Nathan's Run

Chapter 10

Nathan's nervousness disappeared as soon as he started talking. As he spoke on the phone, he paced a repeating course around the bedroom and the master bath. It seemed that when his feet were moving, so was his mind.

"Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?" he demanded.

"Whatever happened to the sanctity of human life?" Although her voice was smooth and soothing, her manner was very abrupt, putting Nathan on edge.

"What does that mean?"

"That means that killing is wrong. Don't you think that killing is wrong?"

"Of course I do. But it's no wronger than getting killed. I don't remember you being there last night. You don't have any idea what went on in there."

"Did you kill the guard?"

Nathan's voice rose in volume and pitch with his frustration. "Yes, but… "

Denise cut him off. "No buts, Nathan. Stop right there. You killed the guard. What more is there to know? You're on the run, boy. You're a fugitive, a hazard to our society. I don't want you on our streets. I want you under control, behind bars."

"There aren't any bars," Nathan corrected.

"What?"

"There aren't any bars. Just heavy doors. In Juvey, I mean."

"Don't change the subject, Nathan," Denise scolded. "Why don't you hang up the phone right now and call the police? Turn yourself in, before you or somebody else gets hurt."

Nathan sat back down on the corner of the bed. "I can't go back," he said matter-of-factly. "If I go back they'll just hurt me again. Or kill me. That's what Ricky was trying to do! I can't go back and just let them finish the job."

The line was silent again for a long moment while Denise put it together. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You say that the guard was trying to kill you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And why would that be?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Kids shouldn't cuss on the radio."

"Oh, sure, you're a fine one to talk. You can't even say your name without cussing."

Denise laughed. This was a pretty sharp kid she was dealing with. "Maybe that explains why we don't get too many kids calling in here."

Or maybe its because what's-his-name said you don't talk to kids, Nathan didn't say.

"All right, Nathan," Denise said, "let's start over again. You say, in essence, that you killed the guard in self-defense."

"Yes. Right. Except they're not called guards. They're supervisors. You get in trouble if you call them guards."

"Well, the last thing I want to do is get in trouble with the supervisors." Denise was surprised to hear the tone in her own voice become warmer. There was something about this kid that was truly disarming. "Why don't I just shut up and listen. You tell us what actually happened last night."

Nathan propped himself on three pillows against the headboard of the big bed and stretched his feet out in front of him. "It's kind of hard to know where to start," he began. "I learned the hard way that I'd never get along with the other residents. Their idea of a good time was to beat the crap out of me and steal my stuff and, well, do really bad things to me. They'd steal my food and stuff like that. I tried to ignore them, you know? Like my dad used to tell me? But jeez, you gotta eat sometime. It got to the point where I had to snarf everything off my plate while I was still in the food line. For the first month I was there, they wouldn't let me alone. I tried fighting back, but I just got smeared."

"Why didn't you tell someone?" Denise interrupted.

Nathan snorted bitterly. "Yeah, right. I tried that once on my first day there. Big mistake. It was Ricky that I told, as a matter of fact. He's the guy that, well, you know… that I I…" He just gathered up his strength and he said it. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I know I shouldn't have done what I did, but Ricky was a real dickhead. Urn, sorry.

"Anyway, there's this area in the JDC where everybody gets together for school or basketball or just talking, or whatever. I was in there, trying to read, when Ricky came up to me and told me I had to come with him. I knew I was in trouble, but I didn't know why.. ."

For the next eighteen minutes, Nathan unraveled his side of the story for millions of radio listeners from coast to coast. He spoke articulately, and with the kind of animation that only a child can generate. Denise interrupted only three times to clarify what he was saying, but otherwise sat silently, staring at her control board, envisioning in her own mind the events described by Nathan. By the time the boy was done, The Bitch was twelve commercials behind, but even the sponsors wouldn't complain. This was great radio.

Nathan had long since finished the books in the JDC library that were worth reading, preferring novels to the comic books favored by the other residents. That day being the Fourth of July, it seemed appropriate to reread April Morning by Howard Fast, a story about a young boy whose life is changed by the Battle of Lexington.

