Rebel Without a Cause

by Robert M. Lindner

  I was in Atlantic City once or twice. I remember seeing the big pier standing way out into the ocean. I didn’t like to go swimming in the ocean. I’d rather go to a pool. It’s not so dirty and there is no sand.

  I remember about ten years ago we went off on a trip up a river on an excursion boat. I think it was my aunt Louise, my mother, my sister and myself. We got on the boat somewhere and went straight up the river. It seemed like a river so maybe it was. With a river you can see both sides unless it is very wide. Maybe it was the Bay. The boat went out and then it turned around and came back. I don’t think it was a river; if it was it was certainly very wide. There were big mountains where the boat docked. I saw people swimming and rowboats and sailboats. There were a lot of people on it but not many people swimming. It was a long time ago. I remember when we started from home. We were living on B—— Street then. There were only myself, my other sister, my aunt Louise and my mother. We lived near the railroad station and I remember we took a train there for where the boat was. When we got off the train we took a bus and went to the dock where the boat was and we went on the boat and then the boat started. I can’t remember whether we went up the river or down or up the coast. I don’t even remember why we went. I was very young then. When we came back it was dark. I recall the people dancing and looking down the boat through a small iron door into the engine room where I saw the wheels and the motors talking, I mean turning, and making a lot of noise.

  A slip reflecting his awareness that he has been evading dealing with the dreams.

  I can’t remember the name of the boat but it had three decks. When we got there we walked up the mountains. There was a road, a dirt road.

  This all probably happened when I was around eight years old. When we came back I was telling everybody about it. I remember one fellow saying he was going on a trip too. We were talking under a street light on the corner. There was a fire hydrant on that corner.

  One of the fellows lived near that corner. He used to take barrel-staves and cut guns out of the wood. I remember some men once drained the sewer on the corner and found a cannon-shell, about a foot long and eight inches in diameter. I tried to pick it up; it weighed about forty pounds. The fellows used to lose balls in that sewer, baseballs and handballs. They got them out by chinning themselves in the manhole and picking the balls up with their feet. In the summer time the firemen would turn on the fire hydrant on that corner. One time I had a fight with a fellow who hit me in the eye and I was lying on that corner crying, right underneath the street light, the street light. It was shining bright in my eyes and everybody was looking at me. After that my mother didn’t let me go out and I used to sit in the window and watch all the fellows out there playing.

  One of the fellows and I used to have whistles. When we wanted to warn each other we would blow them. He was about three years older than I and I remember how he used to read books and I used to think how much smarter than I he was. I remember he used to diagram sentences and play a harmonica. He had an older sister who always used to sit and sew. I didn’t see him for a long time and then when I was twelve I joined the Boy Scouts and found him in the same troop …

  THE NINTH HOUR

  I was just reading about a fellow who has been waiting to be hanged for thirty-two years. The judge died before his sentence was to be carried out so now he is still waiting to be hanged. I know about this fellow from another fellow I used to know; this fellow did about five years in the State Penitentiary and he told me about him. The one that is waiting to be hanged, he doesn’t know what an automobile looks like, or a truck, or an airplane. He gets exercise about two hours a day and most of the day he is locked in. He smokes real strong tobacco, so strong it would even kill a horse to smell the smoke. The fellow that told me about him drove a truck for a bootlegger named Davis. I knew this Davis from seeing him in a brokerage office in B—— Street. That’s the main thoroughfare of our town. He used to be at this office a lot. Up the hill a way on R—— Street is the Court House, across the street is the House of Records where I had to report for probation. My probation officer drove an old Model A Ford; he had a son about two years older than I and he lived near the High School where I went.

  There was a candy store near the High where I hung out. I ate my lunch there, not much, a bottle of coke and a piece of pie and that was enough. I played the pinball machine a lot. One time I had a fight with my cousin Riggs in the back room there.

