Authors: Vin Packer
PART SIX
BROCK BROWN
It was Saturday morning, the day after Memorial Day.
In the corridor of the Kantogee County Children’s Home, where Brock was being held, Robert Brown faced the psychiatrist the circuit judge had appointed to examine the boy.
“Of course,” said Dr. Baird, “my opinion isn’t the only one that counts in a case like this. After all, there’s the hearing on the petition asking the juvenile waiver, and there are still some mental tests we want to give Brock.”
“They’ll try him for homicide if you say he’s sane,” said Robert Brown. “I’m sure of that.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brown. I have to do my duty the way I see it.”
“He
must
have been insane, doctor. You said yourself there was that business about his mother, about his thinking he was responsible for her death.”
“Mr. Brown, I said there was a good possibility that Brock felt
some
responsibility because he may have wished her dead.”
“You never knew my wife, doctor. She hated that boy.”
“I never knew either one of you, Mr. Brown. If your son did wish his mother dead, and felt guilty as a result, it may certainly have contributed to a neurosis. That was probably why he felt sex was evil. Your wife died in childbirth. But a neurosis of that sort is quite common. Many children wish their parents were dead, and parents die every day.”
“Explain to me about his obsession with dirt again. Could you just do that, doctor?”
“Mr. Brown, a child soils. A child is always soiling, one way or the other. His mother must have blamed Brock for being dirty.”
“She used to call him a little pig, doctor!”
“Then, of course, you were a mechanic. There was always dirt on your clothes. Your wife may have mentioned that when the boy could hear it. Or perhaps the boy imagined that she did. Dirt symbolized blame to your son, and it also may well have symbolized sex, the thing that killed your wife.”
“Do you call that sane?” said Robert Brown.
“Mr. Brown, this is very unnecessary—all of it. I told you before, and I’m very sorry that I have to repeat it: in my opinion your son knows the difference between right and wrong. He is also capable of understanding the court proceeding against him, should that be the case, and of helping in his own defense.”
“Dr. Baird, listen. Please. I don’t understand this. I wish I could talk with you, or Dr. Fletcher. Won’t you explain it to me?”
“Dr. Fletcher agrees with my diagnosis, Mr. Brown. Now, neither of
us
is on trial.”
“It’s just that I want to help my boy.”
“And I wish I could help you, Mr. Brown. But there’s absolutely nothing more I can do.”
The doctor touched his hand to his hat as he placed it on his head and went back down the corridor.
Momentarily, Robert Brown stood watching him go. Then slowly he turned and went toward the room where Brock was waiting for him.
“Hello, son,” he said as the guard shut the door behind them.
Brock smiled meekly, standing to greet his father.
“Hello, dad.”
“I brought the clothes you wanted. I gave them to Officer Raleigh.”
“Thank you.”
“Clara sends her love, son.”
“I suppose
she’s
mad.”
“Why do you say that, Brock? There’s no one mad.”
“She had to come back from her vacation, didn’t she?”
“Brock, we’re not thinking about a vacation or anything else but how to help you.”
“Me? I’m helpless.”
“No one is helpless when people care about them.”
“I guess you can have more children, dad. I’m glad of that. Clara wants a baby.”
“Right now, Clara and I want
you
, Brock.”
“Do you, dad?”
The boy began to cry. He sat down in the leather chair in the anteroom and held his head with his hands. “I don’t know why it happened. I’ve tried and tried to figure it out. The doctors were here, the head-shrinkers. They know why, I suppose. I suppose they can figure the whole thing out, just like they always do. They think they know everything!”
“They think you’re sane, Brock.”
“I am! I told them I was!”
“You couldn’t have been, Brock. I know my own kid, don’t I? Something must have gone wrong in your mind.”
“No, dad. That’s where you’re wrong. Listen, dad. I’ll tell you something,” the boy said. “Earlier in the day—earlier, I was worried. I thought something might go wrong. I was all shook up, anway. Remember last night I told you that it was really me who took that flowerpot?”
“You never explained why.”
“I had a headache, dad. I had to take it. I don’t know. But that’s nothing. Dad, I took something else.”
“Something else?”
“A key, dad. I took a key that night when the Rubins called you up and made you and Clara come over. It was a key to their house, dad. I’m sure it was.”
“But why? Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. I had a funny feeling about that key. That I was going to use it for something.”
“For what, son? For what?”
“Something! I don’t know! That’s how come I know I’m sane. All day I was thinking of using the key. I wanted to go back there to the Rubins. I wanted—to get them.”
“Get them for what? Sam and Estelle Rubin?”
