Cell 2455, Death Row Page 9

  “But we’re too young to get married,” Whit protested.

  “There’s a way we could do it,” Barbara said.

  “How?”

  “If I was going to have a baby. I knew a girl it happened to once. They made them get married.”

  This suggestion frightened Whit so badly he had to lean against the shrubbery for support. He remembered a long-ago day in the hills, and a hairy man, a tiny girl and a woman.

  “Please, Barbara,” he said. “Please don’t talk like that. It scares me so bad it makes me die inside.”

  “Why?” Barbara demanded.

  Whit said the words but they didn’t sound convincing even to him. They were just words. “Because . . . because I love you. I love you so much it makes me sick just to think about hurting you. If we got married for that reason people would talk about you. They would say you were a bad girl and it would be my fault.”

  Pouting, Barbara said, “I wouldn’t care what anybody said so long as we were able to get married and be together.”

  “But I would,” Whit said. He tried to make Barbara understand, and in doing so he was really trying to convince himself that he was doing the “right” thing voluntarily rather than the thing fear insisted he do. The words he used were a kind of emotional dialectic. “Can’t you see? You’re a good girl, Barbara. You’ve got to stay that way for me. You’ve got to make me good, instead of letting me make you bad. Right now I’m all mixed up and scared. I’ve done something bad and I’m running away. I’ve just got to run away. But I’ve got to have something to believe in while I’m scared and running.”

  He paused and then he said, “One of these days I think God will make everything all right for me again. Then I won’t be scared and I won’t have to run any more. Then, when I’m good again, I can come back to you. Then I’ll have a right to you I don’t have now. If I took you with me now I’d be taking something that doesn’t really belong to me and I’d always hate myself for doing it.”

  Barbara began to cry. He was letting words get between them. He was right but he was wrong, and she knew he would be sorry. “I understand,” she said, because she did understand. Understanding did not make it easier. “But I’m still awful afraid if I go home now I’ll never see you again, that they will send me away where you can’t find me.”

  “I’ll find you,” Whit promised fervently. “Besides, I have an idea I think will make everything easier for us.”

  He told her his idea. Then they walked to an all-night drugstore and used the pay telephone, both crowding into the booth. Whit dialed the number of Barbara’s home. He let the phone ring five times before he hung up and waited. Twenty minutes later he dialed the number again. This time a woman’s voice answered. Whit identified himself.

  “Oh,” the woman said, surprised, “we’ve been looking all over for you. Where are you now? What’ve you done with Barbara?”

  “She’s safe,” Whit replied. He heard another, a gruff voice demand, “Who is it, that kid? If it is, let me talk to him.” The woman told this other party, “Wait just a minute. Let me ask him a question first.”

  Speaking into the phone, she asked, “Where is Barbara now?”

  “Right here with me,” Whit said, purposely not being more specific. Then he let Barbara talk.

  “Please, listen to me. I’m all right. I’m coming home. But first we want to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know if you should. He’s . . .”

  “Give me that damn phone,” they heard tie gruff voice angrily demand. “What kind of a stunt do you think you’re up to now?”

  “Sir, Sonny told you a lot of dirty lies about Barbara and me. None of that stuff he told you is true. I swear it isn’t.”

  The gruff voice snorted derisively. “And I suppose you’ll swear she didn’t sneak out her bedroom window and that I didn’t see you and her run when I drove up to your house?”

  “No, she sneaked out all right,” Whit admitted. “But she only did it to warn me about the lies Sonny had told you about us and because she didn’t want me to get into any trouble over them.”

  “Yeah, then why’d you both run? Answer me that one.”

  “Because we were scared you would whip her again if you caught her.”

  “She had a whipping coming.”

  “No, she didn’t. She hasn’t done anything bad.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Well, if you won’t take our word for it you can take her to a doctor and he’ll tell you.”

  Then he did shout: “How the hell can I take her anywhere?”

  And Whit answered quietly, “Because she’s coming home. Barbara’s a good girl and she wants to come home.”

