Coca-Cola and a Doughnut Stick
应该是这个故事吧~~
/story/jimmy-wayne-family-support-career
这个网站里有全文，我不复制出来了，内容挺多的。
是国外网站，进去会有点慢，等等就好了~~
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还是全贴出来给你吧，很长。
Coca-Cola and a Doughnut Stick
As a present for my 15th birthday, I got arrested. At 16 I quit school. My home was an abandoned trailer. Then I met Bea and Russell...
By Jimmy Wayne, Nashville, Tennessee
July, 2006
Every day, as I walked to whatever odd job I’d been able to pick up, I’d pass this little woodshop. An old couple lived in the house on the property; I’d seen them coming and going plenty of times. Never gave them much thought. But one day it was like a voice told me, “Stop. Go in and talk to them.”
Maybe it was just desperation talking, but I listened. I walked into the shop and saw the old man running a jigsaw. “Sir,” I said, “do you have any work I could do?”
The old man turned and looked at me, a 16-year-old runaway with hair down past his shoulders and tattoos on his arm. But the old man’s eyes didn’t judge me, and he didn’t look scared. “Ask the boss,” he said, pointing toward the old lady.
“Oh, Honey,” she told me, “we don’t have insurance to cover you working in the shop.”
“Thanks anyways. I appreciate it,” I said, and turned to leave.
“Wait!” she called. “Can you cut grass?” I certainly could. “You come back around four o’clock.”
I showed up at four sharp, got their mower and set to work on the big field next to the house. About halfway through I saw someone standing under a big apple tree next to the fence in the distance. It was the old lady. When I finished mowing, she said, “You must be hungry and thirsty after all that hard work.” She handed me a Coca-Cola and a doughnut stick and paid me a couple of dollars. That was my first day on the job for Russell and Bea Costner.
Every two weeks I could count on mowing that lawn. And I could count on Bea waiting for me under the apple tree, holding a cola and a doughnut stick. It was the first thing I could count on in a long time.
Growing up I never knew what the next day would bring. Nothing good, that was for sure. We moved all the time. My dad wasn’t around, and eventually my mom remarried. That guy was meaner than mean. He sold our food stamps to buy drugs. All I had to eat was the free lunch at school. Sometimes I wouldn’t have eaten since Friday, and by Sunday I was so hungry I could barely stand it. No one else knew what was going on at home.
I’d never been a troublemaker and always worked hard. That didn’t matter to my stepfather. He beat the tar out of me. I learned to keep my mouth shut and stay under the radar. But inside, there was all this pain. It was pain worse than the gnawing ache of an empty belly. I had to let it out somehow. Problem was, I had no one to talk to. No one who really cared about me. No one I could trust. I was about 12 when I started writing things down. My feelings came out on the page as simple little poems. It helped me to put my loneliness into words, but I didn’t show anyone.
I shuffled from group home to foster home and back to my mom. On my 15th birthday the law caught up with me. I’d run away. Again. The cops sent me back to my mom. But when I turned 16 she left me a note saying I couldn’t stay with her anymore.
I’m on my own, I told myself. No more group homes. I quit school and took any odd job I could find to make a little money. At least now I could depend on the Costners for steady work, and I was grateful.
I ended up in an abandoned trailer. It wasn’t much-no electricity and a bed that was nothing more than an old sleeping bag on top of some building insulation. But it was better than sleeping outside. Experience had taught me that.
Bea surprised me one day. She was waiting under the apple tree with a Coca-Cola and a doughnut, as usual. After she gave them to me, she said, “Jimmy, we have a spare room. Wanted to know if maybe you’d move in.”
I’d never told her anything about my living situation. My first impulse was to say no. You’ve had enough of people letting you down, I thought. Don’t let yourself get hurt again. But a voice inside—the same one that had told me to walk into the woodshop—told me to ease up. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll have to get my things.”
I came back later that day with everything I owned in four small bags. I wasn’t there any time before Russell sat me down for a talk. He’d been in the military, and he was not one to mince words. “Jimmy, if you want to stay in my house there’s a couple things you’ll have to do. First, go to church with Bea and me. Second, get a haircut.”
Normally I would’ve told him off and run away again. But there was something different about the Costners. Something I wasn’t too familiar with. Telling me I had to do those things meant they cared. I agreed to the haircut and church.
I kept writing my poems too. But I couldn’t bring myself to show anyone, not even Bea and Russell. The churchgoing got me thinking, though. Maybe God could see them. Are my poems any good? I asked him one Sunday.
Bea got me cutting grass for her friends, all the little old ladies in town. She’d drive me to their houses. “Make sure he gets a Coca-Cola when he’s done,” Bea would say. “I’ll come back to pick him up.”
I almost thought of her and Russell as parents. They helped me get back into school, and things seemed to be turning around for me. I felt like I was on solid ground for the first time ever. Then Russell died of cancer. Now that he’s gone, I thought, Bea’s gonna ask me to leave. But she didn’t.
“Jimmy, I believe you were sent to us for a reason,” she said. “I want you to stay.” So I stayed.
I kept on at school. In the twelfth grade a prison inmate came to talk to us about staying out of trouble. He had a guitar and sang country songs.
“Music’s helped me say things I never could,” he told us. Just like me with my poetry!
I went home and told Bea about him and his songs. We agreed I should buy a guitar. I started plinking out tunes and writing lyrics.
Bea kept asking, “When are you going to play one of your songs for me?” It was scary, but finally I did. I sang about feeling lost and alone, then finding out that there was love in this world after all. Bea pulled me to her in a big warm hug when I was done. It sure took a lot not to cry right then. “You keep on with your music, Jimmy Wayne,” she said. “Don’t you let anyone stand in your way.”
I wrote lots more songs and tried them all out on Bea. Soon I played at cookouts and other events around town. Bea never missed one. Even after I finished school, got full-time work and moved into my own place. She’d hear I was doing a show and call to ask me to come pick her up. We rode along together just like when she used to take me to my grass-cutting gigs.
The last time Bea saw me perform was at a junior high school pageant. She sat right in the front row, just like she always did. That voice inside spoke to me once again. It prompted me to do something I’d never done before. After a few songs I stepped close to the mic.
“I’d like you all to meet a very special lady,” I said. “Right there in the front row. Mrs. Beatrice Costner.” I told a little bit of my story, not in a poem or song this time, but in plain words. I told the kids how rough my life had been until Russell and Bea took me in. I’d never known such caring people. But like Russell had said, Bea was the boss. “If it weren’t for that lady,” I told the audience, “I wouldn’t be here today.” Bea beamed with pride.
When I dropped her off at home after the show, I said I’d pick her up in a few days for the next one. “Good-bye, Jimmy,” she said. That struck me funny. So formal, so not like her. Usually it was “Bye” or “See ya Wednesday.”
“Okay, see you soon, Bea,” I said.
“Good-bye, Jimmy. Good-bye.” She waved till I drove out of sight.
The very next morning I got a phone call. Bea was in the hospital. She’d had a stroke. She never opened her eyes or spoke a word again. Bea died less than a month later.
I wish so hard that she had lived to see me get a record contract and release my first album. I know how proud she would have been. A voice had led me to her, and in a way it was Bea who gave me my own voice. She had been right. I was sent to that couple for a reason. Every kid deserves what they gave me. Love and caring and a chance to make good. When I drink a Coke, or have a doughnut, or see an apple tree, I think of them. And I thank God for putting them in my life.