Issue 10.2 Spring 2015

10.2 cover image

 

About the Author

Arthur Davis is a management consultant and has been quoted in The New York Times, Crain’s New York Business and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1.  He has taught at the New School University, lectures on leadership skills for CEO’s and has given testimony as an expert on best practices before United States Senator John McCain's investigating committee on boxing reform and appeared as an expert witness on best practices before The New York State Commission on Corruption in Boxing.

He has written 11 novels and over 130 short stories. Over 50 stories have been published in 35 magazines online and in print. The Amsterdam Quarterly (the Netherlands) hosted their 2014 Yearbook East Coast launch party on January 17th 2015 at the Anne Frank Center in NYC.  He was one of the guest authors and read from Roy’s Desert Motel, which they published in September 2014.

“Conversation In Black,” was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize by Calliope, the official publication of the Writers' Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd.

 

Lunchtime

 

Authur Davis

 

 

The cafeteria is filled with bright lights and white. The walls, the tables, the lights overhead and counters; everything is a painful, troubling white.


It’s twenty-eight short, shuffling steps from the cafeteria entrance to where I like to sit. I once sat at Danny Cooper's table. It was a mistake. He kicked me under the table. First with one foot, then with the other, rocking his big head from side to side with sickening delight. That afternoon he took out his rage on another victim in the playground while the guards wagered on the outcome of the brutal encounter.

 

That night my shins were splattered with deep purplish, heaving welts, six on my left, and four on my right.

I would have sworn that my left leg made out better. But I am more often wrong than right. Maybe I'm in here because I was so wrong the grownups decided that it would be better for me, and for them, if I were put someplace where my wrongs would not be so inconvenient.

 

After a few petty thefts and a fight I didn’t start that injured a girl in school, an inpatient judge gave my parents an option they thought might help.  They were terribly wrong.

 

I know it's not good to be obvious, to be at the head of the line when we enter the cafeteria, or to raise your hand if you have to go to the bathroom, or be too tall like Peter Cramwell so the guards, especially Lester with his baseball bat, notice you.

 

There are thirty-eight of us on this floor and about that same on the floor below, and forty-one on the floor above where they keep kids from fifteen to eighteen.

 

Greg is in line in front of me. They see him first. I drop my head and fold down my shoulders so that I look smaller. Not that I'm very tall for a fourteen-year-old boy. Andy Harkness with his limp can't disguise his six-foot frame. Peter Cramwell and Andy are the tallest, and the weakest of the group.

 

Lester once slammed the head of his baseball bat down so hard on the cafeteria table where Andy was sitting that his bowl filled with gray oatmeal and sour milk jumped off the table. Lester has the power to do things like that and commit other, less obvious, evil.

 

Some of the older boys once planned to do something to him. At least that's what I heard last year. It was right before Christmas. Even Dennis Buckley, who stutters and eats his boogers, knew something was going to happen. Then one day two boys disappeared from the floor below. No one asked. But we knew. We knew that Lester found out and the boys were lost forever.

 

Lester had the power and the magic. That's what scared me most about him. You could see it in his eyes. You knew he had the secret. I never knew anybody with it except him. Not in my short years at home, in my old school or neighborhood. Not anywhere. He was a powerful, big man with broad shoulders and thick arms and sleeves always rolled up so you had no doubt that he could break your bones and crush your will. And he had those eyes, dark hooded slits of yellow light that could find you and end you.

 

I learned that the second day I was here. I can't recall exactly how long ago that was. I can recall arriving. My parents were with me. There wasn't much talking. My father isn’t a man of great striding sentences. He spoke when words were needed and let them fall where they did. I don’t think he meant to be hurtful but he never understood how much he could cut and break with his disappointment.

 

My mom sat next to him in the front seat. She asked me how I was feeling a couple of times. I said I was fine. I didn't think much about how I felt, just that we were going to a place where they said I had to stay for a while and that if I didn't like it I could come home. I remember my mom saying that again in the car.
I remember my father turned from watching the road and looked at her as though he were scolding her for some tiny infraction. It was the same look he gave me after the judge ruled on my future.

 

We left our home in Rampano City, Virginia, at exactly nine and pulled up between the gates at eleven according to the small clock on the dashboard of my father's tired 1958 Chevy. I sat in an outer office while they spoke to a doctor. I guess he was a doctor. He was tall and wore a white robe.

 

He asked me which sports I liked to play and my favorite music as if he was trying to be my friend. He smiled a lot. too. That was some time ago. My first winter here was terrible. Christmas was very bad for me. That was when Lester started. And Billy Longo appeared in the cafeteria days later, followed by Perry Willis a month after.