  “Well, nothing’s stopping her, is there?” the gruff voice snapped back.

  “Not if you’ll promise not to beat her and not to send her away. I don’t care what you tell the cops about me, but I want you to promise you won’t tell them anything bad about her. And if you let her stay home, sir, I promise you I won’t ever try to see her again until we’re old enough to get married.”

  The voice fumed unintelligibly, called Whit a nervy, presumptuous little bastard, swore Whit would be put behind bars until hell froze over. He might have been talked out of calling the cops once last night and again this morning, but it couldn’t be done again—not unless it was over his dead body.

  “And if that girl isn’t home here in thirty minutes,” the voice concluded ominously, “I’ll have every cop in the country out looking for you. Get that?”

  Whit heard a woman’s voice pleading for calmness and understanding.

  “I don’t think we’re asking too much,” Whit said. “So why don’t you promise?”

  Finally, widi bad grace, the gruff voice gave in. “All right, I promise. But I’m going to tell you one thing right now: if I ever catch you around Barbara again I’m going to beat you to within an inch of your life.”

  Whit hung up.

  He and Barbara stopped walking when they reached the railroad tracks where she lived. The first streaks of dawn had appeared in the east. The morning was cold.

  “I guess we better say goodbye here, Barbara,” Whit said.

  Impulsively, Barbara threw herself into Whit’s arms, pressing her trembling young body against his.

  “Don’t forget to leave a note in that hole in the palm tree so I’ll know if they keep their promise.”

  “I won’t,” she replied, small-voiced.

  “Goodbye, Barbara. Goodbye for a little while.”

  “For two and a half years,” Barbara said.

  “The time will go fast,” Whit said. “And it’s best this way.”

  “If you say so,” she whispered, and then, with a longing she could not put into words, she kissed him.

  Whit had his first taste of manhood. He wanted to take the girl with him. It was a sudden, consuming desire and it almost overpowered him. But he knew he couldn’t take Barbara with him; he was still a puppet on a string.

  Gently, reluctantly, Barbara loosed herself from Whit’s arms, looked once deeply into his troubled, haunted eyes, forced herself to smile and said softly, “Goodbye.”

  She walked away quickly, almost running. “Remember,” she called back, “always remember I wanted to go with you.” She ran then, swiftly.

  Whit would remember. He turned slowly, his heart sick and ineffably sad. “I love you, Barbara,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I love you so much I know I will probably never see you again.”

  He hid himself in the nearby hills of his childhood, away from all of his kind. A few years earlier, he and a pal named Tim had built a crude log cabin in these hills, and it was to this cabin he crept. Here he lay, staring at the ceiling, not eating, refusing to think, waiting. He ventured out only to get an occasional drink of water from a reservoir close by. Although the days were warm and sunny, for it was late spring, the nights were biting cold and through them he wheezed and shivered, but unmindfully, so complete was his sen
se of loss and loneliness.

  Still with him, mocking him, terrifying him, was a dark, unnatural fear that his imagination, events outside himself and a sense of guilt had turned into a monster which threatened to destroy him.

  He lay hidden in the cabin for three days. Then, late the third evening, he came down from the hills on hunger-weakened legs. He found Barbara’s promised note in the hole in the palm tree near her house.

  Beneath a street light he unfolded the note with trembling hands. He read:

  My darling:

  I have to write this in a hurry. My family aren’t keeping any of their promises except they haven’t called the police on you. We’re leaving in the morning. I don’t know where we’re going but as soon as I learn I’ll send our new address to your mother. When you get it don’t try to write because if they found out they probably would move again. Remember I love you now and I always will. Please, please come after me. I’ll be waiting and counting the days.

  All my love forever,

  Barbara

  Barbara had been stolen from him!

  Whit felt numb even though he had known this very thing would happen. He had known but he had refused to believe. His mind and his heart told him he had been cheated, cruelly, unnecessarily.

  And why? He didn’t, he couldn’t fool himself any longer. He didn’t try. He knew why. But not rationally. Emotionally. Arbitrarily. That was how he knew. And knowing required no proof.

