Little Boy Blue (8 page)

6The lights went on
while it was still dark outside. The hard glare seared through Alex’s
eyelids and brought him awake with a start, while against his ears pounded the
clatter of metal banging metal. A man in the doorway was whacking a large key
on the doorframe, yelling, “Reveille… reveille!
Up
an’ at ’em!”

Boys were
rising
,
some with alacrity, others indolently. Alex raised himself up on his elbows and
looked around, his eyes gritty, feeling out of place but not afraid. More than
half the boys were black or Chicano; the youngest were around his age (only a
couple of them) while the others ranged up to fourteen or fifteen. Talk was
minimal. Everyone ignored everyone else. There was no chatter and no horseplay,
unlike other places he’d been.

“Best hurry,” a voice said, and
Alex turned to look into the pale- yellow, freckled face of a black boy. The
face had a wizened look, and kinky hair exploded from it like hundreds of tiny
watch springs. The pale black boy began tugging his own bed together quite inexpertly.
It was something he had obviously had no experience with.

Alex got up from the bed, put on his clothes,
and joined the hurrying. He straightened the bed, making neat square corners as
he’d been taught in military school. Some of the others knew how, but
many fumbled and tugged, and some tried to slap the rippled blankets down
without tightening the sheets beneath. The freckled black boy was exasperatedly
saying, “Sh… sh… shit,” in jerky phrases, nodding his
head in quick emphasis. He backed into Alex between the bunks and turned with
his lips pursed pugnaciously. Then he saw Alex’s neat bed.

“Man, you done been here before?”
he asked.

Alex shook his head.

“How the fuck you make that bed so
cool?”

“I’ll help you.” Alex did
so, first pulling the sheets tight so the wrinkles disappeared, while the black
boy cocked his head and blinked his eyes, looking angry that Alex could do something
he found so frustrating.

The key banged again on the door, triggering
the boys to a final burst of activity. Then they all took positions beside
the foots
of the beds and folded their arms. Alex followed
their example.

The man in the doorway—short and
gimp-legged, wearing a cheap, shapeless sweater—now stalked down the
aisle. Where the beds failed to meet his standards, he grabbed the blanket and
tore the bedding to the floor. Nothing was said until he reached the freckled
black boy’s bed. Then the man smiled mirthlessly, showing yellow-stained
teeth. “Seemed to have learned, eh, Chester? Guess you wanna start eating
breakfast.”

“Yassah,” the boy said, grinning.

“What’s funny, Chester?”

The boy’s face went blank in an
instant.
“Nothing, Mr. Barnes.”

Mr. Barnes grunted, stalked back to the door,
and whacked it with his key. The boys whose beds had passed inspection formed a
line in front of him. The others had to stay behind.

In columns of two the boys going to breakfast
marched down the long corridor of the night before, the leading pair stopping
at prearranged places so the column and the gimpy man didn’t straggle.
The twenty boys from Alex’s dorm were joined by those of two others,
making a group of about sixty. Alex saw the two Mexicans he’d fought
with, but they ignored him. Absolute silence was required, and the boys also
had to walk with their arms folded across their chests, to stop grab-assing.
Three older boys swaggered beside the column, each with a blue kerchief folded
into a rectangle and pinned at the shouldertop as a badge of authority. They
were “monitors,” and each was of a different race. A thin Mexican
with kinky hair started whispering to another boy and was seen by a black
monitor, who trotted forward and kicked him in the butt, using the flat side of
his foot against the soft flesh. It
arced
the victim
upward, humiliating more than hurting. Alex’s cheeks turned red in
sympathy.
Mr.

Barnes saw the kick and said nothing. The
company was at a stop when it happened, and he simply waved them forward.

Silence prevailed in the mess hall, too. Ten
boys sat at each table, with a monitor at the head. The monitor filled the
bowls with oatmeal and did the same with the milk. He used the sugar shaker
first and watched to make sure nobody took more than his share.