The recreation hall was literally and figuratively the center of activity at the Juvenile Detention Center. Roughly hexagonal in shape and fabricated out of concrete block painted yellow-orange, the rec hall served all nonsleeping activities. Three glass-partitioned rooms served as makeshift classrooms during the day, with the largest of the rooms doubling as a dining hall. The detention cells extended down two hallways on opposite ends of the hexagon-one for the boys and one for the girls. From seven in the morning until eight at night, the doors to those hallways remained locked. By eight-thirty they were locked again, with their residents inside.

The sixth side of the hexagon was the control room, half-Lexan and half-concrete. When residents were in the rec hall, the control room was occupied. Reinforced doors on either side led to the administrative areas and to the Crisis Unit.

At around seven o'clock that night, Ricky entered the rec hall from the administrative section, walked directly over to Nathan, and lifted him out of the chair by his ear. "Come with me, you little shit," he said.

Nathan yelped, "Ow! What'd I do?"

"You know what you did," Ricky hissed, his breath smelling of booze and cigarettes. He yanked Nathan across the rec hall toward the door on the other side of the control station. "Maybe a night in the Unit will teach you to draw on the walls."

Nathan hung onto Ricky's forearm with both hands, and danced along on tiptoes to keep his ear from being ripped from his head. "Let go, Ricky, please," he pleaded. "I didn't do anything. Honest to God, Ricky, I didn't do anything!"

Ricky didn't reply, except to lift a little higher on the ear. All activity in the rec hall stopped as dozens of eyes watched the smallest resident of the WC being dragged across the room by the man they all feared most. Each of them looked away, though, as Nathan made eye contact with them, silently pleading for help that he knew they couldn't offer, even if they'd wanted to.

Ricky paused at the door to the Crisis Unit long enough to snap his key ring from his belt. As the lock turned, Nathan began to panic. The Crisis Unit was little more than a single cell, set apart from all the rest as a place where a resident in crisis could regain his composure and set his head straight. In reality, it was a place of punishment, where food or clothes or even light could be denied until such time as the resident was prepared to change his ways. Although it was rarely used, the Crisis Unit had a reputation among the residents. Nathan was terrified.

The lock turned, and the door opened. Nathan yelled louder still, crying like a baby, and promising not to be bad anymore. He started to grab the doorjamb, but instantly had to return his hands to Ricky's wrist. "Ricky, you're hurting me!"

"No shit, jerkoff. If you yell one more time, you'll find out what hurt really means."

Once they were through the door, they were in an area of the JDC where Nathan had never been. The hallway was narrow, barely enough room for the door to swing open. Ricky changed his grip to Nathan's bicep and shoved the boy against the opposite wall, holding him in place with a stiff arm while he once again locked the door to the rec hall. Down to the left, maybe eight feet, the hallway opened up again slightly. Around an angled corner was the door marked with the dreaded words, "CRISIS UNIT."

Nathan renewed his struggle, pulling his arm from Ricky's grasp, only to be taken to the floor by his hair. Ricky followed him down to the ground and placed his mouth an inch from Nathan's ear. "Listen to me, jerkoff," he growled, droplets of spittle splashing against Nathan's cheek. "You're going in that room over there, one way or another, if I have to break bones to make it happen. Do you understand me?"

Nathan nodded, his face pressed against the tile floor. He tried to look at Ricky, but couldn't focus through the tears in his eyes.

"And stop crying, you fucking cunt." He stood once again, keeping a tight hold on a fistful of Nathan's hair and dragging him down the short hallway. He one-handed the lock again, and half-shoved, half-tossed Nathan into the tiny cell.

The Crisis Unit was surprisingly like Nathan's own quarters, though about half the size, with a metal cot and thin mattress on one side of the room, and a combination toilet and sink on the other. There was no source of outside light, the only illumination coming from a glaring bank of fluorescent lights set above the ceiling behind reinforced glass. The floor was bare concrete, without the tile he had in his own cell. And it was cold, much colder than the always-chilly residential wing.

"Take off your shoes and hand them to me," Ricky commanded.

"why?"

"Do what I tell you, boy."

Nathan knew better than to argue. He did as he was told, kicking off the standard-issue black sneakers without untying them. He handed the shoes over to Ricky with one hand while rubbing his sore ear with the other.

"And the socks."

