Poor Man's Son - 1. Chapter 1

July 4, 2000

Claremont, Ohio

Gathan

“Good to see you here, Gathan,” Mayor Schluter said with his plastic politician’s smile. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Thank you, your honor,” I said respectfully. His smile got a little more genuine when I said that. He liked to be called ‘your honor’.

Who would have imagined that a Hayes would actually be an invited guest at the Mayor’s tent here at the 4^th of July Festival, Claremont’s biggest event of the year? The thought of that made me smile, the idea that I was the first Hayes to make such a huge social leap, or at least a Hayes from my branch of the family, from the white trash branch. My cousin Robbie had left Claremont and found fame and fortune in Hollywood; his father, Frank, had pulled himself up to an upper-middle-class life before that; and even before that, my uncle Jeff had broken out of Claremont and onto the football scene at Northwestern, busting a bunch of records, many of which still stood. Others had left and sought their fortunes elsewhere, but no Hayes besides Robbie, Frank, and Jeff had achieved anything that could even remotely be called success. In fact, they’d done just the opposite, and of the whole bunch, my father was the worst.

Fred Hayes was one of the city’s more hardened criminals, something that made him sound more illustrious than he was. He wasn’t even a good criminal; he was just stupid. I’d lived with the legacy he’d left me as a child, suffering humiliation after humiliation as other people made fun of me, or shunned my sister and me for our poor parentage. A convict for a father, and a whore for a mother: not very illustrious.

Growing up had been hell for the first eight years of my life, but then, everything had changed. I still remembered the night it happened. My mother woke my sister Ella and me up in the middle of the night in almost a panic. “Git your stuff together,” she’d snapped. “All of it.” I’d just stared at her dazed until she’d smacked me across the face and jolted me out of it. She’d packed us and our stuff, what little there was, into her crappy car and taken us over to live with my Uncle Wally and Aunt Clara. From that point forward, they became our mom and dad.

Moving there was the best thing that ever happened to us. Ella and I had a great home; Wally and Clara loved us, and did everything they could for us. What a switch from before, where we lived with my mom in dilapidated apartments except those rare occasions when my father was out of jail. Then we still lived in a dilapidated apartment, only then it was also disgustingly messy. When it was just my mother, all we usually had to worry about was her yelling at us or slapping us, unless her latest “boyfriend” got off on hitting kids. When my father was home it was worse, since he didn’t slap, he used his fists. That was almost better than when he didn’t, because then his hands explored places they shouldn’t. I cringed at that memory, especially at what Ella had had to endure, and then I felt the rage burn deep within me.

I walked over to the refreshment table and started loading up a plate of food, hoping that eating would help squelch the latent anger that lived in me. That was my dark side, the demon within me, this thing that lay dormant until it was awakened, and then when it was it had a life of its own. It was the reason I’d started playing hockey; to try to find a physical way to work some of those emotions off. It was the reason that I was the best fighter in school, and the reason that no one gave me or my friends any crap. Once I let it out, it consumed me, and turned me into a psycho; it made me dangerous.

A well-dressed lady in her forties moved up to the table next to me. “Gathan,” she said dismissively, barely acknowledging me.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Finch,” I said, forcing myself to be respectful.

“I’m surprised to see you here.” Her tone was clear. She was saying ‘you don’t belong here’.

“Mayor Schluter invited me,” I said to her, shooting a smile her way that was wasted. That old bitch hated me. I’d asked her daughter Megan to go to the junior prom with me last year, and Megan had said yes and was so excited she was creaming her panties. Then she’d called me that evening and backed out. She didn’t say why, but we both knew. I wasn’t good enough for her, and there was no way her mother was going to let her go out with me. No way would she trust her daughter to the son of a convict, and the nephew of a garbage man.

“That was very thoughtful of him.” Now her tone was patronizing, implying that the mayor had just done that just to placate a member of the unwashed masses. She judged that I was the token white trash guy at his tent.

“He wanted to thank me for helping him out,” I told her nonchalantly. “Especially since I’m leaving for Stanford in a couple of weeks.” I watched that burn into her psyche, the fact that this white trash boy was going to the best university in the country, while her daughter was going to Kent State.

