Rikers High by Paul Volponi Page B

“Yes, sir,” without even taking his lips from the carton.
    â€œYes, son ? You called me son ?” raged Johnson.
    Then Johnson ran up to that dude and smacked him across the mouth.
    The dude was stunned. His mouth was hanging open and milk was dripping down his face like his mama had just popped him off her tit.
    â€œSo I’m your son now?” Johnson kept on. “Explain that.”
    â€œI said sir ,” the dude pleaded. “Not son . Sir. ”
    But Johnson didn’t want to hear it.
    Then Captain Montenez stepped in and told the dude that there was no food allowed outside the mess hall. He said if the dude wasn’t drinking a milk in the wrong place, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
    â€œNice work,” Montenez told Johnson as he lit a cigarette. “Now if you can just keep that house clean, I’ll be satisfied.”
    When we got back to the house, everyone was cleaning, not just the house gang. The COs took the antenna off the TV in the dayroom, so you knew they were serious. Kids were either mopping the floor or cleaning the bathroom with scrub brushes.
    â€œI’ll pound the shit out of anyone who doesn’t pull his weight and gets us burned,” warned Brick.
    He had the most to lose, because it would cut into his business big-time.
    I was scrubbing sinks in the bathroom with Ritz.
    There’s work you do in jail that you would never even think about doing at home. Mom and Grandma did work like that every week for my sisters and me. I never once helped them. But there I was, cleaning for Johnson so he could get himself a gold star.
    All of a sudden, I heard jawing, and saw Barnett and Luis shoving Jersey around in the far end of the bathroom. I jumped up and went over before they screwed it up for everybody. I was surprised when Ritz followed behind me.
    Then Brick walked in and we were all crowded together.
    Everyone had a grip on a mop or a brush, except for Brick.
    I could see by their faces that his goons didn’t like the numbers. They were used to better odds and waited for Brick to make a stand.
    â€œSo you’re their leader now? All up in my business!” Brick shouted at me.
    It was just noise and no action. He had every chance to set it off and didn’t. Then Ms. Armstrong marched inside to see what was going on.
    â€œBetter drop those attitudes,” she demanded.
    And we all went back to cleaning.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11

CHAPTER
    23
    O n our way across the yard the next morning, a family of cats followed us to the school trailer. The teachers weren’t there, so we had to wait outside for them. They’d got caught up in an alarm in the main building and there wasn’t any movement through the jail. Miss Archer usually fed the cats in the morning before school, and they were waiting, too.
    Families of cats live underneath the school trailers in the Sprungs, and most kids like having them around. The cats would stretch out in the sun on the hot concrete, like they owned the place. Seeing them made dudes think about their pets back home.
    â€œMy moms had to give my dog away ’cause there was no one to walk him,” some kid said. “That cuts to the heart.”
    Sanchez said that whenever a cat died under the trailer, all the classrooms smelled like dead cat. It happened twice the month before, so the captain gave the order that they had to go and that nobody was allowed to feed them anymore. But that didn’t stop Miss Archer or the mess hall workers from putting out scraps. And I knew the only ones 100 percent happy to see the cats go would be the rats.
    The teachers finally were escorted out to the Sprungs, and kids gave them a little cheer.
    â€œSometimes we’re locked down, too,” said Demarco, heading into the trailer ahead of us.
    We’d lost most of our time with Demarco waiting outside. But he put a word puzzle on the board while he got all his things together.
    â€œI’m not into