Little Criminals: The Story of a New Zealand Boys' Home (4 page)

Heaven help any nocturnal prowler who encounters a staff member brandishing one of these volumes! Not only are a number of the housemasters reputed to be proficient in various of the martial arts, the sheer weight of any of the manuals swiped across the head could stun an ox — as one would expect of instruction books containing regulations and guidance on every conceivable aspect of a child’s perpetually supervised life during the three or so months he will typically be housed at Epuni.

‘Understanding Polynesians’, the title of one such entry, offers a taste of the general content. ‘Generally speaking,’ the section begins, ‘Pakeha children are taught from early infancy that they must respect other people’s property — “Jimmy, you leave Mary’s ball alone!” But it would never occur to Polynesian parents to say anything so restrictive …’ Given that the overwhelming majority of the young wards here are brown-skinned, such insights are presumably weighed carefully, and gratefully, by a complement of staff that is just as overwhelmingly white.

In the main, the manuals offer more straightforward advice on everything from dispensing weekly pocket money (75c) to perfecting a child’s work skills in, for example, correctly using a cloth to apply polish to furniture. A dedicated page in the
Principal’s Handbook
describes how this should be done in accordance with institutional policy, which in the first instance means spreading White Lily cleaning solution onto the cloth and applying the cloth to the surface until it has fully ‘become black’. Thereafter a
dry
cloth must be deployed to wipe off any excess polish: ‘If this is being done correctly, the area will be slightly polished but a little smeared.’ Finally, the handbook counsels, another dry cloth needs to be used; however, ‘if this gets damp,’ the guide warns, ‘the area being polished will continue to get smear marks on it’. And what if the kid at work gets fed up with all this and simply decides to
slosh hot water on the wood — or, his wits at an understandable end, register his disapproval by heaving a chair through the first available window? ‘Well, YOU will have just WASTED the White Lily — and your time!’

The handbook is also big on making the boys feel occupationally special, offering names that distinguish their services from the rank and file. The child who reports to the kitchen at 7.15 am to help prepare the food, for example, is not referred to as such in the manual, but rather at all times as The Tea and Toast Boy or possibly The Morning Pots Boy. Similarly, for reasons that are never made entirely clear or else have been lost in the mists of time, the boy responsible for emptying trash and cleaning the pig buckets goes under the name of The General (or The Assistant General for the younger ones). Also contained within the volume’s 1000-plus pages are slightly cryptic copies of historical material relating to tattooing practices in ancient Greece and modern psychiatry, tips and instructions for staff, and the correct procedures for minuting and initialling individual files.

Replacing the manuals and continuing to wander around the buildings, something odd begins to dawn on you. Having dizzied oneself in these bulky tools of written instruction, the penny slowly drops that these tomes represent the only published words to be found virtually anywhere in the institution.

Neither in the play areas nor in what passes for a recreational lounge near the front doors, nor even in the classrooms, may printed material of any readable sort be espied, or indeed any published juvenilia at all. Especially troubling for some of the boys, you suppose, must be the absence of literature, apart from comics, in any of the bedrooms, because it’s here that they are required to spend an unusual amount of time, not just in the nights but for up to two hours each weekday afternoon, as part of a practice known as ‘rest therapy’ that is peculiar to Epuni.

Still, as the institution’s managers are always quick to point out, it’s not as if the wards are bereft of real exercise. The institution’s largest building, after all, is a customised gymnasium, which is often put to use at the end of the mid-morning and mid-afternoon lineups after the housemaster has first passed around a bucket of apples and dispensed the quota of cigarettes for the older boys.

The gym used to be such a fun venue. Once it even provided the setting for a game of basketball in which a local team faced off against members of the police training academy in Trentham; a humdinger of a game. The match took place on a cool spring evening, a see-sawing contest where the lead changed frequently until the final couple of minutes when the Epuni team scored the net. (The winners were not gracious in victory.) Nowadays, though, the usual activities are less auspicious, mainly comprising the physical exercise sessions that first became a part of the daily grind in the early 1970s.

