Howdy Doody

The Geppetto Project

Chapters 17-18

Chapter Seventeen

A New Beginning

The task now at hand was to finish closing down the school and shipping it to North Carolina, while keeping the remaining students both happy and busy. By the day, slides, swing sets and jungle gyms were disassembled and packed up with the seats still warm from use. Luckily, the toys and bikes were the last things the children would have to give up, so they weren't completely unhappy. For Sammy and the boys, so long as they had the pool, the Jacuzzi's and the lagoon, they did little complaining as they spent 80% of their day wet. For the staff, it was day after day of filling plastic crates with everything that wouldn't be essential to maintaining the close to 400 people that still remained behind.

"Bye Uncle Adam." Sammy called out as the boy came bouncing down the stairs of the bedroom loft with half a dozen other boys and girls.

"Bye? Where are you headed?" Adam asked as he looked up from packing away pictures and wall plaques.

"Everybody who got boats for Christmas is going to have boat races around the lagoon." Sammy said.

"Want to come?" Carla now asked.

"Love to, but this stuff needs to be ready for pick-up in an hour. Sorry guys." Adam told the group. With the slamming of the screen door, the mafia was gone as Adam went back to work. Hearing Sid's cart pull up and the bells on his cart ringing, Adam knew the assistant director was on his way as a chorus of "Hi Uncle Bert, Hi Uncle Sid!" reverberated from the kids. As the screen door opened, Christopher came flying into the cottage making a bee-line for the Christmas tree.

"Hello there Christopher." Adam said as he turned around watching the boy dig into the pile of toys under the tree. With his now familiar "Hey." which meant anything from hello to goodbye, Christopher began his inspection as Bert and Sid entered the cottage.

"Out for a stroll?" Adam asked the two administrators.

"Just slumming it." Bert said.

"Gee good buddy, looks like you got everything under control here." Sid now said.

"Yes. But four hands are better than two." Adam replied to Sid who also lived in the cottage with Adam.

"Yeah gee I'd like to help, but I'm a very busy man." Sid chided his friend.

"Yeah, I can see that!" Adam quipped.

With a crash, the 12 foot Christmas tree now came down as Christopher stood alongside it "I-ee! I-ee!" Christopher said as all three men stood watching him standing there with his hands in front of his face waiting to get smacked.

"Mine has been down now three times this morning." Bert said as he walked over to the tree. With smashed ornaments and lights dangling off the tree, Bert and Sid picked the tree back up.

"Has anybody figured out yet what "i-ee" means?" Adam asked.

"I think it means 'I just dumped your fucking Christmas tree.'" Sid responded as he went for a mop to clean up the water. Both Adam and Bert chuckled as Christopher stood watching Bert to see if he was going to get his ass tanned. With an I.Q. of something between 55 to 60 at best, nobody at Green Tree was going to paddle him anytime soon, but more than a few had thought about it.

Bert picked Christopher up.

"Christopher, if you pull on the tree its going to fall and get hurt. You don't want to see the tree get hurt do you?" he asked the boy.

"Hey." Christopher replied.

"Good boy." Bert said as he gave Christopher a kiss and put him back down.

"I thought 'Hey' meant 'Yes'?" Adam said.

"That's a loose translation." Bert replied. Adam smiled a little as he went back to his packing. Christopher had not been at the school for a week now, and as the only retarded child at the school, everybody was on a learning curve.

"Where were the kids going?" Sid now asked as he returned with the mop.

"They went to the lagoon to run the remote controlled boats around." Adam replied.

"Christopher, want to go play in the water?" Sid now asked the boy. With another "Hey" Christopher had the straps to his bib coveralls off and down around his ankles as he began to sit down and take off his sneakers. The boy didn't dress himself, but he sure as hell knew how to undress. In about 30 seconds, one naked boy stood by the door.

"I-ee?" Christopher chirped. "I think it means let's go swimming." Adam now said to Sid. It was now Sid's turn to chuckle as he headed for the front door. Once Christopher saw the man approaching, the door blew open and he was history down the stairs.

Christopher was already in the cart and ringing the bar of ice cream truck bells when Sid slid in next to Christopher who promptly sat in his lap to steer. There were about eight palm trees between the cottage and the lagoon, and Christopher tried his damnedest to hit each one, even if he had to turn around and go back for a second try. Once at the waters edge Christopher was in the water and swimming for the island in the middle of the lagoon even before Sid got out of the cart. Sid reached Christopher before the boy had swallowed his second pint of water; Christopher couldn't swim. He never batted an eyelash as he threw up the last of the salt water as Sid carried him to the island.

"Let me guess Christopher: Blueberry pancakes?" Sid asked the boy.

"Hey" Christopher gasped once he could breathe again.

With Christopher making room for lunch, Adam and Bert discussed the progress of the move and the future scheduling.

"The girls are scheduled to go back to North Carolina a week from today. We already have five units winterized on the lower campus, and Dave can probably get three or four more done this week." Bert told the teacher.

"So you're thinking about sending up the intermediate boys too?" Adam asked.

"Not all of them. We need to send up maintenance and kitchen support. I was thinking of sending half the intermediates and half the crew. That will leave all of Camp Kenny and about 50 support staff for them until Dave can complete the winterization." Bert said.

"Sounds like a plan to me. Who's going?" Adam asked.

"I was thinking about all of the mafia and both Nutmeg and Casa Vista cottages. Bert replied.

"That makes roughly 60 boys and staff."

"Works for me boss, who's going to go north, you or Sid?" Adam asked.

"I'll stay with Camp Kenny, Sid will lead the way." Bert replied.

"What about Helen and the girls? Are they staying here?" Adam asked.

"No, they'll go back with the rest of the girls, but Christopher will remain with me." Bert told Adam.

"That's probably wise. Once North Carolina gets a load of him, we'll be back at war." Adam said. Bert smiled a little.

"What's your take on him?" Bert asked.

"Cute lovable kid, but I wouldn't turn my back on him for a second. He needs wall to wall watching." Adam replied frankly.

"I worked with some retarded kids at a summer camp one year. He's manageable now, but if he grows another hundred pounds [45 kg] and stays this impulsive, you've got a two hundred pound [90 kg] gorilla on the loose." Bert nodded his head in agreement, but didn't really want to think that far into the future.

"Keep your eyes open, if you see something that could be improved upon, I'm not too old to still learn." Bert told Adam.

"If you want to improve on something, buy me a new fucking Christmas tree!" Adam said with a smile.

Christopher's arrival out on the island came as a surprise to the close to 50 kids that were already there racing their boats back and forth in the lagoon. Sid's arrival was an even bigger surprise. Staff rarely, if ever came out to the island, it was considered private property by the children of the school and outside of the domain of adults. Then again, Sid wasn't considered as an adult to the boys, more like one of the guys. Once Christopher was spotted, they reached protectively for the boats and remote controls; Christopher had a knack for accidentally breaking things. They liked Christopher and tolerated him well, but they didn't trust him as far as they could throw him. Bert was a little surprised at the boys' acceptance of him, but Sid wasn't. Younger children, those aged six to 12 have an innate sense concerning retarded children, and have a naturally protective attitude towards them. Not until their later teen years are they taught to ridicule, harass or abuse them, and at Green Tree, there are no ignorant teachers.

The next hour was an exciting one for all the kids on the island, and by the time Sid picked up Christopher and walked him back to shore, only one boat had taken a fatal swim as it passed within Christopher's reach, and Sid made a mental note to replace it for the boy that afternoon.

The busses containing the work crew of senior boys arrived back in North Carolina just before 10:00 at night. They had driven straight through except for a stop for lunch and dinner, and as Dave and the boys exited the busses, Florida was no more. It was in the lower 40s [4-6°C] , and for these Florida boys, it was freezing. Taking over the already winterized cabins on the Lake campus, they cranked up the heat to 80 [27°C] and quickly fell asleep under down filled quilts from LL Bean. Morning broke for the boys roasting their asses off.

John had sent along 15 kitchen men who by 7:00 had steam tables full of food as the boys appeared in the mess hall that was now awash in the smell of coffee, ham, bacon and sausage. Like crews of loggers going off to the alpine regions, the boys were dressed to the hilt in heavy winter clothing as they protected themselves from the upper 40 degree [7-10°C] weather outside. The engineers who joined them for breakfast were greatly amused. By lunch, most of the boys were back down to flannel shirts, dungarees and sneakers. As the engineers dug trenches with backhoes and laid water pipe, the senior boys worked inside the cabins to insulate, install electric baseboard heat, thermal pane windows, and move the hot water heaters indoors.

The boys knocked off work at 2:00 the first day, they had gotten to sleep late the night before and Dave wanted to give them some time to recover from the trip so he shortened the first days work. The lake had a skim of ice on it, something the boys had never seen before. As they started a bonfire in front of the mess hall, the consensus of opinion was that North Carolina was cold, but it was nice not sweating your balls off when you worked, maybe even better.

"When do you think it'll snow Uncle Dave?" A senior boy asked. Dave was hoping he could say never.

"Hard to tell, it could be any day now. We've had a few flurries in November and December, but nothing that stuck around too long." he told the boys. The boys were disappointed at the news, but it didn't last long. The following morning, the dawn broke to a dead calm quiet outside. The first boy up to go to the bathroom caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye as he passed a window.

"Holy fuck, it snowed!" he shouted as he ran out the front door and looked at a sea of white on the ground and trees. About two inches [5 cm] covered the ground, and a snowball fight proceeded breakfast. It was the first and the last snowball fight the senior boys had in their underwear and bare feet, that's not the way to go as they learned five minutes into the fight. The snow was gone from the baseball fields by the afternoon, but it would take spring before the deep woods became brown, and then green again.

The plan was to try to winterize one cabin per day. Dave began putting teams of boys doing assembly line work, and by the 3rd day, they were putting out two cabins a day. In all, the camp had 25 cabins to winterize, 10 medium sized buildings used as classrooms, and another six larger buildings like the rec hall, and gym. Unless something radical happened, the camp would be ready to accept all of Green Tree by January 20th.

The boys did a full days work, but Dave also knew they needed rest and relaxation too. Ahead of schedule, Dave gave the boys the weekend off and they discovered that riding horses in the winter was probably more fun than riding in the summer if you were dressed properly. For one, there are no horseflies that will bite your arm or leg off. For another, the woods are fairly open and the property had hundreds of deer who were smart enough to know they were camping out in a no hunting Federal Preserve. Horseback riding is fun in the woods in the summer, but in the winter, the senior boys decided they liked it better.

The boys also liked the new carts they received. The golf carts were fairly useless in the winter because of the snow and ice. Now, the golf carts were replaced by ATVs with four wheel drive and snow and mud tires. The machines were purchased for hauling materials and for work. Try telling that to 13 to 16 year olds zooming though the bridal trails after dinner every night! As long as the work progressed, Dave gave them as much latitude as he could.

New Year's Eve at Green Tree wasn't all that big of a holiday, certainly Halloween ranked high above it on the boy's rank of really important events. The staff also didn't see it as all that special, they'd rather celebrate M.L. King Day sometime in June, or July or something like that. Nobody was going to be awake, because the next day they were leaving for North Carolina; and that was something special! Beginning at 7:00 in the morning, busses started loading with the girls from Pine Ridge. In a pattern that was now familiar to all the children, as the busses loaded, they moved out with their escorts both front and back, and by 9:00, the last of eight busses rolled out of the mangroves. As they always did, just outside of Ocala, the last bus joined the lead bus, and close to 150 more Green Tree residents were on their way to a new home and life in North Carolina.

Largely the trip was uneventful, and the busses stopped for the night in Valdosta as they usually did and by 3:00 the next afternoon, the busses once again roared through the gates of the camp with pretty much the very same grim faced soldiers with nasty looking dogs and even nastier looking guns stepping out of the way as bus after bus of cheering kids re-entered their camp to establish a permanent residence. The soldiers had no clue who was inside the busses, but they did know that they were a "National Security" issue and something they didn't see, didn't know about and didn't know what anybody was talking about if asked. Once again, Adam shook his head. He couldn't understand how people could be so stupidly gullible.

In the spring, the boys had come bounding off the busses sprinting for the lake. Now, there was white under the trees and the first place the boys headed for was the woods. Practically none had ever touched snow before and it was magic to them. All along the way from Atlanta to camp the boys had seen snow periodically along the route and spotting a patch was now more interesting to the boys than video games or the movies on the busses. Like the senior boys before them, they discovered that making snowballs with bare hands wasn't the fun time they had seen on TV.

Once the senior boys showed up on their ATVs, any apprehension about North Carolina winters disappeared from the intermediate boys 'faces as the machines roared into the crowd. Golf carts were nice, but these things had real engines, and they almost flew! Once the last bus rolled in, Sid got off as his boy's raced off into the woods.

"Fifteen dead deer!" Sid announced as he approached Adam and the mafia's staff.

Adam's' eyes rolled up as he shook his head. While the boys on his bus were looking for snow, Sid's bus was counting road pizzas. Adam and Dan didn't need to be told who suggested the game as the men walked over to Bert's cabin and to a bar they knew damned well would be stocked full. As the fireplace roared, Adam got a beer and looked out towards the lake that was so much different than it was in the summer. Gone were the boats and ski jumps. There was no swimming crib for the smaller children and the water slides and docks were all pulled to shore and resting on the ground. The water level was about three feet lower than Adam knew it to be in summer, and the boat house was closed and secured. He could see from the cabin most of the cabins and buildings around the lake; something that in summer would be impossible.

Helen had seen it all before, and as she and her four girls now entered the cabin, she looked at the room assignments worked out by Bert and her back in Florida. They would not be living on the upper campus anymore; they would be living with Bert and of course, Christopher. With the girls now sent to unpack, Helen returned to the library and kicked off her shoes as she sat down on the couch. Bert drank Gin and Tonic while she preferred Screwdrivers. With a drink presented by Sid, he sat down next to her.

"Have you called him yet?" she asked.

"No, but the front gate would have called Alexandria; and they would have called him by now." Sid told the woman.

"We'll get a jingle in less than 10 minutes" Helen smiled. 90% percent of the time, Bert didn't communicate with Sid, and Sid didn't communicate with Bert, but 100% of the time, each one of them knew exactly what the other was doing, thinking and expecting of each other. To Helen, it was damned near spooky how closely the two were connected philosophically, politically and psychologically. To Helen, if they weren't conjoined twins, they should have been.

"Did he cry when you guys left?" Sid asked.

"No, I think he was on the way to the pool with some of the Camp Kenny kids when we pulled out. I'm not sure he knew we were leaving." Helen replied.

"Really? I would have thought he would have carried on like a baby! Why wouldn't Bert know you were leaving?" he asked.

"Bert? I'm not talking about Bert, I'm talking about Christopher!" Helen said.

"Christopher! Christopher doesn't cry. I'm asking about Bert!" Sid told the woman. Helen shook her head as her faced reddened amid the chuckles.

"You horse's ass!" she said as she threw a pillow at Sid.

The level of comfort between the staff was always a driving force behind their success with the children. What the children always saw in the group of adults who governed them was a group of people who behaved with each other as they were being taught to behave with their classmates. An "All for One and One for all." attitude was not only taught, it is practiced at Green Tree. The Albemarle staff no longer considered themselves that. The Pine Ridge women likewise considered themselves every bit a part of Green Tree and by Christmas, 2005, the assimilation was complete.

With the busses now gone and the boys' belongings now being taken to their new cabins, boys with very wet, cold and red hands began gathering at Bert's as staff began assembling their boys. With golf carts now in winter storage, it was a cool, if not refreshing walk to Adam's newly assigned cabin alongside the lake. This was the fourth cabin he had lived in at Green Tree, and this one was on the west side of the lake, opposite where his first two cabins were located. He now lived in what the boys knew as 'Boy's five' which now became Beachview cabin, named after their home in Florida.

Beachview sat in a small cove on the camp lake with three cabins contained within the cove, and this would become the future home of the mafia. With a huge boulder of a rock with a flat top in the center of the cove, it was pretty much a camp within a camp nestled between 80 foot pine trees and weeping willows along the shore, even in the dead of winter it looked a whole lot like paradise as he stood on the front porch listening to the wind whistle through the winter pine bristles.

