Where Have You Been Billy Boy

By Burr Cook

In this Novelette a teen age boy (Billy) with abusive parents runs away from his tenement home in Brooklyn and hides out in a tent near the Appellation trail in Massachusetts, meets up with a tramp (Bud) and has an adventuresome summer camping out with his new friend. A detective is hired to search for him. Billy Boy's mother, an alcoholic and addict gets straightened out while he is away and gets reunited in a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burr Cook
• Release date: Feb 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310405044

Burr Cook

Burr lives in Syracuse, New York, has 4 children, several grandchildren and says that Great grandchildren are arriving at an alarming rate. Burr is a history buff and works hard on his family's genealogy and has a web site at www.burrcook.com which is partially biographical. He may be contacted through this site. He has traveled extensively throughout the US, Europe and Asia by air, rail and highway. Burr has enjoyed a 50 year career in information technology, has owned a worldwide seminar business and a company called “Cyburrsource” providing the public with internet connections. He is now semi retired and enjoys a life as a freelance writer of action/adventure/romance stories primarily in a historical western setting.

Book preview

Where Have You Been Billy Boy

Copyright 2015 Burr Cook

Published by Bur Cook at Smashwords

Second Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Billy Gets an Idea

Chapter 2 The Lawyer

Chapter 3 The Don

Chapter 4 Edward Gets a Lesson

Chapter 5 Running Away

Chapter 6 The Boy is Missing

Chapter 7 David Get’s a Lead

Chapter 8 Just an Old Hobo

Chapter 9 The Poster

Chapter 10 A Call From Great Barrington

Chapter 11 Finding Billy

Chapter 12 Reunited

About The Author

Books by Burr Cook

Chapter 1 Billy Gets an Idea

William Bradford was thirteen years old and was quick to add that he was soon to be fourteen. Billy was a quiet kid, kind of a loner. For at least a year now he had an interest in girls. He was well liked by members of the fairer sex. They liked his muscular build and his black curls and big brown eyes. Even though his clothes all came from the Salvation Army Stores he looked good in them. He lived with his mother and step father. His mother had been divorced and remarried more than once so his name was different from his parents. They were Edward and Susan Mosher. They lived in a dark and dirty tenement in the Bedford–Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. His bedroom used to be a closet. There was just room to stand up next to the cot and he kept his few possessions in a box underneath.

It was early on a Saturday morning and Billy was still in bed trying to think of something new and different to do. His body ached from the beating he took last night. His step father was very abusive and was drunk last night and even though Billy was sure he could have given his step father the beating he didn’t do it because that would just mean he would get a worse beating later on when the guy was halfway sober.

Billy knew that his mother was a prostitute and his step father was a pimp. Both parents were also addicts, which was the main reason there was never enough to eat in the house. He knew where his mother hid money and when she came home drunk and high she never knew how much money she had and it wasn’t hard to take a little as long as it wasn’t too much. He was still dressed from the night before. After being beaten he had crawled into bed without undressing so that he would not be noisy. His step father soon passed out and his mother hadn’t come home yet.

When he finally slipped out of bed in the morning he found the house to be silent. His parents were still sleeping. As he passed through the kitchen on his way out of the door he found two dry slices of bread on the table. He was hungry so he ate the stale bread on his way down the hallway leading to the two flights of stairs which ended at the sidewalk below. He walked to a park nearby and sat on a bench. It was almost the first of June and the sun felt good on his face. Even this early in the morning he could observe a