Rebel Without a Cause

by Robert M. Lindner

  The sisters used to assign lessons and if you didn’t have them done in the morning you would get whipped in the hand, and they forced you to kneel before a statue, the statue of the Virgin, in the dirt. I remember the priest used to have a crooked cane. One time he got a fellow with the cane around the neck and drew him close and then beat him up bad. Sometimes they made us all stay in. One time a fellow tried to get out through the window. I got whipped a lot.

  We used to have a gang then. We’d pay our school dues, forty or fifty cents on Tuesdays. It was forty or fifty cents depending if you were Irish or not. I had to pay fifty cents, but the Irish kids paid forty. Many times we’d keep the money and go to shows.

  One time my mother’s godfather came to our house. He used to board there. It was in the summer time. I know because we used to have watermelon every week. This godfather always had whiskey. Once my mother broke some of his whiskey bottles on the step, the stone step of the porch.

  I remember when my sister Anna, the youngest one, was born. I was in the next room to where my mother was. I could hear my mother crying and hollering. I was sleeping on a small bed. I don’t know where my other sister was. It was when I was seven years old. Before the young one was born I remember my mother used to keep me on her lap and never let me go out. I used to sit and watch the other fellows outside. When it was six or seven o’clock she’d say it was too late to go out.

  We had a victrola, about four or five feet high.

  I remember one time I was sleeping in the front room, the parlor. Somebody was grabbing at the window shade. There was a man with a hat on out there: I know he was a burglar or somebody. Then I fell asleep. Next morning I told my mother about it but there was nothing missing from the house.

  Down the block there was a small house. Nothing in front, just a few windows, no porch, nothing. I remember one time somebody’s furniture was thrown out on the street from it. And there was another house on that block, a big red house, three or four stories high. We used to call it the red house. Everybody said not to go there because it was haunted. Next to that house was one with a big veranda going around one side and the front. I think a policeman or fireman lived there. We used to spin tops on the sidewalk in front of this house.

  There was a Mr. Vanderbilt used to live in the big house next to us on the other side. I don’t remember Mr. Vanderbilt very well. I used to see him when I was around twelve. The fellows used to find money around his house in the garbage cans, fifty and one hundred dollar bills.

  A very common fantasy of infancy and childhood. Sums of money are to be found in garbage, waste, feces. This accounts for the orthodox analyst’s view of money-feces.

  They would find this money and then take it back. Three years ago, by accident, I found out from a fellow who should know that this Mr. Vanderbilt was connected with a big bootleg ring. I met this fellow who used to drive one of his trucks and haul whiskey for him. They used to smuggle it into the eastern part of the country from boats anchored off Atlantic Highlands in Jersey.

  I don’t remember Mr. Vanderbilt. Wait! Davis was his name. Davis. Davis.

  The connection with large sums obviously caused this confusion.

  He had a small wife who I remember better than I remember him. Yet I think he lived there alone and they had another house too. After he moved out there was a big fire in that house.

  There were three or four houses that had a big yard together with no fences between. They had no inside toilets. We used to sit on top of the outhouses and sometimes shoot staples at cats. They had a lot of cats there, hanging around the outhouses.

  Downstairs from us lived this lady who used to shave. She used to get dark in the face, like a beard. She had a son, the kid that got his leg cut off on the railroad. She also had two daughters. One time me and my cousin Riggs got one of the daughters in back of the garage. She was only a baby, about seven. I guess we just tried to do it to her. She didn’t want to. She cried. Then Riggs hit her. So she ran away and told her mother, and her mother told my mother. I remember Riggs’ father and my mother and his, I mean, her mother all sitting in the kitchen; and Riggs, he pointed at me and tried to tell them I was the one who hit her. I hated him then.

  I don’t remember my cousin Tony very well. He used to hang out with the older fellows, the big clique. He was about eighteen then. He used to steal everything he could get his hands on. He’d hitch on the back of one of the big pie trucks and steal pies and we would have a real feast. He went to live with my grandmother one time for about a week because his father was going to give him a beating.

