Little Boy Blue (22 page)
Authors: Edward Bunker
By the following week, Alex’s right eye
was open enough to see through, but his face was still puffed and discolored.
Forever after he would have a small lump beneath his right cheekbone, unseen
but easy to locate with a finger. On the morning of “staff,” Mr.
Whitehorn informed him that he wasn’t going in person. The staff would
decide without him. Alex was frightened. He’d counted on seeing the other
doctors and convincing them—sobbing and begging on his knees if
necessary—that it would be wrong to recommend committing him to a
hospital. Now they would have just the reports, and he was afraid. God, he was
afraid.
A long time later he would realize that the
doctor and Whitehorn hadn’t wanted the staff to see his face because
nothing on paper could justify battering a child to such condition.
But now while it happened his guts crawled, and he felt hollow with
fear.
Even a new Reader’s Digest failed to exceed a blur. Then in
the afternoon, just before shift change, Mr. Whitehorn was due to come around,
already wearing his coat preparatory to going home. He never opened the door
but peered through the window. He had to sign a log on Alex’s condition
before turning things over. Whitehorn had sat in on “staff” and
knew the recommendation. So Alex was waiting at the glass, his cheek pressed to
it so he could see the man coming. When the man approached the door, Alex put
his lips to the crack and called out, “Mr. Whitehorn. Lemme talk to
you!” He shifted back to the glass.
“What’s up?”
“Can you tell me what happened
today?”
“At staff?”
“Yessir.
What’d… what’s the
recommendation?”
“You’ll know pretty soon.”
“Please…” But Whitehorn was
already moving away and out of sight.
“Dirty… rotten
bastard motherfucker!”
Alex
spat between clenched teeth, turning away and kicking backward on the door, a
hard kick. The door jumped in its frame, making a loud bang. Alex expected the
noise to bring the attendants down on him, but in his anger he had no fear.
When he thought about the beating, he was afraid, but in rage he was less
afraid than before.
He flopped down on the bunk and folded
his arms across his chest, staring at the ceiling and burning with anger. God,
he hated them…
On Monday morning, without advance notice, an
attendant brought Alex’s clothes in a bundle and threw them on the cot:
not the ward denims but the clothes he’d worn in the garage near the
beach when arrested. Two months of being rolled up unwashed had made them
stink, but the odor was insignificant compared to his upsurge of joy. He was
leaving this place—not to freedom, of course, but even freedom
wouldn’t have made him happier. He was so keyed up that he fumbled tying
his shoelaces, and then he had to be told to button his pants.
The ward was on work call and cleanup period,
twenty minutes in the morning when they didn’t have to sit on the
benches. Word was out that Alex was leaving, so Toyo and two others were
waiting when he was escorted across the dayroom.
Toyo started to shake hands, but the
attendant got between them. “Say good-bye, but no contact.”
“They think you’ll give me a gun,
I guess,” Alex said with a sneer, words and attitude that would have
brought a backhand not long before but not when he was leaving. Toyo and the
others trailed to the side.
“Where you going,
carnal?
To
court?”
“Yeah, I think so.
Where
else?”
“You won’t come back here, will
you?”
“Jesus, I hope not. This fuckin’—”
“It ain’t so bad.” But Toyo
made an ugly face behind the attendant’s back. “Take it easy,
carnalito. Learn to duck those right hands… and hook off the jab.”
Toyo ended with a grin and wink, giving Churchill’s “V” for
victory sign, so popular in those days.
They were at the office door and it closed
behind him, ending the good-byes and turning the friendship into memory. Alex
never saw Toyo again or met anyone in his later travels who knew the skinny
Chicano and what had happened to him.
In the room beyond the office a uniformed
deputy sheriff was waiting with handcuffs. Several inches over six feet and
many pounds over two hundred, his cheeks flushed with embarrassed surprise on
sight of his prisoner. He chuckled and, almost shamefacedly, put the handcuffs
back on his belt.
“How old are you?” he asked Alex.