"But it's cold in here."

Ricky just glared, and held out his hand expectantly. Nathan slumped to the edge of the cot and started to cry again. He hated himself for giving in to the tears. No matter how hard he tried, he always ended up crying in front of these people. The fact that they all took such pleasure in it really pissed him off.

One foot at a time, Nathan scooped off his socks and handed them to Ricky, who abruptly left, locking the door behind him. Nathan listened to the footsteps disappear down the hall.

"What did I do wrong?!" he shrieked, loudly enough that his ears rang from the echo off the concrete walls.

Cold, confused and miserable, Nathan drew his legs up and rested his forehead on his knees, forcing himself to regain his composure. A single swipe of his sleeve cleaned his eyes and nose. Only ten more months, he told himself Only ten more months, and I'm out of here. It's been eight months already. In half that time, it'll be a year, and after half of that, I get out. I can do this. Easy as pie.

The trick, he had found, was to make the time go as quickly as possible; and no time passed more quickly than sleep. Keeping his knees up, Nathan lay on his side, and tried to make his feet disappear into his coveralls for warmth.

"These people are such assholes," he. said aloud.

The sound of a key in the lock awoke Nathan with a start. Though the light was on within his cell, he could tell through the three-by-five-inch observation window in the door that the hallway beyond it was dark. For a long while after the lock turned, nothing happened. Nathan sat up and brought his knees to his chest again. He remembered seeing a scene like this in a movie once, where the door creaked open and at first there was nothing there. But then, all of a sudden, a vampire appeared and made everybody scream in their seats.

It was a stupid thing to think about, he scolded himself. There were no such things as vampires, and that stuff in the movies was all made up anyway. They called it special effects, things that some brainiac engineers thought up just to scare people.

His dad had always chided him for having an overactive imagination, always imagining creatures and burglars in the dark. Though he told himself in those seconds when he sat on the bunk waiting for the door to open that there was nothing to be afraid of, the fear he felt was quite real. His heart pounded in his chest like a drum. His breathing started to get noisy. Should he get up and go to the door? Was somebody coming in? Maybe he had a friend in the JDC after all, and this was a signal that it was okay for him to walk out.

Nathan jumped again when the door finally started to move inward, revealing Ricky standing alone in the doorway. He was drunk. Or stoned. Nathan could tell by the empty look in his eyes. It was the look that always preceded the beatings from Uncle Mark. Ricky was hiding something in his right hand, keeping it just out of sight behind his back. The look in his eyes got even emptier.

Nathan knew something was going to happen. For the first time in his life, he felt that his life was threatened. Without thinking, and without changing his position on the bed, he rolled his weight to the balls of his feet. He had an idea there was going to be a fight, and while he wasn't much of a fighter, something in Ricky's face told him that this would be the fight of his life-for his life.

Ricky entered the room slowly and smiled oddly. "You poor bastard," he slurred. "You never really belonged here, you know. Sooner or later the others would have killed you anyway."

Anyway? Nathan's mind raced now. Did he say anyway? That meant.. .

Ricky halved the distance between them in a single step.

Nathan reacted by pressing himself against the block wall. He was cornered.

"I'll try not to make it hurt too bad, kid," he said, his weird smile getting broader. "You ever cleaned a fish?"

Nathan stared fixedly at Ricky's hidden right hand. Sure, he had cleaned a lot of fish. You start with a sharp knife low in their bellies, and then split them open up to the head. You let their guts slide out onto the table. Then…

Nathan looked desperately for a way to dash around Ricky. It was easy to outmaneuver a drunk; he had proven that a hundred times with Uncle Mark, though there was always hell to pay later. But the cell was so small and Ricky was so big that there was nowhere to duck and dash to get around him.

He saw the knife. If Ricky had acted quickly and just lashed out at Nathan, it would have ended right there. He was certainly close enough. But Ricky had chosen drama over efficiency, waving the knife around in front of Nathan's face. "What do you think it's gonna feel like… "

Nathan didn't hesitate. Bracing his back against the wall, he shot his leg straight out, driving his heel squarely into Ricky's testicles. Ricky staggered a half-step, then slumped to his knees. Nathan attempted to vault over Ricky's stooped shoulders, but the cot moved as he pushed off, and he only made it halfway, his knees contacting Ricky's head and making them both tumble to the ground. Before he could get fully to his feet, Nathan felt a strong hand around his wrist, pulling him back down to the floor.

