Hard City

by Clark Howard

  Richie and Joey were both greatly relieved to hear that Freddie was okay, but disappointed that he was being sent to another cottage. “Check with the guys who drop off bed linen from the other cottages,” Richie said to Joey, who still worked in the laundry, “and find out which cottage they send Freddie to.”

  “Gotcha,” Joey said, winking his good eye.

  When ten days had passed and there was no word of Freddie Walsh transferring into another cottage, Richie began to worry. “If he’s still in the infirmary, maybe he’s worse off than McKey said,” he brooded.

  “Maybe you could get back over there and see Philly again,” Joey suggested. “He’d know.”

  Richie did that, the next afternoon. Philly was in the infirmary ward hallway, sweeping the floor, when Richie found him. Motioning from the door, Richie got his attention and Philly came over, broom in hand, looking nervous.

  “Philly, I wanna find out how Freddie’s doing,” Richie said. “How long’s he gonna be in here?”

  Philly stared at him sadly, lips parted, enlarged tongue covering his lower teeth. He began to blink back tears. “Freh’ie deah, Ri’ie,” he said.

  Richie stared in shock. “What?”

  “Freh’ie deah,” Philly repeated. “Hih ki’neys ‘topped wor’ing.”

  Richie knew about kidneys; Myron had taught him how to shift his body to avoid illegal kidney punches during clinches. “The kidneys won’t take as much abuse as some parts of the body,” the trainer had emphasized. Richie thought of the force of the fire hose stream hitting the still form of Freddie Walsh, low on the crouched boy’s back. He remembered McKey’s mean little smile as he did it.

  The son of a bitch.

  “Da dah’ters cudn’t figger out why his ki’neys stopped. Dey fi’ny tay it ki’ney fa’wer.”

  The dirty, rotten son of a bitch.

  “Ah’m tony, Ri’ie,” said Philly, tears running down his cheeks. Richie put a hand on the back of Philly’s neck and squeezed, gently, fondly.

  “I’m sorry too, Philly.” With his thumb, he wiped away Philly’s tears. “Go on, get back to work so you don’t get in trouble.”

  “Otay, Ri’ie.”

  As Philly resumed pushing his broom down the hall, Richie walked back outside.

  He’s got to pay for it, Richie found himself thinking. He’s got to be punished.

  All the way back across the grounds toward Polk Cottage, all Richie could think about was McKey.

  Somewhere between the infirmary and the cottage, he made up his mind to kill McKey.

  43

  Three months later, Richie was summoned to the superintendent’s office and found Grace Menefee waiting there for him. With her was a stout, gray-haired woman. Miss Menefee said, “This is Mrs. Clark, Richie. Do you remember her? She’s your grandmother.”

  The woman did not rise from her chair to embrace him or otherwise display any affection. She just nodded, studying him closely.

  “Sure, I remember,” said Richie, playing their game. “Hi, Grandma,” he added, putting on an artificial smile. Whatever it took to get out of this fucking place, he would do it.

  There was no place for him to sit, so Richie stood between the chairs of the two women, facing the superintendent’s desk. “Richie,” the superintendent said gravely, “you are a very lucky boy. Through the efforts of Miss Menefee here, your grandmother was located and has agreed to let you come live with her in Tennessee.”

  “That’s swell, sir,” Richie replied, with what he hoped was the right combination of humility and enthusiasm.

  “There are certain conditions, of course. Your grandmother is a widow with a pension and cannot assume the obligation of feeding and clothing you, so it will be necessary for you to work and to take on that responsiblity yourself.”

  “He won’t mind that, will you, Richie?” Grace Menefee interjected. Then to Mrs. Clark, “He’s always been a very hard worker.”

  “The welfare department in Tennessee,” the superintendent continued, “has verified for us that Lamont High School, which you will attend, has a Distributive Education class in which students are allowed to take their four required classes in the morning, eliminate study periods from their schedule, and leave school at one o’clock every day in order to work. From what we understand, the town merchants cooperate in the program by hiring their part-time help through the school.”

