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story. I also spoke with (or read the recollections of) several men who had done time at MacLaren’s during the same period that Gary was there. Putting together these two perspectives—the accounts of the officials and the remembrances of former inmates—is like viewing two largely disparate versions of the same history. On one hand, it is clear that certain counselors at the school tried their best to understand my brother and to effect a change in his life. In turn, he paid back their efforts with a series of escapes and violent episodes that forced them to impose on him their worst punishments. But it is also plain from the stories I have heard that, despite everybody’s best intentions, the reform school experience of the 1950s had many brutalizing aspects about it. Boys were locked up in cold and isolated conditions, beaten at the discretion of their counselors, and subjected to an environment in which astonishing acts of violence and sexual abuse took place. For some kids, being caged up in such a world only deepened their fears and their hatred. “It doesn’t make sense to a normal person,” one former inmate told me, “but when you’re locked up you can become a very hate-filled individual. And if you can’t externalize that hate—or if a fantasy about going into a bank with a tommy gun and blowing everybody up isn’t enough for you—then you turn that hatred on yourself. You reach a point of self-destructiveness where you’re going to have somebody really give you the ultimate. And sometimes the only way to do that is by hurting or enraging other people as much as you can.”

THE MOST RELIABLE and articulate observer I found on the subject of MacLaren’s was a man named Duane. He was in the reform school for almost exactly the same period as Gary, and he knew my brother well. One morning Duane paid me a visit at my apartment in Portland and shared with me some of his recollections. Duane had been a star student at his school until, at the age of fifteen, his stepfather began beating him viciously. Then he began hanging out with rough boys and stealing cars and other things. One time, they made the mistake of breaking into a cop’s home and stealing his revolver. They became the objects of a big chase and were arrested at gunpoint. The incident ended up getting splashed across the front page of The Oregonian. As a result, Duane and the friend he was caught with came into MacLaren’s with some standing. The other boys saw them as something like full-fledged outlaws. “Actually, we were a couple of dickheads,” said Duane, “but the kids didn’t know and we sure as hell weren’t going to tell them, because ninety percent of what you do in a place like that is bluff. You’re in there with some real bad apples. If they find out that you’re not a homicidal maniac like they may be, they’re going to put you in your place.”

Duane had been at MacLaren’s about a week when Gary was brought in. Duane’s first memories of my brother had to do with the psychological tests that were administered to the boys, to determine school placement and parole prospects. “They had this big fat psychiatrist,” said Duane. “This guy probably weighed three hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. He’s a medical doctor, for Christ’s sake, and he’s talking to reform school kids, so how good can he be? Anyway, you go in there and sit down at a table across from this guy. He sits there and stares at you for twenty or thirty seconds, the sweat just pouring off him, and then the first question he would ask, right out of the chute, was: ‘How many girls have you fucked?’ Almost everybody I ever knew at MacLaren’s had the same experience with him. In my case, I figured if I tell him I screwed a girl, that’s another six months to my sentence. On the other hand, if I tell him I’m a cherry, my esteem will be lowered. So you’re torn. But I really was a virgin when I went up there, so I opted for honesty. Most of the guys would try running a bluff. They’d say, ‘Oh, fifty.’ And then the psychiatrist would want names, and he’d very patiently list all these names. I remember there was