The next afternoon Mr. Kemp signed me out of the ward, and we walked through the maze of hallways and out the front doors of the Hall to the parking lot. It felt strange, almost uncomfortable, being outside the confines of the Hall, as if the air were somehow too thin, the sky overhead too big and bright. There was too much space between things. I felt a little better after Mr. Kemp opened the passenger door to his sedan and I slid myself onto the bench seat, but when he’d let himself in on the driver’s side and started the car, something icy began trickling into my stomach. It grew steadily as we traveled east through Mission Valley, out past San Diego State College, then south, over the hill and into La Mesa.
I will not like them, I told myself, I will not like them, I will not like them.
After driving for twenty minutes, we pulled up in front of a beige stucco house on a quiet side street just off of University Avenue. The house was small, but neat, with a tiny, open, scraggly-looking grass yard in front, and a few tall swaying eucalyptus trees in back, visible over the roof of the house. Mr. Kemp turned off the car and looked at me. He must have seen how nervous I was. “Hey, relax,” he said. “They’re just people.”
Before we could get out of the car, the front door of the house opened, and out they came: the tall, youngish policeman whom I vaguely recognized from our talk more than a month earlier, looking strange (to me) and even younger in his civilian attire of blue jeans and a dark green Ban Lon shirt; then a pretty, pixie-like woman with shining eyes and short dark hair; and, finally, straggling behind her, a small dark-haired boy three or four years of age, wearing a leery expression on his face and hanging cautiously onto his mother’s pants-leg.
Mr. Kemp got out of the car and was all smiles. “Larry!” he said, reaching for Larry Cushman’s outstretched hand and pumping it jovially. “Good to see you again!” I let myself out of the car and stood awkwardly watching the men shaking hands.
Larry slapped Mr. Kemp lightly in the arm. “Glad you could come,” he said. He looked down at me and grinned broadly. “You, too, Billy. Both of you.” Then he gestured toward the woman. “Mr. Kemp, you remember my wife, Charlotte, don’t you?”
Charlotte reached her hand out, and Mr. Kemp squeezed it gently. “Of course, I do,” he said reverently. “Hello, again, Charlotte.”
“Hello, Mr. Kemp,” Charlotte said to him, in a musical voice with a slight rasp to it that instantly clutched at my heart, filling it with a strange, sweet nostalgia for something I couldn’t put my finger on. Charlotte smiled kindly at Mr. Kemp, and then looked down at me. Her eyes settled on my own, and her face softened, the way I’d seen a woman’s face soften when she glimpsed a brand new baby for the first time. I was suddenly, irretrievably smitten. “You must be Billy,” she sang to me in that voice again. All I could do was to stare at her dumbly and nod my head. She reached her hand out, and when I cautiously extended my own, she took hold of it gently and shook it. “I’m very glad to meet you, Billy,” she said. “I’m Larry’s wife, Charlotte.”
“Hello, Charlotte,” I said.
Charlotte bent down and pulled the young boy attached to her leg around and in front of her. “And this young man,” she said playfully, “is Butchie.” Butchie looked at the ground and squirmed and tried to step backward, but Charlotte held him by the shoulder so he couldn’t go anywhere. “Butchie has just turned three years old,” she continued. “Can you say hi to Billy?” Butchie pressed his face against Charlotte’s leg. Charlotte laughed, and my stomach jumped.
We went inside the house and sat in the living room, with Mr. Kemp and me on the couch, and Larry and Charlotte in chairs, facing us. The adults all lit up cigarettes. Butchie ran to his bedroom as soon as we were in the front door, but I could see him once in awhile peeking out at us from the small hallway. Charlotte went to the kitchen and made coffee.
The inside of the house was immaculate. The brown and white oval rope rug covering the hardwood floors appeared to have been freshly vacuumed, and the furniture we sat on, the couch, the chairs, the cherry dining room set I could see from where I sat, all looked as if they’d been bought just yesterday. Everywhere were framed paintings and brass plates and knick-knacks and family pictures, in nooks and on shelves and hanging from the walls. It felt so much like a real home—the kind they had on Leave it to Beaver, or Father Knows Best—that I suddenly ached for it to be mine.
We talked. Or, rather, Mr. Kemp and Larry talked. Charlotte brought the coffee into the room, then sat down and listened, mostly, looking thoughtful while she smoked her cigarette and sipped occasionally from her cup. I listened, too, though with little interest. Right then I was trying to hide my breathless infatuation with Charlotte and her perfect little house. Nevertheless, I heard about the weather. The latest business with President Kennedy and those goddamn Communists in Berlin, and Cuba, and just how close did we come to nuclear annihilation? And would the Chargers take the title in the Western Football League this year? I heard, though nothing sank in for more than a second or two.
Finally, the conversation turned to me. Larry and Charlotte took turns throwing out questions: What sorts of foods did I like? Dislike? What had I been studying in school? Did I go to church? Had I thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up? Did I like playing baseball? Football? Camping?
