While the Locust Slept

by Peter Razor

  I sat erect, peering through hair draped over my eyes.

  “Peter!” she repeated. “Don’t you sleep at the cottage?” She laid a paper on a nearby student’s desk. “The class did well on the test. How some students pass without studying is beyond me.” While sliding a paper in front of me, she said, “You earned an A in spelling and English. I knew you could do it. You’re just mentally lazy.”

  Another day, the teacher caught me whispering across the aisle. “Your hand on the desk, palm up,” she said, brandishing, not a ruler, but a stout yardstick. I lay my hand on the desk and slowly opened my palm as she raised the yardstick high over her head.

  It might have been her sudden movement or the way she grunted—like being jabbed in the abdomen—whatever it was, I jerked my hand back before she whacked it. The yardstick shattered on the desk, reduced to splinters scattered about the floor. Embarrassed, I’m certain, for exposing the viciousness of her intended punishment—like Mrs. Burt with the broken brooms—the teacher gathered the pieces and stomped back to her desk as soft laughter rippled through the classroom.

  This nervous energy often made me careless. Early April 1943, was unusually warm even for south central Minnesota. I was running barefoot through brown grass from the previous autumn, when something seemed to catch my foot, and I fell face down. Laying on my stomach, I twisted to see two inches of rake tine protruding from my upper foot, the skin bleached around the point. Then blood oozed out around the tine. I lay there staring, waiting, until a boy, who was nearby, pulled the rake out. He helped me as I hopped fifty yards to the hospital where I grimaced through a series of four tetanus shots. The wound was bad enough that they wanted to keep me in the hospital for a while.

  Paul, in the bed next to me, wore a full cast on his leg to the hip. A year older than me, very thin with light hair, he had come to the State School only two years before. He was a freshman in high school and decades ahead of me in understanding the real world. We were both alert and began talking soon after I was in bed.

  “I bummed around the streets a lot when I was thirteen,” Paul began. “That’d be two years ago. Then some goof got the bright idea to send me here.”

  “Were you scared?” I asked.

  “Pissed off,” he said, squirming to sit higher in bed. “But it ain’t so bad. Here at the school, I mean, not counting this damn accident. Remember when you got here?”

  “Can’t remember,” I said. “What about it?”

  “Well, the county guy bringing me here stops in this old store for cigarettes. So’s I don’t run off, he takes me in the store with him. When he turns his back, I hid behind shelves, and snuck out the back door.”

  “But you’re here,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s just it. The old coot was waiting when I came out.”

  “They’re sneaky all right,” I said with half a smile. “What happened to your leg? Or is it your hip?”

  “Worst damn thing I ever did,” Paul replied. “I pumps the bicycle into that alley near the hotel, you know.”

  I interrupted, “You got a bicycle?”

  “Jees, where you been?” Paul rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

  “Here.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Paul said with a sigh. “Besides, it weren’t my bike. It belonged to the telegraph office. Anyway, I go lickety-split into the alley just as a pickup truck comes from the other end. I remember trying to stop, but the bumper shoved me down and,” he hesitated as though the memory itself was painful, “the truck runs over me. I figure I’m dying and everything goes black. Nothing. Next thing, I know, I wake up under the truck, which is jacked up, and they’re cutting the bike apart.”

  “Did you break your leg bad?” I asked.

  “Crushed the upper bone,” Paul said. “Been here six months already and Doc says I’ll be here more months.”

  I limped to the cottage after two days, didn’t have to work for a week, but was ordered to wear tennis shoes for another two weeks.

  Exploration at C-15 was limited to the cottage and playground, but at C-16, boys often went awol into town or for some distance along the railroad track. The C-16 staff was not inclined to notice those brief campaigns so long as boys arrived on time at work and meals. My excursions into the nearby world were a combination of excitement and fear, as I inched further out into a world unknown to me, a world of cities larger than Owatonna and places I only knew about through movies.

