I’ll worry about that when the time comes, he thought. Right now I’ve got to get him out of that place.
Clem didn’t have to buy the evening paper. One was on the counter. He was the sole customer left, and he asked the girls for the classified advertising section; they told him he could take the whole newspaper.
* * *
At the Valley Home for Boys, Alex learned about his new environment as he waited for the time when he would leave. It was still two weeks until the new school semester. The boys from the Home attended public school and, Alex found out, ran both the junior high school and high school because they more or less stuck together. The area was generally affluent, and the progeny thereof weren’t conditioned to violence.
“I should be gone from here right after school starts,” he told Sammy.
“Yeah, they’ve been telling me that too.”
“My pop promised, and he doesn’t lie when he promises.” Alex’s face was flushed. Then he saw that his anger left Sammy hurt and surprised. “Forget it,” Alex said. “Let’s go swimming.”
Alex spent a week exploring the grounds, some of which, down by the nearby dry riverbed, were out of bounds. He found a soft place of rich green grass against the bole of a tree. It was hidden, except the side facing the river. He preferred being there, alone with his books, to being around the rest of the boys. He went to the pool in the evening, when it was cooler and less crowded.
Many of the boys had bicycles, some given by parents, some by the local police department when they couldn’t find owners; some were virtually handmade, created by cannibalizing from a basement of broken bicycles and parts. Alex tried to put one together, but even with the help of Sammy he couldn’t do it. Some key parts were in short supply, and resourceful as he was, his mechanical aptitude was nil.
“We could steal one when we go to the movies Saturday,” Sammy said. “Bring it back and change it around. Maybe paint it.”
“Oh no,” Alex said. “I don’t want to take any chances. Not now. I’m getting ready to go home and be with my dad. What if I got sent to Juvenile Hall?”
The large recreation hall had full bookshelves along two walls, mostly donations—an eclectic collection. Few boys in the home were interested in reading, but Alex was at the shelves nearly every day. He’d already devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Tom Swift books. Now it was Westerns. Reading was impossible, however, in a room with three other boys and their friends slamming in and out. Alex loved solitude. In addition to the patch of grass by the river, he found another secret place under the gymnasium stage. It was a dark area, where the gym mats were stored, but enough light came in through a hole to read by. There he hid and studied books on ancient history and prehistory. He fantasized himself into a world of giant lizards and other strange creatures.
Occasionally some of the older boys baited him, in the hope of arousing another rage to entertain them, but he managed to control himself. What they did was less painful and humiliating than it had been in military school, where the cadet officers had authority. Alex had smashed one of them over the eye with a large rock, bringing forth a torrent of blood and another expulsion.
Sammy Macias was his only buddy, but Sammy was always in trouble, usually for stealing. He was an outcast. Most of the boys had an insatiable craving for adult approval, and they were afraid to be tainted by association with Sammy. It was one reason Alex became his friend.
Sammy’s background was more somber than the average boy’s at the Home. His father had gone wild after the accident when Sammy’s mother was killed, turning to booze and bad checks; he was now in jail. Sammy was aggressive and impulsive, nominally the leader because he was bigger and stronger. Alex was too young to see that his friend wasn’t very bright. They roamed the grounds together, throwing rocks at blackbirds and trying to catch gophers, for which the Home paid a quarter bounty. In the evenings they went swimming.
The days were easy enough for Alex, and he was able to avoid Thelma Cavendish’s wrath. But after lights-out he thought of Clem’s promise and felt both lonely and excited.
On Saturdays the younger boys were taken to the movies. The bus carried them fifteen miles into Hollywood, then dropped them off near a group of theaters on Hollywood Boulevard.
One time Hollywood Boulevard’s traffic swallowed the disintegrated group, and Alex and Sammy walked off together toward the row of marquees, which were nearly side by side. One that specialized in Westerns had a facade of logs and a hitching post.
They were looking at the posters in the outer lobbies when Sammy said, “Let’s not go. I’ve got two dollars.…”
“Two dollars! Where…?”
“I found it.”
“You found it?”