They listened patiently, interestedly, as I pondered and stumbled through my responses. I wanted to look intelligent, but the truth was I hadn’t thought much about any of those things. I was sure I came across to them as an idiot, or, worse, a kid with a chip on his shoulder who wouldn’t even try fitting in with the world around him. But they nodded their heads and smiled, and occasionally laughed, as if what I was saying to them was, at that moment, the most important thing in the whole world. It was Charlotte’s smile, though, that most warmed me, deep inside. Amazingly, no one asked about my stealing, or how I’d happened to end up in Juvenile Hall. Just thinking about having to talk about such things, especially in front of Charlotte, made my stomach ache. I had no idea what to say if someone brought it up. Thankfully, no one did.
Finally, Larry said, “Hey, why don’t you come outside with me? I’ve got something I want to show you.” Charlotte poured Mr. Kemp some more coffee, and they lit up another cigarette. Mr. Kemp said something about how beautifully she kept house. I didn’t really want to go outside and leave Charlotte, but I said “Okay,” and we went out into the bright afternoon sun. The screen door slammed behind us. “What is it?” I asked. Larry put his arm around me affectionately. “It’s a jeep,” he said. “It has four-wheel drive, which means we can ride places a regular car can’t go. Can you guess what color it is?”
“Red?” I said.
Larry grinned, surprised. “That’s exactly right! How did you know?”
I grinned, too, and shrugged. “Just lucky,” I said.
Larry took a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked a small padlock on the garage door, then pulled it open to reveal a spotlessly clean Jeep, fire-engine red, with a black canvas top and canvas doors. “I use this when I go camping,” he said proudly. “Or when I want to go someplace shooting.”
I looked up at him. “You mean, with real guns?”
Larry chuckled. “Yes, with real guns. I’m a police officer, remember? We’re supposed to carry a gun with us wherever we go. And we have to practice.”
“Oh.”
He looked at me. “Would you like to learn how to shoot?”
My jaw fell open. “Me? Shoot a gun? A real gun?”
“Of course,” he said, matter of factly. “You’re old enough.”
“Wow!” I could hardly contain my sudden enthusiasm. “Would I?”
Larry laughed. “Well, then,” he said, “we’ll just have to see about making that happen.” He pulled the garage door down again and locked it, then pulled me to him again with his arm. “There are a lot of fun things we can do,” he said.
We went back into the house. “So,” Charlotte said to Larry, “did you show Billy your Jeep?”
“Yep,” said Larry, sitting down. “And we talked about teaching Billy how to shoot, too.”
“Ooooh,” said Charlotte, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “That sounds like fun.”
“I’ve never shot a real gun before,” I said to Charlotte, excitedly, trying not to remember the gun I’d stolen in Ocean Beach.
Charlotte looked at Larry admiringly. “Well,” she said, “you certainly couldn’t ask for a better teacher.” I watched her looking at Larry, and found myself hoping she might one day look at me the same way.
Finally, Mr. Kemp looked at his watch and said it was about time we got back. Butchie had apparently lain down on his bed and was asleep, so it was only Charlotte and Larry who walked us out to the car. They both shook hands with Mr. Kemp, who again was beaming. Larry shook my hand, too, and said he hoped I’d come back for a longer stay. Charlotte held my hand for moment, which nearly made me swoon. “Yes,” she said, “we’d love to have you.”
“Thank you,” I said. I got into the car with Mr. Kemp, and we drove away.
“Well?” said Mr. Kemp “what do you think? Think you might like living with the Cushmans for awhile?”
I thought of Charlotte, her eyes on me, her hand holding mine. Then I saw Mama, just looking at me, and a new ache rose in my stomach. I suddenly felt like crying, but I didn’t exactly know why. “I—I don’t know,” I said to him. “I guess I have to think about it.”
Mr. Kemp nodded thoughtfully. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
They didn’t give me a lot of time to think. The following Sunday, Mr. Jenkins took me into his office after breakfast and told me I’d be going to juvenile court that afternoon. I remember thinking that Sunday was a strange day to have court. “Your probation officer will come to get you after lunch,” he said to me. There came to me then a mixture of heaviness and excitement that seemed to make everything around me more significant, somehow, as if even the smallest thing had some sort of deep meaning behind it. Funny things were funnier; sad things were sadder. One of the kids told me off-handedly that my hair looked stupid, and for some reason it made me want to cry.
I was still eating my lunch of some sort of goulash when I heard the ward doors open. Mr. Kemp, looking harried, appeared at the front desk. He scanned the room until he found me, and then waved me toward him impatiently. “We have to be in court in five minutes,” he said to me. Seconds later he was hurrying me out the ward doors and through the nearly-familiar maze of hallways. “So,” he said along the way, “have you given some thought about whether you’d like to go stay with the Cushmans for awhile?”
“I—I’m still not sure,” I stammered.