  “It sounds like a marvelous program,” Grace Menefee enthused. She squeezed Richie’s hand. “You’ll fit right in, Richie.”

  Sure, sure, Richie thought behind his artificial smile. Just like I’ve always fit in.

  “You have to understand, of course,” the superintendent made clear, “that even though you will be out of state, the Illinois juvenile court will still have jurisdiction over you until you are either twenty-one or enter the military service. Any future runaways, any violations of the law, any trouble of any kind, will be reported back to the court in Chicago, and you could either be returned here or sent to Menard Reformatory, depending on your age. Do you understand that?”

  “Yessir,” Richie said firmly. “I’ve learned my lesson, sir. No more running away for me.” Glancing at Grace Menefee, he saw the slightest suggestion of a frown.

  “Have you anything you’d like to add, Mrs. Clark?” the superintendent asked.

  “No, sir,” Mrs. Clark said, speaking for the first time. She had a pronounced Southern accent without the attendant drawl. “So long as he promises not to run off and not to get in no trouble with the law like his daddy done, why, I’ll let him live with me. I just can’t support him. I barely get along on my pension check and what little I can make working at the tomato-canning factory of a summer. But the house is mine, so there’s a place for him to live. If he’ll work and buy his clothes and help with the groceries, why, I expect we can get by.”

  “I’ll work, Grandma,” Richie promised earnestly. “And I’ll be as good as can be, you’ll see.” Glancing again, he saw that Grace Menefee’s eyes had a hint of suspicion in them.

  “Fine, fine,” the superintendent said, rising. “I’ll get release papers prepared and we’ll send him over for some discharge clothes.”

  “While that’s being done, may I take Richie outside for a few minutes?” Grace Menefee asked. “I’d like to talk to him in private.”

  The superintendent gave his permission and Miss Menefee led Richie out to the front porch of the building, where they sat on a bench.

  “Richie,“ she said, sitting half turned toward him, “you’re not playing some kind of game with these people, are you? Just to get out?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to appear virtuous.

  “You know very well what I mean,” she scolded. “All that ‘I’ve learned my lesson’ and ‘I’ll be as good as can be’ stuff. You know, if you mess up this time, Richie, you could end up in Menard. They don’t have fences there; they’ve got walls and bars.”

  Richie shook his head ironically. “You used to threaten me with this place,” he reminded her. “Now that I’m here, you threaten me with Menard. You’ve always got a worst place, don’t you?”

  “Oh, Richie,” she pleaded, “I’m not trying to threaten you, or scare you, or bully you into being good. I’m trying to warn you. It’s so easy to go off in the wrong direction in life, and even easier to keep going in that direction. This is your chance not to let it happen to you. I know you can walk out of this place and in a few hours ditch your grandmother and be on your way back to Chicago—but what’ll it get you? Chicago is a mean, hard city; it breaks people very easily. It broke your mother. You mustn‘t go back there and let it break you. Go with your grandmother, Richie, please. Go down to that nice little Southern town, go to school, get a job, read all the books you want to read, someday go to college . . . Richie, there’s no limit to what you can do if you go in the right direction. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Leaning forward, elbows on knees, looking at the weathered w
ooden planks of the porch, Richie nodded. “I understand.”

  “Will you try? Please.”

  Don’t let her down again, his mind told him. The one person who always stuck by you. Don’t keep being a prick with her.

  “Okay, I’ll try,” he said, with no trace of John Garfield in his words.

  “Promise?” she asked.

  “Promise,” he said. She smiled a smile that for the first time made her look very pretty to him.

  That afternoon, Richie and Mrs. Clark boarded a southbound Illinois Central train in a little town to which Grace Menefee drove them. Richie was wearing Charleytown discharge clothes and had an extra set of everything in a cloth zipper bag. Miss Menefee gave his grandmother a welfare draft for thirty dollars to subsidize them until Richie could get enrolled in the Distributive Education program at school and get a job.

