Survival School [alternate history] (Turn-of-the-Century Toughs)

Chapter Seven

From the Superintendent of the House of Transformation toComrade Benjamin Carruthers:

Some critics of this House have claimed that the farm that our boys run might be even made to sustain the transformatory. We presume that such expression was made without thought of how little capacity 'good boys' of as young as eleven years old, even when surrounded by the best of home influences, have of contributing to their own support. Then, when a mass of boys are brought together primarily because they are not 'good,' of whom some have been committed for criminal offences and all are designated in their commitments as more or less incorrigible to home influences and thereby a menace to society; when many of these are by inheritance, or through ill treatment, physically unsound, mentally twisted, morally tainted, whose previous environment has trained them to hate work and has skilled them in evasions; then you will understand how hopeless a thing it would be to look to such for profitable returns materially in excess of the cost of supervision. . . .

Our farm products for this sun-circuit were as follows: wheat, 709 bushels; potatoes, 678 bushels; turnips, 632 bushels; beets, 20 bushels; carrots, 21 bushels; tomatoes, 250 bushels; sweet potatoes, 186 bushels; onions, 118 bushels; spring onions, 310 bunches; peas, 114 bushels; strawberries, 1,051 quarts; corn, 438 barrels; parsnips, 26 bushels; vegetable oysters, 25 bushels; pumpkins, 4,700; cantaloupes, 3,600; radishes, 56 bunches; lima beans, 1,250 quarts; white beans, 153 bushels; cow peas, 66 bushels; blackeyed peas, 291 bushels; peaches, 66 bushels; string beans, 263 bushels; gooseberries, 45 quarts; cucumbers, 7,400; cabbage, 26,000 heads.

o—o—o

"Everything was all right till Mam died," said Bat. "That's when it all changed."

He paused to struggle with the stem of the pumpkin he was cutting from its vine, while sweat trickled down his back, giving him shivers in the cool autumn wind. Above him, the sun slipped in and out of dark afternoon clouds that threatened storm. Further down the field, the journeymen worked to bring in the harvest before the storm broke.

Trusty, who was straddling a monster of a pumpkin with his thighs as he sawed away at its stem, merely nodded. That was his way during conversations, Bat had found. Trusty rarely spoke till he had something worth saying.

"There were five of us," Bat explained. "I was the youngest. When Mam died, I was the only one still apprentice-aged. My brothers got it into their heads that they should follow the water away from the Bay; they signed up for the schooners that take molasses to and from the Caribe. I ain't seen them once since they left home. Maybe they guessed what was coming and figured they'd best be on their way."

Trusty hefted the pumpkin into his arms with a grunt. Bat did the same. Together they carried their heavy burdens through the pumpkin patch till they reached the motor-truck and hefted the pumpkins in. Not pausing to rest – the black clouds were scurrying from the west now – they hurried back to where the unharvested pumpkins lay. Nearby, the farmer spoke sharply to a journeyman who was idling. Not a man to idle himself, he was working alongside the journeymen, while his wife, free on this afternoon from her usual secretarial duties, brought a constant flow of glasses of lemonade to the thirsty field-workers.

Too far away from the rest of the workers to have been noticed by Mastress Bennington, Bat licked his parched lips as he hunched over another pumpkin, his back aching. He said, "Dad changed after Mam died. All at once, like he was set on becoming a different man. Started drinking. Started fighting. He had all this anger inside him, busting out."

Crouching down with his knife at the ready, Trusty glanced at Bat. "And he brung that anger home."

Bat nodded, busy with his own knife. Not many inmates were trusted with work-knives; it had been a pleasure to Bat when Trusty handed him a knife on his first day of work. "Used to bruise me so bad I couldn't work the boats. Worst-tempered man I ever knew." Bat rested back on his haunches, wiping the sweat off his brow. "Guess I got the same temper. Didn't know it till I got hauled to the police station in handcuffs."