My Name Is River Blue (8 page)

Detective Walls
cut off the recorder and tried to look mean. "Do want to go to
Stockwell?"

"Where?"

The man leaned
down close to my face. He sneered with his nasty teeth. "Stockwell
Juvenile Detention Center for Boys. Prison for boys who lie to police officers.
They got boys three times your size that were locked up for assaults, rapes,
and even murders. You want to know what they do to punks like you?"

I remembered. I
had heard of Stockwell from Jimmy Cook, a kid who spent a short time at the
boys home. He was older than I was, but a couple years younger than Sean. Jimmy
spent a year in the juvie prison, and when he made parole, they sent him to live
temporarily in the boys home with us. At the time, the home was overcrowded,
and the staff brought an extra cot for him to stay in the room I shared with
Sean. He eventually left us when Tolley House, a group home for boys, completed
its remodel in a new location in Harper Springs. I would come to know Tolley
House very well in the future.

While he shared
our room, Jimmy routinely suffered nightmares and often wet his cot. If he had
a choice, he stayed in our room and had nothing to do with any of the other
boys. If there was ever a boy who fit the description "afraid of his own
shadow," it was Jimmy.

I thought of
Sean as my big brother, and when he suddenly started spending more time with
Jimmy, I grew jealous. That's when Sean explained that Jimmy needed our help.
He told me that one night when Jimmy woke us up screaming that he stayed up with
him after I went back to bed. Sean heard the boy talking in his sleep, and
learned enough that he asked him the right questions, which led to Jimmy
confiding in him.

Sean made me
swear to keep quiet about Jimmy's secret. While he was in Stockwell, a gang of older
inmates routinely abused Jimmy with a guard's knowledge. Sean encouraged him to
tell Mrs. Glover how the gang had tortured and beaten him, but the boy was
still afraid. He believed the gang's members outside of Stockwell would get to
him if he told on the ones inside.

Jimmy Cook was a
wreck, and I didn't think anyone could help him. A couple of months after he
left, I found out I was right.

As I considered
the possibility of confinement in Stockwell, I felt the same as I did the past
fall when I fell on the football during a peewee game, and I thought I might
die before I could take another breath. My legs trembled beneath the table, and
I felt dizzy as if I might fall out of the chair. As did most state kids, I acted
older and tougher than the average kid did, but I was still a frightened young boy.

I did my best to
control my voice. "I wanna talk to Miss Martin alone."

Detective Walls
studied me and then Miss Martin before his eyebrows raised the question to my caseworker.

"I'll be
fine," she said.

"I'll be
right outside. Call if you need me," advised the detective. He walked to
the door, opened it, and took a final look at Miss Martin and me before closing
the door behind him.

With the
detective gone, my words rushed out. "Miss Martin, what am I supposed to
do? I swear I didn't touch Trevor. Mike is blaming me just like he's done
before. I don't wanna go to prison. Please, help me."

Miss Martin's
eyes watered. "You're right about Mike. He swears that you pushed Trevor
out of the tree house. His mother said that when she heard Trevor scream that
she ran to the back yard and saw Mike standing over Trevor, and you were in the
tree house looking down. From what she said, the police don't think that Mike
could have climbed down in the time it took Mrs. Paulson to enter the yard. She
told the police that there were times when you were overly aggressive with her
boys, and the police saw two incidents in your file about you fighting. They
know that you're on probation for assaulting the Beck boy and for destroying
the Becks' property. Your counselor says that you don't cooperate in therapy. It
looks bad for you, River."

"Miss
Martin, Nathan Beck is a bully. I beat him up after he pushed me down the steps,
and made me tear my jeans and cut my knees. And yeah, I tore up his room because
I was mad at Nathan for lying and the Becks for blaming me instead of their
damn baby. They didn't even ask about my torn jeans or the blood running to my
socks. When I got to the boys home, my knees was still bleedin' so bad that
they had to take me to get stitches.'

"Then, I
had to go to court and listen to a stupid judge tell me how bad I was. Judge
Merlo never let me tell my side cause he already had his mind made up after he
read the crap the Becks told the cops. He just put me on probation and ordered
more counseling. He said he'd lock me up if the counselors couldn't straighten
me out. Just like now, nobody believes me cause I'm trash, and I got no parents
to fight for me."

"River, I'm
sorry. That was before I was your caseworker, and I only know you from the
point you went to live with the Paulsons. Your probation, your history of
fighting, the statements from Mike and his mother, and the fact that Senator
Paulson is an important man, all work against you. Some of it shouldn't matter,
but it does."

"What's
gonna happen to me, Miss Martin? Am I arrested? Do I got to go to court? That
cop says he's sending me to Stockwell if I don't say I hurt Trevor, and the way
you talk, I'm going there anyway."

I saw it in her
eyes. Miss Martin had something that wasn't easy for her to say. She was one of
those adults who hated delivering bad news to a kid who might go crazy on her. She
would rather use words that would keep him calm until after she had turned him
over to someone else. If she were lucky, she would be miles away from the
situation when the kid realized the truth and went ballistic. I didn't see her
as a bad person, just one who hated unpleasant confrontations.

"Miss
Martin, be straight with me," I pleaded. "You're supposed to help me
cause I don't got parents. Don't just lie to me until you can get away from here."

"River,
I'll see that you get a lawyer. The police are charging you as a juvenile with
involuntary manslaughter. It means that you didn't intend to hurt Trevor, but
by pushing him out of the tree house, you made him fall and caused his death. You
will stay in Stockwell until you go to court where the family court judge will decide
what happens to you. If he believes you are guilty, he could sentence you to remain
in Stockwell for up to six years. The solicitor said that if you admitted your
mistake, apologized, and behaved well in Stockwell that the judge might release
you in as few as six months."

