Authors: Vin Packer
Twisted Ones (13 page)
CHARLES BERREY
In the Reddton Library, down in the basement in the Children’s Section, it was quiet at last.
Upstairs, it was different. There was a Memorial Day display set out in the glass cases, and visitors were filing by it, exclaiming and praising Miss Schuster for her ingenuity. The display traced the history of the Unknown Soldiers of the United States of America. Charles Berrey had wanted to add his praise to the other’s. It was a remarkably thorough and enlightening exhibit, in his opinion, but he avoided the head librarian. He slipped under the rope that barred the entranceway to the downstairs without Miss Schuster seeing him.
It was a hot afternoon, even hotter where Charles was. The fans that were usually in operation were not in use. Officially, only the lobby of the library was open for the holiday.
Charles Berrey took a seat over by the basement window. With him, he had brought the newspapers and some stationery. His father had given him the writing paper and the envelope.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he had said as he laid them on Charles’ desk that morning. “Things got out of hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, I’ve never put a hand on you at any other time, have I?”
“Not on me, sir. No.”
“A man has a right to hit his wife. That’s something between a man and his wife. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,
dad.”
“Yes, dad,” said Charles Berrey.
“Your mother asks for it. You’ve heard her. And last night,
you
asked for it.”
“Yes, dad.”
“But I shouldn’t have hit you. A man shouldn’t hit his kids. And I’m sorry, Chuck.”
Charles Berrey said nothing to that.
“It wasn’t the money, Chuck. It wasn’t
just
the money. That’s a lot of money, you know. That’s not chickenfeed, in case you’re interested.”
“I know that.”
“And it wasn’t my money, or your mother’s. It wasn’t our money you threw away. It was your own money. Money for your education.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You just threw it away,” said his father. “Chuck, come over here. I want to show you something.”
“What?” the boy asked, approaching the desk in his room cautiously.
“Now, don’t act so damned afraid! I’m not going to touch you! Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to hit you any more?”
“No, sir. You said a man shouldn’t hit his kids. I remember.”
“Well, what do you think that
means!
Now watch!”
His father took a dollar bill from his pocket. There was an ash tray on Charles’ desk filled with paper clips. He dumped the paperclips on the ink blotter and put the money in the ash tray.
“In my business,” he said, “one demonstration is worth a thousand words, Chuck. That’s your two weeks’ allowance there, what I’m supposed to give you tomorrow. Do you understand?”
“Yes, dad.”
“Here’s a match, Chuck. Light it.”
“But why, dad—I—”
“You light it! You light it and burn that money! For God’s sake, you threw a hell of a lot more than that away last night!”
Charles Berrey did as he was told.
Silently, the pair watched the money burn in the ash tray.
When it was ashes, Howard Berrey said: “It makes you sick, doesn’t it? Seeing good money just go phfffft!”
“Yes, dad.”
“That’s how I felt last night, Chuck. Sick!”
“I see.”
“Do you? I wonder if you see. It isn’t just the money, Chuck. There’s more to it than that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You made a fool out of me, did you realize that?”
“You told me to admit I was spoofing, dad. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
“Sure, I told you! I was hot under the collar! I couldn’t believe my ears! All that money—phfffft! Like that dollar bill there!”
“I thought you wanted me to miss. You told me not to know all the answers all the time.”
“Chuck, I told you to spoof Mr. Carter about your English grade, and that’s all I told you to do! I didn’t tell you to spoof
anyone else!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did
I?”
“No. I guess you didn’t.”
“You made a fool out of me! Your mother blames the whole thing on me, just because of that little spoof with Mr. Carter!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! You made a fool out of me! And what do you think Mr. Carter thinks of me this morning, hah? You read the newspapers.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Charles Berrey was remembering the story of the boy in Sykes, New York, who had stabbed a girl with a knife. For that split second, he had forgotten the little piece about him and his family:
Quiz Kid Says He Spoofed.
