Kindness for Weakness (14 page)

After some time I say, “I’m not going to rat you out, Louis.” The words sound absolute, pushed out with conviction and a weird power. My hands and fingers feel strange,
like they’re not my own, and I wiggle them in front of my face, rubbing and pinching them to get some feeling back. Am I going crazy? No. I’m not going crazy. I am changing. Growing up. Getting stronger. I am in the visitation room with Louis, telling him how it’s going to be from now on.

“I won’t rat you out,” I say. “But I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, James?” He’s looking at me different, like I’m someone other than his stupid, gullible brother.

“I’m standing up for myself from now on. I’m going to learn how to be brave. It’s in the book you brought me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a crap adventure book.”

But I’m through explaining myself to him. I don’t care if he doesn’t understand. I rise and knock on the door to get the attention of Pike, who is outside talking up one of the female guards. He opens the door to the visitation room.

“Go to Central Services,” he says to Louis, pointing toward the small room separated by a thick tempered glass window and sliding steel drawer. “They’ll get your keys and things.”

“I’m not finished talking to my brother.” Louis stands up with no small amount of attitude.

Pike stops, the challenge registering on his face in the form of a thin smile.

“You’re finished if I say you are, buddy.”

Out of nowhere Horvath and Crupier materialize.
They flank Pike, making him appear much larger than his actual size. Three guards as one.

“What’s the problem, Byron?” Horvath plants his big black combat boots in a wide stance, hands on hips.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” says Pike. “Croop, take James back to Bravo. Me and Horvath will stay and go over the rules with big brother.”

I see the flash of fire in Louis’s eyes. He wants to pummel the small man in front of him and set things right in the world. “I am fighting for you, James,” he could say after. “I do care about you.” But he knows it’s too late for that. He takes a step back and shows his hands in surrender. “You guys are in charge here,” he says. “I’m leaving.”

“That’s right you’re leaving.” The guards follow him out the door and then crack jokes, calling him “pretty boy” and my “faggot big brother.”

The rest of the day is a fog, and I have no appetite. I’m locked up while Louis is driving home to his apartment, where he can play
Call of Duty
on his Xbox in front of his big-screen television, or else he’ll go to Dirk’s Gym and bench-press three big plates on each side, 350 pounds, while all the blond spandex girls with amazing bodies flirt with him and admire his muscles and tattoos.

“Yo,” Coty says. “We seen your brother getting checked in before your visit. He’s a big dude. He’s, like, ripped, and he got that killer look in his face. So what happened to you?”

“Yeah, how come you ain’t like him?” says Wilfred. “Why you got no tats?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We’re different.”

Antwon says, “Yeah, you different, all right. He’s like steel, and you soft like Wonder bread.”

“He’s almost as soft as Oskar,” adds Coty.

But I’m hardly listening.

“Keep ignorin’ us,” says Antwon. “Just don’t be surprised when you get your ass beat.”

They all laugh at Antwon’s threat, until they lose their focus, shifting to the latest gossip about Oskar.

“Yo, whatever happened to that boy?” says Wilfred.

“He’s mental,” says Coty.

“I heard he’s coming back,” says Double X. “He supposed to be better or something.”

“He ain’t better,” says Wilfred. “He mad fucked up. Ain’t no pills or doctors nowhere that can fix that shit.”

“You remember when that old lady teacher caught him beating it under his desk in her class?” says Coty.

“Yo, that’s whack,” says Wilfred.

“What’s whack is that he beatin’ it to her ugly ass,” says Double X.

“Yo, there’s no choices in here,” says Wilfred. “You got to take what you can get!”

They go on, talking about how many
bitches
they’ve gotten pregnant, the kinds of guns they’ve carried and shot, and who they will live with when they are released: grandmothers; godmothers; aunts; and uncles fresh out of prison, men they claim are living large in Section Eight apartments in the projects with LCD televisions and white leather furniture.