"Let go!" Nathan yelled, launching another kick, this one impacting Ricky's nose and making a loud crunch.

Ricky's hold on the boy's wrist weakened, but it didn't break. Nathan tried another kick, but this time missed completely, losing his balance and falling back down to the floor. Ricky was bleeding profusely from both nostrils, and as he struggled to catch his breath, he blew a bloody mist into the air. "I'm gonna cut your fucking head off," Ricky hissed.

The knife came down at Nathan in a wide, powerful arc from above. Using his free hand, Nathan was able to deflect the trajectory just enough to make it miss, absorbing most of the energy in his elbow. The knife hand recoiled instantly for another strike, but Nathan held onto the wrist, causing Ricky to let go of Nathan's own wrist. Using both hands now, Nathan concentrated his whole struggle on the hand with the knife, slowing down his assailant's motion and limiting his ability to get a good stroke.

When the knife was back to the top of its arc, Nathan pulled himself up on his knees and lunged at Ricky's knife hand with his teeth. He bit down as hard as he could on Ricky's clenched hand, and he could feel the skin break and little bones give way to his incisors. The taste of blood filled his mouth, but he ignored it.

Ricky howled like a dog when the pain registered. "You fucking shit! You fight like a cunt!"

He waved his arm wildly, trying to break Nathan's grip, but the teeth only sank deeper, until he finally let go of the knife, allowing it to drop to the floor. "Goddammit!" In one smooth motion, Ricky swung Nathan close, then drove a pistonlike punch into the boy's right eye.

Behind his eyes, Nathan felt an explosion in his brain. He had never been hit that hard, and the impact of the punch sent him reeling against the cot, knocking it on its side. For a full five seconds, Nathan and Ricky stared at each other, allowing some of the agony to drain from their bodies. Then, together, they eyed the knife on the floor, and together they lunged for it.

Nathan had told himself a million times: a sober kid can outmaneuver a drunk adult any day of the week. And the Fourth of July was no exception. He snatched the knife from the concrete and whirled around in a backhanded slashing motion designed to make Ricky jump back.

But just as offensive moves are slowed by alcohol, so are defensive ones. Unable to react quickly enough to protect himself Ricky seemed to watch dumbly as the blade came around in a horizontal arc and buried itself to the hilt in his abdomen.

Nathan felt as shocked as Ricky looked as the knife drove itself home. Ricky fell straight back, like a tree, his lower legs folding under his butt, and his head impacting loudly against the concrete.

"I'm sorry!" Nathan shouted. "Oh, God, Ricky, I'm sorry!"

Ricky didn't respond; he just stared at the ceiling. His hands gently massaged the handle of the knife, as though he were thinking of pulling it out, but couldn't muster the courage.

Nathan didn't know what to do. But he knew that if he didn't do something, Ricky would die. Ricky seemed obsessed with the knife; maybe he should help him and pull it out for him. That would make him feel better. Nathan looked over his shoulder toward the door, in hopes that someone might have miraculously arrived with the answers. No, he was going to have to do this on his own. He moved hesitantly closer to the knife, closed his eyes, and pulled it free of the wound.

As the knife pulled clear of the wound, Nathan was instantly splashed with a torrent of blood pumping from the gaping wound, like crimson water from a vampire's drinking fountain. The sound from Ricky's throat was inhuman, half moan and half howl. His breath gurgled in his throat, like the sound of blowing bubbles through a straw.

Nathan knew right away that removing the knife was a mistake. Instinctively, he put his hands over the wound to try to stop the blood from spurting out, but it was useless; the gore kept pumping relentlessly from Ricky's belly, and now from his mouth as well.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Ricky," Nathan said over and over again, mantralike. In his heart, he knew he had killed him.

Out of nowhere, Ricky's hand shot up to Nathan's throat and shut off his air supply. For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Nathan locked his hands around Ricky's wrist, trying to make him let go. But, like a mouse caught in an eagle's talon, Nathan was trapped, feeling that his head was going to explode from the pressure. Ricky's eyes showed murder. He was going to die, and he was going to take Nathan with him.

