The Year of the Rat
by Nico Grey
Chapter 11
"You're hungry?" I figured I needed a few details to know how to help Jebby.
He nodded. "I haven't eaten anything in almost three days."
Good grief! Well, at least he had known about Grant Park. But how?
"This pastor I was living with, he came here sometimes. He bragged about it."
I sensed a long, complicated story. And while I still had close to seven hours of darkness ahead of me, I suspected that Jebby might not last that long.
As we walked, I tried to run through some options. Mike would take good care of him. He had done a great job with me. And maybe having someone to look after would make him care again; not give up. It could even help to restore his health!
But I couldn't just drop him with Mike. He was probably already asleep. And I couldn't meet Mike face-to-face, or at least I hadn't figured out how to do that yet.
I thought about fixing up a lair for Jebby in the church basement. But two others living in that building might start to compromise my privacy... and my safety.
Giving Jebby my lair was probably the best option. I had identified other places where I could live, if necessary. Jebby would meet Mike eventually. They could help each other. Maybe. I still hadn't figured out if there was anything in Jebby that was worth a damn.
Besides, if I left I would miss the familiar old church building. I would miss my time communing with the god in its chancel.
I would miss living near Mike. I would miss being able to check on him simply by extending my senses. I would miss kissing his cheek goodnight.
Yeah. That wouldn't be a great choice, either.
I decided to punt. I thought that I could provide Jebby a place in my lair for the night, then figure out his situation later. Maybe I could help Jebby work out a solution. I wondered if Father Maxwell could help.
This sad, pathetic boy walking next to me — that I still hated — just needed some food and someplace safe and fairly warm to get through the night. Tomorrow might provide answers for the longer term.
Jebby wondered if there was a McDonald's open nearby. There was. But I explained to him that he should probably try to eat better, and less expensively, while he was living on the street. You could never tell when money might suddenly get tight.
It was another twenty minutes out of our way, but I brought him to the Whole Foods Market. We found some healthier options for Jebby there. And we picked up food for the following day.
He wondered when I didn't buy anything for myself. "Do you already have food at home?"
That was kind of a tough one. I explained that I didn't need any food right then. It wasn't an excuse that was going to fly more than once or twice.
Jebby was exhausted by the time we arrived at my lair. He wolfed down a quick meal. When I explained that I wasn't ready to sleep, he fought to stay awake. He didn't want to sleep while I was still up. I don't know if he thought that would be impolite. By then, he certainly had no reason to think that I would harm him while he slept.
I didn't fight him. I was starting to figure out some things that I should have realized before bringing him home. If he was awake and active for hours during the following day, he was bound to want to leave the lair. I had security concerns. And I worried that he might bump into Mike and start a conversation that could lead places I really didn't want Mike exploring.
So I accepted Jebby's offer. We stayed up late into the night talking. I learned a lot about what had happened in our past, and what had happened in his more recent past.
He was tired. His story was difficult for me to follow because he was having trouble organizing it in his head. But the short version is that there were some things about Jebby Lee's background that helped to explain why he had treated me they way that he had. I hated that. It made it harder for me to hate him.
Jebby and his family had moved to Chicago from a small town in southwestern Virginia. Things were a lot different in that part of Virginia than they were in Chicago. It was a lot less developed. There were fewer people there. Most people there looked at the world the same way. They were much more religious than most people in the city.
The Lee family found that the values that prevailed in Chicago were far different from the values that most of their community in southwestern Virginia had shared. I suppose the change frightened them. Instead of cautiously reaching out to learn more about the values of their new community, they turned inward.
Jebby's father discovered a small fundamentalist church somewhere out in Northlake. That church and their home became the center of life for the Lee family. His father and mother clung to the values they had brought with them from Virginia. They expected the same from their six children. They expected it with a belt. Sometimes it was worse.
When Jebby showed up at our school to start third grade, he was terrified. That school was much bigger than the school he had attended in Virginia. The community was bigger and much different from the one in which he had spent the first eight years of his life. It was a sinful place. His parents were very clear about that. He lived in fear, those first few weeks at school.