  Right on the corner across the street from the park there was a little triangular lot. We had a clubhouse there, right up against a billboard. There was an empty house nearby where we used to play around. We took all of the fixtures out of it, the copper wires, the iron, all the junk and sold it for the money we could get. Sometimes we’d put dirt and rocks inside the pipes when we took them to the junk man so that they’d weigh more.

  Much inconsequential and repetitious material is omitted from this session.

  I don’t know why we stole so many watermelons. We’d get whole boatloads of them from the railroad cars down the river. I don’t know what we wanted with all of them. We couldn’t eat them all. I suppose we stole them just because we wanted to have something to show.

  One time I stayed out from nine in the morning until around eight at night. When I came home my father spoke to me harshly. I was never on good terms with my father. Maybe it was because he was a little deaf and he couldn’t speak English well and I couldn’t speak Polish.

  The confusion and conflict as between immigrants and their children are well illustrated here.

  He never had much to say to me. Sometimes he would treat me alright and sometimes he would holler and say something. Sometimes I would hear him and my mother argue about me: my mother always held up for my end. My sisters always held up for my end. My sisters always got along with him. The oldest one would sometimes tell him to go to Hell or something like that and he would just laugh. I would only speak to him when it was necessary, other times he just didn’t say anything to me. When I was about twelve we broke into a butcher shop and stole a lot of things, so I went away for about three weeks to the juvenile home and when I came back my father didn’t say anything.

  I never liked to go to church. When I was at St. A—— School they made us go to church in the mornings and in the afternoons. Many times I said I was going to church but didn’t go. One time my father saw me out in the street when I was supposed to be in church and when I got home he gave me a beating.

  I don’t know why but I didn’t like a lot of the kids that went to school there. They were wise and I guess most of them were smarter than me. Anyway, I know I was the one that got most of the lickings and got punished for not having my lessons done or for doing something wrong or for doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I couldn’t read very well and got several lickings for that. I wouldn’t do any work at the board and got hit for that too. They sat me in a back seat where I couldn’t see the board so I never did any work. I never told them I couldn’t see the board. I never told anyone, not even my mother.

  My mother and grandmother and sister used to make me go to church even though I hated it. Once I told my mother that it was all a bunch of lies, so when she was visiting me here she made me promise her I’d go to church once. I went once. It doesn’t grasp my emotions, I guess. I always find some excuse for not going.

  My cousin Emma and I were alone in the house together once. I was supposed to go to church and I went down there but couldn’t tell whether it was over or not. So I went home and we were alone together. I played with her and was kissing her and I played with her breasts. That’s as far as I got. I was about twelve then. She was reading some book, something about where babies come from, and playing the radio. I was sitting on the arm of the chair. She’s about twenty-five now, married about three or four years. I never met her husband. She was always dull and uninteresting.

  I know my cousin Joe’s wife. She’s a fairly beautiful girl. They have one child. She always seemed n
ice to talk to. She’s short and has black hair. When Joe went to prison the time he got eighteen months she told me that next time it happened she would divorce him, but when the next time came around she just let things go. Once in a while my cousin Riggs would mind her kid for her when she wanted to go out and one time he was doing that he asked me to bring Lila up there. I didn’t.

  I always told Riggs that when I had girls I saw no reason why I should share them with him: he never did with me. He used to tell me about this girl and that girl and the other girl he was taking out, but when he saw me with a girl he would come over and try to get her on the side.

  There was that cousin of mine from L—— that I told you about. She would like to sit in the car and pet or sit out on the porch when everyone was asleep, and sit and kiss. I used to tell myself that the next time I would go further and further. I still haven’t reached the point yet. I guess it would be a simple matter for me to go as far as I want with her, but now I think she’ll be too old when I get out, probably she’ll be married.

  There was another girl on S—— Street, Carol I think her name was. I used to have her every once in a while for about two years. She was always afraid she’d have a baby. My friend Willy always told me how he had her once up against a tree. I don’t think I ever told him once when I had her.

