Hard City

by Clark Howard

  Suddenly he hated his mother. Even so, he still did not want to leave her. Maybe, he thought, biting his lip, there was still some other way . . . .

  But Miss Menefee came back and said she was ready, and Chloe, trying hard not to cry, handed her the shopping bag of clothes. Forcing a smile, she took Richie’s hands.

  “Miss Menefee says if you’ll write to me, she’ll give me the letters. And I can write back to you. Won’t that be nice? Sugar? Won’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Richie was trying not to cry too.

  “Now, listen,” she said with as much maternal firmness as she could muster, “I expect you to be a big boy and stay out of trouble and study hard in school—”

  Miss Menefee touched her arm and said, “I’ve found that the quicker we do these things, the better.”

  Stiffening, Chloe moved her arm from Miss Menefee’s hand. “All right.” Releasing Richie’s hands, she bent and kissed him on the cheek. “ ‘Bye, Richie.”

  When Richie, eyes downcast, did not respond, Miss Menefee said, “Tell your mother goodbye, please.”

  Obeying, he did not look at his mother as Miss Menefee put a hand on his shoulder and guided him out the door.

  In Miss Menefee’s car, with the shopping bag on his lap, Richie threw off his hurt and anger and fear, and locked his mind in place to memorize the direction and distance the social worker was taking him. He had already made up his mind that he was not going to stay; he would run away at the earliest opportunity—tonight, if possible—and come back to his mother. All he needed was a few minutes to talk to her without this Miss Menefee around; he knew he could talk her into doing this some other way. If it was just a question of money, why, he could probably get a third paper route; he could start peddling magazines again; beg Rondo to take him back at the Stadium; start stealing more with Stan . . . .

  He would do anything—just as long as he did not have to leave his mother.

  Concentrating, he began counting the blocks, fastening into his mind the corners at which they turned, the names of streets, numbers. Miss Menefee glanced knowingly at him. After she had driven awhile, she said conversationally, “It won’t do you any good, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “Even if you do figure out how to get back across the city, it won’t do you any good. As soon as I drop you off at your new home, I’m going back and take your mother to hers. Even if you got back to your old apartment, there wouldn’t be anyone there.” Reaching over, she patted his knee. “You’ll be a lot better off if you’ll just do what we want you to. It’s for your own good, you know.”

  Clenching his jaw, Richie did not respond. He sat staring at the glove compartment, unsure now exactly what he should be planning. It was difficult to chart a course when there was no destination.

  After an hour, Miss Menefee parked in front of a red brick three-flat building in an unfamiliar neighborhood, nicer than his old one. When they got out of the car, Miss Menefee had Richie stand still while she took a comb from her purse and pulled it through the tangles in his hair. “You’ve got hair like mine,” she said off-handedly. “I fight a running battle with it every morning and never win. Do you have a comb in your things?”

  “No.”

  “Here, you can have this one.” She closed a button on his sleeve, tucked his shirt in neater, and patted his shoulder. “This can work out just fine for you, Richie,” she said. She waited a moment; he did not respond, merely waited too. “All right,” she sighed quietly, “come on.”

  In an immaculately clean and neat living room of the first-floor flat, Miss Menefee introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard was an unimpressive figure of a man, with scant shoulders that looked like sloping extensions of his neck. He kept both hands in his pockets. Mrs. Hubbard, slightly taller, with very large, protuberant eyes, was one of those women who smiled without parting her lips, and barely moved her lips when she spoke, so that Richie could not tell whether she had teeth or not. She had broader shoulders than her husband.

  “I’m sure he’ll fit right in with the other boys,” Mrs. Hubbard said to Miss Menefee, with a closed-lips smile. Mr. Hubbard said nothing, just stood there with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth slightly on his heels and toes. “Say goodbye to Miss Menefee now,” Mrs. Hubbard told Richie, “and go down the hall there to the kitchen and sit at the table and wait. We’ll be back when we finish talking with Miss Menefee.” Without speaking, Richie started to walk away, and Mrs. Hubbard stopped him. “Say goodbye to Miss Menefee,” she instructed again.

  “Bye,” Richie mumbled, looking at the floor.

