Nathan’s Run

by John Gilstrap

  “Do what I tell you, boy.”

  Nathan knew better than to argue. He did as he was told, kicking off the standard-issue black sneakers without untying them. He handed the shoes over to Ricky with one hand while rubbing his sore ear with the other.

  “And the socks.”

  “But it’s cold in here.”

  Ricky just glared, and held out his hand expectantly. Nathan slumped to the edge of the cot and started to cry again. He hated himself for giving in to the tears. No matter how hard he tried, he always ended up crying in front of these people. The fact that they all took such pleasure in it really pissed him off.

  One foot at a time, Nathan scooped off his socks and handed them to Ricky, who abruptly left, locking the door behind him. Nathan listened to the footsteps disappear down the hall.

  “What did I do wrong?!” he shrieked, loudly enough that his ears rang from the echo off the concrete walls.

  Cold, confused and miserable, Nathan drew his legs up and rested his forehead on his knees, forcing himself to regain his composure. A single swipe of his sleeve cleaned his eyes and nose. Only ten more months, he told himself Only ten more months, and I’m out of here. It’s been eight months already. In half that time, it’ll be a year, and after half of that, I get out. I can do this. Easy as pie.

  The trick, he had found, was to make the time go as quickly as possible; and no time passed more quickly than sleep. Keeping his knees up, Nathan lay on his side, and tried to make his feet disappear into his coveralls for warmth.

  “These people are such assholes,” he. said aloud.

  The sound of a key in the lock awoke Nathan with a start. Though the light was on within his cell, he could tell through the three-by-five-inch observation window in the door that the hallway beyond it was dark. For a long while after the lock turned, nothing happened. Nathan sat up and brought his knees to his chest again. He remembered seeing a scene like this in a movie once, where the door creaked open and at first there was nothing there. But then, all of a sudden, a vampire appeared and made everybody scream in their seats.

  It was a stupid thing to think about, he scolded himself. There were no such things as vampires, and that stuff in the movies was all made up anyway. They called it special effects, things that some brainiac engineers thought up just to scare people.

  His dad had always chided him for having an overactive imagination, always imagining creatures and burglars in the dark. Though he told himself in those seconds when he sat on the bunk waiting for the door to open that there was nothing to be afraid of, the fear he felt was quite real. His heart pounded in his chest like a drum. His breathing started to get noisy. Should he get up and go to the door? Was somebody coming in? Maybe he had a friend in the JDC after all, and this was a signal that it was okay for him to walk out.

  Nathan jumped again when the door finally started to move inward, revealing Ricky standing alone in the doorway. He was drunk. Or stoned. Nathan could tell by the empty look in his eyes. It was the look that always preceded the beatings from Uncle Mark. Ricky was hiding something in his right hand, keeping it just out of sight behind his back. The look in his eyes got even emptier.

  Nathan knew something was going to happen. For the first time in his life, he felt that his life was threatened. Without thinking, and without changing his position on the bed, he rolled his weight to the balls of his feet. He had an idea there was going to be a fight, and while he wasn’t much of a fighter, something in Ricky’s face told him that this would be the fight of his life—for his life.

  Ricky entered the room slowly and smiled oddly. “You poor bastard,” he slurred. “You never really belonged here, you know. Sooner or later the others would have killed you anyway.”

  Anyway? Nathan’s mind raced now. Did he say anyway? That meant….

  Ricky halved the distance between them in a single step.

  Nathan reacted by pressing himself against the block wall. He was cornered.

  “I’ll try not to make it hurt too bad, kid,” he said, his weird smile getting broader. “You ever cleaned a fish?”

  Nathan stared fixedly at Ricky’s hidden right hand. Sure, he had cleaned a lot of fish. You start with a sharp knife low in their bellies, and then split them open up to the head. You let their guts slide out onto the table. Then…

  Nathan looked desperately for a way to dash around Ricky. It was easy to outmaneuver a drunk; he had proven that a hundred times with Uncle Mark, though there was always hell to pay later. But the cell was so small and Ricky was so big that there was nowhere to duck and dash to get around him.

