The astounding thing was I didn't even know what hitch-hiking was, not until several days later when I had asked Bobby.
    Bobby and I didn't mind jail, we were together by ourselves.  They had given us some cards so we could play "War."  The only card game either of us knew.  When we tired of that we played checkers.  Even though we tried to keep it out of our minds and our conversations we knew soon the cell door would be opening and someone would be there to take us back to the juvenile home.
    On returning to the juvenile home Bobby was put in an isolation room on the opposite end of the building from me.  Each day we would yell at each other through the crack at the bottom of the door.  It had been hard for either of us to understand what the other had said but one day I had clearly heard the tune to "Over Here Over Dell."  About a week after we had been there Bobby didn't answer my call.  I later found out he had been sent back to our cottage.
    Whenever I was in Isolation I would sing all of the songs I knew over and over again.  Tiring of this I would make up songs putting them to tunes I knew, usually religious ones.  There was one song I sung a lot it was about an orphan boy.  I had always sung it to the tune of "The Old Rugged Cross."  I think the words changed about every time I had sung it.  It had been more of a song about my feelings of life.  Whenever I had made up songs like that and had sung them, tears would run down my cheeks and I would let the tears go for I wanted to cry.  It had always seemed to help make me feel better.  Then I would fall asleep, maybe for a nap or for the night.  I did a lot of quiet crying there in Isolation.  A lot of thinking, thinking mostly of the past what little there was of it.  Maybe it was all because I didn't want to think of the future, for I was very frightened of it.
    Yes I always knew when the afternoon of the fourteenth day came.  On that day the man had always came.  It had always been the same.  Each time he had come I had retreated into my little world a little bit further.  At times I had prayed I would go blind and I would lose the rest of my hearing then I could be alone in my world where no one could ever hurt me again.  One time I had even tried to puncture my left eardrum (the ear where I still had some hearing left) so I would go totally deaf but the pain had been too great.
    Yes the man came on the fourteenth day.  My thirteenth birthday was some two months behind me.  I didn't know if I would be making my next birthday I had a feeling my life was about to end.