Kendall and I walked across the cracked concrete and stood almost in the shadow of the stained brick building that didn’t have a single window intact. I should have had the place demolished and built a giant public toilet facility here.
Kendall took out her notebook and pen. I was giving her the information she needed for an article, but I’d still be damned if I wanted my actual voice recorded on a Dictaphone talking about anything at all.
“So it’s been eleven years since you lived here. How do you feel being back?” she asked.
I looked around the area the staff had called the basketball court, but what we’d called the-place-where-you-get-the-shit-kicked-out-of-you. The ghost voices of chanting kids echoed in my mind.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
“Pissed off.”
“Why?”
“This place. This fuckin’ place. Kids shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t a home. It was a cage for animals. You put kids in, you get animals out.”
“What do you mean? It didn’t turn you into an animal.” she asked.
“It did. You see that ladder over there?”
I pointed at the rusty iron rungs that were bolted to the side of the building. A fire escape at one point, that ladder was already a relic in my day because there wasn’t a single fucking window anywhere near it that didn’t have permanent bars on it. Kendall nodded.
“See how one of the bottom rungs is missing? I ripped that off and changed the way this kid’s face looked with it. He never came back to Wellfort.”
Kendall stopped scribbling and looked up, horrified and confused. “Why?”
“Because he was fucking huge. I was in fights every week, Lord of the Flies had nothing on this place. The guy started hearing rumors that some people thought I could beat him. Well, he was almost eighteen by that point. He’d ruled the roost for so long, used to kick my ass all the time when I was younger, and he didn’t like people talking like that. People start talking like that, you have to watch your back a whole lot more.”
“What did the staff do to stop all the fighting?”
“Stop it? You kidding me? They took bets, this was their fucking entertainment,” I spat.
“You can’t be serious!”
“Look at me. I’m serious. I got a scar here where a kid hit me with a brick. I had a scar here on my neck, it’s faded now, from rope burn when another motherfucker tried to strangle me.”
I shook my head in disgust, remembering the staff who used to hold back, waiting until somebody was about to get killed before they “noticed” the fight and “took appropriate action” as per state guidelines.
“Couldn’t you just… not fight? Stay out of their game?” she asked.
“No.”
“Everybody fought?”
“No. I tell you what though, the kids that didn’t fight had nothin’. If you’re here, you already don’t have much, but those poor fucks had nothing,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“This place taught me that at least. If you don’t fight, then somebody is going to come and take away whatever it is that you care about. Those kids didn’t have a shirt on their back most of the time. Yeah. It taught me that alright. Nobody is ever going to take what’s mine without a fight, without payback.”
“Is that why this place got shut down in the end?”
“I have no idea, never looked into it.”
Kendall wrote something in her notebook, and when she looked up at me again her eyes were glassy. She spoke with a choked voice.
“What was it like? You know, one day you’re at home with Mom and Dad, you’ve got your own room, your toy box in the corner, maybe a bunch of books your parents take turns reading to you at night, you’re safe. You were just a little boy and… the next day you’re here. Did you ever think about that? About them? W-wonder h-how this happened?” Kendall’s lip was quivering.
I looked across the-place-where-you-get-the-shit-kicked-out-of-you to the-place-where-kids-shove-sand-in-your-mouth. In my day, there had been a swing set there. Now there was just a rusty death-trap frame. That was where that guy sat me down and told me what really happened that day.
Hey kid, they’re feedin’ you bullshit here… That car accident wasn’t an accident, it was a mob hit… You don’t remember some guys blastin’ your folks after the crash? You musta knocked your head good… Well, fuck it, I just wanted you to know the truth… the Picolli family did this to ya…
Trench coat, hat and sunglasses like in a shitty spy movie, he dropped that bomb on me and left. I never saw him again, but that was the day my life regained purpose. I would turn myself into a weapon that could take down the Picolli family. Nothing else mattered.