The knife! It was still on the floor! Nathan ventured a hand away from Ricky's wrist, and found the blade an inch from his knee. This time, it would be no accident. Nathan mustered all the strength he had left to straight-arm the knife into Ricky's chest. He struck over and over again, each impact making a grotesque slurping sound. After the second thrust, Ricky's grip relaxed a little, once again allowing air and blood to flow to Nathan's brain. After the fifth, Ricky let go completely, and with a last rattling breath, he died.

Nathan panicked. The Crisis Unit looked like a house of horrors. A supervisor was dead, and they were going to blame him. Sure as hell, there would be nothing that he'd be able to say to anyone to make them believe that Ricky had started it.

Say goodbye to a ten-month release. No sirree, baby, killing a supervisor was about the worst crime there was. They'd throw his young ass in jail until he was twenty-one, if he could get out even then.

No, staying there and facing the music was not an option. Nathan had to get the hell out of the Juvenile Detention Center. He had to run fast, run hard, and run now. But he'd need keys to get out. Tiptoeing through the river of gore on the floor, Nathan pulled the key ring off Ricky's belt and darted out of the room, locking the door behind him.

From there it was easy. Every key he needed was right there on the ring. The door at the end of the hallway to the left led him into the area he recognized from his first night as the in-processing area. Nathan briefly considered rummaging through the storage closet for the clothes they had stolen from him eight months before, but he decided that every second spent inside the building was a second closer to getting caught. Moving swiftly and silently, he glided past the one-armed chair with the built-in handcuff, next to the desk where that fat fart Gonzalez asked new arrivals endless questions to which he already knew the answers.

The final door was the easiest; Nathan picked the right key the first time. He opened it only a crack at first, praying there wouldn't be a cop or a supervisor on the other side. Again, luck was with him. He slipped through the opening, locked the door from the outside, and tossed the keys into the bushes. Ahead of him lay fifty feet of open grass, leading up a tall hill, and beyond that, freedom. He covered the distance in nothing flat.

Pausing for just a moment at the top of the hill, Nathan looked back at the JDC. Though the elevation changed his perspective, the view was exactly the same as when he had first arrived so long ago. It looked like such a friendly place, constructed of ornamental brick and stone and adorned with pretty flowers and shrubs. Yet, on the inside, the Brookfield Juvenile Detention Center was a garden for hatred. The seeds planted within its walls grew well, nurtured and cultivated by the likes of Ricky and Gonzalez.

From atop this hill, overlooking the entire compound, Nathan swore to himself that he would never allow himself to be confined within those walls again.

".. and so I started running," Nathan finished. He was lying on his stomach now, resting on his elbows and tracing the wood grain of the headboard with his finger.

"So, are you all right?" Denise asked, genuine concern evident in her voice.

"I guess so. My eye hurts some and my ear is sore as hell, but other than that I think I'm okay."

"Do you have any idea at all why the supervisor would want to kill you?" As unbelievable as the kid's story was, Denise believed him.

"Yeah, I think he was crazy. He was drunk. He was stoned. Grown-ups always get like that when they drink."

"Grown-ups like whom?" Denise prodded, sensing a new wrinkle to this extraordinary saga. "Like your father?"

"No." Nathan's reply was startlingly emphatic. "My dad was a good man. He'd never drink or hit anyone. He was terrific."

"What about your mother?"

His voice softened. "I never met my mom. She died when I was just a baby."

Jesus, there was another avenue to pursue. Denise jotted a note on a legal pad. "So, did anyone in your life beat you?"

"I don't want to talk about that," Nathan replied curtly.

"Why not? It might help if people understood some of what you've gone through."

"Bull. People want to think that everybody lives like those perfect families on TV. If I tell them different, they'll just think I'm lying. They can yell and scream and hit their kids, and that's okay, so long as the kid keeps it quiet. But if he hits back, or tries to leave, they call you incorrigible and throw your butt in jail."

"Is that how you ended up in jail? Did you hit back?"

