by Watt Key
“Got some special meanin’ to you?”
“It’s the only way I’ve got to get stuff around.”
“I never thought of a wheelbarrow meanin’ much to anybody.”
“Had a deerskin hat, too. I made it myself, but Sanders threw it away. You think they’ll let me have some more pie?”
Obregon shouted towards the door. “Hey, Earle! Earle!”
Earle came through the door. “What?”
“The little feller says he wants more pie. You got any in there?”
Earle looked at me and shook his head. “One more person tells me what to do . . .” He left the room and shut the door behind him. He came back a few seconds later with the pie and stuck it through the bars to me. “This is all you get, you hear?”
I took the pie. “You gonna let me stay in this cage tonight?”
“Let you?”
I nodded. “On this bed here.”
“That’s up to Mr. Sanders. He’s in charge of you.”
“Where’d he go?”
“He went home to Gainesville. Said to keep you here until he got back.”
“Then what’s he gonna do to me?”
“I reckon he’ll haul you over to the juvenile home in Tuscaloosa.”
“He said I was more fit for jail.”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. I just do what I’m told.”
“You’re spineless, Earle,” Obregon said.
“Shut up, Obregon.”
“You can tell Mr. Gene and Sanders both that I don’t aim to go with ’em anywhere. Tell ’em I can whip a man three times my size. Maybe two at once.”
Earle shook his head. He leaned into the bars of my cage. “I’m gonna give you some advice, kid. You’re already in a lot of trouble and don’t have to be. You’ll be lucky if they don’t come down on you for assaulting a lawman. You need to tame that temper of yours and cooperate, or you’re gonna end up in a lot of places you won’t want to be.”
“Let the kid be,” Obregon said.
“Shut up, Obregon.”
“I just want people to leave me alone,” I said.
“It doesn’t work like that. You can’t live by yourself until you’re older, kid. It’s the law.”
“Pap said go to Alaska,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said.
9
The next morning another policeman brought me bacon and eggs and a biscuit for breakfast. Obregon said I ate it all like a wild dog. I told him it was the best breakfast I ever had. Not long after I finished, I heard Sanders talking about me beyond the door.
“Where’s that little pissant?”
“He’s back there,” someone on the other side of the door said. “He’s not too upset about it, either.”
“He been givin’ y’all any trouble?”
“No. He’s been eatin’ up everything we bring him. He and Obregon are good buddies now.”
I heard Sanders grunt, and then footsteps came towards the door. He came in the room and looked around until he saw me in my cage. “You ready, boy?”
“Where we goin’?”
“Takin’ you to Tuscaloosa. Gonna reintroduce you to your old friend Mr. Gene. Get up.”
I set my jaw and shook my head.
“Don’t you shake your head at me, boy!”
I went to the back of my cage and sat in the corner. I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them there possum-style. Sanders reached to his belt and pulled away a set of keys. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. “I said to get up!”
“That child can’t be more’n ten years old, Sanders,” Obregon said. “He got you jumpy?”
“Shut up, Obregon!” Sanders put the keys back on his belt and unsnapped a leather case that held a pair of handcuffs. “Hold out your hands, boy.”
“What’s your problem, Sanders?”
I quickly pulled my hands away from my knees and sat on them.
“This ain’t none of your damn business,” Sanders said to Obregon.
“Don’t tell me you gotta handcuff him?”
Sanders turned around and looked at Obregon. “I thought I told you to shut up.”
Obregon smiled. “I’ll bet you used to have bullies on you like wild dogs on meat when you was in school. Never mind, I forgot. You didn’t make it past eighth grade, did you, Sanders?”
Sanders ignored Obregon. “Get up!” he said to me.
I shook my head.
“Now!” Sanders yelled.
I didn’t move. Sanders reached down and grabbed me by the back of my shirt. He lifted me, still balled up, but with my arms around my knees again. Obregon stood in his cell and clung to the bars. “You hurt him and I seen it all,” he said.
