Cell 2455, Death Row Read online

  This examination over, the old doctor spoke with kindly assurance. “The boy, as you can see, is underweight and rather small for his age. He has an audible congestion in his bronchial tubes caused by his asthma. But his heart is sound as a dollar. Youngsters his age have amazing recuperative powers and the boy seems to be no exception. In fact, I find no indication whatever that he hasn’t completely recovered from his bout with diphtheria.”

  These words had an almost paralyzing effect on Whit. They meant he would not die! They meant that mere sickly slips of humanity did not dictate terms to God. He knew then what he should have known all along. It appeared certain, therefore, that God had made a fool of him, and had left him trapped.

  He didn’t speak on the way home. His dad tried to talk to him and became irritated with his whipped-cur attitude. His mother was overjoyed to hear the good news about his heart. She couldn’t understand why when he went to his room and stayed there.

  Sleep wouldn’t come to Whit that night, so chaotic were his thoughts. A vague but intense fear gripped him; it was as though clammy hands had taken hold of him and would not let go. A familiar sound, which ordinarily would have passed unnoticed, brought him upright with a jerk, wide-eyed and panicky. He would not have been surprised then to have seen the Devil himself, with flowing crimson cape, horns and sinuous, pointed tail, standing there leering at him, mocking him. Instead, in the pale gloom of the bedroom shared by him and his father, he saw the authoress of the sound, faithful old Tippy, industriously scratching herself.

  “Tippy,” Whit called quietly, and she waddled over to his cot, jumped up onto it and nuzzled him. In another moment, lying there beside him, she was fast asleep, again leaving him alone and terribly afraid. An overpowering sense of guilt, theretofore locked in a dark corner of his mind, had found release when he had learned he would not die. Fear was there, too——shapeless, threatening. It filled the room. It filled his mind.

  From across the room he heard the sound of his dad’s deep, regular breathing. He visualized in his mind the composed face of his mother as he had seen it in sleep, with the lines of worry and physical suffering briefly erased.

  Over and over he told himself: They must never know! They must never know! But he recognized this for the delusion it was; they would know. They would know their only son was a thief, a liar, a deceiver. They would know he was not a good son. The realization made him burn with shame. They would be ashamed and hurt; yet so selfless was their love for their child, they would conceal their shame and hurt and do their best to protect him. They would, furthermore, make impossible sacrifices, denying themselves even food in order to repay every cent he had stolen. And they would forgive him for what he had done, fixing the blame on themselves for somehow having failed him. All this he knew, and the knowledge was bitter wormwood. It was all wrong.

  God had no right to punish his parents for what he had done! Already they had been made to suffer too much. Already they had made too many sacrifices for him. He, alone, deserved punishment. His pride, his cowardly refusal to live in poverty, his selfish belief he could do good by being bad, had led him into a maze from which there was no apparent escape. The very nature of his conduct had alienated him from his beloved parents when he needed them most. He dared not turn to them without transferring his guilt and his shame to them, and that he could not do.

  Whit had to find his own way. He realized then, with bitterness, what an uncourageous thing he was, standing alone and unshielded. All places of concealment had been sealed off; the past could not be blotted out. And it seemed to him that past was a steamroller bearing down upon him. He stood directly in its path, transfixed by fear, knowing that unless he could first conquer that fear, there would be no escape.

  He saw himself for what he was: a scrawny, fifteen-year-old boy, barely five feet tall and weighing not more than one hundred ten pounds. An asthmatic, puny, wheezing machine. A poor anonymous nothing who wanted to be a something. A neurotically anxious nothing. And he saw himself for what he wanted to be: A man. Tall and strong. A man who couldn’t be hurt. A man who knew and made his way without doubt. A man who couldn’t be scared.

  Whit was thankful for the morning and the opportunity for physical activity it afforded. After dressing without awakening his parents, he pedaled off on his bicycle just as the sun’s warm rays knifed through the haze over the sleeping city. There was, however, no warmth inside him; only a cold and wintry desolation. He rode along aimlessly, waiting for the hours to pass and for the time to come when he might make the visit he proposed.

