The Cruisers (2 page)

W
e were supposed to be planning our negotiations between the Union and the Confederacy but ended up talking about what Alvin had written.

“We have to make a move on that dude. He’s talking about freedom of speech and stuff but what he’s really dealing with is race,” Kambui said as we sat in the lunchroom. “He’s putting out his little piece in
The Palette
and then cracking up on it. I think he needs a serious beat down.”

“Who we beating up?” Cody Weinstein came to the table and threw a leg over the back of a chair.

“Alvin,” Kambui said. “You see what he wrote in the school paper?”

“Yeah, I saw it. Why don’t you just go to Mrs. Maxwell
and say you object to the piece,” Cody said. “She’s got to go for it.”

“Culpepper is on Alvin’s side,” Kambui said. He had his toothpick working big-time. “I told him about the article and he said it was about freedom of speech. I don’t think we should let him get away with it. What you thinking, Zander?”

“Let’s have a meeting with Alvin,” I said. “If this is supposed to be about the Civil War, then we need to deal with the issues. Race was part of that whole thing.”

“That’s what Alvin’s saying, man.” Kambui was getting mad. “But you should have seen how the guys on the soccer team were reading the piece in the lunchroom and cracking up.”

“How did people deal with that stuff before the Civil War?” LaShonda asked.

“The South said they had a constitutional right to have slaves,” Bobbi said. “And they did.”

“You can’t have a constitutional right to own somebody!” LaShonda said.

“The Confederate states thought they had it and that it was guaranteed by the Constitution,” Cody said. “That’s
why they went to war. Did you ever read their Declarations of Causes of Secession that Mr. Siegfried assigned?”

No, I hadn’t. I didn’t really know anything about the Civil War except for what I had seen in the movies or on television. What I was thinking was that I didn’t want to deal with Alvin. I wanted to deal with the Civil War, do a good job on that, and move on. As far as I was concerned, Mr. Culpepper had to be on our side.

To see Mr. Culpepper you had to write him a note asking him to meet with you and telling him what you wanted to talk about. In the note, I wrote that I needed to set up an official meeting between the Cruisers and Alvin McCraney as soon as possible.

I didn’t really know Alvin. He played goalie on the soccer team and was supposed to be hard. He had been in one of my Language Arts classes in the seventh grade and he was pretty smart. But all the students at Da Vinci had the smart thing going on, so it wasn’t a big deal.

School seemed to drag all afternoon and a lot of the kids were rapping about what Alvin had written. Ashley had things stirred up again.

I knew I had to write something for
The Cruiser.
I had Media Studies so I could hang out in the library, and I
tried working on a piece. At first everything I was writing sounded too mad, but when I started making it look less mad it was sounding lame.

“Hey, Zander, what’s happening?” Sidney Aronofsky asked.

“Nothing much,” I said, putting my piece aside. “How you doing?”

“Okay, okay,” Sidney said. “Look, I just want you to know that I didn’t like that piece in
The Palette.
I don’t think whoever wrote it was right, and I don’t think that I should have to be held up as a racist because I’m white or because my folks are from the South.”

“Who said that you were a racist?”

“Nobody said it,” Sidney said. “But when something like that comes out it makes you either try to ignore it or you slide to one side or the other. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, sort of,” I said.

Sidney was at Da Vinci because of his general grades and the fact that he had played chess in the nationals. He was Mr. Culpepper’s ideal student. His grades were good and at least once a year he was featured in some newspaper because of his chess. He was also one of the four best under-sixteen players in New York.

Okay, the picture was getting clearer. I hadn’t thought much about it when LaShonda first mentioned it but I did see some of the other white soccer players clowning around in the hallway and I figured they were getting off on what Alvin had written. They were laughing and joking around in the hallway and whenever a black or Latino kid came by they would put their heads down like they were hiding something. The white kids, like Sidney, were taking it seriously, too.

At two-thirty, the last announcements of the day came over the loudspeaker. Usually, the announcements were just about what team was practicing, or sometimes a teacher would remind us what paper was due the next day. The announcement that came over the loudspeaker after I had given Mr. Culpepper the note surprised me. A girl announced that the Cruisers and the Sons of the Confederacy were to meet in Mr. Culpepper’s office at eight-thirty in the morning.

Bobbi met me in the hallway near the front door.

“Who are the Sons of the Confederacy?” she asked.

