Rebel Without a Cause (9 page)

One time while he was busy fixing his car my mother told me to call him for supper. When I went to call him he didn’t hear me, so I went nearer to call him again. He picked up a hammer and wanted to hit me with it. He said I had been cursing him. I guess I was about thirteen then.

I used to spend a lot of time at the park. There was a big bunch
of fellows there on Saturday or Sunday night, all gambling and drinking, singing and making a lot of noise. Everybody would run in different directions when the radio car came around. I would go to the concerts there. All the girls from that neighborhood would go too. I tried to see how they would act when I talked to them. Most of them I discovered were just bums. I found that the girls who talked like ladies were the worst bums of all.

On Saturday and Sunday nights we had nothing to do and so three or four fellows would go to the show. We’d make a lot of noise and many times they threw us out. Whenever we would see several girls sitting together we’d sit near them and talk to them and make remarks until they got up and walked away.

Sometimes I used to just like to go and go and walk to the outskirts of the city. I liked to go away somewhere by myself. When I was at my aunt’s home on the farm I’d go out in the woods sometimes and spend the whole day by myself. My uncle was the same way. He used to go and get away from everybody, way up in the mountains. It’s cool up there, brooks run down the side of the mountain. In the winter I would go up into the mountains and chop wood. My aunt always liked to burn wood in her stove.

My uncle would eat a lot of meat. They always had chicken on the table and my aunt would find time to fry pancakes for him at every meal.

Sometimes I would go to my uncle’s father’s house. He had a big cherry orchard and on rainy or cloudy days when you couldn’t do any work I would pick cherries. I’d eat more than I picked. I’d stay there all day long, just with my raincoat on. Lots of cherries in the trees. My uncle’s father made cider and he’d get me drunk with it. My aunt didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. There were a lot of arguments. He was an old man with grey hair and a grey mustache, an old thin man. He just said, “Well, it’s nothing.” My aunt used to yell and yell.

My uncle had a sister about two years and a half older than I was: I was sixteen and she was eighteen. She and some other girls would go out a lot. The fellows used to come around and take them out and lay them. One time, I remember, when she was in the kitchen, she called me in and she says she wants some love. I just turned around and I said, “No love today.” And she said, “O yes, I forgot,
you can’t make love, you’re blind.” And I was so mad I held my penis and said, “This is blind too: it only has one eye.” And my aunt heard it and came in and hit me. So when I came to go home from my aunt’s house she came over to me and apologized. My uncle didn’t say anything. That week I went home. I didn’t want to be there anymore.

The last year I was there my father found some rubbers in my overalls pants. They were left from when I went around with Lila. He showed them to my uncle who burned them. My aunt told my mother and my mother hollered at me.

I can still hear my uncle’s sister telling me that. I’ll never forget it. She was not very fat: she had kind of brown hair with streaks of grey in it, or blond or something. She wasn’t pretty: she was ugly. She had a friend who was big and fat. One time several fellows came to my uncle’s house and brought a lot of whiskey with them. Everybody was drinking. Two of the fellows got drunk and they took the two girls outside but they came back very quickly. I don’t think anything.…

My mind is centered in this room. I can’t seem to get out.

I am working with a fellow I don’t like. He’s a big, blond fellow, a Swede. He reminds me of a big ox. He hangs around with a friend of mine, Dobriski. They are pretty chummy. This Swede hasn’t what’s known as a gentleman’s reputation. He’s distrusted by many. He’s taking the place of a fellow by the name of Mac. Mac is a young fellow about twenty: a quiet southern boy who doesn’t say much. He didn’t like the job; he sweated so.

Mac came here from G——. He tried to escape from there and got five years on top of his three; so he is doing eight now. He lost all his good time on the three years, but he turns up at the Parole Board every three months under some new juvenile law. He plays a lot of ball and sweats a lot.