"That's Turtle Rock Uncle Adam!" Sammy told his teacher as the boy came out on the porch. Adam had seen the rock before, but always either from the path that circled the lake, or from a boat or canoe on the lake as he paddled by. Usually, the rock had at least a dozen boys on it, and from either the lake road or the water, it was probably a good thing that the bowl on the top of the rock precluded sightseers from observing the activity within. This was one of the premier sites for the boys during the summer, and from the porch of boys 4, 5, or 6, all you needed was a bag of popcorn.

"Well, in about five more months the lake will warm up enough for you guys to go back out there." Adam suggested.

"Yeah." Sammy said with a small gleam in his eye.

After dinner, early showers had the laundry chute filling up fast. In summer, it would have been a pair of shorts, and maybe even a pair of underpants or two from the inhabitants of Beachview. Now, it was flannel lined long pants, sweaters, heavy flannel shirts and insulated socks and most definitely a pair of underpants if not both shirt and pants. For Carla and Jeannie, they wore one-piece insulated underwear, and after showers, the Doctor Denton's came out of the drawers. Most of the children would kick off their blankets in the middle of the night, and now, even if they did, they could stay warm, at least until the water started flowing. Thermostats were set at 78 and the fireplace in each cabin would keep even soggy buns warm. If the next ice age attacked North Carolina, these kids were ready for it!

Three girls who did not make it back to Pine Ridge as scheduled were Gloria, Johanna and Beth. Bert made arrangements for Helen, along with another staff member from Pine Ridge to fill in for Gloria as director of the girl's campus until she joined them in North Carolina. Emotionally, neither Gloria nor Johanna was willing to be separated from Green Tree, and to them, Camp Kenny was their home, and wherever Camp Kenny was, so were they. Naturally, Timmy, Kenny, Sidney and Joshua went where the girls went.

"He's tripled his birth weight, his lungs are clear, he's up to date with all his shots for now, and generally, he's in excellent health." Thomas told Johanna concerning Sidney as he handed the baby back to the girl. As Beth now took off Joshua's diaper and handed him to Thomas, David watched. Item by item, Thomas checked out the baby, and at each step explained to David exactly what he was looking at and why. As David took the baby's temperature, Thomas gave the baby an oral vaccine. Mid way through the temperature taking, Joshua decided it was potty time as a three inch [7½ cm] fountain flowed.

"That's a good sign David, if the baby just dribbled, it might be something we'd want to look into but that's a pretty healthy amount of pressure." Thomas told David as Beth threw the boy a dry diaper.

"Thanks for the demo spunky." Thomas said to the baby as he lay cooing a bit.

"How comes his penis is growing back Uncle Thomas?" David now asked. Thomas looked at the baby's genitals and retracted his foreskin.

"It's not really growing back David, it just looks that way because he's gaining weight and his penis is retracting into his groin making it look like he's not circumcised. When the time comes, he'll make Moses proud." Thomas told the boy. David smiled as he read the thermometer.

"98.5 [36.9°C]" he said as he showed it to the doctor.

With a clean bill of health, Joshua was being stuffed back into a diaper as his main focus was on having a mid morning snack from Beth. As Beth unbuttoned her blouse and slid the baby into position, David watched as the boy grabbed Beth's breast in his fingers and wrapped his lips over her nipple and drew it in to begin suckling as Beth kissed his forehead and drew his body next to hers.

With the two newborns out of the way, it was Timmy's turn as the boy was lifted onto the examining table and laid down on his back with a toy in both hands. For Timmy, who was now quickly approaching 3, this was a routine occurrence. Thomas never mixed physicals with vaccinations, preferring instead to give them in settings other than physicals. To the doctor, too many children he had seen feared visits to the doctors office and it wasn't necessary since most of the time, vaccinations weren't given. With David explaining to Thomas what he was looking at and why, the doctor let David do the physical as he coached while talking with the girls. At 12, David was on his way to becoming a doctor and he only had 13 more years to go before he could hang out his own shingle.

"Any change in his scale?" Thomas asked Gloria. Gloria shook her head.

"No. He's a solid 1. Most of the time he'll just masturbate, but he's always ready to go to the room and play there, especially if Kenny's with him too." Gloria replied.

"Is he keeping it friendly, or getting serious." Thomas asked.

"I haven't seen him couple up, but I guess it's not impossible." she replied.

"Usually, when they start getting serious, we'll find them with their hands in their pants digging or finding crayons and things in their pants." she told the doctor.

"Remember Charlie?" Johanna now asked Gloria. Gloria smiled.

"We once found half a banana in Charlie's underpants. The other half he had already planted and we had him sit on the toilet and poop it back out." Gloria said with a smile.

"15 minutes later, he had a whole one" Johanna added as the girls giggled a bit.

"Well, from what Sid tells me, his scale could broaden with age." Thomas told the girl.

"He might become a 2, but that's about the high end of it." Gloria responded.

"And you're able to deal with that?" Thomas asked. Gloria smiled a little.

"Doc, we really don't have a choice in the matter. He is what he is, and he's going to engage when he has to engage; maybe once an hour, maybe once every two hours. In either case, he's not going to be walking around Miami anytime soon." she replied somewhat resigned to the fact.

"Did ya make Charlie poop out the other banana?" David now asked. Johanna chuckled.

"No, we never saw it again."

"How comes?" David asked.

"Because there was a whole big bunch of banana's in the kitchen; and Charlie knew it!" Gloria said.

"Naturally David, you know that a physician never discusses what he learns concerning his patients to outside sources." Thomas told his ward.

"Not even Charlie?" David asked.

"If it's necessary for his health, he can be told, but I don't think Charlie's activities with bananas need to be dug back up. Do you?" David shook his head.

"Good. Now show me how you would palpate the baby's abdomen to check for a bowel obstruction."

With almost 450 people now in North Carolina, the island was beginning to feel a lot larger. For reasons Bert hadn't explained to Anthony and Spencer, the two were left behind when Beachview moved out. Spencer went from a cabin of boys that numbered between 12 to 24 on any given night and he and Anthony were now the only ones left. He was a member of the mafia, but they had all been transferred out. He knew other boys at school, but the mafia boys were his closest friends. Now, he was basically alone except for Anthony.

The day after the mafia left for camp, Gloria and her girls, along with Timmy moved into Beachview to give Jeanette, who was still hosting Johanna and Beth a little more room in her cabin. Bert's move was not accidental, little of what the man ever did was. Caroline and Judy were two 13 year olds that normally wouldn't give an11 year old the time of day because they were too 'stupid' or 'immature'. However, because of his singing ability, Spencer could practically have the pick of the litter of girls from Pine Ridge. He wasn't interested, but then again, that was when he had damned close to 36 beds a night to choose from amongst his friends. Spencer was known to be a virgin among the girls, taking his cherry would have been one hell of a step up the female social ladder for either Caroline or Judy, and if anyone thinks boys can get randy, they're nothing compared to 13 to 15 year old girls in heat. As far as Bert was concerned, Spencer didn't like pussy because he never had any. If the girls were willing, Bert wasn't going to stand in their way.

Beachview cottage was configured with four bedrooms upstairs in the bed room loft and one bedroom downstairs where Thomas and David now lived. Gloria and the girls took Sid's old rooms, and Anthony and Spencer took over Adam's until their expected departure to the camp in two to three weeks. That gave each their own bathrooms. Spencer had now spent the better part of the past nine months or so both with the Pine Ridge girls at camp, and, with Carla and Jeannie one hell of a lot closer, once the two ten year olds wormed their way into Beachview. That fact at least had Spencer fairly use to being around and seeing girls in all shapes, sizes and degree of dress. Usually Carla and Jeannie weren't, but neither girl had ever made a big deal out of either their being naked or Spencer being naked, so he pretty much considered it a draw. Like every other boy in the mafia, he considered both girls just two more of the guys.

Caroline and Judy had no such illusions. They were girls, and Spencer was a very cute little trophy who sang like an angel. He was extremely shy and retiring and that made him even cuter. He showered regularly and kept himself neat and clean, he used baby powder and baby oil, and smelled even cleaner, unlike most ten year old who stunk like horses. He combed his hair and treated people nice. In other words, Spencer was a catch!

As the boys of Green Tree had learned when the girls first showed up at Green Tree, the girls used metaphors amongst themselves when discussing sex. They knew very well the proper terms for body parts and sexual acts, but preferred their own private 'code' instead. Their rational was that they could discuss very private things around adults without clueing in the adults. In reality, it didn't really work, at least not with Green Tree staff that did the exact same thing as children, but maybe used different metaphors.

For the Pine Ridge girls, it was hot dogs and buns. Boys had hot dogs, from cocktail franks to Kielbasa. They also had a bun. Girls had two buns, front and back. Sauerkraut became body hair, and mustard came from a 13 year old boy if you were lucky. For the boys, they learned the code very quickly. Most they adopted, but some still stuck to their own code.

Following showers, David and Spencer joined both Anthony and Thomas downstairs as Gloria fed Timmy in the living room. With the fire going in the fireplace, both boys opted to roast marshmallows over the fire and Caroline now saw the opportunity to open a dialogue. Caroline was only 13, but she took lessons well.

"Would you cook me one of the marshmallows, I can't make it nice and golden brown like you do, every time I try, I burn it." she said to Spencer as she handed him the bag.

"Sure." Spencer said as he took the bag and pierced a marshmallow.

"All ya gotta do is to keep blowing it out and turning it before it turns the skin black." David now offered not cognizant of the inner workings of girls.

"Thanks" Caroline replied.

"Can you do mine?" Judy now asked David. At 12, David was a lot closer in age to the girls than Spencer was, but David didn't sing like a bird and smell like one too. However, he was Spencer's closest friend, mainly because everybody else was up in North Carolina. Therefore, David could be a valuable tool to use by the girls if they were going to end up in Spencer's pants. It also didn't hurt that David was no dog, and he carried a hot dog that looked to the girls like he knew how to use it. David didn't think that much of it as he took a marshmallow and put it on the stick, but he was rather impressed at himself for being so much more smarter than these girls who didn't even now how to roast a marshmallow. As she shifted Timmy to her other breast, Gloria watched the interplay with more than a bit of amusement.

With the adults talking shop around them, the girls kept the talk between them and the boys light, but as the evening progressed, both David and Spencer hadn't really noticed before how smart, clever, intelligent, courageous, skillful, talented, brave, witty, and great to talk with they were. They also didn't realize that none of them would be a virgin in the morning either. Live and learn!

Sammy's first night sleeping up north began for him pretty much the same as it did for all the kids. They had enough clothes on to survive a night out on the ice pack of Antarctica. The cabin was probably 15 degree's [8 degrees Celsius] hotter than it usually was in the middle of the summer when they slept in their birthday suits, but still, Sammy and the boys stood in front of the windows looking at the lake with it's skin of ice holding their arms around their chests like they were thinking about taking a dip. To keep the mood going, Sid had turned on the VCR and the boys watched 'Ice Age' for the 135th time. With Sammy lying between Adam's legs on the couch and Joey curled up on his stomach, both boys were sound asleep before Manny reached the pass. Maybe during a bike ride or a baseball game Adam had seen sweat running down the boys foreheads before, but Adam didn't remember quite as much as he took both boys out of the Doctor Denton's and laid them down in bed. It would take the boys a few days, but they soon learned that North Carolina just ain't Buffalo.

With Joey on one side of him and Sammy on the other Adam turned out the bedroom light and dug his way down into his pillow after he kissed both boys on the forehead and pulled the comforter up around his neck. It was a minute or two, but just before he fell asleep, the creaking of the bedrooms floor boards told him he was now receiving visitors.

One visitor slipped in next to Sammy, and the other slid in on the other side of the bed next to Joey as they scrunched themselves up against both boys and laid their heads down on the boys' pillows. The night light from the bathroom illuminated a soft pink pair of one piece bunny pajamas on a small form, and the very distinctive smell of strawberry shampoo told Adam that he was once again entertaining a co-ed sleepover in his bed. The morning would be a rather hectic one for both Sammy and Joey, but for now, Carla and Jeannie would keep them warm.

While the boys' days were filled trying to mooch rides off the senior boys ATM's and keeping the horses warm and exercised by riding them hour after hour, Adam and the rest of the staff were busy putting together classrooms. Work was progressing nicely but academics for the boys since the previous spring had taken a very serious hit. Sammy and the boys didn't mind, but Sid and Bert most certainly did. Early January saw a reprieve in the boys' school days. But it would soon come to an end.

Christopher's New Life

Not since the death of Bert's biological son had the man felt so attached to another human being, and for the life of him, he didn't understand why. He had waited close to three weeks before he opened the book, but now, Christopher's life came pouring out through the pages.

Christopher was the second son of a couple. His older brother was basically a carbon copy of Christopher. Christopher's father was fond of younger girls, and had met and lived with a family who had several young daughters. The family was quite poor, and in return for paying the electric bill each month, Christopher's father had a room and a very agreeable eight year old to keep the sheets warm. At 12 years of age, she had Christopher's brother. At 13 she had Christopher.

Generally speaking, this ain't a great start to a happy common law marriage. At age 15, mom had had enough of the boys' father and of the boys, and met another upstanding member of the community and she had a little girl at age 16. Christopher's mother wasn't the brightest light bulb in school, but she learned how to open her legs since age six for an ice cream cone or some food.

Nobody in Christopher's home state could figure him or his brother out, so luckily, their DNA samples found their way to Boston. Once identified, Christopher was shipped to Laconia. His brother wasn't as fortunate, the records weren't exactly clear where he's currently residing. His brother Lance was placed in foster care and he had a social worker who had 250 children to supervise. Since there weren't enough hours in a day for her to actually see and visit each one of the little tikes in her charge, she sat at home all day long inventing home visits and documenting exactly where the children were placed. One unfortunate day, she got into an automobile accident and was killed and her files where given to another social worker. Of the 250 kids, the State could positively identify 210 of them. Lance was one of the 40 who are still out there somewhere. Maybe.

What was known was that the boys were both Geppetto boys, and they were retarded. The girl, born of a different father was not a Geppetto Girl nor was she retarded. Therefore, the gene came from daddy who had since split with Christopher's mother's baby sister. If there was a silver lining in the history, it was that Christopher didn't have to deal with parents visiting day. For Bert, that was a comfort. But as he would learn, Christopher did have a memory, and it extended to the one person in his family who he loved very dearly, his father.

By all accounts, Christopher's father was a free spirited hippy who loved people, particularly younger female people. To his son he was Santa Claus, The Great Pumpkin, Wavy Gravy, and Clarabelle all rolled into one. From birth to age eight Christopher lived in a circus of love and madness that would probably make a cookoo's nest seem sane and the Mad Hatter's tea party a formal dinner. The record was clear that Christopher's father loved his sons, but it was also clear that both boys were raised amidst mayhem and bedlam.

The question in the report was; did any of this have an impact on Christopher? Did it make his 'condition' worse? Bert didn't think so, he hadn't heard that the Nixon, or the Reagan, or the Bush kids were all lunatics, so there was room for hope.

"I think you could have surrounded Christopher with Ph.Ds from the minute he was born, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference." Bert told Gloria as he read the report and she took notes.

"So I can delete the parts about Nixon and the others?" she asked.

"No, leave it in. I love to piss off those assholes in Washington who still think Ronny was a God." Bert replied.

"So what's Christopher's service plan?" Gloria asked.

"Academically, I don't think we're going to get much. He's not going to read, write or learn math. If we can channel and control his hyperactivity and impulsivity, we've probably done as much as we can do. We'll mainstream him in school with the rest of the boys, but he stays with his peers, not his chronological age group. During the day, he's with the eight year olds. He's still not going to do 2nd grade work, but at least he'll be physically matched." Bert said.

"It's probably a good idea to tell staff to ignore his chronological age around the boys. I don't care what year he was born in, he's not twelve years old." Bert instructed.

"What about his living situation?" Gloria now asked.

"Putting him in a cabin of Geppetto boys, even six to eight year olds, would result in him being engaged sooner or later. He doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what's going on and it would be uninformed consent." Bert told the girl.

