Rikers High

by Paul Volponi

  The search team even tore through the GED books in the house. They were looking for razors hidden between the pages and in the bindings.

  “Officer, I need that book,” pleaded a kid who was taking the test soon.

  “Stop crying, little boy,” ripped a CO. “We do this so nothing happens to you. We don’t want anybody getting cut.”

  Those words stung me hard.

  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “Assholes! If you’d checked the kid that cut me coming back from court, I wouldn’t look like this! I’d have one less thing to worry about all my life!”

  And I would have been satisfied to say it, even while they were beating me senseless. But I knew better.

  For all their tearing shit apart, there was still no sign of Murray’s chalk holder. It took them an hour and a half to leave the house a total mess. And it took almost two hours of work to put it all back together after they’d gone.

  When Montenez left, Dawson and Arrigo broke out in big smiles.

  “One banger ’s not so bad,” Arrigo said.

  “That’s a pretty clean house in anybody’s book,” bragged Dawson.

  Then they told us the captain burned the house from commissary that afternoon because of Luis’s banger. But after that, we were clear.

  Now maybe Murray was the only one left who still believed we swiped his stupid chalk holder.

  CHAPTER

  27

  They finally brought us over to the school, and it was almost time for lunch. It should have been the end of Mrs. Daniels’s science class, but Demarco was there instead. He knew why we were late and wanted to hear about the search.

  “Did they find it?” he asked.

  “Nope,” answered one kid.

  “Told you we didn’t have it,” said another one.

  Dudes started to rank on Murray.

  “They should lock his ass up here for lying.”

  “I’d make him wash my drawers and do the Pogo every night.”

  “That four-eyed, crooked-nosed bastard.”

  Demarco wouldn’t let us talk like that in front of him. He asked dudes to stop, and they pulled back. But kids were really letting loose about how school was just a place for them to get into more trouble for shit they didn’t do.

  Then Murray walked in to start his history class. Everybody got quiet, and no one would even look at him. We weren’t about to do his work.

  I heard him starting to write on the board when Demarco shouted, “What?”

  “There it is! He’s got it!” yelled Jersey.

  Murray was using his damn chalk holder. He was writing on the blackboard with it like nothing had ever happened.

  “Where did you find it?” demanded Demarco.

  But before Demarco got an answer, he had to hold kids back from stepping hard to Murray. Four or five dudes were already out of their seats and raging.

  The COs heard the noise and came busting in.

  Kids turned right to them, pointing at Murray and his damn chalk holder, like he was an inmate they were ratting out.

  I thought Arrigo was going to flip on him right there in front of us.

  “Is that the one that got stolen yesterday?” he hollered.

  Murray was trying to get him out of the room to talk, but kids started howling at the top of their lungs. There was so much noise you couldn’t make out a thing. Finally, Arrigo just snapped. He pounded his fist on the desk and screamed, “Everybody sit down and shut up!”

  Dudes ran for their chairs faster than I’d ever seen—not because they were scared, but because they were in the right. The game was finally working on their side.

  Dawson was in the doorway the whole time taking in the scene. He never said a word. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said enough. He was wound up tighter than tight, like his face was going to explode.

  “Give me that!” screeched Arrigo, taking the holder away from Murray.

  Arrigo was so pissed that he ripped the chalk out and slammed it down on the desk. It splintered into pieces that went shooting across the room.

  “Watch the class, Demarco,” demanded Arrigo. “And you,” he said to Murray, “come outside with me.”

  “I can’t,” said Murray, smug. “I’m assigned to teach this—”

  “This is jail! I’m in charge!” hollered Arrigo. “Now get out in that hall!”

  I know the same current that shot through me was buzzing inside of every kid as Murray did the perp walk behind Arrigo.

  Dawson was already on the phone calling Montenez, while Arrigo waited for Murray to catch up to him. Kids in every classroom were pressed up against the windows and looking out into the hall, and had their doors cracked open to hear.

  Arrigo held the chalk holder out to Murray and said, “Well?”

  That’s when that high-heeled Ms. Jackson showed up and wanted to know why Arrigo had her teacher out of class.

  “Corrections business, Ms. Principal,” said Dawson through his teeth. “Maybe you heard, there’s jail going on here.”

  “Look,” said Murray. “I found it at the bottom of my bag yesterday in between some papers and—”

  “Yesterday!” Arrigo cut in. “When yesterday? While you were still here?”

  “I told Ms. Jackson I found it,” answered Murray. “She was going to report it to—”

  “You knew, too?” Arrigo said, turning to her. “And you didn’t come over to the house and tell us?”

  “You saw the search squad out in the yard this morning,” said Dawson. “You knew the house wasn’t coming out for school. What did you think we were looking for?”

  “We’re not correction officers,” snarled the principal.

  “That’s right, you’re not,” said Arrigo. “You may have book smarts, lady, but you don’t have any real brains. And you think we’re all stupid? Now we think the same about the teachers!”

  Murray started back to class, but Arrigo made him stay. “This is metal,” he said, with the holder flat in his palm. “You’re in possession of contraband.”

  “The captain already made it clear. You shouldn’t have this here,” said Dawson.