She didn’t respond to that, she just growled to herself and wandered off. Her place was taken by a much more attractive and interesting person. “Dude, it is so fucking hot here,” Darius groused.

“Pussy,” I said in a good-natured way. It was hard not to like Darius, even though he was fucking my sister, and that was normally a death sentence. He was smoking hot, with skin that was almost the shade of an Italian with a tan, but just a little different. His dark hair and sharp features made him seem exotic, and when he flashed his smile with his perfect white teeth, he just emanated charm, and it was that charm combined with his cocky personality that made him almost irresistible. He’d come here to take Ella to the prom a few months ago, and all the girls and even some of the guys had turned green with envy, jealous of this guy Ella had snagged.

“Ella went to the bathroom,” he said, and looked lonely. Boy had she snagged him. This guy was the quintessential wolf, but not with her around. When Ella was there, he only had eyes for her. I worried about what happened when she wasn’t around, but then decided that there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway. Ella could handle Darius. “She’s been gone a while.”

Alarm bells went off when he said that. Ella had been beautiful before, but then Stefan and Claire had taken her under their wings and given her what they called a makeover. Now she was gorgeous and chic, with nice clothes, a new haircut, and makeup that wasn’t overdone. Her looks demanded attention wherever she went, and that was dangerous if the attention came from the wrong direction. I put my plate down on a table. “I’m going to go find her.”

“I’m sure she’s OK,” Darius said nervously, as if he didn’t believe his own words.

“She’s not OK around here, at least not with my father out of jail,” I said as I pushed through the crowds, heading toward the bathrooms. He’d already tried to come visit her once. If he saw her here, God only knows what he’d do to her. If I was with her, he wouldn’t mess with her. It was funny how he got into lots of fights and trouble, but he always avoided confrontations with me. It was the rage; he understood that, and it scared him. It should.

We broke out of a crowd and I saw her off to the side by some trees, her hands on her hips in a defiant posture, talking to my father, just as I feared. I was walking fast now, with Darius next to me, until I saw him reach out and touch her arm. She pushed his hand away, he put it back, and she pushed it away again. I remembered the time when he’d done that and I’d been too young and weak to stop him. I felt the ball of rage inside me expand, felt it reach that dangerous level, and then felt it almost explode inside me like a nuclear detonation.

Now I was almost outside of my body. I was running so fast I left Darius way behind. I lunged through the air and saw my father’s look of surprise, a look that happened almost simultaneously with my fist connecting with his face. The explosion inside me fueled my body, gave me strength, almost like those lame-ass cartoons of that Popeye guy when he ate his spinach. I danced around him, landing punch after punch, beating the living shit out of this man that I hated more than anything, anyone. He fought back, but I didn’t even feel the blows he landed. My body had blocked out all pain, all inputs. It was transformed into an aggressive fighting machine, unstoppable until it was restrained by a stronger force or until the rage subsided.

I knocked him on the ground and he lay there in a fetal position while I kicked him. That was a stupid move on his part, because my legs were much stronger than my arms. All of that time ice skating had built these legs, the legs that were kicking my feet into Fred Hayes’ worthless body. And then he gave me the opening, the chance I fantasized about. He dropped his hands to grab his shin where I’d just kicked him, leaving his face exposed. I pivoted and kicked, smashing my foot right into his nose. I watched as he rolled away from me, both because he was absorbing the blow and because he was unconscious. Maybe if I was lucky, I’d actually killed him.

I felt arms around me, strong arms, pinning my own arms against my body. I tried to use my feet to kick whoever was holding me, to break his death grip, but I couldn’t. “Gathan!” a voice screamed. I looked up, as if I were opening my eyes for the first time since I’d started fighting, and saw Ella in front of me, looking pissed and worried at the same time. “Stop!”

