Harley took me from the Bad Time. He got me from Barbie and Ken, the Bible thumpers. This was up in Portland, Oregon, where I was a ward of the state from the time I was born. They were something like my eighteenth family. The Bad Time is what I call the swamp that stretches back to before I can remember. People from then bubble up in dreams sometimes. The cardigan-sweater lady who baked cookies and hit me if I didn’t show her everything I did in the toilet. The cheery chubbies who made me wear their fat kids’ old clothes and spent my support allowance on a game system I wasn’t allowed to use. The neat freaks who threw away all my books because they cluttered the room I was supposed to keep tidy. The accountants with matching glasses—he liked to come to my room to “talk” on nights when she’d taken a sleeping pill.
Not everyone was bad. I was bad. Or maybe I became bad. After a while I didn’t wait for anyone to mess with me—I messed with them. Anyway, the thumpers weren’t the worst and they weren’t the best. They weren’t really called Ken and Barbie either. Wayne and Patti were their names. I think they wanted to be Ken and Barbie though. They’d come up from some Bible college in California. They had shiny teeth, and we prayed a lot when they weren’t watching Fox News or trying to save me and the gay tree huggers. Wayne and Patti thought gay stuff was the worst sin going— that and jerking off.
“Keep yourself clean,” Wayne would warn. “Never sin against yourself. There are real fires, literal fires of hell, and they burn. Give me your left hand.”
Then he’d hold my hand over a red-hot stove element—not touching it, but I didn’t know he wouldn’t. I’d try to pull away, but he was stronger than me and I’d feel him pushing my hand closer and closer. The first time, I was so scared I wet myself. I got in trouble for that too. It was always my left hand Wayne did the stove thing with. I didn’t tell him I used my right. Instead I’d go into the bathroom and do it all over his toothbrush first chance I got. Then I’d get in a fight at school.
The main problem with Wayne and Patti was the churchgoing and having to pray out loud for forgiveness when I got in trouble, which was a lot. That and the sucker punching to the kidneys. I wasn’t kidding about Bible thumpers. I guess the Bible said hitting was okay, but the state didn’t like bruises.
Harley had been with Darla then, doing their Bill and Bonnie Blessing ministry number. They came through Wayne and Patti’s church. Harley said getting me was easy. He told them to wait a day and then say I’d run off. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d run.
For a long time, I thought Harley had paid them for me. I asked him once a couple of years later, just to know what I was worth. “Give me a fucking break,” he said. “They paid me.” His voice went all singsongy. “A small offering unto the Lord that we might take this child under our wings on the path to salvation.” He snorted and popped a fresh piece of gum. “I’ll guarantee you, they didn’t pay me as much as the next foster-allowance check, and they didn’t report you missing until they’d cashed it. You must have been a royal pain in the ass.”
“I didn’t pray loud enough before meals.”
“Chew with your mouth closed is all I ask.”
I don’t remember much about how I felt when Wayne told me to get into Harley and Darla’s RV with my green garbage bag of clothes. The RV had BLESSINGS TO YOU painted on its side in sky blue. I’m sure I figured it couldn’t be any worse than staying where I was, and anyway, back then I was super good at not letting myself feel things.
I remember sitting in the back of the RV, watching Darla crack her window and light a smoke when we went around the corner. When we stopped at the first traffic light, Harley said around his gum, “Hey kid, grab me a beer from the fridge back there.”
He popped it open, still watching the road. “What are we gonna call you, anyway?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Bill Junior.” Darla blew smoke out the window. “That way, there’s no screwups.”
“Work for you?” Harley glanced at me over his shoulder. I nodded and went back and sat down. The only thing that surprised me about any of it was being asked. I knew they were supposed to be traveling preachers, but I was way past expecting anyone to be what they said they were. Even Wayne had had a porn stash behind some paneling in the basement. I’d left it spread all over the family room with a note that said left or right? before they called me upstairs to go with Harley and Darla. I’m good at finding things.
I remember liking that we had kfc and Dr. Pepper for dinner in the RV that first night. Nobody said grace either. In the Bad Time I’d gotten things like mashed potatoes and minute steak with water or milk—except with the fit freaks. With them, it was all tofu, brown rice, fish and steamed vegetables. That was even worse.
After dinner, Darla lit another smoke. Harley belched and said, “Oh baby, that hit the spot.” It was better than praying and stove elements, but it didn’t mean I trusted them. I kept a steak knife from the kitchenette drawer under the mattress for the first few months. They never bothered me that way though; they didn’t even do it with each other much. Mostly it was just business.
That was what they’d gotten me for: Business. At first I was just cover for them—everybody trusts a family more. I was small for my age and I looked younger than I was, especially after they got me some new clothes and a haircut. “Stand beside me and smile. Then give them an envelope. Say ‘Blessings to you.’”
“Blessings to you.”
“You’re a natural. You like school?” Harley worked his gum.
I shrugged. I hated school.
“Well, we move around a lot. This is a different school. School of life. Right now we’re going to work this mall. Smile and hold Darla’s hand when we walk.”
That was the only part I didn’t like, but I managed.
Harley pulled the door open. “Everything you need to know, you’re going to learn from us. Keep your ears and eyes open.”