“Hey, ese, they’re having a fair fight. Leave ’em alone.” Lulu Cisneros had spoken. “It’s none of your business, que no?”
The older black’s head came up in haughty disdain. “My business ain’ none of your business either.”
“I might make it my business.”
Seeing that Lulu was serious, the black youth shrugged and backed up from his position. “That’s a Paddy. How come you’re gettin’ involved?”
“No, I ain’t involved…’less somebody gets me involved. I just say to let them fight it out.”
“They ain’t doin’ much fightin’.”
The silence in the room brought the man from the shower room down the hall. The boys scattered when the key hit the door. But Alex and Chester didn’t have time. When the man saw them, Alex was pulling his arm from around Chester’s neck. When he reached them, they were on their feet.
The man’s half-smile was more frightening than an angry scowl would have been. “Having a little fight, eh?” he said.
“No, sir,” Chester said—and as Alex heard “sir,” he giggled without thinking.
The man looked at Alex. “Something funny, Hammond?”
Frightened, Alex shook his head.
“Jus’ horseplayin’, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Chester said. “That’s all.” Chester put his arm around Alex’s shoulder. “We friends, Mr. Fitzgerald. See…?”
“That’s bullshit!” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I know what I saw … and that’s why we had the gloves out this afternoon … to get it out of your systems. All you little bastards wanna do is fight.”
“We’re not mad at each other, are we, Alex?”
Alex shook his head; he was only mad at the man, and he kept his eyes averted because of the rage building up within him.
“You know the rule on fights, Nelson … isolation until the chief supervisor talks to you and decides what to do. Gotta make sure you can’t start again when my back’s turned.”
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” Chester wailed. No matter how tough the ghetto and how precociously tough the child raised on its mean streets, Chester was still barely twelve years old. “Don’t put me in isolation.”
“I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.”
Alex didn’t know what isolation was, but he wanted to cry, the ache of sadness and rage eating him. However he just blinked and remained silent. Tears would accomplish nothing, and he would look bad.
“Let’s go to the desk while I call an escort,” Fitzgerald said, motioning the boys to precede him.
Alex watched the eyes of the others in the company as he marched by. Every face was impassive except Lulu’s; the Chicano winked at him.
* * *
A solid door from the corridor led to an alcove where there were two barred gates—one to the right and one to the left. Each opened into an isolation room.
The light was out when Alex stepped in and the gate was locked behind him, but powerful floodlights on the grounds came through two layers of wire mesh and one set of bars strongly enough to illuminate the cell’s vacantness. A bare striped mattress was on the floor, with a washbowl and toilet—the former above the latter—making a single facility on the wall.
“You’ll get a blanket later,” the escorting supervisor said.
“Is Chester Nelson coming in here?”
“I’m getting him now. He’ll be right across the way.”
When the man left, Alex went to the sink for a drink of water, discovering that it lacked buttons or handles. The toilet was the same. They had to be operated from outside the cell.
The window was open, and a chilly breeze was coming in. Alex poked his fingers through the wire mesh but couldn’t touch the window, much less close it. The frame had a padlock.
The corridor door was open, light spilling inside, and Alex heard Chester’s voice without deciphering the words.
“You’ll probably get out tomorrow,” the Man said.
“Say, Mister,” Alex said. “Can I get this window closed? It’s cold in here.”
“I haven’t got the key.”
“Well, don’t forget the blanket.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I need one too,” Chester added, as his cell door was closed and locked.
“I said don’t worry,” the man said irritably. “This ain’t a hotel.”
The Man slammed and locked the door; the click of the lock sounded emphatic.
“Jive-ass motherfucker,” Chester said, the salty words incongruous in his piping child’s voice. “Ah best get me some blankets or ain’ nobody sleepin’ in this buildin’ tonight. What you bet?” His bravado sounded thin.
The slamming door had been like a slap, and Alex also seethed. The blankets were the focus of a wider indignation. It was slowly being etched into his young mind that those with authority didn’t care about right and wrong, good and evil—only about subservience.
