Our company was named Run Charlie Run we ran everywhere we went. We ran when we got off the school bus. We ran for a week. If we stayed out too long the parents got after us and it got real serious. Then we walked around the block and talked things over and sometimes we ran again. We never stayed out late. Charlie and me were still best friends. We lived on the same block as my mom. We ran up and down our streets until supper time. My mother said we were like crazy kids. Charlie's parents didn't care if he didn't come home until after dark. It was a different neighborhood when I was ten. People moved away and new ones moved in. We still walked everywhere with our friends. We spent most of our time at the park. You could run there all day if you liked to. Charlie didn't stop until I was eleven. I can't remember what happened that made me go over and tell Charlie I was going to tell Mom I was tired and wanted to go home. It had something to do with him beating me at tennis. The truth is I can't remember it at all. When we were walking home, Charlie grabbed me from behind and I fell to the ground. He hit me and kept hitting me until I stopped crying and then he left. The next day I told my mom. She didn't get mad at Charlie but she wanted to know what I had said to him to make him want to hurt me so bad. My mother told me she would be watching Charlie and me and if she saw anything happening, she would make Charlie go to a doctor. We had never had anything like that happen before. The only thing she said to me was stay away from Charlie if I didn't want to get hurt and stay in the yard when he got back. She said she would call a doctor if he ever got a headache again. I was worried because Charlie got headaches all the time. She told me she would talk to him about it and she made him promise not to hit me again. Mom didn't have to worry about Charlie. We had the whole weekend to talk about it. I asked him if he was mad at me and he said no, and asked me what I wanted to do for the rest of the night. He said we could go fishing or go to the movies or anything. I said no and that if he wasn't going to hurt me he had better not come near me. He tried to kiss me but I pushed him away and started screaming for my mom. He grabbed me again but she came into the room and saw us and screamed. Charlie told her he hadn't hurt me. She said she knew that, but said I had a better chance of getting hurt if he hit me than if he went after my brother and sister. She sent me to bed without supper and said Charlie had to stay in his room all weekend until she told him I could play with him again. In my room I cried my eyes out and decided that I was never going to see Charlie again. The next day he didn't hit me. He just let me do whatever I wanted to do and I did things with him that I had never done before. He always said he was sorry after he hit me. And he never lied to my mother about it. There were only two things Charlie and me never talked about. One was baseball. He said it wasn't a sport for boys. He said I was too little to care about it and I better play other things if I wanted to get bigger. The other was sex. I asked him if he ever kissed any of the girls at school and he said he didn't know any of them that well. He said they were little girls, but I wasn't worried. I figured he wasn't interested in girls. But he wasn't completely honest about that one either. # **June 24, 1967 Thursday** It was a few days after my mother had beaten Charlie that I saw him coming out of the garage with a can of Fix-a-Flat. Charlie was thirteen. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was fixing the clutch on my mother's car. I said that wasn't a job for a boy and that he shouldn't try to do things that boys were supposed to do because boys were supposed to do other things, but he said he knew how to do it because he had seen my mother do it, so I said he better not mess it up because I didn't want it messed up anymore. Charlie didn't like the way I talked to him and he tried to hit me but I ran to the basement and stayed there until it was dark. Then I went to my room to tell my mother I wanted to stay in the room so I didn't have to be around him. My mother had an idea. She wanted me to have Charlie as a bodyguard. She didn't like me staying in the basement all day so she had him walk me to the park and ride my bike home. She didn't want me to go anywhere or see anyone without him. It was too dangerous she said. She said that just because he was my brother he wasn't allowed to beat me. She said he was supposed to protect me. She said if I was older he could even be my bodyguard at school and sit with me during recess and lunch. I didn't want to go out without Charlie. I wouldn't even go to the bathroom alone anymore. Charlie wasn't around a lot because he was at baseball practice and other stuff in the afternoon. She made him keep his bike in the garage and he had to take a bus home from school. My mother didn't think it would be such a big deal for me to go to school if she was there too and my brother was right there. She would go to school and I could go with him. I told her it didn't matter how much I begged, if he didn't want to go. She wouldn't let me stay in the house all day by myself even if I begged her. She wanted me to start helping her with the bills. There was a man who came over sometimes to do it and I was supposed to bring in the mail and see that it didn't pile up in the mail box. My mother and Charlie left early and picked me up from school before the sun came up. The sky was still dark when we got there. Charlie made me run all the way to the door and put the groceries in the refrigerator. Then we got in the car and drove to my house. Charlie had to stop at my aunt's to get a can of Fix-a-Flat. When he opened the door it was morning and there were people in our front room. They looked at us through the door. Charlie thought they were my mother and sister coming home early. We all went to the basement, and it was quiet there. Charlie put a bottle of Coca-Cola in the refrigerator. He took it out, opened it, and put it back. We didn't say anything else. The light from outside came in through the windows. It was a still night. There was a dog barking in the alley. It was quiet in our house and we talked about what would happen if a police car came and knocked on the door. Charlie thought they might have found my mother and sister and he didn't want to open the door. He put his hand over his face and shook his head. I heard a radio playing behind the curtain in my bedroom. My aunt's TV was louder than the radio. There were sounds and noises that came from the kitchen through the thin walls. There were sirens far away. Charlie shook his head some more. He kept saying they wouldn't find her for a while and then he said they might and that she was probably in jail already. He said if they were going to find her she wouldn't come to this house to see me. Charlie sat on the bottom step, his head down. I sat on the top step and put my legs over the steps. I had a cigarette in my mouth. I took it out and threw it in the dirt. It was quiet in the basement. There was a long silence. Then Charlie started to cry. He threw his arms up and he kept saying he was sorry. He said I would hate him if I found out. He didn't want to believe it but he felt that was true. Charlie said my mother had ruined everything. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He took his arms down and put his hands on the step in front of me. We sat there for a few minutes with our arms around each other and it got quiet again. Charlie cried a little more and his voice got low and then he stopped. He put his face against his knees. I put my hand on his back. I said it was going to be okay. It was too quiet again. He took his hands from his face and put them on my legs. He touched my knee. I shook my leg back and forth and told him he couldn't do that, and he let go. I wasn't going to say anything about what he did to me. He tried to put his hand back on my knee, but I moved my leg back. I wanted to go home. I couldn't sleep if he touched me. He asked me if I was mad at him and I said no. He asked me if I would stay in the basement with him if they didn't find my mother. I said I would do anything he wanted me to do, but I wouldn't do anything for him again. He asked me if I wanted him to make it up to me. I