The White House Boys: An American Tragedy (10 page)
The road leading to the laundry, located near the smoke stack, 2008.
Photo by R. Kiser
Perhaps I would have been better off keeping my original assignment at the hospital. At least there, they intended to repair the damage, not cause it.
O
ne Saturday evening, the boys from Cleveland cottage lined up to march over to one of the other cottages to watch a movie. (Saturday mornings were for beatings, but Saturday nights were generally for movie watching. The bad and the good all in one day.)
The large white movie screen was attached to the side of the building and a projector was lined up with it atop the small grassy hill where we sat. Not far from us were five or six large steel garbage cans with steam rolling out of them.
“What’s burning in those cans?” I asked one of the boys in front of me.
“It’s peanuts,” he told me.
“Why would they put peanuts in a garbage can?”
“To cook ’em,” he replied.
It sounded strange to me, but right before the movie began, we lined up to receive a scoop of the peanuts on a piece of newspaper for a snack during the show. As the movie was just beginning, the boy next to me accidentally spilled his peanuts into the grass. Unable to clean them off, he left them there to be thrown away after the movie.
Feeling sorry for him, I offered to share my small pile of peanuts with him. As the movie played, I sat with the newspaper lying across my lap. He would reach over and pick up a peanut or two, eat them, and reach for more.
Suddenly, the two of us were being snatched up by the shirt collars.
“What the damn hell are you two queers doing over here?” snarled Mr. Hatton.
“I’m just sharing my peanuts with him,” I told him.
“I’ve been watching you two, and I am trying to figure out who is playing with whose balls over here.”
“We ain’t doing nothing wrong, Mr. Hatton, sir,” I said, my voice shaking.
“You two get your little asses up and stand to the side.”
The boy and I got up from our spots and walked to the edge of the building.
“Do you think we’re going down?” whispered the boy.
We stood at the edge of the building for almost an hour until the movie ended. We were told to return to our cottages and that we were to report to Mr. Hatton’s office the following Saturday morning, a week later. Since it was Saturday night, the scheduled beatings had already concluded for the previous week’s violations.
For the next six days, I could not eat or drink anything without throwing up. Almost every night I lay in my bed, covering my face with the scratchy, wool army blanket so the other boys in the cottage would not see me crying.
When Saturday arrived, I walked to Mr. Hatton’s office and stood in line with the other boys who were scheduled to be beaten. As we marched toward the White House, I counted the boys lined up in front of me. I was too afraid to turn my head and count the ones behind me.
After arriving at the house of horror, Mr. Hatton took out his keys and opened the side door of the building. Mr. Tidwell looked on. When the door opened, we marched inside and headed down the short hallway leading into the beating chambers. As always, the smell was almost unbearable, and there was blood on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
Reaching the end of the hallway, we took a left and were ordered to stop. There was a small cement cell on the right and another cell on the left. Two boys were pushed into the room on the left and the others were made to stand in the small hallway.
“KISER!” yelled Mr. Hatton.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Hatton, sir,” I responded, as I did my best to squeeze between the other boys in order to make my way to the front of the line. He reached out and grabbed the boy behind me and pushed him into the small cell on the right.
“Get on that goddamn bed, grab that bedrail, and I had best not hear a peep!” he shouted.
Shaking and crying, the young boy lay down on the bed and grabbed the rail. I watched as Mr. Hatton reached beneath the pillow and pulled out the leather strap.
I near went crazy as I watched Mr. Hatton bend both his knees and, with all his might, swing the leather whip down upon the boy. The sounds and the screams were like nothing I had ever heard before or would ever hear again, even in the worst of horror movies.
With my mind in a state of chaos and total confusion, I stuck my left hand in my mouth and bit down so hard that blood squirted out. (The scar that resulted still remains even to this day, fifty years later.) I do not remember how many licks the boy received, but the beating went on for about ten minutes.
As the boy slid off the bed and tried to get to his feet, Mr. Hatton grabbed me by the neck and pushed me into the room, knocking the boy he had just beaten to the floor.
“So, we like feeling other boy’s balls do we?” asked Mr. Hatton.
“I wasn’t doing anything like that, Mr. Hatton, sir. Really I didn’t.”
“Then you admit he was feeling you?”
“No, sir, Mr. Hatton, sir. We weren’t doing anything ’cept eating peanuts, Mr. Hatton, sir.”
“Just a bunch of goddamn niggers and fuckin’ queers is all they send us nowadays,” he replied, pushing me back out into the hallway.
After another boy had been beaten, I was called forward and questioned about the peanut incident. Then another boy was beaten, and I was questioned again. This happened over and over. Each time I was called forward, I feared it was my turn for a beating. Each time, I would be questioned and then pushed back out into the hallway to wait. When the last boy had been whipped, I knew it was the end of the line for me. With my head down, I walked forward and stood before Mr. Hatton.
