“You know I didn’t shoot anybody,” I said. “Why you on my case, anyway?”
“I’m just interested in knowing how the criminal mind works,” Mr. Hooft said.
“My mind works just like yours,” I said.
“How can your mind work like mine?” Mr. Hooft leaned back in his chair. “I’m not a criminal. You are the one in jail. Keep that in mind.”
“Yeah, well, you were in jail once,” I said.
“It was not a jail,” Mr. Hooft said. “It was a children’s camp and it was during the war. Entirely different. With you there’s no war on, and you people like to shoot each other and fight. That’s what you do, right?”
I shrugged and thought about King Kong. “Sometimes you can’t help it,” I said. “If somebody wants to fight you then you get stuck in it.”
“Why do they want to fight you?”
“Didn’t you tell me that this guy in your camp wanted to fight you?” I said. “Why did he want to fight you?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Hooft said. “Maybe he lost himself. Sometimes people lose themselves and then they do funny things. It happened in the camp. Sometimes they would stand up and scream. Maybe they would run around naked. I don’t know. He was in the camp and as lost as the rest of us. We stopped knowing who we were.”
“How you stop knowing who you are?”
“You know your name,” Mr. Hooft said. “You look in the mirror and you see your face, your eyes staring back at you, but what does it all mean? Are you a man? One time a man was somebody strong and big, but who are you when you are not strong anymore? Not big anymore? Are you a father? A grandfather? But what happens when your children walk away? When they don’t come to see you? Are you a father if you don’t have a son?”
“You losing me, man,” I said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mr. Hooft waved his hand in the air. “In the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I keep my eye on you. You never let a hoodlum get behind you, so I have to keep you in front of me at all times.”
“I’m not a hoodlum,” I said.
“You probably have one of those guns they have in the Middle East,” Mr. Hooft said. “Those automatic guns. Yes, that’s what you people like. Shoot as many people as you can real quick.”
Mr. Hooft nodded to himself, and I knew he was enjoying messing with me. The room was pretty neat except for some papers on the floor and I picked them up and put them in the garbage can. The can had a plastic lining, and after I had picked everything up I removed the lining and took it out to the big trash can in the hall closet.
When I got back Mr. Hooft had got up on the bed and was pulling the sheet over his legs, which were really skinny and white.
“You know, there’s a guy at Progress that always wants to fight me,” I said. “You think he don’t know who he is?”
“Where is he?”
“Progress,” I said. “That’s the name of the jail I’m in.”
Mr. Hooft leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “That’s the jail? And they call it Progress?”
“I guess they don’t want to call it just plain jail,” I said.
“But Progress?”
“They got to call it something,” I said.
“They have all young people like you, or they have older men, too?”
“From twelve to sixteen,” I said.
“This boy, he doesn’t like you?”
“I don’t think he likes anybody,” I said. “He’s just a jerk.”
“You think the Japanese will kill you if you fight him?”
“There aren’t—that’s stupid,” I said.
“Don’t you like to fight?”
“I can take care of myself,” I said. “I’m not afraid of this dude, man.”
“Look at you, puffing up like a bird,” Mr. Hooft said. “The two of you are finding yourselves.”
“So this guy died and the Japanese let you out?” I asked.
“The war ended,” Mr. Hooft said. “It ended as horribly as it began, with bombs. When I went home to the Netherlands I was a hero. My family treated me like a king. I was young when I left Java, and so most of my life I was celebrated. I came to America when I was twenty and only worked important jobs because I knew who I was. You’ll never find out anything, because you have more muscles than brains in your head. And you have a very round head. Did you know that?”
“My head isn’t that round,” I said.
“Do you drink tea?”
“Tea? Yeah, sometimes.”
“When you get out of jail and I get out of here, you can come to my house and maybe we’ll have a glass of tea together,” Mr. Hooft said. “And you can teach me to be a hoodlum.”
“Yo, man, you know I’m not…”
He turned away from me and looked toward the window.
“When I get out maybe we can hook up,” I said.
Mr. Hooft didn’t look at me, but he nodded. I finished straightening up the place and after a while I could see he was asleep.
Nancy looked in. “You do a nice job for a Hausa boy,” she said. “Sometimes Hausa boys are lazy.”
Mr. Pugh was five minutes late in picking me up. He searched me, which wasn’t necessary, and found K-Man’s letter, which he said he was going to confiscate.
“Mr. Cintron gave me that letter just before I left the joint,” I said. “So you need to clear it with—”
He smacked me hard across the face. Case closed.
I thought about what Mr. Hooft had said about the kid in the children’s camp fighting him even though the Japanese didn’t allow any fighting. The bully paid for that fight with his life. But I didn’t know about him trying to find himself. I didn’t even know how to figure out if you could lose yourself. At home, out in the world, everybody knew where they were and mostly where they were going.
I was handcuffed in the back of the van. I knew I was going back to Progress. I knew one day I would be out and going back to the streets. I was scared that one day after that I might be headed back to Progress or another jail like the predictions everybody was throwing at me. In my hood, that’s what happened. We all saw what was going down, but why it was going down was harder to get to.