"He'll stay and live with Helen and me." Bert responded.

"So, the canoe rides were a success?" Gloria now chided her boss. Bert smiled and shook his head.

"You girls can be the biggest connivers on the planet! You know that don't you?" Bert asked.

Gloria giggled a bit.

"Speaking of conniving, who was it that set-up Spencer in Beachview?" Gloria now asked.

"Why, is it working?" Bert asked the girl.

"I've seen nothing, but the girls aren't showering in my bathroom anymore, which tells me the boys don't have to wash their own backs!" she told Bert.

"Well, who knows? Maybe once he gets a taste, he'll decide he likes that side of the street!" Bert said.

Sammy's 10th Birthday

Sammy's first pick for a birthday present was a horse like David had received. His second pick was a trail bike. His third was a paint ball gun. Sid vetoed the horse, he didn't have the stables for every boy in school to own their own horse. If David and Sammy got a horse, why not the rest of the boys? David was the exception, not the rule.

As far as a trail bike, Bert refused to even consider it after Spencer's accident. No boy would own their own motor bike again. The paint ball gun request took longer to reject, but eventually, it was. If Sammy got a gun, they'd all want one.

"Do we really want 400 paint ball guns running around the woods?" Bert asked.

Sammy was informed that his first three picks were down the toilet, but Adam promised him he would come up with a present Sammy would like. The year before, Adam purchased a piece of jewelry for Sammy that the boy certainly liked, but basically really didn't wear. Periodically, Adam would have it taken out of the school safe for Sammy to wear on special occasions, but that was it. Adam wanted something for Sammy that he could use or play with, not something stuck away in a box.

As a young boy growing up in Connecticut, Adam had several passions, one was Astronomy, one was boating, and the other was playing with his trains. The teacher already had an Astronomy Club at Green Tree, and Sammy was a member. Adam had purchased a telescope for Sammy, and it sat on the back porch of the cabin. As far as boating was concerned, the camp and school owned dozens of sailboats, canoes, rowboats and kayaks. Sammy needed no boats. Sammy did not own trains, but Adam did.

Adam's Grandfather and father collected trains as boys, and as the only son, Adam had long since inherited a collection of Lionel and Marx trains that very few boys had seen since the 1950's. For Adam, it wasn't a big deal; he was going to give a few of the sets to Sammy for his birthday. To Adam's mother, it was a big deal, and the stage was now set for a showdown that began when Adam was a child playing with his sister as a seven year old.

"Those trains can't be given away, they belong to the family. They belong to your children and your grandchildren." Adam's mother told him when she learned of the plan.

"You hardly know this kid whoever he is. You just don't give away family property to strangers!" she said. As Adam's blood pressure rose, he kept telling himself to hold his tongue. Dealing with his mother was one pain in the ass after another since he could first remember. He loved her, but GOD she was a pain in the ass! "Mom, he's not a stranger, he's like my own son. I want to give him something special for his birthday, and I really don't think a few trains is giving away the family jewels." he said.

"I forbid it! You're not giving away any trains to a common street urchin!" Adam's mother stated.

In order for secure calls to be made, they had to go through Alexandria. After the words 'Street urchin' were recorded, the phone line went dead. Multiple requests were made from Connecticut to contact Adam in North Carolina, they were all refused. Bert became involved the next morning when Alexandria played the entire conversation back to him.

"We don't need family squabbles Bert." Alexandria told the director.

"Nip this shit in the bud. Go out and buy the kid a set of trains, who gives a shit?" they asked.

Bert knew very well that Adam, for one, gave a shit. What Adam really wanted to do was to talk to his father. At the same time, he knew if he called the house, he'd be talking to his mother. That was pointless. His original plan was to ask his father to pull two sets of trains, some track and a transformer out of his collection and FedEx it down to him. After the street urchin statement, Adam was positively livid. The collection was stored in a storage facility in Stamford and he hired a shipping and packing company to ship the entire contents of the unit down to him. Except for his car, his boat and whatever trunks of stuff he had in the attic of his parent's house, he now had all his property away from his mother's control.

"We all know that the phone lines are secure and scrambled Adam, we also know that the calls are monitored to maintain security for the boys." Bert told Adam as the two spoke on the phone in Bert's office.

"Alexandria is concerned that your mother will raise a stink with you, and that could end up involving the boys." he told the teacher. Adam told Bert he had ordered the contents of his storage unit shipped to him and that the property inside the unit was his to do with as he felt like. Bert suggested that the school would be happy to buy Sammy trains but Adam rejected the idea.

"I want him to have those trains. I want him to have my trains!" Adam declared.

"At 26 years of age, I don't need my mother's permission to give away my fucking toys!" Adam said adamantly.

Sid was there in the office with Adam's permission, and as the phone call with Bert ended, Adam was ready to either beat the shit out of his mother or start crying. He wasn't exactly sure which. Sid could turn anything into a joke, but he full well realized that to Adam, this was no laughing matter.

"It sounds like you have a very strong willed mother." Sid said as Adam sat back in Bert's chair with his eyes closed.

"You don't know the half of it." Adam replied somewhat dejectedly.

"No I don't, but sometimes it helps to talk about it." Sid suggested. Adam knew well that both Sid and Bert were psychology majors but he also knew the two to be his personal friends. Maybe even his closest friend when it came to Sid.

"My mom's been running the family since I can remember." Adam began.

"We get along OK, but I've never really trusted her since I was seven or eight years old. I and my Dad are fine, and as long as she's not around, we always got along really great." Adam told Sid.

"What happened at seven or eight?" Sid asked. Adam smiled a little and thought back 18 or so years to his childhood.

"I was seven or eight and my little sister was five or six and we were playing in the house. I don't even remember what we were playing with, but it had nothing to do with sex, I didn't even know anything about it up until then. I remember my mother came into the room and I had an erection sitting on the floor, and she fucking freaked out. She slapped me across the face and picked me up and took me over to a bed and kept spanking me over and over again saying 'Filthy little bastard!' over and over to me." Adam said as the memory brought back a flood to the grown man.

"I was crying, my sister was crying, and she just kept spanking me and screaming the same words over and over. I didn't know what I did to make her so mad at me. Finally, she threw me on my bed and locked the bedroom door. I cried myself to sleep." Adam recalled.

"When I awoke, my Dad was sitting on my bed.

"Mommy says you and Carol were playing with each other" my Dad told me. I still didn't understand what either one of them were talking about and told my father that. My father told me I had an erection. Shit, he had to explain to me what an erection was." Adam said.

"When I finally figured it out, it confused me even more. I had gotten stiff a few times, and asked my mother why it was happening, and she told me I had to go pee when that happened. So if that was right, why would she freak out if all I had to do was pee? I asked my father. I don't really remember much of the rest of the conversation, but my Dad brought me some dinner and then put me back to sleep. I do remember my parents having one hell of a fight that night, and that was something my parents never did." Adam recalled.

"The next morning, my mother told me to 'forget about it' and acted like it never happened. But I knew she didn't really forget about it, I was never allowed to be naked around my sisters anymore, and we now took separate baths. For years, every time I got an erection I'd go hide in the bathroom and shake with fear thinking my mother would see it and kick my ass in again." Adam told his friend as his hands visibly shook.

"From that day on, I avoided contact with my mother whenever possible. When I was younger, I and my Dad used to go down to the basement and play with the trains. My mother thought it was stupid and a waste of time. I didn't mind, she didn't get involved. In later years, my Dad and I would spend the summer on the sound when he wasn't working, and again, my Mom hated boating and never went. I never really trusted my mother again." Adam concluded as he got up from Bert's chair.

"It must be 12:00 somewhere." Adam said as he opened the fridge.

"Want one?" he asked Sid. Sid usually didn't drink at 10:30 in the morning, but he made an exception as he took the beer.

"Kids are tough little buggers who can bounce back from a lot of shit in their lives, but it's tough to regain trust in someone once it's lost." Sid told Adam.

"Sometimes the adults around them can be pretty stupid and do and say stupid things. I don't think many of these kids would still feel comfortable around us if every now and then we hauled off and sucker punched one of them." Sid counseled his friend.

"But if I were you, I'd be more pissed at my Dad for not laying the whole dam thing out on the table between you and your mother the night it happened." he said.

"Having a tiff with your mother was fine and dandy, but once he found out the facts, it needed to be dealt with right there and then. You should have been told you were innocent, and she should have been made to apologize to both you and your sister. That was your father's responsibility to you."

"Well, it's a little late for that!" Adam replied.

"I disagree. If I were Adam, I'd be writing to the both of them and telling them exactly how I felt about it. If they get miffed and can't deal with it; tough shit. That's not your problem, that's theirs. You've been carrying around a bag of guilt that isn't yours for a long time now, I'd send it back to its rightful owners." Sid suggested.

"What good would it do?" Adam asked.

"I think it depends upon how much your parents love you. If you hurt Sammy's feelings, would you want to be told about it so you could apologize to him? Or would you rather the two of you just keep strolling through life with him pretending everything's hunky dory?" Sid asked.

It would be Easter before the letter was finally written by Adam to his parents. Each parent wrote back, Adam's father felt that Sid was correct, he should have intervened immediately. He also apologized for not having done so. Adam's mother thought it was foolish of Adam to be even thinking about a 'nothing occurrence' that she didn't even recall. Adam shared the letters with Sid.

"So when the kids arrive, make sure Grandma isn't left baby sitting them!" Sid suggested. After 18 years, Adam wrote off his mother's beating of him, but it was going to take a hell of a lot longer for Adam to forget the slur against Sammy.

Sammy's birthday arrived with the same hoopla and fanfare afforded all the students at the school. The dinner meal was their choice, and after dinner, Sammy got to open his presents in the cabin. As Adam wanted, Sammy received two train sets that would need to be laid out on track boards that both he and Sammy, with the rest of the boys in the cabin, would all make together. Adam had spent hundreds of hours in his basement as a boy with his father playing with these trains, and now, the man wanted to share the same experiences with Sammy. At ten years of age Sammy wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at, but a full set of 208 Santa Fa Alco Diesel locomotive's with 12 cars, and a 2344 New York Central F3 Diesel locomotive set with 16 freight cars, more than sparkled Sammy's eyes. The full sized Lionel trains were easily the largest Sammy had ever seen.

The New York Central train cost Adam's grandparents $119.95 when they bought it for Adam's father. The Santa Fe cost them $269.95. Adam was in no way looking to buy Sammy's love, but as far as Sid was concerned, he was failing miserably. Sammy would be playing with train sets that were easily now worth in excess of $10,000.00 apiece.

Now standing over Sammy as he unwrapped his presents, Sid turned to Adam.

"No wonder your mother went fucking bullshit!" Adam smiled, but he cared little about the monetary value of the trains sitting in a storage bin gathering dust in Connecticut. The gleam he saw in Sammy's eye's was the same one he himself had when he was a boy watching the trains move along the track and that's really all he gave a fuck about.

It would be a very long winter, and now, they had one more thing to do together instead of watching the stupid TV!

With Helen and the girl's gone to camp, Bert spent as much time as necessary dealing with the administrative necessities of closing down the Florida operation and switching it up to North Carolina, but he also wanted to use the time to get to know Christopher and try to really understand exactly where the boy was coming from. He knew Christopher was moderately retarded, some might even say profoundly so. The boy couldn't speak, he had no impulse control, he really had no common sense, and few gave him a prayer for getting any better. Still, Bert saw something in Christopher that said to the man that this boy was more than just something to make comfortable. If there was a one in a million chance, Bert wanted to give it to him and he really didn't know why it mattered to him so much other than looking into Christopher's eyes, seeing him smile, and watching his reaction to things that anybody else would ever have noticed. Christopher lived and breathed within his own world, and Bert for one didn't think it was such a terrible world to be in.

After lunch, the girls always went to the pool to lounge around and swim with the babies and little ones and Christopher was instantly attracted to babies. While he would never purposely hurt a fly, he was, even at his small size, like a bull in a china shop when it came to infants. The last thing you would put in Christopher's hands were a small kitten, a puppy, or a baby. He would love them to death. All staff was made well aware of Christopher's potential.

"Hi guys, mind if we join you?" Bert asked the group hanging around the pool.

"Hi Bert. Hello Christopher." Gloria said as she sent Timmy into the pool with Judy.

"Hey!" Christopher exclaimed as his overalls hit the floor and he ran towards the water. Grabbing an arm of Christopher about two feet away from six feet of water, Johanna waylaid the boy as she buckled him into a swim vest. With a kiss, Christopher was gone in a splash into the pool and was only now incapable of sinking to the bottom.

"Once we get to camp, Dan's going to have to go into overtime to teach him to swim. What are you going to do about the lake?" Johanna asked Bert. Bert nodded his head.

"I guess we're going to have to do something." he replied.

"You're fucking right. Ice or no ice, if he's living on the lake, he's going to be heading straight for the water!" Jeanette said.

"If that lake isn't secured, you'd better keep him in a life vest outside and a watcher following his every move. He doesn't fear the water, even when he's drowning!" she told her boss. Bert again nodded. He'd have to call Dave and give him one more job; put a security fence around the entire lake.

Thomas' chief responsibility was to the youngest of the Camp Kenny children, particularly to the infants. Now that they were all in Florida, his job was made easier, and he had more time for his hobby, which was photography. For infants, it was natural for them to stop breathing underwater, and for the older children, common sense. On more than a few occasions, the underwater photo sessions had to be stopped while Christopher was brought to the surface to clear his lungs.

Thomas' specialty as a physician was as a pediatric surgeon. He knew very little about retarded children as did most of the other staff at Green Tree. With Sid now up in North Carolina, Sid asked Thomas to monitor Christopher and his behavior and see what he could uncover, if anything. For one, Sid wanted to know why, since Christopher was a Geppetto boy, he wasn't extremely sexually active. Even after pouring over Christopher's extensive medical records, there was no clue. Simply being retarded wasn't the answer, as anyone who deals with retarded children and adults knows very well, retarded people can be just as sexually active as 'normal' people. Sometimes even more so, because they don't have the capacity to learn shame concerning their bodies and despite society's best efforts, don't feel the inner need to hide, sneak, lie or pretend they aren't sexual beings.

'You'll go crazy if you do that!' came about from retarded people masturbating publicly, while every body else in the world knew they never did such a thing. Point that out to little Johnny who's been caught standing in his closet with his pants down around his ankles, and show him the neighborhood retard jerking off in his back yard and Bingo, Mommy and Daddy just proved it to you! Being sterile wasn't the answer, a vasectomy makes you sterile, but it don't stop you from having sex, and more importantly, from wanting to have sex. So what turned Christopher 'off' in the sexuality department? It was a question Sid wanted an answer to!

"Off the top of my head, I'd say that we're looking at two factors, and they may and may not be interconnected." Thomas said as he sat in Bert's office one afternoon combing through Christopher's file.

"It's either related to a gene or chromosome alteration, or, his retardation has affected a certain group of neurons in the brain that's affected his sexual responses; maybe a combination of both." Thomas told Bert.

"I think it's worth sending the file and a blood sample to Boston and letting the DNA people study it. I'm out of my league." the doctor said.

"From what I've read, I think we need to compare the allele markers from Christopher, his brother, his step sister, his mother and his father. Somewhere in that fucking soup is the key to what turned him off, but does that mean the only way it can be replicated is to turn these kids into zombies?" Thomas said.

"Excuse me?" Bert said more than a bit pissed.

"I'm not calling Christopher a zombie. You know I like the kid as much as you do Bert." Thomas replied as he backed way down.

"What I meant was that if it's going to take a lobotomy to turn the kids off, it's not going to happen!" Thomas said. Neither 'zombie' nor 'lobotomy' impressed Bert all that much when discussing Christopher and it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that Bert was very close to the subject at hand.

"I think your bedside manner needs a little tidying up, but I agree with your conclusions." Bert told Thomas as the two men sat there.

"As far as I know, the brother is lost somewhere in the social services system up there, probably in foster care or a group home. The mother and step sisters' whereabouts are known, but Daddy is off playing with little girls somewhere." Bert said.

