Authors: Frank Nunez
“To escape?”
“Yes.”
“Damn right.”
“In that case, then, I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“Why is that?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.”
“The only way I can tell you if is you promise that you won’t try to escape yourself or tell anyone about my plan.”
“You’re being serious.”
“Deadly.”
I gave him a look of indifference. He seemed hesitant to want to tell me the plan.
“Well, quite frankly, the plan is quite simple really. There are ventilation shafts that run throughout Crowam, each one leading to different areas of the building. There is a shaft that leads to the rear side of the building. It’s only a short drop to the bottom. The trick is getting past the perimeter wall. There is a slight opening underneath one part of the slab. Just enough to squeeze through. Joshua noticed the opening during a morning run around the grounds. Very observant chap if you ask me.
“Joshua told you all this?”
“Yes, with some slight improvements on my part.
“Have you ever tried escaping?”
“I have numerous times, but you see, Mr. Hugo likes to conduct random headcounts. If any boy is missing, as punishment, he picks random boys to get thrown in the cell.”
“What’ s the cell?”
“There are holding cells down in the basement. They place you there for hours, sometimes days, with little to no light. It’s almost like some medieval dungeon. Some boys have gone mad down there. You don’t ever want to be placed in the cell, Jake.”
“That’ why you didn’t try to escape, because you got a conscience?”
“I couldn’t live with myself if other boys suffered because of my selfishness. That is why you must not fall into temptation. You mustn’t try to escape here. It won’t work.”
“I appreciate the advice. I really do. But if I get the chance, I’m taking it.”
“Don’t be a fool. You promised.”
“I didn’t promise you anything.”
“Jake, there’ll be hell to pay if you get caught. Don’t be a selfish bastard.”
“Don’t act like a martyr. You’ve had your chance to escape. If you think I’m going to stick around this freak show, you got another thing coming.”
“You idiot. Maybe Professor Vanden should have hit you in the head with that bloody paddle of his. Perhaps it would have knocked some sense into you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’re not very reassuring.”
“I said that I’ll think about it.”
Charles waddled his way to us, drenched in sweat from a soccer game. “What are you talking about?”
“None of your business,” I replied.
“My goodness, you don’t have to be rude about it. Did you see me play? I almost scored a goal.”
“Almost?” Felix replied.
“Yes, the ball ricocheted off the goal post. But it was a bloody good shot.”
“In this world, almost doesn’t cut it.” Felix stood up and walked away.
I went to the side of the courtyard near the fence to be by myself. All I could think about was escaping. Figuring out all the angles. Maybe Felix was just full of it. I had a hard time believing what anyone said to me. People are all talk. Trust was a hard thing to come by these days.
First you had the war, now this thing called the Cold War. Now, the Russians were the bad guys. It didn’t make a damn bit a sense to me. Just the two biggest kids on the block fighting for their little piece of turf. That’s what the Cold War was to me. It just seemed like somebody was always trying to fight somebody else. We’re just violent creatures itching for a good fight. To feel that adrenaline. Doesn’t matter if you’re that kid fighting off the schoolyard bully to an entire nation, we all like a good fight, for all sorts of reasons. I felt a tug in my pants. Petey grinned at me with that ridiculous smile of his. “Hi.”
“What do you want?”
He nodded his head.
“So what are you bugging me for?”
“Are you from America?”
“Yea.”
“Wow.” He smiled again. I had to admit that his smile was contagious. You couldn’t help but smile yourself. I thought it was odd? Some six year old brightening my day in a place like this. “So what’s a little kid like you doing here?”
He shrugged his shoulders
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember. I was too little when they brought me here.”
“Who brought you here?” He pointed across the courtyard. The Bus Driver, leaning against the cement wall of Crowam, smoking a cigarette. “Him?”
He nodded his head. This place got stranger by the day.
If there was one thing I hated most in this world, it was cleaning pots and pans. I mean, I just hated it. I’d washed enough damn dishes to last me a lifetime. I was in the kitchen with Thomas, pulling pots and pans duty. We stood in front of several stacks of filthy pots, pans, plates and utensils stained with leftover food. The smell was mostly of rotten meat. The stench of food flooded the air of the kitchen.
