My Name Is River Blue (15 page)

That day, in my
bedroom at Tolley House, when Papa and I finished talking, I believed that I was
starting a new life, and I was anxious to see where the man could lead me. I
was excited about having serious goals. I imagined winning a football
scholarship to college, playing pro ball, and having a life that I had always
thought was out of reach for me. When I shook Papa's hand, I was determined to
keep my end of our agreement, and I hoped that he would keep his.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

One night, about
two weeks after I accepted Papa's offer to coach and mentor me, I left the
dinner table to take a nap in my room instead of watching the movie that Jenny had
rented for us. It had been a miserably hot summer day that left me so whipped
after my workout with Papa, I only wanted to crash. The other kids in the park deserted
the hot ball fields in favor of their cool homes long before I did. I would
have done the same, but I didn't want to miss time with Papa, and I was too
stubborn to quit before he was ready.

I had just stripped
to my boxers and stretched out on my bed when Jenny came upstairs to my room to
tell me that Miss Martin was waiting for me in the office. I pulled on a pair
of shorts and walked shirtless and barefooted to the Tolley House office. I was
a little nervous because Miss Martin normally visited only once a month with
each of her boys, and she had already seen me earlier that week. I had no idea
why she would be back so soon unless she was moving me, or I was in trouble.

I didn't want to
move from Tolley House because it was much better than any alternatives would
be. It was clean, I liked my room, and the food was good. I had even begun to get
along better with Hal, Jenny, and my foster brothers. I still didn't have much
to do with the other boys, but there were no serious arguments. As I had
promised Papa, I was trying hard to be a good kid. I was even doing well at saying
"sir" and "ma'am" to Hal and Jenny.

I knew I wasn't
in trouble when Miss Martin greeted me with a smile at the office door. She
didn't hide her emotions very well, and she was not one of the sneaky, lying
adults I hated. As we took seats facing each other, she promised to keep her
visit short and then got right to the point of asking me for a favor.

"River, I'm
bringing a boy from Stockwell the day after tomorrow, and since your room has
the only available bed, he will be your roommate."

I wasn't happy
to hear that my days of privacy were over, but I had known that it would happen
one day, and there was no sense in showing my butt over it. "Okay," I
said. "So why did you make a special trip to tell me? It's not like I have
a choice."

"You don't
have a choice about having a roommate, but you do have a choice about how you
treat him. I'll be honest with you, he's nervous about sharing a room with you
because of your reputation at Stockwell. Specifically, your fight with the
Krieger boy, and all the rumors that grew out of that mess. I assured him that
he has no reason to worry, and I'm asking you to try to make him more
comfortable."

"I get it. He
believes that I earned the "psycho" nickname. Who's the kid?"

"His name
is Antwon Jefferson, but they call him 'Ant.'"

"I know who
you mean. He's a skinny black kid." I had seen the kid and heard his
roommate call him "Ant," but I didn't know much about him. I only
knew that he wasn't a troublemaker because I would have heard more. Everyone
knew the real jerks.

"Yes, he's
African-American and a very nice boy. Thirteen just like you. Ant risked his
life to protect his mother, and she thanked him by telling a lie that sent him
to Stockwell. Just like you, Ant should have never been in juvie, but he's
served two and a half years."

"Well,
maybe he learned a lesson," I said. "He screwed up when he took care
of his mother instead of himself."

Miss Martin
appeared to struggle with a response, and I think she decided not to give me a
lecture on my cynicism. "I'm not asking you to become best friends with
Ant, but I
am
asking you to make him feel safe and welcome. Maybe hang
out with him some. Talk with him some. I would appreciate any little things you
could do to make his transition easier."

I thought about
how to answer her. I wasn't babysitting the new kid, and his problems were not
my problems just because we had to share a room.

"Miss
Martin, I won't be mean to that kid. I'll even tell him the routine here, but I
ain't taking care of anyone but me. The other guys here do their thing, and I
do mine. It will be the same with this new kid, so if he has personal problems,
he'll need to talk to Hal and Jenny."