The noise of that fan reminds me a little bit of a wind blowing in the trees and rustling the leaves. I am thinking of the wind blowing, the leaves rustling, on the side of a hill. I am thinking of the place where my uncle owns some land, about twelve acres on an island. A small river circles around and forms the island. One time I drove
over a bridge to the island with my father and my sister. A little before that the bridge was washed away in a flood. The people had it fixed up again so that they could go over it with their trucks and cars. It was wet and slippery and the road was muddy. Our car jumped off on one side and my uncle’s tractor had to pull it out.

I used to go fishing in that river with my uncle. He never said much: he was a quiet man who would kid you occasionally. He didn’t do much hollering at anybody or anything.

A cousin of my grandmother’s sister has a family in L—— and I have some cousins there. I don’t even know their names. They have a little country place and six or seven children. Most of them are big now: two girls are married already. One of the boys I liked a lot. His name was Jerry. I had a lot of fun with Jerry. He had a little car and we would go skidding over the sandy places together. I would visit there a day or two. We’d go down and swim and row around on the water.

They live near a small town that has a nice beach. One of the girls who is married now was Sarah. She was not too thin and not too thick. She used to like to spend a few hours each night watching the stars when nobody was around. She would like to sit in a corner and pet with me too.

My uncle in L—— used to make a lot of wine and me and Jerry would go down in the cellar and steal maybe a gallon of it and take it to the woods and drink it.

I remember one time my cousin Riggs and I hung around for a while and then we started hitch-hiking. We got a hitch all the way out to L—— and we decided that we were going out to see how Jerry was doing. We stayed around for a few hours and then started back. While we were on our way to L—— a policeman saw us standing and waiting for a hitch. He wanted to know where we were going and told us to watch ourselves and be careful.

When I went around with that gang of fellows in our neighborhood we all had bicycles we stole. I stole about six of them I guess in my life. Several were stolen from me. I sold one or two. One I stole I scratched off the paint and I repainted it a maroon color. My father came down to the cellar where I was painting it. There was a fellow with me; his name was Jimmy and his uncle was a policeman; so this boy spoke up and told my father he gave it to me. He said
his uncle was a policeman; that they didn’t know the owner of it and his uncle paid for it at the cop’s auction. He said he had no use for it because he had one already so he gave it to me. The only way I ever had a bicycle for myself was when I stole it and somebody lied for me to my father so I could keep it. I liked to take it apart, especially where the gear was. When it was greasy and muddy and dirty I liked to clean it and take care of it. I had it about a year and then I stole, I mean sold, it.

After I quit school I hung around with a fellow named Amos for a while. He used to work at a steel company across the river from where we lived. We used to hang out there, me and him. We’d get rocks and throw them in the windows and we’d wreck the joint. We’d steal all the copper wire, tear it out and break all the windows. One time I wouldn’t go to school. Played hookey. I didn’t go home for three nights. I stayed in there until my uncle found me and took me home. He was dead. I mean, he is dead now: got killed about three years ago. He was the best uncle I ever had. He used to tell me that whenever he got his bonus me and him would go together to South America. He died in February and they got the bonus in June. He was the best uncle I ever had.

He was always drunk but he was always good to me. My other two uncles, they were drunk too, always drunk. All the uncles on my mother’s side of the family were always drunk. One of them is married and has a big family now, so I guess he stopped drinking. My other uncle, his name is Sam, he drinks now. He only works a couple of days a week as a plumber’s helper. What money he gets he spends for drink. He isn’t married: the reason is that he promised my grandfather that he’d live with my grandmother all the time and not leave her. He is about fifty-five now.

My aunt Louise, my mother’s youngest sister, she is about twenty-seven, I guess. She’s married and has three children. She always told me I shouldn’t steal things from people: if I needed money to come to her and she would give it to me. But I never went to her and got anything from her. Riggs, my cousin, tried to get me to go to her so we could get money to go to the show; but I wouldn’t.
He used to get mad because she wouldn’t give him any money because she despised him. One time there were two cousins of her’s from Buffalo visiting her. My aunt saw Riggs and me in the park one night and she called us over. I never saw them again afterwards. My aunt always told me how to act in front of people; to be quiet, not to act like a baby, never crack jokes. For about a month after that she always kept telling me that she was wondering what these girls thought of me. I don’t know what I said, something kidding or some joke, but there was nothing dirty, no dirty intention. I remember one of the girls had a dress that looked like a parachute.

