CHAPTER 5
We got up in the morning and it was lightning and thundering.
“In the old days,” Pugh said, “they wouldn’t execute a man during a lightning storm. Too dangerous.”
I looked at the fool to see if he was serious. He was.
I saw Toon at breakfast and he looked the same. That stupid face he always wore, kind of round and wide-eyed with his hair sticking out all over his head, was looking more like a leftover pumpkin or something. The skin around his eye was yellow and blue, colors you didn’t even expect to see on a real person, and the way he was holding his face when he was trying to eat his eggs, you could tell he was paining.
Diego and Cobo were sitting together. Cobo was still acting like he was some kind of big-time gangsta, and Diego was sucking up.
We finished breakfast, and Wilson said we had to wait until the girls came downstairs before we went to classes.
“They’re getting a lecture on birth control,” he said.
“All you got to tell them,” Pugh said, “is to stay away from these knuckleheads.”
We went to the dayroom instead of our cells, and I knew that the cells were being inspected as soon as Wilson left us. I thought about my place. I knew it was clean, so I didn’t have anything to worry about. Anyway, you only got a demerit for dirt in your room, you didn’t drop a level.
We were sitting around when I saw Toon go to the bathroom. Cobo snapped his fingers twice to get Diego’s attention and then pointed at Toon.
“Diego!” I called to him. “Sit down, man.”
Pugh looked up and then he looked at me and Diego. He knew something was happening.
“I think I’ll get myself some coffee,” he said.
Pugh was going to let the shit happen. He knew if I got into it, I could lose my gig at Evergreen.
“What you got to say?” Diego asked me from across the room as soon as Pugh closed the door.
I looked over at Play, and his eyes were dead on me, seeing what I was going to do. Diego couldn’t handle me, I knew that. He looked strong but I didn’t think he had the heart. But it wasn’t Diego making the world go round. It was Cobo.
I went over to where he was sitting. He laid his head to one side and hooked his thumbs in his belt like I was some shorty he was watching on a playground. He was sitting on one of the folding chairs and had it tilted back. I kicked the leg and he went back onto the ground.
Diego took a step toward me, and Play stood up and pointed at him.
“You want him—you got me, too,” Play said.
Cobo got to his feet, looked me up and down, and then the sucker just exploded on my ass! The sucker was hitting me with his fists, his elbows, kneeing me in my side. I was down on my knees covering up and he was pounding me on the back of my head. I was in a blind panic when I grabbed his ankle and pulled it up as hard as I could.
He started to go down backward and reached out to grab onto something, but there wasn’t anything there. When he reached back for the floor he was all open, and I smashed his face as hard as I could. I don’t remember a lot more but I know I kept swinging. Then I felt myself going up in the air and down hard on the back of the couch, which knocked all the wind out of me. Before I could see where I was, my hand was being twisted behind me and I felt the handcuff on my wrist.
I looked over my shoulder and it was Pugh.
He went over to where Cobo was trying to get to his feet and gave him a straight kick right in the stomach. Then he twisted his arm behind him and handcuffed him, too. Wilson must have heard the commotion, because he came running in. I got dragged out of the dayroom and pushed into my quarters. I heard the door slam behind me and just lay on the floor, still handcuffed.
I lay there for about an hour, maybe even two. Then Mr. Pugh, Mr. Wilson, and some other dude I didn’t know got me out and took me to the detention cell.
The detention cell didn’t have anything in it except a toilet. You had to sit on the floor. They brought me some water and a bologna sandwich later on and I told them to keep it. But I ate it when I got hungry.
I got another bologna sandwich for breakfast with a container of milk.
It was a long day, and I sat in the cell by myself until Mr. Pugh came and got me and took me to Mr. Cintron’s office. I started to sit down but he made me stand up and face away from him. He got right behind my back and started talking to me real soft like any minute he might have offed me. I was thinking he was probably hard when he was on the streets.
“Anderson, do you have to work on being stupid or does it just come natural to you?” Mr. Cintron said.
“I ain’t got nothing to say,” I said. “I just did what I did.”
“The guy you fought is going to be doing that same kind of fighting in some kind of institution for the rest of his life. And believe me, he’s going to be in some kind of institution for the rest of his life. What the hell do you need that for?”
I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t.
“Eddie said you were looking out for one of the younger boys,” Mr. Cintron said. “But I don’t know if I believe him. All I know is that I stood up for you and you let me down. That’s all I know.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“This isn’t about sorry, Reese. You’re not on the street stepping on somebody’s sneakers. You’re behind bars. You’re with people who don’t mind seeing you throw your life away. You can’t figure that out?”
“Sir…”
“Shut up, Reese,” Mr. Cintron said. “Just shut up. I’m going home tonight. Home to my wife and children and my lovely apartment and I’m going to think about this. You know what freaking power I have over you now? Do you know what—”
He just stopped talking like he was disgusted or something. I wanted to turn around to see his face, but I didn’t.
When Mr. Pugh took me back to my quarters, he asked me if I was all right. I said, “Yeah.”
