Rebel Without a Cause (13 page)

One of the fellows and I used to have whistles. When we wanted to warn each other we would blow them. He was about three years older than I and I remember how he used to read books and I used to think how much smarter than I he was. I remember he used to diagram sentences and play a harmonica. He had an older sister who always used to sit and sew. I didn’t see him for a long time and then when I was twelve I joined the Boy Scouts and found him in the same troop …

I was just reading about a fellow who has been waiting to be hanged for thirty-two years. The judge died before his sentence was to be carried out so now he is still waiting to be hanged. I know about this fellow from another fellow I used to know; this fellow did about five years in the State Penitentiary and he told me about him. The one that is waiting to be hanged, he doesn’t know what an automobile looks like, or a truck, or an airplane. He gets exercise about two hours a day and most of the day he is locked in. He smokes real strong tobacco, so strong it would even kill a horse to smell the smoke. The fellow that told me about him drove a truck for a bootlegger named Davis. I knew this Davis from seeing him in a brokerage
office in B—— Street. That’s the main thoroughfare of our town. He used to be at this office a lot. Up the hill a way on R—— Street is the Court House, across the street is the House of Records where I had to report for probation. My probation officer drove an old Model A Ford; he had a son about two years older than I and he lived near the High School where I went.

There was a candy store near the High where I hung out. I ate my lunch there, not much, a bottle of coke and a piece of pie and that was enough. I played the pinball machine a lot. One time I had a fight with my cousin Riggs in the back room there.

Right on the corner across the street from the park there was a little triangular lot. We had a clubhouse there, right up against a billboard. There was an empty house nearby where we used to play around. We took all of the fixtures out of it, the copper wires, the iron, all the junk and sold it for the money we could get. Sometimes we’d put dirt and rocks inside the pipes when we took them to the junk man so that they’d weigh more.

I don’t know why we stole so many watermelons. We’d get whole boatloads of them from the railroad cars down the river. I don’t know what we wanted with all of them. We couldn’t eat them all. I suppose we stole them just because we wanted to have something to show.

One time I stayed out from nine in the morning until around eight at night. When I came home my father spoke to me harshly. I was never on good terms with my father. Maybe it was because he was a little deaf and he couldn’t speak English well and I couldn’t speak Polish.

He never had much to say to me. Sometimes he would treat me alright and sometimes he would holler and say something. Sometimes I would hear him and my mother argue about me: my mother always held up for my end. My sisters always held up for my end. My sisters always got along with him. The oldest one
would sometimes tell him to go to Hell or something like that and he would just laugh. I would only speak to him when it was necessary, other times he just didn’t say anything to me. When I was about twelve we broke into a butcher shop and stole a lot of things, so I went away for about three weeks to the juvenile home and when I came back my father didn’t say anything.

I never liked to go to church. When I was at St. A—— School they made us go to church in the mornings and in the afternoons. Many times I said I was going to church but didn’t go. One time my father saw me out in the street when I was supposed to be in church and when I got home he gave me a beating.

I don’t know why but I didn’t like a lot of the kids that went to school there. They were wise and I guess most of them were smarter than me. Anyway, I know I was the one that got most of the lickings and got punished for not having my lessons done or for doing something wrong or for doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I couldn’t read very well and got several lickings for that. I wouldn’t do any work at the board and got hit for that too. They sat me in a back seat where I couldn’t see the board so I never did any work. I never told them I couldn’t see the board. I never told anyone, not even my mother.

My mother and grandmother and sister used to make me go to church even though I hated it. Once I told my mother that it was all a bunch of lies, so when she was visiting me here she made me promise her I’d go to church once. I went once. It doesn’t grasp my emotions, I guess. I always find some excuse for not going.

My cousin Emma and I were alone in the house together once. I was supposed to go to church and I went down there but couldn’t tell whether it was over or not. So I went home and we were alone together. I played with her and was kissing her and I played with her breasts. That’s as far as I got. I was about twelve then. She was reading some book, something about where babies come from, and playing the radio. I was sitting on the arm of the chair. She’s about twenty-five now, married about three or four years. I never met her husband. She was always dull and uninteresting.

I know my cousin Joe’s wife. She’s a fairly beautiful girl. They have one child. She always seemed nice to talk to. She’s short and has black hair. When Joe went to prison the time he got eighteen
months she told me that next time it happened she would divorce him, but when the next time came around she just let things go. Once in a while my cousin Riggs would mind her kid for her when she wanted to go out and one time he was doing that he asked me to bring Lila up there. I didn’t.

I always told Riggs that when I had girls I saw no reason why I should share them with him: he never did with me. He used to tell me about this girl and that girl and the other girl he was taking out, but when he saw me with a girl he would come over and try to get her on the side.

There was that cousin of mine from L—— that I told you about. She would like to sit in the car and pet or sit out on the porch when everyone was asleep, and sit and kiss. I used to tell myself that the next time I would go further and further. I still haven’t reached the point yet. I guess it would be a simple matter for me to go as far as I want with her, but now I think she’ll be too old when I get out, probably she’ll be married.

There was another girl on S—— Street, Carol I think her name was. I used to have her every once in a while for about two years. She was always afraid she’d have a baby. My friend Willy always told me how he had her once up against a tree. I don’t think I ever told him once when I had her.

Willy’s sister was a little too fat for me. She would only let you put your arm around her neck and kiss her; that was the only thing she would allow.

