The Journey Back Read online

  I couldn’t get the thought of that cheesesteak sub out of my head. I had practically inhaled it I was so hungry. While I ate, I had looked around at all the other boys in that dining hall the first night, all of them hunched over and busy eating. It wasn’t anything like my middle school cafeteria where the noise would’ve been deafening. Nobody was talking at Cliffside. No chitchat or food fights or laughing. Nothing. Just forks and spoons—no knives, mind you—scraping away at those hard plastic dinner trays. And I remember thinking this: none of those boys looked like criminals to me. They looked like they could have been boys back at my middle school! Or down to the high school where I should have been a freshman. . . .

  After we ate, us new kids had orientation in the prison office. First thing a nurse took our temperature. I guess to make sure we weren’t sick and bringing in some awful disease. Then we got our hair shaved off and were told to get undressed. We had to put on the Cliffside uniform, which was a white T-shirt, blue pants they called Dickies, and a blue sweatshirt with the name of Cliffside Youth Center on it. Guess they didn’t want to advertise the “detention” part of the name. Everything we wore that day, like my jeans, my shirt, even the L.L. Bean watch that my grampa gave me when I turned twelve, all that stuff got put into a bag and sent home. It was like prison stripped away who you were.

  Then we had a lecture about how we’d have to do chores and go to school, stuff like that. Get this: we would get a dollar a week and two stamps. And we’d be allowed to make two twenty-minute phone calls.

  It was really humiliating. All of it. But don’t forget, I had just ridden out to that place in a prison van with handcuffs and shackles on my feet. I was already beaten down from being in court. I was accepting things as they came because I was guilty. I had done wrong, and I was willing to pay for it. So I went with the program. I wasn’t scheming to get out or anything. Not then. Even with Tio and a couple of them others, I probably could’ve done the time. But then Mom came to visit, and, like I said, I needed to get home to protect her and somehow fix things.

  After we put our uniforms on, they piled up our arms with a load of supplies: sheets, pillowcase, two blankets, socks, boxers, another T-shirt, another pair of blue Dickies, light blue pajamas, a black field jacket, gloves, a wool hat, and boots. But before we left for the dormitory we had to put everything down and fill out a bunch of paperwork about our education and sign promises to obey the school rules. It was pretty basic stuff like: “When the teacher is talking, be quiet and listen . . . Raise your hand to be recognized . . . No writing in your textbooks . . . Always do your best work.” We had to promise not to send emails, or download any pornography or gun material from the school computers.

  A lot of rules. Later, when we got a tour of the place, I saw a sign in the rec center—and don’t get the wrong idea that this rec center was some incredible entertainment place. It wasn’t even like a big room or anything, just the basement of a cabin that had a pool table, a TV, and some video games. It all seemed pretty low-key, but when you walked in, a big sign said: NO FEET ON WALLS. Which made me think it got kind of rowdy in there sometimes.

  Finally, we had to sign a pledge acknowledging that “everyone has the right to be treated with respect.” Which brings me to my good friend, Tio.

  Tio arrived same time as J.T. and me, but in the other van which had brung kids from Baltimore and some place called Montgomery County. First thing you notice about Tio is that his head is like too big for his body, which is short, but really muscular. I think he must have worked out with weights and stuff. Second thing you notice about Tio is his thick, dark curly hair. Let me tell you, there was a mass of it before they shaved it off, which left his head looking like a shiny melon. A real melonhead.

  Next thing you see is either the cold look Tio had in his eyes, or else all his tattoos. He was covered with ’em—his hands, his arms, the back of his neck, even his face had a little design on it, up near his ear, and a single-digit number was tattooed at the corner of his eye. I couldn’t help but stare at Tio ’cause he was the most weird-looking person I had ever seen.

  “So what’s crackin’?” he asked, fixing his eyes on me hard, like I had a hell of a nerve to breathe and be in the same room with him.

  Of course, I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, but already I didn’t like his attitude and I was not— I repeat not—gonna be pushed around by any punk kid at that place.

