Fallen Angels Read Online Free PDF

fifteen times to go a mile. As I ran around that day I could hear Mrs. Liebow’s words echo in my ears.
    “You have to get out of yourself, Perry,” she had said. “You’re too young to be just an observer in life.”
    I was fifteen, and painfully aware that I was “just an observer in life.” I didn’t want to get into what was going on at home, about how Mom seemed to be falling apart, and how I couldn’t think about much else than keeping us together.
    Being an observer hadn’t been so bad in Stuyvesant. There was always a way to frame things, to put them into a romantic setting, that made you feel good. Even the loneliness I felt sometimes was okay. I could break the loneliness, the feeling of not belonging to the life that teemed around me, by going to the basketball courts. I was somebody else there: Mr. In-Your-Face, jiving and driving, looping and hooping, staying clean and being mean, the inside rover till the game was over.
    But sometimes even that didn’t work. Sometimes, when I was tired and the competition was really rough, things would change for me. There would be a flow of action around me and it would seem as if I were outside of myself, watching myself play ball, watching myself trying to establish a place for myself on the hard park courts. It was then that I would feel a pressure to give in, to let a rebound go over my head, to take the outside shot when I knew I had to take the ball inside. I told Kenny about the feeling, and he hadn’t understood it. I told Mrs. Liebow, my English teacher, and she said that it was what separated heroes from humans, the not giving in, and I hadn’t understood that. It was a weakness in my game, not about being a hero.
    Peewee said something that pissed Johnson off, and Johnson started to get off his bunk. Peewee pulled his M-16 across his body.
    “Come on,” he said. “I got something for you, Georgia Boy.”
    I wanted to say something to Peewee but thought better of it. It came to me that Peewee could be crazy. I caught Jenkins looking at me and shrugged.
    The squad we were assigned to came in. They were arguing over who won a volleyball game. They saw us, and one guy beckoned for me to get up. He looked around, and then pointed to another bunk. I got up and moved my gear to it, and he laid on the bunk that I had been on.
    “You the cherries?” A tall, thin-faced sergeant.
    “We’re the new men,” Peewee said.
    “What’s your name?” the sergeant asked.
    “My friends call me Peewee. You can call me Mr. Gates.”
    “Uh-huh. Well, my name is Simpson and I’m the sergeant of this here squad. I’m gonna tell you guys something,” the sergeant was black with a high voice that seemed to get higher with every word. “I ain’t got but one hundred and twenty days left over here. If we go to Hawaii, then I ain’t got that. Now I ain’t about to let neither one of you fools kill me, you hear?”
    “We look like Congs to you?” Peewee said.
    “You look like cherries!” the sergeant said. “I’d rather go out and mess with a whole bunch of charlies instead of y’all cherries. That the truth, too!”
    I made believe I was scratching my forehead so my hand would cover my face. The guy was strange. Thinking we were going to kill him when we were fighting a war with the Communists was weird.
    The rest of the squad consisted of one black guy and four white guys. They played cards in the afternoon, and asked us if we had heard anything more about Hawaii. Later we played volleyball against another squad and won. Sergeant Simpson said that our victory was a good sign.
    We checked our gear and watched television in the afternoon. The television was hooked up to a small generator, and we got more noise than picture, but that was okay. We watched a game show that had been taped. I knew most of the answers and impressed everybody.
    It started to rain. A lieutenant, not our platoon leader, came in and spoke to Sergeant Simpson. He nodded and then, when the