I smiled at Obregon. “It doesn’t hurt,” I said.
“At least put some shoes and a jacket on the kid!” Obregon called after us.
Sanders carried me out of the cage, through the main office, and outside. He opened his car and tossed me in the back like I was nothing but a sack of coon hides. He slammed the door behind me and went back inside.
When Sanders returned, I had come out of my ball and was sitting up in the normal way. He glanced at me once and then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. I knocked on the plastic shield between us, but he acted like he didn’t hear me.
“Sanders?” I said.
No answer. He pulled onto the road and sped up.
“Sanders?” I said again.
“What!”
“Where are we?”
“First of all, it’s Constable Sanders to you. And we’re in Livingston.”
Suddenly the window beside me slid down a few inches and the cold air came rushing through and blew against my face.
“Little chilly back there?” Sanders said as he chuckled to himself.
I didn’t say anything. I wanted the window down to keep me from getting sick again. As I watched the countryside pass by, I thought about escape. But I’d not been farther than Mr. Abroscotto’s store that I remembered, and I knew we weren’t anywhere close to that. I reasoned that even if I could get out of the car, I wouldn’t know where to go, and I wouldn’t have any of my supplies.
“When do I get my things back?”
“You’ll get ’em when we’re good and ready. Everything except the rifle and bullets you were totin’.”
I felt my face grow warm. “You can’t take my rifle!” I shouted. “Pap gave me that rifle!”
Sanders seemed to like it that I was getting upset. He shook his head and smiled. I slammed my fists into the plastic shield.
“Hey!” he yelled. He looked in his rearview mirror at me. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “You scratch up my new patrol car and we’re gonna have a go at it. I spent two hours cleanin’ your stink out of it last night.”
I sat back and looked down at my knees. We drove along without talking for a long time. I thought again of ways to escape, but the situation seemed hopeless.
After a while, Sanders pulled over at a gas station and filled the car. When he came back from paying, he was popping a flat round can against his thumb. He got into the car and opened the container by cutting it with his teeth.
“What’s that?”
“Copenhagen chewin’ tobacco. Now shut up.”
“I’ve gotta pee.”
“Hold it. You ain’t gettin’ out of this car.”
He put some of the tobacco between his front lip and his gum and flicked his fingers at the floor. He closed the door and started the engine. As we pulled onto the highway, I watched him move his lip around and spit into an RC cola can. He caught me staring. “I can’t help but think I’ll be seein’ you in and out of jail all your life, kid.”
I looked away and didn’t answer him.
“You ain’t nothin’ but white trash. You worse than white trash. You ain’t even trailer trash. You know what you are?”
I shook my head against the car window, still watching the
fields pass by.
“You’re stinkin’ militia trash, is what you are.”
I didn’t know that word “militia.” I kept staring out the window while he talked to me. He spat into the can and then scraped it against his chin to catch some dribble. Spat again. “Your daddy ain’t never owned a thing in his life. He trespassed and poached for a livin’. Some dirty low-life you’d see walkin’ down the highway with animal furs wrapped around him.”
“You don’t know my pap!”
“The hell I don’t. I’ve seen him.”
I felt my face go hot again and balled my fists on my knees. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do, so I stayed quiet.
“You’d have never been nothin’, boy. That man didn’t care a lick about you.”
I couldn’t hold the anger in any longer. I slammed both my fists into the plastic shield and shouted at him. “I’ve got another gun, you know! I’ve still got Pap’s hidden away with some bullets! You’ll be lucky if I don’t shoot you dead!”
“Here we go,” he said.
