“I don’t mean me,” I said. “I’m just sayin’ that the cops work through black spies down here. That’s the only way to find out what’s goin’ on.”
Tina hadn’t fully regained her composure. She brought her hands to her shoulders.
“I ain’t no cop,” I said. “I just wanted to take a look-see, hear what you folks got to say.”
Over Tina’s head I saw Clarissa, the waitress from Hambones, enter the room in her pink top and shorts. She saw me and frowned. Behind her came a beefy brown man who had once been the boy in a photograph I had in my pocket. They were across the room from me. Before I could decide whether to cross over to them, everybody faced the music stand. Some people clapped.
Xavier Bodan had taken his place at the makeshift podium. Behind him stood a large dignified-looking man with half straight, mostly gray hair that he combed back like a groomed lion’s mane.
“Time to begin,” Xavier chanted. “Time to begin. This is the two hundred thirty-third meeting of the Urban Revolutionary Party. For those of you who are new, I am Xavier Bodan, secretary to the executive council, and a full-fledged believer in the black man and his struggle against the slave master and his dogs.”
There was applause then.
“The woman struggles just as hard, Xavier,” a voice called.
The young man grinned and ducked his head, flashing lights from the flat surfaces of his glasses. “You right, Sister Em,” he said. “Without the sisters, we’re nothing at all.”
I caught a glimpse of Brawly. He was glowering, looking around the room with the air of a bodyguard or a sergeant at arms.
“There will be a meeting of the executive committee after the general meeting. That’s Tina, Conrad, Belton, and Swan. See you after. There’s business for us to discuss, fund-raising and our education program, but I don’t want to spend any extra time tonight arguing or planning. We all know why we’re here: to spread the word and feed the children, to stand up straight and love each other.”
“Preach.” Someone thought we were in a church.
“We represent an island of civilization in a sea of barbarians. We bring the key to unlock eighteen million chains.” Xavier smiled again and I worried for him; he seemed so frail up there.
“Tonight,” he continued, “it is my honor to present a lion, a master. This is one of the men who made it possible for an organization like the First Men to come into being. He is our shelter and our conscience. He was taking blows for us before many of us were born. He was sweating in the white man’s cages when we were on tri-cycles and playin’ hopscotch. He is our beacon” — the audience started making a noise. It was like an expectant chatter. Not words exactly but pure emotions making their way into sound. “He marched in Selma in 1955” — the volume from the audience went up a notch — “he marched shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King” — the murmur grew into recognizable words of praise — “he is what we once were and what we strive to become” — the applause started then, softly, as if it had been rehearsed — “he is Henry Strong.”
Xavier stood aside, allowing Strong to take the podium.
“Henry Strong,” Xavier said again.
The applause began to thunder. They yelled and whistled. They chanted the elder man’s name. They called out until he had to smile and hold up his big hands. I expected the leader to compliment the respect shown by the crowd and their mouthpiece, but he knew his audience better than I did.
“I was a Garveyite,” he proclaimed.
The applause grew even stronger.
“I was with the first of the first men.”
“That’s the words!” a man exclaimed.
“I have seen the red sun of Dahomey and I have bathed in the African sea.”
“Teach.”
“I,” Strong said, pausing a moment for effect, “have tasted the sweet nectar of the homeland and I am here to tell you that we are sown from the sweetest flowers in the world.”
“Watch it!” someone yelled. I think it was Brawly Brown because when I looked he was plowing through the audience toward a door in back marked by an exit sign.
At that moment the glass door flew open. It shattered but I couldn’t hear it, because at the same time the picture-window wall also crashed. Policemen wearing riot helmets and wielding truncheons forced their way in.
There must have been thirty of them.
The assembled crowd balked for a moment, turning to see what the problem was.
I grabbed Tina and bulled my way toward the rear exit. Just as I reached the door the blows began to fall. Blood was spilling and I knew that there would be a few more chains for Xavier to unlock that night.
— 8 —
“Come on, Tina! Quick!” Conrad, the matinee idol, shouted.
He was seated in the driver’s seat of a lime green ’62 Cadillac. Next to him was Xavier, and in the backseat Henry Strong crouched down against the window. There was screaming coming from behind us, the sounds of scuffling and the occasional heavy thud and grunt.
I pressed Tina toward the automobile.
Conrad yelled, “Not you!”
“He took me out of there,” Tina hissed.
I just kept on pushing until I was in the backseat. Conrad took off down the alley in spite of his unwanted passenger. He sideswiped two wooden fences and knocked over a whole family of garbage cans. I could tell by his driving that Conrad would never make the grade on the military side of the revolution; I hoped that Xavier and Strong saw that, too.
Conrad took side streets. He made so many turns, it seemed to me that we were going in circles. But at some point he pulled out onto Central. We cruised that boulevard toward Florence.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
The younger people were in a funk. Maybe it was their first taste of what the world thought of their idealism, their truth.
Strong was just scared. His eyes were still wide with fear, and his fists were clenched on the hem of Tina’s dress. She didn’t seem to mind. She laid three fingers on the big knuckle of his right hand. There was a great deal of tenderness in the gesture.
I stayed quiet because there was nothing I could learn from hearing my words. A police raid meant nothing to me. I’d been in whorehouses, speakeasies, barber shops, and alley craps games when the police came down. Sometimes I got away and sometimes I lied about my name. There was nothing spectacular about being rousted for being black.
After a while Conrad pulled over to the curb. He fumbled around in the front of his pants for a moment and then turned around, leveling a pistol at my head.
“Hey, Con, what’s wrong wit’ you?” Xavier cried.
“Conrad!” Tina added.
“Who are you, man?” Conrad demanded.
I gazed into his eyes, wondering why I felt no fear. For a moment I thought that I had gone crazy, that Mouse’s death had robbed me of my own survival instinct. But then I thought that it was probably the adrenaline from the escape that kept me unafraid.
“Easy,” I said.
“Say what?”
“Easy. Easy Rawlins.”
“Put the gun down, Conrad,” Strong demanded in a commanding baritone.
“We don’t know who he is. Maybe he’s the one called the pigs on us.”
“They didn’t need him, Conrad,” Tina said. “We were right there in our own place.”
“Yeah, man,” Xavier complained. “Talk sense.”
“Put the gun down,” Strong said again.
Conrad finally did as he was told. It made no difference to me. By then I was thinking about Jesus wanting to drop out of school. Suddenly I felt that I understood my son’s desire. Life was too short and too sweet to be spent in the company of fools.
“Well, Mr. Rawlins?” Strong asked.
“I was lookin’ for Brawly Brown. His mother wanted to make sure that he wasn’t in trouble.”