Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  When I came down the hill for the third time, Dunbaker came up to me and said he wanted to ride the sled. I knew what Dunbaker wanted before he said anything, but I was busy watching a man talking to Mr. Cooper, farther down the hill. He looked like Mr. Stillman. When I got up off the sled, I saw the man coming toward me. He had the same kind of pipe that Mr. Stillman had been smoking the day before, my first day. And he was wearing the same kind of gray coat. When he got close enough for me to see his eyes, I was sure it was Mr. Stillman.

  Mr. Stillman—everybody but me called him Stilly—had tiny red eyes that looked at people in a mean way from way back in his head. He must have had the only pair of eyes in the world like that. The pipe was almost as close to Stilly as his eyes. I never saw him without the pipe. I used to think that the pipe was the thing he cared about most in the world. … I watched Stilly coming up the slope. His look never changed. He seemed to be in his own world, just him and his pipe. I had tried to see Mr. Stillman all day. He was going to be my out; he was in charge of everything in this crazy place. He was the one who looked like and acted like he knew the most. And now here he was … a pair of eyes and a pipe and a big gray coat.

  After asking how I was, the pipe waited a while, then it said, “You wanted to see me?”

  I just asked him if he knew where I could get a sled. I was in Wiltwyck, really in it.

  Wiltwyck was different from the other places I had been in. Some guys had been there for years, and just about everybody had at least one real good friend or partner. When two or three guys were partners, they would share everything they got hold of—packages from home, food and fruits that their parents brought them on visiting day, things they stole, and stuff like that. It took me a long time to find a real partner, one I would share my loot and secrets with.

  I knew K.B. about a year before we became ace boon coons. K.B. was the first cat I locked with up at Wiltwyck. We had three fights before we decided we couldn’t beat each other, but it was a year before we got tight.

  K.B. was from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He was a little cat with a loud mouth, big eyes, and a left hand that nobody ever saw coming at him. And like me, K.B. could beat a lot of big guys. Being so good with his hands didn’t stop K.B. from being one of the nicest cats around. He would always rather argue than fight. Maybe this was because K.B. knew he was real good with his hands and was trying to learn how to be good with talk. He was always trying to get me to tell off guys he didn’t like. When we first pulled tight, K.B.’s favorite saying was, “Ask Claude.” I think Horse broke him out of that habit by asking him if he thought I was his father.

  K.B. and I didn’t get to be partners the way most of the guys did. We never said anything about being partners and sharing stuff we got. We just pulled tight and started getting in trouble together, stealing things and fighting together. One day after we became aces, we had our first fight in over a year because K.B. stole some canned apricots out of the kitchen and didn’t give me any. After that, we shared everything we stole, found, were given, and even the things we bought. Because I could read and knew a lot of words, K.B. thought I was the smartest cat up at Wiltwyck and maybe in the whole world. I never told him any different.

  I think K.B. must have been real shy when he came to Wiltwyck, because he used to beg me to tell him about the girls I knew. Late at night when I was sleepy and tired of lying all day and half the night, I would listen to K.B. tell me about Linda. For the six months that my bed was next to K.B.’s, I went to sleep hearing about Linda. After a week of hearing about Linda, I had to meet her just to see if she was as fine as K.B. said she was. K.B. said she was real dark-skinned, had long hair, wore lipstick, had “titties, little ones, but tits just the same,” had a pretty face, and was real fresh. K.B. said he had done it to her one time up on the roof, and he used to tell me about it so much and in so many different ways that it had to be a lie.

  Most of the time, K.B. couldn’t think about anything but girls, and anybody who could tell him a good lie about girls could get him to do things. Sometimes when I wanted K.B. to help me steal something, I would have to promise to tell him about a real pretty, real fresh girl. K.B. was always trying to jerk off, and he said he shot one time; but I didn’t see it, so I didn’t believe it. But about a year after K.B. and I had moved to Aggrey House, I heard K.B. come tearing down the stairs yelling as loud as he could. It was around one in the morning. He woke up everybody in the first-floor dormitory. I was awake and wondering what was going on, when K.B. came running into the dormitory with his dick in his hand and yelling, “Claude, I did it! I did it!” When he reached my bed and yelled out, “Man, I shot,” all the beds in the dormitory started jumping, and eveybody crowded around my bed with flashlights before K.B. stopped yelling.

