Sleepers (22 page)

“They could have gotten a lot more time,” the lawyer said. “For what they did, a lot more time.”

Father Bobby stood and leaned on the barrier, his Roman collar off his neck and in his right hand.

“This isn’t a game,” Father Bobby said. “It’s not about deals or less time or more time. It’s about four boys. Four boys whose names you didn’t even bother to learn. So don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back.”

“I did my job,” the lawyer said.

“The sworn oath of the mediocre,” Father Bobby said.

“You could have done better with them yourself, Father,” the lawyer said. “Then you wouldn’t have needed the services of a shit like me.”

Father Bobby sat back down, his eyes catching mine, his face ashen and pained.

“It won’t be so bad,” the lawyer told him. “After all, it’s not like everybody who spends time at Wilkinson ends up a criminal.”

The lawyer turned away and cleared off the top of the defense table, shoving a handful of manila folders inside his tattered brown bag and snapping it closed.

“Some of them even find God and become priests,” the lawyer said, turning again to face Father Bobby. “Don’t they?”

“Go to hell,” Father Bobby said.

Outside, a light summer rain began to fall.

BOOK TWO

“Live then, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day God deigns to reveal the future to man, the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and hope.”

—The Count of Monte Cristo

1

I
HAD BEEN
in my cell for less than an hour when the panic set in. To fight it, I closed my eyes and thought of home, of the neighborhood, of the streets where I played and of the people I knew. I imagined a hydrant spreading its cold spray over my face, felt the stitches of a baseball in my hand, heard soft music floating off a rooftop. I wasn’t yet thirteen years old and I wanted to be in those places, back where I belonged. I wanted everything to be the way it was before the hot dog cart. I wanted to be in Hell’s Kitchen and not in a place with cold walls and a tiny cot. A place where I was too afraid to move.

It was dark and I was hungry, the dank air heavy with the smell of cleaning fluids. I didn’t like tight places or dark rooms and my cell was both. Its walls were cracked and peeling, a torn photo of James Dean taped to one. I hated to be alone, to be without books to read or baseball cards to sort through, forced to stare at a thick iron door that was locked from the outside. The steady rumbling sounds that came out of the other cells were difficult to ignore, making me long for those peaceful hours when I would sit in Sacred Heart Church and find solace in its silence.

It doesn’t take very long to know how tough a person you are or how strong you can be. I knew from my first day at Wilkinson that I was neither tough nor strong. It takes only a moment for the fear to find its way, to seep through the carefully constructed armor. Once it does, it
finds a permanent place. It is as true for a hardened criminal as it is for a young boy.

T
HE FIRST GUARD
I met inside Wilkinson was Sean Nokes, who was then twenty-five years old. He stood inside my cell, his legs pressed close together, a black baton cupped in both hands. He had a thick, ruddy face and close-cropped blond hair and he wore sharply creased brown slacks, thick-soled black shoes, and a starched white button-down shirt with a black name tag clipped to the front pocket. His eyes were cold, his voice deep.

“Toss your old clothes to the floor” were the first words he said to me.

“Here?”

“If you’re expecting a dressing room, forget it. We don’t have any. So lose the clothes.”

“In front of you?” I asked.

A smile cracked the side of Nokes’s face. “For the time you’re here, day or night, you do
everything
in front of
someone.
Piss, shit, shower, brush your teeth, play with yourself, write letters home. Whatever. Somebody’s gonna be looking. Most times, that somebody’s gonna be
me.”

I tossed my shirt to the floor, unzipped my pants, and let them drop past my knees. I stepped out of the pants, kicked them aside, and, wearing only my white cotton briefs, white socks with holes in both heels, and a lace-less pair of Keds, looked back up at Nokes.

“Everything,”
Nokes said, still standing in stiff military posture. “Here on, the only clothes you wear are state issued.”

“You want me to stand here naked?” I asked.

“Now you’re catching on. I knew you Hell’s Kitchen boys couldn’t be as dumb as people say.”

I took off my underwear, kicked off my sneakers, and
balled up the white socks, dropping them all on the pile beside me. I stood there naked and embarrassed.

“Now what?”

“Get dressed,” Nokes said, nodding his head toward the clothes that had been left on my cot. “Assembly’s in fifteen minutes. That’s when you’ll meet the other boys.”

“Are my friends on this floor?” I asked, taking two steps toward the cot and reaching for a folded green T-shirt.

“Friends?” Nokes said, turning away. “You got a lot to learn, little boy. Nobody’s got friends in this place. That’s something you best not forget.”

