The end came when another dusty road cut across the tracks. The shrubbery thinned and he saw the police car, the two patrolmen in leather puttees and wide-brimmed Stetsons. He had no strength and nowhere to go. He was surrounded, and the dogs were getting even louder.
He sat down in the dirt, legs crossed, chest heaving. He was empty of fear, empty of all feeling and all strength—a sponge squeezed dry.
5
It was Alex’s first time in handcuffs, the first time he’d ever felt the blows of policemen. They threw him face-down in the dirt, jerked his hands behind him, and fastened the cuffs. Anyone with a pistol aroused fear and anger in the police. An eleven-year-old boy could pull a trigger, he’d proved that. They dragged and shoved him to the car. No tears were shed, not of sorrow nor anger. He refused to speak. They threw him face-down on the rear floorboards, and one sat over him, a thick crepe sole planted firmly on the boy’s neck.
When the three cars in the retinue pulled into the rear parking area of the substation, where the signs said SHERIFF CARS ONLY, he was hauled out by the scruff of the neck. They called him “punk” and pushed him through a back door. He wasn’t afraid, but he realized that back there in the bushes, they had been afraid.
Inside the substation’s main room, a place of several cluttered desks and a counter, they made him sit under a desk, in the niche where someone’s knees would fit. Nobody spoke to him, but they talked about him. The store owner, he learned, was a former officer, and the police took his being shot very personally. They were furious that Alex didn’t have the revolver. The victim was alive and would be all right.
Two hundred deputy sheriffs, highway patrolmen, and city police had been in on the search. Alex was captured less than a dozen miles from the crime.
The substation was small, serving the small town of Norwalk, just inside the county line of Los Angeles. The three cells were occupied, and someone wanted to use the desk.
“Where’ll we put him?” a turnkey asked a grizzled sergeant.
“Put the little asshole in the deep six. The juveniles will be here for him later on.”
The turnkey beckoned. Alex crawled from under the desk and followed the man down a short hall, passing cells with bars, to a door of solid steel. At eye level was a slot that could be pulled open to peek in. The turnkey opened the door, motioned Alex inside, then locked it. The darkness was total, but in the seconds before the door closed Alex could see it was less than four feet wide and perhaps six feet long. A hole at the rear served as a toilet, and there was a nauseating odor coming from it; he nearly vomited. He sat beside the door, his nose pressed to the crack to capture whatever fresh air seeped in.
The juvenile detectives were coming. He’d go to Juvenile Hall and then to reform school until he was twenty-one. Boys in various homes had talked about Juvenile Hall. A few had been there. There were also stories about reform school, though none of the boys he’d talked to had been there yet. Quite a few would wind up there, though, for there seemed to be a connecting line between foster homes and military schools, and the juvenile courts and delinquency.
He thought about his father and began to cry. He remembered his father yelling, “I wish you’d been lost in a condom.” And he remembered his father crying in torment, taking the blame for Alex’s misdeeds on himself. The tears hurt Alex worse than the rage, and they had both cried. Now there was no telling what his father would do, this was so much worse than anything before.
The peephole opened every so often, shooting a shaft of light in, followed in seconds by an eyeball. From the conversations he could tell he was being shown off.
Once the door opened and a uniformed fat man with lieutenant’s bars stood outside with the turnkey. The fat man’s porcine face squirted from a tight uniform collar, his marble eyes hostile. Alex felt fear. He’d seen angry eyes before, but they’d always reflected that he was a little boy. These eyes held unadulterated hostility. Alex trembled, and the first electricity of fear became indignation.
“Get a good look,” he said, his child’s voice shrill.
The challenge reddened the fat man’s face, as if it were a slap. Then he paled before turning a splotchy crimson. “You little … piece of shit. I wanted to see a junior scumbag. You shot a good man.”
“I wish I’d killed him,” Alex said, meaning it as he said it but not meaning it deep inside.
