I couldn’t wait any longer. One afternoon, I unscrewed the caps on their bottles of wine and carefully poured in the aspirin I had ground into a fine powder. I did the same with their other booze. I couldn’t know which ones they would drink. Or even if what I heard about mixing aspirin and booze would work. But I couldn’t run, and there was no place to hide.
If it didn’t work, I told myself, no matter what happened, it would be over. What they were … doing to me, it would be over. I didn’t care about anything else.
When they fell out that night, the woman was on the couch. The man made it to their bedroom. The son slept in the basement—the same basement he used to make me go down into with him. Whenever he wanted.
I did him first, spraying him with a gentle mist of gasoline. Then I crept upstairs for the man. The woman was last. I think I hated her the worst. I don’t know why—I was already old enough to know that all that stuff about mothers was a lie.
Then I opened the door to the oven and turned on the gas, full-blast. I went around the house, making sure all the windows were shut. The smell was making me sick. I eased open the back door, used the last of my hoarded gasoline to soak a bundle of rags. I dropped a match on the bundle. As soon as it was blazing, I threw it as far inside the house as I could.
And I ran.
I was just a kid, but I’d been schooled. No matter how many times they asked me, I told them the same story. I was out when it happened. Prowling the streets, looking for something to steal. When I finally got back to that wood-frame foster home, it was real late. I was going to sneak in, like I had plenty of times before. That’s when I saw the flames and the fire trucks and all the rest.
One of the cops hit me on top of my head with the flat of his hand. He kept asking me questions, then hitting me every time I answered. It made me so dizzy that I threw up. On him. He picked me up and flung me into the wall, cursing. A couple of other cops pulled him off. They told me to get in the bathroom and clean myself off.
When I came out, there was a woman there. A pretty woman, I thought, with reddish-brown hair and a nice smile. She asked me the same questions as the cops. I gave her the same answers.
They put me in a cell.
In court, all I remember is the judge yelling at one of the men in suits. They used a lot of words I didn’t understand, but I remember hearing “evaluation” a lot.
That’s how I ended up in the crazy house.
I wasn’t afraid of the people who asked the questions. All their questions were stupid. Did I like to play with matches? Did I like to watch fires? One even asked me if I wanted to be a fireman when I grew up.
The big-cheese doctor there, he got mad when I asked him if I could have a cigarette. He thought I was fucking with him. Maybe that’s why he was the boss—he was smarter than the others.
One of them—a social worker, I think, but all I knew was that she was “staff”—asked me if the people in that foster home had … done anything to me. I told them they were mean. I said they hit me and made me work all the time and only gave me the crappiest food. And I told her they were drunk all the time, especially at night. She nodded when I said that, like I’d just confirmed something they already knew.
I knew if I said it had been a nice place they’d know I was lying. But I never told anyone what those people really did. Then they’d know a lot more. Not about those people. About me.
They had all kinds of kids in there. Just like the institution. They were all State kids, too. Or poor ones. If you had people, and if your people had money, they said there were “private facilities” you could go to.
Some of the kids cried all the time. One kid played with himself. Right in front of everyone. His cock was bloody from him constantly pulling at it. Some of them talked to themselves … or to somebody I couldn’t see. Some just stayed wherever staff put them. On the floor, in a chair, in bed—it didn’t matter to them.
I knew the kids to watch out for. The ones with all the best clothes. The ones with the best bunks. Stuff like that. I knew how they got those things. And I knew I didn’t have anything worth taking. Except for …
So the first thing I did was find something to make myself a shank with. Soon as I did, I let one of the kids with all the good stuff see it. Just like the institution. And, just like the institution, I had to stick one of them just so they’d know I wasn’t bluffing. Nobody called the cops. What could you do to a crazy kid, anyway? That’s how I found out about the padded rooms.
When Lune came in, I knew he was going to do his time bad. He was the prettiest boy I’d ever seen in my life. He looked like a little doll. And one of the kids with all the stuff wanted to play with him. Eugene Hunsaker was his name. I guess Lune never forgot it, either.
It was none of my business when Hunsaker’s crew grabbed Lune over in a corner of the ward. But when Lune broke free and ran, he headed straight to my bunk. Hunsaker and one of his boys were right behind him. Taking their time. Laughing, knowing nobody was going to come in and stop them. A few extra screams in that place wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, much less a guard.
I don’t know what happened. Maybe Hunsaker’s rape-partner looked a little like the son in that foster home. My circuits just snapped.
All I had was the thick end of the antenna I’d snapped off a portable radio, with the open part ragged and sharp. I stabbed Hunsaker’s partner in the arm with it. He shrieked like it had been an icepick to the balls, and that was it for him.
I yelled “Fight!” to Lune. He turned around like a robot following orders. He did his best, but you could see he’d never fought before. Hunsaker was pounding his beautiful face into a pulpy mess, giggling.
I nailed the scumbag in the back of his neck with my antenna, driving hard. But Hunsaker was a lot tougher than his partner. He just dropped to one knee, grabbed my arm, and flipped me over his shoulder.