  My curiosity and growing restlessness struck a chord with Dale and Chuck. We talked one day about the Waseca outing, then about problems we had with staff and bullies. Dale arrived at the State School when he was seven, shortly after his mother died, and understood far more about the world outside than me. His older sister worked in the main building and was well liked. Employees were reluctant to more than berate Dale for fear of official repercussion, but Dale was witness to many incidents of staff cruelty. Chuck seemed more afraid than Dale and complained bitterly about older bullies.

  “We should just go,” Chuck said finally.

  Bullies picked on him constantly. We were his only friends, and he was willing to risk it. We decided there was no time like the present to strike off on our own. It was slightly overcast, not too hot, and that which couldn’t be seen or imagined beckoned stronger than hot meals or snug beds. Within moments of first discussing it, we were walking west on the tracks and didn’t look back. We had no idea where to go or how to get there.

  “This’ll get us jam and maybe three loaves of bread,” Chuck said, counting our coins that amounted to one dollar and fifteen cents.

  We spent the next two nights and three days with mosquitoes and poor water. We slept on the hard ground without covers. Though Chuck got us a lawn trimming job in Waseca, Dale and he became ill, leaving me with most of the work. Nevertheless, we each got thirty-five cents. On the third morning, we woke on the beach, rinsed in Clear Lake, then went into a small lake-front store to buy food. Little did we know, the clerk had already called the sheriff. When Chuck finished paying for our bread and jam, the door opened and two huge deputies entered and herded us away to the sheriff’s office where Mr. Doleman would pick us up. The store clerk kept the groceries and our money.

  From the Records of the State School, April 1943:

  Miss Putter received a telephone call from Mrs. Parker, welfare board, Waseca, executive secretary, that boys apparently from the school were boarding themselves on the lake shore in Waseca. Miss Putter asked Mrs. Parker to notify the Waseca county sheriff to pick them up and that they would be called for.

  [LATER]

  Worker was notified by Miss Putter, who called the sheriff’s office and learned the boys had been picked up and were there. He called for them and returned them to the school.

  There seemed to be no object for their going except to have good a time. They had no definite destination and had gone west and south to Meridan, Hartland, Richland Center, then up to Waseca.

  The day following our return, I was sent to the hospital beset by diarrhea, 104° fever and severe dehydration. Miss Plum and the doctor were concerned during the first days.

  “Must have been the runaway,” Miss Pearl suggested.

  The hospital staff was as pleased as me when, after eight days, fully recovered, I returned to C-16.

  Back at the cottage, staff seemed to have forgotten my running away. They didn’t even mind that I was still such good friends with Dale and a new boy named Billy, who arrived at the school shortly after I transferred to C-16. He was not my friend the way Dale was, but he had few other friends and seemed comfortable with Dale and me. His apparent adjustment to the State School was probably closer to helpless acceptance of something he really couldn’t understand—like I couldn’t understand the world from which he just came. Soft-spoken, often almost to whispering, he seemed to shield his deeper thoughts, and, like me, he was incapable of exuberance.

  July turned hotter, and our impatience grew, so Dale and I decided to run away again. Billy a
sked to join us, confiding that relatives in St. Paul might take him if we got that far. Dale and I agreed. Little of our brief excursion to Waseca made sense to me, but I realized that planning was needed were I to make it on my own. That expedition taught me a lesson that was never, in any form, taught at the State School—how to plan for myself. The State School fed, clothed, and sheltered us, allowing little choice of work or activities outside of free time, which was confined to specific areas. The staff always claimed, It’s for your own good. Almost every decision I tried to make for myself seemed inappropriate amid strict schedules.

  All three of us, each for our own reasons, began preparations on the last Monday in July to run away that Friday night after last bed check. Studying maps of Minnesota in the library, I also scanned maps of the entire country—just in case. The maps seemed clear enough, but my vision of such a trip was shrouded in mist and the more I planned, the hazier things became.

  Monday night, Roy and I talked briefly in the dorm, though I mentioned nothing about our trip. We were sworn to secrecy. I fell asleep thinking of the reservation in northern Minnesota, wondering how one could possibly get to a place so far away.

