balls.â
Thatâs where we were the day Seth stumbled across us. Weâd been doing nothing out of the ordinaryâsmoking, drinking, talking about girls, doing the things we thought made us men. Seth had been running fast and ran plumb into our little fort weâd worked so hard to build. We didnât see him so much as feel the fort shake when he hit it.
Jake put out his cigarette and went to look.
Ronnie shrugged. âSome animal, I guess.â
Jake came back inside, lit another cigarette. âMen,â he said, âanybody up for kicking some queerboy ass?â
â
I didnât believe Seth was gay. Iâm not sure Jake even believed it at first. Yeah, he was different from us, but there were a lot of kids we went to school with that were different. Being from the woods like we were, we tended to see everyone as an outsider, and if you were an outsider, you were queer. Itâs just how we saw the world back then.
Itâs hard to find the right words to describe Seth.
Fragile
âthat was the word that came to mind, though time would teach me this wasnât really the truth of it. No, truth was, he was as tough as thick rope. We called guys like that hard asses in âNam. He didnât look it, but Seth was a hard ass, through and through. Just took us a little while to figure that out, is all.
Jake wanted to make him pay for being in our woods and said we should track him down.
I told him it wasnât worth it, but that was like trying to convince an alcoholic that he didnât need another drink. Once Jake set his mind to something, he was going to do it.
âI saw this faggot,â he said. âHeâs as queer as a three-dollar bill and heâs on our turf.â
That was enough for Ronnie, and I guess it was enough for me too. We went after him, running deep into the woods. We caught up with him ten minutes later at a little creek. The three of us stood on a hill, looking down on him. Seth sat at the edge of the water, his hands buried in his face. He was crying.
I donât think most people can pinpoint one certain moment when they change from a child to an adult. For me, though, it was easy. Not too long before, I would have joined Jake and Ronnie without a second thought. But for some reason, I didnât see any joy in ridiculing somebody else anymore. Especially somebody as hard up as this kid was. Maybe it was because my own family was changingâmy old man was drinking more and had been out of work going on a year. Maybe it was just that I understood how sometimes a kid needed to find a place alone where he could cry his eyes out and not worry about being called a baby. Hell, maybe it was the way he cried. There was nobody here to impressâat least as far as he knew. Those tears werenât for gaining anybodyâs damned sympathy; they were real.
Years later, as a POW in Vietnam, I suffered moments like this when bawling my eyes out seemed like the only answer. But that was Vietnam. Even at fourteen, I knew Seth must have been up against some pretty heavy stuff.
There was something else too. Something in his face that I recognized. Something in his eyes, maybe. I couldnât place it, but for a second, I saw it clear enough to make me dizzy. Then it was gone, and I heard Jakeâs voice:
âA faggot and a baby. Does the little baby queer want his mommy?â
Seth looked up, his eyes going from hurt to defiant in a hot second.
Ronnie laughed. âLook at that hair. Heâs a homo all right. Hey, pussy juice? You ever heard of scissors? Or maybe youâre trying to grow it out so you can put it in a ponytail?â
Jake snickered. My stomach turned because I knew that every joke they made and every threat they hurled at this kid would make my own life that much harder. Pretty soon Iâd have to make a choice. I couldnât just stand here with them. Silence was the same as approval. I knew that, even at