“As soon as I turned my back you started acting up,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Dear Icy,
It was nice getting your letter. You made me feel a lot better. Sometimes it gets pretty bad in here, but I feel good thinking about you and Willis and the good times we will have when I get out. Do you remember when we went to Coney Island and you went on all those rides? That’s the first thing we’ll do when I get home. Tell Willis to save up a lot of money.
We have a real funny-looking boy in here. We call him Toon because he looks like a cartoon. He’s only a little older than you are. I told him about you and he asked if you had a boyfriend and I said yes, you did.
Icy, I am going to try to get out of here as soon as I can so we can be a family again. I don’t know the exact date, but I hope it’s soon.
Your favorite brother,
Reese
CHAPTER 6
I’ve felt bad in my life, but never so bad as when Mr. Cintron walked away. It was as if everything I had hoped for was gone. He had even put Icy on my mail list, and now I didn’t know if I could send her the letter I had written. I remembered what she had written, to think about her at nine o’clock and she would be thinking about me. But I couldn’t think about anything except that I had messed up again.
I wanted to see what the rest of the guys were thinking. There wouldn’t be any talking at lunchtime, but maybe I could see something in their faces. That’s what I thought, but Mr. Wilson brought my lunch to me and I had to eat it in my cell.
“Is that all you know?” he asked. “Settle everything by fighting? Isn’t that the kind of low-life crap that got you in here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, all Mr. Cintron has to do is to write you up and they’ll send you right upstate with that kid you had the fight with. Then the two of you can fight all you want,” Mr. Wilson said.
He looked at me like I was nothing, and that was the way I felt. But when he left, I thought about what he had said. Maybe he went home and dealt with his family and his
friends like he wanted, but I had to deal with what I found at Progress.
I wanted to pray, but I don’t like doing that kind of stuff. I mean, to me, praying sounds lame. You’ve messed up and then you go asking God to let you cop a plea. One time I heard Mama praying. She was in her bedroom and I thought she was praying to get off that stuff she was using, and I leaned against the door to hear her. But she was praying for ten dollars so she could buy some food. I knew what she would be buying with the ten dollars if she got it.
Mom was a trip and a half. She was small. I was as big as she was when I was nine. She was pretty when she fixed herself up. And she spoke well. Like Icy. Icy probably talked like Mom, really, but when Mom spoke, you could hear every syllable. Unless she was high. And as much as I loved Mom when she was straight, that’s how much I hated her when she was high. And she always tried to pretend she wasn’t using when I knew she was.
But the main thing was that I knew how some of the chicks around the way copped their money to get high. You can finesse people in stores or you can finesse people in the post office, but you can’t finesse no dealer. He knows what you need and what you’ll do to get it.
Sometimes I dreamed about Mom and me and Willis and Icy living somewhere together, maybe in Queens, next to the park. It was a good dream when it started, but it never ended up good. Never.
The whole joint was quiet and I figured the staff had everybody on lockdown. Sometimes, especially if there was a fight or something, there would be a silent lockdown. You couldn’t have a radio on or a television and you couldn’t talk. That didn’t bother me but it bothered some guys big-time. They had to have some noise going on all the time. I think maybe they were hearing stuff in their heads and wanted to shut it out. Those were usually the guys on the meds line in the morning.
When dinner came, I was glad to march with everybody to the mess hall. Dinner was the same as lunch, a hamburger patty, a slice of bread, some creamed corn, potatoes, string beans, and rice pudding. It didn’t have any taste, or maybe I was just not up to tasting it, I don’t know.
My light went out at eight thirty. I’m a level one and it wasn’t supposed to go out until nine thirty. I wondered if Mr. Cintron had dropped me to level three, or even four. If I was on level four, I didn’t get to go to school or have rec time. I wouldn’t be going to Evergreen anymore, either.
Being at Progress, hearing the bars slam or standing in the halls waiting for somebody to unlock one of the steel doors, made me feel like maybe I was an animal or something. Going to Evergreen and seeing people walking around and smiling made me feel good even if they weren’t smiling at me. They were feeling good about themselves, and that’s what I needed.
The thing was that whatever happened to me, there was always something worse than there was before. The first time I was arrested, when they sent me up to Bridges on Spofford Avenue for two weeks, it was bad, but the worst thing that could have happened then was that I got a record. That was like a weight around my neck that was going to drag me down even further the next time I got into trouble. Then the last time I got arrested, I came here to Progress, which is a lot worse than Bridges. When Wilson said they could send me upstate with Cobo, I knew that would be even worse. If Cobo did have a gang up there, they would just probably kill me like they were thinking about killing Toon.
I guess dying is the worst shit you can get into.
Morning came and I got roused up with everybody else. We lined up and I didn’t see Cobo. I was looking for him because he might be trying to sneak up on me and shank me or something. Play gave me a wink but Diego just looked away.
It was summer, and I knew school was out back in the world. My main dog, Kenneth, would be playing b-ball in the Fourth Street tournament. K-Man couldn’t play a lot of ball two years ago, but now he was getting real good. Two teams wanted him to play in the Fourth Street tournament. I wished he could come up and visit me. K-Man is real people.
“Reese, out of line,” Mr. Pugh said.