While the meal was being eaten, Alex’s
eyes roamed furtively over the faces, all of which were engrossed in getting
down the plain but wholesome fare: oatmeal, bread, prunes, and milk. Except for
the numerous olive and brown skins, the faces were no different from those at
military schools and other places he’d been. He’d expected them to
be… different. He couldn’t remember details, but he recalled the
stories about Juvenile Hall, all frightening. He expected tough kids and faces
that showed it. He felt less out of place than he’d expected. Nobody was
paying him any attention—that was part of it—but it was also that
the other places had, in their regimented atmospheres, somewhat prepared
him for this. He did notice that most whites and Chicanes had ducktail hairdos
that shone with grease, and he saw a few boys sneak the white margarine into
pieces of paper and slip the packages into shirt pockets.

When they went back through the corridor it
was to a large room with straight-backed wooden benches and a waxed floor. The
benches were covered with names gouged in the soft pine, so that ensuing layers
of lacquer didn’t erase them. He was to learn that the Los Angeles gangs
took their names either from neighborhood streets or from some landmark in the
neighborhood: Chapo de Temple (street), Alfie de Forence (street), Topo de
Dogtown (dog pound),
Sonny
de Hazard (park).
“De” meant “of.”

The boys sat in arms-folded silence, except
for the monitors. They sprawled in a corner at the front of the room and played
Monopoly, though even they didn’t get loud. Mr. Barnes sat in a chair
tilted back against the wall beside the door, a clipboard cradled in his hand.
He nodded affirmatively when a boy asked to go to the bathroom. They had to ask
by holding up a hand, extending one finger as a request to urinate, two to
defecate, and three to get a drink of water. It was done one at a time, so that
when one boy returned, half a dozen arms shot up.

One boy that Alex thought was Mexican, except
for his slanted eyes, was passing the time by forming bubbles on the tip of his
tongue and blowing them into the air. None lasted more than a few seconds, but
it fascinated Alex, and he worked his mouth in futile imitation, unable to form
a bubble much less blow it into the air.

Half an hour later the company trudged
outdoors. Juvenile Hall was larger than Alex had thought, larger than any
military school he’d been in. Buildings blocked his view for half a mile,
mostly two- story brick, though others were simply concrete covered with paint.
Other columns of boys were emerging from the buildings, and these seemed to be
grouped according to age. The youngest group was seven or eight years old and
wore bib overalls, whereas the oldest was sixteen or seventeen and wore khakis.
The company marched along a road underneath a fifteen-foot wall topped with
barbed wire. Alex looked up, and the weight of imprisonment pressed on his
young mind.

Across a hundred and fifty yards of lawn,
surrounded by pepper trees, was a building that stood all alone. A group of
girls in denim dresses emerged, surprising Alex. What could girls do to break
the law?

The companies met in a paved square outside
the school building and went through the ritual of raising the flag and
pledging allegiance. Only the dozen teachers clustered near the doorway
seemed sincere. Most of the boys watched silently.

When the ritual was over
the companies splintered to organize in small clusters around each teacher.
Five new arrivals remained, Alex and the two Mexicans
he’d fought among them. A skinny old man in a shabby black suit and wire
pince nez, wearing a hearing aid, came over. He knew one of the Mexicans.

“Back again, Cisneros? What’s it
this time? You’re getting a little old for bicycles.”

The Chicano, a boy of thirteen with Indian
cheekbones and raven hair that jutted out like porcupine quills—except
for the ducktail—smiled affably, showing good, even teeth.
“No, joyriding a car this time.”

“Glad to see you’re moving up.
Don’t worry. You’ll make the big time yet. Just like your brother.
You said he’s in San Quentin?”

“He got out last week. He sent you his
regards.”

“How’d know… I mean, you
just came in last night.”

“He came down to the precinct
yesterday.”

