My Dark Places - James Ellroy [56]
10
The army cut me loose in July. I got a general discharge “Under Honorable Conditions.” I was free, white and 17. I was draft-exempt just as Vietnam started to percolate.
My fellow trainees were headed for advanced infantry training and probable Vietnam duty. I dodged their bullet with Method-actor aplomb. I spent my last month at Fort Polk wolfing down crime novels. I stuttered and lurked around the Company A mess hall. I scammed the entire U.S. Army.
I flew back to L.A. and beelined to the old neighborhood. I found a one-room pad at Beverly and Wilton. The army sent me home with five hundred dollars. I forged my father’s name to his last three Social Security checks and cashed them at a liquor store. My bankroll increased to a grand.
Aunt Leoda promised to shoot me a C-note a month. She warned me that my insurance money wouldn’t last forever. She signed me up for Social Security and VA benefits—surviving-child stipends that would terminate on my 18th birthday. She urged me to go back to school. Full-time students could collect the coin up to age 21.
She was glad my father was dead. It probably assuaged her grief for my mother.
School was for geeks and spastics. My motto was “Live Free or Die.”
The dog was kenneled up. My old apartment was locked and boarded. The landlord had seized my father’s belongings in lieu of back rent. My new crib was great. It featured a bathroom, tiny kitchenette and 12’ x 8’ living room with a Murphy bed. I papered the walls with right-wing bumper stickers and Playmate of the Month foldouts.
I strutted around in my uniform for a week. I stood over my father’s grave and flaunted my army greens replete with unearned regalia. I boosted a new wardrobe from Silverwoods and Desmonds’. It was pure Hancock Park: madras shirts, crew-neck sweaters, thin-wale cord pants.
L.A. looked bright and beautiful. I knew I’d pursue some kind of swinging fucking destiny right here in my own hometown.
I stuck my roll in the bank and looked for work. I got a job passing out handbills and quit from boredom one week later. I got a busboy job at L.A.’s flagship Sizzler steakhouse and got fired for dropping shitloads of dishes. I got a kitchen job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint and got fired for picking my nose in front of customers.
I ran through three jobs in two weeks. I shrugged my failures off and opted for a work-free summer.
Lloyd, Fritz and Daryl rediscovered me. I had a pad of my own now. This made me a viable flunky.
They let me back into their clique. A brilliant kid named George made us a fivesome. Fritz and George were USC- and Caltech-bound. Lloyd and Daryl were stuck with another year of high school.
The clique met at my place and George’s place. George’s father, Rudy, was a highway patrolman and a certified right-wing crackpot. He got drunk every night and defamed liberals and Martin Luther Coon. He dug my Boat Tickets to Africa and took a fatherly interest in me.
It was great to have friends. I blew my thousand-dollar roll taking them out to steak dinners and movies. We bombed around in Fritz’s ’64 Fairlane. Bicycle jaunts were behind us.
I stole most of my food. I was on an all-steak diet and filched T-bones and rib-eyes at nearby supermarkets. Two clerks jumped me outside the Liquor & Food Mart early in August. They held me down, plucked a steak out of my pants and called the fuzz.
The LAPD arrived. Two cops drove me to the Hollywood Station, booked me for shoplifting and turned me over to a juvenile officer. The guy wanted to contact my parents. I told him they were dead. He said kids weren’t allowed to live alone prior to age eighteen.
A cop drove me down to the Georgia Street Juvenile Facility. I called Lloyd and told him where I was. The cop processed my arrest papers and dumped me in a dormitory filled with hardcased juvies.
I was scared. I was the biggest kid in the dorm—and recognizably the most defenseless. I was seven months shy of legal age. I figured I’d be stuck here all that time.
Tough Negro and Mexican kids sized me up. They asked