September 14, 1976
Caleb's sixth birthday came with remarkably little fanfare – but that was how things were at St. Theresa's Home for Unfortunates. With seventy total children and thirty adults with nowhere else to go, some things had to be ignored. Some of the adults remembered birthdays, but few of the kids did, and there was never anything like a party – at least, not an official one. Sister Ann remembered everyone's birthday, though, and made sure they got a cupcake and a small gift – usually a cheap plastic rosary – and Caleb was no different. He was still a little fuzzy on just what the string of beads was used for, but he kept it with the rest of his few belongings. One of the older boys who shared his room, eleven year-old David, had nine of them hanging from the corner-post of his bed.
David was a happily cheerful kid, for all that he grew up in the Home, but Caleb figured that was because he didn't remember his parents. Caleb could sort-of understand that, having never known his mom, but he could still remember his dad in painful clarity, even though just how he'd died had vanished from his ability to recall; he knew that his dad had been killed during a convenience store robbery, but he didn't remember actually being there when it happened. But David had shown him the lay of the land during his first few weeks at the Home, and had also managed to entertain him with some minor magic tricks when nightmares woke him in the middle of the night.
Besides David, two other boys shared their small dorm at the Home – Charlie, age eight, and Marshal, age ten. It had taken Caleb over a month to figure out why Charlie never spoke and why the other boy didn't go to school with the rest of the kids. Charlie was deaf. Caleb had overheard a couple of the teenagers gossiping about him and heard that it was because his mother had done too many drugs before he was born. Caleb wasn't altogether certain what drugs were, other than the word sometimes meant 'medicine', but he was sure that whatever they were, they were bad news. Marshal, on the other hand, talked enough to make up for Charlie's silence. And neither Marshal nor David had any trouble in playing with Charlie – both had learned to use the sign language that Charlie needed to communicate – and Caleb was rapidly learning it, too.
The night of Caleb's birthday, David gathered his roommates up shortly after supper ended and herded them to their room. He'd managed to steal two beers from the fridge of one of the adults' rooms in order to celebrate.
As none of them had tried it before, half a bottle each was sufficient to make them a little tipsy. Bit by bit, they started telling stories. First about their favorite memories, or about things that had happened at school, and then about what had happened to some of the other kids who had lived at the Home in the past. David told most of these last tales, but Marshal had more than a few of his own.
Eventually, the tales turned from things they had actually seen and done to what they had heard about from others. And it didn't take long at all for the stories to turn as dark as a child could imagine.
"I heard," Marshal said, signing his words for Charlie, "that some of the people who come here looking for a kid, like if theys can't have any of their own, will take one home – an' the kid thinks he's got it made, ya know, a real home for a change – an' then, bam! Outta nowhere the parents have a kid of their own, so they figger they don't need one-a us no more, an theys brings the kid back, like how ya'd take a radio that don't work none back to th' store."
"That's nothin'," David interrupted, likewise signing his words for Charlie's benefit. "I heard that some'uv them folk don't really wanna kid, least not like a real fambly-type kid. They want someone ta do all th' housework an' chores an' stuff." Had he been raised in a different subsection of society, he likely would have said 'they wanna house elf, not a kid', but that bit of the world was forever locked beyond his understanding. "An' I also heard that those same folk'll wind up beatin' on ya if ya don't work fast enough."
"So what?" Caleb scoffed. Marshal and David both signed his words for him, though Caleb did what words and phrases he knew. "Sister Margaret beats on us all th' time with a ruler in Sunday school."
Marshal, whose mouth had earned him more than his fair share of knuckle-swats, nodded in agreement and looked questioningly at David. David sighed a little and elaborated, "Yeah, she do, but that ain't what I mean. Like that story we had ta read a while back, 'bout all them slaves in Egypt an' how if they ain't workin' hard enough they'd get whipped with a real whip."
"Thought it was a lash in th' story," Marshal pointed out.
"Same thing, moron."
"Shut up, reject."
Caleb rolled his eyes as Marshal and David shot playful insults back and forth over the remaining hour before lights-out. They were both 'full of it', as he knew his dad would have said, even if it would still be a couple of years before he figured out just what 'it' meant. However, the horror stories stuck in his head from that point on, and if the adults who ran the Home ever noticed how he'd disappear when potential parents came calling (no matter how hard they tried to keep it quiet, somehow the information always got out), they never said anything about it.
Caleb remained roommates with Marshal, Charlie, and David until Charlie turned twelve and was accepted to a special school for the deaf. His bed remained empty for nearly a full year before a boy who was, if possible, even quieter than the kid who couldn't talk. The newbie's name was Hector, and when he'd shown up, he'd had two black eyes and a cast on his left arm. He was ten at the time, and the other three occupants of the room quickly learned not to make sudden moves in Heck's direction. Caleb's brain took this as evidence that maybe not all of David's tales on that long-ago night were bull. The theory gained more credence when, eventually, he learned that Heck had been in and out of foster homes since he was a baby.
Since Caleb and Heck were nearly the exact same age (their birthdays were literally a day apart), the two of them became extremely close friends before the cast was removed. It helped that both were fascinated by the things that could be done with slight-of-hand. The week that the plaster cast was to come off was also the same day that David was moved into the men's quarters. Though David now lived on the other side of the building from his friends, he still made time to hang out with them – something most teenagers wouldn't even think about. Marshal followed David's example a year later when, on his fifteenth birthday, he was moved to the men's quarters.
The fourth bed in the room wouldn't be used again in Caleb's remaining time at the Home, but shortly after Marshal moved out, an eleven year-old by the name of Taylor moved in. Taylor wound up leaving the Home after only a few weeks, something to do with his parents getting a divorce and his mom threatening (in front of a judge, no less) to kill his dad if the man got custody. That seemed to set the stage for a long succession of short-timers – kids who would stay, at most, six months before being fostered out or returned to their parents.
Caleb felt sorry for the short-timers. Most of them knew that they weren't going to stay, and so never bothered with trying to get to know anyone. One in particular seemed to sum it all up for Caleb. It had been late May, the spring of the year Caleb was to turn fourteen, and he and Heck had returned from one of the last days of school to find a smallish twelve year-old sitting on the oft-used third bed of their room. A battered brown school bag and a faded green duffle sat at the foot of the bed. Caleb had started in with his 'the third drawer down is yours' speech that he gave all the newbies, but the kid had just shook his head. "Don't bother," he'd said, "I'm not unpacking. 'S'not worth it. Gonna be outta here in a week, tops, an' pro'ly shuffled through three places 'fore summer's half-gone."
Though Caleb never asked why the kid – to this day, he still had no idea what his name had been – was so sure of that, only that he was absolutely positive he never wanted to go through it, too.