Waking up the ‘Sleepers’

Napoleon Bonaparte’s pride was as vast as his empire. Swallowing it after the setback in Waterloo must have mangled his esophagus.

The sea nymph Thetis was careless. Clutching the infant Achilles by the ankles, she forgot to dip him completely into the River Styx, thereby rendering his heel vulnerable to physical attack. Trysts with interns, if exposed, wouldn’t exactly highlight a president’s career. Bill Clinton learned this the hard way when Monica Lewinsky decided she was keeping her mouth...open.

Mistakes, or misjudgments, were created by the Gentleman Above to remind us of all of our limited capacities as Homo sapiens. To err is unavoidable, much like the rapid oxidation of an apple once sliced and left unconsumed. Arguably the harshest of teachers, a mistake often imparts her wisdom with a crippling efficiency, as her students are never graded.

For in life, there are no B’s or C’s, 1.25’s or 4.0’s. You either pass or fail.

One mistake was all it took to seal the doom of four young boys in Lorenzo Carcaterra’s bestseller Sleepers. Never mind if critics lashed out at Carcaterra for penning an autobiography that supposedly contained more fiction than fact. Never mind at all if every ounce of detail was manufactured. I was smitten by the book, and in the end, that is all that matters.

Actually, Sleepers came to my attention when I watched it on the giant screen not too long ago. The film nearly moved me to tears (the macho man in me refused to yield) because I had witnessed the tragic events that scarred young Lorenzo for life. Carcaterra was a self-confessed bookworm, especially devoted to The Count of Monte Cristo. He even earned the nickname "Shakes," obviously after the Great Bard himself.

Only when the movie ended and the credits rolled did I discover that it was based on a book of the same title, authored by Carcaterra himself!

I spent the following week searching for a copy with feverish resolve. I managed to find one and I rented it on the spot (because there was no copy for sale). Either that or I didn’t have enough cash with me.

The opening chapters in Carcaterra’s memoir paint a picture of the Bronx in the ’60s when he was a bold-spirited teenager. His company was composed of three equally adventurous youngsters: the cool and irrepressible Michael, easily the most sexually-experienced of the lot because he managed to kiss a girl on more than one occasion; John, the designated smart aleck of the group, always prepared with a wise crack; and Tommy, the erstwhile dreamer and a nagging worrywart.

While flipping through the pages, I could not help laughing out loud at the complexities of the characters. In one scene, Shakes assists a priest in Holy Communion. A few pages later, he delivers drugs for the local gangster. One moment he and his friends are altar boys, the next, peeping Toms.

The turning point in Carcaterra’s story comes when the boys decide to play a little prank on a hotdog vendor. The plan is simple. Shakes runs away with a chilidog. Vendor gives chase. As soon as the coast is clear, the others ransack his goods. If vendor turns to their direction, they take off with his cart to the nearest subway and keep it dangling by the stairs. Vendor tries to keep it from falling. They escape.

It would have been brilliant had it not backfired. And in their mischief’s wake, it pummeled an innocent man into a coma. It’s an accident no doubt, but apologies don’t mend wounds. Justice is swift, and they are promptly sentenced to various terms at Wilkinson’s Home for Boys.

Life at Wilkinson’s is, to the boys, pure and unadulterated hell. Satan and his minions wear the uniforms of prison guards, and in the place of fearsome three-pronged spears and fiery pits are equally horrific clubs and cold, steel bars. Inside the juvenile correction facility, they endured every abuse imaginable – physical, mental and perversely enough, sexual. Indeed, any chance at happiness is instantly crushed. Talk about growing pains.

Everywhere they go, every corner they turn, it is as if a thousand crows are screeching in their heads, singing them a litany to abandon hope.

Truly, in that place and time, if misery had a face, it would be laughing.

The second half of the book gives an account of Carcaterra’s adulthood. Shakes and Michael are relatively "unscathed," able to lead ordinary lives. However, it is John and Tommy who had the lion’s share of the horrors in Wilkinson’s. Having stayed there the longest, every moral fiber in their bodies must have snapped, for they grow up to become cold-blooded killers. They live by the gun and die by the gun.

Their friendship remains firm but there is no denying that it is never the same again. Only one thing keeps them going as a group, and that is to exact revenge.

But don’t be misled. The book doesn’t preach about getting back at the people who have wronged you – well, at least from my point of view. It talks about redemption, about picking up the pieces and never looking back. The consequences of our errors may not be as monumental as losing an empire or facing impeachment, but it is the manner by which we deal with them that is important. Easier said than done, you might say, but then again, is there anything easy these days?

Heartrending, funny, as vibrant as it is dark, the book was written with a pulsating vitality seldom found in other books. The boys’ helplessness during their incarceration aroused anger within me. The scope of man’s cruelty is, indeed, difficult to decipher. No child deserves this form of punishment. The poignancy of the book flooded me with goose bumps, and though the movie version failed to make me cry, Carcaterra’s published memoir succeeded.

Uh-oh. There goes my macho image.