“Oh… well, go on to Mrs.
Glantz’s class. You haven’t gotten any smarter in three months,
have you?”

Cisneros, still smiling, shook his head.

“You probably didn’t even get
near a school,” the man added, an ironic twang in his voice. The man
didn’t know the second Mexican, who had pale skin and green eyes.
“Bet they call you huero,” he said.

The boy nodded but didn’t smile. He
wasn’t comfortable.

“What grade are you in?”

“B seven.”

“Spell ‘personal.’”

The boy’s face, already expressionless,
went completely blank.

“Go to Mr. Beck’s class.”
He pointed to a group of twelve-year- olds seated around a squat figure in a
tweed jacket with elbow patches, a stubby pipe clenched in his teeth, a man
sartorially the apotheosis of the country pedagogue.

When Alex claimed to be in the seventh grade,
the black-suited man’s rheumy eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Spell ‘observation,’”
the man said.

Alex did so. Since he was eight he’d
been a constant winner in spelling bees.

“What parts of grammar are required for
a complete sentence?”

“A subject and a
predicate.”

“I’ll bet you can even
read,” the man said, again with an ironic tone. When Alex didn’t
reply, the man gestured toward where Cisneros was checking in with a
schoolteacher. “You can go to Mrs. Glantz’s, too.”

A score of boys were loosely gathered in
front of the fortyish woman, who reeked of scent and wore layers of makeup that
nearly, if not completely, subdued acne craters. Her clothes were fluffs and
flounces. She formed them into the inevitable double column, counted heads, and
led them into the building and up the stairs.

Alex was now directly in front of Cisneros;
he was very conscious of the bigger boy’s proximity, almost as if they
were touching.

The column stopped as Mrs. Glantz looked for
her key.

“Hey, Paddy,” the voice behind
him said softly but clearly. A finger patted Alex’s shoulder. He turned,
wary, wondering if they were going to fight. “I’m sorry we fucked
with you,
ese
. For a Paddy you’ve got lots of
guts. My name’s Lulu.”

The surge of bodies as the door opened
amputated their conversation, though Alex didn’t know what to say
anyway. He was still suspicious.

Mrs. Glantz made no attempt to teach. Nearly
all the boys had been raised in slums and disliked school. They didn’t
want to learn. Book learning had no value in their lives. Mrs. Glantz was happy
if they didn’t fight or sabotage the room. Some did jigsaw puzzles, while
others cut photos from a magazine for a collage that would eventually cover one
wall. Some leafed through magazines of all kinds from huge cardboard
boxes—the overflow of donations to the county medical center—not
reading but looking at the photos and jokes. Even if the class wanted to learn,
none of them would be in Juvenile Hall for more than two months (two weeks was
average), and it was impossible to develop a curriculum when the class lacked
continuity. Indeed, Mrs. Glantz saw so many come and
go
that she seldom bothered to learn a name. When she noticed Alex standing
respectfully before her she knew he was a newcomer. She told him to find
something to occupy himself with.

Lulu was at a desk in the rear, a pile of
books stacked in front of him. Alex went
by,
hoping to
receive an acknowledgment, but Lulu was engrossed in writing his name in a
curlicued holograph, lulu de temple, on the blank front and rear pages and the
empty spaces where chapters ended. He wrote relentlessly, over and over.

Taking several Life magazines, Alex slipped
behind a desk near Lulu, hoping not to be noticed, and quickly lost
himself
in the words and pictures, mostly about the war.

At midmorning the class went out to the
softball diamond for a long recess. Lulu and a muscular black youth were told
to pick teams. Alex, younger and smaller than any of the others but appearing
probably superior to a very fat towhead with floppy ears, was chosen next to
last by the black.

Before he could take the field, Mrs. Glantz
called his name, not knowing who he was by sight. She was on a bench, and
beside her was a monitor with the blue kerchief on his shoulder.

“Go with him,” Mrs. Glantz said.
“Dr. Noble wants to see you.”