The State Boys Rebellion by Michael D’Antonio

Author:Michael D’Antonio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Fred had almost fallen asleep when a sudden jolt—someone had kicked the other side of the door—roused him. It was the night watchman on his rounds. He was peering through the window and shouting for Fred to get up. He wanted to know what had happened to the door.

All the rage that Fred felt in his struggle with the bed frame and the door surged back into his body. He grabbed his hammer and chisel, quickly got to his feet, and used them to smash the window in the door. The night watchman jumped back as tiny pieces of glass fell like a handful of gravel on the floor around him. When he saw that the boy was armed, he went to a phone and called for help. Fred waited, and seethed.

In a short time, the watchman was back. Pat O’Callaghan and a nurse Fred knew as Miss Ross were with him. He liked Miss Ross, and he trusted O’Callaghan. They listened from the other side of the door as he explained what had happened, how he had found a home in Dracut, only to lose it. He said that the North Building was an insult to him, and that he would have behaved better if they had just put him in a decent place.

O’Callaghan believed him. He believed that the North Building was torture for a young man like Fred and that the institution was as much to blame for what had gone on this night as Fred. What’s more, he knew it was a sign of the boy’s intelligence, and the strength of his spirit, that he had tried to run away and had continued to fight for himself.

“But he had to calm down, or they never would listen to him,” recalled O’Callaghan decades later. “We told him that in the morning he would be allowed to talk to Dr. Kelley [a Fernald psychiatrist] as long as he took the medication the nurse had brought for him.”

Fred agreed to take the medication, insisting “it won’t do anything to me.” The night watchman opened the door. He and Pat O’Callaghan went in and pulled out the busted bed frame to make room for the mattress to be laid out flat on the floor. Nurse Ross told Fred to sit down. She handed him a glass of water she had brought and a single tranquilizer capsule. Fred took it and lay down on the mattress. In a few minutes, he was asleep.

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