I felt that he was adamant about this decision. I know from experience that the peg-legged often are very stubborn in their thought processes. I thought I�d best help him decide. �Sounds like a tough call. Have you considered your prospects both way?�
He lolled his head. �I figure, dead, it�s an even three way split between heaven, hell, and some kind of really itchy place where it's dark all the time. Alive and up the ladder, I don�t really know what to expect.�
�I�ve got cake,� I informed him.
He looked at them blankly for a moment. �I don�t suppose you�ve noticed, but I�m wearing clothes already, chap. Thanks for the offer, though.�
I stared down his rebelliousness. �It puts on the clothes or it doesn�t get cake.�
Shrugging slowly he donned the sleeping suit and I handed him the cake. He ate like a man who�d truly been in a courtyard for an hour. �I suppose you�re wondering where I came from, and whether I�m not just some Freudian dream come to haunt your consciousness.�
�No; the courtyard is enclosed, so you must�ve come from the building, unless you jumped out of a plane, I suppose, and parachuted in. Or maybe tunneled your way in; or were perhaps dropped by a Norwegian with wings. But then again you were wearing a reformatory uniform, so I think the first guess was right.� He was perhaps fourteen; I assessed he had lost his leg in an accident stemming from an attempt to rob a bakery, in which he�d slipped and found his limb locked in a French bread oven.
�Oh, some bad business?� I had suspected that anyone who would rob a bakery had no moral fiber, but none the less I was drawn to Rufus; he reminded me of my uncle Ted.
�Yes; I�ve back sassed the warden. It was three months ago; the reformatory was in the midst of the most turbulent, vicious storm I�d ever seen for days on end. You know how bad one stormy day may be on a reformatory; no one able to go outside for stickball, nothing but daytime television; but imagine as much day after day, for more than a week. I don�t worry to tell you it was the worst I�d ever seen. All the fellows were absolutely mad with depression. One had taken to making life-sized portraits of Vin Diesel out of potatoes, another had forsworn arts and crafts all together to begin a letter writing campaign to demand the end of �Days of our Lives� be reversed. The warden of the wing was no better; he could do nothing but fill out subscription cards for every magazine our tatty library had. He dared not even give the order to open the emergency supply of board games. Seeing the place coming down in that catastrophic storm, I had it myself to do. I went over to that cupboard and broke into the supply: Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Mousetrap-the whole lot. The Warden up and at me. Turning round at him, I said it-I called him a doodie head. I�m told the storm was so bad, you couldn�t see the parking lot from the window for nearly ten minutes. When it was over, he said to me, �Mister Johnson, you�ve called me a doodie head. You�re no longer fit to be a trustee of this reformatory.�� He allowed a silence to hang between the two of us. �You know, my grandfather�s a crazy old man who beats me with a bible and shouts about damnation on the street corner; quite a thing for me to have to write home about.�
I could tell the man who reminded me of my uncle Ted was no potty-mouthed ruffian. �Do you suppose they�ll be looking for you?�
�Most certainly they will. I stole that Warden�s pen, as well.�
