Little Boy Blue (27 page)

 
“So
what’s your idea?” Alex asked. He was between Joe Altabella and
Watkins while they paced back and forth down the right-field line of the
softball diamond. It was after the evening meal.

“It’s like this,” Watkins
said. “You’re a housecat. During the day you’ve got a chance
to get the chain off the locker-room window downstairs.
Right?”

Alex nodded.

“On Wednesday night you stay down to
separate the laundry. We sneak downstairs and go out the window—”

“Here’s the best part,”
JoJo interjected.

“—out the
window and over to the landscape building, not over the fence.
There’s a furnace underground with a little
room. I loosened some boards and stashed water and candy bars and two
packs of smokes. We hide there until the next night and walk off. They just
look for a few hours.”

“Anybody else know about it?”

Watkins shook his head.

“Sure? You know someone’ll snitch
if they know.”

“I’m tellin’ ya…
ain’t nobody knows nuthin’ ‘bout nuthin’.”

“You wanna go, man?” JoJo asked.

“Lemme think about it.”

“How long?”
Watkins pressed.

“I’ll tell you… at
breakfast. Is that cool?”

“Cool enough.”

The conversation with JoJo and Watkins had
been impulsive. During supper, Alex had poked at his food with the spoon (the
only utensil allowed) and brooded, his thoughts mixing anguish and anger. When
the cottage marched afterward to the recreation field, he’d seen the two
boys, and escape seemed the answer. The streets were far away from his
troubles—the troubles for which he had no answer.

But during the talk he’d imagined what
some would think: that he’d escaped because he feared Chango and friends.
That would be a taint in this world, and he would be back, eventually. Return
was inevitable, sooner or later. And it was fear—in a way. Not physical
fear, not exactly. He might get ganged up on and beat up, but he would survive
and had no real dread thereof. His fear was of living constantly with tension and
incipient violence. That’s what he wanted to run from, just so he could
lie down somewhere in the grass and relax, without Constantine, and Chango, and
other youths wanting to be “bad” more than they wanted anything.
Thus he’d approached the duet. Yet while they talked he visualized
Constantine gloating, maybe even saying: “He ran ‘
cause
some beans were after him. He’s probably a
punk.” Imagining that made Alex’s face burn; he would fight all of
them. Fuck ’em. If only that would end the necessity of being perpetually
on guard, an animal with risen hackles.

When the whistle blew for the boys to line up
to march to the cottage, Alex was still undecided. It was dusk, the reddish
twilight blanketing a hush on the world. An early evening breeze stirred the trees,
making the leaves rustle and sometimes fall. As Alex marched, he looked at the
sun-reddened cumulus clouds in the sky.
A formation of
birds were
black clots too high to determine what kind they were. A
longing coursed through the boy, a bittersweet pain that had elements of
loneliness but was really beyond articulation. He had nowhere to go even if he
got away; nowhere and nobody, so in the end he would be caught. Nonetheless, he
suddenly decided to go. An escape would also be a search for something.
Whatever that was, he would never find it locked up. Out there every dawn would
offer a new challenge and adventure. Anything might happen. Fuck ‘em if
they thought he’d run from fear.

When the boys took off their shoes outside
the cottage (they went on stockinged feet indoors), Alex was gleefully excited.
As soon as they filed into the locker room, each boy depositing his shoes in a
numbered box, Alex touched JoJo’s arm, winked, and whispered,
“I’m going with you.”

“Cool, man, cool.”

The locker-room windows had twin frames that
opened outward. A short chain connected the twin windows in the middle, keeping
them from opening enough for anyone to climb out. On Monday, Watkins stole a
pipe wrench from the plumbing shop. On Tuesday morning, while Mrs. Hoffman was
upstairs with the other housecat, Alex used the wrench on the hasp where the
chain was attached, working it back and forth until, with a loud pop, it
snapped free. He froze, waiting to see if the noise got anyone’s
attention. When nobody came he attached the chain with a piece of wire, hoping
that nobody would look for the next thirty hours.