And then as magically as it appeared, the rage left me, retreating back into its shell, back into the cave deep in my body where it lived, always threatening to come out and turn me into an uncontrolled, unguided missile. “Asshole,” the guy holding me said in my ear. I looked down and saw uniform badges on the short sleeves of his shirt. So it was a cop whose strong arms encircled me. I felt handcuffs on my wrists. “Just like your father.” That really pissed me off, so much that I started to struggle.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Darius snapped at the cop. Guys like me, we knew better than to be dicks to cops unless we were the one being arrested. Guys like Darius, with all the power and money in the world behind him, didn’t have to worry about that. It made me jealous; even as I paused to appreciate that he was in my corner.

“You want to join him?” the cop asked arrogantly. I snickered at that, doing this laugh and snort thing that all the guys in my family seemed to do.

“Fuck you,” Darius said. “He’s nothing like his father.”

“Fighting, causing problems, getting arrested, sounds the same to me,” the cop said with a sneer.

“I wonder if you are willing to answer for the sins of your father.” I really smiled now. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. So smooth and elegant, with a real French accent that made it seem so classy; so firm and in command, while at the same time being melodic in a feminine way. The cop looked up to find himself face to face with Stefan Schluter and his entourage, two really handsome but huge body guards.

“If I committed the same sins, I guess I would,” the cop said defiantly, but without the attitude now that he was facing one of the richest men in the world.

“He was protecting me from that,” Ella said with elegant disdain as she pointed down at Fred. She was pissed off, and she rarely got pissed off. “If you would have been doing your job, he wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.” It cracked me up that Fred was lying there, unconscious and bleeding, and no one really seemed to give a shit.

“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job,” the cop answered snidely.

“No, you do not. That is the job of your sergeant, no?” Stef asked. “Please ask him to join us.”

The drama and anger of the moment had faded, and the cop seemed to realize that picking on me was going to be a lot more trouble than it was worth. He didn’t say anything as he fumbled for his keys and then unlocked the handcuffs. I rubbed my wrists, even though they didn’t hurt, but to make sure I was really free again. “Try to control your temper in the future,” he snapped at me, and then got on his com system to call medics to take care of Fred. We just walked away.

“Dude, holy shit!” Darius said. “You were scary.” Ella resumed her normal place at his side, molding her body into his. “No wonder you didn’t date much,” he said to her.

“Remember that if you think about fucking her over,” I said. He gave me a dirty look but I smiled at him to take the sting out of it. “Thanks for jumping in for me.”

“No problem,” he said. He guided Ella off, ushering her back toward the mayor’s tent.

I shot Stef my most charming and engaging smile. “I didn’t expect to see you here walking around.”

“It is how I evaluate the new talent Claremont has to offer,” he teased.

“What’s wrong with the old talent?” I flirted back. Flirting with Stef was a blast.

“I have had no luck with the old talent.”

“Maybe you just haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe you forgot how to chase guys.”

He smiled back at me. “I do not chase men, men chase me.”

“I think you like a challenge,” I said, moving closer to him.

“And that is what you are? A challenge?”

Time to really mess with him. “No, where you’re concerned, I’m no challenge at all. I’d rip off my clothes and jump into bed with you any day, any time.” I said this in my sluttiest voice, lowering it down a few octaves so it was really deep. I saw him swallow and I winked at him.

His expression suddenly switched to concern. He reached down and put his soft, smooth hand over mine, which was bloody and starting to swell. “We must get you some ice and some bandages? Is anything else hurt?”

“Don’t worry about it Stef,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” I smiled at him, hoping that would be enough to make him drop it. My hands ached, as did my chest and my shoulder, places that Fred had landed hard blows, but I was tough enough to shut the pain out and move on. I didn’t want to dwell on the fight. I pulled out some napkins that I’d picked up at the refreshment table and quickly cleaned myself up.

Our interlude was ruined as JJ and Will walked up. Will was a lot of fun, and had been cool to hang out with as long as Zach wasn’t around. I still didn’t know what was with those two. JJ was another story. The kid was a little bitch, and for some reason, he’d decided to hate me. “There you are,” JJ said to Stefan and put his arm around Stef in what could only be a possessive gesture.

Stef seemed uncomfortable, caught in this squeeze play between JJ and me, so I solved the problem by removing myself from the situation. “Thanks for helping me out Stef. I have to go track down the plate of food I left back at the tent.”