I could see the
disappointment in Miss Martin's eyes, but she should have known better if she
was expecting any more out of me. She probably assumed that Papa was changing
my attitude enough that I might agree to be the welcome wagon and on site
social worker for Ant Jefferson. I couldn't remember making that deal.

"Okay,
River. I guess that's it. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

Miss Martin's
voice didn't sound angry, but I could tell she wanted more from me. I knew it
had to be a real pain to deal with state kids, but that was her problem. The
state paid
her
to do it, not me.

I stood to leave.
"You're mad at me?"

She took a
moment before she answered. "Would you care if I was?"

"I like
you, Miss Martin, but taking care of that kid ain't my job."

She offered a
tired smile. "We're still good, River. Goodnight."

"Goodnight,
Miss Martin."

As I left, I saw
that Hal and Jenny were waiting just outside the door. They told me "goodnight"
and entered the office, closing the door behind them.

I knew the
Mackeys and Miss Martin would be talking about me. Would they advise Papa about
my "selfish attitude?" I was curious enough that I hurried up the
stairs to my room where I had accidently discovered a way of hearing any
conversations in the office. The office was directly underneath my bedroom, and
that same week, when I was doing pushups near an air vent in my floor, I clearly
heard every word that Hal and Jenny said in the room below me. After I closed
my door, I quietly stretched out on my bedroom floor with my ear over the vent.

Jenny said,
"He's been doing so much better about speaking and even using 'ma'am' and
'sir' that I thought he might respond differently."

Hal added,
"Papa has made progress, but we're still walking on eggshells around him
more than we do any of the other boys. With such an angry, bitter kid, you
can't take it personally every time he fails to give more than the minimum
expectations. With a kid like River, if you really need him to do something,
you might just have to make it mandatory."

"I'm not
disappointed with him," said Miss Martin. "I only wish I could help
him. I wish I could have helped him a long time ago before he went to
Stockwell. He didn't deserve that sentence anymore than he deserved his
treatment after he got there. He sees us as part of the same system that took
an innocent kid with an already difficult life and threw him into a nightmare
where he had to act like an animal to survive."

Jenny spoke.
"We know why he went to Stockwell, but there's not much information about
his time there. In his file, it states that his counseling intensified because
of an assault not long after he arrived, but they didn't give us details. Can
you tell us what happened to him there? I think it might help us to understand
him."

Miss Martin
explained about the lack of details. "They didn't give you everything
because there was a big investigation resulting in people losing their jobs and
some of them facing serious charges. The information is not something that the
state wants to be public knowledge. I'll tell you what happened to River but
please keep it quiet."

***

Miss Martin felt
guilty when Judge Merlo sentenced me to a minimum of two years in Stockwell
because she believed that she should have fought Senator Paulson and Detective
Walls and somehow found a way to save me from juvie prison. For a time, I also
wanted to blame her even though I knew she would have never won against the
senator and the judge. She probably would have lost her job, and I would have
still gone to Stockwell. Each time Miss Martin visited me and brought me fresh fruit
and protein bars, her eyes would tell me again that she was sorry. She rarely
missed a week, and she never failed to bring food, but I didn't let her off the
hook. I never even thanked her. Not even once.

During my second
month in Stockwell, Miss Martin had an opportunity to help me avoid serious
charges after a fight with an older inmate, and she didn't let me down.

At the time that
I entered the detention center, Craig Krieger was the leader of a gang of white
rednecks who bullied the kids in my pod. The detention center staff was
supposed to assign boys to a pod by age, but Krieger and his friends were as
much as three years older than I was and should have been housed in another
section. John Malley, the senior corrections officer in charge, took bribes
from relatives of the older boys to keep them safe with the youngest group in
Stockwell. Most of Malley's supplemental income came from Krieger's older
brother, Carl. In return, Malley provided special privileges and good reports
that would shorten Craig's time.