That afternoon, Alex saw Indio in the
education building hallway. The Chicano was going the other way and
didn’t see Alex, who was wrestling with his rage, tempted to use this
chance to attack with surprise. He could tap Indio’s shoulder, and when
Indio started to turn… But the satisfaction would get him sent to
Jefferson Cottage, the punishment unit, and ruin the chance for immediate
freedom. Still… His indecision lasted long enough for Indio to turn into
a classroom, erasing the chance for revenge. It was just as well, he decided.

Following supper, at recreation, the trio of
escapees walked off by themselves the moment they were dismissed.

“It’s ready,” Alex said.
“All ready for tomorrow night.” Welling up in him was happy pride.
He spontaneously draped an arm around Watkins’ shoulder and hugged him.

Instantly, in reflex, Watkins jerked and
threw off the hand. The gesture was so sudden and intense that Alex blushed, startled
by his reaction. He’d forgotten
how tangled were such
matters in reform school
, where freshly pubescent boys were without
girls, and where there was an obsessional dread of being thought a punk—a
punk being one who was buggered. Any touching of buttocks was cause for an
immediate fight, and the paranoia extended sometimes to any touching
whatsoever, especially where affection was conveyed. It was a weird world where
trivialities caused brawls, and if a boy didn’t follow the standard, his
manhood was suspect. Watkins was obviously more confused than most.

Silently they went to the pepper tree near
the road. Alex sat down, his back against the trunk. JoJo sat in front of Alex,
shielding him from the Man while Alex took out two cigarettes wrapped in toilet
paper. He split a paper match in half and lighted one cigarette. They
passed it around, keeping it hidden in a cupped palm, shaking it to stop smoke
from being visible—and they watched Mr. Hoffman thirty yards away.

“Was it easy?” JoJo asked.
“Bustin’ the chain?”

“Yeah… but the fucker sounded
like a gunshot when it broke… if only nobody notices.” While
speaking, Alex eyed Watkins, but there seemed no residual hostility from the
indignation of minutes ago. Alex wouldn’t make the same mistake.

“So now what?”
Alex asked, deliberately deferring to Watkins.

“Tomorrow
night… half an hour after we go upstairs.
You’ll be downstairs, won’t you?”

“Yeah.
Counting dirty shorts and
socks.”

“Hoffman’s off. The relief man
will be upstairs. We get someone to call him down a hallway away from the
stairs. We go down, grab our clothes and shoes, and go out the window.”

“Are we gonna dress there?” JoJo
asked.

“We should put on shoes, at
least,” Alex said.
“Might step on
something.”

“You can be dressed,” Watkins
said. “We’ll see how it is then.”

“Sure sounds easy,” JoJo said.

“It is… that part anyway,”
Alex said.

“I told you about the water and stuff
down
there,
didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I got
some smokes, too.”

“I wish we had some money,” JoJo
said. “It’s a thirty-mile walk into L.A. We could catch a bus when
we get to another town.”

“Maybe we’ll hotwire a
car,” Watkins said. “Tomorrow night when it’s dark… so
the cops won’t see it’s a kid driving.”

“Can you hotwire a car?” Alex
asked.

“Sure, man!
Me
and my brother done it fifteen, twenty times. He usually drove ‘
cause
he’s older.”

“I can drive,” Alex said.

“Good, man, good.”

The conversation became boyish fantasies of
what they would do in the free world. JoJo’s family—actually, his
pretty teenaged sister— would hide them. The Altabellas owned a big, old
frame house in the

Italian section of San
Pedro.
A rear cottage was rented
out. Besides two garages and a pigeon coop, there was a shed with a cot and
sofa. An alley behind the property would let them come and go pretty much
unseen by neighbors. Their “plan” was to stay at JoJo’s for a
while. When they got some money they’d buy an old pickup truck and go to
northeast Oklahoma, in the hill country near the Missouri border. “Yeah,
man,” Watkins promised. “My uncle’s got a cabin out in the
boondocks. We can live there as long as we want, do some huntin’ and
fishin’. We can even get work around the farms. And
there’s
lots of cabins around that nobody uses except a couple weeks a year. They all
got food in ‘em, so we ain’t gonna get hungry…”

The boys’ minds embellished reality.
Alex saw the plan as within possibility. It might be possible to stay away
forever. After a couple of years the California Youth Authority would forget
them—and when he turned twenty-one they couldn’t keep him anyway.

