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The Unwelcome Son
By David Ritchie
Billy and I had walked for about three hours in the hot Nebraska
sun by the time we reached downtown Lincoln. We were not able to get back on the freight train after jumping off to get away from a hobo that had
threatened us with a straight razor. We had seen the violence on the
trains, but we had not yet become victims.
We had not bathed or changed clothes in several weeks, and I had lost so much weight since I ran away from home that my clothes hung loosely from my grease-covered body.
I was relieved to find that Lincoln had a public water fountain. I drank the cold water until my throat hurt. But highest on my agenda was finding a place to work in return for a meal; we hadn’t eaten regularly for weeks. In fact, we subsisted mainly by eating the vegetables that were shipped on the trains we hobo’d on, which were stacked high at pick-up points along the track system.
Billy decided he was going to look for a place to re-connect with the trains; he wanted to go on. But I was tired and hungry. We were heading to the great lakes hoping for a job in one of the tugboat operations there. Billy grew up in Chicago and said he had always wanted to work on the tugs.
We talked for a few minutes. Small talk that meant we cared about each other, but couldn’t come right out and speak it.
After he left, I asked around at the little shops and cafes if they had work available. No one did, so I walked around the industrial part of town a while, and found a mission with a soup kitchen. I could see a line of men outside, so I took the rear position of the line.
Within two or three minutes, a policeman on a motorcycle pulled up and motioned me over. I stepped over to him and smiled. I didn’t want to look like a runaway.
“Hi, what’s amatter?” I asked. I couldn’t see his eyes through the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.
“May I see your identification, please?”
“Have I done something wrong?” I was a little nervous now.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
Now a slight smile appeared.
“Right. Do you have any ID?”
“Uh, no. I left it at home. I’m just walking around, did I do
somethin’ wrong?”
“What’s your home address?”
“1512 Main. Number three.”
“North Main or South Main?”
“South” I said without hesitation.
Now he laughed out loud.
“Ain’t no South Main!”
He softened a bit.
“Where you from, son?”
“Texas.”
“You look a mess. What did you say your name was?”
“Ben.”
“Look, Ben, I don’t believe you’re eighteen, and I don’t believe you’re from around here, either. Let me tell you what I gotta do. I’m going to call a car to transport you to the station and find out who you are and where you’re from. It makes a difference if you are under sixteen, so tell me again how old you are.”
I did not want to admit my lie, so I reiterated that I was eighteen.
He nodded, picked up the microphone from the motorcycle, and talked in police code for a few seconds.
“The car’ll be here in a minute.” He squenched his face a little.” When’s the last time you bathed, son?”
“Don’t know. Maybe a few weeks ago.”
The police car pulled up and I was placed into the rear seat. I was so scared I
fought back tears. I was only fifteen, but I couldn’t tell them.
***
I was numb during the ride to the city jail until we pulled into the receiving area. There everything changed. Instead of being a runaway kid, I was another criminal. The fingerprinting was a cold and unsympathetic experience. I was in a very small room with thick windows and there was a guard at each of two doors. I was suffocating. And no one called me by my name any longer.
“Step in there and take your clothes off. All of ‘em.”
I stripped down to my underwear.
“I said everything, boy. Put those clothes in a pile on the bench.”
I stood naked in a room about 20’x30’. The floor was stained vinyl, and where it abutted the walls, the yellowed ends curled up. The door window had chicken
coop wire embedded in it, and the door was constructed of heavy metal. The
florescent lights gave the room a menacing look. Several minutes later two
policemen came in loudly, and one searched my clothes inch-by-inch. The other pulled on rubber gloves, snapping them at each finger.
“Boy, step over here, please. Place your hands out in front of you.”
He inspected between my fingers. Then he ran his hand through my hair.
“Put your hands on your head now, please.”
As he inspected the crevasses of my body, I felt powerless and humiliated. Oddly, he was kind in his touch.
“Boy, when’s the last time you took a bath?” He squenched up his face like the motorcycle cop did earlier.
“Been a while.”
“How long?”
“I guess it’d be several weeks. Maybe eight or ten.” I answered quietly.
I was ashamed. I stared at the veined wall in front of me. It had scrape
marks all over, revealing a pale lime green beneath, patterned like bloodshot eyes.
“Relax, kid, no one’s gonna hurt you.”
I hadn’t realized my fist were balled and my arms rigid. And my breath was
labored.
“Put your pants and stuff back on and let’s go.”
“Where we going?”
“I’ll take your picture, issue you an inmate ID, and assign you to a cell for now.”
I was terrified. When I moved it was with the stiffness of C3PO.
“C’mon, kid, get those clothes on and lets go.”
