Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

Lune told me that his real parents had been stolen, and he had to find them. There was some kind of plot—I couldn’t follow everything he said—and the people who said they were his parents were part of it. He was a very logical kid. Parents wouldn’t hurt their own children, right? So anyone who did that, they couldn’t be the kid’s real parents, understand?

I did understand. But I didn’t know how to tell him what I knew. Being crazy was his only treasure, his one protection. I was his friend, and I wouldn’t steal from him.

Instead, I schooled him. There were some groups they made us go to. Sometimes we had to make things out of clay and crap. And we always had to be taking those tests. But, most of the time, they left us alone. I told him he couldn’t be telling people about his real parents—they wouldn’t understand.

“And they’re probably in on it, too,” he said, nodding.

Lune was always seeing patterns in things. He figured out that the big-cheese doctor was getting it on with one of the women who worked there. Not that Lune actually saw them, or anything. He just put it together. He tried to explain to me how he did it; but, even when he broke it down, it still seemed like magic.

One time after Lune told me, I was alone with the big cheese. I asked him for another cigarette. I could see his face get red. I told him I thought sometimes people did things other people wouldn’t understand if they knew about them. He gave me a weird look. I knew Lune had nailed it then, so I told the big cheese sometimes people did things with other people. Everybody had secrets. I liked to smoke cigarettes. Couldn’t that just be a secret between him and me? I mean, I’d never tell if I knew one of his secrets.

The big cheese’s face turned dark and ugly, like he was being strangled. I thought maybe he was going to step on that button under his desk and get some people in there to fuck me up. I didn’t move.

But when he pushed his pack of Marlboros across the desk toward me, I knew Lune was smarter than all the people who were keeping him locked up.

Lune kept charts. Of everything. You couldn’t make any sense out of them if you saw them, but he said that was the point.

Other kids started hanging around with us. For protection, I thought, at first. That’s the way we always did it Inside. Four little guys can stop a gorilla, if they’re willing enough. But it wasn’t me; it wasn’t for protection. It was to get close to Lune. No matter what any of the kids told him—even the real crazy ones—Lune had an answer. An explanation that made sense. To them, anyway. He always said it was all patterns; you just had to figure out what they meant.

I think he even scared the doctors after a while. That’s when I knew we had to go.

“There’s a way out of here,” I whispered to him one night. “It’s all in the patterns, right?”

“Yes! It’s always in the patterns. But if I left, how would my real parents—?”

“They’re never going to let your real parents know you’re here,” I told him, urgently. “You’ve got to get out. And get away . Far fucking far away, understand?”

“What would I do?”

“I don’t know; I’m not smart like you. But I know you have to get older before you have any power. We’re just kids. Nobody’s going to do anything we want.”

“Where would I get power?”

“Money,” I told him, with the smugness of a baby thug’s world-view. “That’s the one thing that will always make people do what you want.”

“I could get money.…”

“Sure you could, man. You’re smart enough to get all kinds of money. But not in here.”

“Would you come with me?”

“I’ll go out of here with you. We’ll break together. But we can’t stay together, Lune.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to jail again,” I told him, no smugness in my words then, but no less certainty. “I know how to get along locked up, Lune. But you don’t. And they wouldn’t let us be together in there, anyway.”

“I could—”

“No, you couldn’t,” I cut in, heading him off. “You could never be safe Inside, Lune. But out there, in the World, you could make it. You’d figure it out, for sure.”

“I still don’t under—”

“Listen to me!” I hissed at him. “If you stay here , if you fucking keep talking about your real parents, they’re gonna shoot you up with so many of their fucking ‘meds’ you’ll end up like Harry.”

Harry was a diaper-wearing vegetable who’d once been dangerous … to the guards.

“That would fit their pattern,” Lune said, finally coming around.

“You’re not a criminal, brother,” I told him. “And you’re big-time smart. You’ll find a way to be out there, stay out there, make some money. Then you’ll be able to look for your real parents.”

“What are you going to—?”

“I’m going to steal,” I told him, pridefully. To be a good thief was my highest ambition back then. So I could buy what I wanted more than anything on earth—to be safe. “And they’re going to catch me sooner or later and put me back Inside. I have to wait until I’m big enough to steal good . Then I’ll have money, too, see?”

“Sure!”

That same night, Lune started looking for a seam in the fabric.

He found one so fast I didn’t trust it at first. I thought he’d look for a ventilation duct we could crawl through or something like that. But Lune told me to keep an eye on a kid named Swift. Not let anyone see I was doing it, but watch him close . I already knew how to do that.

Swift wasn’t one of the tough kids, and he wasn’t mobbed up. But he had a nice bunk in a good section of the dorm, and he always had comic books and candy bars. Even a portable radio—in fact, that was where I’d gotten my antenna.

I couldn’t figure out why Hunsaker’s clique hadn’t made a move on him, especially when it came time to draw commissary, but they never did. For sure, Swift wasn’t scoring off his parents; he never had any visitors. There were things you could do to get stuff in there, but he didn’t have enough horsepower to rough it off, and I never caught him creeping anybody’s stash, either.

It didn’t add up. I started sleeping most of the day, like the meds were really doing me in. Of course, I tongue-palmed the fucking things whenever they gave them to me, and I stayed quiet enough not to court the hypo again. So I was awake at night. All night.

In the dark, I slitted my eyes and watched, trusting Lune and his patterns.

I was watching real late one night—I didn’t have a watch, and there was no clock in the dorm—when Swift sat up. He looked around, real careful. I figured, okay, now he was going to make his move; now I’d see where he scored all his stuff from.

He got up like he was going to the bathroom, a big white place with hard tile and no door. He walked right past it, straight to the dorm door. The one they locked every night.

He pulled down on the handle, very slow and careful. And the door opened! I couldn’t believe it. I knew that they locked that door every night. And that the late-shift guard would walk by the giant wire-meshed window that gave him a good view of the whole dorm every couple of hours or so. But Swift pulled the door closed behind him and he was gone.

In another minute, so was I, my bare feet soundless on the filthy linoleum as I stalked him down to a long, dark hall where the floor switched to carpet. I knew where that hall led—right to the part of the building where the big shots had their offices. I figured I knew what he was up to then. I’d always wished I could get in there one night and do a number on all that nice furniture and paintings and plants and trophies and … all of it.