  It was then that Hate and Rebellion took off their masks and introduced themselves. They had been hiding within Whit for a long time, playing a waiting game—for sickness, frustration, resentment, hostility, fear, confusion to build into an intolerable tension—for anxiety to generate a pressure that could not be withstood. Waiting for the inevitable psychical implosion. And then it came, and was soundless, and did its devastating work.

  Hate had showered sparks and the sparks had kindled a fire in the midst of the devastation; Whit vowed he would fan and feed that fire until it became a roaring inferno.

  I’ll get even! (It didn’t matter against whom or what.)

  I’ll make “them” sorry!

  “They” think I’m afraid—I’ll show them!

  I’ll show them I don’t care!

  And I don’t.

  • 8 •

  “It’s Better to Be Anything than Afraid.’

  Night passed and day came unnoticed by Whit. The sun rose. The city awoke. City sounds and smells filled the air. Pedestrians were all about when hunger and fatigue finally brought Whit out of his funk and he became aware that he had been trudging blindly along a sidewalk on the main street of the city, oblivious to his surroundings. He saw where he was. Simultaneously, the sounds of the city became audible, and delicious food smells from a restaurant increased the hunger pangs in his belly.

  He was dog tired. He leaned against a building to rest. Then he noticed Barbara’s crumpled note, still clutched in his hand. He smoothed it out, folded it and placed it in his wallet. He didn’t think about it. He thought about where he intended going. He walked unsteadily south to an intersection. When a business coupe was halted by the traffic signal, he stepped off the curb and asked its operator, “Ride, mister?” The driver motioned him to get in.

  He got a ride to within a block of Tim’s home and walked the rest of the way. His pal Tim was a short, husky, healthy youngster his own age. Tim’s father had died when Tim was a toddler. When smaller, his pal had been shunted around among his relatives to live. When they had refused to keep him longer, the mother had re-established a home of sorts. She had made no great pretense, however of loving her child and, in turn, Tim had felt no particular devotion or attachment to his mother. A rather wild youngster with an urge, perhaps defensive, to be a tough, cynical guy, Tim had already had several minor brushes with the law. He was a member in good standing of a gang composed of would-be young toughs and their girl friends and had made several unsuccessful efforts in the past to get Whit to join his “club.”

  Whit found Tim at home. With him were two teen-agers Whit knew casually. One was Tim’s girl, Bobby, sharp-tongued young sophisticate with a cute, overpainted face. The other was a girl we’ll call Virginia, who, with ample justification, considered herself sexy and a seductress. Virginia was certain she knew all the answers. Both girls regarded Whit with open contempt because they thought him a goody goody mama’s boy, more interested in books than girls. They didn’t think he knew the score.

  “Hey,” Tim said, “where the heck’ve you been? You look awful, like you been run through a wringer. And your dad’s been here looking for you. What happened?”

  “I ran away from home,” Whit said.

  “You ran away from homel I’ll be . . . Where you been?”

  “Hiding in the hills.”

  “What’s the matter, the bulb after you?”

  “I don’t think so. Not unless my dad turned me in.”

  “Well, if the bulls ain’t after you what’ve you been hiding from then?” Tim asked, perplexed.

  Whit flushed with embarrassment and then became angered with himself for having done so. He said, “I guess you could say I’ve been hiding from myself.”

  Bobby squealed with mirth.

  All expression left Whit’s face; the color drained from it. “Go ahead and laugh,” he told her in a voice that sounded harsh and strange even to himself. “I think it’s funny, too. I think it’s the funniest thing I ever knew of happening to anybody. And you know why? Well, let me tell you the whole story and then you’ll know why. Then you’ll really get a laugh.”

  Whit told them, in hard, plain words, about himself. He made what had happened to him come vividly to life before their eyes. He showed them Barbara’s note. He made them read it.

  He said, “That’s the story. Now go ahead and have a good laugh.”