The fat man sprang forward with surprising agility, his hand lashing out with a slap that knocked Alex on his ass inside the dark room. He drew up his legs to kick if the man came after him, but the fat man halted at the door.
“You didn’t kill him,” the fat man said. “But you killed your father.”
Alex uncoiled and sat up, certain of the words yet disbelieving his ears.
“A preacher was supposed to tell you,” the fat man said, obviously savoring the moment. “Whenever they found out if you were Catholic, Protestant, or kike—but your father’s dead.”
“Liar! Fuckin’ liar!”
“He was driving down to help search for you and ran under the rear of a truck in the fog.”
“Liar! Liar!” Alex denied what he simultaneously knew was true and was unable to comprehend.
“Get the newspaper on the desk,” the fat man said to the turnkey, whose face was pale and wrinkled in discomfort. The turnkey looked at Alex and, with tears, nodded confirmation. Then he faced the fat man. “He’s just a kid … a goddamn kid, and you—”
“He’s a criminal.”
Alex’s wail of absolute despair blotted out conversation. His mind was blind. He was unaware of the darkness brought by the closing door. He abandoned himself to sobbing that strained his throat while he was oblivious to it. Death was beyond his grasp, but it was enough that he would never see Clem again. The pain suffused his entire being. He began rocking back and forth, his forehead banging into the steel door, at first accidentally; then the anguish was so complete that he wanted the pain, so he began butting his forehead into the steel, trying to knock himself unconscious while still sobbing.
* * *
The juvenile detectives came in the afternoon—big Irishmen with booze-reddened complexions, Sen-Sen on their breaths, and after-shave on their razor-polished jaws. They were a matched pair.
“C’mon, kid,” one of them said when the steel door opened, spilling light within. “We’re taking you downtown and then to Juvenile Hall. Who put you in here, anyway?” The detective indicated the hole.
Alex ignored the question. He heard what was said, but the words meant nothing that he cared about.
The detective knew the boy had been told about his father, but the big Irishman didn’t know what to say. It was beyond the realm of police work. And the boy had shot a man, nearly paralyzed him. The detective had once felt sorry for straying boys, but he’d seen too many go from delinquency to hard crime, from reform school to prison. Now they were acorns to trees he could anticipate.
“C’mon, lad, let’s put the show on the road.”
Absolutely nothing mattered to Alex. The man’s tone said they would drag him out if they had to, and Alex was indifferent to that, too. Still, he got up and came out. The handcuffs appeared, making a clicking whirr as they opened.
“Behind him?” the second detective asked, cuffs poised.
“Naw, he’s not going to give us any shit, are you, kid?”
Alex said nothing. The cuffs went in front. Now the detectives were quick, getting on each side while the turnkey led them out.
The white light of the sun on concrete hurt Alex’s eyes. Blinking, held by the elbows and rushed down the stairs to a NO PARKING zone, he couldn’t believe the waiting crowd was for him. Nearly a dozen reporters and cameramen were there, the latter retreating with cameras clicking. The reporters came as close as the detectives would let them and tried to ask questions: Where was his mother? How did he feel? Where was the gun?
The cluster reached the car and he was pushed in the back seat, one detective beside him while the ot
her rushed to the driver’s seat. The men with cameras photographed him through the glass.
The car lurched away.
“First time I’ve seen such a blowup for a kid,” one detective said.
“It’s one helluva human-interest story.”
The car moved quickly through the light traffic, and then came to a two-lane highway.
The detective in the back seat glanced down at the boy, who was staring ahead blindly, eyes level with the top of the front seat.
“City Hall first,” the driver said. “Then Juvie?”
“That’s the schedule.”
Alex didn’t even move his eyes.
“The district attorney’s office wants to talk to you, Alex,” the back seat detective said.
