Boy Without A Country

It had been a long cold ride up the coast, gray and unchanging until they turned inland. Matteo Marcus drifted in and out of a restless sleep, at one point jolting awake in fear when he felt a darkness closing in: the forests of the coastal hills were overhead; the open skies above the ocean had bathed him in light, while now the tree canopy encased and trapped him. For a moment he thought he had dreamed his release and he was still at the work camp. But soon the bus was to make its way to the coast again, and he saw his new home through a break in the trees: San Vicente, a jumble of buildings nestled in small groves of dense greenery, the ocean crashing into its eroding western bluffs, and the blessed white-gray sky above. He was free, and he was to have a new start here, a half-hour from where he had grown up, but it could have been the moon to Matteo Marcus. He was seventeen years old.

He had always known that he was blessed with an exceptional mind. He had a head for numbers and his vocabulary in two languages was exceptional. How he had come to learn Spanish was a story unto itself.

As a kindergartener he had been dropped off at school early every day and spent the foggy morning hours with two Spanish-speaking aides as they prepared the science bungalow for the day’s activities. The two women, Adilia from El Salvador and the Peruvian grandmother called La Inca, spoke freely in front of him, thinking that the wiry dark-skinned black kid with the piercing eyes couldn’t understand them and was only interested in his breakfast burrito and his comic book. Once Adilia had used the word negro and Matteo’s head snapped up and they made eye contact, and after that, Matteo was pretty sure they switched to moreno, but Adilia was watching him with that word too, and Matteo knew it, and Adilia knew he knew it. After that Adilia tried to make the Spanish more obscure but La Inca just kept going in her slow, simple way and Matteo seemed to pick it up quickly. He was a handsome boy, who at times could be sweet, even seemingly innocent, but often those deeply expressive eyes told you he understood everything. He unsettled her: he was too worldly, too hyper-aware and self-possessed for a kindergarten child.

One thing Adilia noticed, much later than she should have, was that Matteo was not just leafing through the comic books but actually reading them, taking his time and smiling at certain parts with a deep, mature understanding. Once he came over to her while she was in the middle of a dialogue with La Inca and interrupted by asking, Que es esto? pointing to words on the page. La Inca almost gasped in horror; Adilia looked at the young boy sharply, with a leveling gaze that said: ‘So now we battle.’ She answered him in rapid Spanish that he wouldn't understand. But the boy walked away saying, ‘like a factory.’ The words in the book had been, in English, manufacturing center. Adilia sensed he was thinking hard, and watched him until he reached his seat, and sure enough he turned back to her and said, ‘Manufacturing, like manual. Like you do it with your hands.’ He had lifted his hands up and was looking at them as if in amazement.

‘Los manos,’ he said directly to Adilia.

‘Dios mio,’ La Inca said, crossing herself.

‘Las manos,’ Adilia corrected.

By the first grade, Matteo had been recognized as a Gifted and Talented Student. It was a rare thing for a black male to receive that designation.

Schooling was a mixed bag: Spanish immersion, Math/Science enrichment, summers at private schools where he learned to play lacrosse, but he never stayed at one place very long. The public housing authorities forced them out of empty abandoned spaces, so they stayed in cousins’ homes, or on strangers' floors, for a few months at a time.

In some ways this fit Matteo. He wasn’t comfortable in all the places they sent him, never made any real friends, wasn’t sure what fork to use or whether or not he needed a coaster for certain surfaces. He kept his eyes on how the white kids did it, secretly, because he couldn’t be seen staring, and he learned. Matteo Marcus did not leave water stains on mahogany.

When he was in the third grade, Matteo enlisted a teacher at his school to help him get his sister Dahlia into a Cantonese and Mandarin immersion school across town. His mother had missed the registration deadline and they almost had to accept any school with openings. Somehow Matteo knew to get help and he felt like a man after that.

But feeling like you were an adult meant that other adults telling you what to do was an intrusion. That was problematic for adults who looked at a 10 year-old boy, or a 14-year old boy, as rebellious and disrespectful when he walked out of class at will, or confronted a school principal with a perceived injustice . . . . . . .

........... or at age 15 when he was seen on police video surveillance slipping small packets through car windows out on Millers' Bluff, directing a group of ten year-olds to retrieve items from bushes, paying them in wads of dollar bills and rubbing their scalps like they were his little children and he was their hero. They called him El Jefe (the boss), and he took pride in the title. A few cops already knew Matteo from other encounters, mostly for being too young and unaccompanied after curfew. ‘That’s the smart kid from the Spanish-speaking school,’ Sgt. Ralph Durney told the stake-out crew. ‘Be sure we treat him right. I like the kid. But I’m not surprised.’

