Please note that this episode contains depictions of violence that some people may find disturbing.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas with my last Radio Readers BookByte on Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down.
We are still on the elevator with Will and the ghosts of Buck and Dani. On the next floor a third gun victim enters the elevator. It is Will’s Uncle Mark. Mark encourages Will’s revenge, laying it out for him like the plot in a movie. But when it comes time to shoot in this imaginary revenge, Will cannot say the words. So Buck says, “Shoot.”
The next one to enter is none other than Will’s dad, Pops. At first the encounter is sweet, but it turns bitter soon when Pops holds the gun to his son’s temple.
“I freaked out,” are the first words of the next stanza.
I freaked out.
What you doin’?
I shrilled
in shock.
What the hell you doin’?
Eye-to-eye,
a tear streaming
down his face.
Just one,
so it ani’t
really count.
Chest aching
like a weight
crushing me,
bisquit tight
against my temple.
He cocked it.
Sounded like
a door closing.
And the elevator is still not in the lobby. First an unknown ghost named Frick makes it clear that Pops shot Frick in revenge, but he got the wrong guy. That’s the thing about deadly revenge, you can’t take it back.
Last Shawn, the latest gunshot victim steps in.
But no matter what Will does, his brother will not acknowledge him. When Will is trying his hardest not to cry, the unthinkable happens. Shawn cries. He breaks the cardinal rule.
With the sound of Shawn’s despair, or the moaning of the elevator, Will arrives down in the lobby.
Is Will down? Has he decided to go down the same way his brother and the other five ghosts did? Will he seek revenge and inevitably be shot to death by a neighbor seeking revenge?
Finally, Shawn speaks to him as he leaves the elevator and disappears in front of Will’s eyes. Shawn asks: You coming?
Jason Reynolds leaves the ending open. I find this appropriate.
In this story, told in poems as in life we can imagine an ending. An ending with no more gun violence in our neighborhoods, schools, or malls. We could even imagine an end to poverty.
I believe that what we can imagine we can do.
Wishing you a vivid imagination, I am Miriam Scott for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
