Little Boy Blue (28 page)

Constantine read Alex’s eyes, and the
confident smile dissolved. He started to edge backward, but Alex took a long
stride, grabbed Constantine’s nightgown front with both hands, and swung
him around, deeper into the room, so now he was more or less surrounded.

“Hey! What the fuck!”

“What the fuck!
Your
ass.”

Watkins and JoJo had scrambled up, shoes on
but untied.

“We should stomp your ass,” Alex
said, his pleasure at this power making him forget momentarily freedom’s
imminence.

“Why, man? What’d I do?”

“You’re a fuckin’ fink,
that’s why.”

“I’m no fink, man.”

“Whaa!
What the fuck are you, then?”

“It’s my job. I wanna go home as
quick
as I can.”

“So you fuck over other people.”

“Easy, Alex…
cool
it,” Watkins said, gently touching Alex’s shoulder. “I know
Constantine. He’s okay.” He patted Constantine’s shoulder;
only Alex could see the wink.

Despite the wink, Alex wanted to plant his
fist in Constantine’s eye. The codes of the underworld were becoming
Alex’s own, written on his forming personality by his experience. By the
code, Constantine was a stool pigeon, even if some thought otherwise because of
his job… He couldn’t interfere with them, or get out
to sound an alarm—so fuck
him…

“Look here, Connie,” Watkins
said. “We’ve got an extra pack of Luckies. No use takin’ em.
We can get plenty out there—”

Now the blood was pounding in Alex’s
head. The Luckies were in his pocket.

JoJo had finished lacing his shoes and was
tucking in his shirt. He was conscious of his appearance no matter what the
situation. “Hey, man, you won’t give us up to the Man after
we’re gone, will you?”

“He’s not gonna do that,”
Watkins said. “That wouldn’t be right after we give him the
smokes.”

“I wouldn’t anyway,”
Constantine said. “I do what I do ‘
cause
the Man’s watching.”

“Here, man,” Watkins said,
extending his hand to Alex for the cigarettes. Alex realized that the hillbilly
wasn’t stupid. Watkins had seen that the danger from Constantine was after
they were out the window. There was no way to stop that by force short of
murder. Alex handed the cigarettes to Watkins, who gave them to Constantine.

JoJo was by the window. “Man,
let’s go,” he said, unfastening the wire, the chain clattering as
it fell free.

“I better get back upstairs,”
Constantine said, but he didn’t move until Watkins nodded approval. As he
went out one way, JoJo was in the window to go out the other.

As with all institutions, the grounds had
many bright lights, making pools of brightness, many overlapping. Where there
were shadows, they were deep black.

The escapees came out behind shrubbery next
to the cottage. The greenery was already damp with night dew. It sprayed on
them as they crept along the side of the building, bending limbs that sprang
back. At the end of the building they couldn’t be seen from the upstairs
windows when they took off across a lawn toward an institution road, through
floodlit brightness to darkness beyond. This was the shortest route.

“We’ll circle around the
recreation fields to get to horticulture,” Watkins said.
“It’ll take a few minutes longer, but it’s away from the
buildings. Some fool might look out and yell: ‘Check this!’”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex said, having
acknowledged silently that Watkins was the leader, at least for now.

“Go,” Watkins said. They crashed
from the bushes together, running low across the wet lawn, throwing elongated
shadows in the bright lights. In half a dozen seconds they were in the safety
of darkness. Again they were in bushes. These were next to the fence around the
superintendent’s house. They could see it, a two-storeyed brick cottage.
To Alex it was a mansion. The lights were on downstairs, and a night breeze
wafted the sound of music to the fugitives.

Watkins led them around the outside of the
back yard, and across a patch of dark lawn between the rear of the hospital and
the fence. Then they were on the recreation fields, three in a row, all
slightly larger than a softball field. Beyond the last was a storm fence. The
vocational landscaping area was on the other side, separated from the farm.
Here was half an acre of canned infant shrubs and trees and flowers. A
greenhouse was attached to a small office and, on the other end, to a wooden
double door a few feet aboveground. The door went down to the underground
furnace.

