Chapter 12 - The Social Network.

After almost an hour of sitting there with his little sign, Justin had only collected $2.78. 

He didn’t think that would be enough to get the dreaded Hugo off his back, but he didn’t know what else to do. He’d done his best to smile brightly at all the people walking through the little plaza. He’d even waved at some of them. A few really nice people had come up to talk to him and offered some spare change, which he’d thanked them for profusely. However, when one older lady using a walker had come close, a grubby five dollar bill in her hand, Justin had felt so bad for taking the kindly older woman’s money that he’d insisted she take it back. Then he’d got up from his corner and helped walk the woman across the street and into the building she’d been headed for. When he came back to his corner, he discovered that someone had stolen his little paper bowl with the measly change he’d collected so far. 

Justin slumped down onto his little patch of sidewalk and felt like crying. He just wasn’t good at this asking people for money thing. It was hard. And he was missing Brian something awful. But not only did he not know how to find Brian, he’d now also lost track of the Skinny Boy, so he had no one to help him at all. He was almost ready to give up, but he couldn’t even do that because he was too scared of all the nasty things the other boys had said the Big Angry Man would do to his hiney if he didn’t bring him some more money that evening. He hadn’t felt this hopeless since that day, a few months back, when Brian had left him at the bus station while he went off to make a phone call.

“That’s the nicest panhandling sign I think I’ve ever seen,” a pleasant middle-aged woman interrupted Justin’s moment of despondency. “I especially like the little self-portrait in the corner there.” 

The woman pointed to the bottom left corner where Justin had doodled a tiny picture of himself holding up his sign. 

“Thank you, Miss,” Justin replied politely. “Drawing is a lot more fun than sitting here asking people for money, but I need to pay the Big Angry Man or he’ll do mean things to my rear end, so I guess I have to keep trying . . .”

That statement caused the nice woman to frown at him. “Well, if you’re trying to earn some money, you could probably make more by selling your drawings than by just begging,” she suggested. 

“Do you think so?” Justin asked, perking right up. “I did that once last summer at the Nebraska State Fair. It was fun. I got to draw all these funny cartoon pictures of people and they gave me lots of money for them.” He looked around himself at all the serious people walking around downtown Pittsburgh, most in suits or other business attire, almost none of them smiling. “The man at the fair even offered me a job drawing pictures, which really surprised me because, up till then, the only other job offer I’d had was for a hand job, you know? But I don’t think people here in Pittsburgh would want those kinds of pictures. Nobody here seems to be in a funny mood.”

“Maybe not. Not everyone likes caricatures,” the woman readily agreed with him, pointedly ignoring the comment about the hand job. “But if you can draw serious portraits, you might find a few takers. If you’re at least halfway good, that is.”

Justin stood up and flipped through a few pages of his sketchbook until he came to one of his favorite drawings of Brian. “Is this good enough, do you think?” he asked his new friend.

“Wow . . . That’s beautiful,” the woman immediately offered. “If you can draw like that, what are you doing sitting out here begging? That kind of talent is worth some serious money.” 

“I got lost and I don’t know how to find my Brian,” he explained, looking at the picture of his boyfriend sadly. “And then this Big Angry Man took all the money I had, and the other boys said he’d do mean things to me if I didn’t give him more, but Brian has all my money right now, so now I don’t know what to do . . .”

“That doesn’t sound good,” his new friend sympathized. “I’m not sure I can help out with all the rest, but how about you draw me and I’ll pay you $10 for the picture? And maybe, once everyone else around here sees what you can do, you’ll get a few more takers?”

“Would you really let me draw you? Oh, that would be so nice of you! Thank you, Ms. Lady!” Justin was thrilled by this development. He dug around in his bag for the little metal tin he kept his charcoals in and flipped to a fresh page of his sketchbook. “I will make you an extra-special drawing that I’m sure you’ll like!”