The wards run in circles, or sprint from one wall to another, until they are told to stop. Climbing up a large ladder rack and then climbing down the other side, sometimes while using one arm to carry a large medicine ball, is another regularly prescribed activity. So is clambering up a thick gym rope that hangs down from the ceiling — and then sliding down again. Finally, perhaps, there will be a long round of press-ups, with the duty housemaster picking his way between the grunting exercisers and commenting on their performance.

Late afternoon. More chores. Moving from one allotted task to another, drifting from one corner of the building to another, is for many of these wards, you now begin to suspect, a kind of sleepwalking of no particular significance or importance, even though Epuni Boys’ Home may well be the cleanest institution in all of greater Wellington as a consequence of the endless attention. How to relieve the boredom? Rata Wing, the newest addition to
the building, is fitted with fire sprinklers both on the ceilings of the passageway and in each of the cubicles, offering a perennial temptation. Those red glass phials, which release torrents of water in the case of fire, cry out to be interfered with. It isn’t unknown for somebody to road test the system by tampering with one of the valves and, inevitably, flooding the passage.

Alternatively, somebody might break open the firehose cupboard in the foyer that separates Rata and Totara wings and initiate a furious water fight. Alas, this could lead to a night in the cells, though, so more often than not the temptation is resisted in favour of some music, assuming the stereo is working. Time was when the main source of music was a portable record player shaped like a fat briefcase, complete with handle and inside speaker and powered by battery or electricity. Now there’s an actual cabinet record player, securely mounted on the lounge wall, made out of fake wood with a couple of little speakers and a storage compartment inside for albums. Unfortunately it’s broken.

Little matter. Soon it’s time for more duties, another couple of lineups, the evening meal. Outside the dusk gathers underneath a rising moon that this evening is only a narrow crescent, a pencil stroke of light against the New Zealand sky, and still the distant drumbeat from somewhere across the waters sounds ever more loudly.

THIS BEING A WEDNESDAY NIGHT, HAIR SHAMPOO
will be the order of the evening, as it is on Saturdays as well, a process adding long minutes to the 7.30 pm shower, for which all the inmates are required to strip and form a queue with towels draped around their necks. Always the boys are carefully instructed by the housemaster on the correct use of soap and the hair product (‘this may be a new experience for many of them,’ the manual warns), with the supervisor measuring out a portion of shampoo
from a used kitchen container and sprinkling it on each of the heads clustered together in the one shower. For the youngest kids this will be the day’s final activity before supper and bed. For the older boys, at least those who haven’t misbehaved during the day, there’s some television time before turning in as well.

Rare is the moment when anything changes in the little universe that is 441 Riverside Drive. This evening, however, those distant drumbeats have moved nearer, an anxious rumble now much closer at hand, the noise of a distant world that is not so distant any longer.

Though much of what passes for scheduled life inside Epuni Boys’ Home tends to be intentionally uneventful, evening times are often a bit of a treat. This part of the day is also a lesson in practical economics, because those who get to savour it the most tend to be the ones who have earned their pleasure. This evening, as every evening, each boy taking a seat next to the old black and white TV set has already presented the 9 x 12 centimetre ‘credit card’, which he is meant to keep with him at all times, to the relevant supervisor. The housemaster then awards a predetermined number of clips for good work performed or other emanations of satisfactory conduct during the day. Earn 40 clips over the course of seven days — the weekly tallies are usually announced at lunchtime on Wednesdays — and a bedazzling new world of privileges opens up.

Among the regular rewards are the opportunity to shoot pool in the lounge area and the right to enjoy a few additional cigarettes, above and beyond the daily allowance that all boys aged 15 or more are allowed, to puff between work duties. The kids generally like the system, and that’s how it’s meant to be; the token-economy initiative is what one might call an exercise in behaviour modification, treating the ‘what’ rather than the ‘why’ of behaviour, to be sure, and disabling bad habits. Originally
devised for similar correctional facilities in the United States, it has proved so popular locally that a number of the other New Zealand institutions have taken it up — including the Weymouth centre in Auckland and Wanganui’s Holdsworth School — since Epuni first adopted it in 1972.