“Nearly twelve,” Alex replied,
wondering why the man was shaking his head in disbelief.
Attendants and deputy performed the rite of
signing receipts for his body, etcetera. When that was done, the deputy
signaled he was ready and the door was unlocked solemnly. “C’mon,
slugger,” the deputy said. “We’re late already, so
let’s get rolling.”
Stepping into the bright sunlight, Alex
froze, temporarily blinded. It was his first time outdoors in two months. The
deputy led him by the arm, firmly but not roughly. “They said you were
mean, but they didn’t say you were eleven years old. ‘Mean.’
How the fuck can an eleven-year-old
be
mean?”
The car was plain white, without markings or
special lights, although the inevitable police radio was inside, giving
constant static-punctuated directions to misery, pain, and violence. The deputy
shut it off as they left the grounds. Alex
bubbled
seeing freedom after seeing nothing except a manicured lawn from a window for
so long. Scenery-watching was a habit he developed young and never lost.
The deputy was supposed to deliver him to
court by ten a.m., but it was nine-thirty when they left Pacific Colony in
heavy traffic, and fifteen minutes later they were still thirty miles away from
downtown, stopped at a railroad crossing while a train jockeyed back and
forth at five miles an hour, the freight cars banging in ragged sequence time
and again. When automobile traffic finally got under way, it was ten-twenty.
The deputy pulled to a phone booth in the corner of a gas station.
When he came back to the car, he grinned.
“Okay, Slugger, it’s put off until one. I can run you right in and
leave you in the bullpen at the courthouse, or we can stop for a cheeseburger
and milk shake. You probably haven’t had anything like that lately.”
“No, sir, not for a
while.”
Alex restrained his
urge to show joyous anticipation.
“Okay, kid, just one thing. I
don’t want to have to watch you like a hawk every second. And I’m
not going to handcuff you to a table and have everybody think I’m a
monster. So give me your word that you won’t try to run and we’ll
make it look like we’re pals. Okay?”
“You’ll believe me?”
“If you give me your word… sure I
will.”
“You’ve got it. I don’t
have anywhere to go anyway.”
In San Gabriel, a picturesque suburb
highlighted by one of California’s old missions, directly east of
downtown Los Angeles, the deputy parked behind a restaurant. Large and
gleaming—because it was glass, chrome,
formica
,
and stainless steel—it was the kind of short-order restaurant peculiarly
endemic to southern California. The lunch-hour trade had persons waiting for
booths.
The
hostess
said:
“There’s room at the counter, if you and the boy…”
“How ‘bout it?” the deputy
asked, ruffling the boy’s hair.
Alex shrugged. “It’s cool with
me,” he said, then followed the big man, conscious that he was inches
from the butt of his revolver. It would be so easy to jerk it out. The thought
passed quickly through his mind—pointless speculation—and
disappeared as they slid onto stools.
“
How’s
cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake sound? My wife doesn’t let me
carry too much money.”
“That sounds good… really
good.”
Thus was the order given to the
waitress
without using the menus she brought. When she
turned away, the deputy leaned close. “I have to use the restroom. You
stay here. Remember you gave your word. Don’t get us both in
trouble.”
When the man was gone, Alex’s
sensibilities were swarmed over by the flux of bodies, by the cacophony of
voices and dishes. Everything was so sharp, so crystalline as to seem unreal
and confusing. In the mirror facing him he could see street images behind him,
scurrying pedestrians, hurtling automobiles, all of it alternating from drab to
brilliant under scudding clouds. It took Alex’s breath away, and a nameless,
keening hunger went through him. Without being able to articulate the yearning
specifically, he sensed a fierce call to freedom. It would be so easy to get up
and walk out; the deputy would never see him, much less catch him.
“Free” meant more than not being in an institution. He already knew
absolute freedom, being able to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted,
following his nose over the next hill. A child never had freedom unless he had
lived as Alex did as a runaway.
As the longing peaked, recollection of
his promise
braked
the thoughts. He’d given his
word. His struggle against that truth lasted just a few seconds. He was
munching his cheeseburger when the deputy sheriff returned.