“Good lord, do we have to clean all that?” Thomas looked frightened.
“Looks that way,” I said.
“Oh bullocks!”
This large woman entered the kitchen. She happened to be the lunch lady, with her lunch lady gown and hair net that fit a tad too snuggly on her head. “Alright boys, are you ready to get your hands dirty?”
“Do we have a choice?” I asked.
“We being smart are we?”
“What makes you say that?” I was sick of adults telling me what to do.
She grabbed a wooden spoon and smacked me in the hand, the same hand that Professor Vanden was very fond of. It hurt. Not that I would hit a lady, but I just wanted to knock her teeth out. I probably would have done her a favor, as her teeth were rotten to the core. Brown and stained from years of neglect.
“Keep being smart with me boy.”
“I’m sorry. I guess, well, I’ve never met someone as pretty as you. I get a bit foolish around pretty girls.”
Thomas looked disturbed. Poor bastard was humorless.
“I think I’m bit old for you lad.”
Thomas was relieved she didn’t get the joke.
“I want these pots and dishes squeaky clean by the time I get back.”
“Yes, madam,” Thomas said as she left us.
“Madam?” I asked Thomas, after I knew she couldn’t hear us.
“She is a lady.”
“You think so, because it’s kind of hard to tell.”
“Good lord, Jake.”
“Stick with me and you’ll go places.”
“I’m afraid of where we’ll be going.”
I grabbed some dishes and dipped them deep into the soapy water. The filth fell from the dishes, staining the dish water to a dark brown of mystery meat and God knows what else.
“My God, this is disgusting.” Thomas diligently dipped the dirty dishes into the water. I shoved his hand holding the plate in the soapy water. He cringed, nearly jumping out of his socks. “What in bloody hell are you doing?”
“I don’t know about you. But I don’t want to spend the entire night washing dishes. Haul ass, will you? It’s just water.”
“It’s foul, I tell you.”
“I don’t like this anymore than you do.”
An hour went by. The two of us washed away dirt quickly, trying to finish for the evening. The routine became redundant. Dip, wipe, rinse, dip, wipe, rinse. The kitchen was hotter than a furnace. My white shirt was drenched in sweat that my armpits poured. “My lord, it’s hot in here.” Thomas wiped the sweat off his brow. “I think I need a break.”
“Come on, don’t quit on me now. We’re almost done.”
“I just want to sit for a few minutes.”
Although I didn’t want to admit it, we could have used a break. We sat down against the wall near the doorway.
“Hell of a life, huh?” I said.
“You call this living?” Thomas said.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said.
“What are you going to do when you leave here?’
“When I age out?”
“Yes.”
I had to really think about that one. To be honest, I didn’t know. I was so used to moving around so much that I never gave it much thought. It scared me a bit to tell you the truth. “I don’t know, I guess.”
“Well I do. I want to travel the world. Paris, Rome. I hear the libraries in Italy are like cathedrals. All of those books and knowledge. It must be magnificent.”
“Sounds nice, Thomas.”
“America, yes, I’ll go to America. New York City.”
“You seem to have it all planned out.”
“What’s New York like Jake?”
“There ain’t no other city like it. Buildings that stretch to the sky. The lights of Broadway and Times Square. It’s like all that glitz and glamour you see in the movies.”
“I’ll see it one day. You’ll see.”
“I believe you. Hell, I’ll show you around. You’ll love it.”
“I would like that a lot.”
“Who wouldn’t? It’s New York.”
“That sounds wonderful. I’ll travel the world, that’s what I’ll do. But you still didn’t say what you want to do when you leave.”
“I said that I wasn’t sure.”
“You should have some idea, shouldn’t you?”
He really bugged me with that question. It was sort of nagging at me. I was afraid to think about what I would do when I left Crowam. I wasn’t a mental heavy weight like Thomas who seemed to have everything figured out. Was I supposed to have everything figured out? Maybe we’re all supposed to just live life and let destiny handle the rest. The hell did I know. All I cared about was being out on my own. “Maybe I’d join the circus. Yea, that’d be the ticket. I’d join the circus. Wouldn’t that be something? Orphan turned freak show. Maybe I’d become one of them acrobats. Or that guy they shoot out of a cannon. Anything but a clown. I’ll be a regular show stopper. Hell, people from all over the world would come and see me. My name in bright lights!”