  “What’s crackin’?” I repeated his question and stared back at him. “Maybe your head will be crackin’ in a minute.”

  Boy, that got him fired up. He lunged forward and tried to take a punch at me right then, right there in the office during orientation! Mr. R. had to step in quick and put Tio in a headlock. “You just signed your name to a paper there where you acknowledged this is a hands-off program!” he hollered. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

  Tio didn’t reply. He looked like a big June bug wriggling around and trying to swing his arms, but Mr. R. had him locked up tight.

  “Everyone here has a right to be treated with respect!” Mr. R. yelled.

  Tio strained to look up, but Mr. R. had him facing down. Still, I could tell that Tio had zero respect for me. So I made it mutual. And that was the beginning.

  —

  Wow. I must have fallen asleep there in the bushes. It wasn’t very restful sleep though ’cause I was leaning against a tree and the rough bark made ridges on the side of my face. When I woke up everything was pretty quiet, except for a couple frogs croaking away. You could also hear the slight murmur of the nearby river. The campfire was out. The only thing I smelled was the vague garbage odor from my own clothes. I heard an owl hoot and I kind of smiled ’cause I liked the sound. Reminded me of listening to owls when I slept on the back porch at Grampa’s farm, or camped out with my friends, J.T. and Brady. Could have been that owl woke me up. Bet he was hungry, too. A gentle breeze rustled the bushes. I rubbed at the sore ridges on my face, but the first thing I really thought about was food.

  They say you don’t make good decisions when you’re tired or hungry. Well, I was both. But I had to at least check out those campers, didn’t I? See what they had?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  HARDEN THE HEART

  Slowly, I baby-stepped through the shadows, trying not to crunch any leaves or make any noise. Lucky for me, there was a good bit of moonlight. Between the tree branches, I could see it reflect off the water, making a sparkly silver path across the Potomac River. When I got close to the campsite I kneeled down. I was close enough to see a few glowing embers from a dying fire and make out the silhouettes of two different tents. To my right, not far away, several bicycles leaned against the trees, almost all of them with saddlebags over the rear wheels.

  I crept over to the bikes and ran my hands over one. I didn’t feel a lock or a chain on it. Guess these campers thought they were safe out in the woods. I explored all the saddlebags looking for food, but no luck. I went back to the bike on the outside of the pile and could tell from the fat, knobby tires and the tread that it was a mountain bike. I knew a kid back at school had a mountain bike with twenty-four gears that cost like over a thousand dollars. He let me ride it once, over a cornfield, down a gully, and into the woods. It was awesome.

  In the dark, the mountain bike’s metal handlebars were cool and smooth beneath my fingers. The bike had the twist shifter instead of the trigger kind. You twisted back for easier gears, forward for the harder ones.

  Quietly, I picked that bike up and moved it a few feet to the trail.

  Looking back at the camp, I suddenly noticed that overhead, hanging by a rope in a tree, were several backpacks. That would be their food, I guessed, strung up to keep it away from critters. With my eyes, I followed the line of rope to where it was anchored to a nearby tree. Piece of cake, I thought, untying the knot at the base of the tree and slowly
letting the rope out. When the backpacks were on the ground I fumbled with the knot on the rope, but it was too complicated so I pulled out the knife I stole from the trucker, opened the big blade, and sawed through it.

  After pausing to listen again, I folded and slid the knife back in my pocket. I picked up one backpack and was about to explore what it had inside when I stepped on a big stick that snapped in half with a loud crack!

  Immediately, I heard a voice from one tent—then two voices—then a click—then light spilled out of one of the other tents!

  Quickly, I put the backpack on, dashed for the bike, and hopped on.

  “Hey!” someone called after me. “Stop!”

  I slammed my feet on the pedals and pedaled like a madman, twisting the shifter forward to put the bike into a harder gear so I could cover more ground. But the gears went crazy and the pedals spun around with no traction at all!