“I’m sorry for what I done, Mr. Hatton, sir,” I mumbled.
“I’m too tired to beat your goddamn queer little ass today. You report to my office next Saturday morning.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Hatton, sir. THANK YOU, MR. HATTON, SIR!” I shouted, then ran out the doorway as fast as I could back to the safety of my cottage.
The Fear, the Anger, the
Acceptance
“Y
ou look at me cross-eyed one more time, and I’ll have Hatton beat the pure living shit out of you,” said Dr. Curry in a very firm voice.
I didn’t think I was looking cross-eyed, but I tried my hardest not to look cross-eyed anyway. Let there be no doubt that when Dr. Curry spoke—or anyone in authority at the school, for that matter— even God himself was to pay attention. If not, God would surely share in their wrath.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Curry, sir. I was just playing around in my mind,” I told him.
I watched Dr. Curry as he puffed on his pipe. By now, I was used to the smell of that cherry blend of tobacco he was so fond of. (To this day, the smell of cherry tobacco nauseates me because of the disturbing feelings it conjures up.)
As I sat motionless, as did I on most occasions when visiting his office, saliva began to build up in my mouth. I was afraid to swallow for fear that he might hear me as the slick, wet moist mixture fell down into my throat. The more I thought about the spit, the more I felt my mouth fill up with it. I knew that I had to swallow or I might choke. So, with one big, brave swallow, I allowed the large ball of wetness to slip into my throat.
GULP
.
“Are you mocking me boy?” he asked without looking up from his paperwork.
“No, sir, Dr. Curry, sir. I was just swallowing my spit.”
“Did I tell you that you could spit?”
“No, sir, Dr. Curry, sir.”
I hate him worse than Mother Winters,
I thought to myself.
Dr. Curry began humming some unrecognizable tune. “Hmmm . . . mmm . . . hmmm . . . mmm.”
I was afraid to look at him cross-eyed and I was afraid to swallow, so I tried to sit perfectly still, and stared straight ahead. I knew that at any moment this devil had the power to have me beaten and possibly killed, and I didn’t want to die no time soon.
“How many times do you play with yourself each day?”
How many more times would he ask me the same damn question? How many more times would I have to say, “Dr. Curry, I ain’t never done that kind of thing”?
I denied it again.
“Roger Dean Kiser, you are one little lying bastard. Everyone of you boys do that. RIGHT?” he said, his voice getting louder and angrier.
“I don’t know that, Dr. Curry, sir.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, sir, Dr. Curry. I wouldn’t ever do that.”
The more he talked and the more he hounded me, the more I despised him.
I hope someone kills him one day
, crossed my mind. It frightened me that I thought that, and I hoped that didn’t mean I had the “killer instinct.”
“You are going to sit in that damn seat until you tell me the truth.”
I said not a word and my fists began to tighten. Afraid he might notice, I loosened them and forced my hands to relax. I wanted so much to scream, “I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!” But I did not dare.
“What’s it going to be?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Curry, sir.”
“Are you going to sit there all night or are you going to show me how you jack off? Stand up and drop your drawers and let’s have a look at the goods.”
I knew right then and there that I was as good as dead. I knew that a beating at the White House was now at hand and that there was no way out unless I did exactly what the sick bastard wanted.
Slowly, I rose from my chair and began to unbuckle my belt.
He leaned back, satisfied. “Let’s get a move on. I don’t have all day.”
I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run. I wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to hide. I wanted to die, but I just didn’t know how I could make myself die right there on the spot.
I will never forget the horror of having to drop my pants in his office that day. His eyes scanned my young body as if Santa Clause had just delivered him the perfect gift. He smiled.
As my body began to swell, I watched his bushy eyebrows twitch up and down and his smile slowly faded. His expression changed and he lowered his head until his chin touched his chest, and he sat there like that for more than a minute. Then, all at once, he jerked his head upward and shouted, “Get your perverted little goddamn ass out of here, you freaky little bastard. DO YOU HEAR ME?!”
I pulled up my pants quickly and darted out of his office in complete and utter shame. I hated the entire world. I knew the day would come when I would get even with grownups. They were all cruel and evil, and somehow I had to save the world from them, even if I had to destroy it.
I can only thank God that a few good, kind people came into my life before I totally destroyed myself because of people like Dr. Robert Curry.
The beatings at the White House were bad enough, but the verbal and sexual abuse were far worse than was any beating. The physical wounds would one day heal, but for some reason, the hatred I felt for Dr. Robert Curry has always remained. It’s as if those psychological wounds try to close up, but then something will remind me, like the smell of that cherry tobacco, and the wounds tear open.
T
hough I had taken puffs of discarded cigarette butts at the orphanage from time to time, I was smart enough to know that smoking was not worth a brutal White House beating. Anytime I saw someone with a cigarette or even if a cigarette butt was just lying on the ground, I stayed clear of the area.