  Some guys just said things like “Wow” or “Oh, shit,” but Rickets said, “Man, that’s the real stuff.”

  Horse said, “Man, that ain’t nothin’ but dog water.”

  K.B. said, “That ain’t no dog water, man, ‘cause it’s slimy.”

  Horse, who was always talking about facts, said, “Man, that can’t be scum, ‘cause scum is white.”

  Knowing that scum was white, most of the guys said that Horse was right and that it was just dog water. I said that dog water was more than he ever made. Horse went heading for the bathroom saying he was going to show me what the real stuff looked like. Everybody followed Horse and watched and cheered him on while he tried for the real stuff. Horse only made dog water, just like K.B., but nobody paid much attention—everybody was trying to jerk off that night. It was a matter of life or death. After what seemed like hours of trying and wearing out my arm, I shot for the first time in my life. A lot of other guys did it for the first time too, but some cats just got tired arms.

  After K.B. and I had been tight for a few months, a lot of guys started trying to get tight with us; and before we knew it, we had a gang. Our gang was always robbing the kitchen late at night, gang fighting with Windsor House, or just stealing for the fun of it.

  One day in the summer of the year after I came to Wiltwyck, Simms, who had been transferred from Carver House about a year before, came into the house waving a piece of paper, grinning and shouting my name. When he came into the dormitory and saw me sitting on my bed, he ran up to me, stuck the paper in my face, and said, “Read that, Claude Brown.” It was a transfer slip for me and K.B. We were going to be moved to Aggrey House, the Big “A,” where all the older cats lived and where Simms was a counselor. I didn’t like Simms, and I didn’t like the idea of going where all those big guys were. Some of them, like Jake Adams and Stumpy Edwards, were real mean cats. I told Simms that I wasn’t going to stay in Aggrey House. He just smiled and said, “Don’t tell me you’re scared, Claude Brown?” I told him I wasn’t scared, that I just didn’t want to go and wasn’t going to stay.

  But I really was scared of Simms. I had seen him smack big Jim Cole in the gym one day. Jim Cole was about six feet tall and weighed about 185 pounds. When Simms smacked him, the smack picked Jim up off his feet and slammed him against a wall about ten feet away. Simms was real tall, and he had long arms, big hands, and could move real fast. He would lean toward one side of a cat and hit him when the guy started moving away from him. It wasn’t easy to get out of the way if he wanted to hit you. I saw a lot of guys try, but I never saw any of them make it. I had only seen Simms hit one cat who didn’t cry. That was Stumpy Edwards. And that was another reason I didn’t want to go to Aggrey House—I didn’t want to be in the same house with a cat who could be hit by Simms and not only wouldn’t cry, but even looked mean.

  When I told Simms for the second time that I wasn’t going to Aggrey House, he showed me Stilly’s name on the transfer slip and said, “Come on, boy, git your things. We’re gonna see how much hell you can raise over in my house.”

  I ran to the linen room to get our counselor, Claiborne, and said to him, “Mr. Claiborne, Simms is here wit a piece-a paper, but I ain’t go
in’ nowhere.”

  Simms was right behind me. He handed Claiborne the paper. Clay read the paper and kept looking at it for a while. Then he raised his head, looked at me for a while, smiled sadly, and said, “Claude, get your ace. You gotta go.”

  Simms was still smiling when K.B. came running in, yelling like he always did. For once, Claiborne didn’t bother to tell K.B. not to make so much noise. He just kept looking for some socks for us. K.B. looked at me as if to say, “Is it true?”

  Before he could say anything, I said, “Man, I ain’t goin’.”

  K.B. said, “Claiborne, do I have to go?”

  Clay turned around. His face was trying to smile when he said, “That’s what Mr. Stillman said.”

  Everything was real quiet in the linen room … and real sad too. The only one who wasn’t sad was Simms. He was smiling and gloating. I had become the main problem at Wiltwyck, and Simms had been telling me for nearly a year that I would be a different boy if I were in his house. Now he was going to get a chance to prove it.