From somewhere in the city’s night beyond the wall came the sound of a siren rising and falling, a lament for human misery. From somewhere else came a terse screech of brakes followed by the bleat of an automobile horn, reflecting the driver’s anguish. The sounds were sharp in the stillness, carried on the crystalline night air. Alex hooked his fingers on the wire mesh and stared out at the grounds of Juvenile Hall. The glare of the floodlights—not merely bright but other-worldly—bleached out colors so that the trees and bushes were in stark silhouette, casting impenetrable black shadows, a surreal landscape. Inwardly Alex felt quiet, cleansed, as if the fight had sweated out angers and drained away bad things that he’d felt vaguely without realizing them. His father’s death already seemed to have happened long ago, the heavy pain slowly melting. Clem had been the most important person in his life, and yet Alex had been conditioned to live without a father. Seldom had he seen Clem more than a couple of hours a week, and even then a barrier had existed between them, so they talked little. It wasn’t as if something fundamental to his daily existence had been taken. His anguish was less for a lost reality than for a lost hope. Clem had been his one chance to get away from this, and now Alex had no idea what his future would be. Right now things were unraveling too quickly to do more than deal with the moment, but whenever he had a premonition of his tomorrows, it was bleak. He wasn’t going home, no matter what; home had no place, even in a dream. An eleven-year-old could see that much.
He lay down on the bare mattress, sighing, his hands tucked between his legs, and emotional exhaustion put him to sleep very quickly.
Not for long, however.
The electricity of fright flew through him as he jerked up suddenly. A rhythmic, crashing sound had awakened him—so loud and so close that he thought it was inside the cell itself. Then he heard Chester’s screaming voice and realized the freckled black youth was making an uproar. Alex went to the gate and saw Chester crouching down in the shadows, with both hands on the bars, rattling them against the steel doorframe.
Chester paused when Alex appeared. “Motherfucker never brought no blankets. Ah tol’ him nobody’s gonna sleep. I’ll wake this whole motherfucker up. C’mon and help.”
Alex fell to, making it a duet of din. From the second floor, where the girls’ hospital ward was located, came answering voices screaming in foul language, but whether in opprobrium or support couldn’t be understood.
The light in the alcove went on, and then the door opened. At the light Chester had stopped, but Alex kept on until the door started moving. He still had both hands on the bars when a fat man stepped in. His physique made his trousers sag below his belly, and the heavy keyring hanging on his belt increased this tendency, so that the pants staying up seemed to defy gravity. Remaining in the doorway was the man who had slammed and locked the door.
“What’s wrong here?” the fat man asked. He had a flashlight and waved the beam to look over the two boys. “Somebody got a problem?”
“We need some blankets,” Alex said. “It’s cold in here.”
“You haven’t got any blankets?�
�
“No!” Chester yelped. “We ain’t got shit.”
“I told them I’d bring a blanket apiece,” the second man said.
“That was two hours ago,” Chester said.
“This isn’t a hotel, and I’m not a maid. I’ve got other things to do … like count.”
“You’re just countin’ now,” Chester said. “Bringin’ a couple blankets wouldn’t take a hot minute.”
The fat man had been nibbling at a fingernail. “You didn’t have to wake up the whole institution. You’d have gotten a blanket in due time.” As if to emphasize his words, from upstairs came another burst of screaming and obscenity. “Listen to that,” he said angrily.
“If he’d brought us some blankets—” Alex began.
“You don’t run a goddamn thing here, kid,” the fat man said. “And raising all this hell sure isn’t the way to get anything.”
“It got you down here,” Chester piped in. “Ah know we wasn’t gonna see you till morning … what you bet?”
“You’re not going to get any blankets—not tonight—and if you keep making noise we’ll take the mattress.”
“Why don’t you come in and whip us?” Chester asked.
“Believe me, I’d like to, but little turds like you aren’t worth my job. It’s probably what you little punks need.”
“It’s what your mother needs,” Chester yelped, then stuttered in search of other curses without finding them.
“Keep your shit up and I’ll come in there,” said the man in the doorway. “Lemme hear those gates again. You punks think you can get away with it because you’re kids.”
