The amusement park was going to sleep. Half the concessions were shut down, and the crowd was reduced to a few clots of moving people. The temperature had dropped, and a wind was up from the sea. They spent their last money on a hot dog and orange drink that they shared, standing in the mouth of an alley—two ragamuffins. An occasional passerby stared at them. They looked forlorn and began to feel so.
“Let’s turn ourselves in,” Sammy said. “I’m tired and hungry.”
“Not me,” Alex said. “They’ve got to catch me.”
Sammy’s face screwed up, close to tears. “It isn’t fun anymore,” he said. “It’s going to be cold tonight.”
Alex felt hot anger. “You wanted to run away yesterday morning. You wanted to steal that knife. Go if you want to. You can turn yourself in.”
Sammy hesitated, and Alex turned into the darkness of the alley. It was the way back to the bicycles. Seconds later Alex heard running footsteps as Sammy caught up with him.
On the coast highway the white brilliance of the headlights flashed across the two boys on bicycles. The wind of passing vehicles beat upon them. About five miles outside of Long Beach Alex saw the small grocery store, on the seaward side of the highway. There was a small frame bungalow across a driveway from it but the mingling roar of the highway and the nearby surf would erase any sound. The bungalow’s lights were out, and there was no car in the driveway.
The idea of breaking into the store came full-blown to Alex. He turned into the driveway and Sammy followed. They were in the dark shadow of the store wall.
“What’d you stop for?” Sammy asked.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“Sure I’m hungry.”
“There’s some food in here. We’re gonna break in and get it.”
“Oh, man, that’s really serious. If they catch us—”
“Shut up, dammit! Turn yourself in if you can’t take it.”
Head bowed, Sammy followed Alex. They went to the rear and found a door that was half glass. The lock could be opened by hand from the inside. “Find a rock,” Alex said, excitement beginning to pound in his throat as he bent over the moon-whitened ground, the dirt mingled with sand. The beach was only a few feet away, and beyond that the ocean glistened silver and black. The boys were shadows. Alex found a small piece of concrete and told Sammy, “Go out front and see if you hear anything. Keep a lookout until I call you.”
Sammy disappeared down the driveway. Alex waited a minute, then stood a couple of feet from the door and hurled the concrete through the glass. The velocity punched a hole slightly larger than the missile itself. The rock rattled around inside for a second after the tinkling glass was silent. Alex had ducked around the corner of the building, heart pounding, his ears tuned to hear any sound breaking the rhythm of the night.
Nothing had changed; nobody had been aroused. He reached through the hole and unfastened the lock, then pushed the door open. He was in a small storeroom, and a lighter shadow ahead indicated an arch. Through the front window he could see the passing traffic and make out silhouettes against the background of the lights. He went and got Sammy.
“What if somebody comes?” Sammy said as they entered again.
“Nobody’s coming. Get some snacks.”
“Where are they?”
“Probably by the counter.”
“This is robbery. They’ll really send us to reform school if they catch us.”
“Catch us! Catch us! You’re always scared. You shouldn’t have run away if you’re so chicken.”
“This isn’t stealing small stuff.”
For a few minutes they were furtive, and then they became confident.
In the meat locker they found wieners roped together and took a long strand. Alex opened a quart of chocolate milk, guzzled part of it, and spilled the rest on the floor. He took several raw eggs and hurled them up against the wall. But it was not his nature to take pleasure in vandalism, and he was immediately sorry.
Sammy was gathering packages of bologna and several loaves of bread. He took quarts of milk and large bottles of root beer and boxes of candy bars.
Meanwhile, Alex was behind the counter. The open cash register had two rolls of pennies, which he pocketed. He felt under the counter and found the long barrel of a revolver. As he held it up in the shadows, an electric thrill shot through him, both fright and excitement. It was the first firearm he’d ever had. He put it in the sagging waistband of his jeans. On shelves behind the counter were bottles of wine. He unscrewed a bottle-top and took a swig. It was sweet and distasteful, but he swallowed it down; then he did it again, wondering how it would feel. When a minute passed without his feeling anything, he took several more gulps. Suddenly the warmth and the giddiness crept through him. He felt dizzy and disliked it. He turned the remainder of the bottle upside down and let it gurgle into a pool on the floor. Then he filled his pockets with packets of chewing gum and grabbed a paper bag filled with packaged pastries.
Sammy, meanwhile, had been in the freezer but came out without taking anything. He was already carrying a large sack filled with food. Now his fear was gone. “We’ve got plenty—”
At that moment headlights flashed across the front window. Not headlights going by but headlights turning into the driveway. Alex dropped to the floor. They could hear the car engine outside the building.
The engine went silent. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Alex visualized the leaning bicycles framed in the headlights’ glare, while, simultaneously, the wine spread intoxication from his belly through his brain.
“Oh Jesus … oh Jesus,” Sammy whispered, clutching Alex.
“Get the sacks,” Alex said. “We’ll go out the front when they come in the back. Forget the bikes. Just run across the highway.”
“Look what you’ve got us into.”