  There was a gang of kids in the next street who came over and had a fight with the fellows from B—— Street and I got in between. I got the worst of it. One of the fellows hit me with a piece of rope in the eye. He hit me in the eye. And Gimpy hit me one day with a snowball. Afterwards he swore to God he didn’t do it. It was in the inside of a big house. I was just coming in and he was throwing a snowball out at somebody and he hit me in the eye. I remember Gimpy well. One day he got the loan of a bicycle and he took me out to a dump on the handlebars. We went looking for copper. That day I didn’t go to school. When I got home I got a beating for not going to school.

  Right at the corner of our block there was a fire-station, a hook-and-ladder company. Next door was a Presbyterian church and a big house, the preacher’s house, and then another big house. On the bottom floor there were two stores, one a candy store and one a butcher store. One fourth of July a man came around and parked his car right across the street. He had a lot of cap pistols in the car and some of the fellows saw that and stole some. I stole one too. Afterwards my mother made me bring it back.

  I remember the fire-engine parked on the street in front of the fire-house. The fellows used to blow the siren. We would press the button and blow the siren. We would press the button and blow the siren and pull the cord and ring the bell.

  We lived a block from the river. I don’t think the river is as dirty now as it was then. Once some of the fellows found a credit book from the store in the center of the block where we lived on B—— Street. They erased all the numbers and give it to me and told me to go in and buy some things. The man didn’t give me anything because he saw that the whole book got written in before.

  When I was four we lived on M—— Street near C——. My grandmother lived on C——. We lived on the second floor, and I remember I used to climb the stairs on my hands and feet: I used to help myself up with my hands. There was a store on the bottom. I think it used to sell fruits, vegetables and fruits.

  I don’t remember much. I don’t remember much about living in P——, but I remember coming on a truck, moving from P—— …

  THE SIXTH HOUR

  A lot that I am telling you about comes back to my mind. Shall I repeat things again?

  I remember when I was eight or maybe nine years old. We were still living on B—— Street. One time I went out toward the river and I saw my cousin Riggs and another fellow come out of the brewery warehouse. They broke some boards out of the side. I was sitting there with a group of other fellows at the dock and a policeman came over. He was there to see that nobody went in swimming naked: and he asked the bunch of fellows if they had seen anyone enter the warehouse. He asked me too and I said that I didn’t see anybody.

  I used to spend a lot of time across the river in the swampland, a big area of thirty acres. It was marshy and swampy and in some spots it was sandy with brush growing all over it. We used to go over and catch and shoot bullfrogs there, and sometimes we would swim over with a hammer and some nails and get some logs and boards and make a raft and come back with it. On the shore I remember it was all muddy except some spots. When you stepped in the mud you got in it up to your knees. Once a fellow stepped in the mud and cut his foot on something.

  We used to take a rowboat down the river about four miles or so where there was a landing near a railroad track and big cars of watermelons used to come in. We always stole watermelons th
ere.

  I only saw one man drown in the river. I must have been fourteen then. I remember the police pulled him out of the water. There was a big crowd of people around watching. They put a respirator on him to pump the water out but he was dead. So they put him in a basket and put it in the ambulance and drove away.

  The fellows from M—— Street had a clubhouse that was out in the water. They put poles into the ground and on these poles they built the house. You only could get there on a cat-walk and sometimes they took the cat-walk down and you would have to go by boat or swim. One time the police raided it, knocked the house down, tipped it right over into the water. They used to have big crap games in there and guns on the wall. Most of the fellows owned rowboats and some even had sailboats.