Willy and I used to go swimming in the park and we used to pick up different girls, I guess mostly for the fun of it. We’d always go to shows together when he wasn’t working. He worked at night, I think. We spent a lot of time in the early afternoon and evening walking up and down the main street.

I always dressed as neat as I could, especially in the evening when the streets were getting dark. I’d hang around the corner next to the school and would get drunk a lot. One evening—I guess it was the only time I ever got so drunk—I started drinking at about four o’clock, and it was about nine when I got down to a bench near the river front. I fell asleep and it was raining on me, so I swore I’d never get so drunk as that again.

My uncle liked to get me drunk, the one on the farm. I used to
go down his cellar where he kept his wine and cider, and sometimes I’d siphon out the barrel he kept it in. He used to wonder what became of his wine and cider it went so fast. His father used to get me drunk too. I liked to go to his father’s house. He had a lot of wine too.

My uncle Albert used to eat a lot of meat, all he ate was meat. He worked very hard. I want to be anything but a farmer and work as hard as he did. He worked hard all his life and he’d drink and spend his money only when he was a kid. His father worked hard too and he never had much of anything, just a home. Sometimes when my uncle worked plowing up the ground I used to think I like the country. But I don’t like hard work of that kind. I guess he was born into it and he figures on staying in it.

I’m not interested in making a lot of money. The only thing is, I’m going to write a couple of books on economics. I’m going to change the
Communist Manifesto.
Of course I don’t know much about it but what little I do know about it I know it’s wrong. There are some things I know are wrong. For instance, I know Marx’s theory on population to be wrong. Some people know a little something about economics and they always talk about this and that, but I know that when you take everything away from everybody that can’t be economically sound.

Adam Smith’s
Wealth of Nations,
of course that’s a little too old. Sometime I’m going to rewrite that book and I’m going to change the
Manifesto
too.

Marx criticizes religion but most of his preachings he took from Jesus Christ.

In a couple weeks I am going to send for both books,
Das Kapital
and
Wealth of Nations.
I don’t know much about economics but in a couple of years I’ll know enough about it and then I’ll start working on them. Now I’m interested in this stimulation of industry, I mean the re-armament program, the stimulation of iron and steel and oils and many other manufacturing industries, airplane manufacturing for instance. I want to see what the reaction is going to be in a couple of years. There’s going to be a real downfall. According to the inevitable law of change there’s going to be a revolution or a
reaction. There have been two industrial revolutions, one in England and one in America, and they have been helped along by two great wars, the Napoleonic wars and the World War. They speeded up production and as soon as the wars ended everything dropped. That’s what’s going to happen in this case, maybe not so hard. And I think many airplane companies are going to go bankrupt, and some of the companies making automobiles and trucks for the army. I don’t think a big company like General Motors will lose anything. They have distributing companies over the whole world.

I try to talk to some fellows here who know something about economics, but I don’t want to get like they are. Perry, for instance, always impresses on my mind the economic side of everything but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important one.

Perry and I hang out together occasionally, once or twice a week. The rest of the time I stay in my cell and study. I don’t think he goes out much. He tells me that he is bi-sexual and from some of his actions it would certainly seem that he is. I hope I never have anything to do with him sexually. I wouldn’t like to do anything like that. A lot of my friends are asking me; they don’t seem to be my friends now.

I don’t talk to very many people: they irritate me. I like to go off myself and just think about nothing and talk to myself. Dobriski is a swell fellow but he is really too dumb for me to talk to about economics and that’s the thing most on my mind. He doesn’t care what I talk about.

Perry is willing to argue about anything with anybody. We eat together at the same table. I don’t like the way he puts his foot under him on the bench. I don’t like it. He sits on one foot. He always tries to get some argument stimulated. He gets a lot of fun out of trying to convert people to the ‘only faith,’ as he calls anything he says. There was a fellow yesterday, an ex-Communist from Boston. Perry tried to convert him. It was funny: his face got all red …

This morning I was talking to a fellow outside my cell window who gave me some flowers and I put them in my locker. I didn’t like flowers very much on the outside but in here I like them a lot. This
old man Thomas also liked them a lot: he used to write poetry about flowers and tell me about his garden at home. He had a small estate and he would tell me about all his flowers, how they were growing and how they were arranged. He loved to sit and tell me about his experiences when he was a kid. He was quite a sportsman, it seems, participating in all sports, probably to make a living. He was well built for an old man, his arms and muscles were all hard. He liked to putter around flowers and take care of them; to see how they grow and grow different kinds, big flowers and small flowers.

When he left here he went to see my family. I don’t know where my mother and father are living now. My sister was up to see me not very long ago but she wouldn’t tell me where they live.

Everybody I talk to notices the improvement in my eyes since I am coming here to see you.

They are open a lot more than they used to be and they feel kind of hard in the roof when I spread them wide open. They don’t blink much even in the sunlight now and I remember they used to blink a lot. Years ago I would have to hold my hands over my eyes to see but now I don’t have to anymore. I wear glasses sometimes to keep people from asking so many questions. In my cell I have a very strong bulb so I wear glasses to stop most of the light. They’re dark glasses, smoky.…

My aunt and uncle are the only two people that have so much land on that island. They work it themselves and if they don’t make enough out of it this year they’ll lose it all. My uncle is a kind of fellow who would rather fish than do anything else, but my aunt works very hard.

I remember once near their house when Amy’s brother killed a snake. He was riding a bicycle and the snake was crossing the road and he ran right over it. We caught a lot of snakes around there.