Mr. Hooft’s talk about getting out of Evergreen was strange. It almost sounded like he was in lockdown the same as me.
CHAPTER 19
Mr. Pugh gave me my letter from K-Man after he searched me again. I wanted the letter to be full of good news about the neighborhood and especially about him. It wasn’t.
Dear Reese,
How are things going? Did you get a date yet? I saw Icy and she said she visited you. I asked her how she liked the place you were in and she said it was okay, that nobody could get in and get you. I thought that was funny.
Bunny’s brother got shot. You remember his brother Vincent? He’s got dark skin but a patch of white on his neck? Vitiligo—that’s what it’s called—and I wouldn’t want to have it for nothing in the world because people stare at you. Anyway Vincent, Cameron, Bunny, and this guy named Milton were sitting on Bunny’s stoop when some guys drove up and started calling Cameron names. Cameron told them to kiss his ass, and one of the guys pulled a piece and started shooting. Everybody jumped off the stoop and started running.
The only one who got hit was Vincent, and at first it didn’t seem so bad. He was walking around with a bullet hole in his side. He said he couldn’t walk too good and they put him on Cameron’s bike and took him to the hospital. He went in the emergency room and had to wait like an hour and a half because the nurse who looked at him said it didn’t seem too bad. When he got in and they x-rayed him he was feeling worse. At first they said the bullet just missed something vital and he was lucky. But the next morning he couldn’t walk at all. That’s what’s going down with him now. He can’t walk at all. That is just right on sad because everybody wants to walk.
Things are going okay. I tried to transfer to Frederick D
ouglass Academy but they didn’t have any room at FDA. If I went to FDA I could walk to school every day. Also, there aren’t as many fights up there.
Yo, Reese, I’ll be glad when you get out because there isn’t anyone to hang out with anymore. Everybody is either into a hustle or doing crimes. I’m trying to keep straight like you said, but I really need somebody to hang with who isn’t being shot at or drugging up or getting into trouble.
My moms said if I got a college scholarship it would be good. I’d like to go away to school, maybe one of those big schools with a football team that plays on television and a million cheerleaders with fat legs (smile).
I saw your brother Willis the other day. He was sitting on the rail in front of your building. He looked like he didn’t have nothing to do, the same as everybody else. Yo, Reese, when you get out we should maybe work for a year and then buy a car. We could have a gypsy cab business. I could drive it in the day and you could drive at night and once in a while we would switch up. Unless I got a scholarship. I’m not too hopeful about the scholarship anymore.
Anyway, take care of yourself and come home soon.
Kenneth Bramble
K-Man was smart enough to get a scholarship and he didn’t play ball or anything like that. Most of the white guys that got scholarships did a lot of extracurricular stuff. One white guy I knew even went to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his grandfather. I wish I had done that. My mom’s father had a stroke when he was thirty and could hardly walk. I never saw my father’s father. My father never talked about him either.
The fight between King Kong Tarik and Toon was supposed to take place after supper. I watched Toon looking down at his tray and knew he was thinking about being beaten up again. Diego, that punk, was sitting with King Kong, making jokes and nudging him and stuff, and every once in a while he would look over at Toon.
There was always some little guy around for people like Tarik to beat on. It was like they spent all their lives looking for victims, somebody they could make feel bad.
Mr. Pugh was on the rec room detail but he always took long breaks because he was sneaking smokes. Diego and Leon were sitting next to Toon, and when Mr. Pugh got up to go to the bathroom, they pulled him out of his chair and pushed him toward King Kong.
King Kong knew Toon wouldn’t fight back and started goofing on him, faking punches and winding up and stuff.
“Mr. Pugh is going to come back soon,” Diego said. He was standing at the door looking through the window down the corridor toward the staff men’s room.
When he said that, King Kong threw a hard punch and hit Toon on the top of his shoulder and the side of his head. Toon went down on one knee, and then King Kong started punching him in the back of his head.
Toon whimpered and put up one hand to block the blows.
“Put your hand down!” King Kong stood over Toon, ready to hit him again.
Toon lowered his hand and King Kong punched him on the back of his neck.
“Oh, man, that hurt!” Leon said.
Toon was down on his hands and knees.
“He putting his butt up for you to kick!” Diego said.
King Kong started backing up to get a running start. He backed all the way up against the couch and started toward Toon. That’s when I tripped him.
King Kong stumbled, caught himself, and spun around. I clipped him upside his jaw. He was surprised and his hands went out to his sides like he was trying to steady himself. I jabbed him with my left hand and turned my fist sideways and hit him in the side of his face with everything I had.
“Here comes Mr. Pugh!” Diego called out.
I looked at King Kong, and he was down on the ground lying on his side. Play grabbed Toon and pulled him up and pushed him into a chair. Diego got back to a chair, but King Kong was still lying down when Mr. Pugh opened the door.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked, looking around the room. “I said, ‘What the hell’s going on?’”
Mr. Pugh went over to where King Kong was lying and turned his head from side to side. “You been cut?” he asked.
