Most of those kids — even the ones in there for murder — look like the sort you see hanging out down by Sonic or skateboarding outside the 7-Eleven. I thought Stephen Youngblood was just another one that got caught up in a mess and couldn’t get out. But Ferlinghetti, he thought he was onto something big for him and his head-shrinking business.
Stephen was small and blond and wiry with acne all over. You could drown him just by spitting on him. He had eyeglasses, but kept them hid in his back pocket. Embarrassed, I guess. He always walked with his head down, like he’s hiding something. You wouldn’t believe that he’d done what he done. Most days him and Ferlinghetti would be outside, on the bench under the oak tree. Ferlinghetti’d be talking to him, staring right into his face, hands on his belly, nodding his head up and down. He looked like a buzzard on a branch, searching for some dead meat.
The kids were supposed to get about twenty-five minutes of counseling a week, but Ferlinghetti, damnit, he must have talked Stephen’s ear off for a couple of hours each time.
I was out there the first time they talked, working on a flower bed near the bench, and Stephen was giving him the normal kind of stuff the kids give new counselors. “I took the life of William Harris on December ninth two years ago. I got a thirty-year determinate sentence.” They learn to say it that way in the Capital Offenders Group. After a while they just say it, not a hint of emotion, because they said it hundreds of times.
Stephen was flicking his blond hair away from his eyes, gazing straight ahead, when Ferlinghetti just, boom, changed the subject. Now, most of them counselors they get all serious and sad-like, then say: “Would you like to talk about it, Stephen?” And Stephen’d say, “Yeah, s’pose so,” just because he knows he’d be up the creek without a goddamn paddle if he says no. Then the counselor would say: “Well, Stephen, how do you feel about it?” And Stephen, he’d say: “Bad.” And on and on, until the counselor goes off to write up his CF 114.
But not Ferlinghetti. He just looks at Stephen and nods. Then he starts talking about baseball, football, and heavy metal. I damn near shit myself laughing, kneeling down there with the trowel in my hand. I stayed down there in the flower bed and listened as they talked about some drummer from England who got his arm chopped off in a car accident. Then Ferlinghetti said bye, walking off, his big ass waddling like a duck. And Stephen, he looked like he’d been slapped with a stick.
After that they started meeting all the time. And always on the concrete bench under the oak tree. Most of the other counselors, they like to get one of the offices or something for privacy, but not Ferlinghetti. Out in the open, that was him. And, man, did he get that boy to talk up a storm.
Me and Stephen, we worked together sometimes too. The kids get to do some of the flowers and the weed-eating, depending on their level. Stephen was doing pretty good — he was a senior — and he got to work with me. There’s about three hundred kids, maybe twenty capital offenders, and you hear it all. There’s some in there did nothing more than piss on their momma’s toothbrush. But there’s one who hung babies up by Christmas ribbons when a drug deal went wrong. Another who just blew his friend away for a vial of crack. One girl knifed her old man forty times.
Kevin, he’s different from me. He’s been working there twelve years, and he doesn’t like to hear the stories no more. He says after a while you don’t want to hear anything. You walk around with your head down and you mow the lawn with the noisiest goddamn lawnmower you can find, so that your ears get to ringing and you can’t even hear the bell sounding for lunch. Even when Delicia comes along to pick him up at the front gate every day, he gets in the front of the station wagon, she asks him what’s going on, and he just says, same ol’, same ol’, darling.
* * *
Me and Kevin planted the field in spring. Cunningham lent us the tractor and the other equipment, we plowed the field in late March, then sowed the klein grass the next day. That night, when we finished the sowing, we took ourselves a bottle and sat down at the edge of the creek and had ourselves a good time.
We took care of that field, Kevin and me, even though we didn’t own it. Lord knows why we wanted to do it. One night we was just sitting around, shooting the shit, and both of us got to talking about ranching. See, last year there was a drought and some of the ranchers were low on hay for the cattle. We just wanted to start off with something small. Next year we’re going to plant ourselves a proper crop. But Kevin has a friend works in the feed store on Polk Street who said he could get us some free grass seed, and we said okay. The field was five miles down the road and it was lying idle. We called old man Cunningham and he laughed at first. Said he didn’t have time for fooling around. But we got it, in the end, pretty darn cheap too.
At night we’d come home from the State School and get a few beers and sit down and watch the thing grow. Klein grass has a broad leaf and a narrow stem. It gets up to near four foot.
It was mighty nice out there. We’d sit on the back of my pickup and watch the stars. Sometimes, when the sky was clear, Kevin would point out the satellites moving on through the stars. Every now and then you’d hear a coyote howl. I wanted to shoot those critters — used to be you could get some money for killing them — but Kevin said they never done anyone any harm. I suppose he’s right. There’s enough killing without having to start on the coyotes. When Kevin began in the State School twelve years ago there was hardly any kids who had done murder. Now they’re all over the place. It gets you to wondering.
Kevin brings little Natalie out to the field a lot. She plays on the dirt road and sometimes climbs trees. But it scared the living daylights out of Kevin when Natalie found the rattlesnake down in the creekbed. She was six then and damn nearly got bit. I leave my Robert at home. He’s just four years old and don’t need to be messing around with snakes.
That Friday night we were supposed to start cutting the field. The following day we were going to cut some more, crimp it and lay it out in nice neat swaths. Then we were going to turn it so it dried evenly and, the next day, bale it. As it happened, we ended up being late with the whole deal, seeing how Kevin took the story about Stephen. At first he wasn’t listening much, I was just babbling on. But then he looked at me, bug-eyed, like I’d told him the end of the world was coming.
* * *
Ferlinghetti got everything out of Stephen except why he gave himself up. I never seen anyone work a kid so hard for a tiny bit of information. I listened most days that I could, whenever they were out there on the bench. What I can’t believe is how Stephen opened up to Ferlinghetti, telling him nearly every damn bit, but not the bit he really wanted to hear.
Once I seen Ferlinghetti hand him some Red Man, which is against the rules. It was raining pretty heavy but Ferlinghetti had himself an umbrella and they were huddled up close on the bench. I was walking over to one of the cottages and I seen him take the pack of Red Man out of his overcoat and give it to Stephen. But I do that too, sometimes. I have a can of Skoal and some kid’s working with me, just dying for a dip, so you give him a pinch. It’s only human. I suppose Ferlinghetti knew he could get Stephen to talk if he gave him some tobacco.