  Claiborne was a strict counselor, but I had gotten used to him. I liked him even though he was always telling me he didn’t trust me and always thought I had a hand in everything that went on. The moment he heard something had been stolen, he would come looking for me. But that was all right, because I was usually the one who had stolen it or had told somebody else to steal it or had stolen it from whoever had stolen it first.

  Claiborne liked K.B. more than he liked anybody else in Carver House. One day K.B. made a bet with Jody that the next time Claiborne messed with him, he was going to punch Claiborne in the mouth. Jody took the bet, but he wasn’t the only one who thought K.B. was lying. We all did. I hoped K.B. was lying, for his own sake. Claiborne was mean and didn’t play. On the same day that K.B. made the bet with Jody, Claiborne came into the dormitory and told K.B. to get into his bed and be quiet. K.B. started talking louder than before. Claiborne walked over to K.B. and reached for him. True to his word, K.B. punched Claiborne right smack in the mouth. Claiborne was more shocked than anybody else. This kind of thing just didn’t happen to Claiborne, and he didn’t know how to take it. Claiborne couldn’t hit K.B., since K.B. was just a kid; but he grabbed K.B.’s hand and started twisting it, and K.B. started yelling for Nick, our other counselor, to help him before Claiborne broke his arm. But Claiborne wasn’t crazy. For the next two weeks, K.B. was Claiborne’s yardbird. He had to go everywhere Claiborne went from morning till night. He even had to ask Claiborne when he wanted to go to the bathroom. When the other guys were playing ball or sledding or ice skating, K.B. would be there, but he had to stay with Claiborne and just watch. The one good thing about it was that everybody knew why K.B. was Clay’s yardbird, and it gave him a bigger reputation as a bad cat. After that, Claiborne and K.B. became real good friends. At least the friendship was as good as it could get between counselors and boys.

  The day K.B. and I were supposed to go to Aggrey House, I kept wishing Nick was around; but Nick was off. I knew Nick would have done something, because that’s the way he was.

  I thought Nick was an ugly cat the first time I saw him. But before long, Nick was the most beautiful cat up at Wiltwyck. He came in the door of Carver House one afternoon during the daily rest period. This was a time when everybody had to go and lie on his bed for about two hours. We used this time to bullshit and lie mostly, but sometimes somebody would really go to sleep. Nobody was sleeping when Nick walked into Carver House for the first time. He kind of leaned over when he walked, and he had a big bounce. It was hard to tell if Nick was young or old or young and old. When I first noticed him, K.B. and Jody were talking to him, feeling him out. He was standing just inside the dormitory doorway. I had heard him say, “Hi, fellas.” But looking at him, it was hard for me to believe he had said that.

  Nick was looking real serious while he was talking to K.B. and Jody. He was ∂ funny-looking guy. He had real sad eyes that kept trying to smile at every cat who came up to him to ask if he was the new counselor and to size him up. His teeth all seemed to be rotten and stuck out too far. Looking at his face, I thought his hair should have had a lot of gray in it, but it was a rough black all over. I liked the way Nick looked—kind of cautious, as if he knew he was in our turf and had to be cool till we got to like him. I started to yell out to the guys on the other side of the room to stop fucking with that man and tell him where Claiborne’s room was. But before I could say it, Nick was bouncing up the stairs like he knew where he was going, and K.B. and Jody were arguing about whether or not he was a nice guy. Before long, somebody in the dorm said that he was nicer than Claiborne, and nobody argued about that.

  In a couple of months, Nick was running Carver House. We were all part of his gang. He would never help us rob the kitchen and stuff like that, but he used to take us on hikes around Farmer Greene’s apple orchard and look the other way sometimes. He was more like one of the guys because he liked a lot of the things we liked. He would play the dozens, have rock fights, and curse us out. But I think we liked Nick mostly because he was fair to everybody. Nick never liked to see anybody getting bullied, but he was always ready to see a fair fight. I liked the way Nick was always lying to us. Everybody knew he was lying most of the time, but we didn’t care, because he used to tell such good lies. Nick was a real big cat, even bigger than Simms, and he was from Texas; and some of the lies he used to tell were bigger than him and Texas.