“He hit me!” He was on one elbow pointing at me.
“Ain’t nobody hit him,” Play said. “Clumsy sucker just fell.”
Mr. Pugh wasn’t buying it. He grabbed me and spun me around with one hand behind my back. He cuffed me and then dragged me out of the rec room and down the hall to the detention room.
“You trying to get me into trouble, you little punk?” He had his mouth just about on my ear as he unlocked the detention room door.
He didn’t have to cuff me to the wall restraint, but he did. Then he put one fat hand around my neck and started squeezing.
“Leave a bruise, man,” I said. “Leave a bruise!”
He lowered his hand and then threw his shoulder into me, bouncing me into the wall. I looked into his face. It was twisted and mad.
He said something I couldn’t understand, spitting all over me as he talked. Then he left.
A minute later, I heard King Kong coming down the hall. He was yelling he didn’t do nothing, and I knew Mr. Pugh had his ass headed for the other detention room. Even from where I was I could hear the bumps against the wall.
“Hit him one for me!” I called out.
CHAPTER 20
Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson brought King Kong, Toon, and me into the large intake room and cuffed us to wall rings behind the long bench. We were about three feet from each other with me on one end of the bench, King Kong on the other, and Toon in the middle. Mr. Pugh walked over to the door, turned, and gave us the finger before he left, slamming the door behind him.
“I wish I could reach your black butt,” King Kong said. “I’d tear your damned head off.”
“If you can sing it, you can bring it,” I said. “I ain’t going nowhere. You’ll get your chance. Then we’ll see what happens.”
“You won’t be able to sucker-punch me next time, faggot,” King Kong said.
Then Toon turned and spit at King Kong, which surprised me because I knew King Kong was just looking for a reason to beat Toon silly.
But I liked that. Toon couldn’t fight and he was little and kind of punkish, but he still made a statement.
King Kong started telling Toon what he was going to do to him, how he was going to shotgun him and make him call him uncle and a whole bunch of other crap. Toon looked up in the air and shook his head like he wasn’t hearing him.
Mr. Cintron came in with Mr. Pugh a moment later and told Pugh to uncuff Toon.
“Mr. Deepak, you are scheduled for one day in detention quarters and one week’s loss of privileges,” he said.
Mr. Pugh took Toon out of the room. All the while Mr. Cintron was looking at some papers he had in front of him. I thought he was going to come down on me the hardest. He didn’t say anything until Mr. Pugh came back and he motioned for him to uncuff King Kong.
“Mr. Sanders, you are scheduled for five days in detention quarters and one week’s loss of privileges,” Mr. Cintron said.
Mr. Pugh took King Kong out but not before that stupid jerk could give me another dirty look.
“Reese, when you’re standing up, perhaps reaching for something in your closet, and you sit down suddenly, do you get headaches?” Mr. Cintron asked.
“No, sir,” I said. “I never get headaches.”
“Well, that’s kind of funny because your brains are up your ass,” he said. “Aren’t they?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you want to call this institution?”
“You mean Progress?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Mr. Pugh walked back into the room and came over to where we were.
“A juvenile correctional facility, I guess.”
“James, you ever see a basket of crabs?” Mr. Cintron turned to Mr. Pugh.
“Yeah, I’ve seen them,” Mr. Pugh said, smiling.
“What happens when one of the crabs tries to get out?” Mr. Cintron asked.
“The other crabs pull him back in,” Mr. Pugh said. “No way one of them is getting out unless the rest of them are half dead.”
“Ninety percent of the inmates here aren’t going anywhere with their lives and they know it. It’s not because they can’t, it’s because they simply won’t. They know it, and every time they see somebody who looks like he might break the cycle and do something with his life, they want to pull him back in,” Mr. Cintron said. “Especially if you look like them, if you come from the same environment they come from. If you turn your life around, you’re putting the blame on them for not turning theirs around. Sanders will take another year on his time before he’d let you alone. You don’t get it, right?”
“I get it now,” I said.
“No, you don’t get it,” Mr. Cintron said. “You know it, but you don’t know it well enough to control yourself. You have five days in detention and one week’s loss of privileges. Take him out of here.”
CHAPTER 21
The detention cell is a little smaller than the rest of the cells and just about bare. There’s a small window near the ceiling, but it’s too high to see out of. If you run across the floor and jump up, you can see the sky, but that’s about it. The toilet is fourteen inches high, which means you have to squat down to use it. There is a water fountain, with a button on top. When you push the button, the water comes up from a small hole in the middle of the fountain. The water is warm. It comes up about an inch out of the hole, so you have to put your mouth almost on top of it to get a drink. Nothing in the room sticks out more than a quarter of an inch except the doorknob, and that is tapered so you can’t hook anything onto it. That way you can’t make a noose out of a strip of cloth or a shoelace. In the detention cell, you can’t kill yourself.
There is writing on the wall across from the bed—messages from other guys or girls who have been in the room. One says: “Time lost can never be found again.” Another one says: “I hate myself.” Above it, someone has written, “I hate you, too,” and drawn an arrow pointing to the sign that says, “I hate myself.”