The Buffalo Tree

Chapter One

We are playing floor hockey in the basement of Spalding Cottage. The light cage keeps getting hit and that bulb is about to bust. When it swings you can see those long shadows creeping on the wall.

There are fifteen juvies and most of us ain't sporting shirts. When a bunch of juvies get to playing some floor hockey in the basement of Spalding you get that thick, cooked smell.

Some juvies are playing just to feel their bodies fighting, to throw some bows and bust you in the ribs, and some are mad slashing for that puck. I am playing cause Coly Jo is playing, and I like the sound of those sticks hitting each other. I am playing cause my hands are faster than theirs.

I am the only white juvy. I got a thought that if I was outside of my body and watching from the ceiling, I would look like deadness in the mass of their shiny, boiling dark, like some puppet bones.

I get my stick on the puck and flick it. I am smaller than them but I am quicker and I know they can smell the quickness on me, the same way you know about quickness when a rat is in a kitchen. They can smell it on my back when I get low and use my legs.

I am the fastest juvy in Spalding. Sometimes another juvy wants to race me. He gets those happy feet up and waits for me outside the hash house. And juvies bunch up on the other side of the parking lot and put three or four tenths on the race. Then someone whistles through his fingers and I'm off with the quickness and that wind gets up in my ears and--Go, Sura!--eleven or twelve seconds later I got me another rabbit. That's what I call those juvies who want to race me and wait for me outside the hash house likethat--rabbits. Sometimes I'll even let that juvy get a head start on me so I get a challenge.

Today I dusted Jona Kimbrough and he was sporting some track shoes.

Coly Jo plays floor hockey in his jeans cause that's all he's got. His unbreakable comb keeps falling out of his pocket and he keeps picking it up. He's always trying to bust those naps with that comb. Sometimes he'll just stick it in his Afro and walk around.

Coly Jo is my patch mate. When someone throws me into the wall Coly Jo goes after him and gets that juvy with his stick.

Coly Jo and I have been here six weeks and after blackout we take turns sleeping cause Hodge or Boo Boxfoot will creep into your room and crib shit. Hodge and Boo are on their third clip. A clip is like a year but it ain't the same. Most juvy homes don't give clips. They let you go when you make reform. But Hamstock is different. It's like Hamstock wants to keep you.

Boo and Hodge know the halls and the shadows and the tricks in the showers. I've seen how Hodge sweettalks those old hash house Honeys into extra slices of pie. I've seen the Mop Man slip a fifth of Old Crow into Boo's laundry bundle.

They cribbed most of Coly Jo's shit his first two days. I heard them in our room after blackout, creeping like some cats. Boo sports Coly Jo's Barnum Fletcher squirrelskin cap around Spalding like it's something his moms sent him. He's sporting it right now and the tail keeps flipping up.

Boo's got a harelip and he makes me rent a bedside table for six tenths a week. That's half your juvy pound. And you get that only if you don't get carped. They'll carp you with the quickness for walking into Spalding with your shoes on and cut away two tenths. And you'll be in line for your weekly juvy pound and they'll just take out their little notebook and cross. off some digits and hand you four or six tenths instead of that full bone-and-twenty. And they don't even look at you either; they just shove that change at you like it's some medicine you got to take.

And they'll carp you if you don't call them Mister, too. If you get carped enough they'll send you to Dean Petty and they say he's got a two-foot paddle with air holes. I ain't seen it yet, but they talk about it the way you talk about boogymonsters and sharks. They say it was made from some body-box wood and that he hangs it over his desk. But if you're smart you won't get carped.

That table Boo makes me rent wobbles and creaks, but it can hold pens and shit.

At the hash house Coly Jo tells the other juvies how he's going to get his cap back, how he's going to put a whipping on Hodge and Boo. Most of them laugh, though, cause Coly Jo is fat and he don't sport a belt right and sometimes his ass will creep up out of his drawers like some dark blobfish.

But I've seen Coly Jo stare at them. He does it privately and from a distance. His eyes go yellow like a sick dog's.

On my third day they cribbed my electronic football game. Sometimes I can hear them playing it after blackout. I can hear their voices and I can hear my game beating them and I can hear their hands moving in secret. But their hands ain't faster than mines.

There ain't no windows in the basement and those hair vapors keep getting in my mouth. I tried to comb some of Coly Jo's wave grease into my hair last week, but all it did was make my hair look vinyl. Wave grease's got that medicine smell that the Honeys like. I know this cause before I got caught clipping hoodies I used to watch the Honeys from Choate Street sneaking whiffs of wave grease in the pharmacy where I would crib my squares. Newports got that smooth toothpaste smell and they usually set them right up on the counter. I never smoke them, though, cause it ain't good for your lungwind...