Chapter 1

I live behind the Dollar Store. I don’t live in a house or even a trailer. I live in the woods behind the store. My name is Rubin Saxon, and this is my story.

I woke up without an alarm clock. Without electricity, the sunlight on our tent is what wakes us up. I found my sisters curled up, sleeping next to me in the blue pup tent that serves as my home.

“Good morning.” I stretched myself awake and looked over at my sisters. Cherise and Cassidy are identical twins. They both have blonde hair and similar faces, but you can tell them apart because Cassidy’s boob buds are starting to get a little bigger. The pup tent doesn’t allow us much room for modesty or privacy, so they both sleep topless wearing only panties or shorts.

The tent comfortably accommodates one person; two people find it cozy, but three people find it too crowded. There isn’t enough space for our stuff either, so most of it is outside in sacks or bags. We’ve been living at this campsite for about six months. My mom prefers to be mobile, but this campsite behind the Dollar Store has proven to be more comfortable than previous homeless camps.

“Gah, morning breath,” Cherise said, covering her mouth. She and our sister held each other tenderly.

“Good morning, Cherry!” Cassidy giggled. Cherise and Cassidy used to be redheads; everybody calls her Cherry. I don’t know anyone at the camp who isn’t friendly with my sisters. They are outgoing, bubbly, and easily excited.

“Where is Mom?” Cherry stretched a little and started to unzip the tent. There are several rips in the mosquito net, making it unnecessary for us to zip it up. We still do, though. My mom’s name is Thea, or at least that is what she tells everyone. I don’t think she has an I.D. with her name on it.

“I don’t think Mom came back last night,” I said as I pulled on some denim shorts and exited the tent. My sisters didn’t bother with tops. They came out of the tent in just panties. When we were little, we used to run around homeless camps completely naked. We were raised like flower children.

I stopped doing that when I was old enough to pop a boner. An old woman took one look at my chubby cock and offered to “take care of it for me.” I was too young and naive to know exactly what she meant, but I was too afraid to take her up on the offer for a freebie BJ. Now that I am a little older, I would have chosen to get my dick sucked. Even though that woman was older than my mom, I’d bet she knew how to suck a cock really well.

Now my sisters know they are too old to get away with running around the camp naked. They have small bushes now and boobs that are just sprouting. It was different when we were little. No one thought much of us running around in our underwear or being completely nude. Now, most of the camp stares at them. They like the attention, and they tell me that it’s not a big deal.

Our mom followed the Grateful Dead for years, until Jerry Garcia died in the 1990s. We are all named after the band’s songs—those that meant a lot to her. My mother believed I’d grow up to be a great musician one day. She claims that my father was a member of the band. I don’t think so; I’m not sure which one of them it was, and someone else is the twins’ father, she says.

My older sisters, who I have never met, also must have a different father than me. We’ve never met any of my mother’s family. She says she comes from a wealthy family in Beverly Hills but chooses to be homeless because it’s better that way to live under the stars, free and off the grid.

I cracked open a cold can of Dinty Moore stew for breakfast, pulled from a sack in front of our tent. I don’t think I’d agree with her assessment, but living homeless is the only life that I’ve ever known. Once in a while, we’ve stayed at motels, and sometimes my mom has shacked up with some dude for a few months, but we usually end up camping in a place like this one.

It’s better, she says, to live with other homeless people. There are about thirty of us living in this camp. Most are over fifty years old; there aren’t many teenagers or younger kids out here. My sisters have a few girlfriends their age, and I have one friend named Jimmy with whom I hang out. I nodded at him across the camp as I heated my can of stew over the communal fire.

Most of the people in the camp are what I call the “core,” but my mom calls them family. I don’t consider them relatives, but we in the core look out for each other’s stuff. It’s a code of honor, you might say. When possible, we share food and protect each other’s tents and collections.

Along with the core, there are transient homeless people that come and go; they’re people we rarely get to know. The outsiders at the camp—who haven’t been here long enough for people to trust—tend to stay on the camp edges. They’ll steal your stuff. They’ll even try to put their tent in your space so they can get a spot near the communal fire pit.

Ziggy and Weird Larry maintains the fire pit. I wouldn’t call them camp leaders, but they welcomed us when we arrived. Weird Larry has a long beard and claims to be an army vet. He sees government plots everywhere, but I don’t believe the government is capable of half of what he claims it can. I also don’t see why they would bother keeping tabs on his movements. He almost never leaves the camp, but he believes the government is watching him at all times.

Ziggy looks like an old-timey sea captain. He’s grizzled, with a gray beard, leathery sun-kissed skin, and the smell of bourbon and marijuana. He taught me how to tightly roll a joint with Zig Zag rolling papers. I started calling him “Ziggy,” and now he answers to that. I don’t know his real name; he’s never told me. He claims he was a shrimper and made a lot of money working on a boat until his back gave out. He also claims to be only 42 years old, but he looks about 64 years old to me.

“Hi, Zig; hi Larry,” I waved at them. They didn’t answer me. They don’t talk a lot. They are almost always near the fire pit. They looked up and watched my sisters walk by. I’m sure they were admiring their puffy nipples.

“We’re off to use the can,” they giggled.

We literally have a shitcan in the woods behind a few trees near a ditch as our bathroom. Usually, the Dollar Store and gas station nearby refuse to let us use their bathrooms—unless we buy something. The employees all know us. They serve as our grocery store, library, and source of air conditioning on hot Florida days like this one.