The Nickel Boys

Nickel’s morning rituals include attendance, two-minute cold showers in water that “smelled of rotten eggs” (55), and finally, breakfast. In the dining hall, Elwood meets Turner, a boy strangely “a part and apart” (57) of any situation. He also encounters Griff, Lonnie, and Black Mike, a threatening trio of bullies the other boys know to avoid. After breakfast, Elwood’s dormmate Desmond escorts him to the classroom, although academic performance doesn’t carry much weight at Nickel. More important, Desmond informs him, is earning merits through following the rules and not making trouble.

Inside the classroom, Elwood is shocked to find outdated textbooks written for elementary school students. After class, he inquires about advanced classes, and the apathetic instructor vows to ask Director Hardee, the head of Nickel, about it.

Later, Elwood rakes leaves and maintains the grounds as part of the yard crew. The leader of this crew is Jaime, a Mexican-American boy whose light brown skin confuses the White supremacist segregationists who run Nickel. In the summer, when Jaime gets a tan, Spencer moves him to the Black side of Nickel, but in the winter, Director Hardee shuffles him back to the White side. A small hill separates the “colored dormitory” from Boot Hill, an old graveyard marked by white crosses and “bent and lurching trees” (62). On his rounds, Elwood sees a small, rust-covered building between the White and Black dormitories; he is warned to stay away.

After work detail, Elwood tours the sparsely equipped rec room. He learns about house captains—peers assigned to monitor other boys’ behavior. One day, Elwood sees Lonnie and Black Mike bullying a younger boy. When he tries to intervene, Black Mike slugs him across the jaw. A guard who walks in on the scene calls the boys the n-word and tells them to expect to hear from Spencer.

That night, Spencer and a houseman named Earl load Lonnie, Black Mike, Elwood, and Corey, the bullies’ victim, into two brown Chevys bound for the White House, the small rusty building Elwood was warned to avoid. Before they go, Desmond warns Elwood not to struggle against the beating—the buckled strap the guards use is barbed to rip the skin with each strike if the victim moves.

Inside, Spencer and Earl viciously beat the boys one by one. Elwood cannot hear the sounds of the beatings—all he hears is the same loud mechanical noise that he’d heard his first night at Nickel. He tries counting the seconds each boy is in the room to prepare for how long his punishment will be, but soon realizes that there is no rhyme or reason for how many lashes each boy receives, no sense of fairness or justice. The larger boys, the bullies, each are beaten for 28 seconds, while the tiny Corey—their victim—receives 70 seconds. The only thing driving Spencer is rage— after he tells the boys to take their beatings and shut their mouths, Corey received the most lashes because he cannot stop crying.

In the room where the beating takes place, Elwood sees a blood-spattered mattress and an enormous industrial fan—the source of the mechanical noise that drowns out the boys’ screams. This keeps up the façade that Nickel adheres to Florida laws, which ban corporal punishment. Elwood passes out before his punishment is over.