The windowless room where juvenile prisoners
were held waiting for court had been painted since Alex’s last
appearance. It was already liberally marked with fresh graffiti. The bailiff
had given Alex a sack lunch, the standard slice of bologna slapped dry in stale
bread and an orange spotted greenish-gray. With a full belly, Alex had taken
the sack, because youths from Juvenile Hall were always hungry and would take a
second sack lunch. But nearly all cases had already been heard on the morning
docket, so just two others were waiting when Alex came in, and they
didn’t seem concerned with food. They hadn’t even opened their own
bags. They glanced up when the door opened and went back to their conversation
when they saw it was another boy. Both were white and about Alex’s age. Alex
sat on a bench and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking down at
the concrete floor, pointedly ignoring the two youths. He couldn’t,
however, turn off his ears.
“Man, whaddya mean, you
can’t?”
“I just can’t, that’s
all.”
“Ow, wow!” He threw his hands up
in exasperation with such sudden force that the other boy flinched away in
panic, afraid that he was being attacked.
“Dammit,
Bobby!
If you just say it wasn’t me with you, they’ll cut me
loose.” The speaker stopped, shook his head, and rubbed his hand hard
across his face and eyes, meanwhile staring and showing venom in his
expression. The other boy kept his eyes averted, frequently glancing at the
door.
“Bobby, listen here. 1
haven’t
said anything, man—but I know you
snitched on me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up!” The words
were unleashed fury, seething with threat. They silenced Bobby. “You did.
You had to. How else could they have come for me so fast?”
“Yeah, Max, you said it was cool…
no night watchman.”
“There shouldn’t be in a fuckin’
secondhand thrift store.”
“There was.”
“So he snatched you for the cops. I
wasn’t back at the playground fifteen minutes when they came looking for
me… asked the coach for me by name. ‘Where’s Max
Dembo?’ You got busted cold duck, but the
watchman
can’t identify me. They got you. But if you say it wasn’t me with
you they’ll let me go. Bobby,
man
, you
don’t wanna be known as a snitch, do you?
A stool
pigeon.
Do you want that?”
Bobby shook his head. “But I
don’t wanna be locked up either. You’ve been there before. You can
take it.”
Now Alex was watching intently. Max had a
sharp-boned face, making it unusually expressive and adult. Now it personified
contempt, so open a sneer that Alex had seen such an expression only in the
movies. Bobby seemed to cave inside under the glare; he cowered without moving,
refusing to turn his eyes upward even momentarily.
Alex could see the gears turning in
Max’s mind, the tightening resolve to smash the weakling. It was so
obvious that Alex’s stomach knotted in anticipation. He felt no sympathy
for the snitch.
The key turning the lock froze everyone
except for turning heads. The uniformed bailiff hooked his finger and motioned
to the two of them. The weakling moved instantly, as if the bailiff was a
rescuer (which he was), while the other boy moved slowly, head down as he
passed the man waiting to relock the door.
The boy, who was
barely in his teens, managed to radiate an arrogant indifference to both the
waiting officer and the situation.
When the door was locked, Alex looked around
at the ugly concrete walls, remembering with sudden clarity how he’d felt
here nearly a year ago. He’d been afraid of the unknown, and that
included nearly everything about this world. Still stunned by his
father’s death and his own predicament, he’d been insulated from
too intense feelings. He couldn’t feel. Now he was able to feel
everything, and fear was there, an awful, specific fear of going back to a
place similar to but more horrible than Pacific Colony, for he’d be
committed as a psychopathic delinquent, not as feeble-minded, and that
meant Mendocino, not Pacific Colony. Now, however, he knew this world,
understood it, and the world of freedom beyond walls and bars and locked doors
had faded to the vague and unreal. True, it was the promised, fabled land,
the one of dreams, but it was as hard to visualize as are dreams in the
morning. The heaven of freedom was as nebulous to him as the heaven of
God.
Now he had minutes to waste alone in the
bullpen.
