Crime

Alright, so this touched me. xD! It's so sad how much a negative childhood can change someone. Few parents realize how much they affect their children's lives, for good or bad. Those who do understand often go to extremes...I have yet to meet the perfect parent, someone I believe I will never meet. All of us swear solemnly in our childhood that we're going to do better than those who have gone before us. Pshaw, I've stopped promising myself. I'm contemplating writing a book on the emotions of someone my age. It would be quite educational for the older generation who think they know so much about what is going on in our minds, when it reality their memory of that period is far too vague to allow much experience. I hate to sound proud...but the IQ of most adults is half that of most children. And that's not just my wild imagination, it's a proven fact, so try me! :P But it's not only parent's that affect their children's lives--teachers, friends, relatives, siblings, and even strangers hold a massive part, depending on the amount of respect a child pays them.

I'm getting extremely off topic...my point was meant to be that society is what raises criminals. Atmosphere, education, enviroment, and background has much more to do with the crime and perversion you find in the slums all around the world than the criminals themselves. "Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it."

We got into my car. It was a Sunday, about three o’clock and the streets were quiet. He led me up the cobbled yard and opened the door of one of the houses.

The stink of the place hit me as I went in. Country vets aren’t easily sickened but I felt my stomach turning. Mrs. Binks was very fat and a filthy dress hung shapelessly on her as she slumped, cigarette in mouth, over the kitchen table. She was absorbed in a magazine which lay in a clearing among mounds of dirty dishes and her curlers nodded as she looked up briefly at us.

On a couch under the window her husband sprawled asleep, open-mouthed, snoring out the reek of beer. The sink, which held a further supply of greasy dishes, was covered in a revolting green scum. Clothes, newspapers, and nameless rubbish littered the floor and over everything a radio blasted away and full strength.

The only clean new thing was the dog basket in the corner. I went across and bent over the little animal. Duke was now prostrate and helpless, his body emaciated and jerking uncontrollably. The sunken eyes and filled up again with pus and gazed apathetically ahead.

“Wes,” I said. “You’ve got to let me put him to sleep.”

He didn’t answer, and as I tried to explain, the blaring radio drowned my words. I looked over at his mother.

“Do you mind turning the radio down?” I asked.

She jerked her head at the boy and he went over and turned the knob. In the ensuing silence I spoke to him again.

“It’s the only thing, believe me. You can’t let him die by inches like this.”

He didn’t look at me. All his attention was fixed desperately on his dog. Then he raised a hand and I heard his whisper.

“Awright.”

I hurried out to the car for the Nembutal.

“I promise you he’ll feel no pain,” I said as I filled the syringe. And indeed the little creature merely sighed before lying motionless, the fateful twitching stilled at last.

I put the syringe in my pocket. “Do you still want me to take him away, Wes?”

He looked at me bewilderedly and his mother broke in.

“Aye, get ‘im out. Ah never wanted t’bloody thing ‘ere in t’first place.” She resumed her reading.

I quickly lifted the little body and went out. Wes followed me and watched as I opened the boot and laid Duke gently on top of black working coat.

As I closed the lid he screwed his knuckles into his eyes and his body shook. I put my arm across his shoulders, and as he leaned against me for a moment and sobbed I wondered if he had ever been able to cry like this—like a boy with somebody to comfort him.

But soon he stood back and smeared the tears across the dirt on his cheeks.

“Are you going back into the house, Wes?” I asked.

“Naw!” he said and turned and walked away. He didn’t look back and I watched him cross the road, climb a wall and trail away across the fields towards the river.

And it has always seemed to me that at that moment Wes walked back into his old life. From then on there were no more odd jobs or useful activities. He never played any more tricks on me but in other ways he progressed into more serious misdemeanors. He set barns on fire, was up before the magistrates for theft and by the time he was thirteen he was stealing cars.

Finally he was sent to an approved school and then he disappeared from the district. Nobody knew where he went and most people forgot him. One person who didn’t was the police sergeant.

“That young Wesley Binks,” he said to me ruminatively. “He was a wrong ‘un if I ever saw one. You know, I don’t think he ever cared a damn for anybody or any living thing in his life.”

“I know how you feel, sergeant,” I replied, “but you're not entirely right. There was one living thing…”