The judge was a stern Latino named Esteban Cordero, and he didn’t like the Spanish part of the story at all. He used the Spanish phrase with Matteo that meant: He who knows two languages has twice the value. Matteo bowed his head as the judge spoke. 'But you did not take advantage of that. And your attorney there,’ he scoffed at the angry white man who had raged maniacally during the opening, claiming Matteo had been failed by the system, ‘claims you are the victim. Do you believe that, Señor Marcus?’

At this Matteo stood up and looked around. He recognized no one. He was about to be taken from this room and put in the hands of strangers, perhaps for the rest of his life. He could visualize a before-and-after scenario, the latter a grainy black-and-white movie enacted in a colorless prison. No miracle savior was to come along. There were only these people; to judge and punish.

Matteo took a long moment to process all of this. The assemblage appeared to be waiting on him. His attorney sat on the edge of his seat, ready to show anger. But Matteo was at peace. ‘I don’t believe that, judge,’ he said sincerely, looking the man in the eye. He spoke in his best Spanish. I’m not a victim. I was getting a good education. It’s on me. My fault, judge. I am going to do better. It felt good to come out with that – better than good. It felt like he had grown up a bit, to look the judge in the eye and accept what had happened with so much at stake.

‘The nine-month program at Boudreaux Ranch,’ the judge read the sentence. ‘Sergeant, the young man is remanded to your custody,' he told the clerk, an overweight black man who muttered after every request, walking himself through each procedure as if reading an instruction manual. I’m too much the opposite, Matteo thought. I do it all by instinct.

‘Come back to see me,’ Judge Cordero told Matteo, ‘when you've completed your sentence. Soon you’ll be a man and I want to remind you of a few things. Claro?’

‘Si, jues, gracias,’ Matteo said.

‘I just sentenced you and you thanked me. You have potential,’ the judge said as the clerk led him away. ‘Vaya con dios,’ Judge Cordero said under his breath. The words hit Marcus with a force like a body blow; his knees buckled and he almost fell: the benediction was ominous, final. He did not want his story to be over. Matteo kept his composure, straightened, promised himself that this was not the end. At the courtroom door the clerk turned him over to the juvenile authorities. He looked to see if his mother was in the courthouse hallway, there to wish him well and promise him a home to which he could return in nine months. He was able to take in the length of the corridor, but he did not see her.

The nine months felt like nine months. He read War and Peace, lifted weights, kept a journal, invented some characters he kept going back to, practiced Spanish with some tough Latinos from the Mara Salvatrucha gang who knew him from the big city streets.

On his last day of incarceration, as he was being processed out at Boudreaux Ranch before the transport was to take him to his new home, the head of the Ranch High School joined him in the administrative offices. He was a sedate white guy, maybe in his mid-forties, with sandy hair, pale skin, and a twang to his quiet voice. His name was John Helton but Matteo had coined the nickname ‘Hellion’ for him, which was like calling a fat guy Slim. Helton sat one chair over from him, awkwardly, almost as if he were trying to give the impression he was there for some reason other than saying goodbye to Matteo. ‘Here,’ Helton said finally. ‘Something to occupy your mind.’ He handed Matteo a copy of the novel they had been reading in class and which Matteo had obviously taken to, as he had read far ahead of the class, taking his book with him in the evenings. It was Claude Brown’s 1947 urban classic, Manchild in the Promised Land. He took the paperback from his teacher and stared at it in his hands. When he looked up at the Hellion Matteo had tears in his eyes. ‘Thanks,’ he said. It was the first time in his life that he had been given a gift by an adult male.

In San Vicente, once they had come down from the coastal summit and arrived at the juvenile detention center, they made arrangements for the foster home to pick him up and checked his school record. He was on track to graduate in a year-and-a-half. While he was sitting at the desk of a probation officer, a bald guy with a goatee in a leather motorcycle jacket sat down across from Matteo and looked to the probation officer, then to Matteo.

‘You're Matteo Marcus?’ he asked the boy. Matteo nodded, wary. ‘I’m Ellis Vale,’ the bald guy said, reaching out to shake Matteo’s hand. ‘I’m a teacher from the school district on special assignment. I am looking for talent for a new program we developed.’

‘What kind of talent?’ Matteo asked.

‘Creative talent. We think you guys will be more engaged with school if you’re doing creative stuff.’ The P.O had handed the teacher a folder and Vale was looking through it. He read intently for a minute or so and looked up at Matteo. ‘That’s quite a story,’ he commented. ‘You like to write?’

Ellis Vale enrolled him in the Academy of Commerce and Innovation, housed in a decaying building near the SV Port. Nothing from a school district had ever been like this. It was four floors of rooms that each had a different purpose. In the Language room a huge sign painted sloppily and placed over the clock read: 'School used to be a clock, now it’s a kaleidoscope.' The students all had issues - truants, near drop-outs, court-supervised criminals, runaways, hippies spaced-out from drugs and science fiction fantasies ......

