Andrew Vachss - Dead and Gone

But everything changed when I ghosted around a corner and saw Mr. Cormil. We had to call all the guards “mister” or “sir.” Cormil was the guy who was supposed to be cruising by the big window, looking at all the crazy fish in the concrete aquarium. But he wasn’t doing that. He was doing Swift.

He held Swift’s hand like he was his father. They walked along until Cormil opened one of the offices with a key from the big ring he wore on his belt. They went inside. Cormil left the door open, probably so he could hear if anyone was coming.

But he never heard me coming. They don’t call it reform school for nothing.

It didn’t look like rape. Not to me. Not to a kid my age. Not to a State-raised kid who’d seen rape. It looked like … like Swift on his knees, sucking Cormil off while the guard leaned forward and stroked the kid’s hair. And then it looked like Cormil pulling his cock out and helping Swift stand up. And bend over. He smeared some greasy stuff on his cock and fucked Swift in the ass. But slow and gentle, talking to him like a lover all the while.

It wasn’t anything like I knew rape to be. There was no gun. No knife. No fist. No threats.

It took a lot of years before I understood what I had seen that night.

As soon as we were alone the next morning, I told Lune. He just nodded—you could see his mind was somewhere else.

“How’d you know?” I badgered him.

“I didn’t,” he said. “But I knew there was a pattern. Swift had things. He had to get them from somewhere. He was … special. How come? I didn’t know. But I knew, if you watched him close enough, we’d find out.”

“You’re a dangerous motherfucker,” I told him.

Lune and I didn’t speak the same language. He didn’t get that I was showing him high respect. “I just want to find my real parents,” he said, sadly.

After that, the only hard part about busting out was waiting for Swift to visit Cormil again. And keeping Lune from screwing things up. He didn’t know how to move quiet. And he was so nervous, I thought they’d hear his raspy breathing as we slipped past the room where Cormil and Swift were doing what they did.

But once we made it past them, it was easy. We dropped down flat on the carpet in the hall until they were finished. As soon as they walked back down the corridor together, we made our move. I loided the door to the big cheese’s office—it was nothing but a doorknob lock, no deadbolt—and we went inside.

I picked that room because I’d been in there before. That’s how I knew there was no deadbolt. And what was right outside the window. A parking lot. A parking lot outside the walls around the hospital where they kept us.

I opened the window, moving real slow against it squeaking, but it didn’t make a sound. The office was right on the first floor, and we dropped down easy. Then I pulled the window back closed.

The parking lot was almost empty—just a few scattered cars, and not a Cadillac in the bunch. The big shots wouldn’t be showing up for hours.

I didn’t know how to hotwire a car then. And even if I had known, it would have been a dumb risk.

I had nine dollars in singles. Lune didn’t have anything. I didn’t know where we were, but I could see it was out in the country someplace.

We could have tried hitchhiking, but it was too close to the nuthouse. And if a cop cruised by …

So we walked, following the road but staying in the darkness of the shoulder. I was looking for a place where we could hole up before it got daylight when Lune spotted a diner a few hundred yards ahead.

I told him to let me do the talking if we had to go inside. First I checked the parking lot. Most of the cars had New York plates. Some of the big trucks had a whole bunch of them, from different states. I couldn’t figure out why that would be, but I knew they locked the backs of those semis.

I tried door handles, one after another. If I hadn’t believed God hated me personally, I probably would have prayed. A big new Ford station wagon called to me. The back door opened. “Come on!” I whispered to Lune. We climbed inside. There was some stuff there, but it wasn’t crowded. “He could spot us here. We got to get all the way in the back,” I said to Lune, putting my hand over his mouth when he opened it to ask a question.

In the space behind the rear seat, there was nothing but a pair of suitcases. “All right,” I told Lune. “We’re going to just lie down here. If the guy comes out and gets in the front seat and drives away, we go wherever he’s going, got it? But if he opens up this back part, Lune—brother, listen now—we got to run , all right? Just fucking blast outa here before the guy knows what’s happening. See the woods over there? Right across from us? All right, that’s where we head for. I don’t think he’ll even chase us. Maybe figure it was a joke or something.”

“I can’t—”

“Lune, you have to! Look, if he opens up this part, I’ll try and kick him or something. Give you a little time to get going. Remember how you fought when Hunsaker …? Remember that? It’s like that now, too. We got to do it, or we’re fucked.”

He didn’t say anything, but he was breathing real hard. And real loud.

“Okay?” I asked him.

He just nodded.

I don’t know how much time passed before we heard the front door open. Lune squeezed my hand tight. We felt the weight of the driver as he plopped into his seat, even back where we were. Then we heard the blessed sound of the engine rumbling into life.

When the station wagon pulled out onto the highway, Lune let go of my hand.

It was just coming daylight when the driver slowed down. I couldn’t tell if he was getting gas or what, so I snuck a quick look up. It was another diner. We heard the front door open, then slam shut.

When we climbed out of the back of that station wagon, we saw that the diner the guy had stopped at was in the Bronx.

“We’re okay now,” I promised Lune.

Lune stayed with me for almost three weeks. I knew better than to go back to where they’d grabbed me before. I knew some other things, too. Like places where kids our age could make some money. But shining shoes was out—if you took a corner, you had to be able to hold it, and Lune wouldn’t be able to help. If I’d been bigger, or even if Lune had been better at violence, we might have tried to rip off one of the Times Square chickenhawks.

But there were plenty of other ways.

Lucky for us, it was summer. Lots of kids on the streets. The cops wouldn’t give us a second look once we got some fresh clothes. That I knew how to do. Not shoplifting. That was for the artists. All I knew was snatch-and-run.

I wouldn’t let Lune come with me when I hit the stores. It wasn’t just to protect him—I knew he’d screw it up.

Once we had clothing, we hit the strolls, looking for working girls who’d pay me a little for steering, like I’d done for Sandi. But as soon as they saw Lune, they couldn’t stop fussing over him. They all wanted to pat him, or give him a kiss, or cuddle him … that kind of stuff. If I heard “dollface” or “angelpuss” one more time, I was going to puke. But at least they never bothered me with any of that sappy stuff. And some of them gave us money, too.

People were a lot more careless back then. Stealing was easy. The hard part was finding places to sleep. I knew kids from reform school, but I didn’t know their last names, or their addresses or anything—just where they’d be hanging out if they were out.

There were gangs all over the City back then. Small ones, mostly, with four-block squares of turf, although there were a few that could call out a hundred guys for bloody battles that only the newspapers called “rumbles.” I knew I could work into a gang as a Junior—I had all the credentials. But I also knew Lune wouldn’t be able to handle the initiation, so we steered clear of them.