The Cruisers Read Free Page B

more civilized? Is it the man who has stolen a human being or the man working in the field who cannot read or write English because the person who stole him has made it impossible for him to do so?
    Is forcing another person into slavery civilized? Perhaps the black people working in the fields should rise up and do the same as has been doneto them—break up families, steal the people, and whip and kill those who protest. Would this show that they have become “civilized” because they have copied their masters?
    The Cruiser
doesn’t think so!

CHAPTER FOUR
Zander and the Bear
    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 refrigeratorthat 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 notsupposed 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’reentitled 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