Shortly after Mr. Ladd had talked with me a new cottage opened up.  Several of boys from my cottage were selected to go.  I now being thirteen years old was in the oldest age group in the my cottage so I suppose that is why I was one of those boys selected to go to the new cottage.  To my delight I might add.  Then again maybe Mr. Ladd felt it was time I be moved away from the Urquharts, the cause of most of the abuse I was receiving.   Also I was very happy for most of my childhood friends moved with me, and we had been allowed to be more together.
    The new cottage I was transferred to was not on the main campus but a house located on the corner, south of and across the street from the home's greenhouse.  The cottage had stood empty for several years but due to the increase of the number of boys in the institution, several boys from Turner Hall and several boys from the next oldest boy's cottage had been transferred to the new cottage.
    The cottage parents were new to the institution they had been hired only a few days before the new cottage opened and I had quickly noticed the first day I was there they were nice.  They were nothing like any cottage parents I had ever had before.
    They had taken us in groups of about five boys directly upstairs and showed us our beds.  There were three bunks in each room and they had allowed each of us to select the bed we wanted to sleep in.  I had been lucky for I had been in the first group that went up stairs and I had my choice of any bed I wanted.  I had chosen an upper bunk in the southwest corner of the far back room.
    After putting our things away, several of the boys that had come from Turner Hall and I explored the house.  I had quickly found a narrow stairway that led from behind the fireplace on the first floor to the second floor where our bed rooms were located.
    I had thought I had found a secret passage way and had excitedly shown it to some of the boys I knew.  Most of the boys had been all of my friends I had in White Hall for they had all caught up with me along the way.  There had been a couple of other boys added to our group when we had been in Turner Hall, their names were Dewain Gooding and Kay Kay Kenikur.  Dewain sure lived up to his name too.
    Maybe it was being transferred to a new cottage with all my friends or maybe it was because I had been transferred away from the Urquharts or maybe it had just been I was so excited about my new cottage parents I quit running away.  I don't know why I had stopped running away but it had happen that way.  I hadn't given it any thought, I simply quit running away.
    I had soon come to love my cottage parents and I was proud I was in their cottage.  I became very attached to my cottage parents especially my cottage father.  It was like I was trying to make up for all of the love that I had lost or been denied me over the years.
    In the evenings our cottage mother would read to us in front of the fireplace.  Other times we may throw chestnuts into the fire, chestnuts that we had found on many of our hiking trips they would take us on.  Sometimes the trips were over two miles west of the institution.
    On one of those trips we hunted mushrooms and took them back to our cottage.  There that evening our cottage mother had cooked them for us.  She had gone to the store and bought things like potato chips, hot dogs and other things for a picnic.  Instead of going to the dining hall that night we ate in our yard.  The dining room was the same dining room I had eaten in all of the time I had been in the institution.  It was now a half mile or more away.  That coming winter it had been a long, cold walk.
    Our Sunday evening meal we always ate in our cottage or if the weather was good we would eat picnic style out in our yard.  Sunday evening meal usually consisted of sandwiches, milk, cookies and an apple.  For some reason I never liked Sunday evening meals nor even Sunday evenings.  Maybe I was tired from seeing the movie in town that afternoon.  Then again Sunday is the most boringest day in an institution.
    Sunday morning after breakfast we would have to get dressed in our dress clothes, clothes I hated for they were made out of wool.  Then we would have to go to church to listen to someone who we couldn't understand what in the world he was talking about.  I think I learned more about harlots and drunkenness in church than I did anywhere else.
    There was the singing.  I liked to sing so that part of the service I looked forward to.  Except there was one song they sung every Sunday I didn't really care too much for.  I always thought they were singing about some doctor.  It went, "Holy, Holy, Holy, God Almighty."  It was called Doc something or another.
    After church services we had to stay in our good clothes and wear them to Sunday diner.  Wearing the clothes to church and having to sit there for over an hour was bad enough but to keep them on for Sunday dinner crucified me.  Then if we went to a movie after diner we had to wear them to that too.
    Each Sunday afternoon right after we had eaten and were still sitting at our table Mr. Ladd would get up in front of all us kids in the dining hall and make a speech.