  He saw the knife. If Ricky had acted quickly and just lashed out at Nathan, it would have ended right there. He was certainly close enough. But Ricky had chosen drama over efficiency, waving the knife around in front of Nathan’s face. “What do you think it’s gonna feel like…”

  Nathan didn’t hesitate. Bracing his back against the wall, he shot his leg straight out, driving his heel squarely into Ricky’s testicles. Ricky staggered a half-step, then slumped to his knees. Nathan attempted to vault over Ricky’s stooped shoulders, but the cot moved as he pushed off, and he only made it halfway, his knees contacting Ricky’s head and making them both tumble to the ground. Before he could get fully to his feet, Nathan felt a strong hand around his wrist, pulling him back down to the floor.

  “Let go!” Nathan yelled, launching another kick, this one impacting Ricky’s nose and making a loud crunch.

  Ricky’s hold on the boy’s wrist weakened, but it didn’t break. Nathan tried another kick, but this time missed completely, losing his balance and falling back down to the floor. Ricky was bleeding profusely from both nostrils, and as he struggled to catch his breath, he blew a bloody mist into the air. “I’m gonna cut your fucking head off,” Ricky hissed.

  The knife came down at Nathan in a wide, powerful arc from above. Using his free hand, Nathan was able to deflect the trajectory just enough to make it miss, absorbing most of the energy in his elbow. The knife hand recoiled instantly for another strike, but Nathan held onto the wrist, causing Ricky to let go of Nathan’s own wrist. Using both hands now, Nathan concentrated his whole struggle on the hand with the knife, slowing down his assailant’s motion and limiting his ability to get a good stroke.

  When the knife was back to the top of its arc, Nathan pulled himself up on his knees and lunged at Ricky’s knife hand with his teeth. He bit down as hard as he could on Ricky’s clenched hand, and he could feel the skin break and little bones give way to his incisors. The taste of blood filled his mouth, but he ignored it.

  Ricky howled like a dog when the pain registered. “You fucking shit! You fight like a cunt!”

  He waved his arm wildly, trying to break Nathan’s grip, but the teeth only sank deeper, until he finally let go of the knife, allowing it to drop to the floor. “Goddammit!” In one smooth motion, Ricky swung Nathan close, then drove a pistonlike punch into the boy’s right eye.

  Behind his eyes, Nathan felt an explosion in his brain. He had never been hit that hard, and the impact of the punch sent him reeling against the cot, knocking it on its side. For a full five seconds, Nathan and Ricky stared at each other, allowing some of the agony to drain from their bodies. Then, together, they eyed the knife on the floor, and together they lunged for it.

  Nathan had told himself a million times: a sober kid can outmaneuver a drunk adult any day of the week. And the Fourth of July was no exception. He snatched the knife from the concrete and whirled around in a backhanded slashing motion designed to make Ricky jump back.

  But just as offensive moves are slowed by alcohol, so are defensive ones. Unable to react quickly enough to protect himself Ricky seemed to watch dumbly as the blade came around in a horizontal arc and buried itself to the hilt in his abdomen.

  Nathan felt as shocked as Ricky looked as the knife drove itself home. Ricky fell straight back, like a tree, his lower legs folding under his butt, and his head impacting loudly against the concre
te.

  “I’m sorry!” Nathan shouted. “Oh, God, Ricky, I’m sorry!”

  Ricky didn’t respond; he just stared at the ceiling. His hands gently massaged the handle of the knife, as though he were thinking of pulling it out, but couldn’t muster the courage.

  Nathan didn’t know what to do. But he knew that if he didn’t do something, Ricky would die. Ricky seemed obsessed with the knife; maybe he should help him and pull it out for him. That would make him feel better. Nathan looked over his shoulder toward the door, in hopes that someone might have miraculously arrived with the answers. No, he was going to have to do this on his own. He moved hesitantly closer to the knife, closed his eyes, and pulled it free of the wound.