The haughty contempt enraged Alex out of proportion to the threat. They acted as if he was nothing and they could do whatever they wanted. It was only a blanket apiece—that was all. He began to tremble, and his breathing became audible.
The fat man heard the gasps and turned the flashlight on him. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” The question dripped challenge.
Alex cried out and leaped at the bars, trying to claw the man’s face, missing and then spitting on him. The suddenness of the attack, even by an eleven-year-old behind bars, startled the man so that he flinched backward a step, the flashlight beam tilting crazily. He wiped the spray from his cheek.
Chester laughed. “Scared-ass motherfucker!” he sneered.
“Okay, little cocksucker,” the man said. “Now you’ve done it.”
Alex didn’t hear. He was blind with fury, spinning around in the cell like a dervish, seeking anything to smash or tear. He grabbed the toilet-washbowl fixture and tried to get it loose, but that was futile. Then he saw the mattress. That he could destroy.
It had no holes he could get his fingers into, so he knelt and began biting the striped material, wanting to get an opening so he could tear it apart and throw its innards around the cell. He had just started to gnaw when the cell gate opened and the light came on.
The fat man came first, his round face livid. Alex scrambled to his feet, the absolute blankness of moments before now cracked so he could see enough of reality not to attack. Yet he was still too furious to be afraid.
The open palm slapped him off his feet, dropping him sideways so that his head whacked into the wall. He lay stunned for a moment and then, sobbing with fury, came up and started at the man again, who simply grabbed him by a sleeve and slapped him again, sending lights flashing through his brain. “Oh, you bastard! Bastard!” cursed Alex through tears, his fury increased by helplessness. The man grabbed the boy’s hand in such a way that the wrist could be twisted, forcing Alex down on the concrete.
The second man was in the cell now, tugging out the mattress. “We oughta make him do it,” he said, having to turn the ungainly object sideways to get it out the door.
“Just get it out,” the fat man said, his temper dissipated somewhat. “Settle down, kid,” he said. He thought to himself, This one is crazy as a loon.
Chester was at his bars, yelling: “Brave motherfuckers! Sure are brave … you motherfuckers!”
The second man had the mattress out and stepped back in. “Lemme go in there on that pipsqueak nigger,” he said to the fat man.
“Not yet,” he said, releasing Alex and going out the door. When it was locked, he announced: “You two better stop raising hell or you’ll wind up in straitjackets. Take it for what it’s worth.”
“Fuck you!” Chester said.
Alex said nothing; he was too frustrated by his helplessness. Someday he’d get even with them—all of them. He looked around the empty cage, wanting to destroy something. Again all he saw was the toilet-washbasin fixture, and it was mounted too well for him to tear it off the wall.
The alcove light went out and the corridor door closed.
“Hey, man,” Chester called, but Alex was too overwrought to answer. He knew his voice would be choked, so he remained silent. “Hey, white boy! You think they’re fakin’ ’bout straitjackets?” The worry Chester felt was obvious. Alex was sitting against the wall in the darkness, fighting to compose himself, the quaking sobs slowly diminishing. But the fury in his brain ate deep into the core. Even when he calmed down, there was an abscess in his soul.
8
Elizabeth noble came to see him at eight-thirty A.M. He remained seated when he heard the outer door open, and he smelled her perfume before he heard her voice. He went to the bars slowly. She was still wearing her hat and carrying her purse. Her dress was black.
“Alex, what happened?” she asked plaintively.
He shrugged and looked down.
“The superintendent sent for me when I walked in. Yesterday afternoon he gave me permission to take you … the funeral’s this morning. Now he changed his mind. He got a report that you’d been fighting and causing a lot of trouble. Now he’s afraid you’ll do something bizarre out there.”
“That’s okay,” he said softly, his voice hoarse from all the sobbing and screaming. He’d expended too much emotion to feel pain now. “What difference does it make?”
