A Right to Life

Through a vent in the door of his first grade classroom, young Bobby Dorsey overhears his teacher discussing his misbehavior with his mother, Margaret. He is shocked when he hears his mother tearfully confess that he is the unwanted result of a high school affair, that she never wanted him and that he would have been aborted if not for the intervention of his grandmother, a devout Southern Baptist, and her pastor.

The unexpected and unwanted birth of Bobby causes Margaret to feel she was robbed of the fun of her high school years. Driven to complete her lost adolescence, she exposes Bobby to a string of boyfriends, with whom she has a sexual relationship. Bobby becomes aware of that relationship at an age that is far too early for his healthy sexual development. Some of Margaret's boyfriends are cruel and abusive to Bobby. This coupled with his mother's indifference, eventually leads him to feel an outsider in his own home.

His mother's preoccupation with her own life and lack of concern for him causes Bobby to become increasingly curious about his absent father. Whenever he asks his mother about him, she says that relationship is over and should never have happened in the first place. However, others who are willing to enlighten him enable Bobby to piece together a picture of his father. His best source of information is Reggie Trimble, a man who works for his mother in her florist shop. Bobby discovers that his father was a local town hero in Purvis, Texas, the small east Texas town where he lives. In high school his father, Rod Wilbanks, was quarterback of the town's football team and led them to two consecutive state championships, a feat never done before, and not since. However, when he made Margaret pregnant during her junior and his senior year, his glory turned to shame, and his parents shipped him off to Chattanooga, Tennessee to help run a motel his uncle owned. The more Bobby learned about his father, the more his fantasies about him grew. He wondered if he might find the love and acceptance with him that he had not found living with his mother.

By the time Bobby was ten years old, he concluded that Purvis, Texas was not a good place for him to be. He had learned by then that the good folks of the town, their children included, had no use for him and his mother. For years now he had heard her referred to as the town slut, and even worse, the town whore, while he was commonly known as a bastard. A boyfriend of his mother had been terribly abusive to Bobby and driven him from his home into the home of Reggie Trimble, his mother's employee. He had found Reggie to be the only one in town who had love and compassion for him and who was completely non-judgmental. The last straw however, was when he discovered that the town gossips had labeled Reggie a gay. So according to the good folks of Purvis, he, the bastard child of the town whore was now living with a gay. That was something he could no longer tolerate. Secretly he planned his getaway to hitch hike more than eight hundred miles to his father in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Surely, he would be loved, appreciated and treated with respect there.

In the darkness of night Bobby made his way, suitcase in hand, to the home of his father's parents in Purvis. He hid in the back of Mr. Wilbanks' pick up truck, knowing that the man would come out in the pre-dawn hours to drive to work at the Goodyear plant on I-10. As soon as the truck rolled to a stop in the plant's parking lot and Bobby was certain that Mr. Wilbanks had gone into the plant, the boy got out to begin his hitchhiking journey on the shoulder of I-10. A modern Huckleberry Finn tale unfolds filled with adventure and intrigue along with encounters with fascinating people, and narrow escapes from busybodies who wanted to take over Bobby's problem and solve it for him. Enough people had judged and condemned him. Enough had screwed up

Gerald T. O'Keefe earned a B.A. Degree from Rice University, Houston, Texas, and went on to complete an M.A. in Theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A retired Methodist and Baptist Minister, he presently serves on the Board of Direct