"I think that tests were made a few years ago for Down syndrome on the entire family, so we may already have blood samples on file." Bert told the doctor.

"I'll work on my bedside manner, but I didn't mean to disparage Christopher or his condition Bert." Thomas replied.

"Sorry for getting testy Doc, but there's something about that kid that makes me want to wrap him in a very protective cloak." Bert replied.

Christopher's cloak at Green Tree extended way beyond just Bert as Thomas and everyone else at Green Tree very quickly realized. With Helen and the girls gone, Christopher now slept with Bert. When the girls were there, he invariably found his way to their beds even though he had his own bed. All four of Helen's girls readily accepted him, even though he could sink the Titanic at night. Getting 15 year olds to accept that surprised even Bert.

He loved to be carried and his feet were rarely on the ground. At a little less than 70 pounds [32 kg], he was generally riding on someone's hip. His day was a never ending round of play, and he rarely played alone. Despite his lack of speech, Christopher's communications skills left few wondering which direction he wanted to go in. On paper he functioned in the 55 to 60 I.Q. range which Bert disagreed with vehemently. For some things, like his being ill, you needed visual cues, but for most of Christopher's needs and wants, Bert understood him perfectly. At 55 or 60, a person is technically a moron. To Bert, a moron was something that lay there and you fed it, bathed it, and kept it warm. Christopher was a person.

Acceptance of Christopher by the boys was immediate. They didn't fully understand how he was a Geppetto boy like themselves and not romping, but his 'special condition' was accepted as the cause, and all the boys were aware that Christopher did not engage, even if he backed himself up to you.

"Where do you think that came from?" Sid asked Bert one day as he watched Christopher in the pool with a group of swimmers. Bert had seen him do this before; Christopher had even done it in bed with him and Helen on occasion.

"He was institutionalized for awhile. I think he was taught to lie down and be passive by the other patients there and the staff." Bert replied.

"You think they taught him the shame signal?" Sid asked.

"No, they wouldn't have done that; they wanted to screw him, not to teach him how to stop. He lived most of his time with his father. I think it was something that either his father or maybe a teacher at school taught him." Bert replied.

One of Bert's major reasons for keeping Christopher with him, was due to Christopher's asexuality. Around Green Tree, if you didn't see sex in one form or another, your name was Ray Charles. The boys were use to sexual freedom, and Bert knew full well that in the bathrooms at school, in the steam room or Jacuzzi, in the cottages or cabins and in the woods, there was no way for Christopher not to come face to face with sexual activity.

Like everything else in his life, this did not shake the foundations of his soul or cause him to lose faith in mankind. He was curious, had seen it all before, and if made to do it, was a part of it. Naturally, at Green Tree, he was not made to do it, it was strictly forbidden by Bert. Every boy there knew that Christopher was incapable of saying 'yes' even if he did! Still, Bert didn't want to expose Christopher to cabin or cottage life.

Christopher did not make staff or the other children's job easier when it came to engaging him. For one, Christopher got naked when Christopher felt like getting naked; maybe at meals, maybe at vespers, maybe in class. When the mood struck, he was naked. Problem was, around Green Tree boys, getting naked usually came with a whole lot of fun immediately following.

In Christopher's case it was usually because he had to go pee. For one thing, Christopher drank huge amounts of liquid. He usually peed four to six times a day. At night, wear a life vest if you slept with him. When Christopher pees he pees where he is. If he's standing in front of a toilet bowl, you're lucky. Usually, it's on a tree, in the pool, in the Jacuzzi, riding a horse, riding in the golf cart, or on your hip if you're carrying him.

Sometimes there's a warning. If he's holding his penis, he's about to pee. If he's holding his ass, you have maybe 10 seconds to find a toilet seat. When Christopher pees he gets undressed if he isn't already. He does not pull down his fly and dig for his penis, he sits down and takes off his shoes, socks, pants, underpants, shirt, and anything else he's wearing and then goes. Sometime long ago, Christopher was completely undressed when he had to use the toilet, and Bert thinks he'll be getting naked until he's a very old man.

He also sleeps naked and more importantly, spontaneously gets naked if he see's other people naked. Needless to say, Christopher was naked or in the process of getting naked 80% of his day. Bert now had a clearer understanding of why Christopher's wardrobe consisted mainly of bib overalls. They were the one piece of clothing Christopher himself could put back on without assistance.

During the day, living with Christopher was a whirling dervish of activity. He was never allowed to be alone, and his activity was rarely directed by outside influence. Christopher does what Christopher wants to do, not what someone else wants him to do. When you were with Christopher, you were very busy 'keeping up' with him. At night, he went from play mode to sleep mode in the wink of an eye. Christopher never 'wound down'.

Many nights, Bert would be sitting at his desk doing paperwork and watching Christopher climb up and down the monkey bars set-up on the back porch. The next moment, Bert would look up and Christopher was sound asleep on the floor.

Probably Bert's most valuable lesson learned concerning Christopher was the depth of Christopher's feelings towards his father. The files had explained that the boy was largely raised by the father, the mother was rarely around by the time Christopher was two or three. As a child herself, she had little time for 'two retards' notwithstanding the fact that she was their mother. By every account, the father was a good father to the boys, and nobody disputed the fact that he loved and cared for them, albeit, not the most clinical environment in the world. Still the files made little reference to the attachment the boys had with their father, even years after they were separated.

Reading the file one morning, Bert went to the kitchen for some juice for Christopher, and when he returned, Christopher was at Bert's desk looking down at a picture of his father. The little boy, who never cried even when he was hurt, had very large tears rolling down his face.

"Paw?" he kept repeating to Bert over and over as he looked at the picture and touched it. With Christopher visibly shaking, Bert picked him up and sat back down with Christopher on his lap. Bert tried to close the file, but Christopher would not have it as he put his hand back down on the picture.

"Paw?" he kept repeating.

It was the only time Bert had ever seen, before or since, Christopher grieves. The scene was never repeated. Bert put the picture in a separate file that Christopher does not have access to. At the same time, Bert learned that Christopher went a lot deeper than just about everyone around him gave the boy credit for. He had long-term memory and he could most certainly build relationships outside of himself. A moron he was not! Bert was unsure how much Christopher could be helped towards a more independent life for himself, he knew Christopher would need lifetime assistance, but that's a whole lot different than assuming a boy is a no mind who happens to be living and breathing. Lying in bed that night, Bert looked at the boys face sleeping next to him. Whether Christopher knew it or not, he had a new father and a new protector.

Goodbye Florida

Florida was a broiling frying pan, it was infested with bugs that stung and bit the shit out of you, it stunk when the wind was right, and the water stank when the tide was right, the humidity turned you into melted butter, and a bolt of lightening was more likely to strike you dead than the lottery was to make you rich. A hurricane could blow you away and a thunderstorm could drop a tree on your ass before you could get off the beach. Scorpions liked to hide in your shoes, alligators looked like floating logs, and snakes looked like tree branches. Then again, some people call Hoboken 'home'.

"I spent well over 15 years bitching about the place. Now we're sitting here glassy eyed at leaving." Bert said to the staff at the last bivouac on the beach.

"Let's keep in mind that the place isn't leaving our control, if you get really homesick for a good fire ant attack, or nostalgic about no-see-ums biting the piss out of you, we can always arrange a short vacation." Bert told the assembled.

Most things rarely change in southernmost Florida, winter or summer, except for either sunrise or sunsets. Half of the sunrises are quite striking, but most folks aren't awake yet to enjoy them. For Floridians, one in 20 sunsets is exceptional. The kind that people walking along the beach, or even leaving the Publix Supermarket parking lots pay any attention to. Attribute it to whomever you like, the sunset on Green Trees last day was the one in 20. Bert was hoping for a gray nothing kind of setting, and instead, the hues of color shimmering off the clouds mixed with the water of the gulf reflecting the light wasn't making the impending departure any easier for anybody. Bert's only saving grace was that Sid was gone along with his music. If he was there, Bert could only imagine how much more difficult his assistant could make the parting.

"I've got good news, and I've got bad news" Bert began the meeting in his cottage two hours later with Gloria, Jeanette, Johanna and Beth.

"Jeanette and I will be going by bus with the group. Jeanette will be on the lead bus, I will be on the tail bus. Gloria, Johanna and Beth will be flying with your kids, and you'll have the three children in the infirmary and Doc, David, Anthony and Spencer riding with you." Bert told the group.

"What's the bad news?" Gloria asked.

"You have five adults on the plane, you'll also have Christopher."

Bert said.

"I'm expecting the plane to be landing in Winston-Salem without him piloting the plane." Thomas now stood up.

"I need a drink!" he said as he left for the kitchen.

Christopher had flown before. In fact, he had flown on the same aircraft with the same crew less than six weeks earlier from New Hampshire. Now, Christopher was galloping across the tarmac at Marathon's airport while the stewardess watched very nervously. It was seven a.m. For David and Thomas, the plane was also familiar; it was the same one they had taken to the Vineyards and back. For the rest of the group, it was a brand new world.

They knew they were flying to North Carolina but they didn't know they were going to get there like billionaires did!

Bert did not go with the group to the airport because he did not want Christopher to realize he was leaving the Florida campus behind him. The scene with Christopher and his father's picture haunted the man mainly because he assumed, like everyone else, that Christopher made no special attachment to anyone. This was now quite obviously not the case. As Bert tucked Christopher's shirt into his bib overalls and pulled up the straps he gave him a kiss.

"Today you're going with Aunt Gloria on a nice plane ride Christopher." he told the boy. At the mention of plane, Christopher looked up and smiled broadly.

"Hey" he exclaimed as he rapped his arms around Bert's neck. Bert watched from the front porch as Christopher bounded down the stairs and got into Bert's cart.

"He'll be fine." Gloria said as she gave Bert a kiss on the cheek and lifted Timmy up.

Once the group was on the plane, it was time to settle down and get buckled up. This was something Christopher did not do! For whatever reason, Christopher did not wear belts, nor would he allow himself to be restrained in any manner. He could be hugged, but you'd better not take too long in doing it. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses were out of the question. All of this, the stewardess was already aware of. She tactfully never saw the boy on take off as he stood by the window looking out.

Once airborne her very first question was to Christopher.

"Would you like to go potty Christopher?" she asked. As she led Christopher forward, the girls and Thomas had a good chuckle between themselves. They had heard about Christopher's flight down from New Hampshire and the 'accident' the stewardess had to clean up.

The flight itself took a little over an hour and a half, and by the time the breakfast was finished, the Captain was signaling his landing at Winston-Salem airport. For the stewardess, the flight was a smooth one. Christopher got off the plane with clean and dry underpants on due in no small part to the fact that he was taken to the bathroom four times.

Neither Sidney nor Joshua appreciated the landing, they began crying at 25,000 feet and it continued until the plane was on the ground despite Johanna's and Beth's best efforts to get them to nurse and break the pressure build-up in their ears. Christopher left the plane with a pair of wings attached to his strap and a pilot's cap. To Gloria, the stewardess looked genuinely relieved to be in North Carolina.

"Thank you." Gloria told the woman as she exited the plane with Timmy.

"No, thank you. When we brought him to Florida he flew alone." she told Gloria. Gloria smiled.

Halfway down the stairs Christopher spotted Helen and very nearly yanked Spencer off his feet as he dragged him down the stairs. To a chorus of 'I-ee!' Christopher leaped into her arms damned near bowling her over. He only weighed 70 pounds [32 kg], but that 70 pounds was moving when it landed on her.

"Did you have a nice plane ride Christopher?" she asked the boy who had a pretty good strangle hold going.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. His next question, which was repeated several times was "Burd?" Helen was a little confused, and thought Christopher was saying "Bird". Did you bring a bird with you?" she asked Thomas as the man reached the woman. Thomas smiled.

"He's not saying bird, he's saying Bert. Bert thinks he can't pronounce the "T' sound." Thomas said.

"That's ridiculous. Christopher say Santa." she told the boy.

"Santa!" Christopher exclaimed.

"Say shit." she told him.

"Shit?" Christopher said with a giggle. Thomas shrugged his shoulders, "That's what Bert told me." he said.

"Bert is working and you'll see him tomorrow Christopher. Are you hungry?" she asked the boy.

"Hey!" Christopher exclaimed as he wiggled himself to the ground and bolted for a van that was being loaded.

"So how was the flight?" Helen asked as she walked to the van with Thomas.

"Pretty uneventful." Thomas replied.

"Christopher behaved very well." Helen turned around and looked at the plane that was now taxiing back to take off.

"That's some piece of work!" she told Thomas.

"Corinthian leather throughout!" Thomas replied.

In Florida, the morning began at 5:00 for most staff. Because they would be on the road for the shortest time, Bert loaded the little ones last giving them half the morning to get showered, dressed, fed and play some before they hit the highway. Immediately following breakfast, the senior boys and logistics crew left. John and the remainder of his kitchen crew then boarded the buses and headed to Alligator Ally, leaving only the Camp Kenny children and their staff to follow. On the last bus out, Bert found himself surrounded by some of the randiest boys and girls from Camp Kenny, including Caleb and Scotty.

The Key was now basically deserted with only a skeleton crew of men who would remain there and dismantle requested pieces of equipment and ship it north. Bert's plan was to use the property in the very near future for a vocational training area of older Geppetto boys and men. His goal was to set up programs for teaching Geppetto students who either didn't want to or felt they couldn't go on to college.

"Society" would take a dim view of their sexual appetites and, since to the government they really didn't exist, a sheltered existence was preferable to incarceration. What Bert envisioned was a 'Post Graduate Green Tree' where they would be safe, but preferably learn a trade and function in the 'normal' world if at all possible.

With a little over 150 riders, the six busses ordered by Bert had more than enough room in each one to allow the little one's plenty of space. After the girl's fiasco with the broken down bus, Bert decided for overkill. If a bus broke down, the remaining five would continue on. Usually, the busses didn't link up until they had almost reached Ocala, but just shy of Dade City Bert caught up with the line, and it now moved up Interstate 75 at 80 miles an hour [120 km/h] with a federal escort in between each bus. With the security screen now in place, Bert relaxed as he monitored the bus driver's chatter over the CB while losing a video game to Caleb.

In just under 10 hours, Valdosta was reached for the night, and most staff wished the fuck they were on the plane with the babies. Even with closed circuit TV, video tape, computer games, hand held video games, toys, a bathroom and a never ending supply of finger food, sandwiches, juices and milk, most of the kids were climbing walls by 3:00. Despite two rest stops so they could 'unwind'. Bert for one tried to figure out how parents ever drove from the North with children to visit Disneyworld.

A reverse of the bus order now took place as the little ones left as soon as they were fed breakfast. Camp could be reached in six to eight good hours of driving, and as far as Bert was concerned, it couldn't come soon enough. Three stops were made on the second day, Bert had forgotten about the allure of snow to boys who had never seen it before in their lives!

Just before dinner, the busses rolled through the new gates to the school. The Corp. of Engineers had moved the original gate from the camp road out to the perimeter of the property which would keep the curious even further away than before. Passing by the 12 foot [3,7 m] fence and the guard house, no one would ever know what was beyond the fence, all that was seen was two large signs on each side of the gate that explained the length of the prison sentence you would receive if you were found alive on the other side of the fence for trespassing on a Military Preserve.

Unlike the intermediate boys' entrance weeks before, the Camp Kenny busses were dead silent as they rolled through the gates. More than half the kids were sound asleep; and the rest were watching 'The Lion King' for the 500th time. Bert was fully ready for a Gin and Tonic.

Chapter Eighteen

Starting Fresh

If you were a stranger to the gathering you would have had to conclude that these people hadn't seen each other in a few decades rather than a few weeks. The older they were the wetter their face as they greeted each other in hugs and kisses. Maybe it was just joy over the fact that the two day ride from Florida was over, but Adam clearly knew better as he himself had a tough time holding back a small flood. These adults were not merely fellow employees, and these children were not just a teacher's pupils.

