Nathan's Run (1996)

by John Gilstrap

  Denise could not have agreed more.

  Nathan sat on the edge of the big bed for twenty minutes, listening to a long string of grown-up strangers passing judgment on him.

  How can they say those things? They weren't there. They didn't hear Ricky's threats, or feel his hands around their throats. They didn't know-they probably didn't even care-that if he hadn't killed Ricky, then Ricky would have killed him. They hadn't seen the crazy look in his eyes, or have their brains rattled by a punch in the eye. They didn't see the blood.

  Oh, God. The blood.

  The more he heard, the more he realized that the truth was becoming irrelevant. People were telling lies about him again, and he knew from experience how quickly lies can become reality in people's minds, and how once that happens, they can do anything they want to you. No one had even heard his side of the story. All they had heard was what the police and the JDC assholes were saying about him. All they had heard were lies.

  But he could change that, couldn't he? All he had to do was pick up the telephone and call. He had the number memorized already; God knows they said it enough on the air. He could just pick up the phone and tell his side of the story, and set the record straight. Except it wouldn't be that simple. They wouldn't believe him. She'd make fun of him, and say terrible things to him, and he'd get upset, and the thoughts would come back to him and he'd get caught doing something stupid. He couldn't afford to get caught.

  But he couldn't afford to let people think those things about him, either. There was no harm in just a phone call, was there? If things got bad, he could always just hang up.

  The phone was a cordless one, resting on the nightstand next to the radio. Nathan picked it up, pushed the ON button, and just sat there silently for a long while, staring at the handset. Finally, the dial tone changed to a horrid screeching sound that caused Nathan to hang up quickly. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the button again, and dialed The Bitch's 800 number. He noted the odd sound of the touch tones, which were all the same pitch. At home, he used to be able to play tunes with the tones. When he was done dialing, he brought the phone to his ear to hear an immediate busy signal.

  Nathan felt relieved; the pressure was off. He had tried. Even though he had failed, trying was enough, wasn't it?

  He listened to two minutes more of the radio and decided that no, it wasn't enough at all.

  He dialed the number again. And again. And again. Each time, he got a fresh busy signal. On his ninth try, he heard some odd sounds in the handset, and had to stop himself from automatically pushing the flash and redial buttons. He had a rhythm going. Finally, the phone on the other end began to ring.

  After what seemed to be a hundred rings, someone picked up on the other end. "You've reached the Bitch Line:' the voice said. "What do you want to talk about?"

  "I want to talk about this Nathan Bailey thing."

  "Are you a kid? The Bitch doesn't talk to kids."

  "I think she'll want to talk to me. I'm Nathan Bailey."

  Denise was ready to shift gears again. They had been on the Nathan Bailey topic for the better part of forty-five minutes, and they had stopped receiving original input. Once the callers currently on lines one and four were taken care of, there would be a commercial break, and then they'd move on to some tidbits on the way the president was handling foreign affairs.

  Gordon, a psychiatrist from Stockdale, Arizona, was on the line, babbling psychological double-talk about how children under fifteen don't have a strong enough system of values to make adult-level decisions regarding right and wrong. Denise smiled contentedly. When the good doctor paused to take a breath, she was going to eat him alive.

  She had just opened her mouth to begin her meal when Enrique's excited voice popped in her earphones. "You've got to take the caller on line six," he said.

  The look Denise fired to her producer should have melted the glass that separated them. One of the most basic, cardinal rules of talk radio was, never interrupt the host when she is talking-or about to talk.

  Recognizing the look for what it was-a threat to his career-Enrique explained, "It's a kid claiming to be Nathan Bailey. The Nathan Bailey. I think he's telling the truth."

  Denise completely lost her train of thought for a moment. If it were true, they could be on the verge of some terrific radio. After a pause that was long enough to make some of the audience wonder if their radios were broken, Denise regained her composure and dumped the doctor from the phone line. "Thanks, Doc, but that's about as much of that as I can handle. My kids are a hell of a lot younger than fifteen, and they have an excellent feel for what is right and what is wrong.

  "Well, now, it would appear that we have a celebrity on the line, assuming that my producer is telling the truth." She made quite a show of pushing the button numbered six. "Nathan Bailey, are you there?"

  "Yes, ma'am," said a small but strong voice from the other end. There was determination in the boy's husky voice. For years, Denise had prided herself in her ability to recognize personality traits just from listening to people's voices. This was the voice of a Boy Scout and Little League baseball player; the voice of someone who was honest. Denise instantly began to second-guess her conclusions about Nathan.

