“He wants to fight you in jail?”
“Yeah.”
“That happened to me once,” he said. “You want to hear how it happened?”
“It ain’t the same because you weren’t in jail,” I said. “I’m in jail, and whatever you do against the rules gets you into trouble. It don’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. You fight, you’re in trouble.”
“You don’t know nothing!” Mr. Hooft said. “When I was a boy, nine years old, my family lived in Java. You don’t know where that is because your people don’t know anything, but it’s in Asia. Maybe two thousand miles from Japan—”
“How you know my people don’t know anything?” I asked.
“Why are you interrupting me?” Mr. Hooft asked.
“Why you can’t speak to me like I’m a man, same as you are?” I asked. “I’m not putting your people down.”
“The nurse said I don’t have to take nothing from you!” He was turning red. “One word from me and you are out of here!”
“Yeah, that’s all good, but you don’t need to be insulting me.”
“I can’t bother with you,” Mr. Hooft said. “I have to change my bandage.”
He had a bandage on the outside of his right leg up near his hip. He gave me a mean look and got up on the bed, took the tray of bandages from the white cabinet next to his bed, and lay on one side with his back toward me.
I sat down and watched him pull the old bandage off. It might have hurt him, but he didn’t say nothing. Then he just lay there for a while, breathing heavy.
His butt was hanging out but he really didn’t have a butt, just a crack with a little flesh on it. Seeing his naked skin, I didn’t think he even looked real. More like a bad drawing or something. I had never seen many butts and I didn’t like seeing his.
What I thought I should do was just walk out of the room and come back when he was finished. Instead of that I watched as he tore open an envelope and took out a piece of gauze and tried to put it on his leg.
“You want me to do that?” I asked.
“You’re a nurse now?”
“I can move around better than you can,” I answered.
“Just put the gauze on and cover it with a piece of tape,” he said.
He had a hole in his leg. I didn’t want to look at it.
“I got to go talk to Simi,” I said.
“What do you have to say to her?” he was asking as I left the room.
I found Simi and told her what I had seen. “He got a hole in his leg about this big.” I made a circle with my fingers around the size of a quarter.
CHAPTER 13
Simi led me back to Mr. Hooft’s room. He had covered himself up with the sheet and she threw it off and looked at the hole. Then she went out of the room.
I looked at Mr. Hooft and he wasn’t moving. I knew he wasn’t dead, but he was lying still. When Simi came back, she had a small tube of something.
“This is not going to hurt, Mr. Hoof,” she said, still leaving off the t from his name. “It’s just an antibiotic. I’m going to get Reese to change this bandage whenever he comes. I’ll change it the other days.”
She looked over at me and nodded for me to come watch.
What she did was to put some antibiotic on the hole, then take out a piece of gauze, roll it carefully, and place it right over the hole. Then she pulled the hole together a little and taped it shut.
When she left, I sat back down again in the corner. I didn’t like seeing nobody messed around like that. Even though I wasn’t liking him, I didn’t want to see the hole in his leg.
“You want to hear what I was telling you that happened to me?” he asked.
“Go on,” I said.
“My family lived in Java. My country owned all of those little islands before the war. My father was a schoolteacher. Very tall. We’re a tall people. My mother was a seamstress at home, but when she married, she settled down to being a housewife.
“My father was offered the position of headmaster in a rural school outside of Surakarta. He planned to work there for two years as headmaster, and then return to Europe to teach. But then the war broke out. First it was the Germans and then the Japanese. Nobody thought it was going to last because nobody took the Japanese seriously. In December 1941, they attacked your country. Then in 1942, they overran Dutch Indonesia.
“We heard rumors and more rumors and I was afraid, but Mama kept telling me that everything would be all right. Then one day some Japanese soldiers showed up in our garden. There they were, sitting in our garden with their long rifles, and we were having breakfast inside. They came and took Papa away and searched the house. We had nothing in the house except books and papers. Then they left. Three days later they came again and took Mama and my sister and me to a camp. We stayed in that camp for months, and it was terrible. There wasn’t enough food and we were all living one on top of the other one.”
Mr. Hooft was turning in his bed and winced when he got around on his bad leg.
“You want me to call Simi again?” I asked.
He shifted onto his back and waved his hand in the air.
“But then one day they came and got all the boys and took us to a different camp. There were people crying and screaming and women fighting to hang on to their boys. You know why? You don’t know why. Because there was talk of some of the men being killed. They said that the Japanese soldiers shot some of the men, and some they made them kneel on the ground and then cut their heads off.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
“Why?” Mr. Hooft asked. “Why don’t you believe it?”
“I never heard of it before,” I said.
“Do you know about the Dutch East Indies?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you know about Martin Luther?”
“Yeah, Martin Luther King,” I said. “He made that ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”
“No,” Mr. Hooft said. “Your black Martin Luther King was named after Martin Luther—a German—who lived many years ago and who was also a religious leader. You don’t know anything. That’s why you’re in jail.”
