Kindness for Weakness (17 page)

“He beat some dude with a piece of pipe,” Freddie says. “Dude was lost and asked for directions. Antwon was with his boys and said, ‘I’m gonna help this poor brother find his way.’ Dude got a cracked skull and lost an eye.”

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

After several weeks of working out with Samson, I am finally changing, getting stronger and visibly bigger. Tonight he comes on shift and takes Freddie and me to the weight room for Stage Night. It’s become a ritual: one hour of lifting followed by take-out food.

I go through the warm-ups he showed me, while Freddie heads straight for the stair climber. He rotates the TV set on its wall mount so he can watch a gossip show that Horvath has prohibited on Bravo Unit, with the declaration, “No queer shit on my unit.”

When I’m done stretching and warming up, Samson loads the bar on the bench press with twenty-five-pound plates.

“I want fifteen,” he says.

I space my hands out on the bar, shoulder width, like he showed me. I breathe deep, repeat, and then lift the bar on the third exhalation. The reps come off easy, and for the first time I feel truly powerful, like I can do anything.
On the last rep Samson guides the bar up and says, “Good. Now rest for thirty seconds.”

I sit on the bench, breathing, my head perfectly clear for the first time in days. No thoughts of Louis and my mother. No images of Oskar twisting on his homemade mattress-cover noose above a pile of his little-kid books.

Samson says, “You’re a lot stronger than you know.”

I can’t help smiling, a weird feeling of heat spreading out over my body that might be happiness. I look over at Freddie sweating and dancing and pumping his legs, which are surprisingly skinny for a chunky guy like him. The TV spews some crap about how to get your house ready for a big dinner party. Samson replaces the twenty-five-pound plates with forty-fives, and then adds a ten to each side, bringing the weight, including the forty-five-pound bar, up to 155 pounds. He thumps me on my shoulder and says, “Give me three good ones.”

I push out the set nice and smooth, controlling the weight. “I can do more,” I say after racking up the bar.

“I know. But we’re tricking your muscles. If they know what’s coming next, they’ll never grow. You won’t get stronger.”

He pulls the two small plates off, bringing the weight back down to 135. “No rest,” he says. “Give me twelve quick ones.”

I get to ten before my arms start to burn and tremble. “Come on,” says Samson. I grit my teeth and push out the last two. He adds a twenty-five-pound plate on each
side. “Now I want one strong one,” he says after I’ve had a longer rest.

I grip the bar and take my deep breaths. I lift the weight off the rack, excited that I might be able to do it. But when I lower the bar, my muscles give out and I am stuck with 185 pounds resting on my chest. I grunt and push, but it doesn’t move.

“You got this,” Samson says, bending down, putting the tips of his index fingers under the bar. “Push it out!”

I drive my heels into the floor like he taught me and push even harder. Incredibly, like magic, the bar goes up. Slowly. Steadily. It’s got to be Samson, but how can someone lift so much with his fingers?

“One more,” he says at the top. My arms are shaking like crazy, like they’re put together with rubber bands. I lower the bar.

“Now push it up!” he says, before I drop it all the way to my chest. “Show me you want this!” He’s hovering over my face, encouraging, shouting.

Again the bar starts to rise slowly, like it’s being propelled by the power of Samson’s words. At the top he racks it, says, “Nice job, man. You did it!” He is grinning, happy, though I don’t know why. I’d have been crushed if he hadn’t helped.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t thank me. That was all you.” He pulls a water bottle from his duffel bag and hands it to me. “Drink this. It’ll help you recover.”

It tastes terrible, like chalk mixed with powdered milk. “That was not
all me
,” I say. “I couldn’t do it.”

“You
did
,” he says. “It’s a mind trick. Your brain tells you I’m helping, but I’m really not. I hardly touched the bar.”

I finish up with fifteen repetitions at the starting weight. It feels light, like nothing at all, but my arms are beyond spent, and it’s like I’m pushing with someone else’s dead limbs. Samson helps me with the last two, and then gives me the bottle of chalky milk again.

During squats he says, “There’s a difference between getting big and becoming strong. To get big, you hit it hard and go heavy, over and over again until it doesn’t feel heavy anymore. Or you can take the juice. Or you can shave your head and get tattoos, rip the sleeves off your shirt and buy a Harley. But none of that is real strength.”

Freddie stops climbing his machine and falls like a puddle to the floor. “What’s real strength, Samson?” he says.

“It’s when you’re a balanced man. When you can think as well as you can use your body. And you have to know who you are and be okay with it. If that means that you’re not ripped or tough or a badass, then so be it,” says Samson.

“But the most important part,” he says, “is that you have to believe in something that is real and true. A lot of guys don’t believe in anything. They will tell you what they are against, what they don’t like, but they can’t tell you what they are for. Because they don’t actually believe in anything.”

I say, “What do
you
believe in?”

It’s too personal a question, but I really want to know. I’ve been waiting a long time to have this conversation.

“I believe in people,” he says. “Good people like my family and my friends.” After a moment he adds, “And I believe in you, James. Because you trusted me to teach you something, and today your skinny ass lifted a lot of plates. And that impresses the hell out of me. Now let’s go eat.”

At breakfast I am still glowing from Samson’s compliment. “I believe in you, James,” he had said. My arms, shoulders, and chest burn with the memory of what I did in the weight room. One hundred and eighty-five pounds! Maybe I’ll call Louis and tell him, even if he’s an asshole and might not care. But from now on, that’s his business—whether or not he cares. I can still brag if I feel like it.

