Little Boy Blue

In the summer of 1943, a plain black Ford
sedan carried three people through the Cahuenga Pass from Los Angeles into the
San Fernando Valley. A middle-aged female social worker was driving. An
eleven-year-old boy was in the middle, and the boy’s father was on the
right. All of them stared through the windshield with somber faces. The social
worker looked stern, but it was really a practiced stoicism insulating her
emotions from the pain of sympathy. The father was silently determined, but his
determination was furrowed with worry; his jaw muscles pulsed as he sucked on a
cigarette. The boy’s lips were curled in until almost hidden, and
occasionally he bit them inside to stifle the smoldering tantrum. He was both
working himself up and restraining himself. Rebellion was coming, but this
particular moment was too soon.

Beyond Cahuenga Pass the large highway curved
to follow the base of the hills dotted with white houses buried in green
slopes. The social worker turned off onto a narrow, straight road through endless
orange groves. Every so often there was a flash of white as the car passed a
neat frame house set back from the road. The day was hot and the air
dusty,
and many insects splattered against the windshield.
Once they passed two bare-legged girls riding bareback on a fat mare. In 1943,
the San Fernando Valley was still the countryside—without smog and
without tract homes—where a few small communities were separated by miles
of citrus and alfalfa.

The boy stared ahead, as if transfixed by the
white line in the black road that disappeared in shimmering heat waves.
Actually he saw nothing and heard nothing. He was thinking of how many
identical trips he’d taken since he was four years old, to yet another
place to be ruled by strangers. It was nearly all he could remember—
boarding schools, military schools, foster homes—those places and
snatches of ugly scenes, tumult, and tears, the police coming to keep the
peace. Whenever he thought of his mother it was with her face contorted in
tears. He knew he disliked her without knowing why. He remembered the day when
his father walked out, and he had run after him, dragging a toy Indian
headdress, tugging at the car door and begging to go along. His father had
driven away, leaving him sprawled in tears in the dirt, and his mother had come
with a wooden coat hanger to make him scream even louder.

He remembered being in a courtroom but
nothing about what happened. Then his mother was gone, never seen again, never
mentioned.
After that began the foster homes and military
schools.
He couldn’t even remember the first one, except that
he’d been caught trying to run away on a rainy Sunday morning. His memory
images grew clearer concerning later places; he remembered other runaways, one
lasting six days, and fights and temper tantrums. He’d been to so many
different places because each one threw him out.

At first his rebellion had been blind, a
reflex response to pain— the pain of loneliness and no love, though he
had no names for these things, not even now. Something in him went out of
kilter when he confronted authority, and he was prone to violent tantrums on
slight provocation. Favored boys, especially in military school, looked down on
him and provoked the rages, which brought punishment that caused him to
run away. One by one the boy’s homes and military schools told his father
that the boy would have to go. Some people thought he was epileptic or
psychotic, but an electroencephalogram proved negative, and a psychiatrist
doing volunteer work for the Community Chest found him normal. Whenever he
was thrown out of a place, he got to stay in his father’s furnished room
for a few days or a week, sleeping on a foldup cot. He was happy during these
interludes. Rebellion and chaos served a purpose—they got him away from
torment. The time between arrival and explosion got shorter and shorter.

Now, as the tires consumed the dusty road,
the boy worked himself up, anticipating what he would do. Tears and pleas had
been futile, his father not deaf to them but helpless to change things. He too
had no choice. He was in his fifties, worn and thin, his skin red and leathered
from alcohol and laboring in the sun. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but in
recent years he drank a lot because of his wife, his son, and the Depression. A
good carpenter, he was proud of his craft, but work had been impossible for
nearly a decade. Only with the start of the war had he been working steadily.
He would have been happy except for his son. Why couldn’t the boy accept
the situation, the necessity of boarding him out? The man had told the boy
that the law required someone to look after him. If only there were a
family—aunts, uncles, cousins, friends—but both the man and his
former wife were orphans who had come here from southern Ohio, thinking that they’d
build a new life in sunny southern California. The man had an older sister who
lived in Louisville, but he hadn’t seen her for twenty years.