  The faint moan of a train whistle tugged me awake. While I stared at the ceiling, it blew again, closer. I rolled onto my side and cocked my head to listen. Beginning with a soft moan, the whistle reached crescendo with an eerie wail before fading mournfully. The rumbling and chugging grew louder and the soft wheezing of venting steam drifted through the open window as the train slowed. Never quite ceasing, the rumbling was interrupted by a staccato roar as the driving wheels spun. The train accelerated north out of town, and I fell asleep thinking how at least we might begin our journey.

  An east-west track went past the cottage playground. The north-south track, the one we wanted, was farther in town. I stayed awake Tuesday night to confirm that the train did indeed go north at midnight. It did. There was magic in that forlorn sound. A call to adventure—like Jack London’s Call of the Wild. Standing just inside the bedroom door, I watched the hall clock while timing the chugs.

  Wednesday, timing the chugs of a westbound freight past the school, I was able to guess how fast the midnight freight traveled at its slowest. We would have ten seconds to get aboard, I reasoned. If we ran a little.

  Thursday morning, Dale confirmed the passage of the northbound freight the previous night. I was in constant fear that someone would discover our plan. One of the snitches would find out and turn us in, or staff might collar us at work or recreation. Dale and I slid furtively through a window of the Main Building food stores while Billy raided the clothing room for clean shirts and underwear. We packed everything in an old suitcase, which we stashed under the old arched, wood bridge over the railroad. It seemed we had everything necessary to be on our own. A knife, flashlight, four cans of Spam, two loaves of bread, two bottles of jam and clean clothes. Knowing about farm chores, lawn work, and house cleaning, we hoped such work would get us started.

  The weather began to warm Wednesday and, by Friday, Owatonna sweltered in ninety-five degree heat, which dropped little after dark. The heat was stifling in the C-16 dorms. Boys slept atop covers in their briefs; I was wet as if I had just stepped from a shower. Though tired, I was too nervous to fall asleep and lay counting down the hours.

  Long branches of the cottonwood trees nearly brushed our dorm windows. Other nights I had stared at the branches flickering hypnotically in the streetlight glow, their rustle and sway often lulling me to sleep. That night, however, no breeze moved through the open windows or sighed among the branches. Miss Klein’s bed-check itinerary never varied, nor did her quiet shoes normally awaken us. She began the last bed check in Dale’s dorm, went through ours, finally returning to her room for the night.

  Later, near the exterior door, we each wore denims, a T-shirt and low-cut tennis shoes without socks. To prevent suspicion, we had kept only everyday clothes by our beds, storing all other clothes in the suitcase. We slipped into the shadow of the cottage created by the streetlight. Dale led the way into the bushes but Billy stood stunned. I nudged him, questioning the wisdom of having him along. But we moved silently through the bushes and across the field.

  From the darkness near the bridge, I stared at the cottage silhouetted by streetlights. Delirious with anticipation, needing to get out of town, I paused but a moment. No one had found the suitcase. Since we needed nothing in the case that night, we simply grabbed it and headed east on the track carrying it by turns.

  In town, we scrambled down a bank, which was raised for the viaduct of the north-south track, and made our way to bushes north of the depot. A streetlight dimly filtered through the bushes, and we tried to relax around a blackened circle of stones used by hoboes. No sooner were we settled, than a distant murmur was heard above the sounds of nighttime Owatonna.

  “Must be it,” Dale said, as the sound became distinct. We left the bushes, stood beside the track, waiting. The train rounded the bend, its glaring headlight outlining my friends. Suddenly, its whistle moaned, grew to a banshee shriek, then faded to a low wail. Sounding much as it had from the dorm, only louder, terrifying. Hissing steam and rumbling were beyond anything imagined from C-16. I suddenly felt very small.

  The freight slows to snatch a mail bag or something, Billy had said. I held the suitcase, a remnant, perhaps, of an earlier arrival at the school. It was heavy, bulging, but wrapped with cord, it seemed it would hold.

