Little Boy Blue

by Edward Bunker

  He planned to wait until afternoon work call, following lunch. But at eleven-thirty A.M., the whistle blew for recall. Everyone returned to their companies for noon count and lunch. The detail grounds again filled with the seven hundred reform-school inmates.

  Kennedy was easy to spot in his black uniform. He was with two other detail boys, forming a conversational circle outside the door of the detail office. Alex held his breath, clenched his teeth, and ran on tiptoe the last three strides. Kennedy’s back was to him, but one of the others saw the heavy brass nozzle glint in the sunlight. His eyes widened in reflex, and he yelped, “Look—” as it arched down.

  At the last fraction of a second, even while striking, Alex pulled the blow, snapping it with his wrist instead of smashing it with arm and shoulder. Nonetheless, the heavy nozzle made a loud “plop!”—a hollow sound like a giant egg breaking. Blood jumped from Kennedy’s head. His legs buckled, but he didn’t go down. His companions blanched and fell back, aghast. Kennedy stumbled forward two steps and whirled around. He now faced Alex. His face had two huge streams of blood running down his cheekbones—bright red tears. He wiped his palm across his face, smearing the gore and covering his his hand.

  “You fuckin’ punk,” he snarled.

  Alex had been stunned, hypnotized, but he heard the words and thought he saw the body tense to attack—so he swung the heavy nozzle again, this time without hesitation. It was the horizontal blow of a frightened youth. It caved in Kennedy’s cheekbone and dropped him as if he’d been shot in the brain.

  Many dozen eyes had turned at the first sound of violence. The second made them gasp collectively, and those who were close backed up reflexively. Some thought they’d just seen a boy murdered.

  Then Kennedy began slowly pumping his legs, as if he were riding a bicycle. A hand came up to clutch his cheek, blood seeping between his fingers. Alex stood unmoving, the nozzle dangling by his side, the image being cooked into his brain. Misgivings flickered for one moment, and then were snuffed out by indignation; the bullyin’ motherfucker had it coming.

  Several freemen had turned in time to see the second blow. Seconds passed with everyone on the detail grounds frozen motionless and silent. Then a foreman who was behind Alex ran on tiptoe and crashed into him with a high blind-side tackle. Alex went down, the nozzle flying from his hand. Even before he hit the asphalt, others were piling on top of him. One of them, driven by fear, grabbed his hair and began slamming his face into the pavement.

  * * *

  Every institution that confines people has a “hole.” It may be called anything—Isolation, Segregation, Seclusion, Meditation, The Cooler, The Shelf, The Adjustment Unit, etcetera—but it is still “the hole,” a jail within a jail, and often there’s a special hole inside the hole. In Preston the hole was called “G” Company, and was in a secluded part of the institution. Alex was handcuffed and driven to “G” Company by three supervising counselors.

  The men on duty in “G” Company had been telephoned and were waiting when he was brought to the door. They seemed indifferent, maybe even bored, as they took custody of him. Later he’d learn that two, the Neiman brothers, were from Alcatraz; a kid, no matter how violent, wasn’t going to upset them in the least.

  “G” Company was newer than most of Preston, and it was actually a prison cellhouse in design, with two tiers or galleries instead of floors. The center of the building did have a solid floor. Around it were rooms used for necessary functions: an office, a shower, a clothing room, and a closet that served as a library. The mess hall was down a corridor off the center; it extended out from the rectangular shape of the building. Each tier had seventy-five cells. The doors were solid except for a barred observation window. Light came into the building from high, barred windows at each end. The sunbeams were dissected into patterns, spilling down on the highly waxed tile floor and giving a sepulchral mood to the place. Everything was spotless, and everything was silent, except for their footsteps. A few faces appeared at cell doors to see the newcomer.

  Alex’s clothes were taken and he was given a strip-search. He’d been locked in cells before, but never in a place so much like a prison.

