by Frank Conroy
I didn’t know Ligget. He had no friends even though he’d been at school longer than the rest of us. There was some vagueness about his origins, probably his parents were dead and relatives cared for him. We knew he was in the habit of running away. I remember waking up one night to see three men, including a policeman, carrying him back to his bed. He fought with hysterical strength, although silently, as if he were afraid to wake the rest of us. All three had to hold him down for the hypodermic.
On this rainy day he didn’t fight. He must have known what was up the moment he walked through the door, but he didn’t try to run. The two boys assigned to hold his arms were unnecessary. Throughout the entire trial he stood quite still, only his eyes, deep in the pudgy face, swiveling from side to side as he followed the speakers. He didn’t say anything.
The prosecutor announced that first of all the trial must be fair. He asked for a volunteer to conduct Ligget’s defense. When it became clear no one wanted the job a boy named Herbie was elected by acclamation. It seemed the perfect choice: Herbie was colorless and dim, steady if not inspired.
“I call Sammy as a witness,” said the prosecutor. There was a murmur of approval. Sammy was something of a hero to us, as much for his experiences in reform school as for his fabulous condition. (An undescended testicle, which we knew nothing about. To us he had only one ball.) “The prisoner is charged with saying ‘nigger-lip.’ Did you hear him say it?”
“Yes. He said it a couple of days ago. We were standing over there in front of the window.” Sammy pointed to the end of the room. “He said it about Mark Schofield.” (Schofield was a popular athletic star, a Senior, and therefore not in the room.)
“You heard him?”
“Yes. I got mad and told him not to talk like that. I walked away. I didn’t want to hear him.”
“Okay. Now it’s your turn, Herbie.”
Herbie asked only one question. “Are you sure he said it? Maybe he said something else and you didn’t hear him right.”
“He said it, all right.” Sammy looked over at Ligget. “He said it.”
“Okay,” said the prosecutor, “I call Earl.” Our only Negro stepped forward, a slim, good-looking youth, already vain. (A sin so precocious we couldn’t even recognize it.) He enjoyed the limelight, having grown used to it in the large, nervous, and visit-prone family that had spoiled him so terribly. He got a package every week, and owned a bicycle with gears, unheard of before his arrival.
“What do you know about this?” asked the prosecutor.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever hear him say what he said?”
“If he ever said that around me I’d kill him.”
“Have you noticed anything else?”
“What?”
“I mean, well, does he avoid you or anything?”
Herbie suddenly yelled, “But he avoids everybody!” This was more than we had expected from old Herbie. He was shouted down immediately.
“I don’t pay him no mind,” said Earl, lapsing uncharacteristically into the idiom of his people.
The trial must have lasted two hours. Witness after witness came forward to take a stand against race prejudice. There was an interruption when one of the youngest boys, having watched silently, suddenly burst into tears.
“Look, Peabody’s crying.”
“What’s wrong, Peabody?” someone asked gently.
Confused, overwhelmed by his emotions, Peabody could only stammer. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter.... It’s so horrible, how could he ...”
“What’s horrible?”
“Him saying that. How could he say that? I don’t understand,” the boy said, tears falling from his eyes.
“It’s all right, Peabody, don’t worry.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Most of the testimony was on a high moral plane. Children are swept away by morality. Only rarely did it sink to the level of life. From the boy who slept next to Ligget: “He smells.”
We didn’t laugh. We weren’t stupid boys, nor insensitive, and we recognized the seriousness of such a statement.
“His bed smells, and his clothes, and everything he has. He’s a smelly, fat slob and I won’t sleep next to him. I’m going to move my bed.”
Sensing impatience in the room, the prosecutor called the prisoner himself. “Do you have anything to say?”
Ligget stood stock still, his hidden eyes gleaming. He was pale.
“This is your last chance, you better take it. We’ll all listen, we’ll listen to your side of it.” The crowd voiced its agreement, moved by an instant of homage to fair play, and false sympathy. “Okay then, don’t say you didn’t have a chance.”