Nathan thought back to all the fights at Uncle Mark's house. He pictured the comical lumbering stride Uncle Mark had when he was drunk, and the numbers of books and utensils and appliances that had been flung across the room, only to miss hitting Nathan not by inches but by feet. He nearly laughed at his memory of the stupid, gaping look on the drunk's face. But then he remembered the leather cowboy belt, and the sound it made when it contacted the bare flesh of his backside, and the traces of humor were gone, snatched out of his soul just as Uncle Mark had snatched all the humor out of his life. Through it all, though, Nathan had known better than to hit back. That would have been his last act in life if he had ever tried it.

Maybe I should tell her everything, Nathan thought. Maybe he should tell her how he once did live a normal life; how his dad had raised him in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, just the two of them. Maybe he should tell millions of people that only three days after Dad's funeral, Uncle Mark locked him in the crawl space under the living room just for grins, and how he only got out by making such a racket that the asshole saw the neighbors looking out their windows.

Surely the audience would enjoy hearing that his screams for help had earned him his first belt licking. Maybe he should tell all those people listening in their cozy houses and offices and cars how Uncle Mark used to like parties with all his druggie friends, and how some of those friends, men and women alike, used to come into his bedroom and touch him in places where kids weren't supposed to be touched.

There were so many things that he could tell, but he wouldn't. There was nothing there that he hadn't already told judges and lawyers and police officers. And all that confiding had certainly cut him a great big fat break, hadn't it?

"No," Nathan answered at length, "I didn't hit anybody back. I stole a car."

Denise was flabbergasted. "You're twelve years old, and you stole a car?"

"Actually, I was eleven when I stole the car:' There was a trace of pride in his answer.

"And why did you do that?"

"I don't want to talk about that, either?'

"Why not?"

"Because it's nobody's business."

"But that's why you got sent to the detention center?" "Yeah, except call it what it is-a jail."

Was it possible that she was admiring this kid? Denise asked herself. This killer? There was something in the directness of his answers that struck a chord with her. It was within his power to lie about things he didn't want to discuss, but he chose instead to not answer the question. He was sharp, all right. And he was apparently facing something that had more layers than she had first thought.

"So, what's the end of the story?" Dehise asked. "Where did you run to? Where are you now?"

Nathan sighed. "I don't think it would be real smart to tell you that, do you?" Grown-ups just couldn't help trying to trick you. He gasped as a terrifying thought jumped into his mind. "Oh my God, can they trace this call?" He suddenly sounded panicky.

"No, no," Denise assured him. "This is a radio station. As long as there's a First Amendment, no one can trace our calls." "You sure?"

Denise looked to Enrique, who was no help. "Sure I'm sure," she guessed with a shrug. At least it sounded like the reasonable answer. She shifted back to the subject at hand. "So, what are you going to do next? You can't just keep running."

"Why not?"

Denise started to answer, but stopped. She really didn't know why not. "Because you'll get caught."

"Well, my only other choice is to turn myself in. How is that any different than getting caught?"

"Nathan, I'm just afraid you'll get hurt."

"Yeah, me too. That's why I'm gonna keep running."

Jesus, this kid was good. "You're making a fool of me out here, Nathan," she said good-naturedly.

"No, you're doing fine," Nathan comforted. "But you see my side now, don't you? When I was in Juvey, I did everything I was supposed to do and got the crap beat out of me. I turned the other cheek, just like I was supposed to, and they just beat me up some more. I tell the supervisor, and he tries to kill me. I defend myself, and the people who listen to your show call me a murderer and want to put me in the electric chair. Nobody really…" His voice caught in his throat. He fell silent. The silence lasted a long time.

"Cares?" Denise helped.

Nathan's lower lip was trembling now, and he hated himself for losing control on national radio. He'd felt so together at the beginning, but suddenly a terrible sadness poured over him, like a bucket of lukewarm water. "Yes," he whispered.

Denise's eyes welled up unexpectedly at the sound of the tiny voice. "You're frightened, aren't you, honey?"

"I've got to go," he croaked. He hung up.

In the dead air that followed, Denise looked to Enrique for guidance, but he just stared back.

"Well," Denise said at length, "that was something. Nathan, if you're still listening, we wish you all the luck in the world, however this turns out. Sounds to me like maybe you're due for some. I think everybody needs a minute or two to regain their composure. We'll be right back after these messages."