“Well … a visitor left her purse in her car with the window down.” He grinned, shrugged a shoulder. “What could I do? She had twenty dollars and I just took two. Anyway, hell, we could hitchhike to Griffith Park and go horseback riding.”
“No, my father’s coming tomorrow to take me horseback riding.”
“What about running away? It’s still summer and not too cold at night.”
Alex shook his head, pursing his mouth for emphasis. “I’m not chicken. I ran away for six days about four months ago. I was sleeping under a shoeshine stand, and the colored guy who ran it brought me food every morning.”
“How’d they catch you?”
“I went to the movies during a weekday, and they look through them for truants.”
“I like running away. Nobody to tell you anything. You just go where you want and do what you want—like an explorer. The only bad thing is if you get hungry or can’t find a place to sleep when it’s cold.”
“If you want to run away, go ahead. You can have my sixty cents.”
“It’s no fun alone. Anyway, let’s not go to a movie. Let’s just fool around here.”
Alex hesitated, needled by a premonition of disaster, then nodded agreement. Crossing the street, they went back up the other side, ducking through alleys, wandering through a department store, playing. At a hot-dog stand they bought hamburgers and milk shakes. When they reached the end of the business area, they turned off along a tree-shaded residential street and walked down to Sunset Boulevard. As much as anything they were roaming.
On Sunset they stopped at the window of a huge store called “Builder’s and Sportsmen’s Emporium.” A gleaming Schwinn bicycle made them stop and stare.
“Let’s go in and look around,” Sammy said, beckoning to his friend and walking toward the door. Alex trotted behind.
The vast store had many aisles and departments, selling everything from bolts to boats—tires, shotguns, hinges, outboard motors, rakes, shovels. They were wandering around when suddenly Sammy touched Alex’s sleeve and motioned to a counter laden with sheath knives in leather scabbards. Sammy picked one up, unsheathed it, returned it.
The counter had no clerk. Nobody was paying them any attention. Sammy picked it up again. “Two dollars,” he said.
Alex sensed what was going to happen. Sammy was glancing around; then he lifted his shirt and stuck the knife down into his waistband. Alex held his breath, looking around in fright, remembering his promise to his father.
They were pushing at the door, blinking at the glare outdoors, when the man came up behind them. “Hold it, boys,” he said, reaching for Sammy. Alex could have run but didn’t.
* * *
The punishment was left to Thelma Cavendish. The assistant superintendent of the Home came to the store, thanked the manager for not calling the police, and drove the boys back to the cottage. He walked them to the housemother’s open door. She was in her chair, and a boy was in the doorway, but when she saw the new arrivals she told the boy to step out and close the door. The assistant superintendent also left.
The culprits stared down at their shoetops while the woman, immobile as a statue except for her breathing, glared at them with contempt. Alex’s panic in the store and worry during the sile
nt ride back slowly dissolved in resentment. He hadn’t stolen anything. This was persecution. Instead of nervous fear he had anger, and instead of looking down in guilt he met her eyes, until it was she who looked away.
Finally she spoke: “Well, let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
Neither one answered. Sammy moved his feet and kept looking down. Alex stared at her. The challenge was so open that she had to meet it.
“Sneak thieves … dirty little sneaks. You steal small things now and get off light, you’ll steal bigger things later.” Her voice rose with the fervor of her simplistic convictions. “Believe me, I’m going to teach you … both of you.” But her eyes were on Alex. She rose from her chair and waddled, shaking with tension, to a cluttered table, where she picked up a paddle. It was like a table tennis paddle, except the handle was extended, and it had holes the size of quarters in it. “Five swats apiece,” she adjudged. “Drop your pants, Alex.”
Alex’s breath was coming faster, and the fever was rising in his brain. “No,” he said, tears of fury starting. “You’re not going to hit me with that.”
The intensity froze her, but just momentarily. She was a determined woman, and her authority was the focus of her life. Rebellion was sacrilege; she flushed under layers of face powder.
“Don’t try that with me,” she said. “Take your pants down and bend over.” She loomed above him; he could smell the decay beneath the scene of flowers. Her bulk was intimidating, but his brain was frozen on refusal to submit to injustice. He felt smothered. Oh, God, I wish my father—The thought was unfinished as tears flowed.