  At a few minutes before eight, he parked his bicycle at the curb fronting a small cottage dwarfed by a church that loomed beside it. At that moment the towering house of God was sternly symbolic to him of the Creator’s might; while the tiny parsonage nestled in its shadow represented the strength of man.

  It was in this church that Whit had been baptized. Here, each week, he had attended Sunday School. This was the fount of the world of God he had found. He recalled how his teacher one Sunday had flourished a piece of snowy white paper and told the class: That, when man was born, was the color of his soul; each time man sinned he smudged his soul. God was, she warned the class, a God of love and a God of wrath.

  Whit had sinned. He had felt God’s wrath. His sense of spiritual guilt, aggravated by a creative imagination denied legitimate expression, had become an exquisite horror, and perhaps helped satisfy the need he felt to suffer.

  He had come to beg for intercession. He ran to the door of the parsonage and banged on it until it was opened by the minister, whose sleep-filled eyes opened wide at the sight of this wild-looking young member of his flock.

  “I’ve got to tell you something, Reverend,” Whit blurted out. The story of his thefts and deception spilled from his lips in a torrent of words.

  The man of God heard and was profoundly shocked. He declared the boy had no choice but to go promptly to his parents and to the police and confess.

  “But I just can’t,” Whit sobbed, stubbornly.

  “In that case,” said the then stern-visaged cleric, “I shall be forced to tell them myself.”

  “But isn’t there some other way, Reverend?” Whit pled. “Isn’t there some way you can fix it up with God? I know everything I took. I kept a list. And I thought if I came to you, you could make God understand. I promise I’ll pay it all back.”

  “See here, young man,” the minister said, “I want you to understand right here and now that the good Lord is never a party to thievery.”

  Whit fearfully persisted. “But, Reverend,” he said, “can’t you see? It’s partly God’s fault in the first place.”

  The minister regarded the words as blasphemous. His jaw muscles knotted; his countenance registered righteous horror. He demanded, carefully spacing each word: “Just exactly what do you mean by that?”

  “Well,” Whit replied, anxious to try to explain, “Mom told me it was God’s will that she was paralyzed and I used to pray to Him every night to let me take her place, to paralyze me and let her walk again. Then when I went to my dad he told me God probably wouldn’t do that because He must have had some reason for letting Mom get her back broken.”

  “And what your father told you was unquestionably right,” the minister interrupted.

  “Well,” Whit continued, “Dad spent all his money on doctors trying to help Mom. Finally he went broke and pretty soon we didn’t even have enough to eat. Then, like I told you, I caught diphtheria and we went on relief and I just couldn’t stand living like we were after my dad turned on the gas and after the day Joey saw we were on relief and said what he did. I figured then God wouldn’t be too mad at me if I took something for us to eat. I just had to help my folks. I couldn’t stop myself. Besides, I thought I only had six months left to live and I figured if God wanted to punish me He could do it after I was dead and Mom and Dad would never know anything about it.”

  “I see,” the minister said, clasping his hands together and lo
oking ceilingward through half-closed eyes. He remained silent for many long seconds, which were ticked off by a grandfather clock in a corner of the room. At length he said, “Perhaps, son, you had better give me a few days to think the matter over and pray for guidance. In the meantime, you have my permission not to say anything to anyone about what you have told me, and I shan’t either.”

  “Yes, sir,” Whit said. “Thank you, sir.”

  He rubbed his eyes and started for the door, still gripped by despair. It was still he, alone and unaided, who would have to liberate himself, and he realized his problem, at heart, was not simply the winning of spiritual amnesty or the repayment of something taken which had not belonged to him—it was finding himself and the meaning of himself. Too, in a way, it was finding reality, no matter how ugly reality might be.