“Fuck you.”
“So when they rounded up the boys and took us to another camp, we were all terrified. The Japanese soldiers were very scary because they had dark skins—not as dark as you—and they were short. They were no bigger than we were, and we were only boys.
“But they swaggered around and they had guns. And anything you did they would punish you. Sometimes the punishment would only be a slap. Sometimes they would tie you to a fence and beat you with whips. Sometimes they would take boys away and we wouldn’t see them again.”
“They cut their heads off?”
“I don’t think so. There were even stories that some of the youngest boys were taken to Japan,” Mr. Hooft said. “But I know we never saw them again. Anyway, there was one boy in the camp I was taken to who seemed to hate everyone, but especially me. It was as if he had the soul of the devil.
“I was thin and not used to having to defend myself. When he found me—that’s the way I thought it was, him finding me—it was as if he had found an answer to all of his problems. He would torment me day and night. We were given a ration of boiled barley every morning, and he would come and take mine. The other boys would see him coming and eat as quickly as possible, but I would be so petrified I would just sit and tremble.”
“He punked you out,” I said. “You were too scared to deal.”
“I don’t know exactly what you are saying,” Mr. Hooft said. “What I know is that I was afraid of the Japanese. If we had a fight, I knew the Japanese would take us away and punish us. They would beat us up and maybe even kill us, and he knew it too.”
“He knew that?”
“Of course he knew it,” Mr. Hooft said. “He saw what the rest of us saw. But for some reason he lived on the very edge all the time.”
“So what happened?”
“So after a while, maybe ten month
s to a year after the Japanese took over the island, and all the boys and some of the older men were in this one camp, we settled into a routine. Every morning we would have to go up the road—maybe two miles to where the men were working—and we would sit outside the gates until the guards led the men away on work details. Then we would have to go into the camp and find the dead bodies and load them onto trucks.”
“The dead bodies?”
“Men died from being weak, from disease, from whatever,” Mr. Hooft said. “At the time I didn’t know what dying was about. But I didn’t want to touch the bodies. When someone died, they tied them in cloth and put them in baskets. Then we had to lift the baskets onto the trucks. If you got the legs it wasn’t too bad, because the legs weren’t too heavy. The legs went up first, and then the boy carrying that end would run around and help push the basket onto the truck. But it was from the other end that the liquids came out. That was terrible, because it stunk and it would get on you and you would smell terrible all day. That’s what dying meant to me, the smell. This boy, he wouldn’t push the basket with the others, and then maybe the whole basket would fall on you.
“One day he and I were pushing a basket onto a truck and he moved away. I struggled as much as I could but then it fell back on me and I was on the ground and trying to catch my breath. He was a boy like me, but when he came over, he looked gigantic. His face was wide and big and he was kicking me like he had so much hate for me. His hate scared me more than the pain from his foot. I was lying on the ground. Did I fight back? I don’t know. I knew it was hopeless, that we were fighting against different demons. Two guards came up and started kicking me and they knocked him down. He was bleeding and he wouldn’t get up, and they kept beating him and beating him. Later that day me and another boy had to carry him in a basket for the next morning’s crew.”
“That really happened?” I asked.
“It happened,” Mr. Hooft said. When he said it his voice changed, got very high and very soft, almost like a kid’s voice. I wanted to look at his face, but he was half turned away and I could only see the thin outline of his cheek and his right eye. “It happened.”
When Mr. Pugh came and got me, he asked me how I liked my vacation. I thought about telling him what Mr. Hooft had told me, but I didn’t think he would have understood it.
CHAPTER 14
The stuff that Mr. Hooft said was scary. For some reason I just didn’t want to deal with it, but it stayed on my mind. Maybe Mr. Hooft thought I was like that guy fighting him, or maybe even one of the soldiers. I didn’t know.
On the way back to Progress I remembered Mom saying I should write to Willis. I didn’t want to but I knew she would keep bugging me. Me and Willis weren’t all that tight, but he was still blood and would get my back if I needed him. He would get Icy’s back too. But he was steady going to thug school and making noises like he was too fast for the streets to catch up with him. One time when my pops wasn’t being too stupid, he said the streets were like quicksand covered with whipped cream. You knew when they were slowing your ass down, but it always came as a surprise when you got sucked under.
In the rec room they had some paper that had PROGRESS printed on it so that it looked like a private school or something. I copped a few sheets and wrote to Willis.
Dear Willis,
Mama came up to the jail with Icy. I don’t know how Mama is doing but I was glad to see them. She asked me to write you a letter and say you should join the army. What she said was that being in the army would keep you off the streets and turn you away from getting into trouble. I was going to write f’d up but you can’t put anything like that in a letter from here.
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
CHAPTER 15
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.
Walter Dean Myers Page 6