  He was given an unpressed, zipup jumpsuit without pockets and a pair of cloth slippers. One man motioned for him to follow along the bottom tier, while the other opened a box and pulled a lever. It raised a security bar that dropped into a slot over the door. As long as it was down no cell door could be opened.

  The man escorting Alex opened a huge spike key to unlock the cell door. Alex immediately saw that someone had slept in the bunk since it was made up. It had sheets and blankets, but they were turned back and rumpled. Dirty socks and a towel were on the floor under a pushbutton sink, below which was the toilet.

  “Go on in,” the man said. Then, when he’d relocked the door and his partner had dropped the bar, he added, “We’ll send you down some bedding later. The kid who was in here went to the hospital last night—appendicitis. Anyway, the rules are simple. No talking in here at any time. It’s a silent system. We catch you yelling out the window and we’ve got a place without a window—or anything else except concrete and a hole in the floor to shit in.”

  Alex nodded.

  “We’ve got some other rules, too. You get up at the morning bell—seven A.M.—and make your bunk. You don’t get back on it until after supper. Other than that, keep your eyes open and your lip buttoned and you’ll catch on to the routine.” The man spoke laconically, a speech made to every newcomer. He waited to see if Alex had any response—Alex was thinking how pale the man’s eyes looked—and then turned away.

  When Alex was satisfied that the receding footsteps were real, he began examining his new domicile. Besides the bunk bolted to the floor, there was an aluminum washbowl and toilet. They were one unit, with the washbowl with pushbuttons on top. Its drain ran down into the toilet bowl. It was aluminum instead of porcelain, and the inside of the toilet was permanently stained. In the corner between the fixture and the wall was a small bag and some dirty rags. The bag contained cleanser.

  Alex tore the dirty sheets from the mattress. When he lifted the mattress to turn it over, he saw a sheet of steel where springs should have been. He also found a partial bag of Bull Durham tobacco and many loose book matches and a striker. The matches had been split in half, so each gave two lights instead of one. He had enough smokes for several days.

  His greatest discovery, however, was on the floor in the corner behind the bunk: a stack of old magazines and nearly a dozen books. The covers were torn off the books. It was before the era of paperbacks, and apparently the hard covers were a security threat, although Alex was unable to imagine how. The tension and violence had drained him, leaving an incipient depression and a hollowness, but seeing the books elevated his mood considerably. He began flipping the pages to find the titles: The Iron Hell by Jack London was one, The Foxes of Harrow by Frank Yerby, Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Alex remembered Lewis from Arrowsmith. He’d read that one first. As long as he had books he would be okay. In fact, as long as he had good books he preferred to live in their worlds than the ugliness of his own real world. So far he didn’t mind this hole at all.

  * * *

  Around noon he heard noises and stood up to the door to see. Across from him on the bottom the inhabitants were being let out of their cells. They wore shoes and regular uniforms instead of the jumpsuits and slippers.

  Then security bars went up elsewhere that he couldn’t see. He heard doors nearby being unlocked. A minute later a man unlocked Alex’s door and pulled it open. A boy appeared carrying two compartmented food trays. He passed one of them to Alex and told him to slide it out under the door when he was through. The space was too small if the tray had food, but it was enough when the tray was empty, although residues of earlier trays already marred the door’s bottom.

  The food was cold, but Alex’s two years in institutions had made him indifferent to such things. He finishe
d eating and went back to his book.

  When sounds of activity again broke the silence and brought him to the door, a score of youths were lining up in twos. They wore regular clothes and shoes. A minute later he saw them again, this time trekking up the hill outside his window with short-handled hoes on their shoulders. At the top they began chopping weeds, working down. Obviously there was more than one status in “G” Company.

  During the day nobody talked in the building. It was silent as a cathedral. Three counselors were on duty until five P.M. At night it was different. One man was in charge, although he couldn’t open a cell door by himself; he didn’t even have a key to exit the building. When anything happened he used the telephone to summon assistance. Also, he couldn’t be surprised by his superiors, so he simply sat in the office, drinking coffee, listening to a radio, reading magazines he got from the boys, and sometimes dozing. The office door was visible from several cell doors, and if the man came out, the youths in those cells passed a warning. The man couldn’t hear them from the office because they talked through the windows, calling out along the outside of the building.