  Willy’s sister was a little too fat for me. She would only let you put your arm around her neck and kiss her; that was the only thing she would allow.

  Willy and I used to go swimming in the park and we used to pick up different girls, I guess mostly for the fun of it. We’d always go to shows together when he wasn’t working. He worked at night, I think. We spent a lot of time in the early afternoon and evening walking up and down the main street.

  I always dressed as neat as I could, especially in the evening when the streets were getting dark. I’d hang around the corner next to the school and would get drunk a lot. One evening—I guess it was the only time I ever got so drunk—I started drinking at about four o’clock, and it was about nine when I got down to a bench near the river front. I fell asleep and it was raining on me, so I swore I’d never get so drunk as that again.

  My uncle liked to get me drunk, the one on the farm. I used to go down his cellar where he kept his wine and cider, and sometimes I’d siphon out the barrel he kept it in. He used to wonder what became of his wine and cider it went so fast. His father used to get me drunk too. I liked to go to his father’s house. He had a lot of wine too.

  My uncle Albert used to eat a lot of meat, all he ate was meat. He worked very hard. I want to be anything but a farmer and work as hard as he did. He worked hard all his life and he’d drink and spend his money only when he was a kid. His father worked hard too and he never had much of anything, just a home. Sometimes when my uncle worked plowing up the ground I used to think I like the country. But I don’t like hard work of that kind. I guess he was born into it and he figures on staying in it.

  I’m not interested in making a lot of money. The only thing is, I’m going to write a couple of books on economics. I’m going to change the Communist Manifesto. Of course I don’t know much about it but what little I do know about it I know it’s wrong. There are some things I know are wrong. For instance, I know Marx’s theory on population to be wrong. Some people know a little something about economics and they always talk about this and that, but I know that when you take everything away from everybody that can’t be economically sound.

  Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, of course that’s a little too old. Sometime I’m going to rewrite that book and I’m going to change the Manifesto too.

  This grandiosity is a typical psychopathic manifestation.

  Marx criticizes religion but most of his preachings he took from Jesus Christ.

  In a couple weeks I am going to send for both books, Das Kapital and Wealth of Nations. I don’t know much about economics but in a couple of years I’ll know enough about it and then I’ll start working on them. Now I’m interested in this stimulation of industry, I mean the re-armament program, the stimulation of iron and steel and oils and many other manufacturing industries, airplane manufacturing for instance. I want to see what the reaction is going to be in a couple of years. There’s going to be a real downfall. According to the inevitable law of change there’s going to be a revolution or a reaction. There have been two industrial revolutions, one in England and one in America, and they have been helped along by two great wars, the Napoleonic wars and the World War. They speeded up production and as soon as the wars ended everything dropped. That’s what’s going to happen in this case, maybe not so hard. And I think many airplane companies are going to go bankrupt, and some of the companies making automobiles and trucks for the army. I don’t think a big company like General Motors will lose anything. They have distributing companies over the whole world.

  I try to talk to some fellows here who know something about economics, but I don’t want to get like they are. Perry, for instance, always impresses on my mind the economic side of everything but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important one.

  Perry and I hang out together occasionally, once or twice a week. The rest of the time I stay in my cell and study. I don’t think he goes out much. He tells me that he is bi-sexual and from some of his actions it would certainly seem that he is. I hope I never have anything to do with him sexually. I wouldn’t like to do anything like that. A lot of my friends are asking me; they don’t seem to be my friends now.

  I don’t talk to very many people: they irritate me. I like to go off myself and just think about nothing and talk to myself. Dobriski is a swell fellow but he is really too dumb for me to talk to about economics and that’s the thing most on my mind. He doesn’t care what I talk about.