  This meant he first had to conquer the fear inside him; for so long as fear remained his master, his life would be an unbearable parody filled with the tempests of petty crises. Until he rid himself of fear, he would simply be a wretched puppet, jumping this way and that as fear jerked the strings.

  At the door, Whit turned. “You know, Reverend,” he said, “I think God made a mistake when He didn’t let me die like the doctors said I would.”

  Then he walked out into the sunlight, his eyes blinking against the brightness of the spring morning.

  Whit went home and helped around the house, doing the dishes and other odd chores. It was a ramshackle wooden house and poorly furnished with old and odd pieces of furniture. It was a visible symbol, and he couldn’t deny he hated it and all it stood for: the shame and the degradation of their poverty—that particularly. He made his mother some lunch and sat by her bedside while she ate.

  When his dad came home Whit said he was going to a show. He washed and put on a clean shirt. He walked slowly through the early afternoon sunlight. Somewhere, just out of reach, he felt there was a solution, an answer.

  Barbara was waiting for him in the foyer of the theatre. She was a plump, pretty girl whose parents were strict widi her. About the only time they were able to spend together was at these Saturday matinees which were watched over by mothers from the P.T.A.

  They took seats together, halfway down, on the left hand side of the theatre. When the main feature was half over, two boys seated themselves directly behind them. One of the two was an overgrown, loud-mouthed bully whom we’ll call Sonny who had taken a fancy to Barbara several weeks before and who had been bothering her since. Sonny had been enraged when Barbara had made it plain to him she preferred Whit’s company to his.

  Sonny immediately began making insulting cracks about Whit, coupled with foul insinuations concerning Barbara, which were echoed by Sonny’s leering companion, whom we’ll call Charley.

  Whit turned in his seat but before he could voice protest Sonny thrust his coarse-featured face close to his and said in a stage whisper, “You know something, you scrawny little runt? I don’t think you got a gut in your body.”

  “Why don’t you leave us alone?” Whit asked. “We’re not bothering you.”

  Sonny said, “You’re bothering me by just being alive. Barbara’s my girl from here on. Now beat it home to mama before I punch you in the nose.”

  Barbara turned angrily. “I’m not your girl and I never will be. I’m his and you leave him alone.”

  In one swift motion, Sonny reached out and gripped Whit by the shirt front, ripping it. He made a fist of his free hand. “You’re either my girl or I beat the hell out of this yellowbelly right now.”

  The incident drew the attention of the ushers and the P.T.A. mothers. They descended in a body and made Sonny and Charley leave the theatre. Barbara took Whit’s trembling hand and held it until the show was over.

  Whit was walking Barbara home when Sonny and Charley, who had been lying in wait behind a sign board, again accosted them. Whit involuntarily sobbed.

  Sonny’s long face wore a mean, triumphant expression. He gloated over Whit’s obvious fright. “What’s the matter, punk, scared? You didn’t think I was gonna let you off that easy, did you?”

  Sonny shoved Whit, sending him sprawling to the sidewalk. Before Whit could get up, Sonny laughed and kicked him. Whit looked up. Sonny stood over him, the coarse features of his long face registering his pleasure. Whit was unable to comprehend why this tall, strong boy who towered above him like a giant should find pleasure in picking on such a small and weak creature.

  “Please, Sonny,” he said, “please don’t beat me up.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Sonny demanded, kicking him again, viciously, and making him cry out in pain.

  “Listen to this punk whine, Charley,” Sonny gloated. “I told you he was a gutless wonder.”

  “Some jellyfish, all right,” Charley agreed. “Let’s see you make him squirm some more. Might do him some good.”

  “Sounds like from the way he’s crying, Charley, the punk is gonna die of fright before I get a chance to give him a little workout,” Sonny said, watching Barbara for the effect his words would have on her.

  Barbara was white-faced. She, too, was afraid, but her fear was for Whit, not herself. At first she hadn’t known what to do and her mind had raced. Then, when Sonny looked at her, she knew what she had to do.

