No Matter How Loud I Shout by Edward Humes

Author:Edward Humes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER 12

Judge Dorn’s Solution

The makeshift library on Unit K/L is cold tonight, and oddly silent. None of the usual sounds of too many kids jammed too long in too little space are coming from outside. The TV room stands empty and desolate, the orange plastic and chrome chairs in neat stacks, the folding tables leaning against the cinder block walls, the scuffed linoleum mopped almost clean. Barely audible, an adolescent voice can be heard weeping down some distant corridor, loud gulping sobs that suddenly cut off with the thump of a steel door shutting.

The unit is in lockdown, with every boy confined to his room, stripped to his underwear. Contraband was discovered earlier that day—a homemade knife and a set of master keys, both hidden behind a loose brick in the kitchen, sure signs of an escape attempt in the making. The kids are master smugglers—they have marijuana and other contraband tossed over the walls to them, passed over during visits, tucked inside mattresses and holes in the walls. After the find in the kitchen, every room has been searched, all personal possessions confiscated, the hall “runners”—juvenile equivalents of trustees—stripped of their privileges. Sister Janet and I had to beg the burly and taciturn “senior”—the new night man in charge of the unit—into releasing the writing students from their rooms for an hour so we could hold tonight’s class. Unlike his predecessor, who avidly supported the class and bent the rules each week to let us work past bedtime, this newly arrived senior seems to think it all a waste of time, perhaps even a threat to order on the unit. He sometimes appears suddenly in the library doorway, heavily muscled arms crossed, observing the proceedings with a dour expression on his face. The boys invariably fall silent in their jailer’s shadow. Still, he agrees to let the class go on this night, and the boys slowly file into the room.

Most of the class is subdued. But just returned from his three-month visit to CYA, Geri is eager to read aloud from his autobiography in progress. As usual when Geri is reading, the class is enthralled—not only because his writing is among the best in the class, but because it sometimes seems he is telling all their stories. “I’ve gotten a lot farther along since my last time here,” he says. “You have a lot more time to yourself at YA.”

He has reached a point in his narrative where his mother, Mary, has been released from prison and is desperately trying to stay clean. Geri is a world-weary nine years old by this time, and he is constantly worried that his mom will lapse back into drug addiction and prostitution. She seems to be holding on, though. Then temptation suddenly appears during a visit to the home of one of Geri’s friends. With that setup, his face assuming the look of uncertainty he always wears when reading aloud to the class, Geri resumes his story.

Just as we were ready to

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