They scrambled over the fence, the sound
racing along it as the fence rippled. It seemed loud and goaded them into
action.

Alex dropped first, one foot crashing into a
small plant, the stick snapping. “Shit!” he said, crouching and
trying to fluff it up.

“C’mon, man,” Watkins said.

At the door into the ground, Watkins pulled a
pin and lifted the door from the wrong side. The padlock was still closed. The
space was about eighteen inches wide, but that was enough for three boys to
slide in on their stomachs, swinging their legs down to the ladder. The
firelight from the furnace cut the darkness enough to see silhouettes and
shapes. It was hot down in this hole. The furnace took most of the space, but Alex
found room to lie down on the concrete. The others did the same next to him.

“You sure they won’t look
here?” JoJo asked.

“They didn’t the last time
somebody was missing. I left a thread across the door for a month and checked
it when those two Mexicans from Roosevelt beat it. The lock’s outside.
They probably look at it.”

“
Where’s those
cigarettes
?” Alex asked. “You gave mine to that… fink
rat bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know you didn’t
dig it—but what the fuck could I do? We had to stop him from snitchin’
the minute we were gone. When we had him jammed, we could kick his ass to keep
him quiet, but after that… My brother, he’s in Leavenworth, said
somethin’, ‘You gotta kill a stool pigeon or kiss his ass.
Ain’t
no
way to get around ’em.’ Me,
I didn’t wanna kill Constantine, so I bribed him. It seemed to work.
Wasn’t
nobody
out chasin’ us.
Right?”

“Yeah, right,” Alex said
grudgingly, thinking that this semiliterate Okie was older than everyone else
in Whittier. Watkins didn’t think like a kid. Nevertheless, Alex
couldn’t decide whether or not he liked Watkins.

The cigarettes came over while Watkins
talked. JoJo also lighted one.

“There’s water and candy
bars,” Watkins said.

“Any Snickers?”
JoJo asked.

“Yeah, but you’re not hungry now,
are you?”

“I want a candy bar.”

“Okay… but when they’re
gone, they’re gone. We got a dozen, and that’s what we eat at least
until tomorrow night.”

“Shhh,” Alex said. “Voices
carry at night. We don’t know when they’re up there.”

“Right,” Watkins said. Thereafter
they talked in whispers. But conversation was meager. They lay side by
side, heads resting against the concrete wall, feet toward the furnace. Alex
had misgivings when he faced that he had nowhere and nobody to go to—not
alone. Without their connections he could only wander around for a few days,
until he was too dirty and too hungry, and then the police would swallow him.
He’d learned that much from his prepubescent runaways. Even with money he
couldn’t rent a hotel room, not a young boy. At some future time he might
be a successful fugitive in an intense manhunt, but not now. Not without the
help JoJo and Watkins had.

Yet it would be worth it if he got a few
months of freedom, especially if they were really free; then he could take
the punishment and extra incarceration. Despite the tension, or perhaps because
of it, he dozed off amid these thoughts. The furnace’s proximity made him
dream of sunbathing and sweating on a beach—sea, sun, sand, and water.

A hand was over his mouth. Another shook his
shoulder. He jerked his head and came awake, instinctively struggling to
breathe freely—until his mind registered the circumstances.

“Shhh,” JoJo whispered, lips
almost touching Alex’s ear, jerking a thumb upward.

Voices of indecipherable words drifted down.
Then
came
the clanging sound of a gate being opened.
Seconds later the padlock rattled.

All three boys held their breaths, waiting,
but after the padlock everything was silent. Moments later the gate clanged
again. It was obvious the searchers were gone, but the boys remained quiet just
in case.

Three hours and half a
dozen cigarettes later, all of them sweating profusely from the heat, JoJo
said: “Fuck this, you guys.
Let’s make a move now. By tomorrow night I’ll be shriveled
up—dehydrated.”

Alex, too, had been fretting with impatience.

