Escape!

by Bova, Ben

  “Yeah.” The tall one added, “And in case you don’t know it, Lacey here’s the lightweight champ o’ this whole Center. And he ain’t gonna be playing games with you in that ring. Dig?”

  And they both walked away, as quickly and softly as they had come. Danny stood there alone, trembling with rage. He was so angry that his chest was starting to hurt.

  The other boys who had been hanging around, started to drift back toward the buildings. But one of the white boys came up to Danny.

  “My name’s Ralph Malzone. I seen what them black bastards done to ya.”

  Ralph was a big redhead, huge and solid, like a pro-football player. His face was round and puffy, with tiny eyes squinting out, and little round ears plastered flat against his skull. He looked as if his skin was stretched as tight as it could go, another ounce would split it apart. But Ralph didn’t look fat; he looked hard.

  Danny looked up at him. “I couldn’t even understand what they were saying, half the time.”

  “I heard ‘em,” Ralph answered. “You’re new, huh? Well, there’s a boxing match here every month. You been put down to fight Lacey. He’s the lightweight champ. If you don’t fight him, everybody’ll think you’re chicken.”

  Danny didn’t answer. He just stood there, feeling cold whenever the wind gusted by.

  “Lacey’s fast. Hits hard for a little guy.”

  “I’m shaking,” Danny said.

  Ralph laughed. “Hey, you’re okay. Listen, I’ll help you out. In the gym. I know a lot about fighting.”

  “Why should you help me?”

  Ralph’s face started to look mean. “I don’t like to see white guys gettin’ picked on. And I want that Lacey creamed. He needs his head busted. Only, they won’t let me fight him. I’m a heavyweight.”

  Grinning, Danny asked, “Why wait for the first of the month? Get him outside.”

  “Boy, wouldn’t I like to!” Ralph said. “But it ain’t as easy as it sounds. Too many TV cameras around. Step out of line and they catch you right away.... But you got the right idea. Boy, I’d love to mash that little crumb.”

  Nodding, Danny said, “Okay... uh, I’ll see you in the gym sometime.”

  “Good,” said Ralph. “I’ll look for you.”

  Chapter Four

  Ralph headed back for one of the classroom buildings. Danny started out again for the trees.

  It was colder in the woods. The bare branches of the trees seemed to filter out almost all of the sun’s warmth. They sky had turned a sort of milky-gray. The ground under Danny’s sneakers was damp and slippery from melted snow and the remains of last year’s fallen leaves.

  Danny hated the cold, hated the woods, hated everything and everybody except the few blocks of city street where he had lived and the guys who had grown up on those streets with him. They were the only guys in the world you could trust. Can’t trust grown-ups. Can’t trust teachers or cops or lawyers or judges or jail guards. Can’t trust Tenny. Can’t even trust this new guy, Ralph. Just your own guys, the guys you really know. And Laurie. He had to get back to Laurie.

  His feet were cold and wet and he could feel his chest getting tight, making it hard to breathe. Soon his chest would be too heavy to lift, and he’d have to stop walking and wait for his breathing to become normal again. But Danny kept going, puffing little breaths of steam from his mouth as he trudged through the woods.

  And there it was!

  The fence. A ten-foot-high wire fence. And on the other side of it, the highway. The outside world, with cars zipping by and big trailer trucks shifting gears with a grinding noise as they climbed the hill.

  Danny stood at the edge of the trees, a dozen feet from the fence. Two hours down that highway was home. And Laurie.

  He leaned his back against a tree, breathing hard, feeling the rough wood through his thin shirt. He listened to himself wheezing. Like an old man, he told himself angrily. You sound like a stupid old man.

  When his breathing became normal again, Danny started walking along the fence. But he stayed in among the trees, so that he couldn’t be seen too easily.

  No guards. The fence was just a regular wire fence, the kind he’d been able to climb since he was in grade school. There wasn’t even any barbed wire at the top. And nobody around to watch.

  He could scramble over the fence and hitch a ride back to the city. He wasn’t even wearing a prison uniform!