  “And when I tell you to do something,” she further directed, in a firm but not harsh voice, “I would like you to acknowledge it by saying, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Richie mumbled again.

  “All right, run along now.”

  “ ‘Bye, Richie,” Miss Menefee said as he left the room.

  The kitchen, Richie found, was as immaculate as the living room. It looked like a display in a store window. The sink, which he had always thought was a place to stack dirty dishes, was empty and shining. Nothing was lying about on the counters, unlike in any kitchen of his mother’s, because she left everything exactly where she used it, never putting anything away. Mouth open in awe, Richie put down his bag of clothes and pulled a chair out at the end of the table. He sat down, as he had been told. Maybe, he began to think, this place wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

  It seemed to Richie that he had been sitting there a long time when he suddenly had the feeling that he was being watched. Looking around, he saw at once that he was right: just inside the door stood a boy a couple of years younger than Richie, a boy who had the same bulging eyes of Mrs. Hubbard, the same round shoulders of Mr. Hubbard, and a funny little bullet-shaped head all his own. Richie suppressed an urge to laugh at him, but knew he had not concealed his amusement altogether, because the younger boy turned red and his lips compressed at the look on Richie’s face.

  “I’m telling on you for being in that chair,” he said.

  “I ain’t doing nothing wrong,” Richie told him.

  “You’re not supposed to be in that chair,” the boy said threateningly, pointing a finger. Just then, Mrs. Hubbard strode into the room, her husband following, hands still in his pockets.

  “Junior’s correct,” Mrs. Hubbard said, taking charge. “I see you’ve met our son, fine. Get out of that chair, please. That’s Mr. Hubbard’s chair; the one at the other end of the table is mine. Never sit in either of them. You’ll find that if you listen to Junior’s advice, you’ll do much better here. Bring your things and I’ll assign you a drawer in the dresser that the other wards use.”

  As Richie followed Mrs. Hubbard out of the kitchen, he wondered what in the hell is a “ward”?

  Richie found out that afternoon, when he was helping three other wards carry garbage from the building’s back porches down to the alley.

  “We’re all wards,” he was told by Lloyd, the oldest and biggest of the trio. “That means the county owns us. Means there ain’t nobody who wants us, so the county has to take care of us. A ward is kinda like an orphan.”

  “I’m not no orphan,” Richie declared. “I got a mother.”

  Another boy, named Gerry, looked at him solemnly. “No kidding? Jesus, you better go in and tell the Hubbards that right now! I think there’s been a terrible mistake made here.”

  Richie turned red and Lloyd said, “Cut the shit, Ger. He’s in the same boat we are.”

  “I got a mother too,” said the third boy, Maxie, “but she’s doing time in women’s prison. They got her for fencin’ stolen merchandise Christmas before last.”

  “What about your dad?” Richie asked.

  “Who knows?” Maxie said, shrugging.

  Because the Hubbards owned the building and were responsible for garbage removal, it fell to the wards to carry out the heavy back-porch cans every day and empt
y them into the big iron drums in the alley. “An’ that ain’t all we gotta do,” Lloyd alerted Richie. “We also have the pleasure of sweeping the back porches and stairs, scrubbing down the inside stairs and landings, shoveling coal from the bin to the furnace, doing laundry in the basement and hanging it out to dry, carrying groceries home—not just for the Hubbards but for the other two tenants in the building, bringing in everybody’s milk and newspaper delivery, washing windows, raking the backyard—shit, there’s a thousand things. Don’t count on much free time.”

  “We get paid for any of it?” Richie asked naively.

  “Yeah, we each get thirty-five a week,” Gerry piped up. “Be sure and tell old lady Hubbard weh’der you want yours in small bills or what.”

  “Lay off, will ya?” Lloyd told Gerry. Then to Richie: “We get nothing. Don’t pay no attention to him.”

  “Yeah,” said Maxie, “he thinks he’s Lou Costello.”

  “One other thing,” Lloyd told Richie as they carried an empty garbage pail back upstairs, “is don’t never trust Junior. He’s a rotten little prick an’ he’ll get you in Dutch every chance he gets.”

  “What kind of Dutch?” Richie asked.

  “You’ll see tonight at supper,” Lloyd replied ominously.