  Suddenly bellowing, still fifty yards away, the engine spun in place, its drivers caught and it charged toward us with steady powerful throbs. Leaning out as he passed, the engineer surprised me, considering our age and the hour of night, by waving to us. Nevertheless, I aligned my eyes with his and waved back, quickly glancing aside. It was next to impossible for me to more than glance into an adult’s face, especially staff—like searching for misery.

  The engine disappeared into the tunnel, the powerful blasts, as it passed us, became dull chugs from the other side of the viaduct. Cars rumbled past accelerating ominously, faster than I had estimated. The wind from the train fluffed our T-shirts and tossed our hair as we leaned near to see what cars came past the depot. Half the train passed, still no open boxcars. A flatcar came past the depot. Maybe our only chance.

  “Quick, Billy! The flatcar,” I shouted. “The ladder on the end!”

  Billy jumped, but hesitated to reach for the car only yards away. Dale, running alongside, brushed past him, grabbed the rung at the rear of the car and swung easily—as though it wasn’t the first time—onto the car. He reached down and helped Billy climb on. Crawling to the center of the car, Billy lay flat.

  It was hard running alongside the car holding the ladder rung, and my gait was hampered by the heavy case. In desperation, I pulled myself toward the flatcar and swung the case while thrusting hard with my grounded foot. The bottom of the case erupted. Three of everything, food, flashlight, knife and all were strewn along the tracks. My stride failed when the case emptied. With one foot on the rung, the other in space, I released the case and clung precariously as we gained speed. For a moment I thought to leap off before I fell, but Dale reached down, grabbed my belt, and rolled me onto the deck, holding me until I caught my balance. We went through the tunnel and out the other side.

  9

  The engine belched clouds of smoke that swirled in the blackness, choking, burning our eyes and nostrils. Cinder ash itched my scalp, worked its way under my belt and inside my T-shirt. The train accelerated, rumbled louder, its clickity-clack taunting us that we were prisoners, unable to escape. Everything became exaggerated—a nightmare—as we tunneled through the fumes of hell hurtling into the night. Billy’s fear grew deeper as the miles thundered by. Though he said little, his talk was jerky and high-pitched. When we crawled to the front edge of the flatcar, gripping the leading edge, Billy would lay nowhere but between Dale and me. If I moved away, he nervously gripped my arm, pulling me back, begging me not to leave him.

  …


  I don’t know how much time had passed when Dale yelled over the rumbling, “Keep yer heads down; there’s a guy on the platform!” I buried my head in my arms, but peered out at a man standing level with and one short step away from the flatcar. The man seemed too surprised to move and simply stared, pointing at us from a forward lean, blurting, “Hey you boys! What’re you doing there?” The man was helpless—no small revelation to me—as State School boys rode by, right under his nose. The man’s arm sagged as we rumbled off. Movie images of wartime railroad guards were fresh in my mind, and I was certain the phones would be busy, and we would be taken off when the train stopped—wherever.

  I wished a thousand times for the night to end. With clenched teeth I peered once down into the blackness between cars where my darkest thoughts seethed amid the clatter and the rush of air. It’d be easy to fall or even jump off—to die instantly. That boy at C-15 who fell through glass. Did he just give up and jump?

  The rumbling and swaying numbed me, but it was dangerous to sleep. For much of the night I curled my arms around my head; whenever I felt myself drifting, I lifted my head and looked around for a sign that our ordeal might end, anything to cling to. Then, finally, the first glow of dawn tinged the horizon and I could begin to make out our surroundings. “Dawn’s here!” I yelled, which sounded more like a crow cawing. Dale and Billy raised their heads and together we watched the countryside emerge, first in silhouette, then with depth and color.

  The train stopped at a small town. We slid tiredly off the flat car, found an empty boxcar on the opposite side of the train and climbed in. With time only to adjust myself to sitting, our car was banged hard, rolling me onto my back where I remained, almost instantly draining into a deep sleep, unaware of rumbling and whistle blasts.