Episode 1
It’s summer. Old Collins’ idea of an end-of-school-term party is a lame picnic out by the chain link fence. The eight-year-olds are over at the sprinkler, smearing ice cream on each other’s faces and washing it off in the rotating spray. The Almost Outs—five guys who are nearly 18—sit on the picnic tables, bare feet muddying up the bench seats.
The rest of us huddle in the shade of the biggest tree, finishing the bologna sandwiches before they start to grow botulism or maggots, whichever comes first. I wasn’t paying much attention in biology this semester. Steve and Jerry kept giving me grief over making A’s all the time. “Why should you?” Jerry said. “Who do you need to impress?” I told him, “Whoever will be reading my record when I get out of here.” Here, meaning East Wind School for Boys. It sounds like a reformatory, and it’s run like one, but it’s really what used to be called an orphanage. I’m Vinnie, and we’re all here because nobody wants us.
Jerry cusses, low so Collins can’t hear him, because foul language earns points that get you sent to D-hall. He’s 17, and was assigned to cut the grass when we go back to our dorm. “Water it to make it grow,” he mutters, “and then cut it when it does. That’s dumb.”
A siren screams far down the two-lane. We watch the sheriff’s car speeding toward us. It brakes about thirty feet away, and stops on our side of the road. The flashing light twirls. The sheriff and his deputy stay inside, hidden behind the sun glare on the windshield. A silent EMS ambulance pulls in behind sheriff’s car. Uniformed men get out and meet at a spot in the roadside weeds.
Everyone except the Almost Outs rushes to the chain link, and latch fingers into the mesh like they’re at the circus or something. Besides Collins, who’s picking up picnic trash—and me, because I’m downing the last bottle of spring water—Jerry is the last to saunter over, just bored with sitting still.
An unmarked car comes from the same direction, but slower, and pulls off the road to park behind the ambulance. The sheriff and his deputy cross the ditch, walk a few yards out into a field, and kneel. I join my friends at the fence and we watch the men tug at a round wooden lid and toss it aside. I know it’s the cover of an old well. When I came here seven years ago, Collins brought me out here and told me that’s where I’d end up if I wasn’t a good boy.
“Oh-my-god,” Steve breathes, his sweaty shoulder bumping mine. “Old Collie’s done put some kid in there and he’s been found out.”
“He told you that, too?” Steve’s fourteen, almost two years older than me, and ought to be kidding, trying to scare the Littles. I know from his tense look that he believed the dorm master then, and still does. And they call me Mouse.
Low excited chatter from the guys at the fence. Collins stops picking up ends of hot dog buns and comes over, just in time to see the sheriff take a grappling hook out of his trunk. He hands it to the deputy, who sends it down the well. Collins shoos the smaller boys away from the fence. Now the Almost Outs are coming to see what’s so fascinating. Collie puts the Littles into their care and orders them back toward the ivy-covered buildings.
Us Middles watch the deputy bring up a body.
They’re too far away for us to see much, but the unmarked car must belong to a private detective or a reporter. He’s got a tiny camera and shoots a bunch of pictures before the sheriff marches toward him, waving one arm like an angry drill sergeant. Reporter or whoever backpeddles and sits in his car, watching.
Collins yells at us to get the hell back to our rooms. By ones and twos, the others obey. I linger for a few moments, wondering who she was. Her skin is a streaky blue, but she’s not been down there long enough to rot. One foot still wears a red high heel.
EMS workers put her on a stretcher and load her into the ambulance. It leaves, slowly, and the police car follows. The reporter stares at me. I stare back. Then Collins’ shout, too close, burns my ears. “Vincent, get your ass in gear.”
I turn, thinking, That’s four demerits. D-hall for you, Collie. And I walk away from the fence.
At supper no one’s hungry, but we eat it anyway, mostly to keep Collins off our case but partly to cover the chatter over what we’d seen. What the older and younger inmates think doesn’t reach our table, but there’s enough nervous joking around me to paint a picture. Collie keeps a tight fist on the television and computer access, so most of what we know from the outside comes in with newbies or Jerry hacking into the Internet in the library. It’s the only use he has for my hangout, which is almost always deserted.
“She’s a floozy,” Jerry says. “Or, was. Who else would end up naked and dead in an abandoned well?”
“Lots of people,” Eric says, too mild to provoke Jerry’s legendary temper. “I’ve seen enough tv shows about killers and runaways and wife murderers to be an expert. Anybody can be a victim, not just floozies.”
A few other guys add their opinions, some with Jerry, some with Eric. I keep my mouth working on the overcooked green beans and greasy dinner roll.