Which is how Justin ended up spending the next two hours drawing portraits for a growing lineup of customers who crowded around him in the plaza to admire the artist at work. He remembered how Brian had handled things back at the fair, charging extra for colored drawings, and pulled out his colored pencils from his bag as well. This allowed him to up his prices for some of the portraits. Before he knew it, he had a little stack of ten and twenty dollar bills piling up under his charcoal tin. He didn’t know how much was there, or if it was enough to satisfy the Big Angry Man, but it was more than he’d made while panhandling at least. However, after more than two hours of drawing, his hand started to give out on him. 

He finished up the drawing he’d been working on and then apologized to the rest of the folks waiting for him. “I’m super sorry, people, but I don’t think I can draw any more today. My hand needs a rest.” There was a groan of complaint from a couple of the businessmen who’d been waiting and watching. “If you want to give me your phone numbers, though,” he quickly added, “as soon as I get un-lost, I can call you and arrange to draw your pictures for you then.” That seemed to placate those who’d been waiting and he was handed several business cards. “Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I promise to call as soon as I can figure out where I left my travelling phone. Thank you, all.”

Once his crowd of customers and admirers had left, Justin gathered up his things and stowed all his art supplies back in his bag. He looked through the stash of money he’d accumulated and smiled. There was over $200. He sighed with relief, thinking that should be enough to keep the Big Angry Man from doing anything unpleasant to his rear end. Drawing for money had been a very good idea. Justin would have to thank the Nice Lady for the suggestion if he ever saw her again. And, now that he wasn’t worried about the money for Hugo, he could concentrate on finding his way home again. 

Justin retraced his steps back to the park where he’d last seen the Skinny Boy, hoping that, now that he had the money for the Big Angry Man, his new friend would stop worrying about that and, instead, would finally help him find Brian. Unfortunately, most of the boys who’d been hanging out in the park were gone. There was no sign of either the Skinny Boy or the Jaguar car. The only boy left in the park that he recognized was the one they’d called ‘Trey’. 

“Hey, Stan,” Trey greeted as soon as he saw Justin approach. “Slow day, huh? I’ve only pulled two tricks so far this afternoon. You had any better luck?”  

“I already told the Skinny Boy that I don't know any tricks. I’m really not a magician, you know,” Justin explained again, wondering why all these boys kept asking him about magic things. “I’m an artist.” 

“You’re a kick, Stan,” Trey laughed and slapped his friend on the shoulder. “You should do stand up, you know? Go on the road or something. Although, Daddy doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, so that probably wouldn’t work.”

As Trey led him off down the street, Justin was trying to work out in his head why their Daddy wouldn’t like seeing the boys ‘stand up’. Did he want them to sit down all the time? How would they be able to go out ‘on the road’ and do magic tricks to get him money if they didn’t stand up? Why didn’t anything these boys said ever seem to make any sense?

As the two of them walked along, heading back towards the seedier parts of the city, Justin noticed several people just sitting on the sidewalk dressed in ragged clothing. He’d occasionally seen people like that when he and Brian had been driving around, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen so many of them in one place before. On one corner they passed, he noticed an older woman dressed in what looked like fifty layers of filthy old clothing who seemed to be talking worriedly to the shopping cart she was pushing. That got him curious. Walking closer, Justin thought he saw something moving around in her cart. An animal, maybe? The woman seemed distressed about the thing in the cart and he thought, maybe, the animal might be injured or sick.

He walked up to the woman and introduced himself. “Excuse me Ma’am. My name is Justin. Who is it you’re talking to in there?”

The woman looked startled, most people stayed far away from her, but this cute blond boy was talking to her like she was a person and not someone to be avoided.

“Hello, Cutie,” she cackled and winked at him. “I was talking to my cat, Fang. I don’t think he’s feeling well. It could be worms . . . I don’t rightly know.”

Justin looked into the shopping cart but all he could see were two beady, black eyes staring up at him from under a pile of old bedding, some flattened cardboard, and assorted trash. 

“Your cat?”

