I ran crying as fast as I could over to the high chain link
fence which surrounded the orphanage that I lived in. I pressed my
little seven year old teary eyed face against the cold hard rusty
holes and with all my might I pushed the heavy steel wire outwards
with my hands trying to look, as best I could, to the right and
then to the left, in order to try and see if "Old Topper" might be
walking down the long white concrete sidewalk which ran along the
orphanage perimeter. But he was no where to be seen.
As I turned around and placed my back against the fence, still
shaking and crying from fear, I saw the matron beating one of the
little orphan boys on the back of his head with the broken, old,
rusty pogo stick that we had found laying on the edge of the
baseball diamond over at the Spring Park Elementary, when we were
returning to the Children's Home Society from school earlier that
day.
Many of the boys heard the loud screams which were coming from the
nursery playground, as well as the matron yelling at the top of her
voice at the young boy. They all started gathering together and
began looking out of the windows to see what was really happening.
But no one said anything at all, because they knew better than to
say anything or they would be next.
I stood against the fence shaking in total fear that the matron
would soon look up and see me standing there. That she would know
that I too had been trying to jump on the rusty old pogo stick and
that she would beat me for trying to tell "Old Topper" what was
happening to us kids at the orphanage.
I carefully lowered myself to the ground and slid very slowly like
a snake on my stomach until I reached the safety of the azalea
bushes. My heart was beating ninety miles an hour in my chest and
the sides of my head, by my temples, were moving in and out, sort
of like my head was gonna blow up or something like that.
I just laid there, real quiet like, for the longest time just
waiting for the matron to leave. The little boy just laid there on
the ground, at her feet, without moving. Finally she stopped
yelling at him, threw the old pogo stick over the red brick fence,
and then she walked inside.
I saw the boy's heads, who were looking out the window, start to
disappear one at a time for fear that the matron might catch them
near or looking out the windows. Looking out the windows was
something that was absolutely forbidden for us to do under any
circumstances.
After about five minutes I slowly snuck out of the thick green
azalea bushes and made my way over to the edge of the red brick
nursery building so that I could whisper to the little boy who was
laying on the ground and still not moving.
"Hey" I whispered at him. "Hey, you ok?" I said to him a little
louder. But there was no answer. I carefully walked over to the
little boy and when I did I saw that his eyes were open real wide
and that they were rolled back into his head like a monster
creature or something. I put my hand on his face real easy like
'cause I didn't want to touch nobody that was all dead.
As I felt him on the face with my finger he moved just a little bit
and then he turned his face over and looked at me. There was some
little blood things coming out of his ear. But I didn't say
anything at all 'cause I didn't want to let him know that he was
gonna die real soon. "Will you play the pogo with me" he said. I
did not know what to say back to him so I just sat down beside him
and put my hand on his head.
"WHAT IS GOING ON?", yelled someone off in the distance. My heart
started beating all fast again and I jumped up real quick and
started to run back to the azalea bushes but my arms started
shaking real bad and I could not stop them so I started crying and
screaming.
The next thing I knew I was laying on the ground and I was looking
up at "Old Topper", the old policeman who walked around the
orphanage fences every afternoon to check on things in the
neighborhood. "Are you alright, son?" he said. "It's the little boy
over there" I said, as I pointed in the little boy's direction.
He's gonna die real soon 'cause he got blood."
When I finally sat upright I saw the matron running out of the
nursery toward us. I looked up at Old Topper and I begged him to
help us get out of the orphanage. But he just told me that it was
my home now and that were lucky, and that we should be thankful, to
have such a good place to live and food to eat.
The matron, Mrs. Castile, took Old Topper over to where the little
boy was now standing and I heard her tell him that he had fallen
off the pogo stick and hit his head on the concrete. She rubbed the
little boy on the hair and hugged him the whole time that Old
Topper was there. She just kept looking at me real mean like so I
just kept shaking my head as though I was saying "yes" the whole
entire time.
I never did tell Old Topper what really happened to the little boy,
'cause he didn't die like I thought he would. But I did ask Old
Topper for a stamp, which he gave to me, so that I could write a
letter and mail it to someone important.
That night I made my very own envelope out of a piece of white
notebook paper that I stole out of one of the older boy's locker
and then I went in the bathroom, after the matron was asleep, and I
wrote a secret letter to the President Eisenhower of the United
States of America, and I told him what happen to that little boy.
But I never heard nothing back, ever. 'Cause I guess he thought
that I was lucky too, just like "Old Topper" did.
Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.
The Sad Orphan Web Site http://www.geocities.com/trampolineone
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Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.