He remembered me. At first, he thought I was somebody just like him. I was small. I appeared to be as uncomfortable and unhappy as he felt. He thought we might become friends. He had thought about that a lot.
He was still terrified of what might happen to him among all those boys and girls who were so different from him. When they eventually showed signs of accepting him, when they invited him to join in their games instead of making him the butt of their games, the relief had overwhelmed him. He forgot about becoming my friend. He focused on pleasing those people who could turn on him and make his life miserable if he didn't fit in with them. Jebby went along to get along.
Really, he almost forgot about me for the next two years.
A little after he turned ten years old, he gradually became aware of changes in his body. And slowly, he became aware of changes in his thinking. To make a long story short, he started to feel some attraction toward other boys.
Jebby knew that was evil. His parents and their pastor told him that every day of the week and twice on Wednesday and Sunday.
To a ten-year-old child, still a bit insecure about living in the Chicago suburbs after growing up in rural Virginia, having those feelings was terrifying. Not only would he go straight to hell for feeling that way, if his parents found out he would go straight to the woodshed! If his pastor found out, he would be held up as an example of evil in front of their entire congregation. And if the kids at school found out, he would be cast out from the herd and forced to wander forever in the social wilderness.
The worst part of Jebby's new feelings was that they were triggered by me.
He seemed a little embarrassed telling me about that, although earlier in the evening we had spent the better part of a half hour naked and committing sodomy under the Chicago night sky. But when Jebby started to realize that he had feelings for boys, even sexual feelings about boys, they had mostly been toward me.
I had a little trouble accepting that. Why would beautiful Jebby feel sexually attracted to a rat? But he insisted that it was the truth. It probably saved us both a lot of embarrassment when he didn't go into details.
The twisted part of the story is the way that he handled those feelings. Once he figured out that they were mostly about me, he blamed me for them. I guess he was protecting himself. If he had sexual feelings for boys, he was evil. That would change his life forever, in ways too numerous for his mind to comprehend.
If those sexual feelings were because of me, then maybe I was evil. Jebby was off the hook. He just had to denounce the source of the evil. I guess it was a screwed-up religious thing.
And that, in a capsule, explains why the next two years had been such a misery for me.
Jebby was ashamed of his behavior. He couldn't bring himself to even look at me during that part of his story. He insisted that he had beat himself up every day since I just disappeared mid-way through our sixth grade year. He was sure that he was responsible for that.
I don't know what came over me. I was the aggrieved party. Jebby was the little bastard that had made my life such a misery for years. But seeing him look as miserable as he did telling the story; seeing his shame in the downcast eyes and the tears trickling down his cheeks; watching him pinch his forearms in a form of self-flagellation, I guess; I couldn't help myself. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders. I let him lean into me and sob.
Maybe it was guilt over his behavior toward me that led to his downfall. Or maybe it was fated to happen. He got a little careless.
His mother found some pictures of shirtless boys stashed in his bookcase. Shirtless boys? It wasn't a big deal. But to his father it was a huge deal!
And whether it was because Jebby was just exhausted from the lifestyle he had been living, or whether it was a form of self-punishment for what he had done to me, when his father told him to pull his pants back up and get on his knees to pray to their god for guidance, Jebby defied him! He told his father that he felt the way he did and that no prayer or beatings would change that.
So much for going along to get along.
Their church pastor was called in to handle the case. Clearly Jebby needed more help than his parents were qualified to provide.
When Jebby defied the pastor, too, all hell broke loose! He ended up in church custody! The case could have gone straight to the pope... if that church had a pope.
Instead, Jebby ended up living with that pastor. His parents decided that they wanted nothing more to do with him. His evil might corrupt the rest of their children. The pastor was only too glad to help.
Living with the pastor is where Jebby found out about butt sex. That pastor firmly believed that if you spared the rod it would spoil the child.