“You’re the smart one. Sammy’s a follower. I’m going to teach you who’s boss.”
She reached for him with a liver-spotted hand with purple fingernails. At her touch he leaped forward, butting her with his head, pushing and clawing but not using his fists. The charge surprised her, driving her back a pace.
“Oh you … little bastard,” she said, fending him off and reaching for his hair. As she forced his head away, he grabbed the top of her dress. The cloth ripped away, exposing the fish-white flab above her slip. She dropped the paddle and pulled the cloth up to cover herself.
Alex stepped back, at bay. Then he stopped crying, for Thelma Cavendish had tears in her eyes too. It was unbelievable.
“You’ll get it now,” she said, her voice shrill. “Now you’re in real trouble. You’re going to reform school for that.”
Alex was no longer furious. Tears started again, but they were from the ache. It was all wrong. He wanted to tell her the whole thing was a mistake. He was even ready to blame Sammy, something he wouldn’t have done a minute earlier. “Mrs. Cavendish … I’m sorry, but…”
“Go to your room while I have the superintendent call the police. We don’t have a place for heathens like you.”
Alex’s heart pounded with fear, and he stumbled out—Thelma Cavendish following him to the door—and down the hallway to his room. Nobody was there. He stood trembling in the middle of the room.
Sammy came in, staring at him. Their relationship had changed. Sammy was afraid of him. Anyone who would do what he’d done—attack Mrs. Cavendish—was capable of anything.
Alex conjured up an image of Juvenile Hall, one based on movies with the Dead End Kids. He had no reason to doubt that the superintendent could call the police and have him taken away. It had happened last week to a boy, though Alex didn’t think that the boy had set a brush fire in a vacant lot, which had burned down a garage.
Suddenly he knew the answer: he’d run away. He wouldn’t wait for either the superintendent or the police. He opened a closet and grabbed his windbreaker. From a dresser drawer he took a rolled pair of clean socks. One of the room’s missing residents had a piggy bank in a different drawer. Without hesitation, Alex took it and put it in the pocket of the windbreaker.
“What’re you doing?” Sammy asked.
“Getting away from here.”
“The superintendent is coming,” Sammy said. He was by the window.
“Are you coming with me?”
“Where?”
“Running, you ninny.”
Sammy’s face churned, shaded with inner confusion.
“You wanted to today,” Alex said. “What happened to your guts since then?”
“Let me think…”
“The guy’s coming,” Alex said, heading for the door. “I’m going.”
“Let me get a coat,” Sammy said.
“Hurry!”
The cottage had two doors. The back door was swinging shut behind Sammy as the superintendent opened the front door.
The boys skirted the building and ran toward a line of trees beyond the lawn. Within the trees it was already night.
4
Clem hunted for a place for himself and his son. Every day he marked the classified section of the Times, and after work he made telephone calls or drove to look various places over. None was satisfactory. Those he could afford were dilapidated and in bad neighborhoods, nor was there anyone there to look after an eleven-year-old boy. The nice places in private homes where he and Alex could have room and board cost too much and didn’t provide enough privacy. He’d been confident at the beginning, but as days passed and the time neared when he would see Alex, he began to worry. He found himself awake in the middle of the night, squirming mentally.
He was awake after midnight when the landlady knocked on the door and told him the superintendent of the Valley Home for Boys was on the telephone downstairs. Ten minutes later, when he had the news that Alex had run away again, he sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette and wondering what he would do. It couldn’t go on like this. Alex had also attacked the housemother. The boy was getting worse.
Clem knew there was nothing he could do. He turned off the lights and tried to sleep. It was impossible. He kept wondering where his son was, though after half a dozen runaways he wasn’t as worried as he once had been.
* * *
The two boys left the grounds by following the nearly dry riverbed for a mile, and then began crossing through orange groves on dirt roads until they reached the railroad track paralleling the highway toward Los Angeles. The odd shadows of night and the strange sounds made them tingle with excited fear. Alex was thrilled at the freedom, to be able to go wherever his whims dictated.