  As they waited for the train, Richie could hardly believe things were moving so quickly. He had been processed out of Charleytown in less than three hours, and had not even had a chance to say goodbye to Joey or Philly or Jazz or anyone. As they had driven toward the gate, Richie had seen Mr. McKey come out of Administration and pause on the sidewalk to light his pipe. Seeing Richie looking at him out the car window, the house father had raised his pipe in a farewell salute, almost as if he were saying goodbye to a friend. You dirty bastard, Richie thought, glaring at him as the car went on past. I’m not forgetting Freddie Walsh, he promised himself. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I won’t forget Freddie. And, he silently swore, he would not forget his promise to kill McKey either. Someday, somehow, Richie vowed to return and do it.

  Shortly after the train started rolling along, the conductor came through checking tickets. Mrs. Clark showed him hers and Richie gave him the ticket Miss Menefee had bought for him. After the conductor punched the tickets and moved on, Richie and his grandmother settled down for the eight-hour trip. They sat in facing seats, not talking much except when Mrs. Clark asked him a direct, curious question.

  “Was it hard in that reform school?” she asked at one point.

  “Not too hard,” Richie replied, shrugging. What good would it have done to tell her anything, he thought.

  A while later, Mrs. Clark said, “I know that Chloe was on dope; that caseworker lady told me. Did she treat you bad a lot?”

  “Not so bad, I guess,” Richie replied. Then he asked, “Grandma, do you know where my dad is?”

  “Lord have mercy, no!” she exclaimed. “How in the world would I know where Richmond is?”

  “I just asked,” he defended. “Somebody’s got to know where he is.”

  “Well, it’s not me,” she declared. After a moment’s silence, she said, “I don’t much like being called ‘Grandma’ either. Haven’t never been called that by nobody.”

  “What do you want me to call you?” Richie asked.

  “Ethel,” she said. “My name’s Ethel.”

  “Okay,” Richie agreed. Adding, “Ethel.”

  “Miss Ethel,” she modified. She pronounced the title ‘Miz.’

  “Miss Ethel,” Richie conformed. He studied her for the first time. She did not, he thought, resemble his mother very much. She was heavier than his mother had ever been, of course, not fat as much as heavyset. Her gray hair was, he guessed, very long, because she had it rolled and twisted into a large bun at the back of her head. She was wearing a plain black dress and black oxfords.

  When dusk fell outside and the coach became hazy inside, Richie rested his head back and closed his eyes. He wondered about Lamont, the little town of his birth, and how it was going to be to live there. It’s probably a nice enough little town, he thought. Had to be better than Chicago, that was for sure.

  Any place had to be better than Chicago.

  The Lamont town square was just as Richie remembered it from the last sad time he’d seen it with Chloe: an old county courthouse in the middle of a slightly raised square of land, faced on all four sides by a block of small-town businesses with perpendicular parking at their curbs. Just off the town square was the post office. A little farther out, as if serving as a link between the commercial and residential sections, were several churches, all Protestant. Gasoline service stations were out past the churches. At the far north end of town, near Mrs. Clark’s home, was the Illinois Central depot; at the far south end was Lamont High School, the students of which were all white. Beyond the town limits in all directions were farms.

  His second day there, Richie walked out to the high school to register for classes. It was a two-mile walk: a mile up to the square, a mile past it to the school. Grace Menefee had given Richie the name of a teacher he was supposed to see, Mrs. Reinhart, who was in charge of the Distributive Education program, and whom the local welfare officials had contacted about Richie. She was, Miss Menefee had told him, the only teacher in the school who would know he was transferring in from reformatory.

  Lamont High was unlike any school Richie had ever seen. It was all on one floor, laid out in wings around a gymnasium with bleachers on two sides and a raised stage at one end so that, with folding chairs set up, it could be converted to an auditorium. On registration day, the halls were crowded with students coming and going, shouted greetings, hushed discussions about who was teaching what that year, lots of rushing about to get the best lockers, consultations among friends who wanted to have study hall at the same time, and a plethora of other activities with which Richie was totally unfamiliar.