  As the knife pulled clear of the wound, Nathan was instantly splashed with a torrent of blood pumping from the gaping wound, like crimson water from a vampire’s drinking fountain. The sound from Ricky’s throat was inhuman, half moan and half howl. His breath gurgled in his throat, like the sound of blowing bubbles through a straw.

  Nathan knew right away that removing the knife was a mistake. Instinctively, he put his hands over the wound to try to stop the blood from spurting out, but it was useless; the gore kept pumping relentlessly from Ricky’s belly, and now from his mouth as well.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Ricky,” Nathan said over and over again, mantralike. In his heart, he knew he had killed him.

  Out of nowhere, Ricky’s hand shot up to Nathan’s throat and shut off his air supply. For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Nathan locked his hands around Ricky’s wrist, trying to make him let go. But, like a mouse caught in an eagle’s talon, Nathan was trapped, feeling that his head was going to explode from the pressure. Ricky’s eyes showed murder. He was going to die, and he was going to take Nathan with him.

  The knife! It was still on the floor! Nathan ventured a hand away from Ricky’s wrist, and found the blade an inch from his knee. This time, it would be no accident. Nathan mustered all the strength he had left to straight-arm the knife into Ricky’s chest. He struck over and over again, each impact making a grotesque slurping sound. After the second thrust, Ricky’s grip relaxed a little, once again allowing air and blood to flow to Nathan’s brain. After the fifth, Ricky let go completely, and with a last rattling breath, he died.

  Nathan panicked. The Crisis Unit looked like a house of horrors. A supervisor was dead, and they were going to blame him. Sure as hell, there would be nothing that he’d be able to say to anyone to make them believe that Ricky had started it.

  Say goodbye to a ten-month release. No sirree, baby, killing a supervisor was about the worst crime there was. They’d throw his young ass in jail until he was twenty-one, if he could get out even then.

  No, staying there and facing the music was not an option. Nathan had to get the hell out of the Juvenile Detention Center. He had to run fast, run hard, and run now. But he’d need keys to get out. Tiptoeing through the river of gore on the floor, Nathan pulled the key ring off Ricky’s belt and darted out of the room, locking the door behind him.

  From there it was easy. Every key he needed was right there on the ring. The door at the end of the hallway to the left led him into the area he recognized from his first night as the in-processing area. Nathan briefly considered rummaging through the storage closet for the clothes they had stolen from him eight months before, but he decided that every second spent inside the building was a second closer to getting caught. Moving swiftly and silently, he glided past the one-armed chair with the built-in handcuff, next to the desk where that fat fart Gonzalez asked new arrivals endless questions to which he already knew the answers.

  The final door was the easiest; Nathan picked the right key the first time. He opened it only a crack at first, praying there wouldn’t be a cop or a supervisor on the other side. Again, luck was with him. He slipped through the opening, locked the door from the outside, and tossed the keys into the bushes. Ahead of him lay fifty feet of open grass, leading up a tall hill, and beyond that, freedom. He covered the distance in nothing flat.

  Pausing for just a moment at the top of the hill, Nathan looked back at the JDC. Though the elevation changed his perspective, the view was exactly the same as when he had first arrived so long ago. It looked like such a friendly place, constructed of ornamental brick and stone and adorned with pretty flowers and shrubs. Yet, on the inside, the Brookfield Juvenile Detention Center was a garden for hatred. The seeds planted within its walls grew well, nurtured and cultivated by the likes of Ricky and Gonzalez.

  From atop this hill, overlooking the entire compound, Nathan swore to himself that he would never allow himself to be confined within those walls again.

  “.. and so I started running,” Nathan finished. He was lying on his stomach now, resting on his elbows and tracing the wood grain of the headboard with his finger.

  “So, are you all right?” Denise asked, genuine concern evident in her voice.

  “I guess so. My eye hurts some and my ear is sore as hell, but other than that I think I’m okay.”

  “Do you have any idea at all why the supervisor would want to kill you?” As unbelievable as the kid’s story was, Denise believed him.

  “Yeah, I think he was crazy. He was drunk. He was stoned. Grown-ups always get like that when they drink.”

