“Not to me, but to the group. You saw what the police did the other night. You know what they’re capable of. If we just get out in the street and urge people to vote, they break down our walls and put us in jail. What do you think they’d do if we formed into guerrilla squads armed to the teeth?”
“That’s what Brawly’s into?”
“I’m not sure,” Strong said with all the honesty of a hungry crocodile. “I know that they’re trying to raise money in order to buy weapons.”
“Maybe they want the money for the school,” I said.
“Don’t talk shit, man.”
“Okay. Okay,” I said. “You the one should know.”
“Why are you looking for Brawly Brown?” he asked.
“For his mother.”
In years past when I did favors for people, I lied all the time. Gave the wrong name, never admitted to what my true purposes were. As a rule, people believed my lies. This was the first time that I told the truth consistently and the result was that no one believed what I said.
“If that’s true,” Strong said, “then you had better get to Brawly and take him back home. Because the only thing he’s headed for is an early grave.”
“At least we agree on somethin’,” I said. “I would love nuthin’ better than to get Brawly into a room with his mother. But, you know, I seen that boy once — he threw me across the room and I don’t think he was even mad.”
“Maybe if I came along with you,” Strong said. “Maybe he’d listen to me.”
“You think so?”
“It’s worth a try. That Brawly’s a hothead. With him out of the picture, I might be able to reason with the rest of them. And with you there representing his mother, he just might turn around.”
From what I had seen, Brawly was more brute strength or blind hope — not so much a driving force. But what did I know? And even if my suspicions were right, that was no reason to disagree with Strong. If he was willing to help, then I was willing to let him.
“I know where he is,” Strong said.
“Where?”
“I could take you to him.”
He paid the tab and then walked me out to his car, which was parked across the street. It was an old Crown Victoria, as beautiful as the day it rolled off the production line. The radical leader was vain about his automobile. For some reason, that made me like him more.
But something was nagging at the back of my mind.
On the way I asked Strong, “Are Xavier and Brawly friendly?”
“I don’t really know.”
“No? I’d think the head of a group like the First Men would know all about what his people were doing and how they got along.”
“I’m not the head of the organization. As a matter of fact, I am not, strictly speaking, a member.”
“No? Then why they treat you like some kind of king?”
“I’m an activist from the Bay Area. I live in Oakland. I have a small following up there.”
“But they said that you started the First Men.”
“That was just an accolade of generosity,” he said. “I was a good friend of a man named Harney, Phillip Harney. He was their spiritual model. His aura spilled over on me.”
We drove down toward Compton. Down past Rosecrans Avenue and Alondra Boulevard not far from John’s tract of homes.
The nagging doubt stayed with me.
When the road turned to gravel I looked up at the temporary street sign, which read A227-F. It made sense to me that Brawly would hide out in some empty house near the construction site where he was employed for so long. He knew the area, the security systems, and the schedules of the workers.
That’s when it came to me. Strong didn’t strike me as the kind of man to pick up the tab for some stranger. Maybe for a pretty girl or for some political big shot, but not for some man he didn’t know and not for a fly in his soup like Brawly.
It wasn’t yet five, so the skies were still dark. We pulled up in front of a house that was almost completed. When Strong turned off the engine my heart was already pumping. I was excited, at the end of my search, but I was also leery.
“Let’s go,” Strong said.
“Go where?”
“In the house.”
“Excuse me for doubting you, Mr. Strong, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I mean, why is the house so dark?”
“It’s dark because they’re not expecting us,” he said in a sensible, matter-of-fact tone.
“They who?” I asked just as reasonably, if a little more strained.
That’s when Strong produced a pistol.
“We have just a couple of questions, Mr. Rawlins.”
I held myself back from attacking the First Man. He was big, like I said. I didn’t even know if I could have taken him if he was unarmed.
“Get out,” he ordered.
I opened my door with him close behind, giving me no chance to slam the door on him or run.
We walked down what would one day be a concrete path to the house’s front door.
“Don’t get all worried, Mr. Rawlins,” Strong said as we walked. “We just want to make sure that you are what you say you are.”
I wanted to believe him, but the fact that there was no light on in the house made me doubt his intentions.
When we were halfway down that path the front door swung inward. I couldn’t see into the house but I did hear a sound: a snick and crack. Then the self-professed race man yelled, “No!”
Six months of battle on the front lines under Omar Bradley and Patton are what saved my life. I hit the ground, rolled over twice, was up on my feet running a zigzag pattern down the length of the neighboring house-to-be. Strong was right behind me, wasting strength by yelling for his life. All this while shots were being fired. Bullets whizzed past my head. Strong’s yell cut off on a sudden high note. I zigged to the right, heading for the cover of a house. I looked over where Strong had been. His body was on the ground and inert. A man was standing over him, shooting point-blank at his head. I took in that image in just a fraction of a second. Then I dove past the side of the house, jumped over a pile of rolled tar paper, and kept running hard. I heard at least two men yelling, and three shots were fired in my direction. But I kept running.
After two blocks I started wheezing. Maybe thirty feet after that I felt a terrible pain in my chest. I veered to the right and fell on the ground next to an unfinished porch. I laid flat in the shadows thrown by a security night-light, my ragged breath sounding like two vinyl records being rubbed together vigorously.
I almost lost consciousness.
After a few minutes a car drove by slowly. There was no flashing red, so I was pretty sure that it wasn’t the cops. It took at least fifteen seconds for them to roll past.
After they were gone, and I had caught my breath, I walked six blocks to the main street. By then it was a little after five and the buses were beginning their routes. The bus I boarded hadn’t gone more than four blocks when six county sheriff cars, sirens wailing and red lights flashing, sped in the opposite direction, toward the place where I’d almost died.
— 20 —
I got my car from Mariah’s parking lot and drove down to Sojourner Truth. After parking in the lower lot, I held my hands in front of my eyes. They weren’t shaking.
Then I made my way to the maintenance bungalow. We called it the main building as a kind of abbreviation and, maybe, as a comment on who really kept the school running. It wasn’t even six o’clock. Nobody would bother me for over an hour and a half.
The custodians’ bungalow was a storehouse of cleaning materials, locks and keys, paper items, and tools. Twelve day janitors and a night crew of five were needed to maintain the 132 classrooms, two locker rooms and showers, the gym, the garden, the auditorium, and seventeen office spaces that constituted the school. We had fourteen buildings, upper and lower asphalt recreation yards, and eighteen gates that had to be locked and unlocked every day to keep students in, and to keep them out, too.