Walter Myers - Lockdown

"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. 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.