Lockdown (7 page)

Our cook, Griffin, gave us broiled franks, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, peas, juice, ice cream, cookies, and fruit for lunch. Broiled franks are like a hundred percent better than boiled franks. It was like we were at a ballpark or something and having real life instead of prison life.

“Griffin must have hit the lottery or something!” Diego said.

“Maybe they’re going to execute us this afternoon and this is our last meal,” Leon said.

I wished I had said that.

Play said when he got out he was never going to have franks again.

“Every time I look at a frank it reminds me of my
life,” he said. “Ain’t nothing to it.”

I knew how he felt and I told myself that I wasn’t going to have franks again either.

In the afternoon the maintenance crew was cutting down some trees and we tried to have a class but it didn’t work. With the windows open it was too noisy, and with the windows closed everybody was falling asleep. Mr. Wilson wanted to know if we wanted to play ball or just hang out in the dayroom until supper. I didn’t want to do either, but I ended up in the dayroom watching television.

I was checking out what was on the tube, but my mind was back in the group thing we had had. People were talking about what they were scared of and I knew that it wasn’t for real. You didn’t just come out and start laying out your program to people like that. You had to say something cool, which everybody did. Except for Toon. Toon was afraid that his parents weren’t going to like him. I remember them yelling at him on visiting day, and when I played it back in my head I remembered they were looking around to see who was checking them out. They wanted everybody to know that they were better than Toon. I wondered if my moms thought she was better than me.

I was most afraid that my whole life was going to be about being in places like Progress. I had heard about people going to jail, getting out for a minute, then just going back. One teacher told us that for some people, being in jail was better than being free because you got “three hots and a cot.” That was bull, but I could see how easy it would be to mess up again. Willis was on the street. I knew he could get caught doing something any day. On the street, you did anything to get over. If you had something going on, maybe some college or if your family had a lot of money, then maybe you could follow a good path. But if you didn’t have nothing going on, then it was going to be hard just to squeeze yourself from one day into the next.

Mr. Pugh said that most guys ended up coming back. I didn’t like his ass, but I thought he was probably right. My bid wasn’t too heavy, but I knew how easy it was to get a ton of time if I blew it again.

Play came over and sat near me. He was looking across the room and shaking his head like he does sometimes when he’s mad.

“Yo, Reese, Diego and Sanders are getting their heads together,” Play said. “I think they planning
on starting something.”

I scoped out King Kong and Diego talking. Diego lifted his head, like he could feel my eyes on him or something, and stared at me. I gave him the finger and looked away.

“If they start something, I got your back, man,” Play said.

Play talked hard, but I had never seen him do anything. I thought he was in my corner, but that didn’t mean anything unless he was going to stand up when the bell rang.

Mr. Wilson came over and sat near us.

Me and Play bumped fists and went back to watching some girl on television saying that her ex-boyfriend was her baby’s father.

“Now why would she get on television and lay out her business like that?” Mr. Wilson asked. “I think that’s stupid and demeaning.”

“And
what
?” I asked. “It’s stupid and
what
?”

“Demeaning,” Mr. Wilson said. “That means it makes you look bad. Don’t you think she looks bad talking about how she’s going with one guy now but she went with this guy a year ago and he’s the baby’s father?”

“Yeah,” Play said.

“But the guy running around the stage like he did something to be proud of,” I said. “He’s smiling and going on.”

The guy was saying the baby couldn’t be his because he had a big head and the baby had a little head and his nose wasn’t right. The whole thing was sick, but it came to me that it wasn’t real, either. It was like they were putting on a play and everybody was supposed to be entertained.

Play laughed at the guy and the girl, and Mr. Wilson laid out his serious lines as usual. I was just thinking that I had to sit and watch this crap because I didn’t have anything else to do in Progress but watch the time go by. My life wasn’t any more real than those clowns on television.

My lights were still going out at eight thirty, and I was lying on my bed when Diego came to my door.

“You hear the news?” he asked. “Deepak is going to fight Sanders this weekend. It’s all arranged. That little Indian is going to be killed.”

They were setting me up. Diego knew I had defended Toon before when Cobo got on him. Now he was fixing it up between me and King Kong.

I told myself I didn’t care. If Toon couldn’t handle his business, that was on him.

I thought about telling Play to see what he would do, but in my heart I knew Play had to be pushed too hard to make a move. I couldn’t get to her, but Kat was the person I really needed.

Really, Toon needed Kat.

When I got to Evergreen Mr. Hooft was sitting in his room. A mask covered his nose and mouth. He looked at me and didn’t say nothing and I didn’t say nothing. Something had happened and I guessed he needed help breathing. The mask was attached by a tube to a little machine sitting on the table next to his bed. The machine made a low hissing noise that was louder when Mr. Hooft was breathing. Sounded like Darth Vader.

I sat in the corner and didn’t stare at him or anything.

There were some magazines on the end of his bed and I wished I had one, but I didn’t want to just ignore Mr. Hooft or act like I didn’t care what
was happening to him. I also had a letter that Mr. Cintron gave me in the morning just before I left for Evergreen. The letter was from K-Man. I had had time to read it before I left, but then I got worried that K-Man was going to say he wasn’t my friend anymore and just put the letter in my pocket.

After twenty minutes or so Nancy Opara came into the room and took the mask off Mr. Hooft and asked him how he was feeling.

“I don’t like that thing!” he said.

“The doctor said you had to wear it to assist with your breathing,” Nancy said. “You don’t want to put a strain on your heart, do you?”

“That machine puts a strain on my brain!” Mr. Hooft answered.

I liked that.

Nancy took Mr. Hooft’s temperature and blood pressure and wrote them down on his chart. Before she left, she told me that I looked like I was Hausa.

“Do you know the Hausa people in Africa?” she asked.

“Tell her you’re an American!” Mr. Hooft said.

Me and Nancy laughed, and she left.

“So, Mr. Big-Time Criminal, who did you shoot
today?” Mr. Hooft asked me.

“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.

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.

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.