Free Kick by Walter Dean Myers Page B

line,” Buddy said. “Let’s see what he’s made of.”
    I knew Buddy was trying to give me a chance to calm down, so I motioned for Kevin to get on the line of men and women trying out for the next rookie class.
    â€œAnd after every station, come back over here and talk to me!” I said.
    Kevin looked a little confused, but he joined the first line.
    The police department physical consisted of four timed tests. The first one consisted of push-ups. Each candidate was given two minutes to do as many push-ups as possible. The minimum standard was eighteen.
    â€œHe looks like a nice kid,” Buddy said as we watched the guys doing push-ups.
    â€œNice, but clueless,” I said. “The only reason I’m around him is that his father fell on duty.”
    â€œNot state?”
    â€œHighland.”
    I watched when it was Kevin’s turn. He got into position, and when the signal was given I could see him pumping furiously. He did twenty-seven push-ups, his face turning a bright red from the exertion. He was breathing hard when he came over to where I was sitting on a fold-up chair near the wall.
    â€œTalk!” I said.
    â€œI want to be useful,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Really, I do. About six months after my dad died, some people came over to the house. One of them was my cousin Jorge. I think he was my cousin; maybe he was just a friend of the family. He said I was the man of the house. He asked me if I had a job. I didn’t. I was thinking about getting a part-time job to help out.”
    â€œGroup B, line up!” a cadre was calling.
    Kevin looked around. “They said I was in Group B,” he said.
    â€œSo what are you doing over here?”
    I watched as he ran over to his group. The task was sit-ups, and I watched as a man in his thirties struggled to reach a sitting position, The cadre timing him looked down at the candidate, holding the clock so that the man could see it. The cutoff was twenty sit-ups, and it was clear the guy wasn’t going to make it. He didn’t, and you could see the disappointment. If you failed one of the cutoffs, you were automatically disqualified for the state police.
    Kevin was young and light and started the sit-ups as he had the push-ups, in a furious spurt. He slowed down at the end but he made the cutoff. He walked back to me.
    â€œNext time, run back to me!” I said. “Talk!”
    â€œThere was a poem by an Irish writer—my dad was Irish—that said that when things went really wrong, the bad people would be active and the good people would sit around and do nothing.” Kevin looked around the barracks, and I could see he was feeling bad. “He used to say to me that all he ever wanted was for me not to be somebody who sat around and did nothing when there was something that needed to be done.”
    â€œEven if you had to do something stupid?” I asked.
    â€œHe mentioned . . . that there were a thousand excuses,” Kevin said. “All you had to do was to put your hand out . . . ”
    â€œYou remember the name of the poem?” I asked.
    â€œâ€˜The Second Coming,’” he said. “By Yeats.”
    Group B was being called again, and Kevin took a deep breath and went back to where the cadre was standing with the stopwatch. There was a group of people gathering along the paneled walls of the gymnasium. They had failed the tests and were already on their way home. The test wasn’t that hard for youngsters, I thought. It was good to weed them out.
    The third test was the mile-and-a-half run. I was pretty sure that Kevin could do it. They took everyone outside and put them into two groups. One group of about fifteen would start first and then the other group would start two minutes later. They had to do the mile and a half in no more than 14.25 minutes.
    I watched the first group take off and then saw Kevin go to the side of the track. It looked for