I couldn't stop
the tears from running down my face.

At my hearing
for assaulting Nathan Beck, Judge Merlo had made it clear that he didn't like
me, and I knew I was in a bad situation. If I stuck with the truth, and he
didn't believe me, he could see me as unrepentant and lock me away for six
years for something I didn't do. I could lie, ask for forgiveness, and hope to
get only six months. Either way, like too many other things had been in my
life, it wasn't fair. Six years seemed like forever, but lying seemed even
worse. Lying was like admitting that I was everything the assholes said I was.

"River, I'm
so sorry. Maybe your lawyer can make the judge believe that you didn't do it. Just
be honest with him and let him help you."

"A lawyer won't
care no more about a state kid than the police do. Nobody does."

"Give him a
chance, River. Trust him. Maybe he can't get you out of it, but he might be
able to make the time shorter."

I cried again
with my head down on the table, and Miss Martin placed her arm around my
shoulders. After ten minutes, I forced my tears back and pulled my tee shirt
bottom up to dry my eyes. I fought to be strong because I knew Detective Walls
was watching me from behind the one-way glass, and I hated the idea of the yellow-toothed
son of a bitch seeing me cry.

"Miss
Martin, since I ain't going back to the Paulsons, can you get my things from
there? I got a few clothes, and I got a bag in the closet with personal stuff
in it like a baby blanket from when I was born. I heard that you can't have
personal stuff in Stockwell, so would you keep my things at your house? It's
real important to me."

Miss Martin's tears
rolled into her smile. "Yes, I'll get your things and keep them safe for
you, and you can let me know when you want them."

"Thanks."

"River, I'm
going with you to detention, so they will know that you have someone from the
state looking out for you. When they take you to the processing area, they will
allow me to go back there with you, if you want me. I don't mind if it will
make you feel better to have someone there that you know. It won't be a good
experience for you whether I'm there or not."

"I want you
to stay as long as you can." I remembered Jimmy describing the processing procedures
at Stockwell. I knew it would suck, but I wanted Miss Martin with me. I wanted
the prison staff to think that I was very close to the woman from child
services, and that I meant more to her than just another case file. Jimmy said
that the boys with frequent visitors, especially people like lawyers, ministers,
and state people were treated better by the guards.

"Okay,
River. As soon as we leave here, I will make a call to get you a lawyer, and
he'll visit you as soon as he can. When you go to court, I'll speak to the
judge on your behalf, and I'll make you another promise. If you have to stay at
Stockwell, I will visit you every week, as long as you're there, if that's okay
with you."

"Thank you.
I'd really like that." I started to cry again and choked it off. It was
hard to act tough when I was so scared. They could call it detention, juvie, or
any other name, but I was going to prison. Most kids would have had parents or
at least some family to support them. I had no one but Miss Martin, someone I
hardly knew.

Every day, for
as long as I could remember, I had wondered who my parents were, and why they deserted
me. Usually, I tried to believe that my parents had loved me and had a good
reason for dumping me, but at that moment, I wished that I could tell them how
much I hated their damn guts for making me and then throwing me away. I wished
that someone would hurt them as badly as I had been hurt, and I wished that
they hated their lives as much as I hated mine.

I wanted my
parents to know that Jimmy Cook had nightmares so bad that he wet his bed and
screamed every damn night until he wished he were dead. I wanted them to know
that when he finally couldn't face another day of his miserable life, Jimmy jumped
in front of a speeding train just past the Railroad Street crossing in Harper
Springs. I wanted my parents to suffer the same fear I did when I thought of the
cops locking me away in the place that destroyed Jimmy.

I heard the door
open and saw Detective Walls enter. I was nauseous.

The detective
leaned over the table towards me. "You want to tell me the truth
now?"

The man's smug
expression and condescending tone pissed me off. He was a bully who enjoyed
using his authority to intimidate kids. I was still afraid of what would happen
to me at Stockwell, but I wasn't afraid of Walls, and I wasn't giving him shit.
I was only eleven years old, but that was eleven
state
years, and I knew
the man was taking me to juvie prison no matter how respectful I was.

Probation or
not, I knew the judge would rule against me, so the only thing in question was
how many years I would serve. I was convinced that state kids never won because
they were stereotyped, and because they had no parents to fight an injustice.
It was easy for the authorities to show they were tough on crime by nailing
kids with no tax-paying, voting parents to raise hell and threaten elected
officials.

Since I believed
that I was serving time no matter what I said, there was no way that I was going
to let Detective Walls walk out bragging about how bad he scared the little
punk. I might have been state trash, the kind of boy that no parents wanted
their kid bringing home for a sleepover, but I was not a liar, and I was not a
pussy, and I wasn't going to let some asshole cop with yellow teeth and buzzard
breath turn me into either one.

I gave Detective
Walls a cold stare, laced with all the contempt my dark eyes could show. I was
not the remorseful, fearful kid he thought would be ready to cooperate, and for
a moment, I threw him off his game. I hoped the other lying cops were watching and
listening from behind the one-way glass because my answer was for all of them.

"Here's the
truth. You and the Paulsons are gonna lie about Trevor's fall, and you cops are
gonna lie about how you treated me. I'm gonna tell the judge the truth, and he'll
decide what happens to me, not you. He probably won't believe me, but the next
time a kid complains about you cops, the judge will remember what I said. He
might even start wondering. So go ahead and take me to Stockwell like you
planned. Maybe the guards over there brush their teeth and don't smell like
they been eatin' shit sandwiches."

I'm not sure
what would have happened, if Miss Martin had not been there in the room.
Detective Walls might have ripped my head off. Instead, he tightened his jaw
and quietly left us to arrange my transport to Stockwell.