I remember once I got into a fight with a fellow they called Skinny. I was about seventeen then. Most of us when we grew up broke out of the gang into smaller gangs, five or six fellows in each. Well, we got into this fight one time. He was smaller than I, but heavier. He couldn’t lick me and when he saw he couldn’t lick me he tried to cut me with his belt buckle. He held his belt buckle in his hand and tried to cut my face with it. We were pretty good friends afterwards, got along pretty well. He and I were going to steal a canoe once from somebody’s yard but one of us got afraid so we didn’t take it.

Me and another fellow had a rowboat on the river. One time we went all the way down the river, about eighty miles. We took a .22 rifle with us. After a while we came to a real small motor boat with an outboard motor. We shot that boat full of holes. I wanted to take that motor but instead we shot it full of small holes, like pencil holes. Somebody stole the gun off us later. We had about ten or fifteen dollars between us when we went on that trip. After we got to the beach we couldn’t find a good place to get off. The mud came up to our heads. We were out there altogether about a week, then we got sick of it and went home.

Sometimes I used to stay away three, four, five days at a time. Sometimes my father would hit me when I came home, sometimes he wouldn’t; sometimes my mother would hit me.

When I was about fifteen, my father and mother had an argument and I think he hit her. I was so mad I couldn’t see him. I picked up a poker about three feet long. My sister pulled it out of my hands.

My sister always was good to me. O, we had little arguments but after a day or so we started speaking again. I used to borrow money from her, but first I’d have to do a little talking and say, “Just
because we had a little argument you don’t have to act that way.” She would always give it to me. I never could get a job anywhere so I’d do a lot of reading and sleeping during the day and go out at night.

Once in a while we would steal cakes from a bread company down the street. On Saturday nights a lot of the fellows that worked in the bread company used to have a crap game, so me and another fellow were going to hold them up. We were going to take a shot gun or a revolver. We never did. I don’t know why.

When you look at a shot gun it looks like two big cannons looking right at you. I mean a double-barrelled shot gun.

My uncle used to go hunting up in the woods. He used to take a great big Saint Bernard dog with him. He never shot anything; just go up into the woods all day long. He kept the dog to keep other dogs away from his chickens. This was a great big dog, a monster. Once I saw him shake a little pup and almost chew his head off. But he was a good dog; he wouldn’t bite anybody, just bark.

My uncle had one of these farm battery radios. I would get to hear it once in a while. Crime stories: Gang-Busters. I would hear how the big gangsters got shot and I would laugh.

I smoked a pipe when I was on the outside and I’d throw the ashes on the floor and get hell for it. I’d put the ashes in an ash-tray but there was such a lot of them that my mother hollered at me because she said I was smoking too much, so I started to throw them on the floor again. Then she hollered at me for that.

There were big apartment houses near the Catholic school I went to and on one of the streets there that bordered them there was a very dark place. One night I held up a man and a girl in a car in that place. I got caught. The man grabbed me and hit me in the jaw. I got probation for that, five years probation. I must have been about seventeen then. When I was asked why I wanted to steal the car I told them I wanted it to go to Canada. That was a lie. What I really wanted was the man’s money.

I went to H—— Street School before going to the Catholic school. I started at the Catholic school in fourth grade. The public school on H—— Street was from kindergarten to the fourth grade.

In the winter, on B—— Street, about two blocks from the
public school, a lot of big fellows from C—— and W—— Streets used to come around and throw snowballs at people. I got one in the eye and had a black eye. I remember going to school with my hat pulled over my face and telling them that I wouldn’t come to school for about a week.

I can remember that my eyes were blinking even before I had that black eye.