He didn’t tell the other boys where he was going when he got back in the room. He told them that he was going to the Youth Authority.
9
The waxed deep red of the dayroom floor sparkled from the yellow winter sunlight, sliced into squares by the flat bars of the windows. Inexpensive wicker-framed chairs with removable cushions ran along all walls and in back-to-back rows around the room. Most of the chairs were occupied, and most of the occupants wore grossly ill-fitting, rumpled state denim, the pants cuffs either high above skinny ankles or drooping low enough to be walked upon, either too small to be buttoned or so large they were held up by string or shoelaces. The more ragged the clothes, the crazier the person, or so it seemed. Some talked to themselves, some to Christ and whoever else came to mind and sight. The ward population was over one hundred, but less than half were in the room. The sitters were unusually placid this Saturday morning, for most had been given shock treatments yesterday and were still trying to sift facts from the ashes of memory. The really berserk patients were strapped to cots in small, dim rooms along a corridor (one of two) leading from the dayroom. They, too, were temporarily quieted from electricity applied to the brain.
This ward was the infirmary as well as a receiving and processing unit, and had many slightly corroded minds, including alcoholics and a few addicts taking the cure. Most of these were off the ward this time of day, working in the kitchen or loose on the vast semidesert acreage of hospital property; like most of southern California, what wasn’t desert was farm. They all had grounds parole cards.
The sane who remained on the ward wore civilian clothes—or at least shirts—and were involved in the nearly perpetual ward poker game. Today the locked wicker cabinet with the radio had been moved close to the table, and the gamblers half-listened to the Notre Dame announcer sadly describe a slaughter by the great Army team led by Blanchard and Davis, a pair of All-America backs in tandem, while Notre Dame players who might have stopped them were at Guadalcanal and North Africa. “Now for the half-time statistics,” the announcer said.
The poker game was five patients and an attendant, the last a young man in crisp whites who stood at a corner of the table, following the regulation that he wasn’t to sit down on the job except in the office during coffee breaks. Three white patients were playing, two of them alcoholics and the third an ex-con trying to avoid a forgery sentence to San Quentin by claiming he heard voices. The two blacks (“colored,” then) in the game were junkie confidence men, partners in crime and time, taking a cure because their supply of narcotics had been cut off by the war; they’d been reduced to paregoric and trying to talk doctors into writing morphine prescriptions. One of them was ebony-black, square-jawed and heavy-shouldered, with the flat nose and scarred eyebrows of an unproductive prizefight career. He was know as First Choice Floyd.
The largest pile of money was in front of the other black, who was lighter-skinned than the average Sicilian. His partner Floyd sometimes joshed him as “you ol’ shit-colored nigger,” and indeed, his name was Red Barzo. His reddish hair was processed to stiffness and had a pompadour in front. He looked younger than his thirty-eight years. He was thin and voluble, chattering far more than a poker player is supposed to, continually counting his coins in stacks between hands, counting and arranging, knowing full well that a new hand would erase his count and his neatness and he’d have to start over. He was fidgety, and occasionally his eyes wandered to a wall clock. “I’m gonna have to start gettin’ the funk off my body and get dressed pretty soon, so Clarice don’ be waitin’.”
Alex Hammond stood just behind Red Barzo’s right shoulder, sometimes shifting his weight from one foot to the other but otherwise expressionless, which were the conditions under which he was allowed to watch. His wise young eyes burned with concentration. If Red stayed a winner, he would let Alex play for him when he left to get ready for the visit.
“Last hand for me,” Red said, shuffling and dealing smoothly but without excessive flourish. Only Alex, standing behind him, could see him squeeze back and view the bottom card when he retrieved the cut. The man could ease it off so smoothly that the eye couldn’t tell, though there would be a telltale popping sound that he covered with a cough. Red wasn’t a good poker player—he was too prone to gamble and bluff—but he could cheat pretty good and usually won.
The down cards spun low across the blanket so there was no chance for exposure. As he turned up the second card, Red chanted the values: “Jack … Ace … ten … Ace … another ten … and a cocksuckin’ low-ass seven to the dealer.” Alex was fascinated by the exposure of mysteries, by something he sensed but could not articulate, that this had meaning or metaphor beyond itself. “First Ace bets,” Barzo said.
