Crowam 281

by Frank Nunez

  “What do you want?”

  He nodded his head.

  “So what are you bugging me for?”

  “Are you from America?”

  “Yea.”

  “Wow.” He smiled again. I had to admit that his smile was contagious. You couldn’t help but smile yourself. I thought it was odd? Some six year old brightening my day in a place like this. “So what’s a little kid like you doing here?”

  He shrugged his shoulders

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember. I was too little when they brought me here.”

  “Who brought you here?” He pointed across the courtyard. The Bus Driver, leaning against the cement wall of Crowam, smoking a cigarette. “Him?”

  He nodded his head. This place got stranger by the day.

  If there was one thing I hated most in this world, it was cleaning pots and pans. I mean, I just hated it. I’d washed enough damn dishes to last me a lifetime. I was in the kitchen with Thomas, pulling pots and pans duty. We stood in front of several stacks of filthy pots, pans, plates and utensils stained with leftover food. The smell was mostly of rotten meat. The stench of food flooded the air of the kitchen.

  “Good lord, do we have to clean all that?” Thomas looked frightened.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “Oh bullocks!”

  This large woman entered the kitchen. She happened to be the lunch lady, with her lunch lady gown and hair net that fit a tad too snuggly on her head. “Alright boys, are you ready to get your hands dirty?”

  “Do we have a choice?” I asked.

  “We being smart are we?”

  “What makes you say that?” I was sick of adults telling me what to do.

  She grabbed a wooden spoon and smacked me in the hand, the same hand that Professor Vanden was very fond of. It hurt. Not that I would hit a lady, but I just wanted to knock her teeth out. I probably would have done her a favor, as her teeth were rotten to the core. Brown and stained from years of neglect.

  “Keep being smart with me boy.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess, well, I’ve never met someone as pretty as you. I get a bit foolish around pretty girls.”

  Thomas looked disturbed. Poor bastard was humorless.

  “I think I’m bit old for you lad.”

  Thomas was relieved she didn’t get the joke.

  “I want these pots and dishes squeaky clean by the time I get back.”

  “Yes, madam,” Thomas said as she left us.

  “Madam?” I asked Thomas, after I knew she couldn’t hear us.

  “She is a lady.”

  “You think so, because it’s kind of hard to tell.”

  “Good lord, Jake.”

  “Stick with me and you’ll go places.”

  “I’m afraid of where we’ll be going.”

  I grabbed some dishes and dipped them deep into the soapy water. The filth fell from the dishes, staining the dish water to a dark brown of mystery meat and God knows what else.

  “My God, this is disgusting.” Thomas diligently dipped the dirty dishes into the water. I shoved his hand holding the plate in the soapy water. He cringed, nearly jumping out of his socks. “What in bloody hell are you doing?”

  “I don’t know about you. But I don’t want to spend the entire night washing dishes. Haul ass, will you? It’s just water.”

  “It’s foul, I tell you.”

  “I don’t like this anymore than you do.”

  An hour went by. The two of us washed away dirt quickly, trying to finish for the evening. The routine became redundant. Dip, wipe, rinse, dip, wipe, rinse. The kitchen was hotter than a furnace. My white shirt was drenched in sweat that my armpits poured. “My lord, it’s hot in here.” Thomas wiped the sweat off his brow. “I think I need a break.”

  “Come on, don’t quit on me now. We’re almost done.”

  “I just want to sit for a few minutes.”

  Although I didn’t want to admit it, we could have used a break. We sat down against the wall near the doorway.

  “Hell of a life, huh?” I said.

  “You call this living?” Thomas said.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What are you going to do when you leave here?’

  “When I age out?”

  “Yes.”

  I had to really think about that one. To be honest, I didn’t know. I was so used to moving around so much that I never gave it much thought. It scared me a bit to tell you the truth. “I don’t know, I guess.”

  “Well I do. I want to travel the world. Paris, Rome. I hear the libraries in Italy are like cathedrals. All of those books and knowledge. It must be magnificent.”

  “Sounds nice, Thomas.”

  “America, yes, I’ll go to America. New York City.”

  “You seem to have it all planned out.”

  “What’s New York like Jake?”

  “There ain’t no other city like it. Buildings that stretch to the sky. The lights of Broadway and Times Square. It’s like all that glitz and glamour you see in the movies.”

  “I’ll see it one day. You’ll see.”

  “I believe you. Hell, I’ll show you around. You’ll love it.”

  “I would like that a lot.”

  “Who wouldn’t? It’s New York.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I’ll travel the world, that’s what I’ll do. But you still didn’t say what you want to do when you leave.”

  “I said that I wasn’t sure.”

  “You should have some idea, shouldn’t you?”