Alex felt the fire of anger. He wanted to punch Sammy. Instead he grabbed Sammy’s sleeve and pulled him toward the front of the store. His elbow brushed the half-empty wine bottle on the counter, knocking it to the floor with a crash that seemed like thunder.
Voices from outside could be heard in snatches, in between the wind and surf. Alex visualized the bicycles illuminated in the automobile headlights. A giveaway.
He reached the front door. It was the accordion-type, folding back from the center during business hours. Now it was closed—and there was a padlock. Glancing back, he could see down the aisles and through the arch into the storeroom; a flashlight beam was probing around the open back door. He ducked away from Sammy and into an aisle. His fear was growing. He had nowhere to go. The store had no windows.
A silhouette behind the flashlight beam filled the back door, moving slowly through the storeroom, sweeping the beam over the shelves, lighting Pillsbury sacks and cans of Crisco.
Alex hunkered at the end of the aisle so he could go either way when the intruder entered. If the man came down one aisle, Alex would take the other. He might be able to get out by the rear. He’d forgotten Sammy—
“I give up, Mister,” Sammy said, his shadow rising. Then he was framed in the flashlight beam.
“Sally, I caught one—a goddamn kid, just like I thought.”
“Be careful,” a female voice called. Alex could make out her figure in the doorway.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” Sammy whined, going toward the man.
“Where’s the other one?” the man asked.
Alex, on hands and knees, moved behind the counter. It would take him near the arch. Maybe he could just run by the woman. His heart was squeezing in his chest. He barely breathed. The flashlight swept over the countertop, but he was hidden. He was tempted to crawl onto a counter shelf and hide, but he knew they would find him eventually.
The man held Sammy’s wrist in one hand and the flashlight in the other.
The woman hovered outside, alternately asking what was happening and advising the man to watch out.
“You take care of this one,” the man said. “He’s just a
kid who should get a switch across his ass.”
Suddenly, without warning, the alcohol and fear worked on Alex’s stomach, and he retched. The rich food he’d just gulped down spewed from his mouth, followed by a reflexive cough. The sounds were a magnet. The footsteps grew loud; the light was coming. It struck Alex in his eyes. He came out of his crouch, turning and running pell-mell, crashing into displays. He plowed into a glass cabinet, his foot going through it. It sliced through his pants and cut his ankle.
The light and the man followed him relentlessly. Alex ran down an aisle and reached a dead end—trapped. He whirled, hearing the grunted breathing; the light was in his eyes now, with a giant shadow behind it.
“Little cocksucker,” the man said, closing in on him slowly.
Alex pulled the revolver from his waistband, not thinking. “Stay away,” he said, his voice quaking—and at the same instant the revolver exploded in his hand, sparks leaping from the muzzle, the sound deafening in the close quarters. The flashlight somersaulted and hit the floor, spinning its beam in a circle. The man went down, yelping in shock. Then he said, quite clearly, “Well, I’ll be damned…” He lurched into the shelf, and it toppled, spilling cans and loaves of bread.
The man moaned and writhed.
“Phil! Phil!” the woman bleated, each call more shrill. Then she began to scream when there was no answer.
Alex scrambled over the fallen shelf, stumbling as he stepped on things, the revolver still in his hand.
The woman was in the back doorway, but she ducked out of the way when the small figure came hurtling toward her.
Alex bolted into the fresh air, running in a straight line toward the beach. He reached the sand and it seemed to clutch at his ankles. The woman was still screaming somewhere behind him. He never saw Sammy. He ran until the soft dry sand turned hard near the water. Twice he stumbled, his panic overrunning his legs. The second time he paused and hurled the revolver into the foaming surf. It sank without a splash, and he began running again. The ocean was ahead of him, so he turned left, staying on the hard sand just above the surf, which occasionally splashed his ankles. The beach was empty for miles, bordered by an occasional house and the highway.
A swath of moonlight—like a path across the sea to the moon—raced beside him, but the lights that intersected him were behind. He was half a mile away when the blinking red light turned in the driveway. His lungs burned and his legs ached. He could run no farther along the beach. He turned toward the moving lights on the highway, looking back toward the house where three blinking red lights were gathered now.
A house faced the highway where he approached, a big old house with a yard and a dog. The dog began to bark. Normally a dog would have frightened Alex, but he was beyond that now. His dilemma was how to get across the eight lanes of highway without being spotted. He flopped on his stomach on the slope beside the roadway, waiting for a break in the traffic and a lessening of the pain in his side.
Another blinking red light came speeding along the highway toward the store. The surf drowned the siren until the light was close.
It was an ambulance.
The highway was empty.
Alex rose up and ran—it felt like slow motion, as if he were running in a dream. Would the highway never end? Then he was on the other side, scrambling through bushes up an embankment, falling once as he went down the other side.
Looming everywhere were oil wells, a forest of them, their pumps in silhouette like prehistoric birds scavenging the earth.
