Little Boy Blue (2 page)

The social worker parked and turned off the
motor. Nobody spoke or moved. Finally Clem unlatched the door, the sound sharp.
He stepped out and beckoned to his son. “C’mon.”

The woman got out the other side, but the boy
stared straight ahead and didn’t move.

Clem flushed. “No, no, I’ll have
none of your shenanigans today, young man. Just get out of the car.”

The boy shook his head without looking
around. His breathing was audible.

Each of them knew the script. The man would
be more determined because he’d seen other tantrums, and the
boy’s fury was greater through practice. Long ago a display of tears and
thrashings brought conciliation. Now each of them had a tolerance.

I boy needed to behave insanely, even though
that would probably not change things. His rage was simultaneously blind and
planned,
berserk irrationality as a means to an end.

“Get out or I’ll drag you
out,” Clem said.

Alex didn’t move a muscle.

The social worker was a worried spectator,
sweating in the heat.

Clem leaned inside, one knee braced on the
seat, a hand on top of it. “Come on.”

Alex’s breathing became a hoarse rasp,
a choked cry, like someone having a seizure.

“Knock it off,” Clem said, his
anger rising.

The gasping intensified, and the boy’s
face purpled. The man leaned in further, reaching to grab the boy’s
elbow. At his touch the boy yelped and jerked away, sliding down to the
floorboard in the corner, banging his head on the dashboard and wrapping his
arms around the steering post. Tears poured down his face, and he gave wheezing
sobs of futile rage, his body too small to consummate his fury.

Clem kneeled down on the seat and reached for
the boy’s locked arms. He jerked one hand loose, muttering curses. As he
went for the other, the first one fastened again. The boy’s breathing now
contained coughs and animal sounds. A discharge of adrenaline flooded the
boy’s nervous system, giving him additional strength.

Infuriated, Clem moved in closer on his knees
on the seat and tried to reach down and slap his son across the face. The
steering wheel and narrow space made this ineffectual.

The social worker stood watching in the hot
glare. She was horrified. She’d seen many rebellious children, but
this was like watching a soul begin to die. The woman stood helpless while the
cries cut through her and the summer afternoon.

Clem backed up, his rump jutting out, and
grabbed a foot. The boy thrashed, kicking, twisting, and screaming. Clem
couldn’t pull him straight out; the leverage was insufficient, and the
boy’s arms were locked too tightly around the steering post. The man was
sweating now, puffing from exertion. In sudden fury he wrenched his son’s
leg, pulling him loose in one swift move, dragging him out so that he flopped
on his side on the hot macadam. The fall jerked Clem’s hands loose, and
the boy lunged for the bumper, fighting for every inch. But Clem pried his
fingers loose and hauled him to his feet, cuffing him across the back of his
head.

The woman assisted Clem now, taking an arm to
help restrain the child. They dragged Alex, kicking and screaming, toward the
administration building.

Thelma Cavendish stood peering from a
dormitory window, attracted by the uproar. She knew the boy was being assigned
to her cottage. Her stern, fat face reflected sharp disapproval of such
rebellion.

As the trio struggled up the walk, a school
bus jammed with the younger boys of the Valley Home pulled in. The boys leaned
from the windows, yelling, then spilled out of the door.

Despite his flaming brain, Alex was aware of
the new arrivals, and his fury was redoubled for their benefit, sensing that it
further discomfited his father.

The two dozen boys came over to Alex like
filings to a magnet, forming an audience, falling silent and serious. None
seemed particularly sympathetic to the newcomer.

Clem tripped on a step and fell momentarily
to one knee. “You’re gonna be sorry,” he muttered between
clenched teeth, wishing he could thrash the boy but afraid that the Valley Home
might refuse to take him. Already Alex had been thrown out of half the boarding
schools in southern California.

The sweating social worker was encumbered by
her purse and had to release the boy to reach for the screen door. Alex turned
on his father, clawing for Clem’s face.

