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a long talk. Johnny told them about the school near Mrs. Baker's where he had gotten along so well. At that school, he said, because it was so hard for him to "get" the lessons in the regular classes, he had been given a lot of "handwork" to do. He had done that well. He didn't want to go on being "dumb" in his classes. Would it be possible for him to be transferred to the vocational school where the work consisted mainly of "handwork"?

The principal pointed out that a boy had to be fourteen to go to vocational school and that Johnny wouldn't be fourteen for several months. In addition, vocational school work required at least a sixth-grade education. Johnny was only in the fourth. In Johnny's case though, the principal said, every effort would be made to arrange it. Perhaps there Johnny would find a niche into which he would fit more comfortably. In the meantime, Johnny was to go back to his regular classes.

Johnny made a brave start at being a good boy. During several visits to the Rocco home following this discussion, Mr. O'Brien learned that, though the Roccos were beset with many troubles, Johnny for the first time had no part in them. Mrs. Rocco reported he was helping around the house, that he wasn't staying out late at nights, and that he was not associating with the known bad boys of the neighborhood. Johnny's school and his probation officer also gave good reports of his conduct.

But, like the bright lumber-jackets he had brought back from Mrs. Baker's, Johnny's brave resolutions soon became worn and dingy: he was again swallowed up in the old familiar conditions. He became nervous and surly. The bags came back under his eyes. What little sense of dignity he had acquired disappeared.

When the day of his entry into vocational school came Johnny was miserable in mind and body. His head was twisted to one side because of three large boils which had developed on the side of his neck, and a badly infected finger had caused a pus-pocket to form in one of his arm pits but he had not seen a doctor. He hadn't been in school for more than a few days when he realized that here, too, he was to be "the big jerk."

"In the carpenter work, to figure out the size of the wood or something—I couldn't do it. I didn't have the knowledge in arithmetic. They put me in the printing room. I couldn't spell to print. In electricity, the teacher would tell the kids an' you had to write it down. I couldn't. He talked too fast. Half the time I didn't know even what he was saying.

"Yeah, nobody respected me. The principal—he was a big phoney, a sneak. He thought I was dumb, but I'd know when he was making fun of me. He used to pinch me on the cheek. He talked a certain way—

"One time they had a concert up there. The girls from St. Theresa's school—they saved a bunch of seats for them in the auditorium. I went like everybody else. When everybody was there—the bastard—he got up an' he said, 'I know you girls thought Benny Goodman was coming, but he couldn't. But I've got somebody that's better.' Then he made me get up in front of everybody and bring a chair and sit in the middle of the aisle where the girls were. The dirty bitch! I don't forget. He made a fool out of me."

During the next few months Mr. O'Brien made the following entries in Johnny's case record:

John is showing some significant changes of adolescence. He has grown larger and heavier. The word "grosser" occurs to mind

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as descriptive of the change in him. Almost overnight, it would seem, his features have grown heavier and he has lost the occasional flash of boyishness that used to redeem his appearance. . . . There have been evident personality changes also. He is sullen and unresponsive. He merely grunts out responses to me, his mother, or Mr. Brayden (the school principal). . . .

Mrs. Rocco continues to be very ill. Sometimes she is all puffed up about the face, and swollen at the wrists and ankles. Her heart is giving her a great deal of trouble. . . . She has had several attacks of flu and has been in bed about every second day. . . .

Brother David's blood count is about one-fifth of the normal blood count. Recently he spent ten days in the hospital. He was put in the adult male ward and was quite unhappy all the time he was there. . . . The doctors say his case is hopeless, that he will die in a few months. Somehow or other this information was given in front of David and I discovered, to my horror, on one visit, that he and his mother were talking quite openly about it. It was shortly after this statement was made that the mother took him out of the hospital without permission. His condition seemed to improve markedly almost as soon as he came home . . . but the other day it was necessary for him to have a blood transfusion. . . .

Since Georgio's marriage, the last vestiges of control have left this home. Not only Johnny, but his older brothers as well, come and go as they please. . . . The mother continues to have her usual troubles with the welfare authorities over one of the older boys working. On several occasions this month this family seemed to be in actual need. I had the allotment restored by telling the welfare department I thought the need was very real. Perhaps one of the older boys is working, but certainly, if he is, the money is not coming into the home. . . .