  Right across the river there was E—— Hall which was owned by a politician named F—— where they had meetings once a month or more. Me and two of my cousins used to watch their cars so nobody would bother them till the meeting was over. We used to make a little bit of money that way, not much. Sometimes we would let the air out of the tires when we knew a fellow wouldn’t pay us. This politician used to own a saloon of F—— Avenue. When I still lived on B—— Street I used to go to see a fellow once in a while who lived next door to this saloon. We would get in through the back of an apartment that nobody lived in. It was full of empty whiskey and beer bottles and on a bureau there was a cardboard box full of papers, just filled with papers. I remember digging in it and finding something hard way down in the papers. I pulled it out. It was wrapped around with paper and tied with a string. I broke the string and took off the papers and I found a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun. Three or four years later, when I lived on M—— Street, I told another fellow about it and we went back there to look. We found everything still there, the bottles and all the papers, but the shotgun wasn’t there anymore.

  There was a fellow in that water gang who used to carry a blackjack. Several times he would get a dog or a cat and hit them with it. One time he threw a lighted cigarette into a parked automobile and the cushions got on fire.

  There was a gas station near home and I hung around there a lot. One time I left my coat there and I had a pack of cigarettes in my pocket. When I came back and looked most of the cigarettes were gone, so I don’t think I hung out there much more. There was a lunch wagon near that station and when I was about fourteen I used to break into a little storing shed in the back. They kept bottles of soda there and I would steal bottles and bottles of it. When I was about twelve I would steal milk from the milkman that came around at nights and used to put milk in the boxes that belonged to the stores. One time I walked down the Boulevard with two empty pint bottles and I passed the house of a fellow named Leeter who used to own a motor boat and chased us away so we couldn’t swim around it. I threw the milk bottles right at the door and broke a window.

  I sold my bicycle for four dollars because we wanted to buy an automatic and a .22 target pistol from a fellow. When we came to buy them his father had the guns and he couldn’t get them, so me and my cousin Riggs spent the money. Another time when I was living on S—— Street I stole six dollars from a woman upstairs. Me and my cousin Riggs had a fine time for about two weeks on the money and they never found out whether or not I was the one who stole it.

  There was a kid lived next door and when I was around twelve I got into a fight with him. He snuck up around me and hit me with a stick in the head and I hit him in the eye. Afterwards I took my knife and stuck it into his father’s automobile tires and slit them.

  Characteristically, retribution is directed against the father.

  I used to hide my knives, a checkbook and things like that underneath our porch, and one time a fellow came and asked me for something. He couldn’t find what he wanted so I went out to give it to him. My mother came out to see what it was all about and when I gave it to him she told him not to come back any more, and then she hit me in the head with her hand.

  I remember long before my aunt married my uncle a friend of his used to come in with a truck load of onions and potatoes to sell them at the public market near our home. Sometimes he wouldn’t sell all his stuff and he would come to our house and put it in the cellar. I thought I was pretty strong when I could pick up a fifty pound bag of potatoes.

  One time my cousin Riggs and I went off on a hitchhike to near where my aunt lives and we got a hitch almost all the way to there. Then we waited a long time for another hitch and finally we started walking and eating apples that some farmer gave us. I have a dislike for that cousin. For some reason I never did like him but I used to hang around with him a lot. Anyway, I was real hungry and when we came to my aunt’s house my grandmother who was staying there gave us something to eat. We were on the way home again when we met my uncle. My uncle Sam was coming up to see my grandmother and he told us to wait a while and he would take us home. So we waited and waited. I had about half a dollar in my pocket and we were waiting at the edge of town, so I told Riggs I would go to town and get something to eat again. When I came back I couldn’t find Riggs. I waited for about an hour and he didn’t come back and I couldn’t find my uncle Sam either. So I went back to my grandmother’s house because I thought that maybe he went back there for some reason. I found out he had left and I figured my uncle left too, so I stayed there that night, and in the morning my uncle spoke to me. He wanted me to go to work for him and he would pay me fifteen dollars a month. I had a big argument with my aunt. She was always quick-tempered; when she was mad she didn’t care about anybody or anything. I always felt as if I was in the way there. She always fought or argued with my uncle. He just looked at her. Many a time she picked on me but I never said anything to her. I stayed there about three months that time and all the time my aunt was picking on me. She had one big argument with me. She wanted me to go to work on my uncle’s father’s place and I didn’t want to. We had a terrific argument and I didn’t wait for anybody: I just started to hit the road. That was alright too because two or three weeks before this my father wanted me to come home. He was figuring on getting a farm for himself. First he was going to get a farm on Long Island, a big farm: he was going to raise cauliflower or something; then he wanted to buy a chicken farm; then some other kind of farm.