“Wait a second,” said Herbie. “I want to ask him something. Did you say ‘nigger-lip’ to Sammy?”
It appeared for a moment that Ligget was about to speak, but he gave up the effort. Shaking his head slowly, he denied the charge.
The prosecutor stepped forward. “All those who find him guilty say aye.” A roar from forty boys. “All those who find him innocent say nay.” Silence. (In a certain sense the trial was a parody of Freemont’s “town meetings” in which rather important questions of curriculum and school policy were debated before the students and put to a vote.)
The punishment seemed to suggest itself. We lined up for one punch apiece.
Although Ligget’s beating is part of my life (past, present, and future coexist in the unconscious, says Freud), and although I’ve worried about it off and on for years, all I can say about it is that brutality happens easily. I learned almost nothing from beating up Ligget.
There was a tremendous, heart-swelling excitement as I waited. The line moved slowly, people were taking their time. You got only one punch and you didn’t want to waste it. A ritual of getting set, measuring the distance, perhaps adjusting the angle of his jaw with an index finger —all this had to be done before you let go. A few boys had fluffed already, only graying him. If you missed completely you got another chance.
It wasn’t hurting Ligget that was important. but rather the unbelievable opportunity to throw a clean, powerful punch completely unhindered, and with none of the sloppiness of an actual fight. Ligget was simply a punching bag, albeit the best possible kind of punching bag, one in human form, with sensory equipment to measure the strength of your blows.
It was my turn. Ligget looked at me blankly. I picked a spot on his chin, drew back my arm, and threw as hard a punch as I could muster. Instant disappointment. I hadn’t missed, there was a kind of snapping sound as my fist landed, and his head jerked back, but the whole complex of movements was too fast, somehow missing the exaggerated movie-punch finality I had anticipated. Ligget looked at the boy behind me and I stepped away. I think someone clapped me on the back.
“Good shot.”
Little Peabody, tear-stained but sober, swung an awkward blow that almost missed, grazing Ligget’s mouth and bringing a little blood. He moved away and the last few boys took their turns.
Ligget was still on his feet. His face was swollen and his small eyes were glazed, but he stood unaided. He had kept his hands deep in his pockets to prevent the reflex of defense. He drew them out and for a moment there was silence, as if everyone expected him to speak.
Perhaps it was because we felt cheated. Each boy’s dreams-of-glory punch had been a shade off center, or not quite hard enough, or thrown at the wrong angle, missing perfection by a maddeningly narrow margin. The urge to try again was strong. Unconsciously we knew we’d never have another chance. This wild freedom was ours once only. And perhaps among the older boys there were some who harbored the dream of throwing one final, superman punch, the knock-out blow to end all knock-out blows. Spontaneously, the line formed again.
After three or four blows Ligget collapsed. He sank to the floor, his eyes open and a dark stain spreading in his crotch. Someone told him to get up but it became clear he couldn’t understand. Eventually a b
oy was sent to get the nurse. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
X rays revealed that Ligget’s jaw was broken in four places. We learned this the day after the beating, all of us repentant, sincerely unable to understand how it had happened. When he was well enough we went to visit him in the hospital. He was friendly, and accepted our apologies. One could tell he was trying, but his voice was thin and stiff, without a person behind it, like a bad actor reading lines. He wouldn’t see us alone, there had to be an adult sitting by him.
No disciplinary action was taken against us. There was talk for a while that Sammy was going to be expelled, but it came to nothing. Ligget never returned.
It is two o’clock in the morning. I lie in bed watching the back of my wife’s neck. She sleeps, she is part of the night. The baby wakes at seven, her sleep is for both of them. Sleep is everywhere. I am like a bather at the edge of a pool.