The woman opened her mouth; then her teeth clicked, for she didn’t know what to say. The pendulum movements of his emotions were confusing, even to a psychiatrist. The sad fatalism of “What difference does it make?” was shocking from a eleven-year-old—especially a boy who, at other times, had no control whatsoever, and to whom trivial matters were critical. She decided at that moment to recommend that he go to Camarillo State Hospital for ninety days of observation. That had already been her tentative decision, because she could think of nothing better. She wanted to save him from reform school, where the repressive atmosphere would almost certainly suffocate his good characteristics and exacerbate his inner furies. Alternatives to reform school were meager. Shooting someone was serious, even when it was a semi-accident committed by an eleven-year-old. Few foster homes would accept a child with a history of violence. And he’d been through so many similar places already that the judge would hesitate to send him to another, though it was really up to the probation department; the judge just rubber-stamped the recommendation ninety-five percent of the time. If Alex went to a foster home, it would be a matter of weeks before he was back before the judge, no doubt of that. The state hospital idea had been in lieu of anything better, for his emotional problems were severe enough to justify it. Now she was even more justified, for this sudden lack of affect coupled with the volatile explosions raised the specter of incipient psychosis. It was unlikely, but it was possible—and in a way it would be better if he was psychotic. That could be cured, whereas the psychopathic delinquent had to burn out, which seldom took place until youth was long gone—often not until the person neared forty years of age. By then many were buried in prison, while many others were in the grave. The literature was full of case histories, and the prisons were filled with persons the histories were based upon.
“We’ve got you scheduled for a test at the general hospital tomorrow,” she said, turning her thoughts away from these complexities before she got bogged down in
the morass. “They’ll fasten some wires to your head, but you don’t feel anything.”
“Wires! What’s it for?”
“It’s called an E.E.G. Your brain gives off electrical impulses, and it measures them to see if you have epilepsy or a tumor. Sometimes people with a temper like yours have something wrong with them, and we can give them pills to help them.”
Alex nodded but seemed uninterested. “Where’s my father … going to be?”
“In Sunland. It’s called Valhalla.”
“Valhalla. I read about that. It’s a sort of heaven, isn’t it?”
“Norse mythology. I think it’s where warriors go. Something like that.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Someone’s waiting at my office for me. I’ve got to go. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Can I get something to read?”
“If you’re allowed to have books in here. What do you want?”
“I really liked some books about collie dogs by a man named Albert Payson Terhune … but I’ve read most of them. I like Westerns, and Tarzan. I think he wrote about Mars, too.”
“If you can have them I’ll bring some by this afternoon. Most of the companies have big bookshelves full of things—donations—and not many kids here are interested in reading.”
“I’d rather read than do anything else. It’s like I’m in another world.”
“And you don’t like this one,” she said wistfully, a comment both on his outlook and on his real condition. If he wished to escape reality he had a good reason. If his few yesterdays were dismal, his many tomorrows threatened to be worse, unless something miraculous happened. Not only was the miraculous unlikely, she didn’t even know what it might be.
* * *
Dr. Noble didn’t bring the books, but in the afternoon, when everyone except a monitor was at school, Alex and Chester were taken out for a shower. Alex spotted a bookcase en route, and on the way back he snatched a book and wrapped it in a towel without seeing the title. Back in the cell he was disappointed by the title, Arrowsmith, and he wouldn’t remember it or the author, Sinclair Lewis, for many years, until he began reading it again and realized it was the same story that had enthralled him so long ago. He started reading it because he had nothing else to do except lie on the stained mattress, which had been given back at supper, or look out the window at night in Juvenile Hall. Without knowing there was such a thing as literature—a book was a book—he was suddenly immersed in life born on paper. Some of the words were beyond his vocabulary, but that didn’t matter. The cell faded from consciousness, his troubles were forgotten, and he thrilled and ached and struggled with Dr. Martin Arrowsmith, M.D. When the lights went out at nine-thirty he tried to read from the glow coming through the wire mesh, but it wasn’t enough. As he rolled up his clothes for a pillow and got under the gray blanket, his mind still overflowed with feelings about the book. He didn’t realize that the evening hours in isolation in Juvenile Hall were happier than any he’d known in many months. Erased was Clem’s death, the missed funeral—and also the nagging worry about his fate, though he had realized that his control over it was the same as that of a chip of wood on a river.
Little Boy Blue Page 8