Detective Walls cut off the recorder and tried to look mean. "Do want to go to Stockwell?"
"Where?"
The man leaned down close to my face. He sneered with his nasty teeth. "Stockwell Juvenile Detention Center for Boys. Prison for boys who lie to police officers. They got boys three times your size that were locked up for assaults, rapes, and even murders. You want to know what they do to punks like you?"
I remembered. I had heard of Stockwell from Jimmy Cook, a kid who spent a short time at the boys home. He was older than I was, but a couple years younger than Sean. Jimmy spent a year in the juvie prison, and when he made parole, they sent him to live temporarily in the boys home with us. At the time, the home was overcrowded, and the staff brought an extra cot for him to stay in the room I shared with Sean. He eventually left us when Tolley House, a group home for boys, completed its remodel in a new location in Harper Springs. I would come to know Tolley House very well in the future.
While he shared our room, Jimmy routinely suffered nightmares and often wet his cot. If he had a choice, he stayed in our room and had nothing to do with any of the other boys. If there was ever a boy who fit the description "afraid of his own shadow," it was Jimmy.
I thought of Sean as my big brother, and when he suddenly started spending more time with Jimmy, I grew jealous. That's when Sean explained that Jimmy needed our help. He told me that one night when Jimmy woke us up screaming that he stayed up with him after I went back to bed. Sean heard the boy talking in his sleep, and learned enough that he asked him the right questions, which led to Jimmy confiding in him.
Sean made me swear to keep quiet about Jimmy's secret. While he was in Stockwell, a gang of older inmates routinely abused Jimmy with a guard's knowledge. Sean encouraged him to tell Mrs. Glover how the gang had tortured and beaten him, but the boy was still afraid. He believed the gang's members outside of Stockwell would get to him if he told on the ones inside.
Jimmy Cook was a wreck, and I didn't think anyone could help him. A couple of months after he left, I found out I was right.
As I considered the possibility of confinement in Stockwell, I felt the same as I did the past fall when I fell on the football during a peewee game, and I thought I might die before I could take another breath. My legs trembled beneath the table, and I felt dizzy as if I might fall out of the chair. As did most state kids, I acted older and tougher than the average kid did, but I was still a frightened young boy.
I did my best to control my voice. "I wanna talk to Miss Martin alone."
Detective Walls studied me and then Miss Martin before his eyebrows raised the question to my caseworker.
"I'll be fine," she said.
"I'll be right outside. Call if you need me," advised the detective. He walked to the door, opened it, and took a final look at Miss Martin and me before closing the door behind him.
With the detective gone, my words rushed out. "Miss Martin, what am I supposed to do? I swear I didn't touch Trevor. Mike is blaming me just like he's done before. I don't wanna go to prison. Please, help me."
Miss Martin's eyes watered. "You're right about Mike. He swears that you pushed Trevor out of the tree house. His mother said that when she heard Trevor scream that she ran to the back yard and saw Mike standing over Trevor, and you were in the tree house looking down. From what she said, the police don't think that Mike could have climbed down in the time it took Mrs. Paulson to enter the yard. She told the police that there were times when you were overly aggressive with her boys, and the police saw two incidents in your file about you fighting. They know that you're on probation for assaulting the Beck boy and for destroying the Becks' property. Your counselor says that you don't cooperate in therapy. It looks bad for you, River."
"Miss Martin, Nathan Beck is a bully. I beat him up after he pushed me down the steps, and made me tear my jeans and cut my knees. And yeah, I tore up his room because I was mad at Nathan for lying and the Becks for blaming me instead of their damn baby. They didn't even ask about my torn jeans or the blood running to my socks. When I got to the boys home, my knees was still bleedin' so bad that they had to take me to get stitches.'