    When I had lived in Turner Hall my table, the one I always sat alone at, was right up there in front of the dining hall.  As a matter of fact it was almost on the girls' side of the dining hall.  He would get up there and talk about how noisy the dining hall had been that week and some of the other problems he always seemed to be having with us.
    It seems like it had been almost every Sunday he wouldn't miss a chance of saying, "If some certain people around here don't quit running away, we'll have to take the picture show money and build a fence around the juvenile home."  Every time he would say that he would be standing right in front of my table looking down at me.  There had been no doubt in my mind as to who he was talking about.  It had sort of made me squirm a little bit thinking the other kids would be thinking I could cost them movie privileges if I didn't quit running away.  But that had all been before I had moved to my new cottage.  I never missed a movie after going there.
    No one really cared about his speech anyway, all we wanted to know was if we were going to the movie downtown.  He always left that little bit of news to right at the end of his long winded speech.  In some strange sort of way I wish I could have liked him but I was much too afraid of him and what he could do to me.
    Our cottage parents at times would take all of us boys to a lake somewhere southwest of Tama, about two miles from the juvenile home so we could go swimming and at times even to do some fishing.
    At the age of thirteen I was very frightened of the water and didn't know how to swim.  But I didn't want anyone to know that, so whenever I went into the water I never went in where it was deep and I would always pretend to be able to swim.  The only reason I can think of why I was so afraid of water was because of my cottage mother, Mrs. Gruber back at the orphanage and the baths she had given me.
    I didn't like to fish so I would sit and watch the other boys.  I thought it was sad that they would kill a little fish.  Of course that was something else I was careful in not letting others know.
    My cottage mother had given me some yarn and showed me how to knit so I knitted my mother a black and red scarf for Christmas.  They had to send the scarf to her in the mail for she was no longer allowed to come and visit me.
    Even though I wrote letters to my mother I didn't know where she lived.  Letters, I later learned she never received.  I guess because she never received letters from me, my mother never wrote to me either.
    I didn't care if I ever left the juvenile home not as long as I could stay in this cottage.  I felt my cottage parents really cared about me.  Anyway if I was to ever be transferred to another cottage it would be after I was fourteen and that would be to the man's cottage who had said he would cut my heel-strings. (tendons behind my ankles)  I wasn't looking forward to being transferred to his cottage but then that was several months away and I never thought that far ahead.
    I guess the best thing of all during the school year was on weekends I could go about the institution and help my cottage father paint.  His other job at the juvenile home had been painting.  Mr. Urquhart's other job was electrical, plumbing and other types of maintenance.
    I got into a lot of trouble once when I told Mrs. Urquhart, Mr. Urquhart was a, "Jack of all trades," because I felt he could do so many different things.  I had been trying to say something nice about Mr. Urquhart but Mrs. Urquhart had gotten mad at me and had given me a resounding slap and told me never to say that about him again.  I discovered the last part of the saying "Master of none."  Apparently she didn't agree with that.
    I was the only boy who ever went with my cottage father to paint.  I don't think I was his "Pet" or favorite boy for he treated all of the boys in our cottage about the same.  I think it was I showed more interest in painting and being with him than all of the other boys did.  If I had ever thought I had a father after losing my adopted father then at that time I felt he was that father.  It seems I couldn't be with him enough.
    When the weather was not good enough to paint outside then we would paint inside. We painted all of the rooms in the infirmary.  I definitely remember painting the room I had seen on the way back to the orphanage from my adopted home when I was nine years old.
    When the weather was good we would be on the outside of the infirmary painting all of the windows and eaves.  When school was out a couple of weeks after my fourteenth birthday I would go every day and help my cottage father paint.  First we had painted all of the lower windows in the administration building then we moved to the boys cottages.
    All of the cottages we painted were made out of brick but they had wooden windows and eaves.  We had started on the outside of Turner Hall first when that cottage was done we had moved over to the girls' side.
    It had been towards the middle of July when we had started on the first girls' cottage closest to the dining hall.  That was the little girls' cottage.  Once we had finished that one we had moved to the next oldest girls' cottage.