“You can’t be serious,” Thomas replied.
“Why the hell not?”
“A circus? Of all things.”
“It’s a living ain’t it?
“I suppose so. I just thought you would have bigger plans.”
“Like what?’
“I don’t know. I just think you have a lot of potential to do great things.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. Intuition perhaps.”
“Maybe it’s from reading all them books.”
Thomas then began blabbering about all the books he’d read. He sure could be a bore sometimes. I should have gotten him talking when I had trouble sleeping. He’s better than a warm glass of milk. I noticed above us were one of the air vents Felix was talking about. The steel frame was thick and rusty. Then my imagination began getting the best of me, thinking about how I would escape. I could sneak out at night when the dumb guards weren’t looking. Idiots. They wouldn’t know what hit ’em. I would crawl through the vents and outside, going through that crack in the perimeter fence, just like Felix said. To hell with everyone else.
I had nothing against the boys here. But who wouldn’t want to escape a God forsaken place like this? Any of the boys would do the same thing if they had the chance. Thomas got the hint that I wasn’t paying attention. You could hear a pin drop in the kitchen until I heard a faint noise coming from the vent. I got up close to the vent. It was hard to make it out at first.
“What are you doing?” Thomas asked.
I ignored him.
“Jake?”
“Shut up a second.” The sounds became clearer: shouts and screams. God awful screams. “Thomas, can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Just listen.” The drone of screams continued for a minute until it stopped. I couldn’t be hearing things. “You heard that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not crazy, Thomas.”
“I never said you were.” His eyes said everything. I knew he heard the screams, but he was too scared to admit it. “Maybe we should finish up.”
“You can’t hear that?” The screams sounded muffled and terrifying, echoing through the vents from origins unknown.
“What is that Jake?” Thomas asked.
“Screaming.”
“Good lord.”
We stared at the vent, the faint and distant screams hypnotizing us. We forgot about the dishes, pots and pans that still sat on the kitchen counter waiting to be washed. The soap suds still fizzed in the dirty soap brown water that contained the remnants of mystery meat and leftover food. The kitchen didn’t exist for us in the brief moment of curiosity where our minds were fixated on the sounds coming from the air vent.
Our hypnosis, however brief, was disrupted by the lunch lady. She barged in on us. “What are you two doing?” She was angry. Her raspy voice startled Thomas and I.
“Sorry,” I said.
“What were you two doing there?”
“Just admiring the vent,” I said. I couldn’t’ think of anything else to say to the old hag. I figured I’d just be a smartass. She was already used to that. She expected it of me. She wouldn’t suspect anything else.
“Why are the pots and pans still not washed?”
“I apologize, madam. We’ll get on it right away.” Thomas was a true British gentleman, I had to hand it to him.
“I want these pots and pans cleaned in the next twenty minutes. Or else both of you will be pulling cleaning duty tomorrow night.”
Thomas and I quickly cleaned the remaining dishes on the counter, finishing them a shy under twenty minutes. We headed back to our dorms, where I got to take a shower and clean up from the evening.
The showers smelled like BO and urine. The green tiles of the shower stalls were stained and old, faded from years of mildew. I stood under the stream of lukewarm water that flowed from the showerhead over my body, rubbing the used bar of soap over me trying to rid myself of the filth that accumulated from staying in Crowam.
The other boys were probably discussing the same topics they always talked about: girls, Crowam, the war, and nonsensical garbage that is trivial when compared to the grand schemes of the universe.
A boy named Joseph, a freckled brown-haired kid, stood in the middle of the shower, tucking his wanker between his legs to pretend that he was a girl. His attempt at humor got a few laughs. I thought it was stupid. Joseph had more raging hormones than all of us put together. Rumor has it he got thrown in here because he masturbates too much. Got caught masturbating while he was in class. Who in their right mind would do something like that? A kid like Joseph, I guess.