Carl Krieger had
a reputation for running the local chapter of a lucrative drug operation, and
police suspected him of numerous violent crimes in his efforts to rise to the
top of the organization. Unfortunately, the gang didn't own any of the cops
involved in Craig's arrest, which occurred shortly after he began his
apprenticeship by selling pot at his school.

In Stockwell, Craig
Krieger enjoyed his role as the leader of the gang that ran A Pod, which should
have been for the very youngest boys, ages ten to twelve years old. He had four
tough kids who would follow his every command, and CO Malley made sure that
nothing Krieger did ever made it out of the pod to the director or anyone else.
Every young inmate knew what happened to snitches, and no one, except a foolish
new boy, had the nerve to cross Krieger or the CO who protected him. All of the
boys knew what had happened to one boy who only
suggested
that he might
tell on them, and none of them wanted to look like that boy did when a CO found
him unconscious in the shower room.

When a new kid
arrived in the pod, Krieger would usually leave him alone until after the boy's
thirty-day evaluation period passed. State law mandated that a state
psychologist interview each boy after his first month to evaluate his mental
and emotional condition. The law also required that each boy have a physical exam
by the infirmary doctor who would examine each boy at least annually
thereafter.

Thirty days was
plenty of time for a new boy to get the word that Craig Krieger ran the place. When
Krieger could stand it no longer, he and his gang would confront the kid at a
time when much of the pod was watching. If the kid showed proper respect and
subservience, Krieger would humiliate him enough to show the pod that he had
another slave, but he would seldom physically hurt him.

The kind of kid who
excited Krieger was the rare new boy who thought that he was tough or assumed
that if he yelled loudly that a CO would protect him. If Krieger were lucky, a
new boy would fight rather than submit to a degrading act, and Krieger, with
his gang backing him, would beat the boy senseless and still force him to
comply.

After my violent
confrontation with Craig Krieger, he was admitted to the hospital, and I was
locked away in isolation until they could bring charges against me in juvenile
court. At the time, I thought I would get off light because I was defending
myself against a boy three years older who never should have been in the pod
with me. Until Miss Martin told me, I didn't know that Malley was covering his
butt by claiming that Krieger was part of an older trustee work group who was
serving lunch in A Pod. According to detention center policy, the boys in my
pod were too young to work in the kitchen.

The detention
center notified Miss Martin, and by the time she sat down in the visitation
room to speak with me, she had heard CO Malley's account of my fight with
Krieger. At their meeting in Director Atkins' office, Miss Martin was heartbroken
to hear of my unbelievably savage assault on another inmate, and she believed that
any boy who would do such a thing had serious mental issues. She had little
hope that she could do anything to help me since the senior CO had witnessed
"the most vicious, vile, and unprovoked attack" that he had ever seen
perpetrated by one juvenile inmate on another. Miss Martin believed that my
actions were certain to cost me more of my life in juvie prison, if not in a
mental health facility.

A guard
delivered me to the visitation room where Miss Martin was waiting to speak with
me. My hands and feet were shackled to a chain fastened around my waist, so I
limped and shuffled to her table and sat across from her. I could tell from her
eyes that she was shocked by what she saw. I had not seen my face since I left
the cafeteria, but Miss Martin told me that my eyes were blackened slits, my forehead
and cheeks were bruised, my nose was swollen with crusted blood around my
nostrils, and my lips were cut and swelled to twice their normal size. I knew
one of my front upper teeth had broken off because I could feel the sharp edges
with my tongue.

At first, I said
nothing. I knew I could be hurt much worse, if I snitched on a CO. I tried to
sit straight and focus my eyes on Miss Martin. She asked me if I had any more
injuries. I hesitated and she walked around to me and forced me to stand. She raised
my shirt and saw that I was covered with nasty bruises. She asked if I was
bruised the same way under my bottoms, and I nodded that I was. She was having
difficulty controlling her anger, and she paced around the room twice before
she returned to her seat.