The dining room is hot even with the windows open. According to Collie, his boss won’t let him turn on the air conditioning until summer officially starts—nearly two weeks from now. If it sounds like life here is all bad, it isn’t. The buildings are big and old with Masterpiece Theatre woodwork, especially the library. Many of the books are boring, and the encyclopedias are out of date, but there’s a pipe-tobacco smell lingering from when some old dude lived in that part of the campus, which was once his house.
There’s a swimming pool too, with the Almost Outs assigned lifeguard duty so the rest of us won’t drown each other. It opened two days ago, but my swim trunks are too tight so I’ll have to borrow Steve’s or wait until a busload of us gets a Day Pass to town. Jerry usually misses out on that, being in D-hall much of his life. He’s lucky to get a turn at the lame games in the lame game room. At least those don’t cost anything to play.
The Visitors’ Lobby is the least-used of any area here. Only the Littles get trotted out for potential adopters. It’s next to our own student lounge but Collie shuts the French doors connecting the rooms, whenever anybody is over there being interviewed. I remember sitting on a hard chair a few times, trying not to bite my nails or throw up, while young couples who dressed like they had good jobs and presentable relatives would look at me and then at each other. After about age 9, people quit picking my photo out of the Line Up. I guess people want the youngest kid they can find. There’s nothing wrong with me, except being shy. And maybe too dreamy.
My dreaming is interrupted by everyone pushing back chairs and taking their plates to the conveyor belt. Another meal is over, and there’s no homework. I look forward to finishing my latest library book, something that must have been smuggled in by an older inmate and has escaped notice. It’s a long involved tale about a boy in a European country, who finds a rare book, falls in love with the wrong girl, and has a mysterious stranger following him.
But it doesn’t work out that way. When I get back to the room I share with Steve, he’s cross-legged on his bunk, noodling on his clarinet. That wouldn’t bother me, but Jerry’s there, too, draped over my desk chair, and with a look in his eye that never bodes well.
“Shut the door. And be quiet.”
I shut the door. Jerry’s listening to a little transistor radio, the earpiece keeping his secret until he unplugs it and we hear the newscaster say, ” …no leads as to the identity of the woman whose body was found yesterday afternoon in an abandoned well near Hackett. Sheriff A.D. Goodwin says the F.B.I. has been called in to investigate. Turning to the baseball scores—”
“Shit.” Jerry clicks off the radio and tosses it aside.
“What did you expect?” Steve asks, dripping spit from the clarinet onto the bare wooden floor. “It’s not like she’d be anybody you know.”
“With Feds roaming all over the place, I can’t put my plan into action.”
“What plan is that?” Asking is against my better judgment, but I figure I can spare a few minutes to listen. Jerry has his faults, but boring isn’t one of them.
“Get out of this place. A little vacation.”
“We’re on vacation,” I point out.
“If you call mowing and mopping, chopping and dicing, washing and flushing—a vacation.”
Since there are no housekeepers, and only one old geezer who doubles as a watchman and groundskeeper, inmates do everything short of a major construction job. “You left out painting,” I say, remembering how satisfying it felt to roller on a fresh clean layer.
Steve puts his clarinet back into its case. “Why don’t you tell Vinnie about your plan? Maybe he’d be game for it, if you’re not.”
“The only thing I’m game for is finding out how this story ends.” I take the library book from beneath my pillow and adjust myself against the headboard. Before I can hit the lamp switch, Jerry snatches the book from me and peers at the title. Flips through the pages.
“This looks too old for you, Vinn.” He places the book under his thigh and lights up a forbidden cigarette.
Steve yells, “Don’t do that! Collie will smell it.”
“Collie’s nose atrophied long ago. He can’t smell—”
Steve leaps off his bed and opens the door.
Jerry snubs out the cigarette. Looks at me. “Vinnie, don’t you ever want to do something that’s fun?”
“If you want to leave, leave.” I don’t mention the likely consequences of going AWOL. Even Jerry hasn’t tried that, at least not publicly.
“Steve’s onto something here. You, my lad, are so far under the radar that you won’t be missed for weeks. You can be our front man, find a place for us to live, maybe line up a couple of jobs. We’ll make our break after the case goes cold and the Feds leave town.”
Steve cocks his head to one side, the way he does when he’s suspicious. “Our front man? We’ll make a break? You’re not expecting me to do this, are you?”
“We wouldn’t have to put up with Collie’s ugly mug and stormtrooper attitude. Not to mention all the work and lousy food and sheer boredom.”
Steve gives this some thought. He turns to me. “You are O’Leary’s pet. He wouldn’t punish you the way he would us, if you were caught.”
“I’m not getting caught because I’m not dumb enough to try it. I’m—” I catch myself before blurting out, I’m happy here. For a moment I’m no longer sure this is true. O’Leary is Collins’ boss and I’m not his pet. The few times our paths cross is when he’s giving out the yearly achievement medals. Mine’s always in English and O’Leary dishes up some compliments, that’s all. Until tonight I was just going with the flow, but after seeing that dead woman I’m thinking there’s a big world out there and I’m missing it. So I finish, “—going to take a shower.”