  He found Mrs. Reinhart in the Distributive Education classroom, and told her who he was. She looked up at him from her desk, a slightly heavy woman with an ample bustline, a few gray streaks in her dark hair, and eyes that were alive with intelligence behind her glasses. Looking at him quite frankly, she said, “Well, hello. I didn’t know if you were coming or not. They never really said for certain. But you’re here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right,” she began shuffling papers and folders about on her desk, “we have to get you signed up for classes and get you a job, correct? Correct. Let’s take care of the classes first. Let’s see, I don’t have your date of birth, but you’re fourteen, aren’t you—”

  “No, ma’am. Sixteen.”

  “I thought the people who spoke to me about you said fourteen?”

  “I don’t know about that, ma’am,” Richie lied easily and convincingly, “but I’m sixteen.”

  Pursing her lips slightly, Mrs. Reinhart said, “You wouldn’t try to fool me, would you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Richie professed emphatically.

  Mrs. Reinhart opened a desk drawer and handed him a single sheet of paper. “This is the freshman and sophomore English literature reading list. If you’re sixteen and ready for the junior class, you will have read at least some of these books. Would you like to select three of them and tell me about them?”

  Richie’s eyes flicked over the typed list. Smiling, he handed it back to her. “Why don’t you pick three, ma’am. I’ve read them all.”

  Mrs. Reinhart did pick three, including Ivanhoe, and Richie gave her oral reports on each of them, complete with names of characters, descriptions of locales, and his personal evaluation of the story, the writing, and the author. When he finished, Mrs. Reinhart put the list away and said, “You are definitely ready for the junior class.” Writing his name on a schedule sheet, she said, “All right, you have to take English three and History three; then you have a choice of a math class or a science class. For juniors it’s geometry or biology. Which one?”

  “Biology, ma’am.

  “All right, I can give you that in second period. Now then, you have to take one elective. A lot of the boys take an agriculture class; then there’s a health and hygiene class, there’s typing—”

  “I’d like typing, please,” Richie said. He had often watched Miss Cashman type back at the Damen Avenue branch library in Chicago, and had been fascinated by the way her fingers flashed across the typewriter keys without her even looking at them. But a s
udden apprehension occurred to him. “Do I have to buy a typewriter?”

  “No, of course not,” Mrs. Reinhart replied quietly. “The school furnishes the typewriters.” She gave him his class schedule, then said, “Now, let’s get you a job. Have you worked before, and if so, what have you done?”

  Richie shrugged. “I’ve set pins in a bowling alley, delivered papers, and at Charley—at the place I just came from, I worked on a garbage truck.”

  Mrs. Reinhart tapped one fingertip against her bottom lip. “We don’t have a bowling alley in town, the paper only comes out once a week, except for the Memphis paper which is delivered by a pickup truck, and down here only Negroes work on garbage trucks. But I have a job in mind for you that I think will be perfect,” she said, flipping through a card file. “Mr. Rollie Chalk, who owns Chalk’s Drug Store up on the square, is looking for a boy to work behind his soda fountain. No experience is necessary; he’ll train you. All that’s required is that the boy be neat and clean, and you look like you are. Do you think you’d like working in a drugstore?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Richie said eagerly. A job in a drugstore, behind a soda fountain—it sounded too good to be true. Richie had often watched soda jerks in Chicago and admired the way they scooped ice cream and constructed sundaes and sodas. He made up his mind that if he got the job, he would become the best soda jerk in town.

  “Here’s a note for you to take to Mr. Chalk; you can’t miss the drugstore, it’s right next to the Corner Cafe. And,” Mrs. Reinhart searched for another form, “speaking of food, we’ll fill this out so you can get a free lunch here at school.”