Mr. Kemp seemed to ignore my answer, as if it didn’t matter anymore what I thought. He kept glancing at his watch, as if he was already, in his busy mind, somewhere even farther down the road than the courtroom we were about to enter.
We finally came to a hallway with a white sign hanging down from the ceiling that said “Juvenile Court” and several heavy wood doors with numbers on them. Mr. Kemp opened the door labeled ‘2’ and motioned for me to go inside.
Charlotte and Larry Cushman were already there, sitting on one side of the room on wood benches that looked like church pews. There was a court clerk, a woman, who was busy shuffling papers and stapling them and putting them in a neat pile on the judge’s bench. Mama was there, too, sitting by herself on the other side. They all turned to look at me when I came in, and I could tell they’d been talking about me. “There he is!” said Larry, grinning widely. Larry and Charlotte’s faces brightened in a way that, for some reason, embarrassed me. Mama pursed her lips in a kind of half-hearted smile and nodded. Everybody was dressed up. Even Mama was wearing her good work clothes. Larry wore a suit, and Charlotte had on a bright purple outfit with a matching hat. With her short-cut hair, she reminded me of Jackie Kennedy. She smiled at me, the way she’d smiled at me when we first met, and suddenly the ache in my stomach grew, so that I had to look away, toward Mama. But Mama was busy reading what looked like some sort of court paper. Mr. Kemp guided me to a table in the front of the room, facing toward where the judge would be sitting on his high seat.
We didn’t have to wait long. A door at the front of the room opened, and the judge came out, his black robe flowing around him. The clerk stood up then and told us to rise, then rattled off something about court being in session, during which the judge sat down and began leafing through his stack of papers. It was the fist time I’d been in a courtroom. I couldn’t help thinking this must be what it was like being on Perry Mason.
“Be seated,” the clerk said.
The judge busied himself reading for a few minutes while the rest of us sat and watched him. Finally, he looked at me. “Well, Mr. Campbell,” he said. “It looks like you’ve run into quite a bit of trouble lately. Very serious trouble. Theft. Burglary. Not at all good things to be doing, especially for someone who’s only nine years old.” He looked at me over his glasses, in a stern but not unkind way. “Would you agree?”
“Yes, sir,” I said to him, my voice barely a squeak.
The judge nodded. He read some more, then told me how kids like me need a father, that mothers alone can’t properly raise a young boy. “I understand,” he said, “your family life has been pretty tough going.” He glanced briefly at Mama, then over to the Cushmans. “So I’m going to propose something to you. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live with a model family, one that includes a father. And not just any father, but a policeman. A solid citizen who I think would be an excellent role-model for any troubled boy.” He paused to give his words time to sink in. “Are you willing to take advantage of this opportunity?”
My mind raced back and forth, between Mama and these people, Mama and these people. The ache in my stomach seemed to be pulling the breath out of me. Finally, a sort of numbness settled over me. I shrugged. “I don’t care,” I said quietly.
The judge looked at me for several seconds with raised eyebrows. “Well, I’ve probably heard more spirited responses,” he said. “But I’m going to take that as an affirmative.” He picked up his gavel and whacked something on top of his bench, making me jump. “So ordered,” he said. He signed a paper with a flourish and handed it to the clerk, then announced the court adjourned. We all stood while he got out of his seat and walked out the same door through which he’d come in.
Just like that, I was out of Juvenile Hall. Mr. Kemp took me back to the ward to collect my ‘uniform’ clothes, as well as the comic books Mama had brought for me and my New Testament. Then he took me to the in-processing office, where I was given back the clothes I was wearing the day I’d first arrived. I was surprised to discover, in my jacket pocket, the pencils I’d stolen from Cornet. Minutes later, a man in a khaki uniform brought me to the entrance vestibule, where I found Mama and the Cushmans and Mr. Kemp waiting. Mr. Kemp shook hands with everyone, even me. He said he’d be in touch within the week, wished us all the best of luck, and left. The sun was going down as the rest of us walked out to the parking lot.
Mama looked tired. She stopped and bent down, and told me to give her a hug. “You behave, now, you hear?” she said.
“I will, Mama,” I said to her. I felt as if I were watching a movie, as if this was all being acted. It still hadn’t hit me that I wasn’t going home with her.
Then she let me go and turned and walked across the parking lot. I watched as she got into the passenger side of an old car I didn’t recognize, with a woman I’d never seen before in the driver’s seat smoking a cigarette. The woman started the car and they pulled out of the parking lot and drove away, slowly, it seemed, with Mama just staring out her window.
“Let’s go home,” Larry said. He opened the door for both Charlotte and me, and when he got in on his side, I saw him take a holstered .38 Special which he had clipped to the back of his pants and toss it under his seat. The car still had a new-car smell about it, and I breathed it in like perfume. Pretty soon we were driving down the highway toward La Mesa, and—for me—a brand new life.