“Yep,” the old woman affirmed. “I found this funny looking cat a few days ago. It was just lying there really still. I thought maybe I had run over it with my cart and killed it. So I picked it up and, lo and behold, it was still alive. So’s I put it in my cart to keep, thinkin’ maybe I could have something what would love me. Least ways, I hope he does. He sure seems to want to eat a lot though. I named him Fang because he has a lot of teeth. Could be he has the tapeworm though.” 

The woman moved one of the blankets in her cart out of the way and Justin looked closer. All he saw at first was a happy-looking bundle of fur. Then the little animal looked up at him and Justin took a surprised step backward. He wasn’t sure what kind of animal that was, but it certainly didn’t look like a cat. At least not like the cat he’d used to watch through the window of his mother’s house. This creature had legs that were too short, a snout that was too long, a long hairless tail, and, as the woman had pointed out, way too many teeth. Justin had watched a lot of nature shows growing up and, although he’d never seen one in person, he thought that Fang might be a possum, not a cat.  

The woman had put some pizza she’d found in the cart and Fang was happily munching away on it. Justin then noticed a lot of movement going on in the vicinity of the creature’s belly. Assuming he was correct in his identification, the intelligent boy thought he knew what that meant. With his usual trusting nature, he extended his hand slowly towards the little guy, speaking softly, until he was sure the animal wasn’t spooked. Moving slowly, he was eventually able to pet the wiry fur. Fang seemed to like the attention and rolled to its back so Justin could reach more pettable spots. 

“Ma’am, I think your cat friend here is actually a possum and ‘he’ is a she. A new mama too, if I’m not mistaken. Come look. Here are the new babies,” Justin pointed to Fang’s belly where you could see little arms and legs wiggling just under the skin. “They stay in her pouch and feed until they are bigger. That’s why she is so hungry, she’s making milk for her babies.”

“Well, I’ll be . . . I guess that makes me a grandma!” the woman exclaimed with a grin, evidencing several missing teeth. 

Justin remembered he had a half of an uneaten granola bar in his messenger bag; he rooted it out and handed it to the woman for her new family. 

“Thank ya, kindly, young man. You’re such a sweetie,” the woman said, beaming down at him with her toothless smile. “I know! You kin be the babies’ fairy godmother! That way, if’n anything happens to me, they’ll have some’un to take care of ‘em and feed ‘em and raise ‘em right . . .” The woman broke off in order to rearrange the blanket over the top of her pet with a doting smile. 

“I would be honored to be your grandbabies’ godmother,'' Justin agreed readily, taking over pushing the shopping cart for the woman, who led him further down the street to where she could rifle through a dumpster behind a small market. “I’m not sure about the ‘fairy’ part though. My Brian says he hates it when people call us fairies. He’s not the ‘fairy’ type at all, you know; he’s much too big and strong and not at all like a little fairy from a fairy tale. All his friends say My Brian is a ‘Stud’ and they call me a ‘Twinkie’, although I always thought a Twinkie was something you ate.” He giggled and blushed, thinking about all the times Brian had said he was going to eat him up, not that he thought it appropriate to explain that to his new Possum Granny friend. “Now, My Brian’s tall friend, Emmett, he’s kind of a fairy. Or, as My Brian says, a big nelly queen. I’m not sure that’s true though, either, because doesn’t a queen have to have a palace and a throne and servants and stuff like that? I don’t think the Tall Friend has any queen stuff. I should ask Brian about that sometime, you know?” 

While this conversation was going on, the old woman had finished digging through the dumpster and had added a dirty running shoe and a cracked plastic doll’s head to the other treasures in her shopping cart. Justin didn’t understand why she’d want one shoe or a broken toy, but that wasn’t for him to say. He just kept pushing the cart around where the woman directed, trying to be helpful. He did stop and pick up a fast food bag out of one trashcan the Possum Granny had finished going through, happy to note that there was still a half a hamburger inside. He uncovered the possum from under the blanket in the cart and offered the treat to Mama Possum to go with her pizza. Mama Possum seemed quite grateful and dug in. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for more scraps. 

