That night they moved him to the other side of “G” Company.
* * *
From the beginning Alex knew he would remain in “G” Company until he went to “Broadway,” the nickname for freedom. How long that would be was unknown, but until whenever happened he would be in a “G” Company cell.
The routine was monastic, and Alex adjusted to it quickly. The daily schedule was simple and seldom deviated from. He ate in the building’s small mess hall with the rest of “G” Company’s permanent residents. After breakfast, he went out on one of the three crews, carrying hoe, shovel, rake, or mattock, depending on the job to be done. Sometimes it was chopping weeds on hillsides or removing them from roadside drainage ditches so the water would flow better. They dug up leaky pipes or loaded piles of rotting lumber on trucks. In autumn they raked leaves all over the institution, and for two months they cut off the side of a small hill to widen a road. When it rained, they sat indoors shucking peas from their pods. Most of the work was hard labor in the sun, although it was just for six hours a day. When his muscles adjusted, Alex didn’t mind the work. He actually sometimes took joy in it. At eleven A.M. they came in to eat lunch and were locked up until one. They worked again until four, when they showered and ate again. If the weather was good they were let into a small, fenced yard next to the building until it got dark. In the winter they went directly to their cells after supper. Twice a week a teacher came down at night for an hour, using the mess hall as a classroom, thereby satisfying the state law about every adolescent attending school. The teacher had no curriculum. He donated magazines they could read and take back to their cells; or else he gave them pencils and paper and coaxed them into writing letters home, which was the only place they were allowed to write to. The teacher also had workbook courses in English and mathematics that the boys could do in their cells, but few bothered to take them, nor did Alex. He disliked any structure and hated math anyway. He fed his yearning for knowledge by voracious reading. A utility closet had been converted into a makeshift library holding a couple hundred of the coverless, donated books. He managed to get one of the men to let him into the bookroom for a few minutes once or twice a week. He always grabbed half a dozen books without bothering to open their pages to read the titles. That took too much time with the man waiting, his key inserted in the lock. Nobody else was interested in the bookroom, so Alex devised a procedure where he put the books he’d read on their backs on a shelf, and then taking the next batch in order so he wouldn’t get what he’d already read. The collection was eclectic and middlebrow, from Book-of-the-Month Club best-sellers to nonfiction leaning toward history and psychology. At night he always read, from the time he went into the cell until lights-out, and sometimes when he was particularly engrossed he read long after that. A floodlight outside the building threw enough light through the window to read by if he sat on the edge of the bunk with his back to the window. It took him eight months to read every book in the room, even those on uninteresting topics, like religion. After that he got the teacher to bring him books. They were fewer in number but of better overall quality. He would’ve talked to the teacher about books if the eyes of the others weren’t always present.
As for religion, Alex got his fair share from his aunt’s letters. Every month or so they wrote each other. Along with five dollars, she never failed to admonish him to accept Our Lord, to turn to Him for the way.… Her letters were short and uneasily formal and repetitive, the letters of someone unaccustomed to writing. If he snickered at the religious parts, he did so with gentle thoughts, imagining her as a kindly woman he would like—and be able to manipulate. It was understood very near the start that he would come to stay with her and her husband whenever he was paroled. They’d opened a small café in Los Angeles. Her husband cooked and she worked as a waitress.
Alex turned fourteen in “G” Company. The hard labor conditioned him as he filled out. He was still growing, but now he stood five-seven and weighed one thirty-nine, not a mature man but not a bony eleven-year-old either. He got to know the names of everyone in “G” Company, but of the thirty boys permanently assigned, he never spoke to half except when absolutely necessary. Others he kept aloof from, and only a handful did he associate with at all. And just two were friends. Both were fuckups. One was Allen, known as Twig because he was tall, thin and gawky. Twig had been in Whittier with Alex. He was in permanent segregation because a black cadet officer in “N” Company had kicked him for horseplay and then knocked out his two front teeth when Twig fought back. Twig melted down a toothbrush handle and inserted a razor blade in it while it was soft. When it hardened he was ready. Twig waited until the other youth was bent shirtless over a sink. Twig walked up behind him and stroked once all the way down his back with the razor blade held in the handle. It took a hundred and fourteen sutures to sew up the cut—and Twig was assigned permanently to “G” Company. In later years, after prison and bouts with electric-shock therapy in state hospitals, Twig would become the West Coast leader of the American Nazi party.