My faith in the firmness of time slips away gradually. I begin to believe that chronological time is an illusion and that some other principle organizes existence. My memories flash like clips of film from unrelated movies. I wonder, suddenly, if I am alive. I know I’m not dead, but am I alive? I look into the memories for reassurance, searching for signs of life. I find someone moving. Is it me? My chest tightens.
I get so uncomfortable floating around like this that I almost gratefully accept the delusion that I’ve lived another life, remote from me now, and completely forgotten about it. Somewhere in the nooks and crannies of memory there are clues. As I chase them down a kind of understanding comes. I remember waking up in the infirmary at Freemont. I had been sick, unconscious for at least a day. Remembering it I rediscover the exact, spatial center of my life, the one still point. The incident stands like an open window looking out to another existence.
Waking in a white room filled with sunshine. The breeze pushes a curtain gently and I can hear the voices of children outside, far away. There’s no one in the room. I don’t know where I am or how long I’ve been there. It seems to be afternoon but it could be morning. I don’t know who I am, but it doesn’t bother me. The white walls, the sunlight, the voices all exist in absolute purity.
2
Space and a Dead Mule
I’D BEEN waiting at the main road since early morning, watching cars. The day was clear and sunny and from my seat on top of a stone gate pillar I could see about a mile. Much of the time the road was empty.
I kept a running calculation on the mathematical probability of the next car being the one I was waiting for. Each time one passed I would glance at my watch and recalculate the odds. A schoolmate sat on the other pillar arguing that my figures were wrong, that the chances were equal for every car. I got angry and eventually he left. When the big long-distance trucks passed I would wave, and almost always the drivers waved back.
I’m sure that leaving Freemont was an emotional experience—saying goodbye to my friends, tying my duffel bag on top of the car, driving down the gravel road for the last time. Possibly I cried. But I can’t really remember. My last image is from on top of the stone pillar, recognizing the car and watching it come toward me. In a sense it’s as if it never reached me, as if approaching me, it drove into invisibility. Perhaps children remember only waiting for things. The moment events begin to occur they lose themselves in movement, like hypnotized dancers. Another example occurs to me. The arrival home of my father late one night. I ran down the hall, opened the door, and looked up at him. My last memory is that something was wrong. The outlines of his body spread a corona of power. He emanated force. I’ve been told that on that night he got rough and chased me all over the apartment. When my mother came home I was hiding under the bed, but my memory ceases at the opening of the door. The image is vivid and detailed to the point of remembering the weave of his suit—gray—blue herringbone—and the smell of his breath. Bourbon, but after that, nothing.
On that same night occurred the only preternatural phenomenon in my experience. I knew my father was coming several hours before his arrival, and said so to my sister. I hadn’t seen him in years and seldom thought about him—the knowledge simply arrived in my brain out of nowhere. I might have caught a glimpse of him on the street without realizing it, but since he came direct from a rest home three hundred miles away on unauthorized leave, I have to discard the idea. My mother left her job that night, the only time she ever did, because of an uneasy feeling that something was wrong at home. For which I’m grateful. Father was zeroing in on me when she arrived.
Driving to Florida in a musty-smelling 1936 Ford with brand new woven-straw seat covers. The radio, cigarette lighter, heater, right windshield wiper, horn, and speedometer were broken. Top speed was fifty miles an hour.
I was in the back with Alison, my older sister. We liked each other without having much in common. Besides the differences of sex and age we were separated by opposing philosophies. Next to me, she would start singing:“We’re on our way, and we ain’t comin’ back,
We’re on our way, and we ain’t comin’ back,
We’re on our way, great God, we’re on our way . . .”
To avoid the chaos of family life Alison looked to the larger world outside, as if what was going on at home didn’t matter. “Out there” was where she’d discover who she was. This gave her an aura of independence and strength, useful enough in dealing with the family—all of us, cut off from the outside world, too easily believed in her connectedness. But as she was fifteen and knew little of what was happening “out there,” her independence was no more than a courageous bluff. But it was all she had. In her loneliness she saw the world only vaguely—thus her tendency to color life with ready-made tints. She would take the song of escaping slaves and equate it with her own experience, falsifying both.