Since the majority of the little ones off the busses weren't really dressed for winter, the crowd quickly re-assembled in the dining hall. The old temporary trailers were gone, and a brand new building now stood in its place. Already hanging from the rafters over assigned tables was each cottage's and cabin's flag, and a quick glance by even the youngest of the children told them where they were sitting. Despite the fact that the building was brand new, to Adam it had a warm homey feeling to it with a huge stone fireplace in the middle of the side wall, and knotty pine paneling covering the walls with framed pictures of the students both in camp and back in Florida engaged in various activities throughout the years. Adam had been in many ski lodges as a boy growing up in New England, and this new building could compete with any one of them. He had seen bigger fireplaces in some of them, but still, you could sit a dozen boys on the mantle with no problem, and it didn't take logs to feed it, it took tree trunks.

One of the proudest groups of people in the building was John the chef and his crew who happily conducted tours of the entire building including the kitchen and bakery. John no longer reigned over a broiling hot, cramped and undersized summer camp kitchen, he was in control of a state of the art facility that could feed 1,000 people if necessary in a single sitting without scrounging around for clean silverware and plates. Rows of black and stainless steel commercial stoves, griddles and ovens were his proudest new possessions, and unless you stuck your nose into every one of them, John wasn't sure you fully understood their real worth.

Dinner that night for what was now the entire school all back together was an Italian Buffet that would have made John's alma mater, The Culinary Arts Institute, very proud. It took close to a half hour for the group to settle down enough to get seated, and still, the level of activity was probably three times normal. Sidney and Joshua weren't all that impressed with the new building; they much preferred to nurse off Johanna and Beth as student and staff petted and kissed them unceasingly much to their annoyance. They were very happy once they drifted off to sleep and were propped in the middle of the table in their booster seats much like the centerpiece of a formal table.

Many changes would take place over the next few weeks, and one of the first was that Bert now had his own assigned table. Along with himself, he had Christopher, Helen, Robin, Stephanie, Jill and Claire. Helen had lost two of her girls to Beachview and the remaining four would now live with Bert. For Bert, it was a perfect arrangement because the girls and Christopher were extremely compatible. The table assigned to Bert held 12, so visitors could come and sit with the group, but chiefly, Bert would 'drift' around from table to table as he usually did, but now, he had a base table to go back to. It also helped when his table was centered in the Camp Kenny Section of the dining hall; his table was surrounded by the youngest of the students, those that depended upon his presence the most.

"So how was the trip boss?" Sid said as he dropped a Gin and Tonic in front of Bert and sat down.

"Where have you been?" Bert asked as he shook his friend's hand.

"You were surrounded by your fans so I figured to leave you alone and work my own end of the room." Sid replied as he took a sip of his wine just before Christopher climbed into his lap and put him in a neck lock.

"Have you been told the exciting news yet?" Sid asked as Christopher reached for Sid's glass of wine.

"No, I thought I'd give him a chance to unwind first." Helen said.

"Oh. Have you unwound?" Sid asked his boss. Bert looked at his friend and then to Helen.

"What?" he asked.

With Christopher ready to gulp the wine down, Sid took it from the boy's hands.

"I will give you some, but I don't want you to gulp it down." he told the boy. Christopher sat with his hands in his lap clasped together.

"Hey!" Christopher said. Putting the glass to Christopher's lips, the boy had his hands back up to the bottom of the glass and his head thrown back as half a glass of wine disappeared and very quickly reappeared with Christopher coughing and sputtering.

"What color did that shirt use to be?" Helen asked Sid as she threw the man a napkin.

"White!" Sid responded as Christopher caught his breath and wiped his face on Sid's red shirt.

"Christopher, we gotta learn a little moderation!" Sid said to the boy as he wiped the wine off the boy's shirt and overalls.

"Hey." Christopher said with a burp. Bert shook his head.

"So what's the news Einstein?" Bert asked his friend as he watched Christopher.

"The lake ice still isn't thick enough to walk on." Sid said as he looked at his empty glass of wine.

"Is the fence up around it yet?" Bert asked.

"It is now. Dave had to put the entire crew on it this morning." Sid replied.

"So the lake is now secure?" Bert asked.

"Yeah, except for the hole in it." Sid told the man.

"Hole?" Bert asked.

"Yeah, the one Christopher made when he fell through." Sid said as Christopher looked at Bert with his hands re-clasped in front of him.

"I-ee?" Christopher said looking at Sid.

"Yeah buddy, you fucked up real good!" Bert looked at Helen.

"He fell through the fucking ice?" Bert asked.

"He went out with one of the girls for a walk and had to water a tree. The girl figured she'd give him a little privacy and turned her back on him. The next thing she knew, Christopher was standing a few feet from shore jumping up and down on the ice. He fell in up to his knees." Sid reported.

"I-ee, i-ee?" Christopher said with a very concerned look on his face.

"Boy you got that right little pal." Sid said to the boy. Christopher now looked towards Bert.

"Why wasn't the fence up?" Bert asked.

"It was except for about 300 [90 m] feet, and Dave was going to finish it right after lunch." Sid told his boss.

"Except for some red ankles, he came through just fine." Sid told his friend.

"Suppose the water was 10 feet [3 m] deep?" Bert asked.

"Suppose he walked out to the middle? It didn't happen, he's fine, it's over and 'if' don't count around here." Sid said.

"We just all have to learn the lesson that five seconds is enough time for spunky here to get his ass into some pretty deep shit!"

"Hey!" Christopher replied.

"See that, he agrees with me!" Sid told his boss as he gave Christopher a kiss.

The look of concern, possibly even dread, left Christopher's face. Exactly how much the boy comprehended what the conversation was about was unclear, but he did know when he did something that made adults around him unhappy. Most probably in the past that got his bottom in the fresh air and a hand warming it up. He wasn't cringing out of regret.

Nobody at Green Tree was going to paddle him, but he wasn't there long enough yet to realize that. Now climbing down off Sid's lap, he climbed up onto Bert's.

"Burd?" he asked in his way off ending a word on a higher note than he began it. Bert wrapped the boy up in his arms as Christopher's arms went around Bert's neck.

"I want wall to wall eyeballs on him when he's awake, I don't care if he's taking a shit!" Bert instructed his assistant.

"Shit?" Christopher asked. Sid left the table as he usually did to laughter. He needed another glass of wine and a clean shirt.

"What the hell happened to you?" Adam asked as Sid sat back down in the mafia's section and poured himself a fresh glass of wine.

"I was Christopher's." Sid responded.

The term was now common around school. It meant an accident befell you and the accidents name was Christopher.

"So how did he take the news? Is he going to drain the lake?" Dan now asked his friend.

"He took it a lot better than I expected. He didn't even ask me who the girl was who was watching him." Sid told the group. Adam and the rest of the staff looked at each other. Bert had a tendency to over-react to accidents; it wouldn't have surprised them at all if Bert ordered a ten foot cinder block wall surrounding the lake.

John's inaugural dinner was a complete success. The smaller ones loved it for the spaghetti and meatballs, while the older ones went for the lasagna, stuffed shells, egg plant parmesan and stuffed chicken. They also knew the desert buffet was almost as large as the main course. It was well past 8:00 by the time the dining hall emptied, and close to midnight before the last of the staff left Bert's cabin. Christopher had fallen asleep as he usually did in the middle of playing with the girls, and Helen stuffed him into a pair of pull ups and pajamas. Bert didn't have an opinion one way or the other about wet beds, but Helen much preferred hers dry. Christopher always slept next to at least one warm body, and he was a snuggler.

With the whole school now back together, more than a few changes would have to be made. Meetings had been on-going for months and a new routine would be necessary. For one, they now needed to deal with the weather. Winter in North Carolina is cold, but it's not Minnesota or New York cold. It snows, but we're usually looking at inches, not feet or yards of the stuff. The temperature can dip into the low teens [-12 °C], but usually hovers closer to the 40 degree [5°C] range most days. For Florida boys, that's cold. For the girls, who came from Montana, it's almost beach weather. Additionally, by mid January they were half way through winter, and in six to eight weeks, the crocus, lilacs and tulips would be sprouting and once again, spring was something the boys had never seen before.

In Florida, the boys awoke with the sun. There were no clocks and there were no alarms. Now there was no Florida sun. Most days, it was difficult to say if it was eight in the morning, or two in the afternoon. At Adam's suggestion, they went back to the bugle system that was used for summer camp and adapted to the needs of the school day.

Bert wanted a 'home style' atmosphere surrounding the children. Except for school day lunches and Sunday dinner, all meals were served in the individual cabins. The food would be centrally cooked, but distributed to the cabins as it was in Florida.

It would take another four months before all the portable classrooms would be set up and running, and until then, individual cabins became class rooms. The system for Adam had it's ups and downs; he liked the idea of staying in the cabin and having his students come to him, but wasn't nutty about the idea of having close to 75 students a day traipse mud throughout the house, and that didn't include his own dozen boys and two or three dozen of their closest friends. Within three days, Adam ordered a mud room be installed on the front entrance, and boots and shoes became unwelcome guests.

For Sammy and the mafia, the new school became an adventure from day one. While they had no boats, canoes, sailboats, go-karts and lake to play with, they still had the horses. Maybe it was true that riding bare-assed was out for the time being, riding through the winter woods was just as much fun as it was in the summer, maybe more. Camping out on weekends was also possible if the weather cooperated, and they had sleeping bags that could survive the Antarctic thanks to LL Bean. Chef John made some pretty great beef stew, but the boys wondered if Dinty Moore out of a can that they cooked for themselves over an open fire didn't taste almost as good.

When the weather shut down the horses and the woods, there was always a senior boy to pester for a ride on his ATV. As intermediate boys they could not operate the machinery, but they could certainly beg a ride. Probably more than all the coaxing and being pushed out of the nest in the world brought Jesse to the conclusion that he was ready to become a senior boy and move up. Staff kind of thought the allure of the ATV had something to do with his decision that was now six months overdue.

Intermediate boys lived in cabins with staff. Senior boys lived in bunk houses with their peers. They were supervised, but nowhere near as closely as the intermediate boys were. They had a lot more freedom, and they had privileges commensurate with their age. At between 13 to 16 senior boys still attended school, but when out of school, they worked. Intermediate boys, when not at school played. By design, staff saw to it that intermediate boys aspired to become senior boys. Jesse was now ready to jump the shark.

Jesse liked all the staff, especially the staff associated with the mafia. But like most of us, he had certain staff who were very special to him; Dan for one, and at the top of his list, Sid. Jesse had requested 'talk time' with Sid shortly after the Camp Kenny crew arrived and borrowing an ATV, Sid let Jesse drive him out to Lookout Point and parked on a fairly refreshing 48 degree [9°C] day. Sid knew pretty much the reason for the request. He also knew it was a huge step in the boy's life. He was basically deciding to leave behind his childhood. Intermediate boys enjoyed an extremely comfortable nest, and he was ready to venture off. Not too far, but far enough. Sid brought along some hot cocoa to heat up and the both of them gathered some twigs and branches and started a fire to keep themselves occupied as they talked and warmed it.

"Uncle Dave says that if I want to, I could move into any bunk I wanted." Jesse began the discussion.

"Well, I naturally know every boy in the bunks; I don't really know any of them you wouldn't get along with." Sid told Jesse. Jesse nodded his head as he threw some twigs on the fire.

"I was thinking about moving in with Jake and Steven." Jesse said.

"Didn't they just go into the compound in the fall?" Sid asked knowing the answer.

"Yeah." Jesse said.

"Uncle Sid, How often to you visit the senior boys compound?" Jesse asked.

"I'm in all four compounds every day Jesse, you know that." Sid told the boy.

"No, I mean how often do you sleep there?" Jesse asked. Sid nodded his head.

"It's been a while since I slept there. Uncle Dave is in charge of the senior boys, I'm in charge of the intermediate boys Jesse." It took Jesse a few long seconds to formulate his thoughts, but finally he drew up the courage.

"But you had special boys who moved from the intermediate boys compound to the senior boys compound right?" the boy asked.

"Many dozens Jesse, and like you, they're still special to me and they know it." Sid responded.

"But you didn't ever sleep with them again right?" Jesse asked.

"Well, let me think about that question." Sid said as he sat down on the ground propped up against a rock wall.

"I do my very best thinking with a very special boy sitting in front of me. Come over here Jesse." Sid said. Jesse came over and sat down backwards into Sid sitting in between his legs. Sid wrapped his arms around the boy under his arms and clasped his hands together and sat back. The Interstate was clearly visible through the bare trees and way off in the distance, you could hear the singing of the big rigs tires as they climbed up into Virginia headed for Interstate 81.

Sid knew well that eye to eye contact wasn't necessary; in fact, it might even hinder the conversation. For whatever reason, people hide from allowing others to see them see them get emotional, and Jesse was very much on the brink. With the man's cheek pressed against the boys ear, Sid could now talk to the boy without causing him embarrassment or making him feel uncomfortable.

"As I recall, I have slept with boys who moved up to the senior boy's compound, but it had to be a very scared boy who really wasn't ready to be with the senior boys Jesse. Going into a new compound is the same as walking into a crowd of strangers, just like you did when we went to New Hampshire. Do you think you would feel the same if you went back there now?" Sid asked the boy.

Jesse smiled and shook his head.

"Same thing here. Something new is something strange and a little different, but I'm not going anywhere, every single staff member and boy you know isn't going anywhere, you're surrounded by people who know and love you and will be there for you!" he said.

"But you did sleep with a senior boy right?" Jesse asked.

"Jesse, I sleep with people I love and who love me back. But that doesn't mean that I would take someone like Christopher or Carla to bed. I love them both, and I think they love me back. If I knew it would not end up hurting them, it would be a different story. We've been to bed hundred's of times, but the time is drawing really close when you need to be exploring all your options and not tied down to a single individual." Sid counseled the boy.

"If Jesse needs Sid, then Sid is going to be there for you, but you're going to find out for yourself very quickly that there's a hell of a lot more to this world than looking after me!" Sid told the boy as he kissed him on the side of his cheek. Jesse sat quiet for a long time.

"Is this how Uncle Kenny did it?" Jesse asked.

"The exact same words!" Sid told the boy.

Jesse moved into the senior boys compound the next morning, but at Sid's suggestion, he did not move into a bunk, he moved in with Charlie and his 13 year old boys, Jerry and Marty. Sid monitored the situation closely, but after a little more than a year now, the match-up holds, and Jesse has begun paying a lot more attention to his grooming now that the girls of Green Tree have begun to notice him.

Jesse's departure from the mafia left a huge hole in Sid's heart. He loved Jesse as deeply as Jesse loved him or Adam loved Sammy. Sid had become a lot more deeply involved with Jesse than was normal for a Geppetto boy, and Sid was now paying the price. Adam, Dave, Dan, Kevin and most certainly Bert saw the problem well ahead of Sid, who was much too closely involved. The five men, along with Helen, Gloria, Johanna and Jeanette held a mini-meeting while Sid transferred Jesse's belongings to Charlie's.

"After my wife committed suicide over the death of our son, my mentor's prescription for me was work." Bert told the gathering of staff.

"Music is his passion, right alongside his connection to this school; let's figure out how we combine the two."

"Well, we can either send him on the road as stage manager for Pink Floyd, The Stones or Bob Seeger, or, we get him involved in an all time-consuming production of our own." Adam suggested.

"Like what?" Dan asked. After kicking the ball around for close to an hour, the group settled on a school production of "Oklahoma!"

"Let's keep in mind folks, an idle mind can lead to dumb thoughts and idle hands can lead to a hangover." Bert told the group.

"Gloria, now is the time for you girls to start spinning your little web concerning Patty. Put your little coving together and start whispering in her ear. We'll do the same on our end." Bert told the girl.

"It's kind of amazing how you guys just hate it when we connive, but you guys make us look like amateurs!" Gloria responded.

"I'll let the 'web' part and the 'coving' part slide for now." she told her boss.

With Sid sleeping at Beachview, and with the man being probably the closest friend Adam had at camp, seeing to it that Sid didn't overly bend his elbow became his responsibility along with making sure Sid had ample social time with Patty. Sid and Patty struck up an instant rapport with one another from the day the two had met the previous spring. To be sure, the task was a delicate one; get Sid involved with Patty while at the same time, making sure Patty didn't regard the relationship as her being a 'fill in' for Jesse. To accomplish that, Patty needed to fully understand exactly how a Geppetto boy ticked. That task was left to Helen, her closest friend.