Alex’s other friend was Marsh, a burly seventeen-year-old who’d killed a man who was fighting with his father over a traffic dispute. They were rolling on the ground and Marsh came to his father’s aid with a tire iron. He was fresh from Oklahoma and had a heavy accent that caused him trouble sometimes. The city boys ridiculed him, while the blacks assumed from his voice that he was a bigot. Not that it really bothered him; he was a junior-sized grizzly. He wasn’t allowed to bring in cartons of cigarettes as were those on the mainline, but the Man usually let him bring two or three packs. He couldn’t keep them in his cell, but he could get a few after each meal and when they went out into the yard. Marsh, Twig, and Alex didn’t have to roll the Bull Durham when the sack was passed down the mess hall table. They hated Bull Durham, although it was fine when they could get hands on a bag and smuggle it into the cells where they weren’t supposed to smoke.
He got to talk to Lulu when the Mexican came down for thirty days. Lulu had gotten drunk on home brew and put a turd in the shoe-shop foreman’s lunchpail. Alex saw Watkins by going to the hospital on sick call or to see the dentist, for Watkins was a hospital orderly. Since the failure of the escape, Watkins had been working his way out of the reformatory. He went home three weeks before Alex got word that his own application for parole was being granted. It had taken two months after the caseworker put in the papers. His aunt had written the Youth Authority via the caseworker; so had her Baptist minister in her church. He hadn’t been in any trouble in the quiet routine of “G” Company. Mainly, however, he had served a total of more than three years when they added the time spent in state hospitals and Whittier. The average stay was eleven months. When the caseworker brought him word that he was going home, he added that there was one special condition: the parole officer in L.A. was instructed to arrange a psychotherapy program for him. The Youth Authority members were worried about his temper and potential for violence.
“As soon as he sends us a teletype on that, you’ll be on your way.”
“How long’ll that be?”
“We have to send your files first. I’d say two, three weeks at the most.”
Three weeks!
As the days passed, Alex swelled with expectations, dreams, and ideas. Often he couldn’t sleep until early morning as he thought about being free, legitimately free. Would the last morning finally arrive?
It did, of course.
19
Fear of freedom, an emotion known to everyone imprisoned for very long and repressed by everyone else, came upon Alex the night before his parole. Until that moment he’d handled the situation by not really thinking about it. He performed the behavior of release—talking to social workers, getting measured for clothes, taking a “dressout” photo—without dwelling on what these things meant, detached from feeling. When he couldn’t ignore it any longer, he broke out in a heavy sweat and felt nauseated. The fear had nothing specific to focus on, nothing to overcome. Indeed, it
was the lack of specifics, the lack of knowledge, that engendered the fear. It was going into the unknown. That was the world outside, the unknown. What did he know of freedom? The episodes of escape, when he’d been a fugitive, weren’t preparation for real freedom and its demands. The fear came upon him when the garrulous bedtime dialogues were cut off by lights-out. The darkness triggered the previously suppressed fear; it had been kept hidden by talk and horseplay. As the release date neared, sleep became harder. It was most unusual, because he always slept easily, no matter how tough the circumstances. In fact, he usually slept to avoid tension.…
Alex’s eyes were open when the cell lights came on for the last time. His mouth was cottony and he had stomach cramps. Alex swiftly stripped the bedding from the mattress. Days ago his locker had been cleaned out, so now there was one set of new underwear that he’d wear to freedom and the ragged shirt and jeans that he’d discard in Receiving and Release. He’d finished dressing and brushing his teeth when the night counselor unlocked his door.
“C’mon, Hammond,” he said. “I’ll escort you to Receiving and Release when my relief gets here.”