“That flowerpot leaked all over me. It made me mad. I couldn’t forget it, dad. I kept that key. I was so afraid I almost told one of the teachers at school about it. But I didn’t. I just kept it. In my pocket.”
“I don’t understand, Brock. Sam and Estelle Rubin never did anything to you.”
“I know it. That was what was so crazy! But dad—listen, after Carrie—after what I did, dad, I didn’t want the key any more.”
“What do you mean, Brock? I’m trying to understand.”
“I didn’t want the key any more, dad! I threw it away! I felt silly carrying that key around! Don’t you see? I didn’t want it!”
“I’m trying to see, Brock—I’m trying.”
“Dad, if I was insane, I would have wanted to keep that key! I would have wanted to do something with it. I don’t even know
what
, for Pete’s sake! Don’t you get it?”
“Son, son, I’m trying to understand.”
“It was just like when I took the Mercury last week. After I tied the ten dollars to the steering wheel. I didn’t want that car! I didn’t want it! I felt silly! Just like when I knew I didn’t want the key any more.”
Robert Brown stood there staring at his son, a look of incredulousness on his face. He was beginning to remember something—beginning to remember the day last week when he had gotten the call at the garage to pick up an abandoned car.
“Was it a green Mercury, Brock?” he said. “It wasn’t a
green
Mercury?”
It had been left on a back-country road, with ten dollars held to the chrome steering wheel by a rubber band … It had been left on a dirt road … the same dirt road near Eastern Highway and Simon Point.
“Yes,” said Robert Brown’s son, grinning, “it
was
green. How did
you
know, dad?”
CHARLES BERREY
QUIZ KID TURNS FIREBUG, 1 DEAD
Quiz kid Charles Berrey, known to television viewers as “Chuck,” the bespectacled, eight-year-old with the elephantine memory, formerly a contestant on Cash-Answer, set fire to the library in his home town on Memorial Day afternoon.
Overcome by smoke and unable to escape a flaming death was Reddton’s beloved librarian, Miss Margaret Schuster.
The blaze was set at approximately four forty-five, while citizens of Reddton paid solemn tribute to the war dead in the lobby of the library. There, Miss Schuster had arranged an exhibit tracing the history of the Unknown Soldier in this country.
Charles Berrey, questioned on the lawn of the library while firemen were inside attempting to quell the flames, confessed to setting the fire. He said that he began the blaze with a newspaper in the library’s basement, where he had been “thinking.”
Just what this boy-genius with ambitions to be a baseball player was “thinking” to compel him to arson he refused to make clear. Spectators alleged that the boy’s failure to answer a question on the television show Cash-Answer Memorial Day eve may have incited his resentment against this building, which housed so much information on so many subjects.
The small, nervous youngster, described by neighbors as “more of a bookworm than a ballplayer,” forfeited $52,000 when he incorrectly identified a zebra swallowtail butterfly as a tiger swallowtail. After the television show, he made the tearful, unconvincing claim that he had known the correct answer “instantly,” that he had been merely “spoofing.”
A witness to this scene in the International Broadcasting Company building alleged that the father of the boy, Howard Berrey, salesman, had obviously forced his son to tell this falsehood.
“It was plain that the father was embarrassed and outraged at the kid’s failure,” the witness stated. “The kid was a wreck when he left I.B.C!”
Miss Margaret Schuster, age 59, could have escaped death had she not attempted to rescue the boy. Known as “Chuckles” to his family, the frail child apparently became fearful once the fire was underway in the Children’s Section of the library. He called to Miss Schuster, who immedately ran down the stairs to see what had happened.
“I tried to warn her to run,” said the boy, “but she was pulling at the fire extinguisher and telling me to get out of the building. There was smoke everywhere. I couldn’t see her any more. I ran up the stairs calling, ‘Fire! Fire!’”
One man was burned in a futile attempt to go after the librarian, and several others were driven back by smoke and flames.
The boy admitted that he had used kerosene to aid his firesetting. The Reddton Public Library had undergone a paint-trim job in honor of Memorial Day. The kerosene, along with several cans of paint, were stored just beyond the Children’s Section in the storeroom.
Damage was estimated at $40,000.
Miss Schuster is survived by a brother, Carl Schuster, of Reddton, and a sister, Mrs. Norma Arthur, of Selma, Missouri.
Too young to be charged with manslaughter, the boy was immediately turned over to juvenile authorities for detention, and eventual hearings in Children’s Court.
Howard Berrey, father of the boy, refused to comment. His mother, Evelyn Berrey, was under medical treatment for shock.
REGINALD WHITTIER
It was Saturday evening. Reginald Whittier had arrived back home late yesterday, almost as Memorial Day was at a close. He had dragged himself up the stairs of Whittier’s Wheel, exhausted from the drive, angry at himself for leaving Laura back in Montpelier without a word, and tired of being angry with himself.