  Danny laughed to himself. Why wait? He stepped out toward the fence.

  “Hold it Danny! Hold it right there!”

  Chapter Five

  Danny spun around. Standing there among the trees was Joe Tenny, grinning broadly at him.

  “Did you ever stop to think that the fence might be carrying ten thousand volts of electricity?” Joe asked.

  Danny’s mouth dropped open. Without thinking about it, he took a step back from the fence.

  Joe walked past him and reached a hand out to the wire fence. “Relax. It’s not ‘hot.’ We wouldn’t want anybody to get hurt.”

  Danny felt his chest tighten up again. Suddenly it was so hard to breathe that he could hardly talk. “How... how’d you... know...?”

  “I told you the Center was escape-proof. SPECS has been watching you every step of the way. You crossed at least eight different alarm lines.... No, you can’t see them. But they’re there. SPECS called me as soon as you started out through the woods. I hustled down here to stop you.”

  He’s big but he’s old, Danny thought. Getting fat. If I can knock him down and get across the fence...

  “Okay, come on back now,” Joe was saying.

  Danny aimed a savage kick below Joe’s belt. But it never landed. Instead he felt himself swept up, saw the highway and then the cloudy sky flash past his eyes, and then landed face-down on the damp grass. Hard.

  “Forget it, kid,” Joe said from somewhere above him. “You’re too small and I’m too good a wrestler. I’m part Turk, you know.”

  Danny tried to get up. He tried to get his knees under his body and push himself off the ground. But he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Everything was black, smelled of wet leaves. He was choking....

  He opened his eyes and saw a green curtain in front of him. Blinking, Danny slowly realized that he was in a hospital bed. It was cranked up to a sitting position.

  Joe Tenny was sitting beside the bed, his face very serious.

  “You okay?” Joe asked.

  Danny nodded. “Yeah... I think so....”

  “You scared me! I thought I had really hurt you. The doctors say it’s asthma. How long have you had it?”

  “Had what?”

  Joe pulled his chair up closer. “Asthma. How long have you had trouble breathing?”

  Danny took a deep breath. His chest felt okay again. Better than okay. It had never felt this good.

  “It comes and goes,” he said. “Hits when I’m working hard... running... things like that.”

  “And not a sign of it showed up in your physical exams,” Joe muttered. “How old were you when it first hit you?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

  “How old?” Joe repeated. His voice wasn’t any louder, but it somehow seemed ten times stronger than before.

  Danny turned his head away from Joe’s intense stare. “Five, maybe six.” Then he remembered.

  “It was the year my father died. I was five.”

  Joe grunted. “Okay. The doctors need to know.”

  “I thought you was a doctor,” Danny said, turning back to him.

  Tenny smiled. “I am, but not a medical doctor. I’m a doctor of engineering. Been a teacher a good part of my life.”

  “Oh....”

  “You don’t think much of teachers? Well, I don’t blame you much.”

  Joe got up from his chair.

  Danny looked around. The bed was screened off on three sides by the green curtain. The fourth side, the head of the bed, was against a wall.

  “Where am I? How lon
g I been here?” he asked.

  “In the Center’s hospital. You’ve been here about six hours. It’s past dinnertime.”

  “I figured I’d be back home by now,” Danny mumbled.

  Joe looked down at him. “You’ve had a rough first day. But you’ve made it rough on yourself. Listen... there’s a lot I could tell you about the Center. But I think it’s better for you to find out things for yourself. All I want you to understand right now is one thing: around here, you’ll get what you earn. Understand that? For the first time in your life, you’re going to get exactly what you earn.”

  Danny frowned.

  “It works both ways,” Joe went on. “Make life rough for yourself and you’ll earn trouble. Work hard, and you’ll earn yourself an open door to the outside. You’re the only one who can open that door. It’s up to you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it. I know you don’t believe it, but you can trust me. You’re going to learn that, in time. You don’t trust anybody, that’s one of the reasons why you’re here....”