First Choice Floyd had the Ace and dropped a quarter into the middle of the bare blanket. The next player dropped. The second Ace called and so did the second ten. Red pinched up his hole card so Alex could see: a King. He pushed out two quarters. “Small raise,” he said. Alex, who had been watching and studying the techniques of the game for weeks, was surprised by the raise. He could understand it if Red had another seven in the hole (then it would be a bigger raise), or an Ace with no Aces showing. But the King couldn’t beat what was showing.
“Two sevens,” said the next man, the alcoholic with the exposed Jack. “You wouldn’t raise with an Ace, not with two showing.”
“Sho’ nuff glad you can read my hand,” Barzo said. “But whatcha gonna do?”
“I call.”
“Then throw in another quarter.”
The man did so. His face was full of tiny blue-red veins, giving a purple cast to his face.
First Choice flipped up the four of hearts. “Gotta go,” he said, throwing in his hand. The other two called. It made Red the focus of their attention. They thought he had either the Joker or another seven.
“Cards comin’,” Red said, leaving the deck on the blanket and turning each card with one hand so there would be no question of trickery. “No pair,” he said. “Ace still bets.”
“Check to the raiser.”
Those in between also tapped the blanket or said “check.”
Red had a wilted dollar bill ready and dropped it in, a substantial but not enormous second-card bet in this game. The next man, he of the Jack and the quip, looked at the nine beside Red’s seven and then at his own six. He put a dollar in the pot. The Ace had added a Queen and called. The other two folded. “Naw,” the attendant said. “You can’t have but sevens, but if I draw out on you, one of them is liable to draw out on me.” He tapped the blanket with the back of his knuckles and was turning over as Red spun the fourth round. “Jacks a pair … a trey to the Ace-Queen, and a King to the dealer. Jacks bet.”
“Five dollars,” the alcoholic said.
The Ace-Queen was face-down before the bill landed.
“I call,” Red said.
“Gonna try and draw out,” the alcoholic said, as certain now as if the cards were face-up that Red had another seven in the hole. The last thing in the world that he expected was another King from the way the hand had played.
“Last card,” Red said. The pair of Jacks caught a three, and Red had a five.
“Beat the Jacks,” the alcoholic said, his voice assured. It meant he didn’t have anything more than the Jacks. Two pair was a cinch, and it was forbidden to check a cinch in five-card stud.
Now Red had the man in the crosshairs. “How much you got?” he asked, eye-gesturing toward the pile of money. “Whatever it is, that’s what I bet.”
“Oh no, Mr. Slick Barzo. You can’t run me this time. Just cause you got all the money on the ward.” He was quickly counting the dimes, quarters, and half-dollars. “Fourteen dollars,” he said.
“Put it in,” Red said, dropping three five-dollar bills into the pot. The other man didn’t hesitate.
Red turned up the hidden King.
The alcoholic’s face was already red, and now it blotched. “I can’t go for that bullshit. Not
with you dealin’.”
“Sheeit,” First Choice said. “Talkin’ like a fool. Nobody gotta cheat you. An’ if you’re gonna be a sucker, be a quiet one.”
“Right,” the young attendant said. He was the voice of authority. “If you can’t lose quietly, don’t play.”
Red stacked the coins and watched the play of emotions. A good confidence man reads human nature unerringly, understanding beyond the wildest hopes of the psychologist. A con man must be right to prevail, where the psychologist depends upon his diploma for a living. Deciding the man was no actual threat, he cooled him off. “I didn’t know a King was coming. I put a chickenshit two bits in the pot as a raise to make you think I had the Joker or a pair of sevens. It was a setup for just what happened, that I catch a pair of Kings and someone would be able to beat the sevens but not the Kings. If nobody paired, I run the bluff all the way through. If somebody made Aces, or could beat the Kings, I fold up … with a dollar-fifty invested. The trap got set, and you fell for it. Don’t feel bad—good poker players get nailed in that one, and you ain’ too good.” He extended three one-dollar bills to the man.
Alex hadn’t needed the explanation. It was analogous to a chess gambit, offering the poisoned pawn. Chess was another game Alex had learned with ridiculous ease. First Choice had taught him how the pieces moved and the purpose, and in two weeks Alex won regularly. Now the other poker players were digesting the information. First Choice caught Alex’s eye and winked. Although Alex was around Red more, Red being more voluble, he was more comfortable with First Choice. The black man also showed him boxing rudiments: how to stand, how to stick out straight left jabs instead of the head-lowered wild roundhouses natural to young boys. Minds were too sick with other things to be sick about racism in the state hospital, so nobody thought anything about the boy hanging out with black confidence men. And Alex liked being around them; they made him laugh and were obviously fond of him. They told him stories of prison, where the “code” of violence was similar to that of the Old West, and for Alex it had a similar fascination. They told him about hustling, too, and about things an eleven-year-old doesn’t usually learn: how to spot a card mechanic (his hands were too small, actually, to learn how to do anything), “short” con games such as “The Match” and “The Strap,” the ethics of criminality, and tales about hustling and thieving. He remembered one story about a crap game in the parking lot of Churchill Downs at Derby time, where they’d switched in “Ace-Trey-Fives,” dice with only those numbers and consequently unable to “7,” giving them into a mooch. The mooch was shooting twenty dollars, while they made side bets of a hundred and two hundred. After five passes, when they’d trimmed off two thousand, they walked away, leaving the square with the dice. Now they laughed in recollection, conjecturing what might have happened if the others had found the square shooting phony dice.
“Wanna play for me, Alex?” Red asked. “I’m gonna take a shit, shave an’ shower, an’ get ready for my woman.”
This was precisely what Alex had been waiting for for the last three hours. Whenever Red won, he pocketed his investment and some of his winnings, then left the remainder for the boy. The first time, thanks to strict instructions to play only cinches, and also thanks to the other players never believing an eleven-year-old, he won thirty dollars. The next three times he lost, but only small amounts, once less than a dollar. Now he grinned, and Red tousled the boy’s hair while turning over the seat. Red picked up the currency, but the remaining stacks of coins equaled what most of the other players had before them. The tightness was already in the boy’s stomach, the quickened heartbeat and utter concentration on the falling of the cards. Red paused a moment to watch; Alex had a Jack in the hole and a nine up, and he folded the hand. Red patted him on the back and left. In all previous sessions, Alex had been allowed to play only an Ace or a King in the hole or a pair back to back, and he had to be able to beat whatever he could see, with no bluffs. Now Red had told him to keep playing that way, but if he had a King in the hole and had an Ace up, he could bluff, if that pair would beat whatever else someone might have. As the cards came, he felt a glorious fear—glorious because it was equal parts hope.
Two hands later he won with a pair of eights back to back, catching the third eight on the last card to the attendant’s two Aces. It was a fairly good pot. Because he was ahead, he decided to bluff at the first chance, and because it was more fear and hope than batting a cinch hand. The chance came two deals later. He had a King in the hole and an Ace exposed and didn’t pair either. Another player paired tens on the last card and checked. Alex shoved out ten dollars, delicious terror spreading from his stomach to his throat and limbs. The pair of tens hesitated, while Alex wondered if his face was showing his fear. The tens turned over, flinging the cards angrily to the next dealer. “Fuckin’ kid sleeps with Aces and Kings.…”
Playing the Joker in the hole, Alex caught a Queen-high straight on the next hand, trapping the attendant with two big pair and another player with three of a kind. It was a huge pot for an institution, nearly fifty dollars. The attendant slammed the cards down and quit. First Choice was short of money, and Alex gave him twenty dollars.
On weekends the game always lasted until supper and started again after the weekend movie on Saturday night. On Sunday there were fresh players, since patients got visits and money. But this was Saturday, and the game ended at one-thirty. The last player with three sixes ran into Alex with three Aces. In a fury, the man tore up his cards and threw them into the air; then he kicked his chair over as he stood up. First Choice leaned back, grinning, but there was no doubt what would happen if the losing man tried to strike the boy. Alex couldn’t help but flinch in the face of a furious adult.
The crashing chair brought attendants into the room; they were keyed to psychotic assaults and explosions. When they saw the man slowly picking up the chair, they relaxed.
Just one player besides First Choice remained in the game, and now he claimed a headache. Alex had nearly all the money in the game, and had already squirreled away two twenty-dollar bills, which were contraband in the institution. Nobody was supposed to have anything of a larger denomination than a ten-dollar bill, and a total of twenty-five dollars—but Red had a huge bankroll and First Choice Floyd also had several hundred. Now Alex’s shirt pocket was stuffed with bills, and his jeans pocket bulged with coins that pulled them dangerously low. “I wanna catch Red before his visit,” he said, glowing.
“It ain’t always gonna be gravy,” First Choice said. “Believe me, boy.”
“I bet I won over a hundred dollars!” To an eleven-year-old it was an immense amount.
“So you’re a poker prodigy, young’un,” Floyd said. “An’ sho’ nuff a lucky young motherfucker.” He was folding up the card table blanket.
Alex started across the dayroom, glowing and bouncing, paying no attention to the minds full of unreality around him. Then his eyes focused on a grossly obese man (a round circle of a body topped with a round circle of a head) who was beardless as a eunuch, and whose cheek flesh was wrinkled in infinite tiny creases rather than seams. Red had said the man was a hermaphrodite, and when Alex learned what the word meant he thought Red was joshing him. Alex never did find out for sure, though he peeked at the man’s penis in the shower and it was no bigger than a pencil. The other part he couldn’t see. But since then he had talked to the poor demented creature and couldn’t help teasing him. Now he looked around the dayroom for attendants (they’d warned him already), and he saw none. Probably drinking coffee in the office, he thought, flopping down in an empty chair beside the man. The beardless blob didn’t even glance around.
“Look here,” Alex said, tugging at his sleeve.
The round dome turned slowly, the eyes blinked slowly, and the stubby, nicotine-brown index finger and thumb (from butts pinched to the last puff) came slowly to the mouth. “Gimme Ol’ Gold. Please. Ol’ Gold.”
“Fuck you and Old Gold, too, queer old cocksucker. Tell me w
hat you’re gonna do about it.”
One hand stayed gesturing at the mouth, while the other came ponderously up and patted the immense belly. “Ol’ Gold … Ol’ Gold.”
Alex’s eyes shifted to the corridor, again seeing no attendant. He bit his lip and quickly slapped him—a whiplike flip of the fingernails—across his flat snout. The round head jerked back like a turtle’s. A shadow passed over his face, and a redness suffused it. “Bad boy, bad boy…”
“Tell me what the fuck you’re gonna do.”
“Stick a stake in your ass, bad boy. Stick pins in your eyes, naughty boy. Put you on a big ship with a frying pan in the hold, and put you on there, so when the ship rolls in the sea you slide back and forth and sizzle.…”
“Hey, kid! Goddammit to hell!”
Alex jumped before looking around. The attendant in charge of the ward, a redhaired man in his forties, thin and sourpussed, was just inside the dayroom from the corridor. “I’ve goddamn told you not to tease Benny. Someday he’s gonna backhand you across the room. He’ll stop talkin’ and make it real as hell.”
“I thought he had one of those brain operations where he can’t.”
“That’s what they say. Anyway, you don’t fuck with him anymore. Christ, I’ll be glad when they send you to the juvenile ward. Get away from him.”
The fat, lobotomized, hermaphrodite schizophrenic was still chanting a litany of grotesque tortures when Alex scurried away from the man in white. The boy headed toward the other wide corridor, down which was the big ward restroom, dormitory, showers, and clothing room, all the places the light-skinned black man might be unless he’d already gone on his visit. While Alex walked, the words of the attendant went through his mind, making him wonder why he hadn’t been sent to the juvenile ward. Nearly all new patients were sent to permanent wards in two weeks, and juveniles usually sooner, most of them to the regular juvenile ward and a few to the electric-shock ward. Just one juvenile that Alex knew about had been kept in Receiving during his entire observation commitment, though he’d left before Alex arrived. The other boy had killed his father, sneaking up behind him with a .22 rifle while the man was in a chair. Alex had seen the juveniles but kept away from them. They had their own courtyard for recreation, but it was too small for softball so they came to the main yard once or twice a week. It was big enough for four softball diamonds, all formed by the surrounding buildings. All the male patients sane enough to find their way back to the wards were let into it during the day. When the juveniles were out in it, they kept to one area, and Alex kept away from them. Now as he looked for Red, he realized that they must think his case was serious, like the other boy’s; otherwise they would have moved him. It didn’t matter. He preferred being right where he was.
Little Boy Blue Page 10