It wasn’t until they’d gone on this way for several blocks that Justin remembered his plan to follow Trey back to the ‘Tarlight Motel so he could reconnect with the Skinny Boy. He’d long ago lost sight of Trey, though. Now what was he going to do? He didn’t have any idea where he was again, let alone how to find his way back to Brian. He sighed and shook his head. He definitely wasn’t having a great day. Oh well. He supposed he’d just stay with the Possum Granny and help her with Mama Possum for the time being and hope some better idea came to him. 

Eventually, Possum Granny’s path led them to the back door of an old stone church. There was already a line of other people waiting at the church, so they parked their shopping cart off to the side where others had left their own contrivances and joined the queue. Possum Granny was chattering away to Justin - about what, he wasn’t entirely sure, since the woman seemed to be talking about people that weren’t actually there - but she seemed to be in a very good mood, so he wasn’t about to interrupt. Meanwhile, the rest of the folks waiting in line were eyeing him with suspicion. Justin tried to smile at them but most either scowled in return or simply refused to meet his eye. He was almost relieved when the door to the church finally opened and the line of people began to slowly file inside.  

Following Possum Granny into the building, they went down a short flight of stairs into the church’s basement. The basement was set up with a series of long folding tables and chairs. Over at the end of the room was a counter that separated the room with the tables from a kitchen area. And spread out on the counter was a series of hot plates and piles of food. 

“Oh, good! Dinner. I was getting a little hungry,” Justin exclaimed happily. “I only had a bagel for breakfast and that was a long time ago.” 

“Wednesdays is macaroni and cheese,” Possum Granny explained as she picked up a plate off the stack at the near end of the counter. “Course, I prefer the tuna noodle casserole over at St. Agnes’, you know, but that’s only on Fridays. This here mac and cheese ain’t too bad neither.”

“Nice to see you today, Bertha,” a hefty man dressed in a black shirt with a funny little white collar said to Possum Granny. “How are you feeling this week?”

“Fair to middlin’. Fair to middlin’,” Possum Granny replied as she held her plate out so the man could spoon out a serving of the cheesy pasta for her. 

“That’s good to hear,” the serving man replied with a smile. “And who’s this you’ve brought with you today?” 

“This is my fairy godmother,” Possum Granny explained with a sideways nod of her head in Justin’s direction. 

“I’m not really a fairy godmother,” Justin rushed to correct the woman. “Even though I am gay - and not just gay as in ‘happy’ but gay as in I like to do boyfriend things with My Brian - but I’m not sure I like being called a ‘fairy’ you know? I’m happy to help out with the babies though, so I guess you can call me whatever you want.”

“That’s . . . That’s good to know, son,” the man seemed a little thrown by Justin’s babbling but covered for it quickly. “I’m Pastor Clark.” The big man held out his hand for Justin to shake. “Here at Third Street Baptist Church we welcome all of god’s children no matter who they love.”

“Thank you, Pastor Clark,” Justin gave him one of his best smiles. “I’m Justin. And thank you for the dinner too. I was getting very hungry. The Big Angry Man I stayed with last night only gave us bagels for breakfast this morning and I was so busy all day trying to get people to give me enough money to make sure he wouldn’t do mean things to my rear end that I didn’t have time to stop and eat anything for lunch. My stomach is very glad to be here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, son. Here, have a second roll,” Pastor Clark offered, balancing two of the flakey rolls on the edge of the boy’s plate. 

Justin might have stayed longer and talked with the nice man serving the food but Possum Granny was already moving towards one of the tables and he thought he better go help her first. They both took up their spots and quickly got busy with their dinner. The church hall slowly filled up with the homeless population of the city, eager for a nice hot meal. Justin tried to listen to Granny’s chattering, but it was kinda hard to follow sometimes and he wasn’t sure she was actually talking to him half the time. The rest of the folks sitting at their table totally ignored the woman, which Justin thought was kind of rude, but he would never point that out to their faces. 

He finished his small plate of food rather quickly and then looked around himself at the rest of the group of rather shabby people who were still coming down the stairs and into the room. He felt bad for them. Most were older and quite a few looked unhealthy. They weren’t dressed very well and some didn’t even have shoes. They all looked hungrier and more tired than him, though, so he decided to get up and let someone else, more deserving, have his seat at the table. Instead of just standing around waiting for Granny, though, he figured he should make himself useful.