  The Hubbard supper table accommodated eight: three on each side, one at each end. The wards sat two on each side on the end toward Mr. Hubbard. The two places nearest Mrs. Hubbard were vacant. Junior sat at the end, next to his mother, and she fed him off her plate. Richie could hardly believe his eyes; the kid was at least ten years old, and his mother was actually spooning food into his mouth. But when Richie looked at the other wards they didn’t seem to pay any attention to it, so he shrugged and ignored it also, concentrating instead on Mr. Hubbard’s hands. The supper table was the first time Richie had seen them out of his pockets; they were slim, like his shoulders, and very white with nails that looked pinker than usual.

  On the plate that had been set in front of Richie was half a pork chop and some mashed potatoes and cauliflower. Richie noticed that Mr. Hubbard had two pork chops, and Mrs. Hubbard and Junior one each, while he and the other three wards had a half each. As soon as Richie finished his meat and potatoes, he asked, “Can I have some more, please?”

  Mr. Hubbard looked at him with an amused expression, while Mrs. Hubbard’s lips tensed and her face clouded. Junior grinned like an imbecile.

  “There are no second helpings. And wards are not permitted to talk at the table unless spoken to by Mr. Hubbard or myself.”

  “He didn’t eat his cauliflower, mother,” interjected Junior.

  “Please eat your cauliflower.”

  “I don’t like cauliflower,” Richie said.

  Mrs. Hubbard’s face grew darker and her eyes seemed to bulge farther out of their sockets. “I said,” she enunciated carefully, “that wards are not permitted to talk at the table. Please do not utter another word.”

  “Should I not even say ‘yes, ma’am’ like you—”

  “I said not another word!” the woman screamed, pounding a fist on each side of her plate so that it bounced an inch off the table. “Are you deaf?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not deaf, but—”

  “Stop! Stop it! Stop talking!” she yelled. “Right now! Not another word!”

  “Yes, ma’am . . . .”

  Suddenly Mr. Hubbard was out of his chair, grabbing Richie by the back of his collar, and half dragging, half pushing him over to a corner of the room. “Stand there,” he ordered without raising his voice. “Do not move and do not speak. If you do either, I will take a paddle to you.”

  Richie froze, jaw clenched, staring at the corner. He was aware when Mr. Hubbard moved out of his peripheral vision, aware of the sound of the chair moving as the man sat back down, and surprised to hear Mrs. Hubbard, screeching but a moment ago, say serenely, “Thank you, dear. Such impertinence. Where in the world do they find this kind of boys. Since it’s his first night, naturally we’ll suspend punishment this time; I have a feeling, however, that this one is going to get more than his share of the paddle. Now then, on another matter, I have a complaint from Mrs. Neeley on the third floor. She claims that someone is opening and reading her morning Tribune before she gets it. Does anyone know anything about it? Raise your hand if you do.”

  Richie assumed that none of the wards raised their hand because there was silence in the room until he heard Junior say, “I know who did it, mother.”

  “Tell us,” Mrs. Hubbard said.

  “It was Lloyd. He brought in the papers and the milk this morning. I saw him sit at the top of the stairs and open Mrs. Neeley’s paper and read it.”

  “Thank you, Junior. Is that true, Lloyd?”

  “I on’y took a quick look at the ball scores,” Richie heard Lloyd explain.

  “Is—it—true?” Mrs. Hubbard demanded icily.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I will not tolerate a sneak in this house.” Mrs. Hubbard ruled. “Three licks with the paddle.”

  Richie heard Junior giggle.

  Punishment with the paddle, which was a standard Ping-Pong paddle, was administered at bedtime, after the beds were ready. Each ward had a folding cot, which was wheeled out of a closet and opened up at a specific location within the apartment. Lloyd slept in the kitchen, Gerry in the dining room, Maxie in the hall outside Junior’s bedroom, and Richie in a bay-window alcove in the living room hall, next to a radiator. When the wards had made up their cots and were in their underwear ready for bed, they had to line up and watch whoever of them was being punished that night. The offending boy, for whatever he had done, would have to drop his underwear and bend over the arm of Mr. Hubbard’s big easy chair. With his peers, and Mrs. Hubbard and Junior, witnessing, the paddle would be applied to his bare buttocks by Mr. Hubbard.