Since John's return from the foster home, he has not been involved in any known delinquency, nor has there been any suggestion that he has been verging on delinquency. . . . Yet, paradoxically, I felt more apprehensive about him that I used to when he was getting into trouble with the police more frequently. I suppose that is mainly because I can see his increasing resemblance to the older Rocos.

In August of that year, when Johnny was fourteen and a half, he and another

boy robbed a store. They were caught by police as they left with the stolen goods and Johnny was sent to a reform school, where he remained for six months. During his first month there his conduct was so stormy he was placed in the "disciplinary cottage."

"When you got in there," Johnny says, 'You got to stand a long time with your arms folded. If you move, they'd just as soon slug you. Other times you've got to sit on a bench with your feet stuck out so's they're on another bench. Boy, does that hurt! Some of the masters, they're bitches. Some of those kids got all bloody they were beat up so much. One master there, he had a habit . . . He put his fingers in a boy's neck, I don't know just where, and he'd do something. . . . The boy's nose would bleed."

When he got out of "disciplinary," the officials, having learned of Johnny's fondness for birds, decided it would be helpful if he were put to work in the hennery. His work there consisted, largely, of slaughtering hens. The method used was one in which the bird's throat is pierced by thrusting a knife-like pincers in its mouth. During one of O'Brien's visits Johnny described this work for him in all its "bloody detail." Coming from a boy who so many times had expressed his love for birds, that description, O'Brien commented, struck a "gruesome note."

Johnny also worked on a milk-delivery detail. His conduct, for the remainder of his term, was beyond reproach. He earned the maximum number of credits for good work and conduct, lost none for infractions of rules. O'Brien noticed striking changes for the better in Johnny's appearance. He had gained height and weight, held himself straighter, and seemed generally more attractive. But his perfect behavior, according to Johnny, didn't

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grow out of miraculously achieved
habits of relaxation.

"In Hartford School, Jesus Christ, how I suffered. I suffered, an' I mean, I suffered," Johnny says fiercely. "I was good all right. That was 'cause I didn't even let myself breathe. The work part, that was all right," he goes on. "I could move around an' I was away from the masters an' the other kids. I wanted to be away from everybody. I was afraid if I mixed with someone I might do something—lose my temper, or do something wrong.

"The evening. That was the worst time," Johnny continues. "In the evening when I would go back to the cottage, the kids would be jumping around . . . fellas playing cards an' things. They'd say, 'Come on an' play.' I wouldn't. I just kept my mouth shut. I would just fold my arms, and I would leave my arms folded, an' I wouldn't even move. I was in misery, but I was scared. I had to have the points to get out of there. I had to get out of there, that's all. I can't stand being cooped up anywhere."

One day, early in November, Mr. O'Brien made one of his customary calls on the Rocco family before visiting Johnny at Hartford. David, who was now failing rapidly, had been asking to go for a drive in a car. His doctor had said, since the boy was going to die soon anyway, he should be permitted to do anything, within reason, that made him happy. When Mr. O'Brien came, David pleaded to be permitted to go along when he visited Johnny. Mr. O'Brien consented.

Although David was very happy that day, O'Brien said, his "white wax-like" face looked as though death could not be far off. Two of the reform school instructors, sitting on the porch of the administration building when the car drove up were startled by David's

appearance. When Johnny, who had been expecting Mr. O'Brien, ran up to the car and saw David, he was startled, too. His face twisted momentarily. Mr. O'Brien said, but after that he was careful to give no indication that he had noticed the change in his brother. He climbed into the car beside him, and chattering incessantly, engaged him in a conversation about their neighborhood, the public school, and the boys they knew. As the three of them sat there in the car a group of boys in the "disciplinary line" marched by. Johnny, dipping his head in their direction, said, "Look at them. They think they're wise guys. They'll learn their lesson, just like I did."

Then turning eagerly to David, he said feelingly, "I'm through with all that stuff, Davie. I'm gonna come home an' I'm going to be a help to Ma, not a headache. Nobody's gonna get a chance to call me a crook again." David, the brother whom Johnny had always resented so bitterly, replied with vehemence, "They'd better not call you a crook in front of me. They'd better not, and me hear it." When David said that, O'Brien reported, Johnny stared at him dumbly.

David died a few days after that visit and Johnny was permitted to go home for the funeral. When he arrived, O'Brien said, his face was swollen from crying and he wept all morning at the church and later at the graveyard.