“It’s got to be something Alvin dreamed up,” I said. “But I guess if we can be the Cruisers they can be the Sons of the Confederacy.”

“You getting nervous?” she asked.

“No,” I lied.

“I am, too,” she said, smiling her squinchy-eyed smile. “But it’s good we’re getting our first meeting so soon, right?”

“Right.”

K
ambui had seen a lens he wanted for his camera in a junk shop and I walked him there. All the way he was talking about Alvin, and I could see that it was bothering him a lot.

“In a way, when somebody says they don’t like you,” he said, “you don’t really have a good comeback.”

“Then we have to come up with one,” I said.

We reached the shop and the guy still wanted more for the lens than Kambui wanted to pay. I got the feeling that the guy was making fun of Kambui because he was so young. Adults dance down that street sometimes.

Kambui was mad at the guy in the shop, at Alvin, and I think he was getting mad with me by the time we split up.

When I got home there was a note on the refrigerator
that I should make my own supper and that there were leftovers in the fridge if I wanted them. I found five small bowls of leftover veggies, some Chinese food in a paper carton, a piece of fried chicken wrapped in aluminum foil, and two little round cups of some kind of sauce. Not bad. I put the Chinese food and the fried chicken on a plate and zapped it in the microwave.

I had to read the beginning of
A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansberry for Language Arts the next day so I got out my iPod, put on the television, and was just starting it when the phone rang. It was Kambui.

“So you know you got to be strong tomorrow when we face Alvin and his crew,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means he got some of the other guys on the soccer team to join up with him,” Kambui said. “That’s what that Sons of the Confederacy thing is about. He’s showing he got some muscle with his hustle.”

“No problem,” I said. “Just because you’re strong don’t mean you’re not wrong. And Alvin is about as wrong as he can get.”

“Okay, but remember what my grandfather used to say,” Kambui said. “You meet a bear in the woods and he’s not
supposed to be there, it still won’t make any difference on the menu. You’re going to be lunch.”

I was beginning to feel a little like somebody’s lunch.

The thing was that I had never thought a lot about being African American. I mean, there I was, black from locks to ’Boks, from dreads to Keds, but I just didn’t think much on it and now it was all up in my face. I definitely needed to get my head together.

Ten. Ten soccer players, and all wearing gray hats, the kind you buy in novelty shops that have a little Confederate flag on the side. They were sitting under the American flag in Mr. Culpepper’s office when the Cruisers and I came in. Alvin looked me up and down like I was short or something and I thought about what Kambui had said about the bear. I felt a little nervous, but I knew I was correct.

“So what did you gentlemen want to see us about?” Alvin spoke with this drawl that kind of cracked me up.

“About what you wrote in
The Palette
,” I said. “I think that was wrong and I think you knew it was wrong.”

“Well, we’re edging toward secession,” Alvin went on. “You people have your ideas and we have ours. You’re
entitled to spread yours as you see fit. We intend to do the same.”

“Talking about civilizing Negroes?” Bobbi spoke up. “That’s your idea?”

“You think they can’t be civilized?” Billy Stroud asked.

Billy Stroud was short, as wide as he was tall, and a bully who was always fighting some kid either smaller than him or who just wasn’t into the physical thing. I looked at him and he was grinning like all the other ballplayers.

“I see you don’t have any black ballplayers in your Sons of the Shredded Wheatacy or whatever you call yourselves,” LaShonda said.

“You can’t pronounce your words well enough to say ‘Confederacy’?” Alvin asked.

“Maybe what you need is a beat down,” Kambui said. “Maybe if you got a beat down you could understand LaShonda better.”

“Whoa!” Mr. Culpepper stood and raised both hands in the air. “This is supposed to be a meeting of two groups interested in preventing war. Not two groups threatening each other. Mr. Scott, I thought you people were supposed to be peacekeepers.”

“We’re trying to be peaceful,” I said. “That’s why we called the meeting.”

“But if you don’t want peace,” Billy spoke up again, “we can go anyway you want to take it.”

“Yo, Billy, shut up!” Kambui said.

“Yo, Kambui, shut me up!” Billy came back.

“The meeting is over!” Mr. Culpepper was speaking as loud as I had ever heard him. “Cruisers, leave first.”

I was mad when I left. Not so much mad at Alvin and his Sons of the Confederacy, but mad at myself for not having a better program to deal with him. A problem had come up and I was supposed to be representing and I had just stood there feeling stupid.