Antwon’s eyes stay fixed on me all day to let me know that he’s not going to forget about his
offer
. One more day left. Freddie says that there’s no plan and Antwon’s just fucking with me, seeing how far he can push until I snap. He whispers that I should kick him in his knee when we’re in the lunch line. He points at his own leg and says, “Get him right here on the side; it’ll buckle. Then you take his fuckin’ head and smash it on the metal counter. You do that, and he won’t mess with you no more. I guarantee it.”

At our table Antwon eats his food and buses his tray. Then he sits quietly, pretending to mind his own business, while secretly eyeballing me every time Horvath dips his
own head to shovel up his macaroni and cheese. When the guard goes up to get a second helping, Antwon says, “You in?”

I shrug.

“Go on and shrug,” he says. “See what happens to your bitch ass.”

There are rumors that Pike is coming in later with a new resident. I wonder who it is and if he will look as scared as I did. But all my curiosity disappears when Pike comes in with a kid who looks a lot like Tony, only a little older and with a hard, mean face instead of Tony’s perpetual wiseass grin. He is carrying a stack of state-issued clothes and a yellow resident handbook. He stares straight ahead, avoiding our eyes.

Even when Pike says to the boy, “Tony, take room number one,” I still don’t want to believe it’s him. How could it be? Tony was smart. He knew how to take care of himself. But the really dark thought is,
If he can’t make it, then what chance is there for the rest of us?

Tony goes into room number one and starts putting away his clothes. Mr. Pike shuts the door to give him some space. It’s an uncharacteristically kind gesture, but he follows it up with something rude.

“Mr. Honors Stage, my ass.” He says it loudly enough for everyone to hear, especially Levon, who is Tony’s enemy from their old neighborhood. Supposedly they were in rival gangs, although every gang seems to be the rival of every other gang.

Suddenly Levon is happy and full of life. “Permission to ask a question, sir?” he says to Mr. Pike.

“What?” Pike says.

“Can I, like, welcome Tony back to Bravo Unit?”

“Shut up, Levon,” says Pike. “You’ll be back here again, too, so don’t get all high-and-mighty.”

Levon scowls, which is to say that he goes back to being himself.

Tony stays in his room for hours, and it is not until dinnertime, when Mr. E and Samson are supervising us, that he tells Freddie, Wilfred, and me what happened.

“Everything was going good,” he says. “I got a job at El Taino Café and I was getting it from my girl every single night. I swear!”

Everyone smiles in appreciation of easy sex.

“You get busted for weed?” Wilfred asks.

“Man, I hardly smoked at all, and I was careful.”

“That’s good,” says Wilfred.

“So what happened?” Freddie says.

“My girl told me she was pregnant. And she’s religious and shit, so she wanted to, you know, keep it. And I wanted to be a real man and be responsible and shit, so I said, ‘Fuck it, let’s have a baby.’ ”

Usually we aren’t allowed to have real conversations in the cafeteria. Whenever Horvath or Pike or Crupier works, it is strictly eat and run. But Mr. E and Samson tell us that the only way to learn how to have normal conversations that aren’t focused on drugs and gangs is to practice. So Mr. E just breezes by to make sure we’re not plotting a revolt or something, and then he touches Tony on the shoulder and says, “It’s good that you’re telling your story, Tony. There’s no shame in making mistakes, so long as
you’re man enough to learn something from them. Right, guys?”

“Yes,” we all say, dying to hear the end of the story. Any news of the outside world, even bad news, is welcome, and Tony’s story promises to be good.

He continues. “So I was all set to pick up more hours at El Taino, when I start thinking about time and shit.”

“What do you mean?” Wilfred says, looking at the clock for clues.

“Like, how long does it take for a girl to
really
know she’s pregnant?”

“Damn!”

“Damn is right,” Tony says. “Long story short, I found out some dude was taking my place with her while I was locked up.”

“Who was it?”

“Man, it don’t matter who it was. What matters is I took care of his stupid ass.”

“And your girlfriend?”

“She ain’t my girlfriend no more.”

“So what now?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But there’s no way I’m doing another year in this place without no privileges. I can tell you that much. They gonna have to send me somewhere else. I’ll see to that.”

Back at the unit, someone has slipped a note into my school folder. It says, “Times up. Mak yore desishun.”

It takes me a minute to figure out the last word, but I have no doubt who it’s from or what it means.

After lunch Mr. Pike drops an envelope onto my desk. It’s from Mr. Pfeffer:

Time is up on Antwon’s offer. All day throughout class I hear him and his boys whispering, calling me pussy, and punk-ass. I try to ignore it, but I can’t. My chest feels tight and I start to sweat. I’m so sick of taking shit from people like Antwon. I don’t want to take any more shit.

Antwon sees me standing in the dayroom waiting for him. He lopes over. “Yo,” he says. “Time’s up. You in?”

“No,” I say flatly. My eyes narrow. My breathing gets shallow.

“No’s for pussies and faggots. Which one are you?”

I look around at the bloodthirsty faces of Levon, Double X, and Wilfred. They are hungry for violence. They want something exciting to happen, something to take their minds off the day-to-day of school, chores, and getting bossed around by guards who hate them.

“Come on, man, tell us! Which are you?” Coty and Double X join in.

I want to ask them why there aren’t other choices.
Because if all you can be is either a pussy or a faggot, or someone like Antwon, who is strong but empty, then I think we’re all doomed. Wolf Larsen, with all of his strength, ended up being pathetic and alone. And dead. Socrates, too. His fists, his rock breakers, only brought him pain. It wasn’t until he started thinking, and questioning, that he found any peace.