“Whaddya think?” Watkins asked.

“Fuck, man,” Alex said.
“It’s gotta be three or four in the morning. They’re probably
done looking already. I ain’t got
no
eyes to
stay here all day. And the man might come down here.”

“Okay, let’s try it. We’ll
stay off the roads if we can… and duck when we see headlights. By morning
we’ll be a few miles away.”

“Let’s have another smoke and put
the show on the road,” JoJo said.

Which is what they did.
They squeezed out the way they had entered, the sweat
turning to goosebumps in the night breeze. Alex fought down shivers while
waiting for the others to emerge.

Bending low at the waist to minimize
visibility, they trudged through the reform-school’s fields—first
the beets, then next a cornfield, where they had to protect their faces from
the crackling, dry stalks. At the end of the cornfield was a dirt road just
inside the fence. The fence had rolled concertina wire along its top, except at
the rear gate. There it was just three strands of barbed wire sticking straight
up. On the other side was a privately owned orange grove—and freedom.

The boys crouched in the cornfield, watching
the gate.

“Let’s go,” Watkins said.

“Hold it,” Alex said. “We
oughta wait here awhile, I think.”

“Why?”

“
‘Cause
they ain’t damn fools, and it’s obvious this is the easiest place
to climb out. They could be watching.”

“Man, make up your mind. You wanted to
get going instead of waiting. Now you wanna wait.”

Alex tossed a shoulder. “Fuck it. Do
what you want.”

“You guys wait.”

Alex hesitated, feeling it was a challenge to
his courage. The moonlit night seemed peaceful and unthreatening. Crickets
serenaded.

“We’ll be right behind you if
it’s cool,” he said.

Watkins moved farther back into the cornfield
and urinated. He moved away from them to a more direct run at the fence. He
sprinted out and leaped. The fence began rattling instantly, a loud sound in
the still night.

“HOLD IT!” screamed a voice. Two
men burst from the cornfield only twenty yards away, flashlight beams
bouncing as they ran.

Watkins had his hands at the top, one leg up.
But he didn’t get the other leg above their grasp. They tore him down. A
flashlight beam whipped through the darkness as it was used to club the
struggling boy.

JoJo turned to run, but Alex grabbed his
shirt collar and jerked, sitting him on his rump. Alex wanted to help Watkins,
but he knew it was hopeless without a weapon, and none was within reach.

The men bent Watkins’ arms behind his
back, doubling him over, cuffing him on the back of the head, demanding:
“Where’s your pals… where’s your pals?” Meanwhile
they dragged him down the road.

When they were a hundred yards away but still
visible, Alex patted JoJo’s back. “Now we go. C’mon!”
Without waiting for a response, he leaped up and ran to the gate, springing
high, his fingers curling over the top, but below the barbed wire. JoJo hit the
fence a moment later.

“There they are!” one man yelled.
“Goddammit!
Stop!”
They were too far away for anything more than yells.

Alex’s pants cuff caught on the wire.
He tore it loose. A barb raked his calf, but he ignored it. He poised on top,
gathered himself and leaped, landing in plowed dirt. JoJo grunted as he landed
a moment later. Alex was already running into the trees. “Run, motherfucker,
run!” he said, now enveloped by the darkness of overhanging foliage.

The dirt was soft and loose and seemed to
grab at their feet. Alex’s leg muscles quickly began aching. JoJo was
falling behind.

A dirt road ran through the orange grove.
Alex turned down it, now able to run faster. Hot knives cut into his lungs when
he sucked in air. Soon, however, he stopped, ducking back into the trees. JoJo
caught up and stood bent over at the waist because it was easier to breathe.
Alex knew that speed wasn’t the answer. The men would sound an alarm, and
no matter how fast they ran, the institution’s automobiles were faster
and could cut them off. In minutes those who’d caught Watkins would send
pursuers, and they would know the terrain, whereas Alex had no idea what was
beyond the orange grove. He knew they had to keep moving yet avoid what the
hunters would expect.