Hunsaker was on top of me, trying for my throat. Lune dove down on him, flailing away—all he did was add to the weight. I kept trying for Hunsaker’s eyes, but he’d been there before and blocked me easily. It was all going hazy when I heard the whistle, and I knew the guys with the hypos were on the way.
Hunsaker and his partner wouldn’t tell what happened. They knew I wouldn’t talk, either—we’d all come up in the same places.
But Lune told them that it was his antenna, and that he stuck both of them because they were all part of “it.” He kept demanding to see his parents. One of the orderlies laughed when he said that. If he could have seen what was in Lune’s eyes then, he never would have.
Lune told me that his real parents had been stolen, and he had to find them. There was some kind of plot—I couldn’t follow everything he said—and the people who said they were his parents were part of it. He was a very logical kid. Parents wouldn’t hurt their own children, right? So anyone who did that, they couldn’t be the kid’s real parents, understand?
I did understand. But I didn’t know how to tell him what I knew. Being crazy was his only treasure, his one protection. I was his friend, and I wouldn’t steal from him.
Instead, I schooled him. There were some groups they made us go to. Sometimes we had to make things out of clay and crap. And we always had to be taking those tests. But, most of the time, they left us alone. I told him he couldn’t be telling people about his real parents—they wouldn’t understand.
“And they’re probably in on it, too,” he said, nodding.
Lune was always seeing patterns in things. He figured out that the big-cheese doctor was getting it on with one of the women who worked there. Not that Lune actually saw them, or anything. He just put it together. He tried to explain to me how he did it; but, even when he broke it down, it still seemed like magic.
One time after Lune told me, I was alone with the big cheese. I asked him for another cigarette. I could see his face get red. I told him I thought sometimes people did things other people wouldn’t understand if they knew about them. He gave me a weird look. I knew Lune had
nailed it then, so I told the big cheese sometimes people did things with other people. Everybody had secrets. I liked to smoke cigarettes. Couldn’t that just be a secret between him and me? I mean, I’d never tell if I knew one of his secrets.
The big cheese’s face turned dark and ugly, like he was being strangled. I thought maybe he was going to step on that button under his desk and get some people in there to fuck me up. I didn’t move.
But when he pushed his pack of Marlboros across the desk toward me, I knew Lune was smarter than all the people who were keeping him locked up.
Lune kept charts. Of everything. You couldn’t make any sense out of them if you saw them, but he said that was the point.
Other kids started hanging around with us. For protection, I thought, at first. That’s the way we always did it Inside. Four little guys can stop a gorilla, if they’re willing enough. But it wasn’t me; it wasn’t for protection. It was to get close to Lune. No matter what any of the kids told him—even the real crazy ones—Lune had an answer. An explanation that made sense. To them, anyway. He always said it was all patterns; you just had to figure out what they meant.
I think he even scared the doctors after a while. That’s when I knew we had to go.
“There’s a way out of here,” I whispered to him one night. “It’s all in the patterns, right?”
“Yes! It’s always in the patterns. But if I left, how would my real parents—?”
“They’re never going to let your real parents know you’re here,” I told him, urgently. “You’ve got to get out. And get away. Far fucking far away, understand?”
“What would I do?”
“I don’t know; I’m not smart like you. But I know you have to get older before you have any power. We’re just kids. Nobody’s going to do anything we want.”
“Where would I get power?”
“Money,” I told him, with the smugness of a baby thug’s world-view. “That’s the one thing that will always make people do what you want.”
“I could get money.…”
“Sure you could, man. You’re smart enough to get all kinds of money. But not in here.”
“Would you come with me?”
“I’ll go out of here with you. We’ll break together. But we can’t stay together, Lune.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to jail again,” I told him, no smugness in my words then, but no less certainty. “I know how to get along locked up, Lune. But you don’t. And they wouldn’t let us be together in there, anyway.”
“I could—”
“No, you couldn’t,” I cut in, heading him off. “You could never be safe Inside, Lune. But out there, in the World, you could make it. You’d figure it out, for sure.”
“I still don’t under—”
“Listen to me!” I hissed at him. “If you stay here, if you fucking keep talking about your real parents, they’re gonna shoot you up with so many of their fucking ‘meds’ you’ll end up like Harry.”
Harry was a diaper-wearing vegetable who’d once been dangerous … to the guards.
“That would fit their pattern,” Lune said, finally coming around.
“You’re not a criminal, brother,” I told him. “And you’re big-time smart. You’ll find a way to be out there, stay out there, make some money. Then you’ll be able to look for your real parents.”
“What are you going to—?”
“I’m going to steal,” I told him, pridefully. To be a good thief was my highest ambition back then. So I could buy what I wanted more than anything on earth—to be safe. “And they’re going to catch me sooner or later and put me back Inside. I have to wait until I’m big enough to steal good. Then I’ll have money, too, see?”
“Sure!”
That same night, Lune started looking for a seam in the fabric.
He found one so fast I didn’t trust it at first. I thought he’d look for a ventilation duct we could crawl through or something like that. But Lune told me to keep an eye on a kid named Swift. Not let anyone see I was doing it, but watch him close. I already knew how to do that.