On this particular evening what’s most coveted is the opportunity to enjoy a ringside place on one of the orange plastic chairs arranged around the small television set in the recreational area next to the dining room. As usual the bigger boys go for the seats in front, the smaller ones just behind. There’s Charlie, still wearing a cast from the car crash he had the last time he absconded. Next to him slouches Rangi, none too smart but extremely strong, complete with what looks to be a large handkerchief pointlessly wrapped around his head.

Odder still, at least for anyone with an inkling of what they signify, are a number of crude Nazi symbols tattooed on his massive arms, as opposed to the usual four green dots on the knuckles (the four F’s, remember: find her, feel her, fuck her, forget her) that younger gang members typically plump for. All the same you do have to marvel at the menace the boy effortlessly exudes, dusky arms loosely folded, black hair still wet and draped across an already muscular neck.

You find yourself thinking about everything you’ve seen today, and you think about life. What does it mean to be a child in that moment when those diamond-hard certainties breathed into us at birth first start to slip away? The kids, however, are gaping at the hazy little box, breathing in the energy of what’s happening half a world away — the distant drumbeat now frighteningly close at hand — with all the force of the 28,000 televised fans sucking the air out of the sweltering Araneta Colosseum, in the Philippines, and you should be, too.

EVERYTHING THEY EVER TOLD YOU ABOUT
HEAVYWEIGHT
boxing — about power, beauty, reach, intelligence and creativity — points to an early victory by Muhammad Ali over Joe Frazier in tonight’s bout, the third of their epic clashes in the middle of an era that began, as it happened, at precisely the same time as Epuni Boys’ Home, and even now casts an ever-powerful presence over so many of its wards. But everything they told you isn’t necessarily so.

The opening few rounds confirm as much. Ali, the taller and heavier fighter, disdaining his trademark butterfly approach but still keeping his hands characteristically low, moves in confidently on his more economically packaged, rugged-looking opponent with cruel insults and disdainful jabs. Why else would he be fighting flat-footed in the middle of the unusually large ring?

But Frazier, sweat bouncing off his body, is complex, full of surprises, ominously laconic in the exchanges grunted back and forth during the early rounds, and cutting much more of a verbal presence than one has been led to believe of the man sometimes dismissed as twice as black and half as smart as his more popular foe. (Ali: ‘They told me you was through, Joe, they told me you was finished.’ Frazier: ‘They lied.’) And Joe, as they say in the business, has a cold motor; Ali ought to have remembered that from their previous fights.

By the fifth round, the time for verbal jazzing is way over. Ali, anxiety growing in his black-marble eyes, looks to be in trouble. Frazier — pitter-pattering, crouching, snorting, weaving, slinging lefts and rights to Ali’s body and the occasional bomb to his head — is a baggy propeller, arms whirring faster and faster around a
deadstill
gaze. Peek-a-boo, the standard bobbing and weaving style where the hands are placed in front of the boxer’s face, it might be, but that doesn’t really do full justice to the superhuman performance Frazier is putting on. How can anyone punch a hole through
that
?

The minutes tick by along with the mounting physical traces left by one of Frazier’s signatures: a mighty left hook. Now the bullets are flying. Ali seems unable to find a way out. The assault continues until the bell signals the end of the 10th; the champion, head bowed low, staggers to his corner.

Times like these are when a cornerman is faced with the difficult task of convincing a younger man to find it in himself to continue fighting after he has suffered a series of terrible blows. In this, as incredibly gifted a boxer as Ali is, he’s really no different from any young man, whether among the onlookers in Manila or those in Epuni. But these kids never had anyone like Bundini Brown, Ali’s flamboyant, booming cornerman since 1963, who loves and chides his champion like the father figure that virtually all these far-flung fans lack, and now presents himself at the ring apron, his face damp with emotion.

‘Go down to the well one more time,’ Brown yells, tears running down his face; ‘the world needs ya!’ Ali kind of nods and rises to his feet.