Chapter 38: LOGAN

The fact that she loved me made life a hell of a lot more bearable than it had been before. I didn't have the best of childhoods; my mother was a truck stop waitress who got knocked up by a trucker who used to come through town and sell her dreams. Until the day she told him she was pregnant, and she never laid eyes on him again. As a kid, I spent lots of time alone. Being raised in a small- town, people didn't follow the same tenets as big-city dwellers.

No one thought too much about a young single mom leaving her five-year-old son alone while she went out to make a living during the summer months when school was out. That kid learned a lot about the streets at an early age.

The old guys who hung around at the local bar didn't have any problem teaching him the facts of life. When most kids my age was learning to read and write, I was learning the ins and outs of a hard-knock life.

Mom did the best she could. I don't hold anything against the old girl. In fact