  Captain Montenez got to the trailer, and Ms. Jackson tried to say something to him first. But he walked past her and Murray like they didn’t exist.

  He turned his radio down and asked the COs, “Where is it?”

  Arrigo handed the chalk holder to Montenez and said, “These two found it yesterday.”

  The captain told Dawson to call for an escort. Then he turned to Murray and said, “Give me your pass!”

  Kids were knocked flat by that. Murray unclipped the plastic card from his shirt and gave it over. Now he was just like us, at the mercy of Corrections. Some dudes whispered that they might even arrest him.

  “She knew, too,” said Arrigo, pointing to Ms. Jackson.

  “She’s the principal. I can’t do anything about her—yet,” said Montenez.

  Then the captain stared down the two of them and just went off.

  “Do you want me to call these kids out into the hall so you can explain to them why they got strip-searched? Or why their house got torn apart this morning? And you had this all along,” he steamed, lifting the chalk holder high into the light. “Do you know how much money you cost the city in overtime? They ought to take it out of your paychecks.”

  Ms. Jackson slipped into the teachers’ room during the middle of it all to hide, but Murray stayed put and took it.

  “How about if you explain it to these kids yourself?” Montenez asked him.

  But Murray just stood there like a dummy and didn’t answer.

  “At least we turned up a banger out of this whole mess,” the captain said to his officers.

  The escort came and Montenez told him to take Murray to the front gate.

  “Make sure he gets off the Island,” he said in a loud voice.

  Murray went into the storeroom with the escort to pack his stuff. Then Arrigo called us out for lunch. We deuced
it up in the hall and could see Murray putting his books into a cardboard box. Dudes wanted to snap on him so bad, but Montenez was wearing a grill to kill.

  “Remember, you’re still inmates here,” the captain said, looking us over.

  We were lined up outside the mess hall when the escort took Murray across the yard. He was carrying the cardboard box with both hands and had a briefcase stuck under his arm. He had to pass right by us to get to the gate, and dudes’ eyes just lit up.

  “Say one thing to him while the captain’s still here and I’ll burn this house forever,” warned Arrigo.

  Murray never even raised his sorry head to look at us as he passed. But we watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

  CHAPTER

  28

  We settled into the mess hall without arguing or fussing with each other one bit. Kids were all riding high over seeing Murray finally get his, and that was something we could be one big family over.

  Jail food never tasted any better to me.

  We had chili over white rice, and the mess hall workers piled bread high on our trays. It was like a celebration, or as close as you could get to one on Rikers Island without everybody beating their cases at the same time.

  As soon as we got back to the house after school, kids were trying to run the sympathy routine on Dawson and Arrigo.

  “Look at how that rat Murray did us dirty.”

  “A strip search, the Turtles—damn, we deserve somethin’.”

  “Yeah, come on, bless us.”

  None of it got us to commissary.

  “Yeah, how’d that banger get here?” asked Dawson. “The Tooth Fairy?”

  If Ms. Armstrong was on duty we might have had a shot. Maybe she would have gotten on the phone and tried to talk to Montenez. Still, dudes had to try and run that routine before Officer Johnson came on. Johnson would have listened for about five seconds before he started smacking kids around for trying to play him.

  Brick was quiet about the whole thing. I guess he knew that some of this was going to get kicked back his way. Why should kids sweat not being able to pay him now? It was his doldier that got them burned. Besides, Luis had kept tabs on how much all the Spanish dudes in the house owed. Brick didn’t even know their names.

  He told Sanchez to straighten it all out for him. Brick said he’d wipe out what Sanchez owed if he represented him with the Spanish kids. But Sanchez had already copped out to his drug charge in court and only figured to be around for a couple more days. As soon as a bed popped open up north, he’d be on the first bus off Rikers Island. Those Spanish kids knew that and wouldn’t fess up to him about who owed what.

  Barnett couldn’t get it done because he didn’t speak their language, and those guys would just pretend that they didn’t understand any English.

  I understood why Sanchez wanted to settle his account so bad before he left.

  “If I’m going stay in the system, I don’t want a reputation like that hanging over my head,” Sanchez had told me. “I don’t need it to pop back up at the wrong time. All it takes is for one dude from the house to follow me up north and spread the word. Then what if somebody claims to know Brick and wants to collect for him? It happens to kids in the houses down here all the time. It could be ten times worse up there with adults pulling the strings.”

  No one needed to feel sorry about Brick getting short-changed. Sanchez said that Brick had his grandmother under heavy pressure. She put money into his account every month, and that kept his store fat and healthy.

  Anyway, he still had plenty of shit to juggle in his bucket. Until next Friday, he was the only store around and his prices just went up. It was three-for-one now. But kids were hungry and needed to smoke.

  Since the house was on the burn, Barnett called it a “fire sale.” Shaky was even going around screaming like a siren as he made deliveries. He’d speed around the house in an invisible fire engine. Then he’d throw on the brakes in front of some kid’s bed and juggle for Brick.

  Brick wouldn’t deal to the Spanish dudes anymore. He couldn’t keep track of them, and they’d already beat him for most of what they owed.