"Then, I had to go to court and listen to a stupid judge tell me how bad I was. Judge Merlo never let me tell my side cause he already had his mind made up after he read the crap the Becks told the cops. He just put me on probation and ordered more counseling. He said he'd lock me up if the counselors couldn't straighten me out. Just like now, nobody believes me cause I'm trash, and I got no parents to fight for me."
"River, I'm sorry. That was before I was your caseworker, and I only know you from the point you went to live with the Paulsons. Your probation, your history of fighting, the statements from Mike and his mother, and the fact that Senator Paulson is an important man, all work against you. Some of it shouldn't matter, but it does."
"What's gonna happen to me, Miss Martin? Am I arrested? Do I got to go to court? That cop says he's sending me to Stockwell if I don't say I hurt Trevor, and the way you talk, I'm going there anyway."
I saw it in her eyes. Miss Martin had something that wasn't easy for her to say. She was one of those adults who hated delivering bad news to a kid who might go crazy on her. She would rather use words that would keep him calm until after she had turned him over to someone else. If she were lucky, she would be miles away from the situation when the kid realized the truth and went ballistic. I didn't see her as a bad person, just one who hated unpleasant confrontations.
"Miss Martin, be straight with me," I pleaded. "You're supposed to help me cause I don't got parents. Don't just lie to me until you can get away from here."
"River, I'll see that you get a lawyer. The police are charging you as a juvenile with involuntary manslaughter. It means that you didn't intend to hurt Trevor, but by pushing him out of the tree house, you made him fall and caused his death. You will stay in Stockwell until you go to court where the family court judge will decide what happens to you. If he believes you are guilty, he could sentence you to remain in Stockwell for up to six years. The solicitor said that if you admitted your mistake, apologized, and behaved well in Stockwell that the judge might release you in as few as six months."
I couldn't stop the tears from running down my face.
At my hearing for assaulting Nathan Beck, Judge Merlo had made it clear that he didn't like me, and I knew I was in a bad situation. If I stuck with the truth, and he didn't believe me, he could see me as unrepentant and lock me away for six years for something I didn't do. I could lie, ask for forgiveness, and hope to get only six months. Either way, like too many other things had been in my life, it wasn't fair. Six years seemed like forever, but lying seemed even worse. Lying was like admitting that I was everything the assholes said I was.
"River, I'm so sorry. Maybe your lawyer can make the judge believe that you didn't do it. Just be honest with him and let him help you."
"A lawyer won't care no more about a state kid than the police do. Nobody does."
"Give him a chance, River. Trust him. Maybe he can't get you out of it, but he might be able to make the time shorter."
I cried again with my head down on the table, and Miss Martin placed her arm around my shoulders. After ten minutes, I forced my tears back and pulled my tee shirt bottom up to dry my eyes. I fought to be strong because I knew Detective Walls was watching me from behind the one-way glass, and I hated the idea of the yellow-toothed son of a bitch seeing me cry.
"Miss Martin, since I ain't going back to the Paulsons, can you get my things from there? I got a few clothes, and I got a bag in the closet with personal stuff in it like a baby blanket from when I was born. I heard that you can't have personal stuff in Stockwell, so would you keep my things at your house? It's real important to me."
Miss Martin's tears rolled into her smile. "Yes, I'll get your things and keep them safe for you, and you can let me know when you want them."
"Thanks."
"River, I'm going with you to det
ention, so they will know that you have someone from the state looking out for you. When they take you to the processing area, they will allow me to go back there with you, if you want me. I don't mind if it will make you feel better to have someone there that you know. It won't be a good experience for you whether I'm there or not."
"I want you to stay as long as you can." I remembered Jimmy describing the processing procedures at Stockwell. I knew it would suck, but I wanted Miss Martin with me. I wanted the prison staff to think that I was very close to the woman from child services, and that I meant more to her than just another case file. Jimmy said that the boys with frequent visitors, especially people like lawyers, ministers, and state people were treated better by the guards.
