Walter Myers - Lockdown

"So I'm going to squelch this report. I'm going to let Maldonado, the other kid, take the whole blame," Mr. Cintron said. "Not for you, because I don't have any faith in little punks like you, but for the next kid who comes along and might deserve it. So you're going to continue in this program, Reese. But if you screw up again, you'd better send your soul right to God, because your black ass will belong to me and I will put a hurting on you. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll find the worst facility in the state to send you to and warn them about you," he said. "And if I do that, you'll be sorry as long as you survive." He pressed a button on the intercom and said, "Mr. Pugh, get him out of here."

Mr. Pugh uncuffed me. When I stood up, I almost fell down, my legs were shaking so bad. Mr. Pugh took me back to my quarters and told me to wash the floor, and I started doing that.

The soapy water was cold and wasn't getting the floor clean, but I was down on my knees scrubbing it the best I could. I was crying but I wasn't making any noise.

The thing was that I didn't know if I was going to mess up again or not. I just didn't know. I didn't want to, but it looked like that's all I did.

"You sweet on Toon?" Mr. Pugh had me in a Ripp belt with my hands handcuffed to it in front of me. At least I was in the passenger seat of the van instead of the back.

"Why I got to be sweet on him because I don't want to see the dude killed?" I asked. "You want to see somebody killed?"

"I seen guys get killed," Mr. Pugh said. "In Iraq I seen our guys get killed and a lot of Raqs running off to meet Allah."

"That was war," I said. "This ain't war."

"Yeah, whatever. He didn't ask you nothing about me?"

"No."

We drove the rest of the way to Evergreen in silence. I knew what Mr. Pugh was thinking. He could have lost his job if Mr. Cintron knew he had split from the room when he saw what was going down. I wasn't going to rat Mr. Pugh out because I knew he could do a lot more to me than I could to him.

We got to Evergreen, and he parked the van and came around to my side.

"You're doing okay," he grumbled at me. "Don't mess it up."

I wasn't really doing okay. Mr. Cintron had been in my corner and now he wasn't. He'd made that clear, but he'd also said he wanted me to make it happen for all the juvies who were going to follow me. I liked that.

Father Santora was in the lobby when we got there, and he came up with this big smile and reached out to shake my hand. I couldn't shake his because Mr. Pugh hadn't uncuffed me.

Once I was uncuffed, Mr. Pugh said he would be by to pick me up at four, and then Father Santora sent for Simi. She came down and he told her to have me working on the rest floor.

Simi was short and brown skinned. It looked like all the help at Evergreen were colored and the residents were all white. She had a little gold tooth on one side of her mouth. It looked a little strange, but she had a nice smile.

"I have a cousin who looks just like you," Simi said as we walked up the steel stairs. "Only he's got good hair."

"That's nice," I said, which sounded stupid even before it got all the way out.

The rooms on the rest floor looked a little like our quarters at Progress. They weren't small but they weren't huge, either. Each room had a bed, a sink, a chest with drawers, and a smaller room, about the size of a closet, with a toilet. They also had at least one window, which was cool. The beds were the kind I had seen in hospitals. If you pressed a button, the head or foot would come up.

Some of the rooms had oxygen tanks in them. We had an oxygen tank at Progress in the nurse's office.

Simi, who looked okay, kind of Spanish and kind of black, gave me a big plastic bag and told me to go to each room and collect any garbage they might have.

"Six rooms. We had patients in seven rooms but Mr. Cloder died," Simi said. "You get used to that. All of these people here are very old. After a while they die and you say amen and you move on. After you collect all the garbage, then you go and you stay with Mr. Hoof. He's not feeling good and he might need some help. Anything he wants you to do, you do it."

"Which one is Mr. Hoof?"

"Can you read?" Simi asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay, so when you go into the rooms, you look at the nametags on the inside of the door. When you see one that says Mr. Hoof, then you know who he is. All right?"

"Yeah."

"And knock before you go in, even if the door is open," Simi said.

My conversation with Mr. Cintron kicked back in and I wanted to impress Simi with all the work I was going to do. I wanted to impress Mr. Hoof, too, but I didn't know who he was yet.

I went to each room, knocked, and when whoever was in the room asked me what I wanted, I said I was supposed to collect the garbage.

"Why isn't Simi doing it?" a man asked me. The name on his door read GONDER.

"I don't know, sir," I answered. "She just told me to do it and she's in charge of me, so…"

"Don't take my newspapers," the man said. "Sometimes I read them over to see if I've missed anything."

"I do that sometimes too," I said.

"Where do you live?" Mr. Gonder turned his head as if his neck was stiff.

"Just past the Bronx," I said.

"Where past the Bronx?" he asked.

"Near the warehouses," I said, not wanting to tell him I was at Progress.

"You should move to Harlem," Mr. Gonder said. "They're fixing it up nice. My uncle lived there years ago when it was a really good neighborhood."

"Oh."

"I don't think you live up there," Mr. Gonder said. "You look like you're from Brooklyn. You from Brooklyn?"

"No, sir."

"I can tell where people come from by the way they talk, too," Mr. Gonder said. "They got a certain way of talking in Brooklyn. I don't like it."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Hoof's room was the last one I went into. I saw his name on the door but it wasn't Hoof, as I thought-it was Hooft.

"Hello, sir, I came to collect any garbage you have," I said.

"Where's the colored girl that was doing it?"

"She's in charge of me," I said. "And she told me to collect the garbage."

He was sitting on a chair near the window. He had a book in his lap and I thought it might be a Bible. I found a newspaper on the floor and asked if I should throw it away.

Mr. Hooft motioned with his hand and I put the paper in the plastic bag. He looked really old and thin. His face was white but he had a lot of dark marks on his cheeks that looked like birthmarks. I thought maybe he had a disease.

I finished picking up the stuff in Mr. Hooft's room and took it out to where Simi was sitting at a desk in the hallway. She asked me if I had any trouble and I told her no. She took me to a closet at the end of the hall, opened it, and told me to tie the top of the bag up tight and then put it in the closet.

"The cleaning staff picks it up at night and puts it out for the waste disposal people," she said. "So what do you think of Mr. Hooft?"

"He's okay, I guess."

"He's nice once you get to know him," she said. "Come on, I'll give the two of you a formal introduction."

I thought that was cool. I also noticed that Simi knocked on the door even though Mr. Hooft saw us coming.

"Hello, Pieter," she said. "I want you to meet Reese. He's here from the Progress Facility and he's going to be working ten days a month for us. We think he's going to do a marvelous job."

"What's the Progress Facility?"

"It's a place for young men who have made a mistake," Simi said. "But I think Reese has learned his lesson and now he's on the right road. Aren't you, Reese?"

"Yes." My heart sank when I saw Mr. Hooft's face. He was looking over at me as if he was scared of me.