Outdoors was bright with a lingering night coolness, the weather that raises hopes and spirits. Later it would be hot, but now it was perfect. As Alex crossed the detail grounds, heading toward R&R in the basement of the Castle, exultant anticipation swept away the night’s doubts. He was finally going to be legitimately free, and there were infinite possibilities in everything. So good was his mood that he was humming aloud, and he stopped momentarily to look at the institution’s brick buildings dotting the hills. He felt a tug of affection for the reform school, not that he would ever admit it. Looking back, it hadn’t been that tough. Yeah, maybe tough, but not terrible. According to books he’d read, prep schools were also tough in their way. Here in Preston he’d gotten smarter, and he’d made lifelong friends. He had many addresses and phone numbers in his sock.
Outside the door, the escort shook hands with Alex. “Guess I can leave you here.”
The freeman was due any moment. A small-boned, extremely dark black youth appeared, carrying four unframed paintings, two in each hand. He, too, was being paroled this morning, and the paintings were his own work or he wouldn’t be allowed to take them. The paintings surprised Alex. He knew nothing of art, but the two he could see (one a slum cityscape, the other a view of the Golden Gate Bridge) looked good. It surprised Alex because the black looked really stupid. He’d seen the black in the white clothes of a kitchen worker, but they’d never spoken and didn’t know each other’s names. Now the black ignored Alex and leaned the paintings on the wall.
“That bridge is nice,” Alex said. “You do it?” Alex knew he had.
The black hesitated, suspicion in his eyes. “Yeah, I done it. I’m takin’ it home to Mama … that one. Gonna try to sell the others.”
“We’ll be travelin’ together, huh?”
“Nope. My mama and her boyfriend are drivin’ from Oakland. They’ll be at the gate.”
“Yeah, I’m goin’ to L.A. anyway, out near Santa Monica. I’ve got an aunt and uncle came out from Louisville last year. Ain’t never seen ’em, but they’ve—” Alex stopped talking, realizing the black youth wasn’t listening. The Receiving and Release man appeared at that moment, his keys jingling.
Twenty minutes later, when they were dressed and given their sealed packages (sealed so nothing could be slipped into them and smuggled out), the man escorted them upstairs in the Castle to the cashier’s office. The black boy got the nine dollars in his account; he got nothing else because he was going out to “home and care.” Alex got forty-four dollars and a ticket for the train, plus a sheet of travel instructions and the address and phone number of his parole officer. He had to report to the parole officer within forty-eight hours of arrival.
All that remained was to leave, but even that required a wait. The R&R man had Alex sit on a hallway bench outside the administrative offices while he, the man, escorted the black to the front gate. Then he went for a state car to drive Alex to Stockton, twenty miles away.
While the man was gone, the office workers began arriving for work. None of them knew Alex, so none spoke, except one young secretary; she saw from his clothes that he was being released. “Good luck,” she said. “Stay out of trouble. This isn’t a fun place to grow up.”
“Thank you,” Alex said, then blushed furiously. He could smell her cologne, and when she walked away he stared at her legs and buttocks, which were the ideal of his sexual fantasies. Every boy in the reform school had masturbated over her, and the memory of doing it caused Alex to blush. That and the fact that he hadn’t talked to any female (except the old nurse in the hospital) for more than a year. When she was gone her scent lingered, strong to him because that, too, had been a long time back.
The R&R man was silent while driving through the countryside to Stockton. Alex was glad, for he thrilled at simply looking at the landscape. It wasn’t magnificent countryside. Mostly it was alfalfa and grapes, with a few walnut orchards. This was not autumn, and it was dry and dusty. Heat waves shimmered early, prelude to a scorcher. Yet it was beautiful freedom and had infinite possibilities for him.
Stockton was a farm metropolis, serving a vast valley of unsurpassed munificence. Stockton had many tree-shaded streets, not just in the residential neighborhoods but also in part of the business section. It was larger than Alex expected; it took fifteen minutes from the outskirts of town to reach the train depot near the center.
“There’s a two-hour wait, kid,” the man said as he pulled to the curb and left the motor running. “Don’t get in trouble. Last week I left three here. They’re in jail down in Fresno. They stole a car instead of waiting for the train. The highway patrol ran ’em down four hours after they was released.”
