The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

“That’s a bi*ch.  Anyhow, you ready?”

“Sure are.”

“What about your mute friend?”

“He’s good.  He just likes to observe, keep a lookout on things.  It makes him one hell of a guy to have on your side.  He’s full of all sorts of useful information, and as you can see he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“Alright,” he said with a slightly skeptical look on his face, “I guess he’s alright.”

Cylus motioned with his head for the boys to follow him and started down the docks towards a little shack of a building with light streaming out of all of its cracks. 

Something about the look of it made Caleb feel uneasy.  He couldn’t really say why, but he just had the strangest idea that walking through that door was going to change the rest of his life and there was nothing he could do to change it.  The door was opening and he was being ushered inside, momentarily blinded by the bright lights after how dark it had been outside by the water. 

When his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was virtually surrounded by rough looking men who didn’t seem to enjoy being infiltrated by a couple of kids.  In the center of the little lean-to was an enormous man, taller than any Caleb had ever seen, with massive hands covered in fat gold rings with brilliant stones set in the middle of them. 

He smiled and Caleb’s skin broke out into goosebumps.  He looked friendly enough, but he also looked like he was going to cause them trouble.  But seeing as trouble appeared to be exactly what Tyler was interested in, he supposed it wasn’t a problem.  At least not for one of them.

“Tyler!  You made it!  I was starting to think you had decided not to come!  Who’s your little friend?”

“This is the guy I was telling you about, Geno.  He’s like my brother, we’ve known each other so long.”

“Is that right?  You got the same kind of gumption as your friend, kid?  He went ahead and proved himself, just this afternoon.  Ain’t that right, Tyler?  Tell the kid what you did for me.”

Tyler turned to him with a wink.  He was clearly enjoying the attention, although Caleb could see the fear underneath the bravado.  Whatever he had done, it had been his initiation into a world Caleb didn’t yet belong to. 

He didn’t really want to belong, but he couldn’t stand the idea of Tyler going somewhere he could not follow.  He knew without a second thought that he would do whatever it took to stay with his friend.  Most of the time it felt like he was the only real family he had.

“It wasn’t nothing, Geno.”

“Tell your friend!  I already know what you done.  You done it for me, didn’t ya?”

“Nothing much.  I just took care of something he needed.  Someone was supposed to give him something and they didn’t do it, so I took it upon myself to pick it up for him.  Like I said, no big deal.”

“Au contraire, son.  It is a big deal.  It’s a big deal to me.  It shows loyalty, now doesn’t it? 

Shows that you can be trusted.  Shows that I can count on you.  What about your friend?”

“Caleb.  His name is Caleb.”

“What about you, Caleb?  Can you be trusted?  Are you like your friend?”

Caleb nodded, afraid to even speak.  He felt so completely out of his league that it was terrifying.  This was not one of their gangster games where they pretended to be the biggest bad-asses in the city.  This was them standing in a room with actual gangsters, aligning themselves with them in a way that they couldn’t undo.  But everyone was looking at him and he didn’t have any time to try and figure out what the right thing was to do, so he just continued to nod.  He hoped to god that it was enough.

“Bah, alright.  I can see you’re a quiet one.  That’s fine.  Sometimes that’s even good, am I right?  Just follow Tyler here’s lead and the two of you should do just fine with yourselves.  This is an equal opportunity organization, after all.  I ain’t never discriminated against kids.  Sometimes you kids make the best employees.  Just keep your nose to the grindstone and do what I ask and you’ll be compensated well.

“Better than any other jobs you’re gonna get.  Now go on, get out of here.  I’ve got business to attend to.  But I’ll be seeing you soon, don’t you worry about that.  Me or Cylus, we’ll be getting in touch to let you know what we need from you.”

And just like that, they were out of the little shack, walking along the docks casually as if they hadn’t just been in conference with a band of gangsters.  It was dark and cold; Caleb, for one of the first times in his life, just wanted to be home. 

The walk home was quiet, neither boy speaking hardly at all.  Tyler was probably thinking about all of the future glory he would find with Cylus and Geno, planning how he would spend all of his money.  Caleb wasn’t feeling so optimistic.  It was starting to rain and he shivered against the wind, feeling so much further away from himself than he had ever felt before. 

Climbing up the fire escape ladder and onto the landing, he was consumed by a fear that his mother or father or maybe even both, would be waiting out there for him with a world of pain ready to deliver.  He needn’t have worried, though.  There was nobody there.

He could still hear his mom’s righteous indignation mingling loudly with that of Tyler’s mom, their level of intoxication having reached what sounded like an all-new high.  They hadn’t even noticed he was gone.  He sighed and looked down at the slippers he had taken from his dad.  They were completely ruined, utterly without hope of repair.