    The girls in this cottage were about the same age I was.  This was Mary's cottage, the girl all of the boys had teased me about when I lived in White Hall.  I now liked her but I had very limited contact with her now that school was out.  In school we would slip notes back and forth, very carefully.
    My cottage father had gone up in the girls' dormitory with me as he had in the last girls' cottage and had sat the step ladder under the trapdoor to the attic.  Then he had helped me get into the attic.
    Once he had seen I was safely in the attic he had gone back downstairs and outside to paint the lower windows as I crawled though the attic to the east side of the cottage.  Opening the window I had sat down and opened the can of white paint I had brought up with me.  After stirring it I started painting the outside of the window, sitting half in and half out of the window.
    I had just started painting the window when I heard a girl's voice from inside the attic calling me by name.  It was Mary.  I had crawled inside of the window and we had started talking.  I don't remember what we had been talking about but it had been just two kids talking to each other.
    We had both known we were not allowed to talk to each other.  If she had known why girls and boys were not allowed to have any contact with each other I sure didn't know.  In my life it was a rule and I never questioned rules.  The only rule I had really disobeyed was running away, the rest of the rules I usually tried to follow.
    At that time I was two months past my fourteenth birthday.  I knew I had a strong attraction for her but I didn't understand at that time why.  We had been sitting there talking for about five minutes. I was sitting near the window and she was standing on top of the step ladder at the trapdoor over fifteen feet away.  I had heard my cottage father calling me.  He was now standing on the ground below the window I was suppose to be painting.
    I had stuck my head out the window to see what he wanted.  He yelled up to me, not in a harsh voice or anything like that but more in a normal voice, "Do you have a girl up there with you?"
    I knew that was not allowed.  Mary and I both would be in trouble if anyone found out.  Pulling my head back in the window as though to look around I told Mary to leave and then putting my head out the window again I replied, "No Sir.  There's no girl up here," and went back to painting hoping that was the end of that.
    He must have ran into the cottage and up the stairs to the dormitory for he was soon at the attic trap door.  He had caught Mary going down from the dormitory.  He had put Mary going down the stairs and me inside of the attic not painting the window together and came up with me having lied to him.  He had told me to pick up my paint, come down and go back to my cottage.  He wasn't mad about Marry being in the attic with me, anyway he didn't sound that way.  He had only told me to go back to my cottage.
    I don't know who told Mr. Ladd I had been in the attic with Mary (I think it was Mary's cottage mother) but within an hour I was called to his office to explain why I had been in the attic with her.  I told him all we had been doing was talking.  He told me I knew the rules and after he had done some talking to me, something about me getting girls in trouble, he walked me to Isolation.
    For a boy who had barely passed his fourteenth birthday I was unbelievably naive when it came to girls.  But he had impressed on me when it came to that it was always the boy's fault.  Which put girls, in my mind anyway, a little bit higher upon that ivory pedestal I had placed them on.
    A week later on the Twenty Sixth of July I was sent back to my cottage with a stern warning I had better not get caught near a girl again.  That had been the only time I had gotten out of Isolation without a whipping.  I don't know but maybe Mr. Urquhart was busy that day.
    It was the next day after breakfast I was standing in the washroom waiting for my cottage father to come and tell me it was time to go and paint.  But when he came he told me I would no longer be allowed to help him paint.  For a moment I had stood there and looked at him in disbelief as though I was confused as to what he was saying to me.
    I hadn't asked him why for it wasn't my place to question anything an adult had told me.  I was hurt and even though I was fourteen years old I began to cry and I didn't want him or any of the boys see me crying, so I had ran out of the cottage to a log that laid some thirty feet from the back of my cottage, and I sat there and cried.
    Even though I had felt I had been wrong in talking to Mary, I felt not going to paint with my cottage father was much too harsh of a punishment.  I suppose also I felt because of what I had done the relationship I had between my cottage father and I had been irreversibly broken.  I felt he no longer loved me and that there was nothing special between us.  I was hurt and I couldn't understand for it had seemed I had lost everything.
    It had now been over eleven months since I had last ran away.  Little did I know at the time I had talked to Mary in the attic, that day was to start a chain of events that would change the course of my life forever.  The terror of my life was just before me.

Old Shep
MIDI by Sal Grippaldi

Chapter Nineteen