True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

Chapter 25 begins at an outdoor class on horsemanship. Each of the inmates is briefly allowed to ride the horse. Victor is last. During his ride, he excels, which astounds Mark: "Throughout all of this I felt as if I was a miracle: Victor, with his blocky physique, his acne, and awkward body language, was transformed" (295). Meanwhile, looking for Kevin, Salzman finds Mr. Sills, who tells him Kevin has already been sent away to county to await sentencing. Mark learns that Mr. Sills, who is cool to him on the subject of Kevin, is disliked by other members of the staff and administration for his perceived softness towards the inmates, his frequent barbeques being one such example. This is relayed to Mark in class, who is attempting to deal with the loss in writing. In the same session, Mark tries to explore the students' thoughts on their respective families, which proves painful. At Mark's request, a new student, Frontuto, reads a poem from the play A Place in the Sun, on the subject of fathers: "Dad, why weren't you there?/It's not that you didn't care,/But just that you weren't there" (298). Mark learns, unsurprisingly, that the boys nearly unanimously have strained or non-existent relationships with their fathers, many of whom are alcoholic, abusive, or simply absent.