“I will catch up with you later. I have a present for you,” he said. I forced myself to smile back, but that made me uncomfortable. These guys were so generous, and so nice to me, but it was kind of disorienting to go from having nothing to having damn near anything I wanted. That was more than offset by the pissed off look on JJ’s face.

“I have something for you too,” I replied with a leer, making him laugh as he turned away. Will looked bored. “You want to go back to the tent and grab some food, Will?” It was cool to see his face light up at that, and to see JJ get even more pissed off.

“Sure,” he said cheerfully. He fell in step next to me as we walked back toward the Schluter tent.

“You having fun?”

“No,” he said honestly. “There’s no water, and I don’t have any friends here. My cousins are douche bags.”

I laughed. This kid loved to surf. “I can show you a river, but that’s about all we got. You can hang with me if you want.”

“Really?” I guess in the high school world, it was pretty rare for an incoming freshman to hang around with a just-graduated senior. “Sweet.”

I looked sideways at him and noticed that he had a little spring in his step now that he wasn’t alone. He was a really cute guy, with dark brown hair and green eyes. His hair was longer and cut like you’d expect a surfer’s hair to look. It had these really cool auburn tints where the sun had lightened it, the kind that some kids tried to bleach in but couldn’t quite get right. Will’s were natural; they were right. He had the lithe but fit body of a young teenager, only he seemed bigger, more mature. I decided he could pass for a sophomore, maybe even a junior, without too much of a problem. He had an air about him that seemed to tell the world he was a cool guy, and the world seemed to agree. We got to the tent, wolfed down some food, and then went wandering around. Will spent most of his time trying not to check me out. He was almost as bad as Harry. I tried not to let it get me too excited.

We ran into a group of my friends, and Will became really shy, totally unlike his father. “Hey guys, this is Will,” I said, introducing him. They all kind of mumbled hello to him. These were the guys I hung out with the most. We all lived in the same neighborhood, and we all played hockey together.

“Heard you beat the shit out of your old man,” Cord said. I didn’t have a best friend; I didn’t let people get that close to me. There was only one person who knew me, knew what I was like inside, and that was Ella. But of the four guys in front of us, my group of friends, Cord was the one I was tightest with. He was tall and big, both from being muscular and being overweight. The dude probably weighed 250 pounds.

“He was hassling Ella,” I said, and they all nodded knowingly. No one messed with my sister.

“We going out to the river tomorrow?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know, are we?” I asked, being a smart ass.

“Fuck you,” he said, smiling. He was the handsomest guy of the bunch, with blond hair and blue eyes, both lighter than mine, and a body in perfect proportion. “You wanna come along?” he asked Will. I saw Will’s eyes bulge at having this older guy, this Adonis, ask him to join us.

“I don’t know if we’ll be around,” he said shyly.

“If you are, you can come along,” I said. He grinned at me, but looked down. How cute was that?

“Bet my mom won’t let me go,” Caleb said. “She’ll be all worried that I’m doing something bad.”

“You probably will be,” Danny joked. He was quiet and didn’t say much, but occasionally threw out one-liners, and occasionally they were really funny.

“We bringing the bitches?” Caleb asked. He was going out with this girl named Jessica and was all into her.

“Can if you want,” Cord said. “They’re not drinking my beer.”

“You get them drunk, you may get laid,” Danny said.

“Listen to you homos,” Jake said. “I don’t need beer to get laid. I just snap my fingers.” I looked at Will nervously, since I knew he was gay and I was worried that he’d be offended, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all.

“Right,” Cord said, even though it was almost true.

“We gotta get back,” I said, moving away from them.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. You have to go hang out with all the rich and famous people,” Cord said, giving me shit.

“Gathan’s gonna be on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ as a boy toy,” Caleb joked.

“You’re just jealous that you’d never get the offer,” I told him. “Ugly bastard.” I led Will away, but the conversation bothered me. Ever since earlier in the year when Robbie came into our lives and started giving us money, my friends had been giving me a bad time about it. It was like I wasn’t part of the group anymore, because I wasn’t dirt poor like I used to be.