  Perry is willing to argue about anything with anybody. We eat together at the same table. I don’t like the way he puts his foot under him on the bench. I don’t like it. He sits on one foot. He always tries to get some argument stimulated. He gets a lot of fun out of trying to convert people to the ‘only faith,’ as he calls anything he says. There was a fellow yesterday, an ex-Communist from Boston. Perry tried to convert him. It was funny: his face got all red …

  THE TENTH HOUR

  This morning I was talking to a fellow outside my cell window who gave me some flowers and I put them in my locker. I didn’t like flowers very much on the outside but in here I like them a lot. This old man Thomas also liked them a lot: he used to write poetry about flowers and tell me about his garden at home. He had a small estate and he would tell me about all his flowers, how they were growing and how they were arranged. He loved to sit and tell me about his experiences when he was a kid. He was quite a sportsman, it seems, participating in all sports, probably to make a living. He was well built for an old man, his arms and muscles were all hard. He liked to putter around flowers and take care of them; to see how they grow and grow different kinds, big flowers and small flowers.

  When he left here he went to see my family. I don’t know where my mother and father are living now. My sister was up to see me not very long ago but she wouldn’t tell me where they live.

  Everybody I talk to notices the improvement in my eyes since I am coming here to see you.

  This was a gracious way of informing L of the transference. As a matter of fact, his eyes were unaffected at this time.

  They are open a lot more than they used to be and they feel kind of hard in the roof when I spread them wide open. They don’t blink much even in the sunlight now and I remember they used to blink a lot. Years ago I would have to hold my hands over my eyes to see but now I don’t have to anymore. I wear glasses sometimes to keep people from asking so many questions. In my cell I have a very strong bulb so I wear glasses to stop most of the light. They’re dark glasses, smoky.…

  My aunt and uncle are the only two people that have so much land on that island. They work it themselves and if they don’t make enough out of it this year they’ll lose it all. My un
cle is a kind of fellow who would rather fish than do anything else, but my aunt works very hard.

  I remember once near their house when Amy’s brother killed a snake. He was riding a bicycle and the snake was crossing the road and he ran right over it. We caught a lot of snakes around there.

  There was a fellow named Mick who had an old Chevvy that we’d ride around in and go up and down the big hills fast. There used to be a lot of girls around there too and we had a lot of fun taking them for rides in the old Chevvy.

  Toby’s father liked hunting. He used to raise rabbits simply for the pleasure of letting them loose and then hunting them down. After he killed some we’d all have a big feast. One time we went to a carnival, me and my sister and this Toby’s uncle. He took us into town and all he did was drink. I saved him from some of those sucker games. I told him how they work. It seems to me that anybody grabbing them is just a sucker. When I got home that night I remember I slept out in the grass.

  I recall that me and Mick’s brother went to see a fellow and we were in there talking about nothing at all. This fellow insulted Mick and I said something back to him and he got sore, so he started chasing us with a shotgun and we ran right through a big field of corn.

  I like the country out there and I always thought I could maneuver around to fix myself with a small income, not very much, since I’d rather be up there than down in the city. There are too many people in the city, too crowded and too noisy; they run back and forth and you don’t know your next door neighbors. Out there in the country you get acquainted easily, you know everyone and everyone knows you.

  I only had a couple of fights up there. One was with a big fellow about my age who weighed more than I did. He came from the city to see someone for a week or so. He made a nasty crack about my sister and when I heard about it I started to pick an argument with him. I was afraid of him but I had to do something when I found out that he said something about my sister. So we started to argue back and forth and we started wrestling and I fell down and hit my head on a stone. Then we started arguing again and talking back and forth and he denied he said anything. Then another fellow verified it right in front of me. I stood on a step a few inches higher than him and I was scared and didn’t know what do do. So I hit out and hit him right on the chin and he staggered back about ten feet and went down on one knee and I got more scared and I tried sic-cing the dog on him but the dog wouldn’t do anything and I didn’t know what else to do. So I knocked him down and I managed to get on top of him and I started beating him with my fists. I felt awful weak and tired but I kept hitting at him. I don’t know what happened then. I think some other fellows came along and pulled me off him.