 

Perry is ahead of me as we take seats—good ones today. He whispers to me but I quickly turn away. One of Lester's men is standing in the corner, watching. They’re always watching. Even in the bathroom, cameras swing back and forth overhead. Kip Morrow, a kid who got sick, appendix or something, said there was no film in them. That no camera so small could carry so much film. It just blinked red, on and off, until you believed it was working, watching, telling on you to people who had no particular interest for your welfare.

 

I don't know what happened to Kip or Lenny or the two Tommy's, or Pete with the old scar on the side of his neck, and Kelly Patterson who once stood up to Lester. One day they were just gone. I've learned not to ask questions either, and not to be so curious on an empty stomach.

 

The cafeteria is a lot smaller than the one in my hometown junior high school. But to be truthful, that image fogged months ago. So much of my past has slipped from me that I wake up some days wondering who I was yesterday, and praying I'll be someone I can recall tomorrow.

 

Perry thought we were brothers separated at birth. I agreed at the time because I wanted to believe it was true. Now, it's just important to me that I have someone to talk to and trust, someone who understands me even if I’m wrong.

 

“Fat old nigger.”

 

Lester continued his patrolling. His massive shoulder scraped up against the cafeteria walls, pushing them back just a little with each turn around the white, white room. “I think one of you has something to say to me.”

 

My stomach knotted rigid.

 

“I think one of you doesn't like how I run things around here. Maybe you think you can do better?”
The three women working behind the serving counter stepped back, anticipating the worst. They looked down at their shoes to avoid being noticed, fearful that Lester might turn on them, as they knew he would on us after Perry’s open insult.

 

“That's it? Fat old nigger?” He began to tap his bat against the side of his leg and move toward the window, his favorite spot and where, when we entered, he often stood immovable through our fifteen-minute lunch and dinner. No one knows where he spends his mornings.

 

Today Perry isn't thinking. Or maybe he is—about his parents who don’t come to see him anymore, or the fact that he was supposed to be transferred to a smaller facility closer to his home nearly a year ago, and about how, because of an accident last year when he fell, or was pushed down the stairs leading to the playground, he hurt his shoulder so bad it never healed properly and now he can't defend himself when the guards aren't looking. Or even when they are.

 

“I'm going to get them all one day,” Perry said to me a week ago. Or had a month passed? I don't remember. Other boys have the same problem. The older kids say it's the pills they make us take. I don't know. I wake up in a daze and drift through the day, sometimes forgetting where I am, sometimes hot or cold or in a chattering frenzy of unconnected thoughts that press against the side of my skull. Kenny is worse. The other day he forgot his name. Everybody laughed. I didn't think it was funny.

 

Perry sidled closer in a moment of great bravery and bravado that afternoon. “Going to sneak up on them in their homes with my own bat. With no one looking, I'm going to bring it down on their legs like they did to Davy Huggins, on their butt like they did to Danny, and on their shoulders like they did to me.”

 

“Keep quiet,” I pleaded, thinking only that maybe prison would have been a less frightening choice.

 

One of the nurses was looking at us in the playground. Watching Perry's fists open and close with rage. His head arched back as he always did when he was angry. They noticed these things. It's like being captive on another planet with small green people with long ears and small mouths, who smelled funny and squeaked when they should be talking, and are studying you with awful intentions.

 

Perry said they watched him more—recently more so. At first, he thought it was because he was a foreigner. But there were boys in here that spoke with strange accents, were different colors. And he understood baseball and that for sure made him American.

 

The three women disappeared. Their serving spoons and forks dripping and unattended.

 

Not a boy moved, except Perry Willis. He started tapping his fingers, thumb to pinkie in a slow rhythmic fashion on the table. Over and over and over, so there was no mistaking defiance for absentmindedness.

 

“You impatient for lunch, boy?”

 

“No sir,” Perry shot back, his voice raised to a shrill pitch as if he had been cut open with a knife and left to bleed to death. Boys at the six other tables forced themselves not to listen. The lucky ones had their backs to us. I sat across from Perry. Even if I could have closed my eyes, I should have seen it all coming.

 

I knew Perry for over a year and never noticed his eyes. They were a hard, bright, unmoving green, the kind that's everywhere on St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't help wonder if every boy from South Korea had those specially colored eyes.

 

You would have expected him to stop tapping his fingers when Lester moved up behind him. Perry looked so small. And today there was sadness about him. His cheeks, once red and flushed with enterprise were small shallow graves of pale flesh. His lips, once pulled apart with bright expectation, were narrow and defenseless.

 

Lester looked down at Perry; his gleaming silver belt buckle hovered over the top of Perry's small round head. “You the niggermaster?”

 

The boy to my right closed his eyes.  I’d thought of that.  I just didn’t have the courage.

 

“Yeah, I think you're the niggermaster. You got to be the one. Niggermaster's like to tap their fingers, cause unrest and trouble, disrespect their elders, and make a bad time for everybody. That's about what you're up to, isn't it, niggermaster?”