“They were just talking big because Zander came off so weak,” Kambui said.

“You did come off weak,” LaShonda said. “They’re putting race all in the game and Cody is saying we should get ready to throw down instead of you. I think you’re scared.”

“No, I’m not scared,” I said. “But what are you going to win if you fight them? If I’m going to have a fight I got to see the win in it so I’ll know what I’m fighting for.”

“How about some r-e-s-p-e-c-t, pretty boy?” LaShonda was mad as she walked away from me. “It’s in the dictionary!”

We met up with Cody in the hall.

Kambui followed LaShonda and Cody headed for the gym for his next class, leaving me and Bobbi standing in the middle of the hallway.

“I’ll probably get killed, but I got your back if we have to fight,” she said.

How America got into the Civil War in the first place was getting clearer and clearer. People were just taking sides and stumbling to the rumbling. Cody, Kambui, LaShonda, and even Bobbi were ready to start fighting and we weren’t even all that clear what the issues were.

Mr. Siegfried had all the past reading assignments in a notebook on his desk and I went to his room to check it out.

“You understand that the reading assignments are actually in books,” Mr. Siegfried said as I copied down some of the ones I had missed. “That’s the thing made out of paper with little numbers at the bottom of each page?”

“Yes, sir.” Me, feeling stupid.

In less than two minutes in Mr. Culpepper’s office the Cruisers had turned from being peacekeepers to not only fighting among ourselves but planning a battle against the soccer team. To begin with, there were ten of them against four of us. The odds didn’t look good.

I went to Language Arts, but I couldn’t concentrate on what Miss LoBretto was saying. First I was thinking of all the things I should have said in Mr. Culpepper’s office, and then I began thinking about fighting Alvin. I knew I was faster than he was, but I didn’t know if I could beat him.

After Language Arts I had a study period and was hoping I didn’t run into any of the other Cruisers until I had thought of a new plan.

“Alexander, are you headed toward the cafeteria?” It was Mrs. Maxwell.

“Sort of,” I said.

“Mr. Culpepper said that things didn’t work out too well at your meeting this morning,” Mrs. Maxwell said as we walked down the hall. “He thinks it’s maybe a bad idea to have groups of students within the school representing the North and the South and against each other. Even if it is a school exercise. What do you think?”

“Could be,” I said.

“You know, of course, that before the Civil War the abolitionists, those people who thought slavery was morally wrong, tried to convince the slaveholders to end the practice,” Mrs. Maxwell spoke softly. “But the slaveholders thought it was to their advantage to keep slavery. The abolitionists didn’t give up just because it was difficult, though. I rather admire them for that. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, yes, ma’am.”

“And the black people being held in bondage didn’t give up,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “They escaped when they could and resisted when they could. Didn’t they?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So what’s going to be your next move?” our principal asked.

“I’ll think of something,” I said.

“I thought you would,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Having peacekeepers around is a very good idea.”

“Mrs. Maxwell, if we can’t find a way of stopping the Civil War, is it going to look bad for the Cruisers—I mean for me, LaShonda, Kambui, and Bobbi—”

“For those students who aren’t doing as well as they might?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes things are difficult to resolve,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “But those difficulties often supply great opportunities for people to prove themselves. Don’t you think?”

“Or mess up,” I said.

“Or, as you say, mess up,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “But I don’t think you’ll mess up. I think you’ll do rather well.”

Mrs. Maxwell went into the cafeteria and I went on down to the media center. I was surprised when she had told me that Mr. Culpepper had wanted to stop the North and South groups. But it did look like we were headed for a showdown.

I knew if my mother was my age she would have been like LaShonda, ready to fight. My father would have gone into his television thing. He had this real formal voice that he used when he gave the weather.

The temperature is expected to reach the mid fifties tomorrow with a thirty percent chance of precipitation. If the rain holds up past eleven-thirty we will commence the Battle of Gettysburg.

You could listen to him for an hour and not remember one thing he said. His wife always wanted to speak to me
over the phone, to ask me questions about how my ball playing was going or what computer games I liked to play. I didn’t really hate her, but I didn’t want to talk to her or him on the phone.

The thing that got to me was how Alvin and the other soccer players were speaking with accents and making the whole thing seem like some kind of joke. The joking around was something they could kind of hide behind. They were turning up the tension with smiles on their faces.

We had to find a way to change that.