In the pastor's defense, he didn't just shove Jebby into the deep end and expect him to swim. But Jebby hadn't been living with the guy for more than a few weeks before he found out about oral sex.
The Catholics have their own form of Communion, the pastor and his church had another. Jebby received communion quite often before he graduated to more advanced lessons.
That went on for more than four months. When Jebby's father finally came to see him, Jebby was almost overjoyed!
It wasn't a heartwarming reunion. Mr. Lee demanded to know if Jebby had disavowed unnatural relations with men. How could Jebby say that he had? He was having unnatural relations with a man every night. Sometimes more than once in a night.
When Mr. Lee detected Jebby's reticence, he disowned him on the spot. He told Jebby that the Lee family was returning to Virginia, and that his siblings would be raised far away from the perverse influence of their black sheep brother.
He had brought papers with him. He signed them in front of Jebby. Those papers gave the pastor permanent possession of Mr. Lee's son... and of his son's ass. The only thing that could be said in Mr. Lee's defense is that he probably didn't know what the pastor had planned for Jebby's butt. Probably.
Three nights later, Jebby fled from the pastor's home and started living on the streets. A couple of weeks later, after freezing nights in doorways or behind dumpsters, and mostly picking food out of those dumpsters, Jebby had remembered the pastor mentioning Grant Park and the restrooms in the northwest corner of the park.
And there, in Grant Park, Jebby and I had come full circle. We had ended up consummating a relationship he had dreamed about, under circumstances that neither of us would have chosen for ourselves. But maybe we would have if we had known about the ending. I was still a little conflicted about that. I was starting to look back on his squealing with some fondness.
When he finished talking, Jebby was exhausted. He pulled away from me a little bit. Maybe he was unsure of my reaction to his story.
He tried to meet my eyes.
"You can hate me, Rat. I deserve it. Most of the time I even hate myself."
It was his form of atonement. Maybe it was a generous offer. I wasn't sure.
I searched my heart. I relived my past. I experienced all of that pain again. I thought about how it had shaped my life. And I thought about the life I was now living.
I didn't hate him.
It might take me a while to fully understand everything. I couldn't figure out all of his reasoning at the time, but he had been ten. I certainly regretted that I hadn't had a better childhood.
But that wasn't Jebby's fault. He didn't try to hurt me deliberately. At worst, he was just doing his best to keep himself from getting hurt. But there were so many screwed up circumstances that affected his understanding of what was happening to him, and to me.
I didn't hate him.
I couldn't hate him.
We finally settled into my nest as dawn broke outside the church. I could sense it coming. Direct sunlight will kill a vampire. But even if inside a sealed mausoleum, a vampire finds it very difficult to remain awake once the sun's first rays begin to rise into the sky.
Jebby was exhausted. He was asleep before he had finished burrowing into the nest.
Maybe it was a reflex. I wasn't sure why I did it. As I settled into the nest behind Jebby, I leaned over and kissed him on the side of his head. He never moved, but I sensed a smile forming on his lips that just never fully blossomed.
Jebby was still in the nest when I woke. Apparently he had been awake for at least a little while. But he hadn't wanted to disturb me. And he hadn't wanted to leave me.
"Man! You weren't kidding when you said you were tired, Rat." He really seemed delighted to see me awake. "You slept like the dead!"
That gave me a shock! And it reminded me of my dilemma. Jebby needed someplace safe to stay. And I certainly couldn't offer him a place with me. If we shared a lair, sooner or later certain peculiarities in my habits were bound to raise uncomfortable questions — probably sooner.
After sleep had cleared from my brain, I was still no closer to figuring out what to do about Jebby. I needed help. I also needed something for Jebby to do.
He asked about going back to Grant Park. After his experience there the previous night, I considered that courageous.
I explained that his money would last several more days and that it wasn't necessary to work every night. If he was still on the street in six months, it might make sense to begin setting money aside for the winter. But with summer approaching, there would always be opportunities to make money.
I discovered that Jebby didn't really know a lot about downtown Chicago. I was actually disappointed that I would never be able to show it to him during the day. Maybe that was something that he and Mike would be able to do together.