  His first night there, Richie watched as Lloyd got his three licks. It was like some kind of obscene dream. Round-shouldered, bland-faced little Mr. Hubbard, with one pasty white hand wrapped around the handle of the paddle, the other holding firmly to Lloyd’s naked thigh; Mrs. Hubbard sitting stiffly nearby, lips compressed to a thin line, bulging eyes fixed on Lloyd’s naked buttocks; despicable little Junior, his grin almost an evil leer as he squirmed impatiently, waiting for the paddle to fall; and the wards, three boys in their underwear, stripped of dignity along with clothing, without identity, without family or ties, three pieces of scrap in society’s junk pile, being taught that they had no value, no worth. And the transgressor, Lloyd, bent over with shorts down, exposed, humiliated, tears running even before the blows.

  “Come on now,” Mr. Hubbard said cheerfully, “take it like a man. What are you crying for already; I haven’t even started yet!”

  “Let’s get on with it, dear,” Mrs. Hubbard said. “It’s almost time for Charlie McCarthy.”

  “Say, we don’t want to miss that! All right, young man, here we go!”

  Grimacing, Richie closed his eyes as Mr. Hubbard’s arm swung the first time. He heard the paddle strike flesh with a resounding SMACK! It sounded as if a huge piece of very dry wood had been snapped. Lloyd yelped like a kicked puppy. While Richie’s eyes were still closed, there was a second loud crack and the boy being punished cried out again, not a yelp this time but a bellow of pain. Unable to hide in the darkness behind his eyelids any longer, somehow feeling that if he watched he might share some of Lloyd’s punishment, relieve some of his suffering, Richie opened his eyes in time to see the paddle fall the third time, striking now a vivid red circle already there, a target provided by the first two blows. This time the sound of the blow was muted by another cry of anguish that Lloyd emitted even before the lick came. As soon as it struck, the boy became a tangle of flailing arms and legs as he struggled to get off Mr. Hubbard’s lap, to get his balance, to get his underwear pulled up to cover his nakedness.

  “All right, boys, off to your beds now,” Mrs. Hubbard said, clapping her hands. “Junior, turn the radio on so it can be warmin
g up for Charlie McCarthy.”

  As Lloyd went running crying to his cot in the kitchen, the other boys spread out to the various locations where they slept. Richie got into his cot in the alcove. Lying on his back, he was staring up at the ceiling when Mrs. Hubbard came by to turn out the light. Pausing, she looked down at him with her odd globular eyes.

  “There is no getting up in the middle of the night,” she advised. “We cannot have boys wandering the house at night; so if you have to go to the bathroom, you’ll just have to hold it. And you are required to sleep with both hands outside the covers; this is a decent house and we won’t tolerate anything nasty. Do you understand?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Richie replied, taking his hands out from under the covers.

  The last thing he saw as the lights went out were those marble-like eyeballs of hers, looking for all the world as if they were going to pop out and fall to the floor. If they ever did, he swore, he would not even try to catch them.

  Richie did not know what time it was. He only knew that it was still dark when his cot began to rise. There was a slight hissing sound somewhere near; he was on his back, as he had gone to sleep, and the cot left the floor and rose slowly toward the ceiling. But when it got there, there was no ceiling; it had opened up like the top of a cereal box and the cot floated up into the night sky. Somewhere on the edge of Richie’s mind was the perception that this was not possible; that if the ceiling did open, his cot would rise into the second-floor apartment, not the sky. But as he was trying to rationalize that impression, his cot continued to rise higher and higher into the night sky, the strange, quiet hissing sound staying with it, actually seeming to propel it along. Being left far, far below was the night city, its lights looking from above much like the starry sky looked from below.

  Richie knew he was going to fall. He did not have to think about it, weigh it in his mind, consider it from any perspective; he knew it. The certainty of it laced him with fear and he began to whimper and tremble. Frantically he looked around for some avenue of escape, but clearly there was none; there was only the great black void of sky around him, and the earth far, far below. And that quiet, relentless hissing that sent him up farther and farther and farther . . . .