  “Leave him alone, Sonny,” Barbara said.

  “Sure,” Sonny replied, his voice mocking her. “Sure, I’ll leave him alone—provided I can have you.”

  Barbara stepped closer to Sonny and the expression on her face should have warned him.

  “All right, Sonny,” she said, facing him. “You can have me—like this!”

  Barbara raked her fingernails down Sonny’s cheek; in a frenzy of anger, she kicked and scratched him until a blow sent her reeling back.

  Whit leaped to his feet and rushed at Sonny, only to be struck solid, sickening blows that dazed him. Sonny hit him twice more and Barbara shouted, “Run!”

  Whit ran, with Sonny and Charley chasing after him, cursing him. He thought his lungs would burst before he managed to elude them. Then he stumbled into a restroom at a service station and vomited until he was too weak to stand. He sobbed with shame and humiliation.

  Late that night he stole quietly from his cot, dressed and wrote this brief note to his parents:

  Dearest Mom and Dad:

  I am running away because it is best. I can’t tell you why. Please don’t try to find me. I will come back as soon as I can. God bless you both.

  Your loving son,

  Whit

  He placed the note on his pillow, tiptoed silently from the house, and had just reached the sidewalk when a figure stepped out from behind a hedge.

  “Barbara!” he exclaimed.

  “Shhh,” Barbara told him.

  “Gee,” he whispered, “what’re you doing here?”

  “I came to warn you.”

  “About what?”

  “Something awful has happened,” Barbara said. “Sonny called up and said he knew we had been doing something bad. You know what I mean. He said you had been bragging about it.”

  “But it isn’t true! It’s a dirty lie!”

  “Of course it isn’t true, but they won’t believe it. At first they were so mad they said they were going to kill you and me both. But after they quieted down they said they were going to the police station in the morning and get you put in jail. And send me away. I waited until they went to bed and then I sneaked out my bedroom window and came to warn you. I was just going around to the back of your house and try to wake you up so I could tell you when you came out. How did you know I was out here?”

  “I didn’t,” Whit said.

  “Then what—?”

  ’I was running away,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “Partly because of what happened this afternoon; partly because of some other reasons. Can’t you see, Barbara? I’m no good and a coward on top of. it. Everybody concerned will be better off if I’m not around.”

  Barbara said feelin
gly, “You mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t! You’re not a coward. I know you’re not.”

  “But I ran away,” Whit said bitterly. “And now I’m running even farther away. I’m like a rabbit; I run every time I get scared.”

  Barbara’s answer died on her lips when a sedan rounded a corner up the street. The beam from the headlights caught and outlined them for an instant. The auto accelerated, racing toward them and then braked, tires squealing, to a stop.

  “Quick, run!” Barbara cried. “Here they come.”

  They ran, together, down the driveway. They climbed the back fence, dashed through a back yard, up a second driveway, scooted across a street and concealed themselves in the thick shrubbery in front of a school. There, panting, they crouched and listened anxiously for sounds of pursuit. There were none.

  “They sure will be sore now,” Barbara said.

  “What’ll we do?” Whit asked.

  With a boldness to hearten Whit’s timidity, Barbara said, “We’ll both run away. We’ll run away together where nobody can find us.”

  • 7 •

  The Inevitable Implosion

  Whit said, “It wouldn’t be right for a girl to run away, at least not with a boy.”

  “All right,” Barbara replied, hurt and a little angry. “Then I’ll go home. And you know what will happen?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll get beaten again real bad, that’s what. I might even get killed. And if not, I’ll probably get sent away—maybe to a reform school— and you’ll never see me again. Never! Is that what you want to happen?”

  “Gosh, no,” he said, frightened. The mental picture conjured up by the girl’s words and magnified by his own imagination made him shake so much his knees knocked together. “But just the same I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  Barbara laughed and looked at Whit sharply in the near-darkness of their hiding place. “I’m already in trouble. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a girl and a boy running away together if they’re in love and want to get married.”