Going up to the counter, he caught Pastor Clark’s eye and offered, “can I help with anything? I could take a turn serving the macaroni if you like. That way you can take a break.”

“That’s kind of you to offer son,” the big man nodded at him. “Okay. Here you go. Make sure everyone gets one big spoonful of pasta and a roll. And try to get them all to take a serving of salad too - most of these folks don’t eat very well so we try to push the vegetables whenever we can.” 

“Will do!” Justin took up the serving spoon and assumed his duties with gusto as the Pastor went back into the kitchen to see if the church ladies doing the cooking needed any help. 

“Hello! Hi! How’s it going?” Justin greeted everyone coming through the line with his cheeriest smiles and an enthusiastic attitude as he dished out the food. A few of the takers mumbled something in return, but most seemed to pass by in a bit of a fog. “Here, take some salad too. It’s good for you. I read in a book once that you will get scurvy if you don’t eat enough vegetables, and you don’t want that, now do you?”

After dishing out three large vats of macaroni & cheese, the line of people trudging down through the doorway finally came to an end. Justin set his serving spoon down and looked around at the dining hall full of people with a frown. He didn’t like seeing so many sad people. It was kind of depressing. 

“Thank you for all your help today, son. I appreciate you stepping up to serve so I could tend to other things,” Pastor Clark offered with a smile as he picked up the almost empty container of pasta. “While you were helping out with the serving duties, I was able to make three more fundraising calls and I even managed to secure a commitment from Whole Foods to provide their deli seconds to our program for the next six months. Which means we might be able to open up the kitchen for a third night a week.”

“Don’t people need to have dinner every night of the week?” Justin asked, a little confused.

“Yes, they do,” Pastor Clark confirmed with a sad smile. “Unfortunately, we’re just a small parish and we don’t have the resources to open our doors every single day. The nights we’re not open the folks have to go to another soup kitchen or, if that’s not an option, they often go hungry altogether. Which is why I’m so happy I was able to find the support to keep us open an extra night.”

“That’s not right. You should be able to feed the people all the nights,” Justin insisted, his mouth pursed up in a worried knot. “If you had more money, you could feed them all the time, right? So, how much money do you need for that?”

The pastor laughed a big, hearty laugh and clapped Justin on the shoulder. “More money than I’m likely to ever be able to get my hands on, son. A lot more money.”

“I have money I could give you,” Justin offered without a second of hesitation. “My dead mother - who I didn’t really kill - left me a lot of money. I gave it to Brian to help him with his business, but there’s still some left over, I think. And we’re making more money all the time. Maybe, if I asked him, My Brian would give me some of the money back so I could give it to you.” He smiled up at the kindly pastor, happy to have found a solution. “Would ten thousand dollars be enough? That’s how much Brian said he was going to make a month off the new Tropical Smoothie Cafe account that I drew the logo for. Would that help you feed all the people all the nights?” 

“Oh, son . . .” Pastor Clark smiled indulgently down at the sweet boy who seemed a bit simple to the worldly man who’d already seen far too much suffering in his life. “I appreciate the offer, my child, I really do but I think you look like you could use some taking care of yourself right now.”

“That’s true. I really do need to find My Brian. I got a little lost, you know, and I miss him like you wouldn’t believe. But once I do find him, I’m sure he’ll agree with me that we don’t need all that money as much as you do. We only have the two of us to feed. And Gus, sometimes, when he comes to stay with us. But Gus is only three so he doesn’t eat that much, you know. You have a lot more people to feed than us, so you should have some of the money too.”

“You comin’, Cutie Pie?” Possum Granny interrupted as she shuffled by on her way out of the church hall. “Our babies are waiting for their fairy godmother now.”

“Of course.” Justin smiled at the church leader and waved as he followed in Granny’s wake. “Thank you for the delicious dinner, Pastor Clark. I’ll send the money as soon as I can. Night!”