Alex didn’t reply. The detective shrugged and dug around in a pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
The interrogation at the district attorney’s office was brief. A young man with ambition gleaming from behind his horn-rimmed glasses sat on his desk, legs dangling, and tried to question Alex, expecting that any eleven-year-old would pour out all that had happened and, certainly, tell where the revolver was. Actually, without a statement they had no case. No identifiable fingerprints had been found. The victim and his wife couldn’t identify Alex. They’d seen nothing but shadows. Under California law Alex could not be found guilty solely on Sammy’s testimony, for Sammy was an accomplice, and an accomplice’s testimony had to be corroborated by something independent: a confession, the missing gun, something.… The deputy district attorney’s infectious smile and man-to-man demeanor cracked into perspiring worry when Alex sat absolutely silent before sympathy, cajolery, and, finally, threats.
“Please let us get that pistol before it hurts someone else. You don’t want that, do you? We know you were just scared, that you didn’t intend to hurt the man.…”
Alex’s hazel eyes stared blankly into space. He didn’t open his mouth, except to eat a hamburger and drink a Coke. The bribe failed, and in exasperation the deputy district attorney slapped the empty cup away from him, scattering ice around the room.
Alex’s thoughts behind the impassiveness stormed with guilt. He saw his father disappearing into the ground—it was all he could see.
“Get him out of here,” the deputy district attorney said. “I’ll get an order for a psycho exam. I think he’s loony.”
* * *
Juvenile Hall’s front door was innocent in appearance but really impregnable to anything short of a bazooka. It could be opened only by an electric buzzer from inside a glass booth.
The detective handed his papers to a female receptionist. The reception area was roomy, with dark hard-backed benches along one pale-green wall, on which glass-framed prints of Norman Rockwell’s visions of America were hung. The prints and the drapes covering the wire-mesh windows were the total decor. The half-glass control booth, with a periscope view of the outside, had a six-foot bulletin board, black, with removable white lettering and numbers giving the count by unit and then the total: 476 males, 53 females. Now the count would be increasing by four. A very pregnant black girl, her hair askew, sat weeping on a bench. Two young teenaged Mexicans in dirty jeans and maroon sport shirts buttoned to the throat sat on the other bench. Both wore upswept ducktails. When Alex had started to load his hair with pomade and comb a ducktail, Clem immediately took him for a haircut, saying, “We’ll have no pachucos in this family.”
The receptionist pressed the intercom switch and told the other end that three males were waiting. Minutes later a huge black woman entered, her eyes sweeping over the room. She was six-foot-three but perfectly proportioned; she wore her hair in a natural, unpopular in 1943. Her white uniform said she was a nurse.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “We stop for lunch, too.” She took the papers from the receptionist and waved them at the boys, beckoning them to follow her long strides up the corridor to a large room that combined a medical dispensary with a clothing storeroom. One corner was piled with cardboard boxes. She waved in their direction. “Get one and put your clothes in it, except for your shoes. They’ll be washed for you when you go out.” She walked past Alex, saw his glum face. “Cheer up, pretty eyes. It can’t be that bad.”
The simple words touched him, made him smile, but then he wanted to cry. She was trying to be helpful, but she didn’t know.…
They went into a community shower with three shower heads. The front had a tile wall, shoulder-high, so they could be seen but still have some privacy. The nurse went to a desk across the room and began to fill out papers. She called Alex’s name. He felt so good in the water that he was ashamed.
“What’s your birthdate, Hammond?” she asked.
“March tenth, 1932,” he said.
She was standing bent over the desk so her rump jutted out. She asked him the routine questions of a medical history—mumps, measles, et cetera. He answered mindlessly, oblivious to the two older Mexicans standing beside him. They talked in Spanish, half whispering.
Then a hand reached out and stroked his ass. Alex jerked erect and turned abruptly, not understanding the grins confronting him, twisted grins beneath evil eyes. Homosexuality had existed in some of the military schools he’d been in, but it hadn’t affected him.
Prior awareness was unnecessary, however. The bitter-looking Mexican had a semi-erection protruding from a shadow of pubic hair. “Touch it,” he said, meaning his penis, and he seemed to be half laughing.
The nurse was paying no attention. The wall hid the shower area. Alex felt distaste. He shook his head.
