Little Boy Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
superintendent could call the police and have him taken away. It had
happened last week to a boy, though Alex didn’t think that the boy had
set a brush fire in a vacant lot, which had burned down a garage.
    Suddenly he knew the answer: he’d run
away. He wouldn’t wait for either the superintendent or the police. He
opened a closet and grabbed his windbreaker. From a dresser drawer he took a
rolled pair of clean socks. One of the room’s missing residents had a
piggy bank in a different drawer. Without hesitation, Alex took it and put it
in the pocket of the windbreaker.
    “What’re you doing?” Sammy
asked.
    “Getting away from
here.”
    “The superintendent is coming,”
Sammy said. He was by the window.
    “Are you coming with me?”
    “Where?”
    “Running, you ninny.”
    Sammy’s face churned, shaded with inner
confusion.
    “You wanted to today,” Alex said.
“What happened to your guts since then?”
    “Let me think…”
    “The guy’s coming,” Alex
said, heading for the door. “I’m going.”
    “Let me get a coat,” Sammy said.
    “Hurry!”
    The cottage had two doors. The back door was
swinging shut behind Sammy as the superintendent opened the front door.
    The boys skirted the building and ran
toward a line of trees beyond the lawn. Within the trees it was already night.

Chapter 4

     
    Clem hunted for a place for himself and his
son. Every day he marked the classified section of the Times, and after work he
made telephone calls or drove to look various places over. None was satisfactory.
Those he could afford were dilapidated and in bad neighborhoods, nor was there
anyone there to look after an eleven- year-old boy. The nicer
places in private homes where he and Alex could have room and board cost too
much and didn’t provide enough privacy. He’d been confident
at the beginning, but as days passed and the time neared when he would see
Alex, he began to worry. He found himself awake in the middle of the night,
squirming mentally.
    He was awake after midnight when the landlady knocked on the door and told him the superintendent
of the Valley Home for Boys was on the telephone downstairs. Ten minutes later,
when he had the news that Alex had run away again, he sat on the edge of the
bed, smoking a cigarette and wondering what he would do. It couldn’t go
on like this. Alex had also attacked the housemother. The boy was getting
worse.
    Clem knew there was nothing he could do.
He turned off the lights and tried to sleep. It was impossible. He kept
wondering where his son was, though after half a dozen runaways he wasn’t
as worried as he once had been.

 
         The two boys left the
grounds by following the nearly dry riverbed for a mile, and then began
crossing through orange groves on dirt roads until they reached the railroad
track paralleling the highway toward Los Angeles. The odd shadows of night and
the strange sounds made them tingle with excited fear. Alex was thrilled at the
freedom, to be able to go wherever his whims dictated.
    As midnight neared, the warmth of the day
left the air, replaced by a chill. They were on the outskirts of San Fernando
and knew they couldn’t walk the downtown streets at this hour without
attracting attention from the first passing prowl car. Between the railroad
right-of-way and the highway was a large auto wrecking yard stuffed with gutted,
truncated vehicles. The yard had a sagging board fence that shivered as they
climbed it. They found the hull of a bus and used it to spend the night. Sammy
lay on the floor, on shards of glass from a broken window, trembling with the
cold, hands between his thighs. Alex sat up, watching the traffic on the
highway, the growling diesel trucks outlined in lights, more relentless
than the darting automobiles. He thought of Clem, imagining the pain he was
causing his father, and yet he was not sorry for running away. Mrs. Cavendish
had been wrong, and he’d had to fight back. He had no goal. Once when he
ran