face like a worn-out leather mailbag, absent of pretty much any kind of feeling save a gritty and downbeat pragmatism that was doled out by the handful to anyone within arm’s reach.
Michael Travis was inducted at State Welfare on Monday, August 24, 1942, just five days after the death of his father. He had not seen or heard from his mother during those five days and had not been given any information regarding her circumstances or whereabouts. Those five days had been spent in the holding cells of the Flatwater Sheriff’s Department, simply because there was nowhere else to put him. A perfunctory inquiry into existing relatives had turned up nothing. It appeared that both maternal and paternal grandparents were deceased, as was Janette’s one maternal aunt, Clara Pardoe, herself a liquor-widow. Clara had had a son, Bernard, who was Janette’s cousin, though he was dead. Bernard had been briefly married to a woman called Esther, though she could not be easily located.
So, five days of jail food and serge blankets later, Michael Travis was driven twenty or thirty miles upstate to Welfare, and once he had been stripped, deloused, clippered and uniformed, he found himself standing before Warden Cordell, a custodian behind him, another at the door.
Warden Cordell sat behind a beat-to-shit desk as wide as a football field. The chair within which he sat was a wooden roller, and each time he shifted, it creaked like a ship. He read through the single sheet of paper that sat in the manila file in front of him, and then he leaned back and looked at Michael for what seemed like half an eternity.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “and not a great deal younger than yourself, I did something wicked. I killed a cat. It was a mean cat, a vicious little son of a bitch, and it sat on the veranda of my folks’ house like it owned the place. I would shoo it away, kick it every once in a while, but it was a tough creature, and it just kept on coming back for more. My ma used to throw it tidbits, you know? Encourage it. I hated the thing. Hated it with a passion. But I’ll tell you this now, son, that cat was not a quitter. No matter the times I kicked it or pelted it with rocks, it would just keep on coming back for more. Seemed the urge to survive was a great deal stronger than the fear of pain.”
Cordell paused for a moment, as if caught in reverie, and then he looked back at Michael and went on talking.
“Anyways, one day, I got tired of this cat, and I coaxed it up on the veranda with a piece of chicken and then I bashed its head in with a stone. That was that. The cat was dead. And you know something? I damned well missed that son of a bitch. I missed him something bad. Real sorry that I killed him, but—”
Cordell waved his hand dismissively.
“What you gonna do, eh? The past is the past, and there ain’t no reason for cryin’ on it, right?”
Michael stood impassive, implacable. He didn’t want to say anything in case it was the wrong thing.
“Well, believe it or not, son, there’s a coupla reasons for tellin’ you that story. Firstly, like I said before, there ain’t no use cryin’ on what’s been an’ gone. Life kicks us this way and that, and kicks us good. You may think that you’re the only one who ever got kicked this hard, but I can assure you that there’s a good deal of kids here that has had it as tough, some even tougher. Okay, so your ma is up at the reformatory for killing your pa, but at least you got a ma, son. At least for a while.”
Cordell smiled like he was delivering some good news in among all this other business.
“Anyways, second reason I told you about the cat is perhaps more relevant to your present situation. I learned from that experience that cats is tough. Well, I learned from working here that kids is tough too, often tougher than cats. There is rules and reggerlations. They is ironbound and immovable. You break those rules, we gonna fix you up so you see the error of your
Michael Travis was inducted at State Welfare on Monday, August 24, 1942, just five days after the death of his father. He had not seen or heard from his mother during those five days and had not been given any information regarding her circumstances or whereabouts. Those five days had been spent in the holding cells of the Flatwater Sheriff’s Department, simply because there was nowhere else to put him. A perfunctory inquiry into existing relatives had turned up nothing. It appeared that both maternal and paternal grandparents were deceased, as was Janette’s one maternal aunt, Clara Pardoe, herself a liquor-widow. Clara had had a son, Bernard, who was Janette’s cousin, though he was dead. Bernard had been briefly married to a woman called Esther, though she could not be easily located.
So, five days of jail food and serge blankets later, Michael Travis was driven twenty or thirty miles upstate to Welfare, and once he had been stripped, deloused, clippered and uniformed, he found himself standing before Warden Cordell, a custodian behind him, another at the door.
Warden Cordell sat behind a beat-to-shit desk as wide as a football field. The chair within which he sat was a wooden roller, and each time he shifted, it creaked like a ship. He read through the single sheet of paper that sat in the manila file in front of him, and then he leaned back and looked at Michael for what seemed like half an eternity.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “and not a great deal younger than yourself, I did something wicked. I killed a cat. It was a mean cat, a vicious little son of a bitch, and it sat on the veranda of my folks’ house like it owned the place. I would shoo it away, kick it every once in a while, but it was a tough creature, and it just kept on coming back for more. My ma used to throw it tidbits, you know? Encourage it. I hated the thing. Hated it with a passion. But I’ll tell you this now, son, that cat was not a quitter. No matter the times I kicked it or pelted it with rocks, it would just keep on coming back for more. Seemed the urge to survive was a great deal stronger than the fear of pain.”
Cordell paused for a moment, as if caught in reverie, and then he looked back at Michael and went on talking.
“Anyways, one day, I got tired of this cat, and I coaxed it up on the veranda with a piece of chicken and then I bashed its head in with a stone. That was that. The cat was dead. And you know something? I damned well missed that son of a bitch. I missed him something bad. Real sorry that I killed him, but—”
Cordell waved his hand dismissively.
“What you gonna do, eh? The past is the past, and there ain’t no reason for cryin’ on it, right?”
Michael stood impassive, implacable. He didn’t want to say anything in case it was the wrong thing.
“Well, believe it or not, son, there’s a coupla reasons for tellin’ you that story. Firstly, like I said before, there ain’t no use cryin’ on what’s been an’ gone. Life kicks us this way and that, and kicks us good. You may think that you’re the only one who ever got kicked this hard, but I can assure you that there’s a good deal of kids here that has had it as tough, some even tougher. Okay, so your ma is up at the reformatory for killing your pa, but at least you got a ma, son. At least for a while.”
Cordell smiled like he was delivering some good news in among all this other business.
“Anyways, second reason I told you about the cat is perhaps more relevant to your present situation. I learned from that experience that cats is tough. Well, I learned from working here that kids is tough too, often tougher than cats. There is rules and reggerlations. They is ironbound and immovable. You break those rules, we gonna fix you up so you see the error of your
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