I could show Jebby around Gateway Park and the Navy Pier. Those were always interesting places to be at night. And I hoped that I might run into someone there that could help me figure out how to resolve my dilemma.
I found Taryn sitting alone near the Wave Swinger. It was a shame it was still early in the season. That would have been a great distraction for Jebby had it been open. Instead, I handed him fifty dollars and told him to return in about an hour.
I felt kind of bad for dumping him like that. I know that he looked disappointed. But I explained that I had to meet a friend for a private discussion.
When Jebby noticed Taryn, he wanted to know if he was my drug dealer! I was startled, but also somewhat relieved. Jebby wasn't being judgmental, just curious. He was so naïve in many ways. I was beginning to feel some actual affection for him.
I explained that Taryn was just a friend. But that he was a fairly private person and might not be comfortable meeting both of us until he got to know Jebby. Since I needed to discuss something private with him, it was better if Jebby went somewhere nearby and had some fun while Taryn and I talked.
I suspected that Jebby was worried that the something private I had to discuss involved him. Since it did, I tried to distract him. I could see that Jebby was concerned about being alone of the pier. I encouraged him to stay in sight of us.
I didn't have a lot of time and I thought that we probably had a lot to talk about. I didn't even speak 'hello'. I just sat down beside Taryn, rested my head on his shoulder, and opened my mind to him.
He understood.
When he had finished sorting through my latest experiences and concerns, there was a troubled expression in his eyes, but a faint smile curling his lips.
"I still have no idea how you do that," he said. "Even Justin and I don't have the kind of rapport that just allows us to open our minds to each other that fully."
He was more concerned about my news. He didn't lecture me. He didn't have to. Too much involvement with humans creates complications for vampires that can turn disastrous. I understood that. But I couldn't just stand by and watch Mike, and now Jebby, suffering.
Taryn didn't have too many options to add to those I had already considered. There were shelters for street kids, but they were often as bad as living on the streets; sometimes worse.
Any involvement with human services ran the risk of getting Mike deported to Canada and Jebby back in the hands of his perverted pastor.
Taryn thought it was too soon for Father Maxwell to have put anything together to help street kids. But he encouraged me to talk to him anyway.
He thought my option of leaving Jebby in my lair and finding a new home might be the best of my choices, but I would still face complications if I returned to Grant Park to work. And I really wouldn't be able to go back to the church, even to visit.
"You should just leave them there and never see them again," Taryn advised. "But you really are too kind-hearted to abandon them, aren't you?"
He was grimacing as he said it. This time I saw the affection in his eyes.
"You understand the consequences for you, and probably for your friends, if this goes wrong, Rat." Taryn shook his head. "But whatever you decide, you'll make the right choice. You have a good heart."
I had a good heart. It just wasn't helping me to resolve my dilemma. I let him hold me for a few moments before we had to separate.
Taryn stood up and left when Jebby approached. But he did spare a smile and a gentle greeting for the kid.
That probably made Jebby feel better about my visit. Drug dealers aren't ever that friendly.
"Is he your boyfriend?" he asked as we watched Taryn stroll away.
I couldn't help it. I laughed.
"He's a great guy, Jebby. But he isn't my boyfriend." Then I had an inspiration. I never knew where it came from. Maybe it was something that emerged while Taryn was in my mind. "He's like a support person. I have a kind of illness, Jebby. Taryn's understands. He has it, too."
I was going to build on that. I needed a little time to put all the pieces together in my head, but I thought that it just might help me to resolve my dilemma. Or at least one part of it.
I realized that I wanted Jebby to stay involved in my life as long as he needed help, no matter what the vampire code, or whatever, said about it. I was actually starting to care about him. He wasn't Mike. I loved Mike. And I owed Mike so much. But Jebby was like a lost puppy. And I had never had a puppy.
I took my puppy shopping that night. I hadn't really put the question to him, but I was pretty sure that he wanted to stay with us. Precisely how that might work out was something I was slowly piecing together in my mind.