Sanders veered off the road and skidded to a halt. He racked the gearshift into place and flung the car door open. I crouched on the seat like a frog. When he opened my door, I jumped at him. He didn’t expect me to come at him like I did. By the time his hands stretched out to grab me where I would have been on the seat, I was already clinging to him with my legs wrapped around his stomach and my arms under his armpits. I bit into his shoulder and chewed at it like it was tough gristle. Sanders started yelling and backed away from the car while I worked in three or four chews. He grabbed me around the waist with both hands and squeezed so hard that my body shot with pain and I had to throw my head back and cough at the sky. I felt my pants grow wet with pee flowing down my leg.
“Damnit!” he yelled. “How about this! You feelin’ this?”
I tried to nod so that he would stop, but I couldn’t.
“I ain’t the man to mess with, boy. My family’s owned land in Sumter County for a hundred years. You wouldn’t know anything about ownin’ stuff, now, would you?”
I coughed again and my eyes felt like they were about to burst.
He squeezed me harder. “Would you!”
Everything I saw was blurry. A truck whooshed by. I heard the dinging of the police car where the door was still open. Suddenly he released me and dropped me to the asphalt, and I heard him spit and walk away. I rolled over and got sick onto the ground. I hoped that he’d let me lie there until I felt better. I wanted to stay until it became dark out and I heard owls calling. I lay there for what seemed like a long time, staring at the loose gravel, until he grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me and threw me back into the police car. He said something to me, but I couldn’t make it out.
I lay across the backseat, taking deep breaths and waiting for the pain to go away. I felt the gentle motion of the cruiser through the vinyl.
It wasn’t long before the car slowed, and I heard the tires on a gravel road. “Want you to pay attention to somethin’,” Sanders said.
The car stopped and I saw Sanders’s window going down. “Billy!” he yelled. “Go tell your daddy to get out here.”
I heard a screen door slam somewhere outside. Sanders began to pack his Copenhagen with dull thumps against his thigh. “Show you what it’s like to own things, boy.”
He turned and looked at me as he shoved another pinch of tobacco into his mouth. I watched his face as he stared at me and worked the tobacco around with his tongue. Then, I heard another man’s voice outside.
“How you doin’, Davy?” the man said.
Sanders turned away from me and peered out the window. “What did I tell you last month, Allen?”
“Davy, you know how things have been around here. I talked to your daddy about it. He said we could get settled with you in two weeks. I got disability comin’.”
Sanders shook his head and stared straight out over the steering wheel. “Allen, lean in here,” he said calmly.
I heard footsteps outside the car.
“Come here,” Sanders said again. “I wanna tell you somethin’.”
“Well, I can hear fine from right here, Davy.”
“Lean in here. No sense in little Billy hearin’ this.”
I heard the footsteps again and saw the man’s head appear at the window and his hands rest on the driver’s door. His face was long and sunken and smudge-streaked. He reminded me of a blue heron. He swallowed and I saw his Adam’s apple move up and down. Sanders suddenly let go of the steering wheel and backhanded the man across the jaw. It happened so fast I jumped in my seat. The man’s face was knocked around as if he’d looked away to stare at the back tire. He slowly wiped his mouth and continued looking downwards.
“My granddaddy didn’t leave this land to my daddy, did he?”
The man didn’t answer. His face was beet red.
“Did he?” Sanders repeated.
“No. He didn’t.”
“See what you can do, then. I know plenty of people that would love to take over this house you built on my property.” Sanders rolled up his window and began to drive forward. The man’s hands slipped away from the car and his face passed by my window. He never looked up.
“That’s white trash,” Sanders said.
10
When we got to the boys’ home, there were people in the driveway with cameras to take pictures of us. Sanders opened the back door and the people crowded close and shouted questions, but my chest and head hurt too much to answer. I balled up on the backseat.
“Where’s your daddy, kid?”
“How long have you lived in the cave?”
“We heard you buried your father. Tell us about it.”
Sanders grabbed me under the armpit and lifted me onto my tiptoes. He leaned down close to my ear. “You screw up, kid, I’ll squeeze you until your head pops off.”