A young man from the bus—the athletics
coach—pushed through the crowd of boys, scattering them. He wrapped his
arms around Alex, pinning him. The boy collapsed, and the coach carried him
inside. Alex had not willfully surrendered, but the ferocity of his resistance
had sucked all his strength away. His brain fogged near a faint, and if the
young man had not been holding him up, he would have collapsed on the floor.
His body tingled as if charged with electricity. His eyes fluttered and
nearly rolled back into his head. The woman and the young man were frightened
by the boy’s paleness and the blue tint to his lips. Neither had had any
experience with such behavior. Clem, however, had seen this stupor that
followed the tantrum many times.

“Is there any hot water around
here?” Clem asked, scanning the waiting room, which was furnished with an
empty desk and stuffed furniture, the
masonite
floor
scarred by years of young feet. The coach waved toward a short corridor where a
frosted-glass door at the end opened into a washroom. It was too small for more
than Clem and Alex. The father shut the door and turned on the hot water,
waiting until steam rose from the bowl; then he shoved his son’s hands
under the water. For nearly half a minute Alex remained limp and oblivious,
until the pain got through to his stupefied brain and the scalding water made
him squirm. His hands turned scarlet.

Alex tried to pull his hands away.
“It’s okay,
Pop
. I’m okay.”

Clem turned him loose, knowing the episode
was over, the rebellion spent. “Wash your face,” he said
quietly, ashamed at having lost his own temper, aching and sad at the whole
situation.

Alex turned on the cold water and used cupped
hands to splash it on his face, mindless that it dampened his cuffs and collar.

Clem Hammond lit a cigarette and sat on the
toilet and waited.

Outside the washroom the young coach, Mike
Macrae, listened as the woman told him about the boy’s history. The young
coach was awed and for some reason felt guilty. He was just ten years older
than Alex, and he wondered if he could befriend the boy. In his whole life Mike
Macrae hadn’t experienced as much anguish as he’d seen the boy go
through in just a few minutes. Maybe he could take a special interest in the
newcomer, straighten out the warp. The social worker sighed.

Inside the washroom Alex Hammond patted his
face dry with a paper towel. Clem dropped his cigarette butt into the toilet.
“Hey,” the man said, “look here.” The boy’s eyes
were downcast. The man searched hard for words, and words came hard.

“You’ve got to act like a
man,” he began, then halted. After a pause he said, “Remember the
poem you learned last year… by Kiping?”

“It was Kipling, Pop.”

“I don’t remember… but I
remember what it said… about taking what happens and holding your head up
and being a man.

It isn’t my fault you have to be in these
places. What do you want me to do
?“

“Let me stay with you.” The
boy’s head was still down; he shuffled a foot.

“If I could, I would. I’ve got to
work, and there’s nobody to look after you.”

“Pop, I can look after myself. I
won’t get in trouble, I promise.”

Clem fought down the wetness in his eyes.
“You can’t live in a furnished room.”

“We can get a small place.”

Clem shook his head. He wanted to hug the
boy, but such gestures had stopped. Maybe… maybe, he thought, we can rent
a place and have a woman come in to help. “I can’t make any
promises,” he said, “but maybe we can work something out.”

“Oh, Pop, please.”

“Remember, it’s not a
promise… but I’ll see what I can arrange.”

The tears welled in the boy’s eyes,
triggering a similar response in the man, and he gathered his son in his arms.
Please God, Alex pleaded silently, let it be so. I won’t do anything
wrong.

Clem held his son at arm’s length,
hands on his shoulders. “Okay, I’ll work on it, but you
be
good here. Don’t give them any trouble. I’ve
got to work out of town this week, but I’ll be here to see you a week
from Sunday.”

“Promise, Pop?”

“Promise.
You can go
horseback
riding
at Griffith Park if you want.”

“Oh, yes!”

