Richard Stays With Us

CW: suicide 

***

It was a day in spring, near the end of the school year. That was the day that Richard put his knife to his throat. The Principal of the High School was called to the home where Richard was staying, to see if he could talk Richard out of suicide.

It was Senior Skip Day at the High School, so I was home the whole day, when somehow word got to me that something was going on at the Slade’s. I knew Richard from school, and we had become friends. We went on the lake in an old beat up boat I had, which I named “Captain Woody” after a local cartoon show celebrity. Captain Woody had arrived after the legendary cowboy actor Buck Barry retired from WOOD TV, and he inherited the Popeye cartoons and Three Stooges features from the aging matinee idol. So we rowed “Captain Woody” around as water seeped into her, bailing her out when it looked like we would founder on a broken wooden spike from an old peer. It was ridiculous and harmless fun.

Before that, we were in Choir together at the High School, and we met there and attended the choir picnic together, complete with a swim. Someone commented in a funny way when he noticed Richard’s manhood blooming under his swim trunks while he watched the girls cavorting in their bikinis.

Richard was unlike anyone else I knew in school. He had not been in the school system before, and nobody knew his family. In a small town like that, everyone knew everyone, but not so Richard. He was a mystery, a dark skinned person but yet not African American. If anything, he looked somewhat Native American. He was someone who did not seem to be very bright, perhaps not able to read…but that may have been due to his upbringing, about which we knew little. He told my parents that he had “Run away f’o home.” Who did he belong to, and how did he ever get into this little town?

Richard had two possessions that I knew about, other than the clothes on his back; they were a knife and a battery charger. How I became friends with him I cannot tell you. We just started doing things…he was open to that, I guess. Perhaps it was because I felt rejected by the elites in school, who I suspected thought my absorption in playing classical piano was extremely nerdy, (the town was never a cultural mecca at that time) or perhaps it was because I rebelled against the elite snobs at school, the "Townies,” by embracing as acquaintances a riff raff of unsavory rejected types… tough kids, as it were, and thought myself friends with them. When one of them ended up in Hospital, I brought him magazines, or at least went to say hello.

 I hung out during lunch across the street from school outside a convenience store called “Stokes,” with all the cigarette smokers, among whom was Richard. I even carried a pack of cigs in my shirt pocket during school, which many of the tough kids did, but for which the principal did not punish us, although it was a technical infraction. So, Richard and I were friends, and so I was at the Slade’s, surprised at the sudden appearance of our Principal, who gave me a nod and disappeared into the Slade home and up the stairs to where Richard held his knife to his throat.

Now, the Slades were the "Lord’s People", apparently, at least in their own eyes. They were not only religious, but sanctimonious. Their lack of real Christian charity is shown by how when their cat had kittens, the poor mother cat lugged them all over the neighborhood dropping them off everywhere, including at our house, because the Slades could not be bothered to feed or find a home for them. Richard was living with the Slades, a family already wall to wall with children. He had fallen into their trap when he showed up at campsites operated by their church. They were going to” bring him to God”. But instead, Mr. Macmurty was upstairs talking Richard out of getting to Eternity a lot sooner than scheduled. Mr. Mac succeeded, (which put him higher in my esteem than he ever had been before) because soon he and Richard emerged and drove away, with Mrs. Slade calling out behind him, “I don't want that kid back here, he’ll never be welcome back here, never!"…kind, Christian soul as she appeared to be.

Richard went to the “Nut Hut,” which is what kids back then called the local sanitarium. Mom and I visited Richard at the hospital, and Mom decided that she wanted Richard to stay with us after he got out. And so, Richard came to stay with us. My brother and I previously had given up our bedrooms to stay in the basement together, as our older brothers had done before us, and we were quite comfortable there, so Richard took the small bedroom upstairs. Although Richard could be very personable, he could also be strange and moody. Mom and I used to have lunch out, and discuss what we could do for Richard, how we could come to understand him, how to have him feel at home.

About two weeks into his stay his father showed up. He was suffering badly from PTSD related to combat in World War 2; He dressed in a grubby hacked up tee shirt and crud encrusted pants and reeked of alcohol. He looked around and expressed his desire that since we “are good people” that Richard should stay with us. Then he got into his beat up old Ford and went back to where he lived, about 50 miles from our place. I wonder if it was abuse that caused Richard to "Run away f'o home."

Richard seemed to be all right, but his instability was a concern…there was some fear in the family that in some sort of exaggerated state he might hurt some one of us, or himself. One day, he was taking a nap, and I walked into his room. He heard my footstep, and spun up out of bed with a defensive pose, looking like a caged animal about to strike. “What’s up, Richard, it’s only me.”

This vague sense of Richard somehow posing some mysterious danger to us came to a head when my sister visited during the summer. She was frightened by Richard and the potential danger that she thought he posed to the family. She spoke to us all about that, and she spoke, I suspect, to Richard. She made herself disgusting with her comments on this boy, who she didn’t even know from Adam’s off ox. No doubt about it, Anne thought that Richard should go, as if it were any of her business. She had her own damn life to live, and it wasn't at home anymore.

I am sure that Richard became aware of all this. He and I went one day to the Campsite of these Holy Rollers again, to pick up some of his gear, and they accused him of stealing a mattress. Richard said “I did not do it.” They continued on their rubbish about him stealing the mattress, until finally I said, “If Richard said he didn’t steal the mattress, then he didn’t steal the mattress.”

“Who are you? What do you know? That kid is trouble from the word go.”

“Why I am John, I am Richard’s friend, and I won’t have him called a liar. Come on, Richard, let’s go.” Such people bring only shame to the name of the Lord.

I wonder if my comments at the campground were the reason why the sanctimonious Slades were trying to pry Richard back into their clutches. He started going over there to have conversations for which I was kept out of the house. I don’t think Richard was aware that Mrs. Slade said, as he left that day with our Principal, that “I never want him in my house again!”

This was at a time when my Father was talking about how he wanted to put Richard through college at his own expense. I think Richard reminded him of his own youth, where he and his sister were insulted by passers-by in the street for being part Native American. (My great grandmother was "Flight of Geese," a woman of the Ho-chuck tribe, and for marrying her my great grandfather was disinherited.) Instead, the Slades, Especially Mrs. S, convinced him to go to some Goody Two-Shoes bible school in the South! It was the worst idea possible for someone like him. He went there, got into trouble and fights again, failed miserably, and was thrown out. Meanwhile, he was out of our influence, and I think we were doing him some good when he was with us. We did not judge him or condemn him or view him as dangerous…well, except for my sister. But we were prepared to keep Richard, in spite of my sister’s protests.

He never again lived with the Slades, as far as I know, or with us. At least he was free of the strange superstitions of the Slade cult. This was the same woman who once told my mother that she felt she could hardly breathe without feeling like she would be cast into hell at any moment. Yet she raised her whole family that way, and they are just as sanctimonious today as ever.

Richard got a job delivering cars from one state to another. One night, he overturned and crashed one of those cars, and was lucky not to get killed. He was fired, however. He ended up going back to his home city, and found work…but we were soon out of touch.

I don’t think that Richard needed anything more than some stability, and a chance to feel at home. I expect that in order to keep him out of the clutches of the holy rollers, my parents should have fostered him…but who expected that he would return to their dark embrace?

 In total, Richard lived with us for about a year, and yet I remember him to this day…he was unique, and somewhat of a mystery that was never truly revealed, at least not to me. This made him so different from the everyday students at our provincial little High School and town, and memorable. I hope he found some peace and joy in what has remained of his days on this troubled world.