My philosophy, at age eleven, was skepticism. Like most children I was antisentimental and quick to hear false notes. I waited, more than anything else, waited for something momentous to happen. Keeping a firm grip on reality was of immense importance. My vision had to be clear so that when “it” happened I would know. The momentous event would clear away the trivia and throw my life into proper perspective. As soon as it happened I would understand what was going on, and until then it was useless to try. (A spectacularly unsuccessful philosophy since nothing ever happened.)
In front, my mother, rather tall for a woman, with an abundance of blond hair and wide, cleanly cut features. She radiated the robust freshness of a farm girl—her forebears were, in fact, Danish country people—missing ideal Scandinavian beauty only because her face lacked suggestiveness. Studying it you noticed that things were a little too big. She was handsome rather than beautiful, but for all that men’s heads never failed to turn.
Next to her, in the driver’s seat, was Jean, a man of almost impossible Gallic good looks. The ne’er-do-well son of a collapsed aristocratic New Orleans family, he had been around for years, seeing my mother while my father was away. He was six feet tall, slim, and sported a black mustache. The bones of his face and head were extraordinarily delicate and well proportioned, just slightly smaller than life size, accentuating their fineness. A perfect Greek head, but without the Greek effeminacy. His features were French and masculine. Dark, almost black eyes, a thin humorous mouth. He smoked cigarettes through an F.D.R. holder but affected the mannerisms of the proletariat. I rather liked him, which was lucky. From this trip on, for the next eight years, he was my stepfather.
We didn’t have much money. Stopping only for gas and food, we drove straight down the east coast. Our destination was a town called Fort Lauderdale.
During the Florida real-estate boom of the late nineteen-twenties vast tracts of land in the interior were bought up by speculators. Heavy machinery came out from the cities on the coast—Caterpillar tractors, graders, steam shovels, heavy trucks, earthmovers. Selected islands in the woods were cleared. Scrub pines were bulldozed into the sand, palmettos poisoned with kerosene, road beds laid, sidewalks poured, fire hydrants ins
talled, building lots measured off, streets named—all the preparations for the conversion of wasteland into suburbia. Then came the crash of twenty-nine. There was no more money to continue development. Inflated land values collapsed, in some cases from thousands of dollars an acre to a dollar or less in the space of a few months. Inaccessible without city transportation, without city water, sewage, or electricity, without stores or gas stations, without, in most instances, a single soul living on the premises, the speculators’ subdivisions weren’t even worth cannibalizing. Like neat surgical scars on the surface of the earth they were left, empty, under the hot Florida sun.
Ten miles back of Fort Lauderdale, well hidden in the woods, was one of these islands. Untouched for twenty years, it had fallen into the hands of a socialist from Wisconsin named Doc, a bovine fellow dedicated to giving the workers homes of their own. For no money down and a few dollars a month anyone prepared to build with his own hands could get a plot of land. It was to be a workers’ community, or more precisely, a white workers’ community.
The land had come full circle, from the big money boys of the twenties to the smalltimers of the forties. In every respect Doc’s plan was the antithesis of the older plan—instead of the middle class, the lower class, instead of speculators, homeowners, instead of money, labor—as if he had a religious obligation to take ground tainted by the capitalist fantasies of the boom and wash it clean with the down-to-earth realities of socialism. Lying in his trailer at night did Doc dream his dream? The rediscovery of an older, better America. Cabin raisings. Town meetings. Simplicity. Was he to be the father of these children? Probably. With pathetic optimism he had named the project “Chula Vista,” beautiful view, and the name if not the project marked Doc as a social visionary. The view in all directions was exactly the same. Flat, sandy land, underbrush, and stunted pine trees. Dismal, to say the least. We bought two lots.