As midnight neared, the warmth of the day left the air, replaced by a chill. They were on the outskirts of San Fernando and knew they couldn’t walk the downtown streets at this hour without attracting attention from the first passing prowl car. Between the railroad right-of-way and the highway was a large auto wrecking yard stuffed with gutted, truncated vehicles. The yard had a sagging board fence that shivered as they climbed it. They found the hull of a bus and used it to spend the night. Sammy lay on the floor, on shards of glass from a broken window, trembling with the cold, hands between his thighs. Alex sat up, watching the traffic on the highway, the growling diesel trucks outlined in lights, more relentless than the darting automobiles. He thought of Clem, imagining the pain he was causing his father, and yet he was not sorry for running away. Mrs. Cavendish had been wrong, and he’d had to fight back. He had no goal. Once when he ran away he’d gone to Clem’s room, and his father had immediately taken him back to the military school. Alex wouldn’t make that mistake again. They would head toward the ocean and then south toward San Diego.
He didn’t realize that he’d been dozing until he woke up, shivering. The sky was lighter in the east. He touched Sammy’s shoulder, and they left the junkyard, still following the railroad tracks. Sammy wanted to hitchhike, but Alex knew it was still too early, and they were still too close to the Valley Home for Boys.
Hunger drove them to cross a field to the highway and enter a small café, where they spent half their money on pancakes and milk.
Beside the café was a trailer set on blocks and settled to rest. It had a dirt yard and a rope swing hanging from a tree. The yard was cluttered with rusting things, b
ut leaning against the trailer, near the door, was a shiny red bicycle. The blank wall of the café blocked the people there from seeing it, and the trailer was dark and silent.
“Look at that!” Alex said, grabbing Sammy’s arm.
“It’s sure nice.”
“Let’s steal it. We can go a lot faster riding than walking.”
Sammy stared at the mobile home. “What if somebody comes out?”
“If they come out…” He shrugged. “But they’re still asleep.”
Sammy said nothing, but his face registered his fear.
“I’ll get it,” Alex said. “You keep walking along the road, and I’ll pick you up.” Alex’s young voice contained the hint of a sneer.
Sammy hesitated, but one fear overcame another and he began trudging along the highway shoulder. Alex waited until Sammy was about a hundred yards away, then moved quietly across the yard. When he reached the side of the trailer he froze, listening for signs of someone moving. All was silent. He took the bicycle by the handlebars and walked it across to the highway, where he mounted and began to pedal. Up the road Sammy was walking, looking back over his shoulder. When he saw Alex, Sammy waited. A minute later they were on their way.
* * *
It took all day to cross the city of Los Angeles. Late in the morning they stole a second bicycle from a park playground, and thereafter they played follow-the-leader, weaving on sidewalks and down alleys and around automobiles. The day was warm but bleak and overcast until early afternoon. They wandered down side streets in both middle-class and slum neighborhoods. It was an exploration of uncharted land where they might meet any adventure. They stopped to rest and play in places as diverse as a huge gravel pit (they were coated with white dust when they left) and a small park with a public swimming pool. Once they had to walk the bicycles up a long grade, but they raced wildly down several miles on the other side, laughing at the wind in their faces. By late afternoon they’d traveled almost fifty miles from where they started and were in Long Beach. Dinner was milk and sweet rolls shoplifted from a small market, gulped on the beach in the shadow of the immense amusement pier. Night arrived, and the gala lights, smells of hot dogs and onions and candy apples, and carnival sounds beckoned to them. They wandered around the amusement pier, which overflowed onto a wide boardwalk. They had no money for rides nor for what was giving off good smells, but they wandered with the crowd and poked their noses wherever they could, forgetting temporarily that they were still hungry. Movie theaters were numerous and cheap. One was showing a Boris Karloff double feature—The Mummy and Frankenstein—and they couldn’t resist the lure of being frightened. Alex bought one ticket for twenty cents—leaving them another twenty-five cents—went inside, then opened an exit door so Sammy could slip in. They stayed through two shows—until the lights went on as the theater closed.
Little Boy Blue Page 3