The man felt guilty about his son and salved
his conscience by paying more than he could afford on the military schools and
boarding homes. He scrimped on his own meals, lived in a cheap room. The boy
didn’t seem to notice the sacrifices. The man wondered if the boy was
crazy.

The man flipped his spent cigarette through
the window and suddenly felt angry. He’d spoiled his son. That was the
trouble. Only a spoiled boy would run away, fight, steal,
throw
tantrums. The man had done his best. He knew he’d done his best.

The social worker kept her hands firmly on
the wheel, her no- nonsense shoes on the gas and clutch. Traffic lights were
gauged early to shift down the gears. She’d learned to drive when she was
forty, having grown up where automobiles were not part of the landscape, and
she was always conscious of what she was doing. But with an empty road and
moderate speed, she had room to think. She could feel the boy beside her, his
body well known to the welfare agencies. Eleven years old and he’d
already accumulated a file.
A bright boy, in the top two
percent in intelligence, though his chaotic behavior and emotional problems kept
him from being a good student.
The boy had potential, but it would be
wasted. Years ago the situation would have
agonized
her, but for her own peace of mind she’d developed a protective shell
around her feelings. She did all she could to help but didn’t invest her
soul in a case. Too many cases failed, as if divorces and foster homes were
precursors to Juvenile Hall, reform school, and prison. This boy’s
chances for a successful life were very slim, made worse by his tempestuous
nature. His unique potential would develop into unique destructiveness. What a
pity, she thought, that there’s no direct relationship between the
intellect and the spirit. This boy needed a home and love for salvation, and
nobody could provide them, certainly no agency or institution.

“We’re early,” she said.
“We could stop for a bite somewhere.”

For a moment the man didn’t respond,
and then, as the words filtered through his reverie, he seemed startled. He
looked down at his son—a boy with a head too big for his body and eyes too
big for his head.
“You hungry, Alex?”

Alex shook his head, not wanting to speak and
break his gathering emotions. He needed everything for the looming
conflict.

The man, Clem Hammond, flushed. He too had a
temper. He shrugged an apology to the woman for his son’s churlishness,
thinking what his own father would have done faced with such a snotty attitude:
the stern farmer would have cut a switch and raised welts. Times had surely
changed, and not necessarily for the better. Yet Clem could understand Alex’s
misery, and he was sorry for being angry with the boy. “We could stop and
get some airplane magazines.” Then to the social worker he added
with pride, “Alex doesn’t like comic books.”

“I don’t want ‘em,”
Alex said, without looking around. His hands were pressed between his legs,
clenched into white-knuckled fists. Acid burned in his stomach, and tears
pressed behind his eyes. I don’t want to go there, he moaned inside
… don’t… don’t…
just take me
home, Pop. I’ll sleep on the floor and I won’t be any trouble…
please, Pop… please, God…

The silent prayer didn’t slow the Ford.
The orange groves fell behind, and now alfalfa fields glowed in the sun.
Whirling sprinklers threw off necklaces of sparkling water. The low
foothills that were the northern border of the San Fernando Valley grew larger.
The Valley Home for Boys was nestled at the base, shaded by eucalyptus,
pepper, and oak.

SCHOOL
ZONE DRIVE SLOWLY

Alex’s feet pressed the floorboard, his
body rigid, as if he could restrain their forward progress by willpower.

VALLEY
HOME FOR BOYS

A narrow road coated with fallen leaves was
behind the sign.

“I don’t like it,” Alex
said through tight jaws.

“How can you say that? You
haven’t seen it.” Clem was holding back his own anger. Hadn’t
he done all he could? He also saw the hints of a tantrum.

“It’s dirty,” Alex said.

The Ford went through sunlight mottled by the
overhead foliage. Stillness filled the grounds, a hush broken by occasional
trilling birds. But all living things were hiding from the August heat.

Everyone was tense. Alex’s eyes roved
like those of a small, trapped animal, and his breathing was thick, but he held
back the tantrum, waiting.

The road widened into a parking lot. Around
it
were
several two- story buildings with yellow tile
roofs; near the eaves the yellow was streaked. These were the dormitories. The
administration building was whitewashed frame that had seen better days. The
parking lot was nearly empty.