  “Come back, you thief!” one of the campers called out.

  Finally, the gears caught. I practically jumped on the pedals to get the bike going and pumped hard. Zipping into the black tunnel, I had to imagine the path when it disappeared. Imagining wasn’t good enough ’cause right away I smashed into the brick wall dripping with water and got scraped off the bike. I hit my head hard and sat on the ground, stunned.

  Forcing myself up, I grabbed the bike’s handlebars and started running while pushing the bike beside me. I kept it between me and the wooden railing, hoping the railing would stop me from falling into that murky canal.

  A little glimmer of light up ahead gave me something to aim toward. I hopped back on the bike and pedaled furiously again, flying out the other end of that tunnel like a guy whose pants were on fire.

  With only moonlight it’s a miracle I stayed on that towpath as long as I did. I leaned forward and kept pedaling. I covered a lot of ground this way, too—maybe as much as a mile—before the accident.

  I don’t know what I hit, but all at once I was off the towpath, in the air, and crashing hard against the ground. When I got my bearings I realized the backpack was gone and that in another inch I would have been over the edge into that stew pot of a canal.

  In a panic, I patted the ground all around me, found the backpack, and threw it back on. I lifted the bike by the handlebars, but when I hopped on it, it wouldn’t go and I could tell the front tire was punctured. That bike wasn’t going anywhere anymore. With both hands, I picked up the bike and heaved it deep into the brush. Then I took off running into the woods.

  I paused once to listen and when I heard voices and saw a tiny headlight approaching, I threw myself flat on the ground.

  Seconds seem like minutes when you got your face pressed into a bunch of dirt and wet plants that had who-knew-what kind of insects crawling all over them. But—this is a weird thing to say—I also kind of liked it. I bet the Marines did stuff like this all the time. It was a challenge, but it was saving me and I knew I could live through it—that I could endure it.

  Boy, and I knew that word endure. It was on a sixth-grade spelling test once. Endure means to “harden the heart . . . to hold out, to last.” I remember when my teacher read the definition for that word out loud, how I dropped my head and slid down in my chair. Even my face got hot ’cause that teacher could have been talking about me! That word endure applied to like my whole life. I had hardened my heart all right. I stopped crying in about the fifth grade. And some nights, the whole night, when I was a kid, I slept in my own backyard at home so my dad couldn’t find me during one of his rages. When we still had the big truck, I’d curl up in the sleeper. But he found me there once and whupped me good. So I got me this other spot behind the toolshed where I had made a shelter with sheet metal, old tires, and a broken-down lounge chair. So no. I never forgot that word endure. I lived that word.

  I kept taking shallow breaths and listening. Soon, two bikers cruised by on the towpath with their little bouncing lights. They didn’t see their bike in the bushes. More important, they didn’t see me.

  When I figured they were far down the path, I stood up. But instead of returning to the towpath, I walked through the woods to the edge of the river. It was rough walking. In some places, there was no beach at all, just rocks. Big, small, round, sharp—all kinds of rocks. I ended up in the water half the time, but I waded quietly, close to shore and kind of hunched over so I couldn’t be seen. One time, I had to climb over a bunch of boulders and one of my boots slipped. I went down hard. The backpack broke my fall, but then I slid sideways, cutting and tearing my pants at the knee.

  I walked this way all night until a few birds started singing and faint traces of dawn turned the sky purple. Then, out of nowhere, I stumbled on this boat ramp. A sign said: LITTLE ORLEANS DRIVE-IN CAMPING. And next to the ramp were two overturned canoes.

  Staying low, I snuck over to the canoes. It would be a change of pace to paddle in a canoe instead of walking. Fun, too. I chose the dark green one and not the silver one ’cause I thought silver would draw more attention. But when I went to lift the end of the canoe, I discovered it was chained to a stake in the ground. Both canoes were chained up.