When he finished his six-month term at Hartford, Johnny returned to vocational school, but it was tacitly agreed by everyone concerned that there was no hope now that he would ever fit into its program. There was nothing for Johnny to do but "wait out" the months until he was sixteen and permitted by law to leave school, or to find some job that would justify his getting special permission to leave. Johnny, who was

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miserable at school, tried several jobs but none of the jobs were satisfactory. He worked for a while as a part-time janitor in an apartment building, receiving fifty cents a day for five hours of work. He hated the job. In addition, his mother kept nagging at him. Such a job, she kept telling him, was a waste of time and did more harm than good. His earnings only cost her the free "welfare milk" the family had been receiving, and so what was being gained? He quit.

He tried working as a farm hand for a while. This job paid $12.00 a week, and room and board. But Johnny could neither get along with the other workers nor adjust to the isolation of farm life. He quit that, too.

He was comparatively happy for two months in a woodworking shop where he had been employed on a temporary basis, but he stepped on a nail one day, injuring his foot, and had to stay at home until it was healed. When he returned, he was no longer needed. Between jobs, Johnny spent his time at school. He was not expected to go to classes. He swept floors, ran errands, or just sat around in the office.

When Johnny was fifteen and a half, Mr. O'Brien found him a job as a truck driver's helper, and Johnny got an official release from further attendance at school. He was overjoyed. It seemed to him this job was less menial than anything he had ever done, and it would give him a certain freedom. He never could stand "being cooped up." Finally, the salary was to be $15.00 a week, a lordly sum to Johnny. He would be able to help at home, to buy some clothes, and have a little money in his pocket besides.

O'Brien went with Johnny for his final interview about the job on a Saturday afternoon. Johnny was told to report for work on Monday morning.

"Never have I seen this boy so happy and yet so poised, calm, and sure of himself," O'Brien said. "When I left him on his corner after the interview he was enthusiastically telling a group of boys of his age about his good luck."

But on Monday morning Johnny was in jail. Sunday night, with another boy, he had broken into a store near his home and stolen $21.00.

O'Brien visited Johnny in jail a few days later. He said Johnny was pale and lifeless and looked as if he had been crying a great deal. "My first remarks to him," O'Brien continued, "brought forth a slow but continuous flow of words."

"I don't know how anyone will believe me," Johnny had said, "It wasn't like it was me at all that did those things on Sunday. Ever since I came out of Hartford, you know, I was scared to do anything wrong. If someone even mentioned Hartford or stealing it made me feel scared. It made me sick. I didn't even want to talk about it. . . . I can't stand being locked up."

"Saturday night, I went to sleep an' everything was fine. Sunday, I woke up, and it was not me. It was just like somebody else. It was that crazy old way, back when I wanted to go out and walk around and not come home for supper or anything. . . . I knew I was going to do something bad. . . . I wanted to do something . . . to hurt people. . . ."

Johnny had got out of bed, dressed, and gone wandering around in the center of town. There he ran into a friend named Mike. They'd gone into a number of penny arcades and tried to shake money out of the machines. When that failed, Mike had said, "Let's go snatch pocketbooks." Johnny had put him off—"I don't know why I said no"—but suggested that they meet on

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a certain corner that evening and "go out and break into some stores."

That night, Mike didn't show up. Johnny prowled around for several hours. Then he met another boy he had known only slightly. "He told me he was going to join the Merchant Marine an' we talked about that for a while. Then we got to talking about stealing an' this an' that. He'd done it, too, from cars and everything. He said there was one store where he worked once. They always left money there on the week-end. We went over an' we got in and took it."

The police caught Johnny and the other boy as they were coming out of the store. Then, Johnny said, "a crazy thing" happened. "I started to laugh an' I laughed an' laughed. . . . I don't know what I was laughing for." After a while, though, he'd begun crying and had been crying incessantly ever since. "I don't know how it happened. Everything is all screwy," Johnny said heavily. "I'm always behind the eight-ball."

Later Mr. O'Brien discussed this occurrence with a psychologist who was familiar with Johnny's case. "The psychologist and I agreed that it was no mere coincidence that this delinquency occurred at this particular time when John was about to be incorporated into the workaday world," he wrote in his records. "Our belief was that it was related in some way to this imminency of being absorbed into a life of work in which he presumably would be protected against such likelihood of delinquency as has existed for him in the past. We felt as though 'the bad Johnny' within the boy had risen in last rebellion, determined not to be thus 'saved.' In any event we were sure that its happening just at this time, after such a long period

of good behavior, had some special significance."