But my mind is not on them or their stupid stories; it’s on Louis and how he used to be my hero. Now I don’t want to be like him at all. Not if it means dealing drugs and selling out my friends. And I think that maybe I’m okay with this. He’s just my brother now and not my hero. I will not try to be like him. So, then who am I supposed to be like?

I scan Bravo Unit for Samson and Mr. Eboue, but they’re not here. Instead Horvath looks back at me, his
small hard eyes glinting with meanness and stupidity. He twirls his keys on a lanyard, his fat neck bulging out of his shirt collar, rolls of obscene sweaty skin showing in animal-like contrast to the white cotton of his button-down uniform. Piglike. Bull-like. Ready to teach us his version of manhood. He catches my eyes and sneers at me as if to say that I’m still a slow learner and will need extra lessons.

Blankly, I turn the pages of
The Sea Wolf
and read from a part where Van Weyden and Wolf Larsen are arguing about the value of life. Wolf says:

“I believe that life is a mess. It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

It sounds true enough. At least for people like Horvath and Pike; and now my brother. The big eat the little. The strong eat the weak. I know where I stand in this chain, but I don’t want to be eaten. I’m tired of being the weak one who gets pushed around. The big question is, when the time comes, how hard will I fight? I don’t know, but I go to my room and crank out sets of push-ups and dips until my muscles ache and I can’t get up from the floor.

Mr. Samson and Mr. E are doing overtime running transport to New York City to pick up a new kid. This means Horvath and Pike are in charge.

“I don’t know what Mr. E and Samson usually do for group,” says Horvath. “But we’re gonna talk about goals, and I don’t want to hear any bitching.”

Everyone groans. We’re sick of talking about goals, because even if we have good ones, realistic ones, it won’t matter. Bobby will still be hyperactive and annoying. Antwon will stay lost in the bullshit of his gang. Freddie will keep stealing nice clothes from Bergdorf Goodman. And I will go on being whatever it is that I am supposed to be. The question is, do I get to decide what that something is? I hope so.

Coty mutters, “Forget goals.”

“Shut up!” Horvath says. “I told you not to bitch. This isn’t a choice. Now, who knows the difference between a real goal and something that’s stupid and unrealistic?”

Wilfred raises his hand.

“Go ahead.” Pike points at him.

“Getting a job’s a real goal,” says Wilfred, “but hooking up with a
Hustler
model or going to college is stupid and unrealistic.”

Double X says he can get with a
Hustler
model anytime he wants.

“So can I if I pay six bucks at the magazine stand,” says Levon. “But that don’t count.”

Pike shuts the two of them up by standing between their chairs. “Getting a job
is
a realistic goal,” he says. “So is going to college.”

“No, it ain’t,” says Wilfred. “Nobody in my family been to college, and I ain’t going, either. But I’m gonna work. I know how to fix cars.”

“Then that’s a good goal,” Pike says.

Wilfred beams, proud of his good goal. Then he says, “Mr. Pike, what’s your goal?”

I can’t tell if the guard is surprised because Wilfred remembered his name, or because someone actually wants to know about his life. He looks at Horvath, who shrugs. “My goal,” Pike says slowly, cautiously, “is to get my pilot’s license.”

Hands shoot up. Questions fly.

“You mean like an airplane?” says Bobby.

“Yes, fly an airplane,” says Pike.

“What you have to do to get that kind of license?” says Levon.

“Yo, I want to fly one of them private jets,” says Double
X. “With leather seats and a full bar and a hot tub and lots of them
Hustler
girls Wilfred was talking about.”

“You fly the plane,” Antwon says. “I’ll entertain them girls in the hot tub.”

Pike silences us with a hand. Despite all the stupid questions, he is smiling for the moment, no longer angry and mean. He seems like a different person, and I wonder if maybe he has needed this all along, a chance to talk about himself and what he wants. Maybe everybody does.

“You need to practice and take a test, and then rack up forty hours of flight time.”