T
HE BUS RIDE
up to the Wilkinson Home for Boys had taken more than three hours, including two stops for gas and a short bathroom break. Lunch was eaten on board: soggy butter sandwiches on white bread, lukewarm containers of apple juice, and Oh Henry! candy bars. Outside the temperature topped 90 degrees. Inside, it was even hotter. The old air conditioner hissed warm air and half the windows were sealed shut, dust lines smearing their chipped panes.

The bus was old, narrow, and dirty, painted slate-gray inside and out. Half the thirty-six seats were taken up by boys younger than I was; none was older than sixteen. There were three guards along for the ride, one in the front next to the driver and two in the back sharing a pack of smokes and a skin magazine. Each guard had a long black nightstick and a can of Mace looped inside his belt. The guard up front had a small handgun shoved inside the front band of his pants.

Four of the boys were black, two looked to be Hispanic, and the rest were white. We sat alone, occupying every other seat, our feet chained to a thin iron bar that stretched the length of the bus. Our hands were free and
we were allowed to speak, but most seemed content to stare out at the passing countryside. For many, it was their first trip beyond New York City borders.

Michael sat two rows ahead of me and John and Tommy were close behind to my left.

“This is like the bus Doug McClure drove in
The Longest Hundred Miles,”
John said to a pock-marked teen across the aisle. “Don’t you think?”

“Who the fuck is Doug McClure?” the kid said.

“Not important,” John said, turning his attention back to the sloping hills of upstate New York.

E
ARLIER THAT MORNING
, we had said our good-byes to relatives and friends outside the courtroom across from Foley Square. My father hugged and held me until one of the guards told him it was time for us to go.

“Treat him right,” my father told the guard.

“Don’t worry,” he answered. “He’ll be okay. Now, please, step away.”

I walked from my father and into a line forming near the bus. The crowd around us drew closer, older hands reaching out for a final touch, mothers crying softly, fathers bowing their heads in angry silence. I saw John’s mother lay a strand of rosary beads over his head, her knees buckling from emotion. Michael and Tommy stood behind me on the line, their eyes staring at empty spaces; no one was there to see them off.

I looked to my left and saw Father Bobby standing next to an open-air parking lot, his back pressing a light pole. I nodded in his direction and tried but couldn’t bring myself to smile. I watched as he flicked his cigarette to the sidewalk and walked toward the bus.

I wished he wasn’t there. I wished none of them were there. I didn’t want
anyone
, let alone people I cared about, to see me get on a bus that was going to take me to a place I could only think of as a jail. Father Bobby
especially. I felt I had let him down, betrayed his trust in me. He tried to help us as much as he could—sent a stream of letters to the judge, hoping to get the charges dropped or reduced; argued to have us assigned to another institution; begged to have us placed in his custody. None of it worked and now he was left with only prayer.

He stood across from me, his eyes saddened, his strong body sagging.

“Will you write to me?” he asked.

I wanted so much to cry, to put my arms around him and hold him as close as I had held my father. I fought back the tears and tried to swallow, my mouth dirt-dry.

“Don’t worry,” I managed to say. “You’ll hear from me.”

“It’ll mean a lot,” Father Bobby said, his voice as choked and cracked as mine.

He stared at me with wet eyes. Years later I would realize what that look contained, the warnings he wished he could utter. But he couldn’t tell me. He didn’t dare risk making me even more frightened. It took all the strength he had not to grab me, to grab all of us, and run from the steps of that bus. Run as far and as fast as we could. Run until we were all free.

“Would you do me a favor?” I asked him.

“Name it.”

“Check on my mother and father,” I said. “These last few weeks, they look ready to kill each other.”

“I will,” Father Bobby said.

“And no matter what you hear, tell ’em I’m doin’ okay,” I said.

“You want me to lie?” Father Bobby said, a smile breaking through the sadness, one hand on my shoulder.

“It’s a good lie, Father,” I said. “You can do it.”

Father Bobby moved from the bus and watched as I
boarded, his eyes scanning the faces of the other boys already in their seats. He pulled another cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, inhaling deeply. He then went over to my father and stood by his side until the bus closed its doors and pulled away from the curb. Then the two men—one a priest, the other an ex-con—walked with heads down and hands inside their pockets toward a nearby subway station for the ride back to the only place either one ever trusted.

2

T
HE
W
ILKINSON
H
OME
for Boys held 375 youthful offenders, housed in five separate units spread across seven well-tended acres. It had two large gyms, a football field, a quarter-mile oval track, and one chapel suitable for all religions.

From the outside, the facility resembled what those who ran it most wanted it to resemble—a secluded private school. One hundred guards were on hand to monitor the inmates. The majority were local recruits only a few years older than their oldest charges. For them, this was a way-slop on a path to other jobs in law enforcement or government. A two-year tour of duty at Wilkinson, which was the average stay for most guards, always looked good on a résumé.