  “You represent me in the time you got left here,” Brick told Sanchez. “You’re my go-between with those guys. They’ll cave soon. And I’ll let you know how much of your tab you’ve worked off by the results.”

  I knew that something in the house had to give. Those Spanish dudes had decent numbers on the north side and the south. Once they saw that Brick was losing his grip and had nothing to offer, there was no reason for them to play his game anymore.

  That night, they just stepped to the phones during prime time and started to dial. They tied up the lines and watched each other’s backs while they were talking.

  Other kids were busy peeping in on the action, but Brick stayed cool.

  “Be the cash register and keep track of it all,” he told Sanchez, who stood there with a pad and pencil.

  Brick tried his best to make it look like he’d charge them later.

  But he was just playing the middle now and hoping the black kids wouldn’t catch on. Then he would really be out of business.

  Long after lights-out, I could hear those Spanish dudes whispering in their language. Sometimes they’d just laugh. And deep down, I was laughing with them.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 13

  CHAPTER

  29

  During rec the next day, most of the house was just lying out on the bleachers. It was hot and the heat was coming up off the concrete. There were just enough players for one basketball game. Ritz was playing on the main court with the good ball for a change. His team had won three games in a row, and he was showing off all his skills. Kids from the bleachers started calling him “Crackerjack.” And every time he scored or passed the ball to somebody cutting wide-open to the hoop, they’d scream out his new tag.

  Some dudes started saying that Ritz was even better than big Barnett. Then Brick got to the yard and started ranking on kids for thinking like that.

  “No white boy runs anything out here,” he laughed. “This is the hood, not some Wall Street.”

  But kids were willing to back Ritz against Brick’s doldier.

  “I’ll lay two-to-one on my boy for all you fools,” spouted Brick.

  They got Barnett out of the dayroom and even stopped a game right in the middle just to get those two on the court alone. It was “Crackerjack” against “Chocolate Thunder.” Everybody made their bets, and the kids who’d backed Ritz promised him a piece of the action if he won.

  Only Ritz didn’t need the idea of winning money to get hyped. Just proving he was somebody in that house would keep him going hard.

  “This is gonna be for every insult I ever took in this place,” he said, focused.

  Barnett wanted to warm up and missed a couple of shots from the outside. Then he pounded the rock on the floor, making a few layups.

  “Bring it on, white boy,” Barnett growled.

  The game was Straight Eleven.

  Ritz dribbled between his legs and blew by Barnett with his right hand to score first. Then he faked right and spun left for another easy basket.

  Before long it was 5-0, and Barnett hadn’t even touched the rock yet.

  The next time Ritz went to the hoop, Barnett leveled him. He laid him out flat with a shoulder, then picked up the ball and scored.

  Ritz was sitting on his ass, listening to dudes roar.

  “Told you he’d bounce more than the ball!”

  “Get up, Crackerjack. I got a week’s worth of cookies riding on you!”

  Ritz had no beef about getting bounced.

  The rules for jailhouse ball are simple: no blood, no foul.

  The big man couldn’t hit a shot, and Ritz kept making him pick up his dribble twenty feet from the basket. But Barnett was pounding him senseless. So Ritz had to throw up thirty-footers just to get a clean shot off.

  After almost twenty minutes, the score was still only 7-1.

&
nbsp; Sprung #2 was lined up at the door to their house waiting for the yard. But all the rec officers were busy watching the game. They held Sprung #2 up as long as they could, then they finally blew the whistle and took the ball.

  Everyone who’d bet on Ritz wanted to collect. Most dudes that backed Barnett paid off. The big man even nodded his head to Ritz on the way off the court. But Brick claimed the game wasn’t official.

  “Your man didn’t get to eleven, did he?” Brick argued. “Game called.”

  Brick was just being ass-stupid. He could have paid everybody and got it all back on the juggle. Now even more kids were just going to hold a grudge against him.

  It was almost four o’clock when a CO screamed, “Forty, visit!”

  I was supposed to be going home in six days, if the system didn’t find a new way to screw me. And that was a worry I’d been carrying around inside of me like a two-ton weight. When it started getting late, I thought Mom might skip this visit, trying not to jinx anything in court. But there she was for me.

  The escort had already picked up kids from Sprung #1 and #2. Most of them walked across the yard like they were somebody. Some were fronting. Others were serious about their reps. I walked out of Sprung #3 and the only thing those kids saw was the cut on my face. I was either a killer or a herb to them, nothing more.

  We hit the main building, stopping at the mods along the way for more inmates.

  I started to run it over in my brain, what I’d do if we ever picked up the kid who’d cut me—if that spiderweb on his neck was within my reach. I wouldn’t say a thing. I’d just rush him. I’d put two hands around his throat and ram his head against the gate before the COs could stop me.

  We hit almost every mod in the building, and I just got deeper into that scene at every door. I’d watch each dude’s face as he stepped into the hall, with my eyes running down to his neck.

  My heart was beating hard.

  I was ready to be an animal and put it all straight.

  But there was no one to aim it at.

  We got to the visit floor and I was raging inside. I was staring up at the ceiling trying to slow down and breathe normal again.