“I talked to the superintendent.
He’s a nice man and he tells me the housemother, Mrs. Cavendish, is a
fine person. Show me you can stay out of trouble so I can leave you alone while
I work.” He tapped the boy’s arm with a clenched fist.

Alex nodded rapidly, his face glowing.

“You’ll have to apologize for
causing the lady all that trouble. Then we’ll see about getting you
settled.”

The glow faded from the boy’s eyes.
Suddenly he was embarrassed by what he’d done and pricked by the
reality that he had to stay while his father left.

Thelma Cavendish, a widow, lived in three cluttered
rooms of the cottage—the cottage being the lower floor of the two-story
dormitory. The upper floor was for boys aged fourteen to sixteen. The
clutter of Thelma’s quarters was in contrast to the strict neatness she
insisted on for the boys on her floor. She was sixty-five years old and healthy
as a bull elephant, despite more than two hundred pounds on a five-foot-five
frame. She’d raised her own three children into good, successful
Christians, and a thousand other boys had come under her wing during twenty-two
years as a housemother. Her stamina was evidenced by her being in charge
of thirty boys, ages eleven and twelve, five and a half days a week. Other
housemothers had a college student to assist them, but Thelma Cavendish ran her
cottage alone. If she had Victorian strictness, she could also clamp a homesick
boy to her bosom. If excessive strictness had occasionally harmed a
forming personality, the balance sheet was still in her favor. She lacked
patience with interfering parents. They’d turned over to her a job they
couldn’t handle. Most of the boys came from broken homes; many had
alcoholic parents, some had been abused, and a few were en route to full-blown
delinquency and institutions.

Thelma Cavendish told Alex to make his bed,
put his clothes away, and then come to see her.

The room had two double bunks. A bottom bunk
was empty, and Alex put his duffel bag and cardboard box on top of it. He
ignored the two boys watching him silently from their bunks. Alex didn’t
unpack anything but instead went back down the hallway to Mrs.
Cavendish’s rooms. The door was open, and he could see the woman darning
socks from a large basket, her fingers flying. Alex knocked on the doorframe,
and she beckoned him in with a head gesture. She nodded toward a wicker chair,
the only place to sit not piled with clothes.

“I saw that display in the parking lot
and I’m not going to stand for anything like that, you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.
I’m not going to be here very long
anyway.”

The woman’s fingers paused as she
looked closely at the youth. “I talked with your father. He didn’t
mention that you weren’t staying.”

“When did you talk with him?”

“Last week. We had a long talk about
your problems.”

“Well, he just told me.”

“Are you sure you’re telling the
truth? That it isn’t something you’re imagining because you want it
to be true?”

“No, it’s true.”

The woman’s lips pressed tighter.
“Well, be that as it may, while you’re here you’re going to
have to follow my rules. If you do, we’ll get along fine. If you
don’t, we won’t get along at all.”

Alex said nothing. He resented her authority
and the threat it represented.

“I can’t tell you all
that’s expected in one session,” she said. “But the boys get
up at six and clean their rooms. Breakfast is at seven. We all go together. The
school bus leaves at seven forty-five. When the bus brings you home, you check
with me before you go out. You get back to the cottage by five. Study hall is
from seven to eight for junior high school.

“One place my boys don’t go—behind
the kitchen. That’s the smoking area for high school boys. I don’t
approve of it, but Mr. Trepesanti is the superintendent, and he lets them smoke
there.”

Alex said, “Yes, ma’am,”
whenever it was appropriate; he was glad when she let him go back to his room.

When he reentered the room, a fat little boy
was searching through Alex’s box. When he saw Alex he wheeled around,
flushing wildly, obviously frightened. Alex had long ago learned how boys steal
in boarding homes. He’d done it himself. Usually he would have started a
fight, but today he was too drained. The fat boy had nothing in his hands, so
Alex simply warned him to never do it again. The boy’s name, he later
learned, was an appropriate “Porky.”