  Michaels was already feeling the result of too little sleep, and the coffee he had consumed to compensate had formed an acid bath in his stomach that could etch glass. Without consciously realizing that it had made any noise, he picked up his phone after the first ring.

  "Lieutenant Michaels."

  "Michaels, this is Petrelli," the other voice said.

  Oh, shit. That's what I fucking need. "Good morning, J. Daniel. I see you were up early for the cameras."

  Clearly agitated, Petrelli ignored the barb, which was uncharacteristic of him. "Turn on The Bitch," Petrelli barked.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The radio, goddammit. Turn on The Bitch. The Bailey kid is on there talking to her right now!"

  "No shit?" Michaels was in no hurry. He knew he'd be able to catch whatever he missed by listening to one of the many tapes of the program that were being made by any number of police officers who would soon march them into their supervisors, making a show of how conscientious they'd been.

  "Yeah, no shit," Petrelli growled. "Turn it on and listen. I'll call you when they're done."

  Chapter 10

  Nathan's nervousness disappeared as soon as he started talking. As he spoke on the phone, he paced a repeating course around the bedroom and the master bath. It seemed that when his feet were moving, so was his mind.

  "Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?" he demanded.

  "Whatever happened to the sanctity of human life?" Although her voice was smooth and soothing, her manner was very abrupt, putting Nathan on edge.

  "What does that mean?"

  "That means that killing is wrong. Don't you think that killing is wrong?"

  "Of course I do. But it's no wronger than getting killed. I don't remember you being there last night. You don't have any idea what went on in there."

  "Did you kill the guard?"

  Nathan's voice rose in volume and pitch with his frustration. "Yes, but . . . "

  Denise cut him off. "No buts, Nathan. Stop right there. You killed the guard. What more is there to know? You're on the run, boy. You're a fugitive, a hazard to our society. I don't want you on our streets. I want you under control, behind bars."

  "There aren't any bars," Nathan corrected.

  "What?"

  "There aren't any bars. Just heavy doors. In Juvey, I mean."

  "Don't change the subject, Nathan," Denise scolded. "Why don't you hang up the phone right now and call the police? Turn yourself in, before you or somebody else gets hurt."

  Nathan sat back down on the corner of the bed. "I can't go back," he said matter-of-factly. "If I go back they'll just hurt me again. Or kill me. That's what Ricky was trying to do! I can't go back and just let them finish the job."

  The line wa
s silent again for a long moment while Denise put it together. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You say that the guard was trying to kill you?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And why would that be?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  "Kids shouldn't cuss on the radio."

  "Oh, sure, you're a fine one to talk. You can't even say your name without cussing."

  Denise laughed. This was a pretty sharp kid she was dealing with. "Maybe that explains why we don't get too many kids calling in here."

  Or maybe its because what's-his-name said you don't talk to kids, Nathan didn't say.

  "All right, Nathan," Denise said, "let's start over again. You say, in essence, that you killed the guard in self-defense."

  "Yes. Right. Except they're not called guards. They're supervisors. You get in trouble if you call them guards."

  "Well, the last thing I want to do is get in trouble with the supervisors." Denise was surprised to hear the tone in her own voice become warmer. There was something about this kid that was truly disarming. "Why don't I just shut up and listen. You tell us what actually happened last night."

  Nathan propped himself on three pillows against the headboard of the big bed and stretched his feet out in front of him. "It's kind of hard to know where to start," he began. "I learned the hard way that I'd never get along with the other residents. Their idea of a good time was to beat the crap out of me and steal my stuff and, well, do really bad things to me. They'd steal my food and stuff like that. I tried to ignore them, you know? Like my dad used to tell me? But jeez, you gotta eat sometime. It got to the point where I had to snarf everything off my plate while I was still in the food line. For the first month I was there, they wouldn't let me alone. I tried fighting back, but I just got smeared."

  "Why didn't you tell someone?" Denise interrupted.

  Nathan snorted bitterly. "Yeah, right. I tried that once on my first day there. Big mistake. It was Ricky that I told, as a matter of fact. He's the guy that, well, you know . . . that I I. . ." He just gathered up his strength and he said it. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I know I shouldn't have done what I did, but Ricky was a real dickhead. Urn, sorry.

  "Anyway, there's this area in the JDC where everybody gets together for school or basketball or just talking, or whatever. I was in there, trying to read, when Ricky came up to me and told me I had to come with him. I knew I was in trouble, but I didn't know why . . ."

  For the next eighteen minutes, Nathan unraveled his side of the story for millions of radio listeners from coast to coast. He spoke articulately, and with the kind of animation that only a child can generate. Denise interrupted only three times to clarify what he was saying, but otherwise sat silently, staring at her control board, envisioning in her own mind the events described by Nathan. By the time the boy was done, The Bitch was twelve commercials behind, but even the sponsors wouldn't complain. This was great radio.