… The other story—the one about the “shook-up slayer”—had sent him back and forth to his knife rack three, four, even five times, to check the rack, to make sure the knives were secure.
“I know you read them, Chuck. Why do you lie to me? Chuck, what’s come over you?”
“I’m sorry, dad.”
“Lie after lie after lie! Last night in front of millions—this morning, in front of your own father.”
“I read the newspapers.”
“You’re damn right you did! Don’t you think I know you bury your head in them the minute you get home with them?”
“I just forgot.”
“You didn’t
forget
, Chuck. You just didn’t want to remember. You made a fool out of me! How do you think I look to the world this morning?”
“I don’t know, dad.”
“I look as though I forced you to say you’d spoofed. You know damn well!”
“You
did
tell me to admit it.”
“Chuck, I told you to
admit
it, but I didn’t make it up about you spoofing, the way the newspapers say I did!”
“I know.”
“All right! Okay, mister. Let’s just set things straight now.”
“They’re straight, dad.”
“Not quite, Chuck. There’s a small matter unattended. It won’t do much good, but it’ll be a little help.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I put this stationery here for a reason. I want you to write the paper and tell them that you spoofed, and that it was
not
my idea. You tell them that, Chuck!”
“All right, dad.”
“You tell them I didn’t give you any orders whatsoever about how you were to conduct yourself on Cash-Answer! Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you have that letter to me by six o’clock tonight!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes,
dad!”
said Howard Berrey.
“Yes, dad.”
• • •
Charles Berrey sat at the round table in the library leaning on his elbows, remembering it all. There would be another fight tonight, he knew that. His mother had ridiculed his father’s idea that Charles write the newspapers.
“They’ll think we’ve all gone crazy!” she was screaming when he left the house to come here.
And his father? “Shut your yap! Shut your yap! Shut your yap!”
Last night Charles Berrey had thought his father would kill both of them. Even his mother had thought that. She had screamed over and over: “You want to kill us both! You will yet!” and once, after his father had slapped his face and while he was lunging at his mother, Charles Berrey himself had thought of killing. He had thought of his knives. He had sat crying in his bedroom, listening to the uproar, and he had thought of getting one of his knives.
But he was afraid of his knives, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he more afraid of his knives than anything in the world? He never thought of them as
his
knives, anyway. They were his father’s. His father had given him those knives, every single one of them but the little stone flint and the saber Howie had sent to him.
Maybe if things got out of hand again, the way they had last night, something would happen with those knives. Someone would use them.
For the third time that day, Charles Berrey unfolded the newspaper. With a feeling of sick apprehension he began to read the same news story again:
SHOOK-UP SLAYER SAYS GIRL DROVE HIM TO MURDER
By Ethel Waterbury
(SPECIAL TO U.P.)
I talked with the shook-up slayer today. A 16-year-old boy with a handsome, slightly pale face and solemn brown eyes. He had close-cropped black hair with sideburns, but if the sideburns were an indication that he was a member of this wild, rock ‘n’ roll “shook-up” generation, they were the sole indication.
There was not a vicious expression to his whole countenance, nor any hatred there, nor any meanness. If I had seen this boy in my own backyard, I’d have wanted to say a friendly “Hi” to him. I’d have wanted to have him meet my own children.
Yet, on his own confession, Brock Brown admitted that less than a day ago he had slain 16-year-old Caroline Bates, after assaulting her, by plunging his pocketknife repeatedly into her body. He admitted he had left her there in the muddy road and gone home to wait for the police, taking the jackknife with him.
What made him do it? A boy who had never bought a rock ‘n’ roll record in his life, who wasn’t a wise guy or a smart aleck, whose pride was his neat grooming, and who admittedly had never “had anything to do with girls before.”
A soft-spoken, well-mannered boy, who says of his family: “Dad and Clara were always swell to me. I didn’t have an unhappy childhood. I had everything I wanted, from cars to clothes.”
But a boy, too, who had few friends his own age, who didn’t make the school fraternity because the others thought he was a lone wolf—a boy who didn’t “belong” the way other boys did.