While Helen and the rest of Sid's friends played 'matchmaker' Bert's plate was also full, and its name was Christopher. To his credit, Bert didn't over react and either put Christopher in a gilded cage, nor did he order the lake drained and filled in (but he did think about both). The day after Bert returned to camp with the Camp Kenny children, Helen had gone shopping and came back to camp with a harness; the kind you see on small children at Wal-Mart being led around like a dog so that they don't get lost.

Helen had not been around Christopher, and she wasn't aware of his dislike for restraints of any kind and as she was putting the chest harness on Christopher, she was concentrating on the harness and not on the boy as she buckled him in. Just as she finished, Bert came in the cabin. Christopher wasn't crying, but he had the largest bulges of water ready to overflow Bert had ever seen "I-ee!, i-ee Burd, i-ee?" Christopher exclaimed as he saw the man coming in through the door.

"What's going on?" Bert asked as he neared the two.

"I saw this at the store; we can use it to keep him safe when we send him out with the girls." Helen said with a smile.

"Helen, look at him, get it off!" Bert said as he bent down. Christopher now lost it as the tears no longer held back. He still didn't cry, but the tears showed the distress he was now feeling.

"It's off Christopher, it's off. You don't have to put it back on." Bert said as Christopher climbed into Bert's lap and wrapped his arms around Bert's neck in his very familiar pattern.

"I don't understand, he never said a word. I didn't know he was getting upset." Helen said.

"It's not your fault; he won't be put in restraints. Something happened with him before he got here, and he has a morbid fear of being tied down." Bert told Helen who was now crying herself.

"More? More Burd? More?" Christopher asked Bert as he held the man.

"No more Christopher, here, take the harness and go throw it into the garbage can." Bert instructed the boy as he held it out. The boy now backed away from Bert's chest and looked at the harness. Scooting himself down, he took it from Bert's hands and walked over to the trash basket and dropped it in.

"Let's take the garbage out Christopher." Bert said as he picked up the can and took Christopher by the hand.

Bert was now pissed, but he was pissed at no one at Green Tree. Sending Helen and Christopher to the pool with the girls, Bert was on the phone calling New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire School had not heard from Bert since they sent Christopher to Florida. The director at New Hampshire figured this was a good sign; No news is good news. Now he learned Bert was on the phone and speaking 'curtly'. The amenities were very short.

"Matthew, we've been friends for a long time, I really don't appreciate being blindsided by a friend." Bert began the conversation.

"Bert, like I told you, if it doesn't work out with him, we can move him." The director replied.

"Fuck that bullshit, Christopher's not going anywhere!" Bert shot back.

"I want to know why I have to find out directly from a child that he's attached by the umbilical cord to his father. I want to be told he's been restrained in the past before he freaks out on me for being put into a fucking belt!" Bert replied.

"This file you sent me is a fucking fantasy. It's 50,000 words of garbage!" Bert fumed. By now, Christopher's dorm father, teacher and the school's doctor appeared in Matthew's office and sat down. The New Hampshire School was run slightly different than Green Tree. At Green Tree you said very plainly what was on your mind. At The New Hampshire School, they were much more clinical in their language. Matthew was very use to his friend Bert, but the doctor and teacher learned more than a few verbal ways to blow somebody's doors off that afternoon.

"Bert, you need to understand that we didn't produce that file, he was only with us for three weeks before we sent him down there. The only part we have anything to do with are the reports from 11/05 on, and most of them are just medical findings." Matthew said.

"We wouldn't have any knowledge about his father, he's absent from the picture. And as far as restraints are concerned, we don't use them here so we don't know anything about any problem." Matthew told Bert.

"You never tried to put a belt on his pants?" Bert asked.

"No, Christopher always wore overalls; you don't use a belt on bib overalls." Christopher's dorm father replied.

"My advice is to extract the medical records from that file and burn the rest of it." The doctor now said.

"How is he doing?"

With Bert's blood pressure almost back down to normal, the better part of an hour was spent recounting and swapping stories about Christopher. Long before the conversation ended, the New Hampshire School staff knew that Christopher had found a very permanent new home.

With Camp Kenny now back, the mood of the entire campus improved. For just about everybody in North Carolina, being separated meant that someone they loved or missed very much was absent from their daily lives, and now, they were literally a short ride or a few cabins away. For Sammy and the intermediate boys, it was especially important to have Gloria, Johanna and Jeanette within their grasp if the need arose. It didn't happen all that often, but a scrapped knee or simply just knowing the girls were near was enough to make things better, and without them close by, insecurities could nag at them. The girl's presence was most especially missed at the pool where the Camp Kenny children spent the greater part of their day along with the girls. Empty chairs were a constant reminder to the boys exactly who wasn't there with them. Now, all was right once again.

By the beginning of February, the need for a larger pool was abundantly clear. As it was, the pool was reserved for Camp Kenny in the mornings and early afternoon, the intermediates in the late afternoon after school and for the seniors at night after dinner.

In the spring, the construction of another pool alongside the old one would commence, but for now, the pool was simply over crowded, especially in the afternoons.

Joey's Operation

To Sammy and the boys from the mafia, David was 'playing doctor' with their friend as Joey lay in bed and they watched with keen interest as Thomas guided David through the examination. Even Joey was getting the giggles over it right up until the time David palpated his appendix. Once Thomas saw the grimace, David's examining day was over.

"He has an inflamed appendix, it may subside, it may not. We'll know by tomorrow night unless his fever spikes." Thomas told Bert and Adam.

"If it doesn't subside by tomorrow, it'll have to come out."

Adam had a friend as a child who needed an appendectomy; he was told his friend came close to death. He didn't understand it then, and he didn't understand it now.

"If your friend almost died, it was only because they waited until it almost ruptured before performing the operation. Kids don't die today from it unless they're in the middle of the jungle or their parents ignore their complaints." Thomas said.

"Joey's appendix is inflamed, but it isn't about to burst and kill him." Thomas replied.

"If it has to come out, we're going to have to put him under general anesthesia. I can do it at Duke, or do it here, but I'd rather have an anesthesiologist that doesn't ask any questions"

Thomas told Bert.

"Let Boston know that we may need a doctor here on five hours notice."

"Adam, pack some stuff that will keep him happy, we need to monitor his temperature through the next 24 hours closely and he can't be running around." Thomas said. Adam nodded his head.

"He'll be a lot easier to keep happy if he has company. He and Trevor are attached at the hip." Adam told the doctor.

"No problem, but let the both of them know there won't be any partying going on until he either subsides, or losses a few ounces."

"What's the chances that it will subside?" Adam asked.

"50/50. But frankly, once these things go off, they usually make a pain in the ass out of themselves until it has to come out. If he were my child, I'd arrange to take it out and get it over with." Thomas said.

"Then let's tell Boston to get on the plane." Bert said.

"That's your call." Thomas replied.

At ten years of age Joey was a spunky little dude from Adam's cabin along with his friend of six years, Trevor. Trevor was now 11 and the two were fairly inseparable, but then again, these boys now ran as a 12 boy and two girl cabin, not as individuals, or even as pairs. When you saw one, you generally saw all 14 or them, and if you were smart, you got out of their way.

The trip to the infirmary was more like a parade than a hospital visit as Thomas checked to see if he had everything necessary. Thomas barely looked up as the first few children passed by his door on their way to the ward, but somewhere around six or so pairs of feet later, he realized he had a population explosion going on. With enough toys to keep a large Cub Scout pack happy, Joey was being helped into a hospital gown as Thomas sidestepped his way past kids on his way to Adam.

"He'll probably be back in the cabin in four or five days." Thomas began.

"Are you sure he has enough to play with?" Adam smiled.

"Sorry Doc, but the kids were afraid he might get bored." Adam replied. With Trevor now presenting himself naked to Sarah, the nurse slipped a gown over the boy's shoulders and turned him around to snap him up.

"And Trevor's aware of his restrictions?" Thomas asked.

"Sure Uncle Thomas. It's always been a rule we can't fuck in the infirmary." Trevor replied with a smile and two very innocent looking dimples on his cheeks. With a chorus of 'yeah' and nods of the head, Thomas looked at Adam who just shrugged his shoulders.

"But that's just for pussy. We can still play." Matty interjected.

"Ain't that right Uncle Adam?" the boy asked.

"Uncle Thomas will work out the details with Joey and Trevor, but we all know that there's more than one way to play." Adam replied. With a loud chorus of 'yeah!' following them, Adam and Thomas retreated to the doctor's office.

"Trevor is only one boy right?" Thomas now asked Adam.

"Yes, but the boys also know visiting hours by heart, so Sarah and Martha know what to expect once one of them hits the infirmary. Is bed rest an integral part of curing appendicitis?" he asked the doctor.

"No, but we don't want him flying on the high trapeze either!" Thomas replied.

"Well, we don't have to worry about that; it's been packed up for the winter." Adam replied. Thomas looked at Adam.

"I was only kidding." he said.

"I wasn't." Adam replied.

With a fever hovering steadily around 99.8 [37.7°C], Joey wasn't the spunkiest boy in the infirmary, and after dinner, with the mafia surrounding him, he fell asleep much earlier than usual probably due in no small part to a mild sedative provided at dinner. By 7:30 Joey was down for the count and his friend Trevor eventually expanded to Sammy, Matty, Chris, Carla, Jeannie, David and Spencer. If there was a 'rat pack' within the mafia, this core group was it, and reluctantly, Thomas agreed to permit the invasion if they left Joey to rest undisturbed.

The morning light saw Joey with a fever or 100.2 [37.9°C], and Thomas was very happy with his decision to go ahead with surgery. The most difficult part of the task was now at hand. Joey could eat or drink nothing, and the anesthesiologist was on his way in three hours. An occasional ice chip was all he received, and Joey was no longer in a playful mood as he got testier and testier by the hungrier and thirstier hour. Wisely so, the boys were removed back to Beachview except for David. All staff knew very well that anyone of them would have snuck Joey a half a glass full of water not realizing the danger to their friend. To be sure, they weren't happy listening to Joey begging for something to drink.

Sid met the doctor at the airport, and quickly learned that the man was the same doctor present at Sidney Patrick's birth. He was a Geppetto boy himself, and was even at The New Hampshire School when Sid was there before Sid transferred to Green Tree. It was a quick and pleasant ride for both men; they had a lot in common and knew each other's friends.

Jeanette and Johanna spent the entire morning with Joey primarily trying to get his mind off his empty stomach and thirst. Along with Adam, David and Trevor, they used the time to explain what would be occurring to him, and why it was necessary. Joey had never been in a hospital setting before; this would be his first operation. Knowing the plane had landed in Winston-Salem and the anesthesiologist was on his way with Sid, Thomas sedated him and hooked him up with a saline solution which quieted down his thirst and his pleading for water. Once Sid arrived with the doctor, Joey slipped under before the count of 96.

Besides Joey, probably the happiest person in the infirmary when Joey was finally sedated and put to sleep was David who had become extremely edgy about Joey's begging for water.

"I understand your concern for your friend David, but if he was given water and aspirated it during the operation, he could die." the anesthesiologist told David.

"Listening to your friend asking for water for a few hours is far outweighed by helping to save his life. Wouldn't you agree?" he asked David.

David nodded his head, but still, he was very happy Joey was now asleep.

"When I went to medical school, I had an old professor that a lot of the other medical students saw as something of an old fool, but he taught me something that sticks with me to this day David. He told me that when my patients ask me for something, what they are really asking for is help. Now most of them aren't doctors so they sometimes don't really know what the right help is. Joey asked for water, but what he wanted was for the pain to stop. We're about to stop the pain, and tomorrow, Joey's not even going to remember much about being thirsty this morning." the man told David.

"Throw Joey's words this morning out of your mind and replace them with the knowledge that you helped to cure his pain."

The operation itself was smooth and went routinely. Thomas and the anesthesiologist chatted back and forth, mostly about school chums, since both came from Harvard. David watched most of the operation, except maybe for the incision and the appendix in the tray, but Thomas was happy with the boy's reaction to his first procedure. David may or may not become a doctor about 14 years down the road, but if he does, he doesn't think he wants to become an anesthesiologist. He knows a pretty good one, who's plenty smart, but his Uncle Thomas is a pediatric surgeon, and he thinks he's pretty smart too!

Joey's scar became a war wound. He was the center of attention and spent the greater part of the next three days lifting up his gown and showing it off. The mafia moved back into the infirmary the morning after the surgery and the anesthesiologist returned to New Hampshire that morning after seeing Sidney Patrick for the second time in his life. Three days after his surgery Joey moved back into Beachview which was none too early for the infirmary staff. They were used to calm and quiet; and Beachview didn't have those words in their vocabulary.

"So Uncle Thomas, when we get back to the cabin we don't have any more strictions on us right?" Joey asked the doctor as Sarah helped him get dressed.

"Strictions?" Thomas asked.

"He's asking if they can get back into their normal social routine." Sarah said diplomatically.

"By all means Joey, be my guest." the doctor said as he shook his head and Sarah and Martha giggled a bit.

With Jesse now living with Charlie and his boys, Operation Sid went into high gear with the staff. The goal was to keep him so busy he didn't really have time to think about anything, or anyone else, and it worked almost too well. To the boys, Sid was a very old man, but in reality, he was now 51, in very good shape, and the last thing you wanted to suggest to him was a rocking chair, slippers and a pipe to keep him happy in his waning old age.

He was raised on Rock and Roll, knew his way around drugs in his college years, and had the largest bra collection on campus of Georgetown University. He could drink most staff under the table, and rarely, unless he was depressed, got sloppy about it. By AA standards, Sid is probably an alcoholic, but then again, by AA standards, so is George Bush and we tend to cut him a little slack. As far as Adam was concerned, given Sid's childhood, he deserved a great deal of slack and like most staff at Green Tree was extremely protective of the man. Keeping him busy and active was now the goal, and busy and active Sid would be, even if 'problems' needed to be invented.

As the summer camp stable master, Sid ran the camps horse program. Now, Bert decided that the barn would be heated and a winter program would continue indoors when the weather outside was too wet or cold for the students. As the school's audiophile, Sid was in charge of producing the music and stage lighting for school productions, and Sid was informed that the next production in July, was to be 'Oklahoma!'. Both music and horses would be involved in the production and endless meetings where scheduled. In Sid's 'Spare time' he could function as the intermediate boys' campus director. He was also a classroom teacher of history with a full day's academic schedule, and the Second in Command to Bert as the director of the entire school. When Sid had a second or two, his relationship with Patty was encouraged, and Sid rarely made it past 10:00 at night anymore. Maybe the boys were right, maybe he was getting old.

The move by the mafia back into Beachview took place right after Thomas' afternoon rounds. As close to a dozen kids trooped up the trail from the lower campus dragging pillows and blankets behind them, the rest of the mafia from Kevin and Dan's cabins appeared on the porch. Adam watched the boys approach and took one last fleeting glance at his sparkling clean floors. With close to three dozen children making up the mafia, Adam would be enjoying a week-end of non stop picking up and cleaning behind the mob that wouldn't go home for the entire weekend.

The Hanukkah/Christmas holidays were comparable to Adam's next three days. Cozy meals for 40 or so, piles of laundry, hours of showers, two dogs, a turtle, two rabbits and a black snake that had an uncanny ability to get out of its cage kind of made Adam wish he had Sid's load of work. His calmest time was between six and seven in the morning if he was lucky and ended up sleeping with Sammy. Sammy was now dry more often than wet, but that didn't stop his friends who just might be sleeping in with him and Adam. The chance of staying dry with two or three other kids in the bed was fairly remote. One of them, at the least, would create new laundry before the night was over; Adam could count on it!