  The first night Alex kept out of the conversations, but by listening and using inference he learned that “G” Company had two sections. One was for punishment, per se, where the boy stayed anywhere from ten to sixty days. Some of those went out to work, but Alex was unable to learn what decided if it was work or cell. The second section of “G” Company was the half of the building beyond the office-administrative area. Apparently the other section was for boys permanently assigned to “G” Company—troublemakers the staff didn’t want in a regular company, such as “dings,” “fruiters,” the chronically assaultive, and whoever else might disrupt the institution. It wasn’t punishment, so the officials said; it was just segregation. They had full privileges except for attending the weekend movie. They worked around the building, passing out the food and then washing the trays, keeping the floor of red tile buffed to a sheen, performing make-work; or else they went on a special crew that did hard labor, their tools being mattocks, shovels, and hoes, for the most part.

  That much Alex gleaned from listening for several hours to at least five different voices. One reviled the disciplinary committee for permanently assigning him to “grade B” in “G” Company. The others made fun of him: what did he expect after three escapes. He was lucky they weren’t transferring him to San Quentin for security. San Quentin was the next step up the institutional ladder.

  * * *

  Around ten A.M. the next morning, Alex was lying on the concrete floor, but his mind was living in the Oklahoma Territory of the late nineteenth century, carried there by the novel resting on his stomach. He was really enjoying the story and missed the sound of the approaching man until the key hit the lock.

  “C’mon, Hammond. The disciplinary committee wants to see you.”

  The disciplinary committee used the building office for a hearing room. Each youth waiting to be heard sat on a bench outside the office. One “G” Company counselor stood next to the door, watching the boy and waiting to usher him in when the last one came out. A second counselor brought another boy when he took one back to his cell. A youth was just going in when Alex arrived and was pointed to the bench.

  The man beside the door eyed Alex for a long time. It was unabashed scrutiny, and thirty seconds of that is long. Finally the man asked, “How old are you, Hammond?”

  “Fourteen,” he lied glibly, adding three months.

  “That’s pretty young for Preston. There’s a few your age, but eighty percent of our boys are sixteen or seventeen. You must be a fuckup.”

  Alex didn’t know what—or if—he should answer, so he shrugged, but he was careful to avoid flippancy in the gesture.

  “I know you fucked Kennedy up. He almost lost his eye … won’t ever see right out of it again.”

  Once more Alex was silent; he couldn’t very well say he was glad and that in the jungle culture it would give him status. Nobody else would try to take anything from him.

  The door behind the man opened and a face with a goatee appeared. “Hammond?”

  The man waved Alex in.

  Three persons sat around the desk. It had been cleared except for a pile of manila folders. Each one contained a boy’s file. Some were skinny, with just a few sheets of paper; others were thicker. Alex’s was among the thickest. The man in the chair behind the desk (the other two were on each end) had a graying crewcut and a nameplate pinned to his jacket: J.N. KEPPEL, ASST. SUPT. He had a long, thin face and a sharp-bridged nose. His necktie was too tight, and it exaggerated his Adam’s apple. The other two men were Reverend Flowers, the Protestant chaplain, and Mr. Hill, the institution’s consulting psychologist. Keppel was obviously the power. He had the center position and his visage was stern, his eyes penetrating and cold. “It didn’t take you long, did it, Hammond? You nearly killed that boy.”

  Alex looked down at the floor between his legs.

  “What was it about, Alex?” the psychologist asked.

  Alex shook his head without looking up.

  “Christ almighty!” Keppel said, huffing and puffing. “We’ve got another punk with the code. Let me see his file.” As he took the file, he added, “You don’t like being called a punk, do you? That’s bad, isn’t it? Well, that’s what you are—a punk!”