A boy who never went to church, though he said he often prayed; a boy who is the picture of health, though he said he often had bad headaches that came over him suddenly “for no reason”; a boy who disclaimed any interest in things the other teen-agers did or said, though the words “shook up” were the only ones he could think of to explain his motive; a boy who was proud because he would not drive after dark and break the law, though brutal murder he would do—he did do.
“How do you feel?” I asked him. And the “shook-up” rapist-slayer, who had shown no emotion during hours of police questioning, studied his hands with a melancholy sigh and said: “I don’t know. I’m glad it’s over.”
Brock Brown did not seem overwhelmed with grief, nor even overly concerned. He was nervous as he sat there in the prosecutor’s office in his navy blue suit with his clean white shirt and fresh navy blue tie.
He showed very little emotion until he told about his attack on Caroline Bates, and then he began to tremble.
“She drove me to do it,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that crime. Why didn’t she go home, the way she was going to in the first place?”
The “crime” this pathetic youth was referring to was the rape of the Bates girl. Her murder, the crime for which he is being held, seemed of only secondary importance.
“I don’t know why I used the knife at all,” said the boy. “I don’t know how I thought of the knife, or why.”
“What kind of television shows do you like?” I asked.
He told me that he had no special favorites, but that he did not like movies about the Nazis because they reminded him of their cruelty during the war.
“I don’t like mushy movies either,” he added. “I walk out on those kind if they show them on television.”
Asked why he did not like such movies, his eyes were vacant. “I’m just not that kind of guy,” he answered.
Questioned as to what his ambition was, the youth admitted that he had not given it much thought.
“I was supposed to go to college or something,” he said. “I guess that’s over with now.
“I can’t give you any answers for this,” he said. “I know I said I was shook up, and that everyone thinks wrong of me for saying that, but I can’t think of any other way to put it. I used to pray to God a lot. I never asked Him for anything. I had what I wanted. But I used to say prayers of thanks.”
Then he repeated the familiar words again: “I’m just shook up,” he said. “There’s no other way of putting it.”
* * *
What does it feel like to interview a 16-year-old rapist-killer? Not the way you think.
You don’t feel hatred. You don’t feel hot anger. You don’t even feel disgust.
You go away feeling only a momentous emptiness, a void which only the question: “Why?” can fill, and a certain dumb, sad, horrible shock at the sudden realization that you don’t know the answer to “Why?” … and you wonder if anyone will ever have the answer to “Why?”
Charles Berrey folded the paper when he finished reading the article. He felt a sudden impulse to burn the newspaper, to burn it the way his father had made him burn the dollar bill that morning—to simply destroy it so he would never have to think about it again.
Over and over in his mind, he kept remembering the words: “I don’t know why I used the knife at all. I don’t know how I thought of the knife, or why.”
He thought of that, and he thought of his own knives. And he thought about what it would be like to go home. It was four-thirty on Memorial Day afteroon. He was due home at six o’clock—with the letter written!
He placed a piece of the stationery his father had given him on the desk in front of him, and he took out his ball-point pen. It would be easy to write the letter … All he would have to say was that his father had not told him to spoof. He just had to write it out. That his father had not told him to spoof, that his father had never given him any orders about how to behave on Cash-Answer.
Then Charles Berrey could hold back the tears no longer. They were tears of rage; of fear; of wretched, confused disappointment. They came, and he was helpless to prevent their flow. He thought of the way his father had slapped him; of all the fighting and the quarreling; of his knife rack; of the fire alarm box on the corner of Rider Avenue; and of how he would like to burn that newspaper. He cried, feeling the tears roll off his cheeks and splash onto the collar of his green sports shirt, and he thought of the way the rains came in the old Polynesian myth, of Maui’s grandmother with fire on her fingers and her toes, and the rain coming to put out that fire … But in the trees, the fire burned. Even the rain couldn’t stop it. Nothing could.