  Danny snapped, “I’m here because I nearly killed a fat-bellied cop in a riot that some niggers started!”

  “Wrong! You’re here because the staff of this Center decided there’s a chance we might be able to help you. Otherwise you’d be in a real jail.”

  “What d’ya mean...?”

  Joe grabbed the chair again and sat on it. “Why do you think we call this the Juvenile Health Center? Because you’re sick. All the kids here are sick, one way or another. You come from a sick city, a sick block. Maybe it’s not all your fault that you’re the way you are, but nobody’s going to be able to make you well—nobody! Only you can do that. We’re here to help, but we can’t do much unless you work to help yourself.”

  Danny mumbled some street words.

  “I understand that,” Joe said, his eyes narrowing. “I’m part Sicilian, you know.”

  “You know everything, huh?”

  “Wrong. But I know a lot more than you do. I even know more about Danny Romano than you do. I know there’s enough in you to make a solid man. You’ve got to learn how to become a whole human being, though. My job is to help you do that.”

  Chapter Six

  It was lunchtime the next day before the doctors would let Danny go. He walked across the campus slowly. It was a warmer day, bright with sunshine, and Danny felt pretty good.

  Then he remembered that he had failed to escape. He was trapped here at the Center.

  “For a while,” he told himself. “Not for long, just for a while. Until I figure out how to get around those alarms... whatever they are.”

  He had lunch alone in the crowded, noisy cafeteria. He sat at the smallest table he could find, in a corner by the glass wall. He saw Lacey walk by with a group of Negroes, laughing and clowning around.

  Danny finished eating quickly and decided to find the gym. He didn’t have to look far. Just outside the cafeteria door was a big overhead sign with an arrow: ELEVATOR TO LIBRARY, POOL, GAME ROOMS, GYM.

  He walked down the hall toward the elevator. Other boys were going the same way, some of them hurrying to get into the elevator before it filled up. Danny squeezed in just as the doors slid shut.

  “FLOORS PLEASE.” It was SPECS’ voice.

  “Gym,” somebody said.

  “Library.”

  “Pool.”

  “Hey Lou, you goin’ swimmin’ again?”

  “It beats takin’ a bath!”

  Everybody in the elevator laughed.

  The gym was on the top floor. The elevator door slid open and a burst of noise and smells and action hit Danny. A basketball game was in full swing. Boys shouting, ball pounding the floorboards, referee blasting on his whistle. Overhead, on a catwalk that went completely around the huge room, other boys were jogging and sprinting, their gray gym suits turning dark with sweat.

  But at the far end of the gym was the thing that struck Danny the hardest. A boxing ring. And in it, Lacey was sparring with another black boy.

  Danny stood by the elevator and watched, all the sights and sounds and odors of the gym fading away into nothing as he focused every nerve in his body on Lacey.

  The guy was good. He moved around the ring like he was gliding on ice skates. His left snapped hard, jerking the other guy’s head back when it landed. Then he winged a right across the other guy’s guard and knocked him over backwards onto his back.

  Turning, Lacey spotted Danny and waved. His black body was gleaming with sweat. His face was one enormous smile, made toothless by the rubber protector that filled his mouth.

  “Hello, Danny.”

  Turning, he saw Alan Peterson standing beside him.

  “Hi.”

  “Watching the champ? I hear you’re scheduled to fight him the first of the month.”

  “Yeah.” Danny kept his eyes on Lacey. A new sparring partner had come into the ring now. Lacey was jab-jab-jabbing him to death.

  “Were you in the hospital yesterday?” Alan asked. “There’s a story going around....”

  “Yeah, I was.” Danny still watched Lacey.

  “Are you sick? I mean, will you miss the fight? You can’t fight anybody if you’re sick.”

  “I ain’t sick.”

  “But....”

  Lacey floored his new partner, this time with a left hook.

  “I ain’t sick!” Danny snapped. “I’ll fight him the first of the month!”

  “Okay, don’t get sore,” said Alan. “It’s your funeral.”

