Birmingham

The rhythm of the wipers makes me sleepy. It's hot in this old cop car: all the windows closed to keep out the rain. I blink my eyes a couple times and try to see through the grease streaked windshield. Rain still coming down fast. Blurred neon lights reflecting off the shiny wet asphalt street. Don't know how the big cop sees through all the crud. The radio's playing and Nat King Cole's singing We're too young. I just turned twelve which is why I'm on my way to the  Boys School.  habitual criminal is what Judge Barley called me. "Well son worse kids than you have made it in this old world. You'll stay there till you either straighten up or grow up. Which ever comes first. It's a darn sight better'n being out on the streets where you can get killed." I wanna be mad at him but I can't. He's always been good to me.

-

I cry. Silently. Don't want the cop to think I'm a baby. He'd probably tell the guards at the Boys School what a wimp I am. I ain't whining about the past. Its over and done. It's right now and tomorrow that scare the crap out of me. I start imagining what its gonna be like: Barred windows. Gun toting guards. My head shaved. Wearing black striped white pants and shirt. My imagining gets ended when a gas pain stabs  me in my lower gut. The butter beans they fed me for supper at the jail have turned into gas. I sit here hurting 'cause I can't lower the window: no window handles on cop cars. Wish he'd hurry.

 -

"Are we about there?" "Just a few more blocks" he replies in a tired voice. He lowers his window, and a few sneaky raindrops hit my face. The misty cool night air feels good, though. He slows and turns left onto a dark street. Lotsa trees. Off to the left, kind of down in a low spot is a big spreadout one story building, all lit up. He passes the street that goes to it. Darn. We circle around to the right. Ahead is a flickering street light. He slows and we turn left onto a school campus.

 -

No guards. No fence.  Just a house on the right and a couple of spooky dark three-story buildings directly ahead. The cop parks the car, gets my bag of stuff out of the trunk and walks me up the fifteen wide concrete steps leading to a dimly lit office. It's closed, but an old white-headed night watchman, sitting at a school desk outside the office door takes my belongings and records from the cop. He glances at my records and says "Well Norman, welcome to the Alabama Boys Industrial School." He turns to the cop and they talk a bit, then say their goodnights and the watchman takes me upstairs to meet the other hundred or so trouble makers that are about to rip me off.