He had come home where he was safe.
He had opened the door—left unlocked—and entered the dark living room of the apartment.
He had thought to say:
“Mother? Mother?”
but the dusty antique clock in the shop beneath him was striking midnight. He had smelled the odor of home, and for the first time since he had left this place, he had felt himself again.
Quietly, so as not to wake her, he had tiptoed past his mother’s door to the bathroom.
Then he had heard the familiar tones, precise, slow, sing-song sounds of her voice late at night; Psalms.
“As for the children of men, they are but vanity; the children of men are deceitful; upon the weights, they are altogether lighter than vanity itself!”
“Mother?” he had said. “Mother?”
But he had known better than to expect a direct answer. He was home … with Miss Ella; back at the Wheel with his mother and her ways.
“Have I not remembered thee in my bed?” the voice continued from the bedroom of his mother, “and thought upon thee when I was waking? My soul hangeth upon thee.”
“I’m home now, mother,” he had said.
For an answer: “These also that seek the hurt of my soul, they shall go under the earth.”
• • •
This morning, Reginald Whittier had gotten up at eight o’clock, the time he always got up when he was at home. He had walked into the living room and found his fresh orange juice, squeezed and waiting for him, in the same tall glass on the coffee table.
In the kitchen, his mother had been stirring her oatmeal on the stove.
“Mother?” he had said.
She had nodded at him without answering.
At eight-thirty, he had gone downstairs to the shop, turned the “Open” card to face the street side of the door, and walked back behind the counter … the way he always had when he was home.
So it had taken him this long to do what was expected of him; it had taken him from last evening to this evening to do it; and in between, there was the hell of self-hatred, and the anguish of Miss Ella’s silence; and there was the bitter knowledge that he would do exactly what he
was
doing.
He knelt by her rocker in the living room of their apartment with his head in her lap, her lap muffling the sniffling, agonized sounds of his confession.
“And then?”
“I couldn’t find a job. I was afraid no one would hire me.”
“Of course you were. That’s a normal fear, Reginald. Not everyone is patient with someone who stutters.”
“She kept telling me I didn’t.”
“A woman like that will tell any lie to get what she wants, Reginald.”
“We didn’t have any television. It was just a bare room.”
“Reginald, do you know I haven’t watched
your
set once since you left? I bought it for you. With you gone, I wasn’t interested.”
“There were other things. Things I don’t want to talk about.”
“You’ll have to get it all out of your system one day, but don’t worry about it now, Reginald. You’ve purged yourself sufficiently for now.”
“Thank you, mother.”
“The marriage will be annulled.”
“Shouldn’t I try to call her? Send her some money, mother?”
“You’ll have nothing more to do with that woman, Reginald!”
“She’s a girl, mother. I’m older than she is.”
“Just don’t give’ her another thought. You’re home, Reginald. You’re where you belong.”
“Yes, mother.”
“We’ll just carry on as though this hadn’t happened.”
“Thank you, mother. I’m sorry.”
“I have ample forgiveness in my heart, Reginald. Ample forgiveness!” His mother smoothed his hair with her hand. “I can remember when you came home from the Boy Scout Jamboree, with that awful disease on your body. We can just thank God you don’t have another disease.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Do you want to watch the television now, Reginald? The way we always do? Then I’ll fix a little dinner.”
“All right, mother.”
“Chicken, and mashed potatoes, and fresh peas!” said Miss Ella. “Your favorites, Reginald. All your favorites.” She took his hands from her lap and held them in her own. “When you were a little boy,” she said, “I used to kiss these hands and tell you that God gave them to you for good deeds to be performed.”
Reginald Whittier took his handkerchief from his trousers and blew his nose.
For a half-hour, he sat beside his mother watching the television set. It was a mystery story set in the South Seas. Miss Ella was audibly intrigued, but Reggie could not keep his mind on the screen. For one thing, he wished he dared walk into his bedroom and get the half-empty package of cigarettes from the bureau drawer. He wanted to smoke. Everything he seemed to want to do, and everything he seemed to say, reminded him of Laura. He remembered the way they had tumbled about on the floor—only yesterday—laughing and tickling one another, and kissing, like the married couple in that movie he and Laura had seen their first night in Montpelier. He thought of how Laura told him that she could cry when he was nice to her, and then he remembered the way
he
had cried in Mac’s Diner, the way everyone had stared at him.