"Okay, River. As soon as we leave here, I will make a call to get you a lawyer, and he'll visit you as soon as he can. When you go to court, I'll speak to the judge on your behalf, and I'll make you another promise. If you have to stay at Stockwell, I will visit you every week, as long as you're there, if that's okay with you."
"Thank you. I'd really like that." I started to cry again and choked it off. It was hard to act tough when I was so scared. They could call it detention, juvie, or any other name, but I was going to prison. Most kids would have had parents or at least some family to support them. I had no one but Miss Martin, someone I hardly knew.
Every day, for as long as I could remember, I had wondered who my parents were, and why they deserted me. Usually, I tried to believe that my parents had loved me and had a good reason for dumping me, but at that moment, I wished that I could tell them how much I hated their damn guts for making me and then throwing me away. I wished that someone would hurt them as badly as I had been hurt, and I wished that they hated their lives as much as I hated mine.
I wanted my parents to know that Jimmy Cook had nightmares so bad that he wet his bed and screamed every damn night until he wished he were dead. I wanted them to know that when he finally couldn't face another day of his miserable life, Jimmy jumped in front of a speeding train just past the Railroad Street crossing in Harper Springs. I wanted my parents to suffer the same fear I did when I thought of the cops locking me away in the place that destroyed Jimmy.
I heard the door open and saw Detective Walls enter. I was nauseous.
The detective leaned over the table towards me. "You want to tell me the truth now?"
The man's smug expression and condescending tone pissed me off. He was a bully who enjoyed using his authority to intimidate kids. I was still afraid of what would happen to me at Stockwell, but I wasn't afraid of Walls, and I wasn't giving him shit. I was only eleven years old, but that was eleven state years, and I knew the man was taking me to juvie prison no matter how respectful I was.
Probation or not, I knew the judge would rule against me, so the only thing in question was how many years I would serve. I was convinced that state kids never won because they were stereotyped, and because they had no parents to fight an injustice. It was easy for the authorities to show they were tough on crime by nailing kids with no tax-paying, voting parents to raise hell and threaten elected officials.
Since I believed that I was serving time no matter what I said, there was no way that I was going to let Detective Walls walk out bragging about how bad he scared the little punk. I might have been state trash, the kind of boy that no parents wanted their kid bringing home for a sleepover, but I was not a liar, and I was not a pussy, and I wasn't going to let some asshole cop with yellow teeth and buzzard breath turn me into either one.
I gave Detective Walls a cold stare, laced with all the contempt my dark eyes could show. I was not the remorseful, fearful kid he thought would be ready to cooperate, and for a moment, I threw him off his game. I hoped the other lying cops were watching and listening from behind the one-way glass because my answer was for all of them.
"Here's the truth. You and the Paulsons are gonna lie about Trevor's fall, and you cops are gonna lie about how you treated me. I'm gonna tell the judge the truth, and he'll decide what happens to me, not you. He probably won't believe me, but the next time a kid complains about you cops, the judge will remember what I said. He might even start wondering. So go ahead and take me to Stockwell like you planned. Maybe the guards over there brush their teeth and don't smell like they been eatin' shit sandwiches."
I'm not sure what would have happened, if Miss Martin had not been there in the room. Detective Walls might have ripped my head off. Instead, he tightened his jaw and quietly left us to arrange my transport to Stockwell.
I was grateful to Miss Martin, who followed the police car outside the city limits to Stockwell and then stayed through the intake process. I have no doubt that the staff treated me better that day because of her presence. As she promised, she visited me every week, and more importantly, there came a day when she fought for me, as hard as any mother would have fought for her own child, to save me from another injustice.
CHAPTER FIVE
June 2000
Over two years later
The juvenile justice system stole two years of my life and gave them to Stockwell Juvenile Detention Center, a fifty-three year old prison of neglect and abuse, in which fearful boys fought to survive behind walls where the rats and roaches were the least of their worries. However, on the two days each week when visitors walked through the front doors of the facility, the first thing they saw was the detention center's mission statement, which led the naive and the willing among them to believe something entirely different from the appalling reality. In the visitation room, it was easier for an outsider to accept the lofty words on the poster than it was to search for the truth behind the dull, hopeless eyes of a boy too afraid to expose it.