The first thing I knew was that we needed to make a home for Jebby. Even if I couldn't put together a plan to remain in his life and Mike's, Jebby needed basic supplies to survive and a few things that could turn space in that church basement into a lair for him.
All of those necessities that I had brought home for Mike and for me, I needed for Jebby. Blankets and a pillow so he could have his own warm nest in the cold weather. A basin for cleaning clothes and himself. More food for the pantry.
I considered purchasing a camp stove and a picnic cooler, but I thought that maybe he could use what we already had. If not, the stores would always be there.
I found a couple more of those solar-powered lamps and some candles. Sometimes we had to stay indoors and the nights could be long. I found out that Jebby like to read, so we bought books. And I thought that a can of tennis balls and a few small toys would also help to pass time when we couldn't go out.
When we got back to the church, Jebby and I started to clean out one of the two rooms adjacent to my lair. By that point, it already felt like I was committed to a course of action.
I didn't anticipate Jebby's disappointment when he realized that we were creating a separate living space for him. I felt guilty when I saw the hurt in his eyes. I tried to explain that we would be living in adjacent rooms, but that he would have more independence to do what he wanted with his own space.
"I don't need my own space, Rat," he insisted. "I've never had a space of my own. I wouldn't know what to do."
I explained that I would be next door. That he wouldn't be entirely alone. It might be good to learn to become more independent, one small step at a time.
His reply was uncompromising. And it cut to the heart of the matter.
"I really want to live with you."
Oh, yeah. The sexual attraction. I don't know why I hadn't considered that it was still there.
I couldn't figure out how to proceed without really hurting his feelings. So I did something stupid. Or brilliant. You be the judge.
"It would be hard for you to live with me, Jebby." I put all the empathy I could into my voice. "The reason I stayed up all last night. Taryn. The guy we met on the pier. My support person?"
I thought I had the explanation worked out well in my head. As I prepared to deliver it, I realized just how disorganized my thoughts still were.
Here goes nothing.
"I have a kind of illness, Jebby. I got it working here on the street. What it does, it makes me very sensitive to sunlight. If my skin gets exposed to any sunlight, like any sunlight at all, it can make me really sick. I can't ever go outside during the day. I even sleep in a room that has no windows, just because my body really can't tolerate sunlight."
I'm pretty sure that Dr. Drew could have explained this illness better. Dr. Oz, too. Probably. I'm not so sure about him.
I spun a tale of medical necessity that just made it easier for me to live my entire life after sunset. I even kept a lock on my door so no one could come in during the day and let sunlight in.
"That's why I want you to have your own place," I concluded. "I want you to be able to go outdoors and enjoy the sunshine. You should be able to play outside. Even if I can't. Because of my illness."
Jebby wasn't deterred. He pleaded to live with me.
I thought that maybe a little cold water on any sexual attraction would help. I didn't want to hurt him. But I also really didn't want to hurt him. It was hard to say which path might hurt more.
I probed gently to find out how he felt about me. That way.
Jebby admitted that he was still attracted to me. That way. Very attracted. His shyness as he struggled to meet my eye, his hundred watt blush, were actually kind of endearing.
I prepared to hurt him and hoped for the best.
"I like you, Jebby. Maybe if circumstances were different..." I let my voice trail off for a moment. "There's someone I'm in love with now. I owe him my life. And I'm really hoping to find out that he feels the same way about me..."
Surprisingly, he wasn't hurt. He did look disappointed, but he was still determined.
"I don't need for us to be boyfriends," and he blushed again. It really was endearing. "I really want us to be close. I want us to be friends."
And with those words, Jebby pushed my magic button. It was what I had been jonesing for when I was eight. I thought I had gotten over it, but apparently not. I still tried one more time.
"You'll be locked in that room with me all day. And I do usually sleep all day. You won't have anything else to do. I never go outside until after dark."
No luck.
"So? We can be children of the night together," he giggled.
Children of the night. Together. What an unusual idea.
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