Little Boy Blue (26 page)

A month after becoming a housecat, Alex made
a bushel of Chicano enemies, adding to his dilemma of feeling he didn’t
belong. It was Sunday morning and he’d gone to Mass, so he could talk to
Lulu afterward—find out if the Mexican was getting a visit in the afternoon.
If so, Alex would pay the black monitor two cigarettes to make sure he was
assigned to escort Lulu’s visitors to the visiting grounds. En route
he’d pick up two packs of Lucky Strikes and hide them under a brick
beside the recreational area for later pickup. Following visiting hours,
everyone in Scouts was searched, and everyone who got a visit was skin-searched
before returning to their cottages. Tomorrow, during school recess, he’d
retrieve the cigarettes, take twelve and deliver the rest.

Mass was over. The boys had to file out one
aisle at a time. Even then there was horseplay. Just beyond the door, where the
priest stood and smiled good mornings, a grab-assing youth jumped backward to
avoid retaliation and crashed into Alex, knocking him backward into someone
else. “Excuse me, man,” he said. “I’m sorry.” But
the boy ahead, who’d knocked Alex back, merely glanced at what he’d
done and ignored the situation. Alex thought he saw contempt flicker on the
boy’s face.

“Hey, man!” Alex
called,
his face hot. “Can’t you say ‘excuse
me’?” His voice was loud and challenging. It froze the youth,
called “Change,” a huero Chicano with bright green eyes, low
forehead, and hair that stood up like porcupine quills.

“What
… ?
”
he snapped, eyes glassy. “What the fuck did you say?

A fight was at hand. More words would make no
difference to that certainty. So while the Chicano’s mouth was still
open, Alex put his fist in it,
then
followed the clean
punch with a swarming volley. The first two punches caught the Chicano flush,
knocking him backward. He clutched at Alex, ducking his head under the
swings. They grappled, seeking a hold or a clean knee to the testicles.

The priest came running at the first sound of
violence. He was still wearing the vestments of the Mass. He grabbed Alex by
the collar from the rear and hurled him back. Alex couldn’t keep his feet
under him and fell on his rump, hands extended behind him to take some of the
force and to scrape the skin. Meanwhile, the priest had grabbed the furious
Mexican and was holding him. The Chicano was spitting blood and cursing
Alex—who gave him the finger in return.

Two counselors pushed through the milling
boys, yelling: “Clear it out! Get to your cottages! Get on there! Break
it up!”

As Alex got up, waiting for whatever was
next, a dark Chicano from Roosevelt Cottage who looked like an Indian (and was
nicknamed “Indio”) passed close by and paused for a moment,
his dark eyes glittering. His face was a mask of fury. “You fucked up,
white boy,” he snarled. “You shouldn’t have punched my
homeboy. You’re gonna get fucked up.”

“Fuck you and your greasy mother,
too.”

“Okay, punk, okay!”

“Okay my ass, sissy!”

A counselor was bearing down, hand
outstretched to grab Alex as a culprit. Indio turned away, going with the flow
of movement to join his cottage. He stopped to look back and nod affirmation of
his threat.

The man vised Alex’s arms, digging in
until the boy flinched.

“I’m sorry,” the man said.
It was obvious that he, too, was a little non-plussed.

The antagonists were kept apart and escorted
to the supervising counselor. He was in charge of the institution on Sunday
mornings. He grabbed the Chicano’s nose to make sure it wasn’t
broken. He asked no questions because he didn’t want to hear any lies.
“You’re in different cottages so you can’t try a rematch.
Can’t you find plenty of fights
?…
”
He looked at the blank faces and knew how useless
was any
advice, even sardonic
. “You’ve both got three hours of extra
duty tonight. The next time you start fighting at church, I’m gonna
finish it… and then drag your asses to the disciplinary cottage.
They’ll have to pull my size twelve outa your butts.” To the men,
he said: “Take ‘em back to their cottages. Don’t bother with
an incident report.”

That sunny afternoon, with the visiting
grounds full of boys and their families, so it looked like a picnic area in a
park, Alex looked for Lulu and his family. He had walked Lulu’s sister
and her husband in earlier, picked up the cigarettes, and now he was back to
see his friend. Lulu saw him coming and got up to meet him, beyond hearing range.
Usually he motioned Alex over. Now his face was stern. “Man, how come you
copped a Sunday punch on Chango?”

“Because the motherfucker crashed into
me… and he was gonna Sunday me.”

Lulu shook his head. “Watch yourself,
man. A whole bunch of beans are mad.”

“Let ‘em scratch their asses and
get glad.” The bravado hid the knot of worry. It wasn’t
overpowering fear, but it was serious. It would have been worse in nearly any
other cottage, for Chicanos were fifty percent of the institution’s
population, but of fifty boys in

Scouts, just seven were Mexican, and none
were troublemakers. In fact, they were there because they were too Americanized
and didn’t even speak Spanish, which made them semi-outcasts among other
Chicanos.
Except for Hava.
He was well-liked, or so it
seemed to Alex. Hava always had plenty of friends from other cottages to talk
to him on the grounds detail and whenever else the cottages mingled. Lulu said
that Hava’s brother was a bigshot narcotics peddler in East Los Angeles.
Alex hoped Hava wouldn’t turn against him; not that he was afraid of the
Chicano. Alex could handle him with ease, but he liked Hava. He also liked
Lulu. “What about you, man?” Alex asked; he was just learning about
race. He’d never thought that anyone but white persons could be
prejudiced, and he’d never been so.

“I won’t jump you… but
I’m a Mexican… and I can’t go against my people to help
you.”

“Yeah, I know, man.”

One of the counselors who watched over the
visiting grounds had been eyeing the talking boys. It was against the rules,
and he’d let them have enough leeway. He started to move in. They saw him
and said good-bye, shaking hands. It was an unusual gesture, gauged by the
predicament.

Alex continued to the restroom, and while he
urinated
an ache of loneliness rose inside him. It seemed as
if he was at war with the whole world without having anyone on his side.

“Fuck ‘em,” he muttered as
he buttoned his pants.

Because it was summer and twilights were
long, the cottages went to the outdoor recreation yards following supper. A
big, mainly dirt athletic field was divided in half by a line. Scouts Cottage
had one half; Washington Cottage the other. Hoover Cottage had an area visible
in the distance, and the other cottages were elsewhere on the state property,
near the buildings housing them.

When the ranks disintegrated, most of the
boys gathered around Mr. Hoffman and Constantine—and the cardboard boxes
filled with brown bags, the goodies left by visitors earlier in the day. Mr.
Hoffman called out each name, and as each boy got his bag and turned away he
was joined by his friends. They flopped on the lawn and gorged on whatever the
family had left, predominantly cookies and candy.

Ignoring the crowd, Alex strolled with his
head down to the trees beside the road, which was the boundary line. He sat
down with a tree trunk as a back brace. Pretty soon he would be picked up to do
the extra duty for the fight—wash the high, vaulted windows in the mess
hall. Meanwhile, he’d light up a cigarette. Probably one or two of the
few boys he talked to would come over, mouths salivating for nicotine.
He’d share with them because it made him feel good, even though he had no
close friends in this cottage—not even one partner, which nearly everyone
had unless they were finks or dingalings.

Two boys whom he didn’t expect
approached him. One was Watkins, a skinny Okie with a loud mouth. Hearing his
voice without seeing him, anyone would expect a huge brute, not a
fourteen-year- old with a wizened countenance and a jagged scar down his cheek.

The second boy was a newcomer, but Alex had
seen him over a year earlier in Juvenile Hall. Joe Altabella by name, he was
called JoJo. An already husky lad, he would fatten on pasta with passing years.
Now he was good-looking, with curly dark hair tumbling down his forehead. He
wore a ducktail, as did everyone. Because he was Italian, and could also pretty
much understand Spanish, he got along with the Mexicans. He wasn’t
considered a “white boy,” per se. He’d had a visit today, his
parents (the mother cried) and two sisters. One was a skinny ten-year-old, but
the other had many boys looking. Precociously developed at thirteen, she had
full breasts and hips to go along with luxuriant dark hair and big hazel
eyes— and the tint of olive in lovely skin. Alex flashed these thoughts
in the half minute as the two boys approached. He shaded his eyes with his hand
to look up. The dying sun was behind them.

“What’s happening?” he
asked.

“Ain’t much,” Watkins said.
“Thought you might wanna smoke one of JoJo’s fags with us—but
you’re fired up already.”

“I saw that scene at Mass this
morning,” JoJo said. “Chango is a troublemaker. He tried to get me
jumped in Juvenile Hall… said I was trying to be a Mexican ‘cause I
was speaking Spanish. He’s a real nutty guy.”

“Yeah, man, you gots troubles,”
Watkins commented.

The statement touched a nerve, seemed a
challenge. “I got trouble,” Alex said, “but he’s got
two black eyes. You guys come over to offer help?”

“No, no!” Watkins said. “I
ain’t fightin’ all the Mexicans for no California boy.” His
voice was shrill, nearly a parody. It made Alex smile. Watkins was a clown in
his way.

“We wanna get outa here,” JoJo
said. “Split.”

Watkins turned his head and glared. “We
decided I’d tell him, huh, man?” He waited for JoJo’s nod,
then
said to Alex, “Would you like to make it outa
here?”

“I haven’t thought about
it… not seriously anyway. Everybody thinks about it some.”

“Well, man, put some serious thought on
it and let us know.”

“I couldn’t think seriously on it
without knowing what you’ve got in mind.
Right?”

The duo
looked at each other; then JoJo touched Watkins’ sleeve and made a head
gesture. They would talk it over alone.

No sooner had the pair turned away when the
supervisor’s state car came down the road, braking when it got to
Scouts’ recreation area. Alex got up and hand-brushed the seat of his
pants. It was time for the extra duty. He was ten feet from the car before the
man got out. The supervisor waved to Mr. Hoffman and gestured that he was
taking Alex.

Fifteen minutes later, Alex was on an
eighteen-foot ladder with rags, Bon Ami, and water. A couple of free cooks and
helpers were still in the kitchen, but the vast mess hall was empty and silent,
an atmosphere conducive to reflection while working. Maybe the trouble with the
Chicanos (it wasn’t all of them, just Chango’s friends and those
who put La Raza over everything) would go away if he played it soft and watched
himself. They might cool
off,
go on to other conflicts
and enemies. What the fuck, it was just a chickenshit fight and Chango was in
the wrong.

Escape! It was harder than it looked. True,
the front lacked even a fence (but the sides and rear, which had fields and
orange groves outside, had fences and rolled concertina wire), but it was a
heavily trafficked boulevard in a business neighborhood, and every citizen knew
the reform-school clothes. Blacks and Mexicans really stood out; the town of
Whittier was lily-white. No escapee would last long walking down the sidewalk
in broad daylight. At night they were locked in the cottages. When they marched
around after dark, to the auditorium or gymnasium, there was a chance to bolt
for it. This was done sometimes, but Alex knew he didn’t run fast
enough. The boys in Greenleaf Cottage, who wore all-white uniforms and were
close to parole, were sent after those who ran. Several of them sometimes
walked along with a cottage just in case. A capture of a runaway and the
“close to parole” became “immediate release.” And a
cottage that had no runaways for thirty days got a picnic or movie. Then, too,
the men of Whittier State School knew the terrain. Unable to walk the streets,
the runaways had to follow riverbeds and railroad tracks. The men knew these
routes and sat watching them when boys were missing.

After getting away, what then? Alex had
nowhere to go, nobody to help him. Without such things he would surely be
caught sooner or later. It was far past the era when a young boy could live
on his own
. Still, the vision of a few weeks or months of
freedom, just wandering the streets where every new dawn was the possibility of
an adventure, was dizzying to imagine.

He made no decision that night, and by
morning he had forgotten, at least on the conscious level, the offer of a
hunted freedom. Other things intervened; nothing of serious consequence, but
enough to snatch his attention. On the detail grounds he saw Indio point him
out to another Chicano. Alex’s stomach knotted and turned queasy, part
fear and part anger. That afternoon he kept watch between classes and on the
crowded detail grounds, keyed up to start fighting if anyone made an aggressive
move. Nobody, not Chango, Indio or their friends, came within twenty feet of
Alex.

After recall and count he could relax.
Or mostly so.
In the cottage was Constantine. Thus the day
and early evening were dominated by acting tough—or actually being tough,
for he was ready for trouble. But in the privacy of his room at night, the pain
of it all, of being other than what he wanted to be, geysered up and put tears
in his eyes. What kind of a life was this? In institutions, fighting all the
time, being ruled by men who used authority for whim and caprice? It was
shitty. That’s what.
Plain shitty.

The pain and wet eyes soon hardened into
deep, defiant anger.