After taking my picture and laminating it for a temporary ID, the officer walked me through a series of metal doors into a holding area consisting of rows of cells. As we walked down the unpainted cement walkway, I could see wild looking men staring at me through the bars. The smell was deodorant and sweat.
Some of the men said things to me I did not exactly understand. The policeman just shook his head.
My voice was a whisper.
“I’m only fifteen.”
“What?”
Still a whisper.
“I’m only fifteen years old.”
“Boy, either speak up or shut up.” As we stopped in front of a pale green cell, I was able to move my face closer to his.
“I…I said I’m only fifteen.”
“Fifteen what?
It dawned on him.
“Fifteen years old! Jesus. Why didn’t you tell us before? You could‘ve saved yourself a lot of trouble, kid. Sit down on that bunk, do not move, and I’ll go talk to the arresting officer and the sergeant. I’ll be right back, and don’t pay any attention to what these animals say to you.”
**
“Boy, what’s your name?” Asked the sergeant.
“Benjamin Hammond. I go by Ben.”
“You fifteen years old?”
“Yessir.”
“We’ll check, you know”
“Yessir.”
Over the next half hour I gave them all the information they wanted.
“Well, we’ll call your daddy and get him to send money for a ticket home, but we’re gonna transport you to the juvenile detention center in the meantime. It ain’t quite like here. Officer Ramirez, call for a van to take this boy to juve for us, will ya?”
“Look, Ben, just do what you’re told and you’ll be fine. You been in trouble before?”
“Nosir.”
“This will be over in a week or so if all checks out. Ok?”
“Ok.”
He called the juvenile center and told them I was coming.
**
The detention center for juveniles was a few miles from the downtown area. During the drive, I remember that the scene around me changed from gray, innocuous buildings, to green pasturelands and oak trees. While in the city, I didn’t see the of the color of the sky, but now I could appreciate the robin’s egg blue draped over the huge oak trees like a mural on an old building.
I rode in he back seat of one of the black and white police cars to the center. The only sound was the hissing of the police radio and a sudden bark of police codes. After a while, we pulled into a fenced commercial area with buildings painted institution green.
The police car pulled past the front reception to a covered and fenced spot at a side door. There was a large woman in a floral print dress waiting. Her large, muscular arms were folded and her face was non-revealing.
“Grab your duffel bag, son.” The policeman said as he opened the
car door to get out.
The woman stood at the door. She didn’t say a word to me. Her eyes had a tight look. I walked up to the bottom of three cement steps leading to her.
“Ma’am, I’m Ben Hammond.”
She looked at me with all the raw power of authority and knowledge of its use.
“Never. Ever, speak until you are spoken to.”
There was complete silence.
“Do you understand?” She said.
“Yes ma’am.” My stomach swam in an abyss of desolation.
The policeman handed her paperwork to sign me in. She signed it and returned it with a word or two I couldn’t hear. She then motioned me through the door.
I followed her through a series of doors similar to the ones at the police station. Chicken wire in the glass, metal, imposing. Each required a different key. Her office is at the end of the hallway. She motioned for me to follow her into the office. Settling into the chair behind her desk, she spoke.
“You’re dirty, boy, we need to fix that first.”
She handed me a bucket containing a liquid soap in a squeeze bottle, and a
large, hard bristled brush.
“Come with me and bring that stuff with you.”
In front of a door marked “Men’s Shower”, she stopped.
“When you are finished, I don’t want to see this greasy stuff on
you, understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“When you’re finished, ring here.” Pointing to a buzzer. “And
wait.”
Later, I finished washing and rang the bell. A few minutes later the woman showed up.
“Jesus, boy! I told you to get that grease off you before you finished. You barely touched it.”
“Ma’am, I…”
“Take those dirty clothes off and get back in the shower.” She said as she pushed me into the shower.
And she followed me into it. She turned the water on hot, manhandled me under the water, and scrubbed me hard enough to remove the top layer of skin.
At this point, the stress of the last weeks took control of me like a lion takes control of an antelope. I fell to the floor of the shower hitting my head on the tiled wall. The shower water dramatized a trickle of blood. I pulled myself into a fetal position, trembling. I remember that I could not cry.
It surprised me when the woman sat down in the shower and took my hand.
“Listen, Ben. We have to be tough here. We don’t know which of the juveniles are violent and will be a problem, and which won’t be.” She ran her other hand through my hair. She stood up.
“Let me help you up.”
As I was getting up, she helped me wrap a towel around my self.
“My name is Mrs. Burton.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She reached down and picked up my dirty clothes and put them in a large trash bin.
“That’s all the clothes I have.”
“Its ok. I have some dungarees and a denim shirt for you. I’ll get you some
shoes and socks, too. Looks like yours have about had it.”
