Read Online Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers - Free Book Online Page B

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 likequicksand 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 lostthirty-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 mightseem 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