  The loudspeaker suddenly cut through all the noise of the gym: “DANIEL FRANCIS ROMANO, PLEASE REPORT TO DR. TENNY’S OFFICE AT ONCE.”

  Danny felt almost relieved. He didn’t want to hang around the gym any more, but he didn’t want Lacey to see him back away. Now he had an excuse to go.

  “I’ll take you,” Alan offered.

  Danny said, “I can find it by myself.”

  Chapter Seven

  He had to ask directions once he was outside on the campus. Finally, Danny found the building that the boys called “the front office.” It was smaller than the other buildings, only three stories high. The sign over the main door said ADMINISTRATION. Danny wasn’t quite sure he knew what it meant.

  Inside the door was a sort of a counter, with a girl sitting at a telephone switchboard behind it. She was getting old, Danny saw. Way over thirty, at least. She was reading a paperback book and munching an apple.

  “Where’s Joe Tenny’s office?” Danny asked her.

  She swallowed a bite of apple. “Dr. Tenny’s office is the first door on your left.”

  Danny went down the hallway that she had pointed to. The first door on the left was marked:

  DR. J. TENNY, DIRECTOR.

  Instead of knocking, he walked back to the switchboard girl. She was bent over her book again, her back to Danny. He noticed for the first time that there was a clear plastic shield between the top of the counter and the ceiling. Like bulletproof glass. He tapped it.

  The girl jumped, surprised, and nearly dropped the book out of her lap.

  “Hey,” Danny asked, “is Tenny the boss of this whole place?”

  She looked very annoyed. “This Center was Dr. Tenny’s idea. He fought to get it started and he fought to make it the way it is. Of course he runs it.”

  “Oh.... Uh, thanks.”

  Danny went back and knocked at Joe’s door.

  “Come in!”

  Joe’s office was smaller than Danny’s room. It was crammed with papers. Papers covered his desk, the table behind the desk, and lapped over the edges of the bookshelves that filled one whole wall. In a far corner stood an easel with a half-finished painting propped up on it. Brushes and tubes of paint were scattered on the floor beside the easel.

  Joe leaned back in his chair. He squinted through the harsh-smelling smoke from the stubby cigar that was clamped in his teeth.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay.”

  “Sit down. The smoke
bother you?”

  “No, it’s okay.” Danny saw that there was only one other chair in the office, over by the half-open window.

  Sitting in it, he asked, “Uh... did you tell any of the other guys about, eh, what happened yesterday?”

  “About you trying to escape?” Joe shook his head. “No, that’s no business of anybody else’s. SPECS knows it, of course. But I’ve ordered SPECS to hold the information as private. Only the staff people who work on your case will be able to learn about it. None of the kids.”

  Danny nodded.

  “Quite a few people saw me carrying you into the hospital, though.”

  “Yeah... I guess so.”

  Joe tapped the ash off his cigar into the wastebasket next to his desk. “Listen. You’re going to start classes tomorrow. Most of the kids spend their mornings studying, and use the afternoons for different things. You’re expected to work a couple of hours each afternoon. You can work in one of the shops, or join the repair gang, or something else. Everybody works at something to help keep the Center shipshape. Otherwise the place would fall apart.”

  Danny frowned. “You mean it’s like a job?”

  “Right,” said Joe, with a grin. “Don’t look so glum. It won’t hurt you. You get credit for every hour you work, and you can buy things in the Center’s store. SPECS runs the store and keeps track of the credits. And it’s only a couple hours a day. Then the rest of the day’s all yours.”

  “A job,” Danny muttered.

  “You can learn a lot from some honest work. And you’ll be helping to keep the Center looking neat. You might even get to like it.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  Joe made a sour face. “Okay, I’m not here to argue with you. You have a visitor. She’s in the next room.”

  “She? Laurie?”

  Nodding, Joe said, “You can spend the rest of the afternoon with her. But she’s got to leave at five.”

  Without another word, Danny hurried from Dr. Tenny’s office and burst into the next room. Laurie was sitting on the edge of a big leather chair. She jumped up and ran into his arms.