Swift wasn’t one of the tough kids, and he wasn’t mobbed up. But he had a nice bunk in a good section of the dorm, and he always had comic books and candy bars. Even a portable radio—in fact, that was where I’d gotten my antenna.
I couldn’t figure out why Hunsaker’s clique hadn’t made a move on him, especially when it came time to draw commissary, but they never did. For sure, Swift wasn’t scoring off his parents; he never had any visitors. There were things you could do to get stuff in there, but he didn’t have enough horsepower to rough it off, and I never caught him creeping anybody’s stash, either.
It didn’t add up. I started sleeping most of the day, like the meds were really doing me in. Of course, I tongue-palmed the fucking things whenever they gave them to me, and I stayed quiet enough not to court the hypo again. So I was awake at night. All night.
In the dark, I slitted my eyes and watched, trusting Lune and his patterns.
I was watching real late one night—I didn’t have a watch, and there was no clock in the dorm—when Swift sat up. He looked around, real careful. I figured, okay, now he was going to make his move; now I’d see where he scored all his stuff from.
He got up like he was going to the bathroom, a big white place with hard tile and no door. He walked right past it, straight to the dorm door. The one they locked every night.
He pulled down on the handle, very slow and careful. And the door opened! I couldn’t believe it. I knew that they locked that door every night. And that the late-shift guard would walk by the giant wire-meshed window that gave him a good view of the whole dorm every couple of hours or so. But Swift pulled the door closed behind him and he was gone.
In another minute, so was I, my bare feet soundless on the filthy linoleum as I stalked him down to a long, dark hall where the floor switched to carpet. I knew where that hall led—right to the part of the building where the big shots had their offices. I figured I knew what he was up to then. I’d always wished I could get in there one night and do a number on all that nice furniture and paintings and plants and trophies and … all of it.
But everything changed when I ghosted around a corner and saw Mr. Cormil. We had to call all the guards “mister” or “sir.” Cormil was the guy who was supposed to be cruising by the big window, looking at all the crazy fish in the concrete aquarium. But he wasn’t doing that. He was doing Swift.
He held Swift’s hand like he was his father. They walked along until Cormil opened one of the offices with a key from the big ring he wore on his belt. They went inside. Cormil left the door open, probably so he could hear if anyone was coming.
But he never heard me coming. They don’t call it reform school for nothing.
It didn’t look like rape. Not to me. Not to a kid my age. Not to a State-raised kid who’d seen rape. It looked like … like Swift on his knees, sucking Cormil off while the guard leaned forward and stroked the kid’s hair. And then it looked like Cormil pulling his cock out and helping Swift stand up. And bend over. He smeared some greasy stuff on his cock and fucked Swift in the ass. But slow and gentle, talking to him like a lover all the while.
It wasn’t anything like I knew rape to be. There was no gun. No knife. No fist. No threats.
It took a lot of years before I understood what I had seen that night.
As soon as we were alone the next morning, I told Lune. He just nodded—you could see his mind was somewhere else.
“How’d you know?” I badgered him.
“I didn’t,” he said. “But I knew there was a pattern. Swift had things. He had to get them from somewhere. He was … special. How come? I didn’t know. But I knew, if you watched him close enough, we’d find out.”
“You’re a dangerous motherfucker,” I told him.
Lune and I didn’t speak the same language. He didn’t get that I was showing him high respect. “I just want to find my real par
ents,” he said, sadly.
After that, the only hard part about busting out was waiting for Swift to visit Cormil again. And keeping Lune from screwing things up. He didn’t know how to move quiet. And he was so nervous, I thought they’d hear his raspy breathing as we slipped past the room where Cormil and Swift were doing what they did.
But once we made it past them, it was easy. We dropped down flat on the carpet in the hall until they were finished. As soon as they walked back down the corridor together, we made our move. I loided the door to the big cheese’s office—it was nothing but a doorknob lock, no deadbolt—and we went inside.
I picked that room because I’d been in there before. That’s how I knew there was no deadbolt. And what was right outside the window. A parking lot. A parking lot outside the walls around the hospital where they kept us.
I opened the window, moving real slow against it squeaking, but it didn’t make a sound. The office was right on the first floor, and we dropped down easy. Then I pulled the window back closed.
The parking lot was almost empty—just a few scattered cars, and not a Cadillac in the bunch. The big shots wouldn’t be showing up for hours.
I didn’t know how to hotwire a car then. And even if I had known, it would have been a dumb risk.
I had nine dollars in singles. Lune didn’t have anything. I didn’t know where we were, but I could see it was out in the country someplace.
We could have tried hitchhiking, but it was too close to the nuthouse. And if a cop cruised by …
So we walked, following the road but staying in the darkness of the shoulder. I was looking for a place where we could hole up before it got daylight when Lune spotted a diner a few hundred yards ahead.
I told him to let me do the talking if we had to go inside. First I checked the parking lot. Most of the cars had New York plates. Some of the big trucks had a whole bunch of them, from different states. I couldn’t figure out why that would be, but I knew they locked the backs of those semis.
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