His morning classes were traditional academics and the afternoons were for Creative Integrated Studies. They said that over 20 kids were assigned to the class but Matteo had never seen more than a dozen, and was told many were on projects and had to check in only a few times a week. ‘How do I get that gig?’ Matteo asked Ellis Vale.

‘You earn it,’ Vale told him.

There was a writing lounge with sofas and chairs and a few video screens flashing images. They gave him a laptop that he could actually take home. By week 3 he was deep into his memoir at the urging of Ms. Woods, a high-energy teacher about 6 feet tall with an intense manner and a gum-popping habit that was so loud Matteo commented on it to one of the other students, a dark-haired, mysterious white girl named Monica Stein, who told him, ‘She's in recovery,’ and when Matteo quickly turned his neck to look at Monica and inquire, she said slyly, ‘Takes one to know one.’

Monica Stein, a Goth in boots and chains and cracked leather, was always going off on some hard-to-follow rant about the government and the CIA, and Vale would challenge her, and she would come back with some pretty smart stuff. Vale listened like she mattered; Matteo took note. We matter here; people listen.

Matteo did have writing talent. His essay on education, Burn to Learn, made it to the city-wide competition and was in the City Hall library under Youth Literature. His memoir at 120 pages had become epic. He wanted to add some history about his mother, his absent father. But there was no one to ask. He couldn't decide on a title. Boy Without A History? Like Man Without a Country? The lead guy was some kind of traitor, not allowed within any borders. He stayed on a ship his whole life in international waters. He danced with some woman he was into and didn't she reject him because he was a traitor? He forgot how it ended but the isolation and heavy judgment made an impression on him.

And here he was in San Vicente, a city formed at first from the Central Coast homeless encampments and scattered, failed unincorporated areas. Migrant workers then arrived to take advantage of three years of bountiful artichoke and apricot harvests, and squatted on the land, living in barns and sheds. An almost invisible group of technology savants, now known collectively as Alt Tech, squatted in the brick warehouses that had been empty for decades and fashioned the odd pieces of tech detritus into custom devices that could penetrate any firewall and bypass security codes. The Alt Techies had tapped into the residual and passive energy that leaked from Big Tech machinery and above- and underground cables, powering their movement for free. The Alt Techies were starting to scare some people. San Vicente felt like the land of opportunity to Matteo Marcus.

Ms. Woods told them in her urgent style that it was time to team up and create their term project. ‘You know,” Matteo said to Monica one afternoon, ‘I used to ride these private mini-vans from the city to rich San Vicente neighborhoods I couldn’t even find now. I wonder if there's a story in that. But where are those neighborhoods?' Monica didn't know them either. 'There's someone here who will know,' she said.

As soon as Matteo, in the room where they found Franklin Tom leaning over a drafting table drawing intricate lines in a slow, painstaking manner, started explaining to Franklin Tom what he was trying to do, the sophomore with an old man's face calmly stated, never looking up: ‘That would be the 48 Punta Final line. Runs every 8 minutes at peak. Fourth most used line.’ Matteo told him he wanted to make a video about the social contrast on the line, a microcosm of his life story. Franklin recited more stats and was starting to get worked up about the 5-year plan to redo all routes.

'We should call it the The 48,' Matteo said.

'I like Punta Final,' Monica offered. 'It's also a political statement.'

'Too dark,' Matteo said. 'Nothing is final. And politics will be incidental.'

'It should be The 48L,' Franklin said. 'It's not the 48X.'

'A stickler for detail,' Monica commented. Franklin looked confused and shuffled off toward a bank of computers.'That was a compliment, Franklin,' she called after him, catching Matteo's eye and shrugging.

The rest of the team was put together quickly: 8th grader Elena Ruiz and her 10th grade sister Katrina, Elena allowed to come to The Academy early where she had the lead in the year's musical; and a junior named Valerio Prieto, a "cybersecurity expert" from Colombia with an SVPD monitoring bracelet prominent on his right ankle and a sleek silver Alt Tech item in his hands at all times as he accessed whatever websites, hotspots and networks were nearby. 'We can load all the video on here,' Valerio offered, 'and edit like professionals.'

The video shoot took three weeks. As they exited the 48L bus at the crest of one of SV's largest hills on the final day, with Elena appropriately wonderstruck, Franklin poring over his route map, Katrina brooding as she sat on a curb and Monica and Valerio operating the camera, Matteo looked around and told them: ‘I know this block. A little ways down is where Jeff Randle lives. One of my lacrosse coaches from middle school.’