Elated expectation enthralled them when Mr.
Hoffman split the air with his whistle. The fifty youths began moving toward
the road and forming ranks. Alex’s group was farther away than most and
straggled a little. They weren’t late, but they were last—and they
were still talking and laughing.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Constantine
yelled. “You guys are holding up the works.”

As always, Constantine grated on Alex,
causing him to clench his teeth until his jaw muscles were rocks. But tonight
it was easier to pass it off, because after tomorrow night nobody would be
yelling at him, or giving him orders. He even smiled at Constantine while going
by.

Seven evenings a week the boys were allowed
to shower if they so desired, but on Wednesday and Saturday it was mandatory.
They exchanged bed linen, underwear, socks and towels, and were checked off a
list. By nine p.m. it was finished. Wearing nightgowns, wet hair shining and
pressed down, they lined up and marched upstairs to their rooms. It was another
hour until lights-out.

Alex remained downstairs, confronted by piles
of dirty laundry. He still wore his clothes, except for his shoes, because he
was expected to sort out, count, and bundle the dirty laundry. Although the
boys were supposed to sort their own, it was inevitable that socks and jeans
got in with sheets and towels. Despite the escape half an hour away, Alex did
his work, counting out sheets (the laundry would return just that many) and
stuffing things into laundry bags. He did it mainly to keep his mind off the
main event. Yet he heard noises from upstairs, some of them making his
heartbeat race. He heard muffled voices and footsteps, and occasionally a
raised voice.

He did enough work so that the relief man
would think everything was normal (in case Watkins and JoJo didn’t
show up); then he got Watkins’ and JoJo’s clothes and brogans from
their lockers and put them in rolls next to the window. Only eighteen minutes
had gone by, but to Alex it seemed several hours. Every small sound stiffened
him. Several times he thought he heard someone coming down the stairs, but it
was his imagination—and when they really came he heard nothing until they
appeared in the doorway. They were so close together that JoJo stumbled into
Watkins when the latter stopped.

“Nobody see you?” Alex asked.

“Nobody,” JoJo answered.
“We had two guys start raising hell on the end of the hall.”

“
There’s
your clothes,” Alex said, pointing. He then went near the doorway to hear
any possible pursuit.

“Let’s get dressed,” JoJo
said. “I don’t dig runnin’ around in a fuckin’
nightgown.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Watkins said.

They stripped their nightgowns over their
heads and began throwing on clothes, ignoring the underwear and socks.

“Put ‘em in your pocket,”
Watkins said to JoJo. “You can wear ’em later.”

JoJo nodded, breathing audibly from
excitement. Both boys were frantic, fumbling with metal buttons on pants.

Alex waited near the doorway, watching them
and glancing out. Now they were on the floor, pulling on their heavy shoes.
Footsteps sounded on the stairway outside.

“Shhh!”
Alex said, gesturing with raised hands for emphasis.
They froze, looking at the door.

Constantine came in, wearing nightgown and
slippers. “What’s happening here?” he asked, but his face
registered that he knew.

Nobody answered. The two lacing their shoes
sat motionless. If Constantine summoned the Man, they would spend the night
naked in a stripped cell and the next few months doing road-gang work in Thomas
Jefferson Cottage. Alex, too, was near panic—for a few moments. But when
Constantine looked at him, he’d realized that a yell wouldn’t be
heard upstairs, and Constantine wasn’t leaving this room. Maybe Alex
would have trouble alone, but three of them could surely overpower him.