I stepped out of line, and he left-faced the crew and marched them off toward school. I was just standing there by myself but I knew better than to move. When Mr. Pugh gets mad at you, he can make your life two kinds of miserable.
He came back and told me to follow him. “Put your left hand on my belt and don’t take it off!”
I put my left hand on his belt. And he started walking toward the staircase. We went to the stairwell and down the stairs real slow. Sometimes Mr. Pugh would stop and flinch like he was going to do something. I just held on to the belt. He was letting me know that any moment he could stop and punch me in the face. I was knowing it.
We went to Mr. Cintron’s office. Miss Rice, his secretary, looked old. Mr. Wilson said she had been working at Progress for over fourteen years.
Mr. Cintron came out of the office and he told Mr. Pugh to bring me in.
“You want him handcuffed to the chair?” Mr. Pugh asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Cintron said.
He went around to the other side of the desk while Mr. Pugh cuffed me to the chair and left. Mr. Cintron shuffled through some papers and shook his head like he was disgusted.
What I was thinking was that if I went upstate and they were going to kill me, then it would be better if they did it right away. I didn’t want to have to walk around looking over my shoulder all the time.
“We picked you!” Mr. Cintron said, looking up at me. “We selected you for the work program because you had a high IQ, you hadn’t done anything violent, you had a decent reading score, and you sounded like you really wanted a break. So everybody on the board is going to be looking at the ‘model’ for this work project and making a judgment. And you’re here getting into fights. You really know how to screw things up, don’t you?”
“Sir, I’ll break my back to make it up,” I said. “I’ll do anything you say. I’ll work hard, I won’t get into any more fights. If somebody wants to beat me up, I’ll just let them. I swear it, sir.”
“Hey, you’ve already proven that your word doesn’t mean shit,” Mr. Cintron said. “So why are you giving me that bull now?”
“I’m giving you the only thing I know, sir,” I said. “I’m not a snitch, sir, but they were talking about offing Toon. I just didn’t want that to happen, sir.”
“Reese, well, maybe we were wrong about your IQ,” Mr. Cintron said. “You’re in here with boys who can steal, who can shoot each other, who can kill. That’s the kind of life you chose, and that’s the life you got. And you’re one of them. So when you start running down some bull about you couldn’t let this happen or you couldn’t let that happen, it doesn’t mean a thing to me. You stole because you didn’t want something to happen. Deepak—the boy you call Toon—is in here because he wouldn’t behave himself. Tell me where I’m wrong, Reese. Tell me where I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong, sir,” I said. “I was wrong, but…”
“But what?”
“I was just wrong.”
“So, I have a number of options,” Mr. Cintron said. “The first is to write up a report on the fight and give you a nice label. How about ‘Aggressive and violent. Cannot control temper’? Then I can send in the report and have you transferred to an upstate facility. You ever been to one of the longterm facilities? In New York they usually put them in nice areas upstate. It’s pretty up there this time of year. You can fight up there to your heart’s content. They have a half dozen gangs and you’ll be in one of them, and then you can get ready for your visit to Manhattan. You ready for that?”
“What’s that?”
“That’s when they send you back to the streets for a visit,” Mr. Cintron said. “It’s only for a visit because you’ll blow it again and be back in some facility. You’re lucky you didn’t get a longer sentence.”
“I can’t get another chance?”
“I don’t want to give you another chance, Mr. Anderson,” Mr. Cintron said. “But if I take away your chance, if I report this incident, that our ‘h
igh-IQ, nonviolent, carefully selected choice’ has messed up, it’s going to stop the work program in its tracks. Why should we fund this program, pay the extra insurance, and pay for the extra staff hours if these African Americans are just going to throw it away? They’re going to look into my face and talk about recidivism rates and emotional instability and social understanding—but in their hearts they’re going to keep it a lot simpler. They’re going to be thinking that people like you don’t deserve a chance.
“So I’m going to squelch this report. I’m going to let Maldonado, the other kid, take the whole blame,” Mr. Cintron said. “Not for you, because I don’t have any faith in little punks like you, but for the next kid who comes along and might deserve it. So you’re going to continue in this program, Reese. But if you screw up again, you’d better send your soul right to God, because your black ass will belong to me and I will put a hurting on you. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll find the worst facility in the state to send you to and warn them about you,” he said. “And if I do that, you’ll be sorry as long as you survive.” He pressed a button on the intercom and said, “Mr. Pugh, get him out of here.”
Mr. Pugh uncuffed me. When I stood up, I almost fell down, my legs were shaking so bad. Mr. Pugh took me back to my quarters and told me to wash the floor, and I started doing that.
The soapy water was cold and wasn’t getting the floor clean, but I was down on my knees scrubbing it the best I could. I was crying but I wasn’t making any noise.
The thing was that I didn’t know if I was going to mess up again or not. I just didn’t know. I didn’t want to, but it looked like that’s all I did.
CHAPTER 7
“You sweet on Toon?” Mr. Pugh had me in a Ripp belt with my hands handcuffed to it in front of me. At least I was in the passenger seat of the van instead of the back.
“Why I got to be sweet on him because I don’t want to see the dude killed?” I asked. “You want to see somebody killed?”