Alex laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not that crazy.”
“Ain’t my worry. Don’t bother me none what you do. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Alex said.
They completed the ritual of release by shaking hands; then Alex got out, package tucked under his arm, watching the state car until it turned a corner.
With the car’s disappearance, freedom crashed on his sensibilities. It was nearly a physical blow, and for a moment it was frightening. Then he recalled that he had to catch a train, and somehow that mollified him. Still, there were two hours to fill. Several blocks away were signs above storefronts, and vehicle and pedestrian traffic was heavier. No doubt there was a place there to obtain a hamburger; his mouth salivated at the thought of relish, mustard, and onions. Hamburgers in Preston were a liberal mix of bread crumbs with ground meat, cooked in an oven so they were hard and dry on the outside and often raw in the center. Ah yes, he definitely wanted a hamburger. And the café would also have a cigarette machine.
He walked with a grin on his face, feeling a giddy hilarity, meanwhile oblivious to the sweat streaming down his forehead and making his shirt stick to him.
Although air-conditioning was a decade away from small cafés, a pivoting fan there created a cooling breeze. The café was nearly deserted; it was after the breakfast crowd and before lunch. Alex savored the hamburger, delighting in the juices and tastes of meat and relish, mustard and onions. He dripped sweat and finished eating. He wanted to walk around sightseeing before getting on the train.
A cigarette machine was next to the front door. He timed his exit so the waitress was at the rear—just in case she should say something. His twenty cents gave him a pack of Chesterfields and two pennies of change inside the cellophane. He’d left the waitress a quarter tip, and she ignored the minor illegally operating the cigarette machine.
Instead of walking a direct route down the boulevard to the train station, Alex zigzagged down shaded residential streets—just to see what was there. It was a habit he would always keep, this curiosity. Now he saw elderly persons on shaded porches of big, old houses; he saw tanned six-year-olds running through a lawn sprinkler. Two teenaged girls in
cut-off blue jeans passed him from the opposite direction. As they went by he smelled, momentarily, their sweetness, and saw the hints of breasts pressing out at their shirts. That and imagination brought an immediate erection.
Yes, there was so much to do out here. He shook his head in expectation as he turned the last corner and saw that station half a block away. But a lot of what he did depended on Aunt Ada and her husband. Ray was his name. Alex impressed it in his mind, for he tended to forget it. Aunt Ada seemed good enough in the letters, except for the religious bullshit—but lots of middle-aged women got all involved with God. It was all right if she prayed for him, just as long as she didn’t want him to pray. What he wanted was to work in the café, besides going to school (that was depressing), and save five dollars a week for an automobile. He was worth twenty-five dollars a week and room and board. He was old enough for a learner’s permit, but certainly they would understand that he was more mature than most fourteen-year-olds, and that when he was fifteen in a few months (he wouldn’t be able to save enough money until then anyway), it would be right to say he was sixteen so he could get a license and have some kind of car. It was so important that he couldn’t let doubt creep into his mind, at least not into his conscious mind. He had some other ideas and hopes, too, but he’d wait to see how everyone got along before bringing them out. Maybe he’d been wrong when he stood on the San Pedro breakwater and saw himself fated to be an outlaw. Maybe he had a chance for something else.
20
When the train came out of the switchbacks and curves of the mountains into the basin of the San Fernando Valley, now gathering speed for the final twenty-mile run into Los Angeles’ Union Station, the sun was a red half-disk being pulled down between the peaks into the unseen Pacific. Alex had stared avidly from the window every minute of the journey. He’d just read The Grapes of Wrath, and when the train went through Salinas and Soledad and the other towns of Steinbeck’s world, he wondered where the people were. These were sleepy farm villages without enough life for drama; or maybe there were things he was unable to see. Now it was the San Fernando Valley, and it was all orange groves and alfalfa and desert except for a few small communities close to the Hollywood Hills. On their fringes were the white, wood skeletons of tract homes, precursors to the greatest exodus in human history, though Alex Hammond had no awareness of such things as he rode by.
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