Walter Myers - Lockdown

Anyway, I know there is a bonus if you join and I guess either you or Mama would get it. If she tells you that she's going to hold it for you I don't know what to say.

In a way she is right that being in the army would get you off the street. I don't know if you remember Guy from the Bronx. He lost thirty-two pounds to get into the army and then he went and got killed in Iraq. He was a hero and they had a special service for him at Mt. Olive. But after the funeral and everything he was still dead and nobody said anything about him that sounded special to me. He went into the army, he was killed, case closed.

So, in a way what I am saying is where you think you wouldn't mind dying? If you died while you were in the army it would go over big on 116th Street but it wouldn't mean much on 125th because that street is jumping too heavy to care about just another soldier dying.

Mama said she would like to see you join the army because it would keep you safe. How's it going to keep you safe if there's a war on?

I talked to an old white dude who was in one of those wars with a number on it. Maybe they should put numbers on all wars just to see how many they got going and how stupid it looks. If you went all the way back to Bible times it would probably be up to War 302 or something.

The bottom line is that you got to look out for number one, which is you. I know that might seem funny coming from me writing to you from jail. I don't know if I would join the army unless I could learn a trade that would get me a good job when I got out. Maybe I could learn to drive a tank and come back and take over everybody's parking spot in the hood.

If you don't mind dying here in Harlem then that's another deal, because ain't nobody except me and Icy going to make a big thing over it because it's really not that unusual. Some people would put R.I.P. on their windshields or something to show love, but I don't know how much love you can show to somebody dead.

So what I'm saying is that maybe you need to be thinking about getting to some place where people aren't even talking about dying. When I get out of here I got to chill for a few years until I can figure out a way to get paid. I'm not into no quick get overs because I'm tired of being locked up. I was thinking about you and me opening a business. Maybe we could open a grocery store and be like the kind of guys who everybody in the neighborhood looked up to. We could even open up a supermarket and hire some guys from the hood. Icy could go on to college and maybe run for mayor of New York, and you and me could get all the people in Harlem to vote for her. The newspapers would run stories about why people should vote for some black girl from Harlem but then Icy would come out and blow everybody away with her plans to make New York the best city in the world for everybody (not just for white people) and she would be mayor. I bet that would even straighten Moms out.

Anyway, Moms asked me to write to you but I can't say nothing too heavy because I don't really have anything useful in my pocket right now. As you know my situation is definitely not all that tight, either.

Write back if you get a chance. Your brother, Reese Anderson

Saturday. Miss Dodson from ACS-Administration for Children's Services-and Miss Rossetti from Progress announced that instead of our regular Saturday routine we were going to have a basketball game and then a co-ed group session.

Miss Dodson handles kids in the foster system, and I figured that had to be a hard road because they didn't have a home to go back to when they got out.

"Remember they did the same thing before Christmas?" Play asked. "We're supposed to be smiling and stuff when we play."

"Yeah, first they divide us into two teams and run the game," I said, remembering the Christmas program. "They video the game and then the whole group thing is about how basketball is supposed to be about life."

"What they call it again?" Play was eating an apple. "A semaphore or something like that."

"A metaphor," I said. "Remember Miss Dodson asked us to show how basketball was like life, and that kind of girly dude said that the ball was round and life was round, and she asked him what that meant and he said he didn't know but he had noticed all balls were round."

"That guy was a goof," Play said.

"Why you eating the core of that apple?" I asked. "You that hungry?"

"No, I'm too lazy to take it over to the garbage can," Play said.

Miss Rossetti set up the teams with me, Toon, Play, Mr. Pugh, and a skinny kid who was on some serious meds on one side. On the other side they had Mr. Wilson, Diego, Leon, a fat white kid everybody called Lump, and the King Kong dude who was messing with me before.

My team was the shirts, and when King Kong took off his shirt I saw he had a bird tattooed on his chest with some Chinese writing on it.

He said that it was his name in Chinese letters and that his name was Tarik.

"That's why it's got five letters," he said.

"You know I read Chinese," I told King Kong. "And it don't say no Tarik."

"What it say?" He looked at me sideways.

I got real close and squinted at the letters. "It says, 'Please flush after each use.'"

Mr. Pugh and Play cracked up, and Mr. Wilson put his hand over his mouth. Everybody was laughing but King Kong Tarik.

The game started and the only real ballplayers on the court were me, Play, and Mr. Wilson. Everybody else was jive. Mr. Pugh was running around knocking people down and walking whenever he got the ball. Me and Play were scoring; all we had to do was to keep the ball away from Mr. Wilson.

Toon was a trip. If he had the ball and you came near him he'd give it to you. We'd be waving for him to pass but he'd panic and give the ball to anybody near him.

When I got into the low post, King Kong kept coming over to me and leaning his body against mine like he was digging me or something. I put my elbow in his chest a couple of times and told him to back off. He knocked Toon down a couple of times even when Toon didn't have the ball. He wouldn't mess with Play and he tried to goof on Mr. Pugh, but Mr. Pugh was so busy with whatever he thought he was doing he didn't even dig it.

When it went wrong I didn't even notice it right away. All I know was that King Kong gave Toon an elbow to the back of his head and I automatically did what we did in the hood when some big jokey fool started hitting people on the court. I stomped down on the top of his foot near the ankle.

He grabbed at his leg, then he jumped up and came toward me. I thought he was going to chest me up but he didn't. The sucker lit me up! He was throwing a lot of punches but he really wasn't hitting all that hard.

Mr. Pugh grabbed him around the waist and pulled him off me. I put my hand on my mouth and saw my lip or something was bleeding.

"Calm down! Calm down!" Mr. Pugh was yelling. "This is only a freaking basketball game! Calm down!"

I looked over at King Kong, and he was breathing hard and running me up and down with his eyes like he was ready to kill me.

"Are you calm now?" Mr. Pugh had both arms around King Kong and was yelling into his ear.

"Yeah, yeah!" King Kong said.

It wasn't really me, but it was somebody in my skin taking a step forward and hammering that fool in his temple with the side of my fist.

Sucker's arms went up into the air and he flopped down on the ground.

"Everybody here is on report! Everybody here is on report!" Mr. Pugh was screaming.

Okay, so what happened was that Miss Dodson was only there for the day and we were supposed to have group. Mr. Pugh and Mr. Wilson wanted us all back in our cells and locked in, and they were going to figure out if anybody had to go to detention. But Miss Rossetti came up with the idea that this was a perfect opportunity to teach us something in group.