The Nickel Boys

Released from the hospital, Elwood is assigned to the yard crew again. He decides to do his best to rack up enough merits to leave Nickel by the following June. That way, he can still go to college, and will have missed only one year of school. He worries that Harriet has spent all of their savings on a lawyer—Mr. Anderson, an idealistic young White man from the North eager to make a difference.

One day, while cleaning out the schoolhouse basement, he discovers a collection of classic British literature (Dickens, Trollope, etc.). He realizes his Nickel Academy classes will never challenge him, so he reads these books on his own. Meanwhile, Desmond educates Elwood in the logic (or illogic) of the merit/demerit system. Elwood tries to figure out a calculus for early release, but the system is completely arbitrary: Staying out of trouble won’t help if trouble finds you, Desmond says. Despite the odds, Elwood resolves to leave early and set his life back on track.

One day, Elwood is reassigned to a Community Service detail with Turner and a young White Nickel employee named Harper. Harper’s mother worked at Nickel, and he grew up around the school. Because of this, he sees the boys as unluckier versions of himself and isn’t malicious towards them.

Community service, it turns out, involves selling the provisions issued to the school by the Florida government to local businesses—Nickel administrators shortchange the students and pocket the profits. Still, this work allows Elwood to be away from Nickel for a few hours, and he relishes the freedom, but Turner warns Elwood to keep quiet about the details of the job. After they complete their deliveries one afternoon, Harper leaves Turner and Elwood to paint the gazebo of a local White woman. Community Service often means doing menial labor like this for highly placed townspeople and for Spencer’s patrons and cronies.

While working, Turner tells Elwood his backstory. He worked as a pinsetter at a bowling alley, joking and entertaining the White customers until a Black fry cook accuses him of “shucking and jiving for these white people” (95). The criticism stung, and Turner’s attitude turned sullen and angry. One night, he retaliated against an angry customer by smashing his car window.

Elwood is placed permanently on Community Service detail. The new job lifts his spirits, and he keeps meticulous records of every delivery.

Griff, the feared bully and “baddest brother on campus” (98), is chosen to represent the Black side of Nickel in the annual wintertime Black vs. White boxing match. Trevor Nickel, the school’s founder, who got the job because of his Ku Klux Klan affiliation and despite never having run a school before, instituted the boxing tradition as a way to build moral character through physical fitness (and to have sexual access to the young boys in the showers, abuse the school’s current psychologist also perpetuates).

Griff’s seeming invincibility fills the Black boys with glee—he should easily be able to best the White boys’ contender, Big Chet. However, Turner overhears Superintendent Spencer order Griff to throw the fight or else be taken “out back.” According to Turner, “out back” means being shackled to two iron rings deeply embedded in two trees behind the laundry building, where guards horsewhip you, and then “[T]hey put you down as escaped and that’s that, boy” (105). Being disappeared like this is a punishment reserved only for the Black boys. Elwood has trouble believing this could work—wouldn’t the boys’ families demand answers? Turner scoffs that not everyone has Elwood’s support system; he has brought Elwood to the iron rings to show him the true nature of Nickel.

The town’s White residents eagerly attend the boxing match between Griff and Big Chet. The audience puts bets on the outcome, heavily favoring Griff. Spencer has promised the school’s board of directors to rig the right, so they can bet against Griff and make lots of money.

Griff has been crowing about his upcoming chances, and the boys’ admiration has turned his head the last few days. Elwood wonders whether Griff is smart enough to remember to lose. Sure enough, caught up in the fight, Griff misses the right time to go down. He wins the fight during the third round, and then, confused and terrified of the consequences, pleads with Spencer that he made a mistake—he thought they were still in the second round of the fight, not the third. That night, Spencer and other guards take Griff “out back,” and he never returns. The boys mythologize him, saying that he refused to lose as a matter of principle and that he managed to escape.

In the present, student archeologists find and exhume the body of Griff, whose wrists were broken, showing that he must have been manacled while being beaten to death. The iron rings remain in the trees, though few people now know what purpose they used to serve.