 

But Perry wouldn’t be distracted.

 

Lester lived for anyone who brought disruption to his world. It was what drove him, his name-calling, and his grating voice that hurt to listen to from a distance. The nurses let him be. They did their job running and tending and constantly demanding and scolding and medicating. They let old Lester be Lester because he was who he was—big and scary and threatening, and he settled scores. The nurses didn't have to be afraid of the boys. The threat of Lester and his bat was never far away.

 

“Now we're going to have some law and order here. No smartass back talk. No upstart little shit mouthing off little shit comments. No sir, we can't have that.”

 

Lester tapped his bat against the side on his leg as he moved about our table. He walked around once, then again and a third time.

 

“Look at you. A bunch of tiny wiggling cowards who let one boy speak for all of you because each of you has no courage and no heart. Each of you are nasty, stinking cowards,” Lester announced so all the boys could hear. The other guards nodded approvingly.

 

Perry’s face darkened. I could feel a presence directly behind me. It was big and it was threatening and it made my friend finally stop tapping his fingers.

 

“Hey boy you in on this, aren't you?”

 

Perry shook his head violently and, speaking for me, shouted. “No.”

 

“I wasn't talking to you, boy,” Lester thundered, his bat pointed at Perry’s head. “When I speak to you, you will answer and none of your smartass, little shit lies. I know this little worm here put you up to this conspiracy.”

 

He was so close I could feel the chill coming off that silver belt buckle. Then I heard it again. This time there was no reason to doubt. 

 

“Fat old nigger.”

 

Perry’s words drifted from his lips like balloons hovering over cartoon characters in the comics. Lester laid his left hand on my shoulder. Douglas Winters, who was sitting next to Perry, pulled away.

 

“Fat old nigger,” Lester mimicked. “Well, boy, I got to give it to you. The first time I thought you were just plain crazy. I can understand crazy. That's why you boys are in here. Now I know you're just a nasty fucking troublemaker.”

 

His hand was cold. It hurt, even though he wasn't bearing down on me. It just pained to the touch. And I could hear his voice throb in his hand. Each word, like the way thunder sneaks across the land and you can feel it coming long before it gets here. At most, Perry weighed the same hundred-thirty as I did. I once heard someone joke that Lester Cranston put in at well over 300 pounds.

 

“Now take your friend here,” Lester began. “He minds his own business, at least that's what he wants us to believe. He goes about his day as if he were the whole world of innocence. But we know better. I've got reports on all you nasty shits,” Lester said as if he were speaking to every boy at Bradenton Hills, “which tells me everything. Who are the thieves, the perverts, the fire starters and, like this boy here, the worst of all kind, the schemer.”

 

I tried not to move, but I could feel myself twisting from his grasp. I wanted to take back my life.  I wanted to apologize to everyone.  ‘I wasn’t a bad kid,’ I kept repeating over and over in my head, but it wasn’t enough to stop Lester.

 

“Now where do you think you're going, boy? Ain't no place for you to hide, you and the others here who are plotting to hurt old Lester.”

 

I was jerked back. Lester's silver buckle scraped against the back of my head. I wanted to cry out. Perry saw that I was in pain. He started to rise then caught himself.

 

“You have something to say, young man?” Lester asked. I believe, directing his question towards Perry.

 

“Fat old nigger.”

 

“You've already said that, and now we know who put you up to it.”

 

No. That's not true. I didn't know Perry was going to get crazy and say that. “Please, sir, I didn't do anything.”

 

Lester's fingers folded down over my shoulder and bit into my flesh. “Quiet boy. You have done quite enough, getting your friend there to do your dirty work. Calling me names and thinking I wouldn't know who was really responsible for mouthing off.”

 

Perry planted both his hands on the table. “He's nothing to do with this Lester. I said what I said because it was true. And someone should have said it long ago.”

 

I knew I was going to get hurt. Maybe hurt real bad. This sensation of knowing came over me most times when I was at home. I remember that. The image of my father taking off his belt and coming towards me is most of what remains of my childhood.

 

I tried to break away again. It was the wrong thing to do. I should have known better, but that's why I'm in here. For not knowing. And probably for lots more too. “Lester, please!”

 

“Since when do you talk unless you're spoken to, boy? He screamed in my ear. “I know you put your friend

there up to this. I know you would have said it, insulted me like he did, if you had the courage. But you don’t, so you made him do it. And he will pay. In his own time, he will pay for humiliating and insulting me. But first, you're going to pay.”

 

“No he's not, you fat old bastard.”

 

Lester looked up at Perry who was standing his full five and a half-feet. “What did you say?”

 

Perry straightened himself up, relaxed, as though he was waiting for the school bus.  “Deaf, as well as fat, you are.”