The phobia concerning the winter cold had long since disappeared and the children were back to their routine of sleeping basically naked helped in no small part by the fact that the cabin was kept at a constant 78 degrees [25.6°C] in winter. Awakening Saturday morning next to a soundly sleeping Sammy, Adam got up for a piss call and went to the kitchen for a badly needed bottle of water as he got back into bed. With Sammy on one side, and Matty and Chris on the other, Adam very carefully returned to his pillow and scooped Sammy into his body. Adam's ass was wet, but Sammy's was dry. Sammy always awoke slowly, and this morning was no different. He realized he was being pulled from behind, and from the size of the pullers arms, realized it had to be Adam. As his Uncle's arms wrapped themselves around the boys waist Sammy covered Adam's arms in his and yawned deeply while drawing in a big breath. With Adam now directly in back of the boy, his Uncle kissed the side of his neck as he snuggled down into the pillow. This was Sammy's preferred way of waking up, and he was in no particular hurry as he lifted his leg over Adam's and pulled himself closer in as their two bodies joined as one.

Outside, the amount of light told both Sammy and Adam that it was probably 6:30 or so and reveille didn't blow on the weekends until 8:00. Outside, it was a chilly 45 degrees [7°C], but the snow was beginning to recede from the ball fields and disappearing in the deep woods. The lake had a huge hole in the center with no ice, and it was receding from the shoreline. Sammy and his friends had seen some skunk cabbage sprouting from the ground here and there, but other than that, winter still held its grip on the mountains surrounding the camp. Spring wasn't very far away, but Adam had already told the boys that they'd know when it arrived when they awoke to the sound of birds and not silence from the woods.

"Do you hear any birds, Uncle Adam?" Sammy asked very softly. Adam listened for a few seconds and then, reaching for Sammy's groin which was both warm and dry, shook his head as he cupped the boy's genitals in his hand.

"Not a peep yet." he told the boy.

"But soon right?" Sammy asked as he slipped his hand down and laid it on top of Adam's.

"Very soon." Adam replied as Sammy went erect. Sammy loved to play, but somehow playing with his Uncle Adam was always something a lot more 'special' to the boy. This was not a 'romp' or merely a way of releasing built-up sexual tension, this was a special time when Sammy knew full well that Adam loved him like nobody else ever did.

"Uncle Adam, how come you picked me instead of David or Jesse when you first came to Green Tree?" Sammy asked as he lay there watching a squirrel climb up a tree.

"Well Sammy, as I remember it, the both of us chose each other at the same time." Adam replied.

"If you remember, you decided to move in with me at the same time I decided to stay on here to live." Adam told the boy who by now had turned himself around and got on top of Adam's chest.

"But you still could have liked David or Jesse more than me!" Sammy replied as he laid his head down and closed his eyes.

"Yes, I could have, and I do like both Jesse and David very much. I also like Chris and Matty and the rest of the boys in the cabin. I don't know any boy here I don't like, but there's always been one I liked more than the others." Adam said.

"Me?" Sammy replied as he lifted his head and looked into Adam's eyes.

"You!" Adam told the boy as he kissed the tip of Sammy's nose. Sammy giggled a little and laid his head back down.

"How come?" Sammy asked.

"What's your favorite ice cream?" Adam asked the boy.

"Cherry Garcia" Sammy replied.

"Why?" Adam asked the boy.

"Just because I like it better." Sammy replied after some thought.

"It's also Uncle Sid's favorite ice cream!"

Adam smiled. Half the kids in the cabin loved Cherry Garcia and Adam had long suspected that Sid's influence just might have something to do with it.

"That's exactly why I love you little man, just because you're you." Adam said as he kissed the top of Sammy's head and hugged him.

The early mornings with Sammy were always Adam's favorite time of the day. They rarely lasted more than a half hour to 45 minutes, but they were 'prime time' spent with Sammy and an opportunity for Adam to get to know how Sammy was growing and learning and whether he was happy and content. If Sammy clung to Adam, or was reclusive and withdrawn, Adam would have been known something was wrong and bring in the staff. This was almost never the case. Now and then, like this morning, Sammy wanted to hear how much he was loved, and once he knew the answer, the party could continue for the ten year old.

"We're going to the stables this morning and see David's horse!" Sammy exclaimed as Adam got up and took the boy into the bathroom. Now standing at the toilet, Adam watched as a damned good stream made bubbles in the bowl with Sammy chasing them around.

"When is the baby horse due?" Adam asked.

"Uncle Sid says next month sometime." Sammy replied as he got into the shower. Joey's entrance into the shower was something of a parade. Joey was the wounded hero who had a waterproof bandage on covering his stitches to prove it. Four days in the infirmary with wall to wall attention paid almost exclusively to him had the boy glowing with confidence as Adam shampooed his hair and then let Sammy and the boys take over the rest. Breakfast was a gathering of close to four dozen people in a cabin for 12, and Adam for one was happy when the mafia decided it was time to invade the stables for the morning.

Originally, the plan called for Dave to close up the barn doors and windows for the winter and allow the natural heat from the horses to heat up the stable. The stable would stay at around 55 degrees [13°C] most of the time, and the horses had grown their winter hair. For them, it wasn't a problem. However, the girls wanted to ride dressage, and the mare was foaling in the spring. As Sid knew very well, the mare was perfectly fine and happy with the temperature, but the girls were not.

"It's not as simple as it sounds." Dave replied when asked to get the stable 20 degrees [10°C] warmer.

"For one, you're going to drive the horses nuts. They're not going to know if it's winter or summer and will be shedding like snowflakes every other week." he told Bert.

"They grew hair in the fall knowing the winter is coming. If you put them in warm stables, their systems are going to think summers here and they will lose their hair. Going from heat to cold to heat will screw up their system." he told his director. Bert knew little to nothing about horses and looked to Sid and Patty who nodded their heads.

"Secondly, most barns burn down. They burn down either from spontaneous combustion, or electric wiring and heating fires. The chance of a fire with heat goes up dramatically." Dave told the group.

"Horses will chew on anything, including electric cable. If you heat with propane or fuel oil, straw dust is as combustible as gasoline in the right quantity. Open fire inside that building is begging for trouble." he counseled.

"OK, so what now?" Bert asked his Chief Engineer.

"Send the trail horses outside during the day when the girls are going to ride and bring the stable up to room temperature while they're riding with portable heaters contained out side the building. After they're done, let the barn go back to body heat from the horses and bring the trail horses back inside." Dave recommended.

"And the mare? She won't have a problem with the cold?" Bert asked.

"Bert, the horse is a Belgian. Do you have any idea how cold it gets in Belgium? That horse frolics in four feet of snow!" Dave said to his boss. Dave didn't fully explain how noisy portable forced air heaters are, but three days later, the girls were riding dressage inside without wearing ski parkers. Sammy and the boys found it all amusing: posting to them was little more than screwing the air as far as they could see. At the same time that it amused them, it also confused them.

"All they do is complaining about us fucking, but they sit on them horses and ride around fucking all day!" Sammy protested to Sid. The stable master looked towards his assistant, Patty.

"Don't mind my presence Sid. I'm interested on hearing your explanation of this behavior on the girl's part." Patty chided.

For the boy's part, they listened to the explanation, but didn't buy it for a second.

Saving Stephanie

"OK, so now what are you going to do?" Bert asked the administrators of the program in Boston.

"There are six facilities around the country that can take her in. Three are east of the Mississippi, and three are west of the Mississippi, the only one that could be right for her is in Utah." Boston told Bert.

"So she's going to Utah?" Bert asked.

"She could, but a few staff here think she's just going to try again, maybe even succeed next time." they told Bert.

"And they're recommending what?" Bert asked.

"They feel if she's re-located there at Green Tree, it's her best chance of survival." Bert was stunned.

"You're fucking kidding me!" Bert replied.

Bert had been involved with Geppetto since the diagnosis of his own son. Allowing relatives of Geppetto boys to live together was almost like breaking rule number One.

For one, all relatives were lied to. The word 'Geppetto' was never spoken to relatives. The boys had a natural medical sexual dysfunction called 'precocious puberty' and it could be channeled in most boys to teach them to lead productive lives. That was the 'official' government line on these boys. To allow the parents and relatives to discover that these kids were manufactured by a government program that went amok would never be sanctioned by anyone in Washington.

"They propose to bring in Caleb's mother and live with him? Does anybody up there know how these kids get their kicks in their spare time? Do they understand they're in each others pants six, eight or ten times a day?" Bert asked as sarcastically as he possibly could.

"Do you honestly think she's going to go picking daisies knowing Caleb is screwing his balls off with all his little pals?" Bert asked.

"She already does know that Bert." Boston replied.

"Yeah, because she thinks he has precocious puberty. It'll take her two days to figure out that's a fucking load of bullshit!" Bert replied.

"She's slicing her wrist because Caleb has a problem. How do you think she's going to react when she finds out that she's the one who gave it to him?" Bert asked.

"And forget the mother for the time being. There're almost 600 people here who have relatives too! Almost everybody has a mother, father, sister or brother that they'd love to have live with them. How the hell do you think they'll react when Caleb gets his mother and they don't?" Bert asked.

"You haven't said one word yet that we don't agree with Bert, but these are very special circumstances. The psychologists say the likely hood she'll try again is almost 100%. If nothing's done, she's a dead woman!" Boston told Bert.

There was a very long pause on the line before anyone spoke.

"Obviously Alexandria is aware of this and is agreeing to it. Why?" Bert asked Boston.

"Because the husband has some juice in St. Paul. If his wife dies, he just might start looking for Caleb at some future date. If the mother stays alive, and is actually living with Caleb, he'll most probably move on with his life, get married and start all over again." Alexandria now told Bert. Bert instantly recognized the voice on the other end. He also knew all along that the phone call was monitored. All outside lines were monitored.

"Harry, from what I read from Caleb's file, the father wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. Why would he suddenly change his mind?" Bert asked.

"If she died, guilt would probably change his mind Bert. If she's alive, she can take care of the 'little pervert' as he calls Caleb. If she's dead, that picture could change in the good daddy's mind." the man from Alexandria said.

"Who came up with that Harry?" Bert asked.

"A combination of our people and Boston. Do you agree with them?" Harry asked.

"It sounds about right." Bert replied after considering it.

"How much juice does daddy have?" Bert now asked.

"Enough to get him caught in a blizzard with no gas if he starts asking the wrong people questions." Harry responded.

"It happens all the time up there."

"Is this a done deal? Do I have any choice?" Bert asked.

"Yes of course. If you say 'no' she doesn't arrive." Boston replied.

"Give me 24 hours; I have to get my staff involved with this." Bert told the administrators.

"We can do that, but keep in mind that she's sedated and under restraints. We can't keep her in that condition long." Boston responded.

"Let's just keep in mind; if Caleb's mother is brought into the loop, it's a one way ticket." Alexandria reminded the callers.

The calm and quiet of March ended within 15 minutes as Bert brought together both the school's hierarchy and the crisis team. 20 staff listened to Bert explain the entire phone call. Everyone there instantly agreed on one fact. Bringing in Caleb's mother solved two people's problems. It created problems in roughly 598 others who attended the school.

To Adam, the most striking part of the meeting was that no one suggested the mother not come, they immediately began to figure out how to make it work with minimal disruption to the other students, both the boys and the girls. And even then, most of these staff had their own relatives they were estranged from. As one of the staff with the least amount of seniority, Adam preferred to do more listening than suggesting.

"What about setting them up in their own separate unit?" Kevin asked. Sarah instantly rejected the idea.

"Caleb would never agree to separate from Camp Kenny. He needs company from the time he wakes up until he drops off to sleep at night. Not being around the other kids won't work." she replied.

"I think the first thing we figure out is who's going to break the news about Geppetto to her. Is it going to be done in Boston or here?"

"If she's coming, it should be done here. Once she's back with Caleb, his presence will pull her through." Sid said. Bert nodded agreement.

"Where do you think they should live?" Bert asked Sarah.

"Are we assuming they should live together?" Sarah asked.

"We're not assuming anything at this point. We don't even know what her mental state is right now." Bert replied.

"Caleb will not want to be moved, and I don't think it's a healthy idea for her to live with him. I don't think it would be good for Caleb or his mother, and I know damned well it'll send my kids running to the front door looking for their parents." Sarah responded quite frankly as she usually did.

"No arguments here." Sid said as he got up for a beer.

"So where would you place her?" Bert asked.

"I think the only way it could be presented to the kids without a major insurrection is to tell them she's being allowed here to help protect her life and she's not here to be 'Mommy' to Caleb despite the fact that she is his mother. In other words, tell them the truth and they'll accept it. Try to bullshit them, and we'll get tripped up sooner or later." Sid said.

"If the question comes up about why their mommies aren't here, the answer is simple; Your Mommy isn't trying to harm herself." Sid said sitting back down.

"You don't think that will negatively affect Caleb?" Gloria asked.

"Caleb will be getting his mother back; he's not going to give a shit why or how!" Sid replied.

"So where would she live?" Jeanette asked.

"Well according to the records, she was a nurse before she married, let her live in the infirmary." Sid suggested.

"And what would the relationship between her and Caleb be?" Bert asked.

"Naturally, she's his mother, but we have to bend over backwards to accommodate her, I think she needs to do some bending too. She's the school nurse; he's a student in the school. We have 399 other kids who'd like to have a nice walk with Mommy around the lake, but it ain't gonna happen, so she's going to have to be extremely sensitive about the other people around her if she's going to be allowed to stay near her son." Sid said unemotionally.

"Nobody likes the idea Sid, but we can't let her harm herself can we?" Bert asked.

"No, of course not. But we better make damned sure other parents don't realize how to open the front door or I suspect we're going to have a run on Gillette." Sid said.

"What's Gillette?" Johanna asked.

There were hundreds of details to work out, but Bert called Boston that afternoon and told them to say nothing to the mother and put her on the plane the following morning.

Caleb was to be told nothing in case anything happened to his mother, and the infirmary was told they would be receiving a new patient.

"Until she's completely recovered, she's a patient and nothing more." Bert told Martha and Sarah.

"Until the both of them are fully ready, I don't want any contact."

Sid, Martha and Thomas met the plane the following afternoon and met Caleb's mother for the first time. Strapped into a gurney, Thomas looked down upon a gaunt woman in her early thirties who was heavily sedated and had both wrists wrapped in bandages. All three had seen the pictures of his mother in Caleb's file; this person looked nothing like her.

"Hello Stephanie, my name is Doctor Thomas." Thomas told the woman who didn't respond in the slightest. This is Martha, and this is Sid." he told the woman.

"We're going to take good care of you." The trip back to school in the station wagon was a quiet ride. Small talk from the three staff, and no response whatsoever from the woman who simply stared at the roof of the van or just closed her eyes. Thomas wasn't all that surprised; the woman had enough Demerol in her to drop a horse.

Martha's first act once the woman was in her hospital bed and gown was to put a candy cane wrist bands on both wrists. Stephanie was now on suicide watch with a 'must special' watching her 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the watch was lifted by Thomas. Stephanie had stopped eating a week before her first attempt, and now into her 10th day, she was given a choice; by mouth or intravenously. Still unresponsive, Stephanie was hooked up and would basically stay that way until she resumed eating. Her first evening and night saw routine procedures and tests being performed. The staff would begin bringing her back into the world of the living the next morning.

She refused all food and liquids in the morning and accepted being bathed in bed without complaint or objection. All staff knew that wasn't a great sign, she had simply given up and didn't care anymore. For Sid, rocket science wasn't necessary. He didn't have anything better to do, so Bert gave him one more job; bring her back from the brink.

Thomas wasn't completely sure of Sid's Grand Plan, so just in case, he had a few syringes prepared just in case.

"Good Morning Stephanie! How are you feeling today?" Sid said to the woman as he came into the room with Thomas and Sarah. Stephanie looked at Sid but said nothing as Sid opened the curtain wide in front of the sliding glass doors of the ward. Outside, a huge willow stood just along the lake edge. Sid cranked up Stephanie's bed which propped her up and swung the bed around facing the window.

"See that tree? Ain't it a great looking tree?" Sid asked. If Stephanie looked at the tree nobody could have been the wiser, but Sid ignored the obvious.

"During the summer, that tree is one of the favorite hangouts for the boys here. They just love that tree and come here all the time." Sid told Stephanie.

"Like this boy." he said holding up a picture of Caleb standing in front of the tree with four other kids from Sarah's cabin.