“You better … if you know what’s good for you.” He dropped his eyes to his penis to emphasize his meaning. The other Mexican was out of the water, standing beside Alex. Their postures held threats of violence. It puzzled Alex, for he’d done nothing to them. He shook his head, smiled to show he was friendly, and went back to his shower, quickly washing off the brown laundry soap that burned his skin.
They were drying off when the nurse left the room. Alex had already forgotten the momentary episode in the shower, so he never expected or saw the punch. It was a flashing pain, exploding lights in his eyes. He felt his feet go out on the wet floor as his rump hit the tiles and his head snapped back into the wall.
He was sitting naked on the floor, one hand to his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers. My father just died and they won’t leave me alone, he thought.
“Don’t rat on us,” one Mexican hissed.
Alex frowned; it would never enter his mind to snitch. The ethos of boys’ homes included that rule, though it was often ignored by the smaller boys.
But fury was welling up in him. He held up the hand with the blood.
“Tell ’em you fell down,” one of the Mexicans said.
“Why’d you hit me?” Alex asked. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“To show you.”
“Show me what?”
“What you want, your ass kicked good.”
Alex came up in an explosion, surprising them enough so that they didn’t move. They tensed for a direct attack, but instead he sprang to a shelf where jars of saline sat in a row. He snatched one, whirled, and half swung, half hurled the bottle. The distance was only three feet, but he had telegraphed the attack and the Mexican ducked, so the heavy missile missed by inches. It shattered against a wall. Alex grabbed another.
“Man, cool it … don’t get us busted!”
The older boys had split apart, half wary and half afraid, ready to duck. Alex faked a throw, the Mexican ducked, and then Alex let go. Again he missed, but he ran to the desk and snatched up a letter opener.
The door flew open and the black nurse rushed in, two men in blue shirts and gray pants at her heels, their heavy keyrings jangling as they moved. One man wrapped his arms around Alex, lifting the boy off his feet and hauling him backward. “Ho, boy, dammit!” the man said. “Knock this shit off.”
The second man interposed himself between Alex and the Mexicans, spre
ading his arms as if to hold them back, but it was unnecessary.
“Get him out of here,” the nurse said, nodding toward Alex. Blood was dripping from his nose to his chest. The man carried him in the same grip out of the room. Alex wanted to cry in mortification.
Twenty minutes later the bleeding had stopped and he was dressed in faded, unpressed green khakis. The shirtsleeves hung to his fingertips, and his pants were both rolled up at the bottom and folded at the waist beneath the web belt. The man and the nurse asked him what had happened, but he hung his head and pressed his lips together. They knew he hadn’t started the fight because of the odds against him, the differences in size and age as well as numbers. The men wanted to lock all three of them in “seclusion,” but the nurse made both sides swear that the fight was over, and then she decided to let the matter drop. She outranked both of the men.
“He can go,” the nurse said, patting the boy’s head. “Take it easy, kid.” She smiled, her good white teeth contrasting with the mahogany of her skin.
One man had already disappeared; the other got off his perch on a table and motioned to Alex. “Time to go to bed,” he said.
Still shivering slightly, his energy spent from the fight, Alex followed the man. He was afraid of this place, having heard wild stories in the military schools and boarding homes; it was the threat the housemothers always used. The man led him down enclosed stairs, along a narrow corridor where the concrete walls shone dully from light striking enamel, then through a steel door that the man opened with a big key. It clanged shut, and they were in another, even wider corridor. The masonite floor was waxed, the green-enameled walls immaculate, and the corridor seemed to stretch into infinity, though actually it was only a hundred yards or so. The lights were dim and his escort’s leather heels reverberated in the stillness. They passed a nurse at a desk in an alcove. She looked up at them without expression. Now they were at a gate of bars like a grille, beyond which another corridor formed a T. At the juncture was another desk, a hooded lamp fastened to its side so the beam of light hit the green blotter but shadowed the face of the man in the chair.
Little Boy Blue Page 5