She was better off without him. He was sure of that. He might have done something terrible to her, something he couldn’t help doing, just as he hadn’t been able to keep from criticizing her all the time for practically nothing at all. Just as he had not been able to refrain from calling her Tobacco Road trash. She was better off with him gone … But she was pregnant, and she had told him she didn’t want him to leave her.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Miss Ella said.
“Yes, mother.”
“I’m glad you’re home. I knew you’d come home.”
“Did you, mother?”
“I didn’t have a real minute’s worry, Reginald.”
What about Laura? What about Laura right now, in the room by herself at the tourist home? She had been so sure everything would work out. She had never heard of a scrub. Of a
shrub
, she had, Reggie thought to himself, smiling, but not a scrub. Did she think he would be back “in a sec”? Was she washing out her underwear again and thinking Jeez, when will Reg be back? Reg. No one ever called him that before. Gloomy-ears, she called him. Gloomy-ears. And she had tickled him so hard he laughed until he was crying.
When his mother said, “Wasn’t that interesting, Reginald?” he realized he had not heard or seen any of the television film.
“Yes, it was,” he said.
“I knew that dark man in the Panama suit was the thief. I knew the moment I saw him. I’m going to start dinner while the news is on. That way we’ll be all settled with our plates in front of us by the time Electric Theater starts.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Is it good to be back, Reginald?”
“I told you that it was, mother.”
“You just forget all about it. We’re going to have a very pleasant evening.”
“I think I’ll go to my room for a while, mother.”
“Aren’t you interested in the news?”
“I can hear it. I’ll keep the door open.”
“It was terrible about that quiz kid, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t believe he was spoofing,” said Reggie, standing, stretching.
“No, I mean about the fire,” said his mother. “He set fire to the library. Yesterday afternoon. Right in his home town, and the librarian was killed.”
“Really?”
“It was in all the newspapers, Reginald. It came over the radio too.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Oh, yes. He was angry because his parents had pushed him too much.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“It came over the radio. He confessed.”
Reggie walked across the room to his bedroom.
“Aren’t we glad we have all our arms and limbs, and we’re safe in our own cozy home, Reginald?”
“Yes, mother.”
“That makes the second Memorial Day weekend tragedy. There was that boy in upstate New York too.”
“I read about that.”
“That girl must have been some girl! Some nice girl, letting a boy take her out in the country that way, in the rain!”
“What’s the rain got to do with it, mother?”
“I’m fixing all your favorites for dinner,” said his mother. “Aren’t you glad you’re back?”
He did not answer her. If he were to walk into the bathroom, with the cigarettes in his trousers, his mother would never notice. He could smoke in there. There was a bottle of air-refresher in there, and he could spray some of it around to kill the odor. He opened his top bureau drawer to get the package of cigarettes.
Suddenly, his mother appeared in the doorway.
“I’m glad you’re home, Reginald.”
“You told me that, mother.”
“I wouldn’t have any other boy for a son. I’m glad you came to your senses.”
“Thank you, mother.”
“With children running around murdering and raping and setting fire, I’m glad you’re safe and sound and back here where you belong.”
“All right, mother. All right! We said we’d forget it!”
“Oh, I know there are things on your mind. Things you haven’t told me, Reginald. You’ll have to get it all out of your system, after dinner, when Mr. Danker comes.”
“Mr. Danker?”
“You can have a long talk with him. I won’t pay any attention. You and Mr. Danker can sit in a corner of the living room and have it all out.”
“What’s Mr. Danker got to do with anything, mother?”
“I understand you better than you think, Reginald. I know you want to get it out of your mind—all of it.”
“I
said,
what’s Mr. Danker got to do with it?”
“Now, we won’t discuss it before dinner. You know how an argument before dinner can upset your digestion. You’ve always had a queasy stomach, even as a little boy.”
“I don’t want Mr. Danker to come here, mother. Ever!”
“He tried his best to keep you from running off with that woman! He told me all about it!”
“She’s a girl. A kid! An eighteen-year-old kid!”
“She taught you to smoke, didn’t she? She taught you to acquire
that
filthy habit too!”
“You took them, didn’t you, mother?”
“Yes, I destroyed them. You needn’t bother looking in your drawer for them, Reginald.”
“I want them back!”
“Reginald, you’re talking to your
mother!”
“I want them back!” he said, walking toward her. “I want my cigarettes back!”
“I destroyed them!”
“I’ll geh-geh-get them, I’ll geh-geh—”
“What are you doing? Reginald Whittier, what are you picking up in your hands!”
“It’s a ha-ha-ham-mer, mother.”
“I know what it is! Put it down, right now,” she said. “I’m your mother!”
“I know who you are,” said Reginald Whittier, raising the kitchen hammer in the air, “Muh-muh-moth-er!”