The home had a circular drive in the front and an elaborate enclosure for the entryway; they walked beneath a covered trellis deeply entwined with ivy and bougainvillea. They were in a fragrant green cave waiting for someone to answer the door. Finally it opened to reveal a small portly man in butlers’ attire, scowling as he contemplated the group before him. ‘We don’t want any raffle tickets,’ he said dismissively, beginning to close the door.

Matteo asked: ‘You don’t remember me? Matteo Marcus? From Mr. Randle’s lacrosse team?’ The butler said nothing but appraised Matteo with a critical eye, then took a quick glance at the others. Monica was filming unobtrusively, the camera at her hip. ‘Is Mr. Randle in?’ Matteo asked sweetly. The butler pivoted and left the entryway, but the door was open and the group was inside the mansion, where the high ceilings gave every sound a cavernous echo and dusty rays streamed in from a skylight.

Jeff Randle soon appeared, smiling and energized. He wore a sweater tied around his neck and was in tennis shoes and a T-shirt, looking like a fit man of leisure.

‘Matteo Marcus,’ Jeff Randle exclaimed. ‘Good to see you. How long has it been?’ They fell into easy small talk, and Matteo could not tell if Randle knew of his recent incarceration. Matteo introduced the group. An oblivious Franklin Tom was still drawing lines in a notebook, but looked up long enough to say hello and shake Jeff Randle’s hand. Elena gushed: ‘This is so beautiful.’

They were led into a parlor of sorts where a wide panoramic window allowed them to look out on the ocean, a rare northwest view that took in distant islands and the forested cliffs of the coastline. Even the normally jaded Monica seemed impressed. They were brought iced tea and oatmeal cookies by a maid who slipped in and out soundlessly. The group and their host settled into comfortable chairs and sipped the tea and nibbled at the cookies. Franklin had even put his notebook down. ‘My mother would not believe this,’ Elena commented. Her sister and Monica sat on an ottoman, leaning into each other sweetly, staring out at the turbulent Pacific. Valerio was showing Jeff Randle video images on his device.

Matteo Marcus took all this in. Two months earlier he had been in his last days at The Ranch. He had no idea where his mother and sister were, did not know where he would be placed, only that soon he most likely was going to be on his own. But he was not thinking about that directly at this moment. He took in the panorama, the brocaded drapery, felt the expensive glassware and dishware in his hands; even the exotic flavor of the tea and the subtle spices in the cookie seemed to deepen this exalted moment. In the long silence that followed the last of the conversation, Matteo Marcus allowed the moment to extend its roots into him, and he thought: This is not so foreign to me. I’m making a video here. I’ve got something to say. Ellis Vale had said: 'You’re just inches away from what you want. It’s up to us to help you take that final step.’ They had done that for him: The Academy had brought him back to a place he thought he might never see again. He was one of those students who earned the independence he had asked about that first week.When he looked away from the panorama, he saw each of his group in their own internal worlds. Elena was brushing cookie crumbs from her mouth, Katrina and Monica whispering and softly giggling, feeding each other bits of cookie; Jeff Randle was checking his phone.

It was at once a serene tableau of sharing the good life, and a façade hiding the darkness each of them held: Matteo the orphan, one false move from a long stay in adult prison; Monica and Katrina, secret lovers, estranged from their families for their sexuality, either of them capable of self-harm and worse, with Elena at The Academy because of the abuse in their home and her sister's fragility; Franklin Tom diagnosed with autism at an early age, had spent his life in school trying to fight his way into the mainstream, and had arrived there as a useful curiosity, never quite fitting in and knowing it, aging prematurely, locked in his obsessions that grew more joyless each year; and the mercurial and brittle Valerio Prieto, a reviled and now vengeful computer hacker, about to be sentenced for major cybercrimes, a boy with a dark dangerous genius lurking that could ultimately be his undoing.

Jeff Randle was on the phone, biting his lip, reading with an intensity that in later years Matteo would look back on to wonder if this was the moment Jeff found out that his insider trading network was being investigated ............ there were two panoramas in the room that afternoon, and Matteo Marcus, years later, was able to balance one against the other, to understand the nature of this life, its dualities and shadows, its joys and despairing fears.

On this day, breaking the stillness, Valerio came over to sit beside Matteo and showed him an image that caused Matteo to widen his eyes and indulge in a huge smile: the dark genius had found Dahlia Marcus; his sister was a freshman at a Chinese Immersion High School south of San Jose, within a few hours of where they currently sat. Dahlia looked healthy and poised, flanked by a diverse set of classmates; his 3rd grade bravado had paid dividends. Life was starting to add up.

The future was poised and ready to accept all of them, for better or worse.

Pulling away from his phone, their host asked Matteo: ‘Will this be the end of your adventure? Your visit to our little enclave up here?’

'I don't think so,' Matteo said thoughtfully. 'It may just be the beginning.'