Now he walked, driven by the blind instinct to flee, not thinking rationally of his predicament but rather suffused with it. He was in mental shock that insulated him from emotions, though flashes of panic, pain, and guilty horror cut in for a second or two, pushed out before a whole thought could form. The sense of destroyed hope was intense. What would happen to him now? His wrongdoing was beyond what he could conceive.
As he trudged through the forest of oil derricks and wells, he sensed the extremity of his isolation. He saw again the looming figure behind the flashlight and remembered his own fear; then the explosion, the darting tongue of fire, the scent of burnt gunpowder. For the rest of his life he would have flashbacks and dreams. He thought of the screaming woman and caught his breath. He’d taken her love away, and he knew what it was to be alone.
The oilfield was on softly rolling hills. At the summit of the first he took a last look back toward the highway. The traffic flowed slowly past the cluster of lights at the store—curious yet oblivious. For the first time Alex sensed how alone everyone really is.
He stood for a long time, but nothing moved below. The sea wind was growing. Sudden shivers went through him, and goose bumps rose. He began walking again, without destination, the smell of oil and ocean in his nostrils, despair in his mind. He never should have run away. If God gave him mercy this time, he would never do anything wrong again as long as he lived.
He had nowhere to go, so he headed toward the glow of Los Angeles. He’d go to his father’s room. If nothing else, he would be fed and given a bath before being turned in. He thought that maybe his father would stick by him this time, help him hide out.
An hour later the air was muggy and he was perspiring. Suddenly the sky rippled with light, followed by a clap of thunder. It happened a couple of times, and then a sprinkling rain began. Alex was soaked before he could find a place to hide, in an unfinished tract home. At dawn he was walking, clothes dry but caked with dirt. He was coughing green phlegm now and had a fever and chills. He was sick and going home to his father, no matter what happened afterward. He still had the two dollars in pennies from the cash register, so he would get something to eat and catch a bus for downtown Los Angeles. From there he knew his way to the furnished room.
He came upon the railroad tracks where they cut through a barrio on the outskirts of Santa Ana, an impoverished place of sagging fences, mongrel dogs, and olive-skinned women and children. The women hanging clothes on backyard lines looked at him silently, without curiosity or judgment.
A passenger train went by, and he stood beside the tracks and watched the faces stare out.
The populated area fell behind, and now there were orange groves and avocado orchards. As the tracks crossed a rural boulevard Alex saw another market a quarter of a mile away. It was a converted house with signs on its walls. He took the wrappers off the pennies and let them drift away. The pennies weighted his pocket down.
The store had a screen door and a bell that tinkled when he entered. An old woman came from the back room. He went to the freezer and got a quart of milk, then took two prepackaged cupcakes and two candy bars. He piled everything on the counter and saw the woman look away quickly when he turned to her. He realized how he must look, covered with everything from dry mud to cockleburs. His hands and face were gray with a film of dust.
“Sixty-four cents,” the woman said.
Alex plunked the pile of pennies down and began pushing them across with a forefinger, counting them out one by one.
“Where’d you get all these pennies?” she asked.
“What?”
“The pennies. Where’d you get so many?”
“I saved them in my bank.”
“I haven’t seen you around here before. Where do you live?”
“Just a couple of miles away.” He jerked a thumb to indicate a direction. The woman’s false teeth clicked as she started to speak, then decided against it. She rang up the sale.
Carrying his breakfast in a paper bag, Alex hurried down the road to the tracks, glancing back occasionally. He thought he saw her behind the screen door but couldn’t be sure.
He climbed up the embankment and walked in the dust for half a mile, looking for a shady place to eat. Both sides of the tracks had thick foliage, but it was low and dry and ugly as well as uncomfortable. Finally there was a tree, and the earth was cool beneath it. He ate the cupcakes and gulped the milk. He could see an overpass a mile away, and suddenly a black-and-white p
olice car was there, halting long enough for its occupants to scrutinize both ways. Alex was hidden by the shadows and shrubbery. The woman had called the police. They were closing in. He dropped the unfinished milk container, darted around the tree, and went into the brush. The dry foliage was thick, a cousin to cactus without spines, but it had many sharp branches that tore at his clothes and scratched his hands. He struggled for fifty yards until he reached the edge of a plowed field. It stretched for a mile before there was a fence and a road. Moving slowly down the road was a police car. He backed into the shrubbery, keeping out of sight while heading toward the road with the overpass. The railroad right-of-way seemed to be fifty yards on each side, and then there were flat fields, either freshly plowed or with low-growing beets.
Ten minutes went by, many heartbeats for the hunted, and he crawled back to the edge of the bushes. The police car had a twin now, and they were parked three hundred yards apart; one policeman was outside, holding up binoculars. He heard dogs baying. He began to run blindly, the shrubbery whipping and scratching at his face and hands. Before long his lungs were on fire, he felt a searing pain in his side, and his legs weighed fifty pounds each. He kept running entirely on instinct. He did veer toward the railroad tracks, where the brush was thinner. The baying sounds were relentless, but he couldn’t tell if they were louder or falling back. He ran without hope, but he wouldn’t surrender.
Little Boy Blue Page 4