He
shadow- boxed for a minute, practicing
what First Choice Floyd and Toyo had shown him, and then his bladder ached for
release. The lidless toilet was in the corner.
While buttoning his pants, he saw a paper
clip on the floor. Someone had straightened it out and dropped it. Alex picked
it up and scratched his name into the paint. He couldn’t match the
curlicues and fanciness of the Chicanos, who’d had lots of practice in
defacing walls, so below his name Alex added something he’d heard Red
Barzo say several times: “If you can’t do time, don’t fuck
with crime.” Below that he put: “Whittier, 1944
to
?”
He was sure that was where he was going; he knew he
wasn’t crazy…
Then he began shadowboxing again, stabbing
out jabs and sliding forward to turn them into short hooks followed by right
uppercuts, punching in combinations at imaginary opponents. He pivoted on the
balls of his feet, slipping and counterpunching, loosening up.
He was leaning forward, simulating a flurry
of short body punches, when the door opened. The bailiff chuckled. “
Don’t hurt nobody
, kid!”
Alex stopped, flushed with embarrassment.
“Er… uh…”
“You wanna be a boxer?” the
bailiff asked, seeing the boy’s embarrassment and trying to assuage
it.
“Yeah,” Alex said spontaneously,
though not insincerely. It was the first time he’d conjured the
possibility. “I’d like to do that… if I’ve got the
talent.”
“It’s a tough game. Say, I came
to find out if your parents are here to go to court with you?”
Alex shook his head.
“Is anybody else?
An
aunt?
A guardian?”
“Naw.
Nobody.
I haven’t got
anyone.”
The grin on the bailiff’s face
lessened, as if he shouldn’t grin at an orphan. “Okay. You’ll
be going in a few minutes.” He locked the door.
When the door opened again two bailiffs were
wrestling the cursing, kicking figure of Max Dembo. One bailiff had the
boy’s arm twisted up behind his back, while the other had a headlock on
him. They half-entered the room and threw the youth forward.
“You’re goin’ to the hole when you get back tonight,”
one said.
“Fuck the
hole
,
fuck you, and fuck that snitchin’ punk you sent home to his mama!”
The men hesitated, obviously wanting to slap
the foul-mouthed boy into respect. One of them tensed to do so. The boy
didn’t flinch, but the other man grabbed his partner. “Fuck this
punk. Imagine… jumped on that other boy right in the judge’s
chambers. Picked up a brass ashtray and busted his head wide open.”
Alex was awed, all his sympathy and respect
going out to the defiant youth still glaring balefully at the men.
“Did His Honor swallow his
teeth?” the other bailiff said, chuckling, his anger suddenly
dissipated.
“Naw.
He started yelling, ‘Get him outa here! Get him
outa here!’” Then to Max Dembo: “You’re a tough punk,
but where you’re goin’ there’s lots of toughies… Okies,
niggers, and bean bandits who been fightin’ all their lives…”
“I just don’t like finks,”
the boy said. “And I’m already in the hole in Juvenile Hall or
I’d have
beat
his ass before this.”
“I don’t like finks either, kid.
Why don’t you cool down?
Don’t raise no
more hell, and we won’t report what happened to the people back at the
Hall.”
While they backed out and locked the door,
Alex wondered what
kind
of hell the boy could raise in this bare room?
Perhaps kick up a ruckus by kicking the door, or start a fight, or flood the
toilet.
The boy began wiggling his shoulders, as one
does to get rid of a kink of pain. Although his face was flushed, he
didn’t appear otherwise discomfited.
“What happened, man?” Alex asked.
“Ah… fuck! What I figured would
happen. That punk spilled his soul. The judge asked him if I was involved. Damn
near told him that he’d go home if he said it was me. Sheeit! After that
they damn near had to choke him to stop his snitching! They put him on
a year
probation. So when it was time to go, and his fat-ass
mama was huggin’ him, I busted him upside the head with the ashtray. He
started screaming like a bitch.
Weakassed
motherfucker.”