  A punk submitted to sodomy, and to be called that was a bad insult. But Alex restrained a retort.

  While Keppel leafed through the file, which he then handed to Reverend Flowers, Mr. Hill commented, “Kennedy says he doesn’t know why you attacked him. Was he trying to fuck you?”

  “Nobody’s tryin’ to fuck me,” Alex said, raising up to snap angrily at the bait.

  “Well, you must’ve had a reason.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  The chaplain, meanwhile, had brought out a letter stapled to a hand-addressed envelope. Letter and envelope had been loose in the folder, not holed and spindled. “Did you see this?” he asked his associates.

  The psychologist shook his head and took the letter. Alex was halfway watching them, curious about what it was. It wasn’t a regular report from an official.

  “You’re not a child and you aren’t going to get kid gloves around here,” Keppel was saying. “We have fist fights around here … but we don’t have punks doing this. You’ve got a lot of violence on your record. Don’t you ever want to get out of these places?”

  “Sure I do … but…”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Say, Alex,” the chaplain interrupted after reading the letter. “Your aunt is looking for you.”

  “Aunt. What aunt?”

  “Your father’s sister. She and her husband just moved to Los Angeles and tried to find her brother. She found out that … about him … and that you were in Whittier. She wrote this”—he held up the letter—“but you were gone, sic transit gloria, from Whittier. You had escaped.”

  Alex was frowning, head spinning. He vaguely recalled his father mentioning a sister; she had a husband Clem disliked, or so it seemed. Alex didn’t even know her name. It didn’t really matter what he remembered of yesterday; the future was what counted. An aunt!

  “Can I write her?”

  “I’m sure we can arrange that,” said the chaplain expansively.

  “Hold that up, Mr. Flowers,” interrupted the assistant superintendent. “You can talk to him tomorrow. This is a disciplinary hearing.” To Alex he said, “You’re here on a serious charge—attempted murder of that boy.” Now Keppel’s voice had the wrath of righteousness. Gone was the false fatherliness most of them used talking to him. The harsh tone was a bony finger of accusation, an accusation that demanded an accounting and responsibility. It surprised Alex. He was already spinning about this new aunt, his father’s sister. Did it mean he had a home somewhere?

  “You sneaked up on him like a coward and hit him when he wasn’t looking. And you’re old enough to know j
ust what you were doing.”

  “Yeah, I knew … and I wish I’d killed the motherfucker!” The words flew forth unbidden, unexpected. In a way he meant them, at least figuratively; Kennedy had started it by taking the shoes. Whether or not he meant it literally he would have to think about when he wasn’t upset.

  The sentence upset them instantly. They all sat up straighter, and their eyes came to life. Mr. Keppel turned ashen and then red, and then even redder with white spots in the red, while his jaw muscles pulsed. He looked back and forth at his associates with the jerky motions of a chicken moving its head.

  Alex expected him to yell, but when he spoke it was almost a whisper, albeit a furious whisper:

  “Can we send this … this … to San Quentin? Is he old enough? What’s the law?”

  Alex was sorry he’d flared up. Now he hurt, and they would never forget. It would be an immutable fact documented in his file forever-more. Whenever someone looked in the file they would see that he was unremorsefully homicidal. He already knew about files; whatever was in them became the gospel. Who knew how long people would be deciding his worth and destiny by the file? He wanted to say he was sorry, but he couldn’t—so he sat with a burning, unrepentant face while Keppel learned that only seventeen-year-olds could be moved to San Quentin, and then only in unusual cases.

  “I’d say it’s unusual enough—he’s already shot a man, too. But he’s only—” He looked at the age on the file and decided not to say it aloud.

  Being unable to transfer a thirteen-year-old to San Quentin, the disciplinary committee ordered him assigned permanently to “G” Company, with review of the order in six months. On the report of their decision, which also went in the file, it was their conclusion that he’d committed an unprovoked armed assault on another boy, that he showed no remorse whatsoever, and he was too unpredictably explosive to be trusted in the general population.