She led me down the hall. I followed her to the second floor where she ushered me into a small room. The room was old, clean, and contained two single beds with a small table between them. The window had the chicken wire in it, like the small window in the door.
I sat down on one of the beds, and Mrs. Burton said she would bring me a change of clothes in a few minutes. She left the room, and I saw there was no
knob on the inside of the door. For a moment, I was afraid that no one would remember that I was in the room. I was afraid no one would remember my name. I laid down and slept. When I woke, there was a pile of clothes on the
other bed and shoes on the floor. When I tried them on they were stiff and
chaffed my raw skin.
I went back to sleep.
**
Sometime that evening, I woke to the clanging of the door. It was Mrs. Burton.
“Ben, I just got a call from the Sergeant Sullivan. He’s the officer who contacted your father about returning you. The sergeant is coming by to talk to you tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to show you to the cafeteria. Are you hungry?”
“Yes ma’am.”
After dinner, she led me to a common room for the detainees where, with a
few others, I absently watched television until the lights blinked with the
signal to return to our rooms.
A deafening buzzer announced the next morning. This was the signal to get ready for breakfast, and a few minutes later I could hear someone unlocking the doors.
After breakfast, Mrs. Burton asked me to her office. As I entered, I could see Sergeant Sullivan sitting in the guest chair.
When she saw me, Mrs. Burton said the sergeant wanted to speak
to me alone as she shut the door behind her.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than the jail, huh?” The gruff man asked.
“Yessir.”
He nodded and pursed his lips, and worry lines formed on his brow.
“Listen, son. Ben. Your daddy doesn’t seem too interested in how and when you get back home to Texas. Didn’t you tell me he was a preacher or faith healer or somethin’?”
I was stunned. But the news was not a surprise.
“Baptist preacher.”
“The guy sounded like an asshole when I talked to him, is he always like that?”
“Yessir.”
“Hell. Here’s what I told him. Due to your age, he didn’t have any choice but to bring you home. You being a minor and all that. Besides, the alternative for you is to be confined in a place like this, and that would be the shits. Know what I mean? Well, I put it on him pretty hard about responsibility and all that. I don’t think he bought it all, but he sent the money for your bus ride home. And that’s the other problem. He sent $45.10. That’s the exact amount for the bus ticket. It’s a two and a half day trip and you need money to eat. What a jerk.”
“It’s ok, I’ve gone longer than that without food. I can…”
“That ain’t gonna happen. We’ll figure it out, but for now don’t think about it. You will be picked up tomorrow morning at 7:30 so we can get to the bus station. Mrs. Burton will have all the paperwork ready when I leave today so there won’t be any delays. Be up and ready.”
“Ok. Where do I go in the morning?”
“Mrs. Burton will have you at the processing room where you came in. She’ll come to get you about 7:15.” He said rising to leave.
He looked back at me one more time as he was leaving.
“The man ever hurt you, son?”
I did not answer.
“What an asshole.” His voice echoed down the hall.
**
Mrs. Burton walked me to the police car, and much to my surprise, she got in beside me. She was silent. The driver was the arresting officer, and in the passenger seat was Sergeant Sullivan. The sergeant looked back at me, smiled, and nodded. I nodded back.
Not one word was said during the ride to the bus station. When
we arrived, we parked in the back, near the busses. The big silver machines were gray caterpillars that would creep along the long, dusty roads of Texas.
All three of them got out.
“We’ve already got the ticket for you, Ben. So let’s go check
your luggage.” Said Sergeant Sullivan.
“I don’t have any luggage.”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot.” He went around to the trunk of the car and
opened it. There was a single old suitcase and two plastic bags. He opened
the suitcase.
“We took up a collection, boy, and here are two pairs of blue jeans, two shirts, and a few other things you gonna need.”
I was amazed. It took a while for it all to register.
“And here are two sacks for you to carry on the bus. It ain’t fancy, but ones got sandwiches and cookies, and things from Mrs. Burton, and the other sack has some books and magazines we thought you might like to look at. No girlie stuff!”
Tears came. And when that happened, Mrs. Burton started crying, too.
“And Tommy, here” pointing to the arresting office, “wants to
give you this.” He said as he handed me a ten-dollar bill.
Mrs. Burton and the sergeant walked me to the bus door. Tommy checked my luggage for me. The sergeant and Mrs. Burton leaned in to me and hugged me.
“If he hurts you again, boy, you call us.” Both the sergeant and Mrs. Burton were nodding their heads.
“Yessir, yes ma’am.” I said sloppily.
I took a seat near the rear of the bus. The smell of diesel fumes was strong. I looked out the darkly stained window and waved good-bye to all three of them.
When we rounded the corner where I would have my last view of them, they had
not yet moved.
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