The word “motherfucker” seemed
particularly gross in this boy’s mouth. Unlike the blacks, who used it as
noun, verb and adjective, flavoring every sentence and slurring it to virtual
unrecognizability, this boy enunciated it precisely, each syllable clear; it
was more vulgar by how it was said. Indeed, his entire manner of speech was
unusually harsh.
“What about you?” Max asked.
“I dunno.
Haven’t
been into court yet.
But I think I’m goin’ to Whittier. Fuck
it!” He tossed a shoulder; reform school didn’t matter.
“Yeah, fuck it! I’m goin’
back there. I just did eighteen months and stayed out ninety-four chickenshit
days. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Sure is. I’ve been busted for a
year.”
“Yeah.
What for?”
The first
real interest was aroused. Max raised his head to listen.
“I shot a guy. He caught me busting in
his store.”
“Kill him?”
“Uh-uh… no.
Just wounded him… I’ve been in the
nuthouse for observation.”
“Yeah, they do that when
something’s serious. See if you’re crazy. And you damn sure are
goin’ to Whittier. I’ll see you there. My name is Max Dembo.”
“Alex Hammond.”
“Good luck.”
“Good luck to you.”
“Yeah, I need it.” The hard-faced
boy, whose whole manner spat defiance at the world, curved his mouth in a grin;
his eyes sparkled, and for that moment everything about him was warm.
They shook hands, Alex feeling somewhat
foolish in performing such an adult gesture with someone his own age, and
before more words could be exchanged they heard the sound of the turning key.
The bailiff stuck his head inside and summoned Alex.
“Good luck again, man,” Max said.
“Thanks, man.”
This time the large courtroom was empty
because the bullpen was likewise empty. The dozens of families were not there
because the bullpen didn’t have dozens of boys waiting to be called into
the hearing rooms.
The combination office and tiny courtroom was
the same as a year ago, the same nondescript clerks, recorders and probation
officer flanking the judge behind the polished darkwood table. The bailiff
pointed Alex to a chair across from and below the judge. Alex couldn’t
remember the previous judge’s name, or anything of what he looked like, but
he knew this was a different judge simply because he was a Negro, albeit
light-skinned, with his graying hair greased and pressed down to tight waves
close to his skull. He wore owlish glasses of great thickness, making his dark
amber eyes appear huge, yet he lacked the dour visage that Alex recalled from
the last one. There was a kindly emanation from his face. He was studying a
file and Alex knew it was his. The judge studied it for less than a minute, but
that was long enough for Alex’s imagination to create a mental hospital
worse than Pacific Colony. Utter terror arrived with the creation, nor did the
judge allay the fear when he looked up; his big eyes were staring
unsympathetically.
“You don’t seem to get along
anywhere, do you? It goes way back— runaway, runaway, temper tantrums,
and finally breaking into a store and almost killing the owner. I’m sure
it wasn’t in your plan, but you did pull the trigger. An adult would be
in prison a long, long time for that.” The judge paused, and Alex felt
the man was waiting for some comment, but Alex could think of nothing to say.
The judge turned to the probation officer. “Are you sure he doesn’t
have any family?
None whatsoever?”
The voice had
a note of incredulousness.
“ None
that we can determine. And there’s a file from
social service agencies going back to age four, even prior to the court
becoming involved.”
The judge shook his head and grunted; then he
spoke to Alex. “Well, you’re not crazy. At least not in the way we
usually think about crazy. You seem sane, you talk more than just reasonably
sane for your age, but some of the things you’ve done”—the
judge shook his head—“can only be described as insane
behavior.”
What was he saying? What was going to happen?
The dread of Pacific Colony or someplace worse swelled malignantly through his
brain. It nearly drove out reason and made him scream his terror. For a few
seconds he lost track of the judge’s conversation. The lips moved, teeth
and tongue showed, but Alex couldn’t untangle sound and give it coherence.
He was afraid to interrupt and show his confusion; it might tip the balance if
the judge was weighing mental hospital against reform school.
