Synanon Kid by C. A. Wittman

Author:C. A. Wittman [Wittman, C. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-08-10T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Hit and Run

Sometime after that another child was hurt much more severely.

We were on a field trip, clustered near a building that might have been a store, somewhere along a road. The Synanon school bus waited at the top of a steep driveway. Two of the boys and I separated from the group and ran down the driveway to the curving highway, which was flanked by redwood trees. One of the boys, Brett, and I decided to cross, but I changed my mind and went back to the shoulder. I was crossing; then I wasn’t. Somehow I knew to stay back even before I saw the car.

I may have yelled for Brett not to cross; or maybe I didn’t. I do not remember.

A car shot out from around the curve of the highway. A giant wave of metal swept Brett off his feet. His body flipped onto the hood, bounced high into the air, then fell to the pavement. A tennis shoe landed at my feet.

The car kept moving. Inside it, black-haired children with large, dark, round eyes screamed against the unfolding nightmare. As if the driver were on a mission to kill my friend, the car slowed, pushing Brett’s body down the highway. In the passenger seat, a woman clutched at the driver’s arm while he remained bent over the steering wheel.

One moment I was at the side of the road; the next I was up the driveway by the building, but behind a chain-linked fence.

The car pulled over and children poured out. The woman clutched a red-faced baby, all mouth, its cries shrill and loud. She and the man talked over each other in Spanish.

Brett lay abandoned, curled up on the road, slowly, noiselessly opening his mouth like a fish on dry land. His body convulsed with one big shudder, then he was still.

It seemed the occupants of the car were on the run. From what I didn’t know. Later I discovered that the driver had stolen the car. He had five children of his own, but if not for his wife, he wouldn’t have pulled over.

Brett was not killed. He remained alive, but in a comatose state for quite a while. After he was released from the hospital, he returned to the Synanon school, where he became the business of the demonstrators.

We were told that we could look at Brett, but we needed to keep quiet in his room. One by one, we stepped up to the large crib where he slept like a giant toddler and peered at his still form.

He slept for days. Once in a while he opened his vacant brown eyes and looked around. Everything he’d learned throughout the eight years of his life, his personal experiences, which made him uniquely Brett had all been wiped from his mind. He did not even know his name.

Gradually he stayed awake for longer periods, but didn’t talk. He’d become an infant again. He didn’t understand anything. We talked to him like he was a newborn.

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