  Disappointed, I sat on the grass and crossed my arms. But then I had an idea. I tried moving one of the stakes back and forth, back and forth, until I felt it start to get loose. I worked at it until the stake gave way and I could pull it out of the ground. Quietly, I lay the stake and chain in the green canoe, set the backpack on top of them, and started pulling the canoe across the grass.

  At the water’s edge, I took off my boots and socks, and gently placed them in the bow. Then I rolled up the bottoms of my pants, although I’m not sure why ’cause they were already wet.

  Stepping into the cold water I felt the pull of the current. I was several feet out in the river beside the canoe when I remembered the paddles. Damn! I cast a glance backward and scanned the area, but I didn’t see any. What I did see was a police car slowly coming down the dirt road. Like a snake, I thought, sneaking out of the bushes to get me.

  Quickly, I ducked down and pushed the canoe out to deeper water. When I felt the water halfway up my shins, I pointed the canoe downriver and rolled over the gunwale the way a high jumper rolls over the bar. Flat on the bottom of the canoe, I curled up and stayed low while the boat drifted with the current. The whole time I expected someone to call out to me from shore, but the only thing I ever heard was water rippling down the sides of the canoe.

  After a while I sat up and discovered I was a good ways down the river with the landing out of sight beyond a bend. Another close call. Unbelievable.

  Guess some people thought the river was a floating trash can ’cause I saw a ton of disgusting stuff out there in the water: tires, a little kid’s wading pool, a car seat cushion, tin cans, bottles, a Styrofoam cooler, dirty diapers, a broom. When I saw the broom, I reached out and grabbed it. Even if I couldn’t paddle with it very well, at least I’d have something to push the canoe off the rocks if it got stuck.

  I lay the broom down inside the canoe and sat for a while, watching the sun come up in the east over the trees. It was a right pretty sunrise and I wondered what the day was going to bring. But my stomach was making a lot of noise again so food was my next order of business. Here’s what I found in the backpack:

  Two bottles of water

  A tiny red flashlight that worked

  Small box of waterproof matches

  The C&O Canal Companion, a guidebook sealed in a Ziploc bag

  One asthma inhaler, which I held in my hand a full minute before I figured out what it was

  Food! Two apricot Clif bars, a package of organic beef jerky, buttermilk pancake mix, a Baggie full of raisins, and one package of dehydrated oriental-style spicy chicken.

  Right off, I drank an entire bottle of water without stopping, I was so thirsty. Then I chowed down one of the Clif bars, swallowed a handful of rais
ins, and bit into one of the beef jerky sticks before stopping to save some of that food for later.

  I felt better, but I was still pretty tired from all the running. I folded up my sweatshirt and put it on the bottom of the canoe for a pillow, pulled the trucker’s red hat from the jacket pocket to lay over my face, then stretched out to rest.

  Now, I know what a person might be thinking at this point. Like did it bother me I broke out of prison? That I stole a tractor-trailer truck and burned up its brakes? Did I feel bad for ripping off that trucker’s jacket and his knife and his hat and his three bucks? Was I crushed with guilt because I took someone’s backpack full of food? Then stole and gave their bike a flat tire? Did I ever stop to consider it wasn’t very nice to uproot a chained canoe and take it down the river?

  The answer is no. The answer is hell, no. I did not ever stop to think about whether what I was doing was right or wrong and what the consequences might be—the if/then thinking stuff. Later on I did, sure. I knew what I did was wrong, but I didn’t feel awful about it ’cause I had my reasons. No way did I have that conduct disorder thing that Miss Laurie talked about. She said if I beat up kids and didn’t feel guilty about it that it could be a warning sign. She tried to scare me, I know she did, by saying if I had that disorder I’d probably spend most of my life in prison and end up getting killed before I was twenty-five years old. But, like I said, I knew I didn’t have that disorder. I never beat up a kid who didn’t deserve it. And let me point out that I did feel bad when I saw that asthma inhaler thing in the backpack ’cause I knew this girl in middle school who needed to suck on hers all the time or else she couldn’t breathe.