“They seem like cool dudes,” Will said.

“Yeah, they’re alright. If you’re around tomorrow, you should go with us,” I said.

“You sure?” He couldn’t decide if I was being polite or if I meant it.

“Yeah, as long as you don’t spend all day lusting after Jake,” I teased, making him blush.

“Or you,” he said, flirting with me for the first time.

“Nah, that’s allowed,” I said, and winked at him. He smiled back at me while he looked me straight in the eye. He was getting used to me; he was starting to unwind. “There’s your dad.” I saw Brad and Robbie over at the Crampton tent, so we went over to talk to them. A guard stopped me, but Will jumped in and got me a wristband so I could come and go. I looked down at my arm, at both of my bands, one for the Mayor’s tent and one for the Crampton tent. Those things were status symbols here at the Festival. I’d never even had one before, and now I had two.

“Hey!” Brad said enthusiastically and gave me a “man hug,” where he shook my hand and hugged me at the same time. Robbie was much more demonstrative. He just pulled me in and wrapped his big arms around me. Hugs from him made you feel loved.

“Hey guys.”

“Are we gonna be here tomorrow?” Will asked.

“Why, you anxious to go home?” Brad asked.

Will ignored him. “Gathan asked me to go to the river with some of his friends.” I figured that would bother Brad, having his son run off with us poor kids to do God knows what, but he seemed totally down with it.

“We’ll be around at least that long,” he said. “You see Ella and Darius?”

“They were at the Mayor’s tent last time we ran into them,” I said. I looked over at the bar area and saw Rich Crampton talking to some people. We’d found out earlier in the year that he was Ella’s real father, but she still hadn’t met him. I kind of figured he’d show some interest, make an effort, but he didn’t do anything. I knew how much that bothered her, even though she didn’t say anything. I don’t think she really wanted a relationship with the guy; she just didn’t like being ignored. Brad followed my eyes and looked at me knowingly.

“Could be an interesting day,” he said.

“Could be,” I agreed. “We left JJ with Stef.”

“Is he going with you tomorrow?” Robbie asked.

“No,” I said a bit too firmly and heard Will chuckle next to me.

“Why don’t you guys go see if you can find Darius and Ella and give them these wrist bands,” Brad suggested, handing me bands. He had that evil eye, the one he got when he was about to stir up some shit.

“They had better food at the other tent anyway,” I said, cracking Will up. We walked at a pretty leisurely pace, and just kind of checked out the crowd. Ashley Johnson walked by and stopped to talk to me for a minute, but I think I stared at her boobs too long and made her uncomfortable. It was kind of funny to see Will get kind of annoyed that I was paying attention to someone else. I guess he’d latched on to me, and that was that.

“Were you with her?” he asked as we walked away.

“With her?” I asked, knowing damn well what he meant.

“Yeah, like together.”

“No,” I said simply.

“You with anyone?”

“No.” I could tell he was frustrated because I didn’t expand on those answers, and he knew it would be rude to push me harder. I decided that his frustration was easier than me telling him the truth. “You?”

“No,” he said.

“Those dudes can be kind of boring,” I said, referring to my friends. “You can hang out with Zach and his homies instead, if you want.” My friends were a lot more fun than Zach’s; I was just messing with Will.

“No,” he said, just as flatly as I had.

“You pissed at him?” I asked.

“Who?”

I stopped and looked at him. “At Zach. What did he do to piss you off?”

“Nothing,” he lied. I rolled my eyes and walked on until we finally found Darius and Ella sitting on a bench making out.

“Dad wants you guys to come to the tent,” Will said and handed them their bracelets. He turned to walk away, but I wanted to make sure they came with us, so I just stood there waiting.

They looked at me, hoping I’d leave, but I just stared at them. Finally they sighed and stood up. Darius’ shorts tented way out when he did, and that cracked Will and me up. He rearranged himself while glaring at us. “Quit trying to look at my junk.”

“Whatever dude,” I said. I put my arm around Ella, which kind of pissed Darius off since his was usually there, until he heard the topic of conversation. “Rich Crampton is there. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I want to see if he ignores me to my face,” she said bitterly. “Let’s go.” She took off toward the Crampton tent at a pretty quick pace, while we scrambled to keep up with her.

“She acts more like Dad than Aunt Claire,” Will said to Darius, gesturing at Ella. Darius chuckled a bit, but neither Ella nor I got their inside joke.

With our wristbands on we breezed right past the guards. I watched Ella pause, as if trying to decide if she wanted to storm right up to Rich or get reinforcements first. Her style was to seek reinforcements first; mine was to dive right in. True to form, I watched as she headed for Brad and Robbie.

Brad greeted her more formally than Robbie, just like he’d done with me, but I could tell by his expression that it wasn’t that he didn’t like us. He just seemed more reserved, just like Will, I thought as I glanced sideways at him. I remembered how nice Brad had been to me the first night I met him, how he’d pulled me aside just to tell me how to act at the country club. I’d been freaking terrified, because I’d never eaten at a place like that with a bunch of forks and bowls for God knows what, but he laid it out in about two minutes, and put me at ease. That dude was a class act.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the other people around us, so I was kind of surprised when a guy kind of nudged himself in front of me. “Rich Crampton,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Gathan Hayes,” I said cautiously, shaking his hand.

“I hope you enjoy yourself,” he said stiffly, then turned to see the person he’d come over here to see. “Hi Ella.”

“Hello,” she said tersely.

“I know this is probably strange for you. It is for me,” he said nervously. We all stood there staring at him, and I kind of felt sorry for the guy. “I’d like to take you to lunch or dinner sometime and get to know you a little bit.”

“I’m leaving for California in a couple of weeks,” she said. Her voice was still cold, but she was melting. Ella had a hard time being mean to anyone.

He handed her a card. “That handwritten number, that’s my cell phone. Call me if you have some time before you go. Otherwise maybe I can come out there to see you.”

“You mean you’d fly all the way out to California just to see me?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, I would,” he said, and smiled at her. That lasted for a few uncomfortable seconds, and then he ambled off.

“That wasn’t what I expected,” Brad said.

“You were hoping for more drama,” I teased. “No wonder everyone is always pissed at you.”

“Everyone is not always pissed at me,” he said.

“He is,” I said, gesturing toward JP. He and Stef were just walking into the tent. Brad and Robbie both laughed at that. “So what are you gonna do?” I asked Ella.

“I don’t know. You think I should call him?”’

“I think you should make him come see you in California,” I said, grinning. “See if he’s full of shit.”

“Not a bad idea,” she said, considering it.

After that, Will and I wandered around the festival. I couldn’t decide if he was so easy to be around because he was just so cool, or because he was mature for his age, or because I was immature for mine. All of my friends, especially the girls, loved him. He was that exotic guy, the California surfer dude, the guy who represented an entirely different culture than we knew. He might as well have been from Zimbabwe.

“It’s almost 9pm,” he said, looking at his watch. “Want to come to a party with us?”

“Whose party?”

“The Crampton’s. It’s up on Skyline. It’s cool, because they’ve got a pool, tons of food, and a great view of the fireworks.” He was begging me to go with his eyes. It was pretty cute.

“Tons of food, eh?” I joked. “You sure it’s OK if I come?”

“I’m sure it’s OK. I invited you. Besides, I’m sure Ella will be there.”

“Alright,” I said, caving. “Wanna ride up there with me?”

“Sure,” he said. He called his dad and told them what he was up to, and did the same for Darius, all while we walked to the street to track down my vehicle.

“A Dodge truck?” he said as we got to it. “How old is it?” I felt my defenses go up, felt myself getting really pissed off. No one dissed my truck. “It’s in great shape. It’s fucking rad.”

And my whole mood changed. “Thanks. It’s an ’82. I got it pretty cheap and fixed it up whenever I got extra money. Brent did most of the mechanical repairs; he’s good at that.”

We hopped in and I fired it up. The engine ran pretty well. I wasn’t sure if it would make it all the way to California, but I guess I’d find out in August.