I watched the sidewalk pass under my feet while Sanders pulled me along. Cameras flashed and people yelled at me.
“Officer, can he talk? Has he been educated at all?”
I heard Sanders reply. “He’s a little militia kid. He don’t know much of anything.”
“Your daddy ever kill anybody, kid?”
“Does he have any relatives?”
“Hey, kid? Is it true you lived in a tree?”
We were soon inside the boys’ home, and the flashbulbs and the shouting of reporters faded away behind the front door. Sanders stopped and my eyes saw the tips of shoes in front of me. I looked up to see Mr. Gene.
“Moon?” he said.
I didn’t reply.
“You best get some restraints on this boy before I let loose,” Sanders said.
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” Mr. Gene replied. “Unless he knows how to buzz that front door open, he can bounce off these walls all day long.”
Sanders released me, and I dropped to the floor. “He’s all yours, then. Kid’s an animal. He pissed his pants and I got to clean my backseat of him for the second time.”
I tried to rub my shoulder where Sanders had been squeezing me, but the constable slapped my hand away. “Don’t you move a finger!” he spat. Sanders looked back at Mr. Gene. “I’m tellin’ you now, this kid’ll be on you like a wet cat, you don’t tie him down.”
My stomach felt queasy and my head was still throbbing. I wanted to lie down and sleep. “I’m not gonna whip up on anybody,” I said to the floor.
Sanders left and Mr. Gene took me to a back room and stood me in front of a giant black man.
“This is Mr. Carter,” he said. “He’s the watchman here at Pinson. He’ll take you from here.”
“My stomach hurts,” I said.
“I’ll bet it does,” Mr. Gene said like he didn’t believe me. “I know all about that stomach. We’ve seen just about every trick in the book at Pinson. Isn’t that right, Mr. Carter?”
“That’s right.”
“Mr. Carter, will you get this boy a uniform and show him to the showe
r room? After that you can show him to his bunk.”
Mr. Carter nodded and began to lead me away.
“And Mr. Carter,” Mr. Gene said. We stopped and turned around again. “Moon will be wearing our special color for the time being.”
“I’ll fix him up,” Mr. Carter said.
Mr. Carter pointed me through a door on my right and then we turned left down a hall. Soon we came to a closet where we stopped. He opened the door and, from a top shelf, got a one-piece uniform that was the color of orange flagging tape. He handed it down to me. “You don’t give us any trouble and we’ll let you wear a white one. What size shoes you wear?”
“I don’t know.”
He knelt down and dug into a cardboard box and pulled out some white canvas tennis shoes. “Take these with you and we’ll swap ’em out if they don’t fit. I’ll round up a jacket for you and put it in your locker later on.”
I took the shoes and backed up as he came from the closet and shut it. We continued on until we came to a steel door that Mr. Carter had to unlock with keys that hung from his belt. Once we passed through I heard the sound of boys shouting. He locked it behind us and we turned right and kept walking. “You have boys in cages here?”
“Cages?”
“Like jail.”
“No. No cages like jail.”
We turned left again and walked down another hall until Mr. Carter pushed open a door and motioned for me to go in. “Get a shower and get dressed. There’s towels above the sink in there. I’ll be out here when you’re done. You had lunch yet?”
“Nossir.”
“The rest of the boys already ate, but I’ll see what I can find for you.”
I walked into the empty shower room and looked around. I saw the stall and remembered how Earle had turned the silver knobs to get the water out. After placing my new clothes on the floor, I stripped naked and stepped under the shower head. I watched the nozzle as I turned the knob and suddenly icy-cold water pounded my face. I sucked in my breath and let the water run over me for a few seconds before I reached up and turned it off.
When Mr. Carter came back I was waiting in the middle of the floor with my new uniform and shoes on. He gave me a sandwich and bent over and picked up the clothes Earle had found for me. When we walked back out into the hall, he tossed my jail clothes into a trash can and wiped his hands on his pants.