  Nathan had long since finished the books in the JDC library that were worth reading, preferring novels to the comic books favored by the other residents. That day being the Fourth of July, it seemed appropriate to reread April Morning by Howard Fast, a story about a young boy whose life is changed by the Battle of Lexington.

  The recreation hall was literally and figuratively the center of activity at the Juvenile Detention Center. Roughly hexagonal in shape and fabricated out of concrete block painted yellow-orange, the rec hall served all nonsleeping activities. Three glass-partitioned rooms served as makeshift classrooms during the day, with the largest of the rooms doubling as a dining hall. The detention cells extended down two hallways on opposite ends of the hexagon-one for the boys and one for the girls. From seven in the morning until eight at night, the doors to those hallways remained locked. By eight-thirty they were locked again, with their residents inside.

  The sixth side of the hexagon was the control room, half-Lexan and half-concrete. When residents were in the rec hall, the control room was occupied. Reinforced doors on either side led to the administrative areas and to the Crisis Unit.

  At around seven o'clock that night, Ricky entered the rec hall from the administrative section, walked directly over to Nathan, and lifted him out of the chair by his ear. "Come with me, you little shit," he said.

  Nathan yelped, "Ow! What'd I do?"

  "You know what you did," Ricky hissed, his breath smelling of booze and cigarettes. He yanked Nathan across the rec hall toward the door on the other side of the control station. "Maybe a night in the Unit will teach you to draw on the walls."

  Nathan hung onto Ricky's forearm with both hands, and danced along on tiptoes to keep his ear from being ripped from his head. "Let go, Ricky, please," he pleaded. "I didn't do anything. Honest to God, Ricky, I didn't do anything!"

  Ricky didn't reply, except to lift a little higher on the ear. All activity in the rec hall stopped as dozens of eyes watched the smallest resident of the WC being dragged across the room by the man they all feared most. Each of them looked away, though, as Nathan made eye contact with them, silently pleading for help that he knew they couldn't offer, even if they'd wanted to.

  Ricky paused at the door to the Crisis Unit long enough to snap his key ring from his belt. As the lock turned, Nathan began to panic. The Crisis Unit was little more than a single cell, set apart from all the rest as a place where a resident in crisis could regain his composure and set his head straight. In reality, it was a place of punishment, where food or clothes or even light could be denied until such time as the resident was prepared to change his ways. Although it was rarely used, the Crisis Unit had a reputation among the residents. Nathan was terrified.

  The lock turned, and the door opened. Nathan yelled louder still, crying like a baby, and promising not to be bad anymore. He started to grab the doorjamb, but instantly had to return his hands to Ricky's wrist. "Ricky, you're hurting me!"

  "No shit, jerkoff. If you yell one more time, you'll find out what hurt really means."

  Once they were through the door, they were in an area of the JDC where Nathan had never been. The hallway was narrow, barely enough room for the door to swing open. Ricky changed his grip to Nathan's bicep and shoved the boy against the opposite wall, holding him in place with a stiff arm while he once again locked the door to the rec hall. Down to the left, maybe eight feet, the hallway opened up again slightly. Around an angled corner was the door marked with the dreaded words, "CRISIS UNIT."

  Nathan renewed his struggle, pulling his arm from Ricky's grasp, only to be taken to the floor by his hair. Ricky followed him down to the ground and placed his mouth an inch from Nathan's ear. "Listen to me, jerkoff," he growled, droplets of spittle splashing against Nathan's cheek. "You're going in that room over there, one way or another, if I have to break bones to make it happen. Do you understand me?"

  Nathan nodded, his face pressed against the tile floor. He tried to look at Ricky, but couldn't focus through the tears in his eyes.

  "And stop crying, you fucking cunt." He stood once again, keeping a tight hold on a fistful of Nathan's hair and dragging him down the short hallway. He one-handed the lock again, and half-shoved, half-tossed Nathan into the tiny cell.

  The Crisis Unit was surprisingly like Nathan's own quarters, though about half the size, with a metal cot and thin mattress on one side of the room, and a combination toilet and sink on the other. There was no source of outside light, the only illumination coming from a glaring bank of fluorescent lights set above the ceiling behind reinforced glass. The floor was bare concrete, without the tile he had in his own cell. And it was cold, much colder than the always-chilly residential wing.

  "Take off your shoes and hand them to me," Ricky commanded.

  "why?"

  "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 th
e 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.