  Nick was much better to have as a counselor than Simms. Nick didn’t get excited real quick the way Simms did, and Nick had sense. I wasn’t so sure about Simms. I was always getting into fights with Nick, since I knew I wouldn’t lose too bad. When Nick hit me, I would just hit him back and keep swinging. But somehow I just couldn’t see myself taking Simms on and living afterwards.

  Within six months after I had moved into Aggrey House, most of the guys who had been in Carver House with me had been transferred to Aggrey. I had my old gang from Carver and some bigger cats who were already in Aggrey when I got there. I was raising twice the hell that I had raised in Carver House, and Simms wasn’t smiling now. Some of the counselors were starting to say that nothing could be done with me and that I should be sent to Warwick. But there was a new man, Papanek, in charge of everything at Wiltwyck, and he didn’t feel that I should be sent to Warwick or anyplace like that. Papanek had the last word on everything about Wiltwyck. Even Stilly had to listen to him, like it or not. At first, most of the cats up at Wiltwyck thought Papanek was kind of crazy. And I think some of the counselors felt that way too. But Papanek wasn’t anything like crazy. He was probably the smartest and the deepest cat I had ever met. Before long, we all found out that Papanek was the best thing that had ever happened to Wiltwyck and maybe one of the best things that could ever happen to any boy who got into trouble and was lucky enough to meet him.

  I remember the first day Papanek came to Wiltwyck. Everybody was told to come to the auditorium that afternoon. For a long time, we had heard rumors about getting a new director, and it seemed that this was the day. The counselors usually had a lot of trouble getting guys to go to the auditorium for anything other than a movie. But the day Papanek showed, it was different. Everybody, boys and counselors, was real anxious to see what this cat looked like, if he knew anything, if he was big or small, mean or kind, colored or white, young or old. We wanted to know what kind of changes were in store for us … for Wiltwyck. Every boy and every counselor knew that the man we were going to meet that afternoon would be the one to handle all our troubles at Wiltwyck for a long time to come. Just the thought of a cat being able to do that was enough to make us really wonder about him. Some of us wanted to know mainly if he was as mean as the outgoing director. All I ever knew about that cat was that he was mean as hell, and I think that’s all a lot of cats ever knew about him. He looked like one of those mean old preachers who would think nothing of killing somebody in the name of the Lord. I hated to be around the cat. He never smiled, and he was too quick to take off his b
elt and beat your ass.

  After Stilly told us that the new director was going to introduce himself to us and and say a few words, most of us were still looking for the cat when he started talking. I remember Papanek saying, “My name is Ernst Papanek.” I just watched him. He wasn’t tall or short, and he was real straight, with a bald head and a kindly face. He didn’t look real bold, but he seemed to have a whole lot of confidence, as if he knew he could handle Wiltwyck. Like everybody else, I was more interested in him than in what he was talking about. To me, he just didn’t look like the kind of cat who could handle Wiltwyck. The poor guy looked like somebody even the counselors could run over. After a while, Papanek stopped talking and asked if there were any questions. After the first question, it seemed that Papanek was talking with everybody, not to us.

  As we left the auditorium after hearing Papanek tell us who he was, where he was from, and what he wanted to do at Wiltwyck, I had the feeling that the rule of the staff was over. It was a good feeling. I knew that the boys were going to run Wiltwyck now. And I was going to be the one in charge. I was going to be the director of Wiltwyck, thanks to that poor old nice Mr. Papanek.

  I tried to joke about Papanek’s accent with K.B. and Horse, but they seemed to be kind of lost. Tito said, “Man, he sure can’t talk.” J. J. said something about how shiny Papanek’s bald head was. A few guys tried to laugh, but I could tell they were faking. Some of the counselors were trying to make fun of Papanek, but they were faking it too. I couldn’t understand this. I started talking to everybody about the new director, counselors and boys; everybody was lying and trying to hide it, but I could tell that they liked him and thought he was a nice guy. I got kind of scared of this guy Papanek. He had come to Wiltwyck and talked for a little while. And in that little while, with just talk, he had won every living ass in the place—just took over everything with a few words that we couldn’t even understand too well. No, I didn’t like this cat. He was slick … real slick. Papanek was so slick that he didn’t have to be mean. He could take anyplace right on over in less than a day and never fire a shot. I had never met anybody that slick before. He scared me a little bit, but I had to get to know this cat and find out just how smart he was.