When I get back, Jerry’s so into his escape plan that he forgets to tease me about my striped pajamas. What he doesn’t know is that I take them off as soon as the light’s out. Steve might know, but he’ll never tell.
“I’ll give you bus fare to the big city of your choice, Mouse. And throw in some cash for eats along the way. And pay for the phone call to tell us where you are. We’ll be there ASAP. Won’t we, Steve?”
“If you say so.”
Steve yawns, but I know he’s as wide awake as I am. I decide to play along. “Where would I go? I like a warm climate.”
Jerry hunches forward, eager, cheering me on. “Now you’re talking. You can do odd jobs, and mail a little traveling money back for us. Since I’m giving you mine.”
“Whoa. The first time a letter comes to either of your boxes, Collins traces it back to me.”
“He won’t know it’s money, or from you if you don’t do something stupid like putting on a return address.”
“If I turn up gone, it would be pretty clear. Besides, who else would send you mail? You haven’t gotten anything in that box but junk from a porno publisher for two years.”
Into the heavy silence that falls, I add, “Of course, I never get any mail at all.”
Tight-throat answer as Jerry pushes past me toward the door. “You sure as hell don’t. Coward. Baby. Rot in here another six years.”
Over the next day or two, we sneak peeks at the news when Collins watches tv in the teachers’ lounge. Doesn’t look like the Feds will be leaving as soon as I’d hoped, and Jerry is onto me again about tasting adventure. The idea has caught root and is keeping me awake at night.
So on the fourth night after the picnic, with the Feds sending for reinforcements in the case, I find myself wearing a backpack and tennis shoes, a ball cap, and a jacket that’s too hot for the night even after a thunderstorm passes.
East Wind is out in the sticks, so the only street lights are the ones on campus, and the only road in either direction is that two lane blacktop that leads into town in one direction and God knows where in the other. Shadows under the ancient oaks move in the slight wind, sending raindrops down on my head, and Jerry casts a ghoulish shadow on the grass as he tries to lasso one of the iron gate points with a nylon rope.
I’m wondering why he chose to send me out by the front instead of down at the chain link, which I think I could climb even if it is higher than this old brick fortress guarding the front. But I shiver, remembering I’d have to pass that well on the road to Hackett, and I can’t remember whether the sheriff or his deputy put the cover back on, or not. If not, chances are I could fall into it in the moonless night. Maybe Jerry thought about that, too, and planned my escape with more concern than I’d given him credit for.
Steve interrupts my musing. “See that little tree? Maybe you could climb it, and go over the wall instead of the gate.”
“What if they’ve got broken glass on top? I read—”
“Quit complaining and get away from here before old Martin comes along.” Jerry coils the rope and hands it to me. “Tie the rope to a limb so you can let yourself down.”
I climb the tree, tie the rope to a limb, and let myself down onto the uncut grass on the far side of the wall. Behind me, I hear Jerry say, “Get the rope. Don’t want to leave any evidence.” And Steve answers, “Get it yourself.”
While I’m revving up the nerve to leave, Steve runs to the gate. “Hey, Vinnie, you got the money?” He grasps the bars, leans on them.
I walk over to him. Pat my belly. “Pinned to me skivvies.”
Jerry joins him, coiling the rope again. “That’s your stake, man, and you better not lose it.”
“I won’t lose it!”
Steve goes through his check list. “You got the phone number?”
“Pay phone in the dorm—right.”
“Remember: hitch to the bus station, and call us the minute you get to the city.”
Jerry pulls on his arm. “He knows all that. Come on, let’s get inside before somebody closes the damn door.”
Steve calls back, “Don’t get in the car with anybody you can’t beat up.”
“Right,” I answer, not loud because old Martin might be making his rounds early.
I watch my friends run up the walkway and into the mossy brick building where I’ve spent more than half my life. The sliver of light winks out as they close the door. Then I jog down the paved road, toward Hackett and away from East Wind.
I’ve covered half the five miles, grateful that track is one of my electives and I’m in pretty good shape, when I hear Eric’s voice saying, “tv shows about killers… runaways…wife murderers.” The chill inside deepens so even though I’m sweating, I keep the jacket on. Greater than the fear of becoming a victim on tv is the fear of going back to face Jerry. Coward. Crybaby. Mouse.
Nah. It’s my first adventure. And the Feds are out there, keeping a lid on things.
Leaving in the middle of the night wasn’t such a hot idea. Hackett has one motel, and it’s full. A note on the closed key return window says so. Now what?
TO BE CONTINUED!
RLB Hartmann is fascinated by Mexican history.