Because of Johnny's "good behavior" during the preceding months he was again placed on probation but, of course, lost the job which had been promised him. According to O'Brien's records Johnny had two more brushes with the police. When sixteen he went back for forty days to Hartford Reform School for violation of probation, a charge which Mr. O'Brien protested vigorously as prejudiced and unfair. A few months later he was questioned about a theft but was released.

Mr. O'Brien had been Johnny's counselor nearly five years, by now. At this time, he left his position with the boys' work agency and moved to another city a few miles away. For a while, he kept in touch with Johnny, but the relationship finally staggered to a close.

Since that time Johnny has worked in a wholesale fish market, a slaughter house, a meat packing plant, a black-market butcher shop, as assistant to an embalmer, and in a couple of factories. "I never can get a good job," Johnny says miserably. "I can't spell. I can't even spell to write an application. My father's name—Alexander. I know it. But I can't write it down. My mother's name—Italy, the place where she was born—Humphrey Ave., a street I lived on once—. I'll be a bitch if I can write it. I can read all right. Hitler—Europe—things like that. But I can't spell. I can't be that dumb," he says significantly. "There must be something wrong."

"When I do get a job, I can't keep it," he continues. "I can't seem to stay in the same place and do the same things all day, every day, all hemmed in. I have to feel like I can keep moving. A factory! That's captivity. I just go crazy. . . . In Hartford School I was

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in misery. I suffered. An' I mean, I suffered. I could never stand to feel like I'm locked up. ...

Johnny has developed an acute claustrophobia.

He has had one or two jobs that he's liked, but he didn't keep those either. Johnny cannot endure to reveal himself as fallible. On one of those jobs, whenever his employer asked him to take a package to the shipping room and address, weigh, and stamp it, Johnny was plunged into a fever of anxiety. Sometimes he pretended he hadn't heard the order. Sometimes he managed, by devious ways, to get someone else to do it. "Plenty of times I got in positions where I'd have to write and refused. The guy would say, 'Why? Why don't you write'? I'd say, 'I don't want to, that's all.' Cause I couldn't," Johnny says angrily. "An' I couldn't tell him I was that stupid. There must be something wrong."

On another job, where he had been very happy driving a station wagon for a large industrial concern, he quarreled with another worker who accused him of an oversight. When the quarrel came to the attention of his employer, who reprimanded him for his violent language and behavior, he quit "because now I was ruined there."

"I have to do everything just right," Johnny explains. "I don't want anybody to have something on me. I try so hard, I get nervous. If somebody says something to me, if they insult me, I fly off the handle. Maybe I am stupid but I've got pride," Johnny says. "Nobody makes a jerk out of me."

As soon as he turned seventeen, Johnny, the last of the Rocco boys to leave home, joined the Navy. He managed to fill out the necessary applications by copying from a paper prepared for him by a friend the night before. There is no official information available about Johnny's conduct in the

Navy, but, by his own accounts, he was considered undesirable. A few months after he joined, his sister Carla, who had married a soldier she'd known only ten days, died in childbirth, leaving Mrs. Rocco completely alone. Mrs. Rocco petitioned the Navy for Johnny's discharge. The Navy complied quickly.

"I feel bad about things I done," Johnny says. "I used to cry over my brother Davie when he died. Now I only cry over my mother. I feel bad about things I done to her...."

"When I went in the Navy I didn't fix it for her to get the allotment. I didn't even tell her when I was going. I know she was sick, but Jesus, she used to nag me. When I came home I wanted to do right. I gave her a hundred dollars from the money the Navy gave me. She just spit on the floor an' said 'va fangue!' That means like—'I don't care if you are home or not.' She nagged an' nagged me. I couldn't keep a job. I was a bum, no good. I always brought her trouble. Whenever I came in the house, she used to give me hell."

"I was going with my girl, Judy, after I came home. I loved my girl. She was the only one that ever went for me like I always wanted. I used to see her every night. When I took my girl out, I'd have to leave my mother alone. If I brought her home my mother yelled and hollered."

"My mother was plenty sick then," Johnny, as if impelled by a need for confession, continues. "She had to sit in a chair day and night. She had heart trouble an' dropsy an' they had to give her needles to drain the water out. She was suffering all the time. Once my girl was there an' I wanted to take her to a show an' my mother said no, but I went anyway. It was raining that night. She turned the gas on. When I came home she was passed out. I feel