"Now, this is what we're going to do. First, you start eating, then when you're ready, you tell someone you want to talk to Uncle Sid and we discuss that tree." Sid told her as he patted her on the foot and dropped the picture on the bed telling Sarah to return her bed to its former position.

Sid had left standing instructions not to answer any questions the woman had. If she wanted to eat or drink, allow her to do that, but she wasn't to get out of bed and she wasn't to be released from restraints. Only "Uncle Sid" could answer any question she might have, and staff would be happy to have him come to see her if she wanted him to. Once Sarah gave her the picture that Sid placed on the bed, she didn't let it go again for almost two days.

It took a few seconds, but even through the fog of Demerol, the darkness of depression and the weariness of hunger, Stephanie came to realize that the tree right outside the window and the tree in the picture were one in the same. Moreover, the boy in the picture was Caleb and he had been standing feet away in the not too distant past. It took her almost an hour to finally realize that first she ate!

By 10:00 Sid was called to the infirmary and spent his first five minutes listening to 'please' and the woman begging to see her son. Reasoning was out the window, and Sid was going to have to take her cold turkey through the process of bargaining. There was no bargaining, she had no options, first she did this, then she got that.

"She had two soft boiled eggs, some orange juice and half a banana." Martha told Sid as the girl took her tray away.

"Great start Stephanie. If we have a nice lunch and a nice dinner, these dumb old tubes can come out!" Sid said with a smile.

"Please, where did you get the picture? Is Caleb here? Why can't he come to me?" she asked Sid.

"Last year you were sent a video tape of Caleb Stephanie. Do you remember that?" Sid asked as he picked up a remote and pointed it at the TV on the wall.

"A video tape?" she asked.

"Yes, this one." Sid responded as he clicked the TV on. On the screen the video Gloria had taped the year before came on. Sid stopped it at the scene by the tree outside. Stephanie looked at the screen and the tree.

"He is here! Please let me see him!" she pleaded.

"You will see him, but you will see him when the woman he's looking at is the woman in this picture, not the woman lying in this bed." Sid told her.

"How fast you see Caleb depends completely upon you Stephanie. We have a lot of talking to do and a lot of rebuilding to do when it comes to what you've done to yourself. Caleb is very well, very happy, and very close. But if he saw you today, it would scare the hell out of him and we're not going to allow that. Can you make yourself whole again to see Caleb?" Sid asked the woman.

As Stephanie remembered it later, she learned to hate Sid long before she learned to love him. He was a bully, a tyrant, stood between her and her son, and enjoyed seeing people suffer. He had no feelings, no love and no compassion and insisted everything be done his way. She was frustrated at every single turn; he was unyielding in his dominance over poor, helpless people.

The IV tubes came out that night, the restraints came off the next day and after eight days, the 'must special' was canceled and she could fall to sleep all by herself in her room without someone sitting in a chair watching her. Her wrist bands would not come off until mid May, and when they did, Caleb was given the scissors to do the cutting.

It was now time to explain Geppetto to the woman, but the team decided on one more option before it was offered. She could work at Duke as a nurse and visit with Caleb monthly. She decided she couldn't live alone, she wasn't strong enough. Sid did not disagree with her opinion.

"I think in a few months she'd spiral right back to where she was. She's been depressed so much in the past six years she's in danger of going manic without support." Sid concluded at the staff meeting.

"If we tell her about Geppetto, she can't go back." Jeanette said. As the staff nodded their heads, Adam was more than a bit confused and needed a little clarification.

"I don't get it. If I want to leave, I can can't I?" he asked the group.

"Sure Adam, you're an outside uncle." Bert replied.

"So what?" he asked.

"So if you go outside and tell anybody about Geppetto, they'll think you're either a lunatic or a sex pervert. If we went outside and said anything, we could prove it with DNA evidence!" Sid responded.

"Let's get back to Stephanie. I think if she's told she closes her options and stays here with Caleb, she should be told by one of the girls. It would be a little softer coming from another woman." Gloria told the group. All eyes now looked to Sid. Sid shook his head. "That ain't what you said to me last week up in the hayloft!" Sid quipped.

"You lying dirty old man!" Gloria said as she threw a pillow at him.

The decision by Stephanie to remain at Green Tree came just over two weeks after she arrived. The girls opted to have a 'slumber party' of sorts in the infirmary, and Gloria, Jeanette, Johanna and Beth joined in with their boys to have a discussion that would go from 7:30 at night until almost 4:00 in the morning. Stephanie's final question involved Caleb.

"When can I see him?" she almost pleaded "We'll speak to Uncle Sid in the morning." Johanna replied. That news did not make Stephanie sleep soundly.

Preparing Caleb was left to Bert. The director wasn't so much worried about Caleb's reaction to learning his mother was there, but rather of what the other kids reaction to her presence was going to bring. Just telling Caleb was the easy part. The student body was told by their individual counselors, and some boys would even need to be double and tripled teamed depending upon their attachment to their own family. Sammy took the news a lot easier than Adam did; Adam knew how much Sammy's parents loved him.

The girls took it better than the boys, and Sid attributed it to the female aspect.

Hours and hours had been spent telling both what to expect, how each might possibly react, and what not to do or say that would get the other upset, but in the end, Sid walked into the infirmary with Caleb and pointed to the ward as he left with Sarah and Martha.

Today, Caleb remains in Sarah's cabin with his friends, and often visits his 'Aunt Mommy' as Stephanie is known by all the children of Camp Kenny and a large portion of the upper camp.

Her assimilation into Green Tree life went smoother than most had expected. If she sat around all day carrying Caleb around kissing and hugging him, it would have created huge problems for the staff with the other boys. As staff would learn, once Stephanie came to grips with the real cause of Caleb's problem, she was determined to do whatever it took to make his, and the other boys lives, as full and rich as possible.

One of her first tasks was to rid herself of her loathing of Sid. For his part, Sid was well aware of Stephanie's feelings, he not only condoned them, he fostered them from the beginning. Many staff suggested they intervene on his behalf which Sid forbid.

"Depression is little more than anger turned inward. When you run out of other people to hate and blame for your problems, you turn those feelings inwards towards yourself." Sid counseled Johanna and Jeanette.

"Depression is a black emptiness that leads to suicidal thoughts when you run out of other people to focus on. Let her focus on me, when she's back on thick ice, she won't need a scapegoat." Sid told the girls.

"Besides, I am a son of a Bitch!"

Probably more than anyone else, Caleb opened her eyes regarding Sid. For her part, she could easily remember his unyielding tone and matter of fact attitude. There was nothing warm, loving or kind about the brute, he liked to see people suffer and make them feel worse than they already did. Yet, her own son would leap into the man's arms whenever they came close, and this monster showed her son more love and attention than his own father did. Stephanie did not seek out the girls or adult staff to ask questions about the sadist, she quietly asked the boys why they seemed to like the man so much. 9 times out of 10, the answer came back "Just because he's my Uncle Sid!" Sid knew himself the problem was resolved as Caleb cut off her wrist bands in May.

The Arrival of Baron von Trapp

"Is that it?" Sammy almost screamed as he lifted his head off Adam's chest and damned near scared Adam out of bed.

"That's the beginning, they may not make noise every morning, but they're obviously looking around for food." Adam replied. The morning's activity was filling bird houses with seed and hanging them around the cabins. Most of the afternoon was spent watching the squirrels steal it all. In the dead of winter, the animals were rarely seen, now in the morning the boys spent their first hour laying on the floors of the cabins porches watching deer, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, possum, porcupine, raccoon and when really lucky, a fox or two. In the woods, there were two beaver dams on streams which helped feed the lakes, and now and then a beaver family would swim past the cove.

The ball fields became greener as the first spring flowers bloomed and the boys watched as the willow trees along the lake became the first trees to show signs that they weren't dead for good and all as Sammy had long suspected. With all the ice gone from the lake, Bert relaxed and ordered the fence taken down. The danger was over; no boy would venture into the still ice cold water.

Christopher's cold lasted just shy of a week after he was fished out twice on that first afternoon the fence was down. Christopher didn't mind all that much as he waddled naked back to his cabin for dry clothing, but the three people who had to retrieve him did. Bert ordered his swimming lessons intensified. Today, Christopher still does not swim, but he floats very well. Then again, floating was never a problem, Christopher always floated very well; he just doesn't understand that you can't breath in water and not expect to drown. Dan's problem with getting Christopher to understand that someone doesn't even try to breathe once they're underwater wasn't made any easier with Sidney and Joshua being constantly lowed into deep water and swimming around underwater like the naked little cherubs they were. After all, if little babies could swim and play underwater, why couldn't he?

By mid April, Christopher had his world once again figured out and he of course was at the center of the universe. The staff had learned much, and Bert had learned more than any of them. Just about all of Christopher's first eight years was spent in fantasy. Just about all of the next four were spent in tragedy. There were no written records; there was only Christopher and his reactions to go by. If Christopher was not severely abused emotionally, physically and sexually, he somehow learned to mimic his reactions perfectly to a boy who had been. And worse, he had long term memory.

Still, to Bert's utter amazement Christopher wanted only to have fun, be happy, play with the toys and anything around him, and smile. Christopher's complete lack of fear made him dangerous, but usually to himself rather than others. Likewise, his threshold of pain was a danger, always to himself. His capacity of love and compassion was boundless and could even be dangerous. This was not a little boy whose hands you placed a puppy or a kitten in; he could easily love it to death and never understand the concept.

Christopher had by now lived with Bert for just a little less than 18 weeks. It may as well have been 18 years.

For all that Christopher did not know; what he did know and how he communicated that knowledge without the ability to speak was fairly incredible to the staff around him. While a great deal of the interaction between Christopher and those around him was interpretation, there was no doubt in anyone's minds that if you came up with the wrong interpretation, you'd learn about it real fast from Christopher. If he wanted to ride the horses and you agreed to take him swimming, you would find out about your ignorance real fast!

Christopher had a vocabulary of about 50 words, but many times, Christopher would crudely sign his wishes. Two hands palm to palm on his cheek with his head turned sideways meant he wanted to go to bed. An open mouth with his fingers together meant he wanted to eat. Poking his penis meant he needed to go to the bathroom. Bert watched the signing, as crude as it was, and figured out that somewhere in his past he was taught some basics, most probably by his father.

"Why his father?" Adam asked.

"Nobody else would have given a shit." Sid replied.

"There's a large deaf community on the Vineyards. Do you want me to have my brothers send down some materials?" Thomas asked. Bert sat back and thought about it for awhile.

"Frankly, I'd be extremely reluctant to let any deaf people anywhere near Christopher." Bert replied as Sid nodded his head, "I spent more than a few semesters at Georgetown doing volunteer tutoring for Gallaudet students." Sid said.

"They are without a doubt the rudest, most obnoxious, self centered group of ingrates in the fucking world." Sid said.

"If you're not completely deaf, you're an asshole. End of story, good night."

"I've certainly heard that before, but the deaf people on the Vineyards aren't from Gallaudet and have nothing to do with them as far as I know." Thomas replied.

"I'm no expert in sign, but what Christopher's doing isn't exactly sign, I don't even know if it's condoned anymore." Bert replied.

"Condoned by whom? If a few signs gets his needs and wants across to us, whose approval do we need to teach them to him?" Sid asked his director.

"You're right Sid and that works just fine if he stays with us, but suppose he goes out into the world years down the road? Wouldn't it be nice if people other than us knew what Christopher was asking for?" Bert asked.

"Boss, these are pretty basic signs were talking about. If somebody came up to me in the street pointing to his dick, I'd automatically assume he's not looking for a blow job!" Sid replied.

"Not if you were on Key West!" Dan quickly replied. Once the chuckles subsided, Bert was ready to continue.

"OK, let's gather some information and take a look at it. Christopher is not about to learn American Sign Language, but there must be some kind of "shorthand" signs out there that are universal even if Gallaudet doesn't approve."

Today, Christopher understands and uses close to 300 transparent manual communications signs that would be readily understood by anyone he came into contact with. His verbal communications skills are unchanged, and probably never will be, but he has shown signs of linking signs rather than making single requests, and that's called progress in Green Trees book.

Progress towards spring came on almost a daily basis for Sammy and the boys, and on a balmy 55 degree [13°C] day in mid April, John lost the entire lunch crowd of students as a stable boy announced to Sid that David's mare was laying down in her stall. Sid and Patty knew horses, but wanted a veterinarian at the foaling in case something went wrong and Sid made the immediate call. John looked at about 350 bowls of soup getting cold and sandwiches getting stale.

The scene at the stable as Sid and Patty drew up in his golf cart probably would have freaked the mare out if she saw it. Close to 400 boys and girls now encircled the stable looking for a peek at the Belgian mare that weighed in excess of a ton. She was big enough on her own, but now about to have a foal, she was immense. As those who've been there know, having babies is a fairly messy affair. Having horse babies is quite a bit louder and messier even with every other horse in the barn turned out to pasture. With several stable boys trucking buckets of warm water to soothe the mare, there was little to do but wait for the vet and hope the foal did the same.

The mare went down at around 12:30 and by 3:00 David saw his new horses back legs for the first time. Luckily for everyone, this was the third foal born to the mare and she, unlike most people there, was an old pro at this birthing thing. David for one was convinced the mare was going to need a blood transfusion, maybe a new liver, kidney and bladder. With a final snort, the foal came sliding out of the mare like a freight train down a waterslide along with half it's mother's guts as far as David was concerned.

The next 30 seconds for David was an extremely long time as he watched the foal sitting on the straw like a sack full of raw beef liver. The foal was in a bag and barely distinguishable as a horse. It also didn't move a muscle.

"Is it dead?" David asked the vet who was now helping guide the mare back on her feet.

"No, I doubt it. I got a pretty good heart rate just before she foaled." the veterinarian told David.

Once the mare was upright she turned around and began licking her baby on its stomach.

"She knows how to get it breathing; her licking it will stimulate it to breathe. Once she's got it breathing, she'll clean him up and get it out of its sack." he told David.

"How?" David asked.

"She'll eat it off." The veterinarian replied. David was now happy he hadn't yet eaten lunch.

Within a minute or so with the veterinarian concentrating on delivering the rest of the foal's placenta and cleaning the mare up, David watched as the foal started moving. First its head, and then slowly its feet, as its mother continued to lick and clean her baby. Patty helped with some warm towels, and before long, the foal was lying in the hay with its head up determined to stand by kicking its way to its knees. It took probably five minutes, but eventually, the horse stood on some of the wobbliest legs on a horse David had ever seen, but it was standing.

"That's 95 percent of the battle. If he didn't stand up, we'd have a big problem on our hands, and he'd have to be bottled fed." the veterinarian told the group.

"Now, he can reach Maria and take care of himself."

"It's a boy?" David asked.

"David, you've been around horses long enough to figure that one out!" Sid now said. As the pony wobbled itself over to the mare that stood frozen by its side, the pony stood underneath his mother and took his first meal in as the mare turned her head and continued to clean.

Like its mother, the colt was going to be a chestnut color, but for now, the wet horse looked more like a small brown deer than a horse as far as David was concerned.

"In four or five years, that colt will most probably weigh very close to 3,000 pounds [1,400 kg]. His sire is a champion Belgian." the veterinarian told David.

In a very quiet slow procession, every student got to pass by the new pony with its mother that afternoon. The pony wasn't always drinking, once full, it lay down and rested in a freshly made stall. The one question now on everyone's mind was what the new horses name was going to be. At 13 years old, the mare was already named when she was presented to David, but now, her colt would need a name.

"Maria" was named by the farmer after Maria Von Trapp. Knowing this, David had been given a book about the family, and had chosen the name "Baron" for the colt which was already engraved on a brass plate and was now attached to the stall door under his mother's name by Sid.

As David knew, the pony would remain with his mother for a full year, and then be shipped back to New Hampshire to the farmer that bred him. David, as well as the rest of the boys very much wanted the colt to remain with them, but Sid tactfully explained that unless the pony was gelded, it could not remain with its mother. That, plus the fact that the farmer would only agree to sell the mare if he got the foal. Baron is set to return to New Hampshire in May, 2007 and at 600 pounds [275 kg], is well on his way to give his father a run for his money when he reaches his full weight.

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