age, Irene Caleigh died (cirrhosis of the liver, he reasoned years later, because one of the 'uncles' at the funeral bluntly told him, 'She died of the drink, son'). Gabe had spent a month or so (he could never remember how long exactly) in a care home, until one day an aunt called Ruth, his mother's older sister and who he hardly remembered (she hadn't attended the funeral) came to collect him. Aunt Ruth took her nephew back to her old ramshackle but clean clapboard house on the outskirts of Quincy, where some areas were even rougher than those he had been used to.
Aunt Ruth was kind to him, if somewhat distant, but the wildness was already in him, and he was soon loose in the streets, again joining a gang whose members were mostly older than himself. Cars were his obsession—other people's cars, that is—and he soon learned to hot-wire them. In fact, his skill at breaking into vehicles and quickly getting them running without keys and no matter what model quickly earned him the respect of his elders in the gang—even then, he seemed to have an affinity with machinery of any kind. But when he was fourteen, Gabe's increasing delinquency came to a sudden and tragic end.
The pristine stolen Mercedes saloon in which Gabe and his friends were joyriding went out of control on a bend and crashed into three trees, one after the other. The driver, seventeen years old and gang leader, a tough guy who was good in a rumble, went through the windscreen when the car hit the first tree, to die instantly as his body slammed into the tree trunk, his bowed head snapping at the neck and smashing his own ribcage, while the passenger in the seat next to him broke his spine at the second tree and had his foot turned back to front on the third impact. Gabe and another gang member, who shared the rear seats with him, were thrown to the floor at the first impact, and there they stayed, bounced around but saved from serious injury by the backs of the front seats.
Perhaps it was to deter him from a career of crime that the authorities decided to deal with Gabe firmly. For the autotheft itself and because of its serious outcome, plus Gabe's past record of minor offences, he was sent to the Illinois Institute for Delinquent Boys for one year, while his companion, who was even younger than Gabe and had a clean sheet as far as the law was concerned, was given a period of probation. The front-seat passenger, who had broken his back and lost a foot, was deemed punished enough.
Because of Gabe's ongoing problem with authority, he served a further three months at the facility. But something worked there. They found he had an aptitude for machinery as well as calculation and they encouraged him to pursue his gift. Because he did not want to serve any further time, those last three months of incarceration had more value than the first twelve months: Gabe knuckled down and began to study for a career as an engineer, a mechanical engineer. When he was released, he returned to Quincy and Aunt Ruth, went back to high school and attended night college to learn as much as he could about engineering. On weekends he worked as a junior mechanic in a garage and car showroom (which meant mainly washing cars and handing tools to real mechanics), watching everything they did to engines, learning fast while he did so. The meagre amount of cash he earned was handed over to Aunt Ruth to help pay towards his own keep.
At seventeen, having achieved good results in both school and night college, he left Quincy for New York City. Unbeknown to him, his aunt had been secretly saving money for precisely this kind of move, which she knew would come sooner or later; she had even put aside the money he had given her from his weekend work. He had spent almost a year of hardship in the Big Apple, living in a one-room attic apartment in the South Bronx, taking any job that came his way—washing dishes in a Harlem bar, short-order cook in a diner, delivering pizzas, shelf-stacking
Aunt Ruth was kind to him, if somewhat distant, but the wildness was already in him, and he was soon loose in the streets, again joining a gang whose members were mostly older than himself. Cars were his obsession—other people's cars, that is—and he soon learned to hot-wire them. In fact, his skill at breaking into vehicles and quickly getting them running without keys and no matter what model quickly earned him the respect of his elders in the gang—even then, he seemed to have an affinity with machinery of any kind. But when he was fourteen, Gabe's increasing delinquency came to a sudden and tragic end.
The pristine stolen Mercedes saloon in which Gabe and his friends were joyriding went out of control on a bend and crashed into three trees, one after the other. The driver, seventeen years old and gang leader, a tough guy who was good in a rumble, went through the windscreen when the car hit the first tree, to die instantly as his body slammed into the tree trunk, his bowed head snapping at the neck and smashing his own ribcage, while the passenger in the seat next to him broke his spine at the second tree and had his foot turned back to front on the third impact. Gabe and another gang member, who shared the rear seats with him, were thrown to the floor at the first impact, and there they stayed, bounced around but saved from serious injury by the backs of the front seats.
Perhaps it was to deter him from a career of crime that the authorities decided to deal with Gabe firmly. For the autotheft itself and because of its serious outcome, plus Gabe's past record of minor offences, he was sent to the Illinois Institute for Delinquent Boys for one year, while his companion, who was even younger than Gabe and had a clean sheet as far as the law was concerned, was given a period of probation. The front-seat passenger, who had broken his back and lost a foot, was deemed punished enough.
Because of Gabe's ongoing problem with authority, he served a further three months at the facility. But something worked there. They found he had an aptitude for machinery as well as calculation and they encouraged him to pursue his gift. Because he did not want to serve any further time, those last three months of incarceration had more value than the first twelve months: Gabe knuckled down and began to study for a career as an engineer, a mechanical engineer. When he was released, he returned to Quincy and Aunt Ruth, went back to high school and attended night college to learn as much as he could about engineering. On weekends he worked as a junior mechanic in a garage and car showroom (which meant mainly washing cars and handing tools to real mechanics), watching everything they did to engines, learning fast while he did so. The meagre amount of cash he earned was handed over to Aunt Ruth to help pay towards his own keep.
At seventeen, having achieved good results in both school and night college, he left Quincy for New York City. Unbeknown to him, his aunt had been secretly saving money for precisely this kind of move, which she knew would come sooner or later; she had even put aside the money he had given her from his weekend work. He had spent almost a year of hardship in the Big Apple, living in a one-room attic apartment in the South Bronx, taking any job that came his way—washing dishes in a Harlem bar, short-order cook in a diner, delivering pizzas, shelf-stacking
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