“And then what?” I ask. “After you get your license.” I’m having trouble picturing him doing anything other than being a guard with Horvath, working the seven-to-three shift. But I want to know, because maybe, if he can have dreams of something else, then I can, too.

“I’m going to retire from this place and work as a pilot.”

Horvath gets this sour look on his face. “Come on, Byron,” he says. “We’re trying to teach these kids about realistic goals, not fantasy.”

“This
is
realistic,” says Pike.

But Horvath is too bitter and pissed off. He’s done listening to whatever Pike or any of us might have to say.

“You ain’t getting that license, and everyone knows it. How many years you studied for the airman’s test?”

“It’s a tough test,” Pike says. “There’s a written part and then the flight test. It takes a long time to—”

“How many years?” says Horvath.

“Five.”

“And how much money you spent on them lessons to get your hours?”

“It ain’t about the money, Roy.” Pike looks hurt and dejected, just like Wilfred or Bobby when their math assignments come back all marked up with red ink and Mr. Goldschmidt tells them to rewrite it.

“What’s it about, then?”

Pike looks around uncertainly. “It’s about having something to look forward to,” he says.

But Horvath waves it all away with his hand like he’s swatting bugs. “Come on, man! In five years you’re gonna be right here working doubles with me and Croop. Unless you’re too good for that, Mr. Big-Shot Pilot.”

You can hear a pin drop, because we have never seen these two turn on each other.

“That ain’t a goal,” Pike says. “That’s just giving up, and I ain’t gonna be a lifer. Even if you think it’s all I can do.”

Horvath sits thinking. His big hands are resting on the knees of his gray work pants, which are stretched tight over his ever-increasing bulk. He looks uncomfortable sitting, like his fat powerful body was made only for working, and the idea of group is more than a waste of time. It’s a disgrace, a perversion.

Pike shoots his partner a hard look. “What’s your goal, then?” he says. “If you’re such an expert.”

“I want to coach my son’s football team.” He says it fast, like he’s been waiting a long time for someone to ask, and then he just stares off at the wall, looking deflated. I want to know why he can’t coach his son’s team, because it sounds like an easy thing to do. Maybe it’s because his
visitation got cut off, like he said when I first came in to Morton.

After a moment, Pike looks at his watch and says we have to wrap things up. “Real quick,” he says, “go around and say what your goal is.” Wilfred wants a job at an auto body shop. Levon wants to be a pro ballplayer. Double X is going to be a rap artist or a record producer or a fashion designer. Freddie says he’s going to community college, and Coty wants to own a four-wheeler repair shop. Antwon says that he will be a businessman, an entrepreneur.

When it is my turn, my first thought is that I want to help my mother and brother get out of trouble. But I know that’s not exactly true anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to help them; I do. But I don’t think they can be helped. I don’t think they’re going to change.

I close my eyes and imagine Socrates Fortlow saying, “But what do you want for yo’self, boy? What do you want?” And the answer is there, clear in my mind. It’s always been there, covered up by layers of fear thick with dust.

“I want to go to college,” I say. “I want to live in a dorm where no one will know where I came from or who I was at my old high school. I want to start over and see the world outside of Dunkirk. I want to take writing classes.”

Pike seems surprised by my outburst. “Good goal,” he says.

Freddie gives me a nod.

“You and Peach can go to college together,” says Antwon. “Share a room.”

Everyone laughs.

“Line up!” says Horvath. “Group’s over.”

Before I go to sleep, I do sets of twenty-five push-ups. After the fourth set my arms give out and I lie on the floor, exhausted, but happy because I know what I want for myself. I am finally getting strong.

Instead of passing by my desk during mail call, Pike drops a letter in front of me. A real letter! It’s from Mr. Pfeffer. I can’t believe he wrote back. I read it several times, and then ask Mr. Eboue for a piece of tape to put it up on my bedroom wall. It says: