Rebel Without a Cause (43 page)

I—I—my mother starts feeding me. It tastes like—sour milk—coffee without sugar. I can hear my father talking to my mother. I can’t understand what they are saying. My father is talking to her. I don’t know what he is saying. I—she—is feeding me and I don’t want it. I see my mother take a cup away. She puts it behind me somewhere. The saucer is still in front of me with the spoon in it. My mother sits down. She wants to feed me—whatever it is. I feel—my cheeks—are wet. I don’t remember … I was crying very hard. The knuckles of my hands are wet. I—my father looks alright and he—he hands me something. I don’t want it from him. I start to cry again when he hands me something. It looks like a piece of bread. Crying—crying again. She picks me up and holds me in her arms. It’s nice. She’s patting me on the head. She’s holding me. I’m crying. I—she’s talking smoothly to me. I just want to forget about everything—about the wolf, the lights, my father in bed—hurting my mother. She is just standing there rocking me in
her arms. She’s got my head on her shoulders, on her left shoulder. I’m looking at my father. I’m looking at the stove. I can see the stove. It’s got four—four fireplaces on it. It looks black. I see a … My mother starts walking up and down. I—my head—my head is right in front of her, in front of her, almost to her neck. I’m leaning on my ear, my right ear. Once in a while when she moves I can see the sun in back of her. I can see my father a little bit. I know I’m crying, crying. My hands are all wet …

I don’t seem to remember much what we were talking about yesterday. O! it’s coming back now. I saw yesterday these salt and pepper shakers. I don’t remember now seeing any salt and pepper shakers like that in all my life. I don’t see how they could be on the breakfast table. I thought I was sitting in the highchair and I thought I saw them. They reminded me of two penises. Just why, I don’t know. I don’t use much salt in my food and I don’t use any pepper at all. Do you think that’s perhaps why I don’t use any salt or pepper? I don’t like pepper now because it burns and makes me sneeze. Even when somebody else at the table is using it I don’t like the smell. Yet I use salt occasionally. C—— and I were talking about Dobriski today. He doesn’t use salt and pepper either. There was a fellow from Chicago, a tough little kid, who used a lot of pepper. When he threw that pepper around at the table everybody would sneeze. I hated that.

When I was about ten, Benny carried knives. He’d play with them all the time, even worse than me. He’d draw bull’s eyes and pictures of animals and throw his knives at them.

When I was twelve or thirteen I used to play cards with the fellows, not for money, for match covers and things like that. One time another fellow and I stole about a thousand of these from a kid. My sister found mine and turned them over to this kid again. When she told my mother that she gave them to this fellow she got a licking. The reason was that she shouldn’t have given those things to the kid: she should have turned them over to my mother first.

L: ‘Have you ever thought about why you steal?’

When I want something, I take it: I steal it. I never stole any large amount of money—if that’s what you mean. I stole a few dollars here and there but I never went into the higher hundreds or thousands. I always seemed to take just a few dollars; enough to get along on was what I wanted. I guess I used to steal to prove to myself that I could do it; to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted to do. Sometimes when I was in swimming, or when we’d jump off trestles into coal piles on the tracks, I jumped off the highest places. I did it just to show myself and the other fellows that I could do it. I liked to dive into the water, never mind from what height. But when I’d steal something I must admit I was afraid.

L: ‘Afraid of what?’

I don’t know. I guess I was kind of shaky and nervous. I wasn’t cool and calm. But later on I got used to it and didn’t mind it very much. I was still a little shaky even after I got the hang of the thing, but not very much.

L: ‘What, specifically, were you afraid of?’

I don’t know …

L: ‘Were you afraid of being discovered in the act?’

Yes.

L: ‘Or were you more afraid of being punished?’

Well, I don’t know what it was. I guess I was afraid of both of those things. I don’t know which I was most afraid of most.

L: ‘Why were you afraid of both of them?’

Well, if I was discovered in the act I knew I’d be punished …

L: ‘How would you be punished?’

O, by a prison sentence. And I was afraid I’d get a beating up with a club or a rubber hose down at police headquarters. I was always afraid of that rubber hose. I always used to think that if they got hold of somebody they’d always beat him up—with a rubber hose. I didn’t like being hit by a policeman or a detective. I didn’t like the idea of their—hurting me. I always thought that policemen were like my father. That’s all they do when they got somebody that can’t get back at them.

L: ‘The same way your father used to beat you?’

I guess so. But I always felt different when I had a gun on me. I never felt afraid of a detective or a policeman then. When I had a gun …

L: ‘You were just as strong as they were then?’

Yes. And sometimes when we played cards I’d put the gun on the table beside me and it would make me feel stronger.

L: ‘And you needed that feeling of strength?’

I did.

L: ‘Because without that feeling of strength, you were just … Harold?’

Yes. I used to commit other crimes without using my gun. I broke into houses, stores, lunch-wagons …

L: ‘Let’s look at those things more closely to discover if we can see why you did them.’

Well, I always broke into houses myself, always myself. I wanted to do a lot of things myself, that especially, because then I would feel like a real smart person. When I did them myself, then everything was planned and it worked out as I thought it should. I planned it. I thought I could put something over on somebody, completely fool them.

L: ‘Put something over on whom?’

My people, my family, somebody I stole things from. It would give me the feeling that I was more intelligent than I was to commit a crime and completely fool everyone else. I wouldn’t walk around with my head down when I committed a crime. I’d keep it up.

L: ‘You felt even better after you had committed a crime, is that it?’

That’s right. When we broke into lunch-wagons some of these fellows used to grab three or four bottles of soda. Me, I’d grab a whole case. I always felt that I was better than the other fellows I hung around with. I felt that I could plan things out more, do things in a way that would be better than what they could do. When I planned something like a hold-up the idea would come quickly to me. Then I’d wait five or ten minutes. I’d get nervous all over, and shaky. Then I’d wait a while until I cooled down a bit before going ahead. When I committed it I’d be afraid for a while but then, about an hour later, I’d feel better.

I used to steal pennies from my mother when I was a, kid. I’m not sure whether I stole anything else before I was ten. O, yes … One time we tried to get even with a fellow. He had a clubhouse in his back yard, a big garage where he kept a lot of things, rifles, spears, bows and arrows, a small sailboat, several pairs of dumbbells, boxing gloves and things like that. So once he got in an argument with this
gang I hung around with and he stopped travelling with us. I don’t know what the argument was about but to get even with him I planned to steal everything out of his clubhouse. So one morning about six o’clock I went inside the clubhouse and took a pair of dumbbells and the sailboat. I hid them behind the garage. I waited until I was in school and then told several fellows about it. They all seemed proud of me: they patted me on the back and said that was o.k., now we’d steal everything he had out of the clubhouse. But this fellow’s mother saw me when I was coming out of that clubhouse. She knew my mother, so she went over and told her about it. My mother called me in and told me to give the stuff to her. I denied everything even though the woman told my mother that she had seen me. I got out of it by saying that I’d look for it, so I went over to the yard and made believe I was looking for the stuff. There was really nothing to it. I made believe I was looking for it and then found it. It was the only time I ever really stole anything up to that time. Then I started hanging around with the kids on S—— Street. I started playing truant, didn’t go to church on Sundays. Then I started stealing my school money and going to shows with it. Then it got worse. In the summer we stole cakes out of the bakery. There was a truck that used to come around about nine or ten at night to bring milk to the stores. They’d leave the boxes outside the store and we’d rob stuff from them. Then we really got started stealing. We broke into a lunch-wagon and stole cigarettes and split them with the rest of the gang. About six of us broke into these wagons occasionally and we’d make off with a lot of soda. Sometimes we’d find cans of peas and beans. We didn’t want them so we’d just open them up and spill the stuff all around the place. The soda, we’d keep most of that for ourselves and just divvy a few bottles with the gang. Then we used to steal keys out of cars. I just stood by those times. I myself didn’t do much of the actual work in stealing, except when it came to lunch-wagons and so on. As for milk and things like that, there was another kid named Billie. I don’t know if he or I was the leader, but pretty soon both of us were running everything in the gang. We’d go out and see what we could steal. Billie always carried a blackjack. He was a kid about twelve and he had a blackjack he stole somewhere, from his brother I think. He and I didn’t bother with the little stuff. We’d tell a couple of kids to look inside automobiles
and when they’d see a key we told them to get it. It was somehow more fun to have the kids get the stuff than get it yourself, because then you really did two things instead of one: you told someone else to get the stuff and you also planned it out. I remember how we tried to poison all the dogs in the neighborhood. We didn’t like them. Every time we tried to get through yards and jump over fences they’d bark at us. So we tried to poison them.