  The instability of the father is evident here.

  I came home hungry and started eating all the cakes they had. My aunt Louise, she always made cakes for me; she sure used to fix up a cake! She is the one that always told me not to steal or take anything when I needed money, just to come to her and she’d give it to me; not even go to my mother for it. She was just a quiet, motherly type. My other aunt, Vanya, was just the opposite of that. She would always have arguments with everybody and she had a kind of wild look. She always combed her hair straight back: but my aunt Louise had nice hair, and she wore it nice and curly over the sides. She had curly hair like mine. My aunt Vanya has real black hair. She used to live with my grandmother before she was married. Once she and grandma had an argument and she came to our house to live for about two months. She bought our first radio, the first one we ever had, and she used to holler when anybody but her touched it. She was very good to my sisters and used to bring them things. Both my sisters had diphtheria about that time. I never had it.

  I don’t remember much about when we lived on S—— Street. I guess it was four rooms and a bathroom. I used to sleep in the front room, the parlor, and I would close all the doors and windows and listen to the radio until late at night; listening to crime stories and all the comedians I could get to hear. If my mother heard it she would chase me to bed, but as soon as she went out I was at the radio again. I don’t remember the kind of radio it was, but I know it was a cabinet set, a big one. When my aunt went back to my grandmother’s she took it with her, and about a week later we were so used to having one that we bought our own.

  My grandmother’s radio is a real old set; must be about twenty years old. My uncle Sam always has a baseball game or something on. H
e would rather listen to a baseball game or see one than anything else. He used to drink a lot of coffee; he and my aunt Vanya would maybe drink a couple gallons a day. I guess that’s why she’s so sensitive about everything.

  Before my aunt moved she was living in my grandmother’s house and my grandmother gave her the money to buy the farm. My grandmother used to say she wanted her children to have places of their own and that’s why she bought this farm for my aunt Vanya.

  There was a small cemetery about a mile from the farm. I was always afraid I would run in to it. One day when I was walking in the mountains I ran in to it. I didn’t know what it was at first. Then I saw the stones and crosses. It was in the afternoon but even then I didn’t want to go all the way in, so I circled around it and kept on going.

  In front of my aunt’s property there used to be a big tree. I spent a lot of time in that tree just reading. My uncle used to say I must be in love with that tree to sit so often up there and read.

  There was this girl Amy who lived right across the road that I told you about. She used to look at me just like I was a younger brother to her. She had a brother, a tough kid who got into a lot of fights. Once his friend made a crack about my eyes winking so I hit him twice, twice in the head, once with my left hand and once with my right. He cried hard. After that we were good friends. I never had any of those fellows bother me or say anything about my eyes after that.

  Me and Amy’s brother Toby used to go out a lot together. We went to the town nearby where there was a roadhouse we’d get drunk in.

  There was a farmer out there who seemed to like me a lot, Toby’s uncle. He had a son about my age with a brand-new Terraplane coupe and me and Toby and him used to go tearing around in it. We rode fast. I drove it several times. It was light and easy to turn. Toby’s father didn’t like this kid. I guess he was afraid he’d get killed driving too fast, but I always got along with him. My mother didn’t like me to go out with him either because she was listening to Toby’s father. I remember once me and Toby and this fellow—I forget his name—started out to get a driver’s license for me. Toby’s hair was like mine and he and me had about the same build, so he was going to town and register in my name and they were going to take the Terraplane and make the test in it and get the driver’s license for me. Somehow we didn’t get around to doing it.