As my story goes on, I will share some memories about my time in Stockwell, but I won't tell you everything that I have tried for years to keep buried in the darkest corner of my mind. In those cases where I don't offer explicit details, you should trust me that you probably don't want to read about them any more than I want to write about them. What I hope to do is tell you enough about my time in the juvie prison to make you understand how it changed me, and how I felt about the possibility of me ever giving up my freedom to return there.
Upon my release from Stockwell, located on the outskirts of Ackers, Miss Martin assigned me to live in Tolley House, a group home in Harper Springs. The house held a maximum of eight foster boys, and was only two miles from where I had lived on and off in the Bergeron County Junior Boys Home. Miss Martin thought it would be better for me to attend school in Harper Springs where the kids would most likely know nothing about my stay with the Paulsons or my time in Stockwell. It would also be easier on my guardians at Tolley House to drive me to appointments with my parole officer and counselor, since their offices were only a few minutes away.
Boys who lived in Tolley House had more in common than the fact that they were wards of the state. Each boy had been paroled from Stockwell or sentenced to probation for a first offense that a judge decided wasn't serious enough to warrant detention. Whether he was on parole or probation, a boy was always under pressure to follow strict rules of conduct so that his case officer received only good reports on him. Each boy met with his parole or probation officer monthly to review progress reports from the boy's school, guardians, caseworker, and counselor. The meetings were usually stressful for a Tolley House boy who worried about losing his freedom.
The morning that Miss Martin signed me out of Stockwell, she drove me to Harper Springs to check in with my parole officer before taking me to Tolley House. At the new Juvenile Center, Miss Martin explained that every parolee had to enter through one particular door marked "C5" in order to visit his parole officer or counselor. I signed in at the reception window and sat with Miss Martin while I waited to be called for my appointment with Mr. Harvey. She was not allowed to go back with me.
Miss Martin warned me that each time I had an appointment with my PO or counselor that I would go through a security checkpoint on
the other side of the door before I was allowed into the office areas. When the woman at reception called my name and buzzed me through the C5 door, I saw a security setup similar to that of an airport. I walked through a scanner, and a security guard sent me on to my appointment. Another security guard was physically searching a black kid, so I assumed that I was just lucky that morning.
When I met Mr. Harvey, I thought that he disliked me before he ever met me because of what he had read in my file. After hearing some of his remarks, it was obvious to me that Mr. Harvey was a racist redneck with a poor opinion of throwaway bastards like me. The man didn't even try to hide it. He told me that he hoped that I would violate my parole so that he could send my sorry ass back to Stockwell where I belonged. He promised me that if he received one report of me losing my temper, fighting, or refusing an order from an authority figure that he would nail my ass. He dared me to complain about him, and he dared me to try to get him fired as I did "those dumbasses" in Stockwell.
Howard Harvey was a bull of a man in his forties. I'm not sure if he ever played football, but he had the size and the attitude to be a professional middle linebacker. He scared me because I was convinced that he would do whatever he said regardless of the consequences to him. I wanted to tell Miss Martin how he acted, but I decided to see how things went. I wasn't sure that I could trust her not to raise a stink that would get me in bigger trouble, and I didn't want any trouble from a man like Harvey. I knew that if I ever complained about my PO, I would have to make sure that it was something big enough that he would lose his authority over me.
Before Mr. Harvey kicked me out of his office, he gave me a folder of information and rules. He told me that he hoped I was too lazy to read it all, but if I did read it, he hoped that I didn't follow any of the instructions. As soon as I got in the car with Miss Martin, I began reading on our way to Tolley House. I had the information memorized by the following day.
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