Sometimes when I went away I was afraid to come home and face a beating; but when I got hungry I’d come home. When I was younger I didn’t stay out very long, one or two days and that’s all; but when I got to be older I’d stay out longer—two or three weeks, a month, even three months. Once or twice I went with Riggs but he always seemed like a baby; he seemed to want to cry for leaving home. So I tried to avoid going with him. I never liked to be with him anyway.

When we stole something or broke into automobiles or stores I always was the one who figured out and planned how to get into it. The other fellows didn’t seem to be able to think of the ways I could think of. When we’d get to a locked car they couldn’t get it open; but if I was there I’d force the car window open just a bit and put a little wire through the window and pull the door-knob up. There it was: it came natural to me. Most of these fellows didn’t strike me as naturally born crooks. I always thought that I must be a natural born crook. For instance, when we wanted to break a window I got the idea to put some flypaper on that window and then cracking it and pulling it off with the splinters of glass on it. These fellows didn’t know much. For instance, when you wanted to open a window you’d take a pen knife and stick it between the window and the sill and pull the latch over. That’s the way I’d get into my own house.

We had hundreds of keys, just hundreds. When I was hanging out with that gang on S—— Street everybody always had a dozen or more keys. Billie made the other kids carry them in their pockets. Every once in a while we’d get to a garage door and then everybody would try his keys …

Why did I steal? I guess in a way I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I always wanted to prove to myself that I could steal something and get away with it; that I was a better man than my father thought I was. I’d think better of myself then. Even if
I would never use it, even if I would throw it away … Every once in a while I would steal a battery all by myself. I’d sell it to a fellow in a garage nearby and he would give me a dollar for it. He knew damn well it was stolen but he didn’t mind. I’d keep the dollar all to myself. I needed money then.

L: ‘What did you need the money for, Harold?’

When I got the money I didn’t know what to do with it. I’d buy a few ice-cream sodas and go to the show. About forty cents was all I really needed.

L: ‘And you could have got that money from your mother, just by asking for it, couldn’t you?’

When my father was home my mother used to give me money to get rid of me, to get me out of the house. I used to wonder why she would do that. Sometimes my mother would come to me and give me a little money to get out of the house. There were many times when she would do that. I’d wonder why my mother gave me money to go to the show without me asking her for it. When my father was home my mother would try to keep me and him separated. It appeared to me that way. When we lived on S—— Street I got into trouble with some other guys when we broke into a store and got caught. I almost cut a fellow with my knife. I would have cut him if he hadn’t twisted my arms and taken the knife out of my hand. There were some detectives came down and investigated the store where we broke in. They knew that a lot of kids were hanging around the clubhouse so they started shaking it down. They really shook it down! I was coming along the street and one of them saw me. I don’t know whether he was a dick or not. He chased me about six blocks. I was jumping over fences and dodging through alleys but I couldn’t lose him. I had a big knife with me, about ten inches long, so when the fellows standing around began to yell and he kept coming right after me I got a funny feeling in me and I just stopped. I stopped and pulled the knife and put my hand back over my shoulder. He came at me and grabbed my arm and twisted it until I dropped the knife. Nothing much happened: I got a year’s probation. So I went home and pretty soon I got into some more trouble. During that time my father didn’t work much and he was sore because he couldn’t find any work. He would work for only two or three days a week. I went to school then, High School, but some
days when I was home from school—like Saturdays and Sundays—my mother used to give me twenty-five cents or so and I’d go away and wouldn’t come home until supper. She used to tell me, “When you come home you just tell your father you’ve been at your grandmother’s.” So she’d fix it up with him and everything would be o.k. I’d go to bed and nothing happened. This didn’t happen every week, just some weeks, especially when he was home in the afternoons. It kept on until I was around seventeen and then I started getting into trouble again. I don’t know whether she suspected my father didn’t like me or what. I often wondered why she gave me the money. I guess I used to think that maybe she liked me better than my sisters.