  He really bugged me with that question. It was sort of nagging at me. I was afraid to think about what I would do when I left Crowam. I wasn’t a mental heavy weight like Thomas who seemed to have everything figured out. Was I supposed to have everything figured out? Maybe we’re all supposed to just live life and let destiny handle the rest. The hell did I know. All I cared about was being out on my own. “Maybe I’d join the circus. Yea, that’d be the ticket. I’d join the circus. Wouldn’t that be something? Orphan turned freak show. Maybe I’d become one of them acrobats. Or that guy they shoot out of a cannon. Anything but a clown. I’ll be a regular show stopper. Hell, people from all over the world would come and see me. My name in bright lights!”

  “You can’t be serious,” Thomas replied.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “A circus? Of all things.”

  “It’s a living ain’t it?

  “I suppose so. I just thought you would have bigger plans.”

  “Like what?’

  “I don’t know. I just think you have a lot of potential to do great things.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Intuition perhaps.”

  “Maybe it’s from reading all them books.”

  Thomas then began blabbering about all the books he’d read. He sure could be a bore sometimes. I should have gotten him talking when I had trouble sleeping. He’s better than a warm glass of milk. I noticed above us were one of the air vents Felix was talking about. The steel frame was thick and rusty. Then my imagination began getting the best of me, thinking about how I would escape. I could sneak out at night when the dumb guards weren’t looking. Idiots. They wouldn’t know what hit ’em. I would crawl through the vents and outside, going through that crack in the perimeter fence, just like Felix said. To hell with everyone else.

  I had nothing against the boys here. But who wouldn’t want to escape a God forsaken place like this? Any of the boys would do the same thing if they had the chance. Thomas got the hint that I wasn’t paying attention. You could hear a pin drop in the kitchen until I heard a faint noise coming from the vent. I got up close to the vent. It was hard to make it out at first.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

  I ignored him.

  “Jake?”

  “Shut up a second.”
The sounds became clearer: shouts and screams. God awful screams. “Thomas, can you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Just listen.” The drone of screams continued for a minute until it stopped. I couldn’t be hearing things. “You heard that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not crazy, Thomas.”

  “I never said you were.” His eyes said everything. I knew he heard the screams, but he was too scared to admit it. “Maybe we should finish up.”

  “You can’t hear that?” The screams sounded muffled and terrifying, echoing through the vents from origins unknown.

  “What is that Jake?” Thomas asked.

  “Screaming.”

  “Good lord.”

  We stared at the vent, the faint and distant screams hypnotizing us. We forgot about the dishes, pots and pans that still sat on the kitchen counter waiting to be washed. The soap suds still fizzed in the dirty soap brown water that contained the remnants of mystery meat and leftover food. The kitchen didn’t exist for us in the brief moment of curiosity where our minds were fixated on the sounds coming from the air vent.

  Our hypnosis, however brief, was disrupted by the lunch lady. She barged in on us. “What are you two doing?” She was angry. Her raspy voice startled Thomas and I.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “What were you two doing there?”

  “Just admiring the vent,” I said. I couldn’t’ think of anything else to say to the old hag. I figured I’d just be a smartass. She was already used to that. She expected it of me. She wouldn’t suspect anything else.

  “Why are the pots and pans still not washed?”

  “I apologize, madam. We’ll get on it right away.” Thomas was a true British gentleman, I had to hand it to him.

  “I want these pots and pans cleaned in the next twenty minutes. Or else both of you will be pulling cleaning duty tomorrow night.”

  Thomas and I quickly cleaned the remaining dishes on the counter, finishing them a shy under twenty minutes. We headed back to our dorms, where I got to take a shower and clean up from the evening.

  The showers smelled like BO and urine. The green tiles of the shower stalls were stained and old, faded from years of mildew. I stood under the stream of lukewarm water that flowed from the showerhead over my body, rubbing the used bar of soap over me trying to rid myself of the filth that accumulated from staying in Crowam.

  The other boys were probably discussing the same topics they always talked about: girls, Crowam, the war, and nonsensical garbage that is trivial when compared to the grand schemes of the universe.

  A boy named Joseph, a freckled brown-haired kid, stood in the middle of the shower, tucking his wanker between his legs to pretend that he was a girl. His attempt at humor got a few laughs. I thought it was stupid. Joseph had more raging hormones than all of us put together. Rumor has it he got thrown in here because he masturbates too much. Got caught masturbating while he was in class. Who in their right mind would do something like that? A kid like Joseph, I guess.

  Anyway, his attempt at humor fizzled out pretty quickly. The drone of noise from the other boys ceased as they ran out, like animals scurrying when a dangerous predator was approaching.

  “Hey Yank.” The voice was clear, ringing in my ears. I knew who it was. Some people handled pain a little differently. Some people cried and moaned. Others held it in. Some people even enjoyed the pain. The pain from Tom’s punch landing on my face felt sort of good in a twisted sort of way. He punched me hard. It knocked me back a bit. My head hit the green tiled wall behind me.