 

“All of you get back to your rooms.”

 

Eyes darted from Lester to Perry to me, in an endless circuit of fear and apprehension, but no one moved.
“Back to your rooms,” Lester bellowed.

 

Guards came up behind several of the younger boys and lifted them to their feet. But no one else moved. A few began to sob.  The air was gone from the cafeteria.  White had turned to black and, worse, a predictable darkness.

 

“OK, no one goes back to his room,” Lester said in a tone I'd never heard. “No one moves and no one gets lunch or dinner or goes to the bathroom and, when it's dark in here and you get tired and fall asleep after you've said terrible things about me, I'll come for you. In the night, tonight, or tomorrow.”

 

A boy at the table behind me whispered, “no.”

 

“Mark my words, Lester never forgets and will be here when you're old men. And Lester will remember who said such terrible things to him, who treated him so poorly when all he wanted to do was keep order and peace and keep you from the nurses with their needles and drugs.”

 

“Don't let him scare you,” Perry said to the rest of us.

 

“Stop it, Perry,” I yelled, shaking with fright. “Lester's done nothing to you. You got no right to badmouth him.”

 

Perry caught my gesture, the one hidden from Lester's fury. “He's going to kill us all.”

 

“Not if we stay in line,” I said. I believed that.  I had to believe that. 

 

“Don’t any of you believe that.”

 

Lester leaned over me towards Perry. “Boy, you're getting on my nerves.”

 

Pointing his finger at me, Perry shot back. “He may believe you, but I know better.”

 

I leapt up, reaching out to silence Perry, to beat him into quiet, but I was quickly dragged back and pressed down until all I could do was blink in pain.

 

“Perry, stop,” I cautioned breathlessly.

 

“He hurt Danny Wilkins. What about it, fat man? How'd you take care of him? Or Larry Burchmond? I heard you crippled him good, and I'm half his size. Not much of a fight for you. But before I go, I want every boy here who will someday be a man living on the outside to know what a sick bastard you are.” Perry stood and kicked his stool away from behind him. It went flying into the wall.

 

Lester’s bat dropped out of nowhere and slammed down on the table. Splinters of wood split the air. A piece cut across my cheek. I was certain that Lester would not let us live out the day.

 

Perry was undaunted, I believe because he knew he had said so much already there was nothing left but the truth.  And he knew in his heart he had so little left to live for.

 

“You killed Wilkins. Probably murdered Burchmond too. You or one of your buddies over there,” he said nodding toward the guards. “Every boy here should know that and when they get out I want them to tell their parents and grandparents and friends and relatives who you are and what you've done.”

 

Suddenly the guards started to pick up one boy, then another, and take them back to their rooms. After a dozen had been hauled away, others got up and left on their own.

 

When the cafeteria finally cleared Lester walked to the end of the table. His glare was dead and empty. “I'm going to recommend that each of you be taken from the ward and sent to other floors. I'm going to report that each of you threatened my life and caused unrest and disruption. I'm going to see that each of you never leaves here.”

 

“Perry doesn't mean anything, sir. His parents made him promises and don't care about him anymore.”

 

“Well, I can see why,” Lester said. “He's not even an American. Boats filled with his kind, flooding into our streets, into our schools, and not acting grateful like they should.”

 

“I'm just as much an American as you.”

 

Lester flared a contemptuous grin. “Now you know that ain't true, boy.”

 

Perry's courage had brought Lester to the rim of a conversation; as if they were really equals, instead of man and boy, guard and prisoner, madman and fool. It was only after the tapping had gained an unnatural momentum that I realized that Lester had choked up his grip on the bat. Something batters do that to get greater control.

 

“Maybe I’m even more of an American.”

 

“One more word, boy. Just one,” Lester said, lifting his bat overhead.

 

“Lester Cranston, you're filled with hate and evil,” Perry said, cold and sure.

 

And as the letters filled into words and words into a sentence, a wooden flash filled every space in front of me until bright red and faint pink and dark brown flecks splattered across my face and arms and chest. I wanted so terribly not to know what they were, and who they once belonged to. I felt myself sliding off the stool, drowning in a vacuum of loss.

 

It was too much for Perry. He'd reached a point where it just didn't matter anymore. Where the only answer was Lester. As a friend, I should have seen that. I should have been there for him as he had always been for me.

 

I woke up days later in the hospital.  When my mother heard, she wouldn’t let it be. Arrangements were made. I had served enough time. I was home within the month. 

 

I spend most of the time now alone in my room. My mother calls up once in a while. My father lets me sit at the dinner table if I promise not to speak. I don't know what happened to Perry, but I've taken a vow, one that I know Perry would have taken if he were the one that had been sent home.

 

One day I will find out what happened. I owed him that.

 

 

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