Christopher Paul Curtis by Bucking the Sarge Page A

I could get a little start-up capital was to come back to Flint, get hired in skilled trades at the Buick, work double shifts and any other overtime I could pick up and start saving money. I knew the only way my pocket was ever going to have any real weight was to set up my own business, to make the system work for me and follow the same rules they follow.”
    I knew we were getting near the halfway point of the Sarge's speech.
    “And believe me, young man, they do follow a whole different set of rules. They milk the system for everything it's worth, and I'm trying my best to do the same thing. I'm milking any- and everything that moves. If it's got nipples, I'm going to milk it.”
    What kid wants to hear their mother talking about nipples?
    She started in with the soulfully deep stare. “Look, I know that may seem harsh, but if you want to learn by experience, go ahead. If you want to go work somewhere other than here you keep in mind that a fast-food worker is three times more likely to be injured on the job than a construction worker and four times more likely to be killed on the job than a cop. Sounds like pure sucker path action to me.
    “In the end know that the only thing that's going to earn you the kind of cash, the kind of respect and the kind of life that you can leave to your kids is this business. So when it comes to you working at McDonald's, you tell old Ronald he's going to have to find some other young black child to grind up in his McJob. That's not for you.
    “You're too young to remember, but I promised you, right after your father died, that I wasn't falling for the okeydoke anymore, I promised you and myself that just like every big-time exec out there I was going to take care of me and mine first. That's the way of the world, young man, and the quicker you learn it the better off you'll be.”
    She was wrong. And I was going to prove it to her.

“Hello?”
    “What's up, Luther?”
    “Sparky! Where you been? I was starting to think you'd crawled off somewhere and died.”
    “Naw, man, everything's tight. I just been off by myself thinking.”
    I asked, “You still getting those mystery headaches?”
    “Naw, man, they went away right after the doc took them stitches out. Peep this, even though hanging with you has been the death of my social life it has done one good thing, it's got me thinking philosophically.”
    “Oh yeah? How's that?”
    “Well, you know how you keep saying that everything happens for a reason and that some of the time it seems like life is trying to send a message to you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, I been getting that feeling too, it seems like life or something's trying real hard to get a message through to me.”
    “Yeah, it's probably a lawyer from Taco Bell trying to tell you to stay off their property. But that's not the kind of message I've been talking about.”
    “See? See what I mean? That's one of the main reasons no one can't stand you. I'm being real here, bruh. I really think I need to check out all these signs I been getting.”
    “OK, so who're these signs from and what're they telling you?”
    “On Saturday morning I was waiting for the eight-fifteen bus to go to the fire station and it was right on time!”
    “It probably wasn't, that was probably the seven-thirty bus being forty-five minutes late.”
    “Are you gonna let me finish?”
    “Sorry. Go 'head.”
    “Like I said, the bus was on time and whose face do you think was all over the side of it?”
    “Whose?”
    “My boy, Dontay Gaddy!”
    “So?”
    “Hold on. Then I'm sitting on the bus and got my headphones on listening to 93.7 and who you think the first commercial I hear is from?”
    “Let me guess, Mr. 1-800-SUE-EM-ALL.”
    “You know it, the big D.O.G. hisself. Then to top it off, when I get to the fire station I'm fixing to cut the lawn but Sergeant Forde calls me back in to play one more game of Ping-Pong. So I'm schooling the old man and talking andhe starts telling me about his