  I threw a punch back, hitting him in the jaw, giving him a slight bruise, but the bastard had an iron jaw. I didn’t’ mind fighting, except I’m naked and he and the other boys wore shorts. The two other boys hit me in the back of the head. I started getting lightheaded, losing my bearings. The two boys grabbed me by the arms. I tried fighting back, but this time the pain got the best of me. “How are you enjoying your shower, Yank?”

  “Go fuck yourself.” The room went black after Tom’s final punch. The last thing I remembered was falling to the ground in a sea of laughter. I don’t remember how long I was out before I came to. I began opening my eyes when I saw Charles standing over me.

  “Jake, Jake are you alright? Say something.” Charles voice just irked me. I almost wanted to go back to sleep. When I awoke I found myself in a puddle of blood. Owen Stood behind Charles. Charles was wearing a towel, but somehow still exposed himself to me.

  “Would you put some clothes on!”

  Charles and Owen helped me up.

  “Are you ok?” Owen looked genuinely terrified.

  “I’m alright.”

  “You took a hell of a shot to the head,” Charles said.

  “Courtesy of my best pal, Tom.”

  “That giant ignoramus,” Charles said.

  Owen grabbed a towel that hung on the towel rack and wrapped it around a wound near my eye. I struggled to regain my balance. They helped me to a nearby stool. “How are we feeling?”

  “Like hell, but thanks for asking.”

  “We should take you to the nurse,” Owen said.

  “I’m exhausted. I just want to go to bed.”

  “You should have that wound looked at,” Owen said.

  “I’ll be fine.” I made a makeshift bandage out of some dry towels. Thomas was sound asleep. The pain of my lost battle put me right to sleep.

  Chapter 9

  When I woke up the next morning, I had a throbbing headache. I noticed blood all over my pillow. I grabbed my head and blood covered my hands. The towels were soaked red.

  “Good lord, what happened to you?” Thomas said as he woke up.

  “Rough night last night.”

  “How did that happen? You should have that looked at.”

  I should have listened to Owen. I was just too tired. My head was throbbing. My face felt like a giant wound, bleeding from the seams.

  I sat in the examining room, waiting for the nurse to arrive. A packet of ice and some gauze covered my wound. There was another boy waiting outside complaining of having diarrhea, most likely a symptom of food poisoning from the meals they served us, which could have been dog food for all I knew. I believe I saw him go to the bathroom at least three times since waiting there. Every time he opened the door leaving the bathroom, an odor, something awful, escaped into the open air. I had to cover my nose and mouth so I wouldn’t pass out from what could be confused for mustard gas.

  The door creaked open. A petite blond entered, with blue eyes and pearly white teeth. She didn’t look too much older than me. I felt at ease when she came in. “How are we feeling today, Mr. Hudson?” Her accent was intoxicating, pulling me right in. Her nurse’s outfit was modest, yet was flattering to her figure.

  “Good, I guess.”

  She removed the blood stained gauze, exposing my fresh wound. “That’s a nasty cut you got there. When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “How?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it does. Were you in a fight?”

  “I fell?”

  “You fell?”

  “Sure did.”

  “A strapping young man like you doesn’t fall so easily.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  She examined the wound, cleaning the blood off of it. Her hands were soothing, even with the rubber gloves. “Well, you’re lucky. You don’t need stitches. This is going to hurt a bit.” She put some rubbing alcohol on a clean gauze pad and placed it on my wound.

  The pain was excruciating. I thought I was going to scream for the world to hear. I would have shoved her if she wasn’t so pretty.

  She removed the gauze and bandaged up my wound. “Looks like you’re going to live for another day, Mr. Hudson. Hopefully you won’t have any more nasty falls.”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t seem like you
belong here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re nice.”

  “I don’t belong here because I’m nice?”

  “Nobody else here is.”

  “Perhaps you should give it some time. It’s hard staying in a new school.”

  “I’ve been through plenty of schools, but not one where there are guards keeping us locked up like a prison.”

  “They’re for your protection.”

  “From what?”

  “From those who want to cause harm to you.”

  “It seems like there are plenty of people who want to cause me harm right here.”

  “Aren’t you exaggerating things a bit?”

  “You’re telling me you haven’t noticed some of the things that happen here?”

  I could tell I was making her uncomfortable. She didn’t like me bugging her about this place.

  She kept herself busy by bandaging my wound. “Can I give you some advice, Mr. Hudson?”

  “Sure.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t be going around asking so many questions.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you might get into trouble.”

  “You worried about me?”

  “I’m worried about all the boys in this school. I would like to see them in a good home or in better circumstance when they leave.”

  “Oh and I thought you were getting all sweet on me.”

  “Sweet on you? Are you implying that I’m coming on to you?”

  “You’re implying that, not me.”

  “I’m a bit older than you, don’t you think.”

  “Not by much. By the end of the year I’ll be 18. You must be what, 21?”

  “It’s rude to inquire about a lady’s age.”