Little Boy Blue (11 page)

Dr. Noble didn’t bring the books, but
in the afternoon, when everyone except a monitor was at school, Alex and
Chester were taken out for a shower. Alex spotted a bookcase en route, and on
the way back he snatched a book and wrapped it in a towel without seeing the
title. Back in the cell he was disappointed by the tide, Arrowsmith, and he
wouldn’t remember it or the author, Sinclair Lewis, for many years, until
he began reading it again and realized it was the same story that had
enthralled him so long ago. He started reading it because he had nothing else
to do except lie on the stained mattress, which had been given back at supper,
or look out the window at night in Juvenile Hall. Without knowing there was
such a thing as literature—a book was a book—he was suddenly
immersed in life born on paper. Some of the words were beyond his vocabulary,
but that didn’t matter. The cell faded from consciousness, his troubles
were forgotten, and he thrilled and ached and struggled with Dr. Martin
Arrowsmith, M.D. When the lights went out at nine-thirty he tried to read from
the glow coming through the wire mesh, but it wasn’t enough. As he rolled
up his clothes for a pillow and got under the gray blanket, his mind still
overflowed with feelings about the book. He didn’t realize that the evening
hours in isolation in Juvenile Hall were happier than any he’d known in
many months. Erased was Clem’s death, the missed funeral— and also
the nagging worry about his fate, though he had realized that his control over
it was the same as that of a chip of wood on a river.

The next morning the deputy
superintendent came to see if Chester and Alex were through fighting and ready
to go back out with other boys, though to a regular company rather than
Receiving
company
. Chester was ready to promise
anything, and Alex went along with the attitude expected of him, although he
was really content to stay indefinitely where he was—as long as he had
enough to read.

 
“B”
Company was in its dayroom when the escort brought Alex in before supper. The
boys sat in silence, arms folded, on hard benches around three sides of the
long room, while the counselor and monitors were in chairs on a landing up
three steps, as if onstage. The proscenium was the frame of the bars and the
grille gate, beyond which was the rest of the company quarters.

All the watching eyes burned into Alex from
faces already trained in hardened repose, and he colored and looked along the
floor. It was concrete, but waxed and buffed to gleam like varnished maple. No
human blemishes marred its surface. Alex saw that every boy except himself was
in stocking feet.

The seated counselor was speaking to him, and
he could see a yellow nicotine stain at the base of the man’s lower
teeth, but he couldn’t see his eyes—they were hidden behind
wire-framed, tinted glasses, and they caught the sunlight through the window.
The man was swarthy and his name was
Miranda, that
much Alex understood from the words. A pointed finger told him to remove
his shoes, and one of the monitors, fetching him a folded rag of gray blanket,
told him to buff away the marks he’d made.

The shoes encumbered him, but he didn’t
know what to do with them. His face flamed, and he knew he looked like a fool.

“Put them down, dummy,” Mr.
Miranda said, his voice cutting through the silence, eliciting a few snorts and
snickers before his glance stifled them.

Just as Alex got on his knees and his rump
jutted up, someone made a loud farting sound. Laughter followed, and although
Alex was embarrassed to the point of pain, he managed a lopsided, cemetery
grin to convey camaraderie.

“It’s funny, yes?” Mr.
Miranda asked. “Someone makes a foul sound with their mouth, and you
young heathens think it’s hilarious.”

Alex had raised himself upright, though still
on his knees.

“Nobody told you to stop,” Mr.
Miranda said, flicking a hand and dismissing him back to work.

Alex kept at it until the company went to eat
supper.

After supper they stayed outdoors until dark.
They had the soft- ball diamond area, but a vote switched the game to dodgeball
instead. The forty boys became a herd, and Mr. Miranda hurled a white
volleyball into it. The boy it hit came out and threw, and then a second boy
joined him. At first it was impossible to miss, and those hit slowly formed a
large circle. As more came out, those who remained had more room to dodge,
leaping, ducking, feinting one way and jumping another, running from one side
of the circle to the other. The boys yelled in triumph and dismay. Alex was
caught up in the game, enjoying himself immensely. He was still in the circle
when just five others remained, more because others threw at their friends than
because of his agility. Finally, a ball missed everyone, and before he could scurry
to the far side, he tripped and fell down just four feet from the boy with the
ball. Moments later he was a member of the circle.

It wasn’t until shower time, just
before bed, that he realized how few of the boys were white—not more than
half a dozen among forty. Nearly every torso and pair of legs was olive or
brown. He wondered why it was, but otherwise he had no feelings about it.
During the fight with Chester, when he had been getting the better of it, he
hadn’t attached any significance to the grumbling blacks, and if asked
what it meant, he would have answered that they simply knew and liked Chester.
Clem had always used “nigger” and “kike,” and because
these were said so easily by the father, the son didn’t know they were
offensive.