  “Grown-ups like whom?” Denise prodded, sensing a new wrinkle to this extraordinary saga. “Like your father?”

  “No.” Nathan’s reply was startlingly emphatic. “My dad was a good man. He’d never drink or hit anyone. He was terrific.”

  “What about your mother?”

  His voice softened. “I never met my mom. She died when I was just a baby.”

  Jesus, there was another avenue to pursue. Denise jotted a note on a legal pad. “So, did anyone in your life beat you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Nathan replied curtly.

  “Why not? It might help if people understood some of what you’ve gone through.”

  “Bull. People want to think that everybody lives like those perfect families on TV. If I tell them different, they’ll just think I’m lying. They can yell and scream and hit their kids, and that’s okay, so long as the kid keeps it quiet. But if he hits back, or tries to leave, they call you incorrigible and throw your butt in jail.”

  “Is that how you ended up in jail? Did you hit back?”

  Nathan thought back to all the fights at Uncle Mark’s house. He pictured the comical lumbering stride Uncle Mark had when he was drunk, and the numbers of books and utensils and appliances that had been flung across the room, only to miss hitting Nathan not by inches but by feet. He nearly laughed at his memory of the stupid, gaping look on the drunk’s face. But then he remembered the leather cowboy belt, and the sound it made when it contacted the bare flesh of his backside, and the traces of humor were gone, snatched out of his soul just as Uncle Mark had snatched all the humor out of his life. Through it all, though, Nathan had known better than to hit back. That would have been his last act in life if he had ever tried it.

  Maybe I should tell her everything, Nathan thought. Maybe he should tell her how he once did live a normal life; how his dad had raised him in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, just the two of them. Maybe he should tell millions of people that only three days after Dad’s funeral, Uncle Mark locked him in the crawl space under the living room just for grins, and how he only got out by making such a racket that the asshole saw the neighbors looking out their windows.

  Surely the audience would enjoy hearing that his screams for help had earned him his first belt licking. Maybe he should tell all those people listening in their cozy houses and offices and cars how Uncle Mark used to like parties with all his druggie friends, and how some of those friends, men and women alike, used to come into his bedroom and touch him in places where kids weren’t supposed to be touched.

  There were so many things that he could tell, but he wouldn’t. There was nothing there that he hadn’t already to
ld judges and lawyers and police officers. And all that confiding had certainly cut him a great big fat break, hadn’t it?

  “No,” Nathan answered at length, “I didn’t hit anybody back. I stole a car.”

  Denise was flabbergasted. “You’re twelve years old, and you stole a car?”

  “Actually, I was eleven when I stole the car:’ There was a trace of pride in his answer.

  “And why did you do that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, either?’

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s nobody’s business.”

  “But that’s why you got sent to the detention center?” “Yeah, except call it what it is—a jail.”

  Was it possible that she was admiring this kid? Denise asked herself. This killer? There was something in the directness of his answers that struck a chord with her. It was within his power to lie about things he didn’t want to discuss, but he chose instead to not answer the question. He was sharp, all right. And he was apparently facing something that had more layers than she had first thought.

  “So, what’s the end of the story?” Dehise asked. “Where did you run to? Where are you now?”

  Nathan sighed. “I don’t think it would be real smart to tell you that, do you?” Grown-ups just couldn’t help trying to trick you. He gasped as a terrifying thought jumped into his mind. “Oh my God, can they trace this call?” He suddenly sounded panicky.

  “No, no,” Denise assured him. “This is a radio station. As long as there’s a First Amendment, no one can trace our calls.” “You sure?”

  Denise looked to Enrique, who was no help. “Sure I’m sure,” she guessed with a shrug. At least it sounded like the reasonable answer. She shifted back to the subject at hand. “So, what are you going to do next? You can’t just keep running.”

  “Why not?”

  Denise started to answer, but stopped. She really didn’t know why not. “Because you’ll get caught.”

  “Well, my only other choice is to turn myself in. How is that any different than getting caught?”