  Bobby squirmed in her chair, avoiding Whit’s eyes. She had seen Whit’s, soul; it had frightened her. She stammered, “I don’t think it’s so funuy now.”

  “Then you’ve missed the point or you’ve got no sense of humor,” Whit said. “Because it is funny. It all started because I wasn’t satisfied with being ordinary and plain and poor, but there wasn’t much I could do about changing it on the outside. So I changed the inside. I let my imagination make me a special world. I created a lot of symbolism with religion and people and things, like I used to do with my music and drawings. After that everything that happened was symbolic; it had a special meaning that only I understood, and it made me feel important. But after I’d started to steal and then found out I wasn’t going to die, it got out of control. I found out I’d created something a lot worse than just being plain and poor. It was like being in a nightmare when something awful is chasing you and you can’t run, no matter how hard you try. You’re sick with fear and yet you aren’t even too sure why. And somehow you know it’s only a nightmare but you can’t wake up. Then, finally, the awful thing does catch up with you and that’s when you do wake up. You wake up and find you haven’t been sleeping. You find out that you’ve been unconscious, and you’ve been that way because you’ve been taking something like dope. You know you don’t ever dare take the dope again, not ever, because the thing will be waiting for you. And yet without the dope you’re so confused you don’t know for sure what’s right and what’s Wrong or what’s real and what isn’t. But you have ‘to find out—above everything else you have to do that—and you’re sure of only one thing: It’s better to be anything than afraid.”

  Tim didn’t understand the import of what Whit had said, but he possessed a form of cunning which told him his timid friend stood where the road branched. Tim long since had concluded that only suckers took the “right” road; so he asked, “Does that include the cops?”

  Whit’s eyes glittered strangely. “That includes the Devil himself,” he said quietly, meaning it.

  Virginia looked at him with bold, interested eyes. “You talk big,” she said. “But I bet you’re even afraid of me.”
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  Bobby giggled. The talk had returned to a level she understood. Tim snickered.

  The color rushed back into Whit’s face; for an instant there was renewed confusion inside him. He fought it down and said, “Not if I had something to eat first.”

  Tim knew then his pal had really changed. “How long since you had something to eat?” he asked.

  “Three or four days,” Whit said. “And I feel kind of weak and dizzy.”

  “Jeez,” Tim said, “no wonder.” He told Bobby and Virginia to fix his pal a breakfast. “My old lady’U raise Cain. She does every time there’s anything missing. But I don’t care. I like to hear her squawk.”

  Whit wolfed down the meal the girls prepared for him, listening to their chatter and Tim’s expansive talk. He learned the other three were ditching school. Virginia cleared away his dishes and poured them all coflee. Then she opened a package of cigarettes, passing them around. Whit didn’t smoke, but he took a cigarette and purled on it experimentally.

  Tim said, “What we need now is something to drink. There’s a bottle stashed around here some place. Let’s find it.”

  They all began searching for the bottle. Bobby found it on the top shelf of a cupboard behind some canned goods, an unopened fifdi of Scotch. Tim opened it while Bobby rinsed out four water tumblers and Virginia got a quart bottle of a cola drink from the refrigerator to mix with it. Tim filled the tumblers half full of the Scotch and then poured in the cola until they were full.

  The first few swallows burned Whit’s mouth and throat. When the drink reached his stomach he wanted to gag but managed not to. After that the mixture went down easier and he began to feel pleasantly lightheaded.

  Tim’s mother returned home unexpectedly and found them noisy drunk. She snatched up a dust mop and routed them from the house. The alcohol had accentuated Tim’s tough-guy complex; he snarled ludicrously at his mother.

  They made their way, none too steadily, along the tree-shaded street on which Tim lived, with Tim muttering imprecations and Bobby and Virginia singing until Bobby got the hiccups. They cut across a dusty vacant lot to a boulevard and continued on toward the business section of the city. The day was scorching hot. The sun was beginning to spoil their drunken fun when ahead of them they saw a portly gentleman park his late-model sedan at the curb and enter a drugstore, leaving a door of the car open and its motor running.