He learned otherwise on Sunday morning. The
boys had to attend church, Catholic or Protestant, and since he wasn’t
Catholic he went to the other, which was really just fervent volunteers in
shiny, cheap suits, poor sinners who had found Jesus and were offering him to these
troubled children. There was much praising the Lord and singing of “The
Old Rugged Cross” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” On the
way out the boys were each given a candy bar. Alex didn’t want his, and
two boys immediately clamored for it. “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe,”
he said, the timeworn child’s litany, thoughtless and without malice.
“Catch a nigger by the toe…” Suddenly looming in front of
Alex was a whipcord-lean thirteen-year-old with chocolate features twisted
in anger, fists clenched in challenge. Alex stood his ground and put his hands
up, because he knew no other way. A bony black fist whacked into his nose,
knocking him on the seat of his pants and bringing forth a stream of blood.
When he was getting up, puzzled and afraid because he was overmatched, the
counselor ran over between them.
This time it was a different
counselor, one who liked the black youth, so he sent Alex to the washroom to
stanch the blood and afterward made Alex apologize for using the word.
Alex never again used “nigger,” except—very rarely—as a
curse of hate directed at a specific individual. He never used it just with
whites, feeling it was wrong to be two-faced.

The following week he was fully impressed
with the differences and divisions of race when a husky white fourteen-year-old
called “Okie” got into a scrap with a Mexican in the schoolhouse
latrine. Okie was big and strong, but as he rammed the Mexican youth against a
wall, four other Chicanos leaped at him. One white youth came to Okie’s
aid, and both took a beating before the uproar brought an adult to the rescue.
All involved were older boys, on a different level than
a
eleven-year-old, so Alex just watched, but finally he understood. Thereafter he
was conscious of race, self-conscious whenever skin color was different, until
he’d had some sign about attitudes. One part of innocence was over.

Days drifted into weeks of routine in a world
similar to the schools he’d known, but it was different,
too—tougher, crueler, and a greater challenge. All the boys spoke atrocious
English laced with vulgarity, and his own precise grammar stood out, though it
began to change slightly, like a bright leaf with the first dot of brown mold
at its edge. His vocabulary was extensive for his age, and often the other boys
couldn’t understand a word he used. So instead of using the vocabulary
he’d been proud of, it became a habit to use simpler words. Sometimes he
had to think consciously of an easier word, and it gave him a sort of hesitant
stutter. The boys used the word “motherfucker,” which he’d
never heard previously. “Fuck” had been rare and daring, and
“motherfucker” slapped him for a while.

A probation officer called him to the front
office for an interview. A clinical psychologist summoned him to the
hospital, and he took tests, saying what he saw in ink blots, putting blocks
together, reciting numbers backward and forward,
figuring
out puzzles.

He didn’t think about his future. The
world of Juvenile Hall pressed lives too closely together for him to dream as
he used to. The hours were scheduled tightly, from lights-on to lights-out.
Only on Sunday evening did he feel his lonely condition. On Sunday afternoons
the boys had visitors, and nearly every boy had someone, usually a whole
family. Families could leave bags of candy, cookies, and magazines. After
supper the bags were distributed. While the bags were being passed out, he sat
alone, sunk into himself, shaking his head if someone offered him something. In
his pain was bitter anger, a way of coping with it.

He had no friends in the company and was
pretty much ignored. He’d established that he would fight if bothered, so
he was left alone. The half dozen other whites were older and from different
backgrounds, nearly all of them affecting ducktails and low pants. Two were cousins
and bragged that they had been charged with murder. They had shot a hobo
walking along the railroad grade behind their house with a .22 rifle stolen
from a neighbor’s bedroom. No newspapers were allowed, so the claim was
unverified. True or not, it was their prestige in a world where rank
depended on skill at violence. The toughest boys were the most respected, even
if the toughest were slobbering cretins. Most of the adolescents had committed
some crime—broken into a house or got caught rifling glove compartments.
A few had stolen cars, and one twelve-year-old black, Lewis—he seemed
much older— had been caught burglarizing gas stations for ration stamps
which he then peddled lucratively in his neighborhood. This boy seemed always
ready to smile in a warm but superior way, and when the company was seated on
the benches and forbidden to talk, which was for hour-long periods several
times a day, Lewis always read a book. Nobody else did so
except
Alex, though it was the one activity Mr. Miranda allowed.

Books were sneered at, but nobody sneered at
Lewis. On
boxing day
nobody would put the gloves on
with him. Although Alex couldn’t call him a friend, Lewis was the first
to notice that he had no visitors and to offer cookies from what his own
family left. Once when an older black crowded in front of Alex at the sink in
the washroom, Alex pushed back, and before the uneven fight could start,
Lewis stepped in and stopped it. He didn’t make the black give back the
sink but instead gave Alex his own.

At the school, Alex had Lulu, who was
friendly when they were in the classroom. But during recess, when the boys
withdrew into groups, Lulu ignored him, though he sometimes picked Alex for his
softball team ahead of boys with more ability. He was from Temple Street, and there
were several boys from his neighborhood gang in Juvenile Hall. He hung out with
them and had time for Alex only when they weren’t around.

Only to
Chester did Alex talk very much, as if the fight and being in seclusion had
cemented the friendship. Chester had four brothers and two sisters, and his
father was in the army; his mother worked as a
cleaning woman
in a hotel, and the children were pretty much on their own. He wanted to be a
professional baseball player. This was his third trip to Juvenile Hall, and he
was waiting to go to a county camp for six months. He planned to run away as
soon as he got there.