“Huh?”
“Oh, sorry. That’s a Thai word. There’s no English equivalent. I picked it up in Chiang Mai. It’s yours. I’ma give it to you. Riabroi means everything together at once, complete, sensible, beautiful, perfect, and natural. You do this form — or anythin’ else—riabroi and you won’t need me lookin’ after you no more.”
“Looking after me? I’m the one Doc told to—”
“Bishop, shut up and do the form.”
I followed his lead, letting him teach me the twenty-four moves of the (Yang) Tai Chi Chuan form he’d picked up while traveling overseas, making myself slow down more with each posture, each breath, wasting no motion whatsoever, and as I mimicked his movements I began to feel lighter and less fatigued — like water, like wind — though I’m sure if Rev. Littlewood had entered Bethel AME just then, he would have found it puzzling to see two black men, both refugees of the American race wars, doing Taoist-drenched Tai Chi in the Christian sanctuary where generations of right and proper Griffiths had prayed to a god unknown to either Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu.
On our way back to the Nest that evening my anger at him for making me leave Amy was, strange to say, replaced by an ineffable peace. “Do that form three times in a row every day,” he advised, “and you’ll live longer than that colored ex-cowboy in Texas named Charlie Smith I was reading about.” His promise of longevity made me laugh, but I agreed to do as he asked, for had he not proven himself to be, despite his crabbiness and infuriating eccentricities, an experienced guide for those of us, broken-winged, condemned to mediocrity and the margins of the world? All during the ride back I felt this fraternity with him, but I had no idea I was not alone in my admiration.
As I pulled up the road I saw the green Plymouth parked near the farmhouse and two travel-stained men sitting on our porch as if they owned it.
“Watch yourself,” said Smith. “Let me handle this.”
The older of the two men, gourd-shaped with dull egg-blue eyes behind his thick glasses, his tie tucked under his belt, stood up as we got out of the car and came up the foot-path, scratching the side of his head where he needed a shave. He took off his hat. The movement exposed for a second the shoulder holster inside his wrinkled suitcoat and the butt of a snub-nosed.38.
“Evening, Chaym,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
I stayed to one side of Smith, my palms beginning to perspire.
“Evening yourself. You fellahs lost?” Smith’s eyes burned into them. “You’re pretty far off the main road—”
“No, this is where we want to be. My name is Jasper Groat and”—he made a twitchlike nod—“my colleague there is Vincent Withersby. We — say, do you think we could talk inside for a little while?”
“Depends on what you want, Mr. Groat.”
“Oh.” Groat laughed and dipped inside his coat; then his palm displayed a shiny, official-looking badge pinned to his wallet. “That’s simple. We want to talk. To offer you a way to make a little money and maybe help your country out during difficult times. That sound good to you? I certainly hope it does. The people we work for are very … interested … in Martin Luther King. Our director thinks your success impersonating King could, urn, be … useful … for one of the projects we’ve been kicking around the office for a coupla years. Couldn’t find the missing piece, though, till you showed up. Damn, you do look like him, you know? Even behind those dark glasses and that beard. You think we might rest a spell inside, put our feet up, and chat awhile?”
To his left, Withersby was packing enough Dunhill tobacco into his Liverpool pipe to last for an hour. Regardless of what we said, they planned to stay So I slid open the screen door, stepped to one side, and bid them enter.
10
On the floor of their living room in Atlanta, with the rugs rolled back into a corner and furniture pushed to one side, he was wrestling with his children, pinning Dexter’s arms while Marty, one arm around his neck, rode his hack in an effort to topple him so both boys could get the upper hand. Away to the left in his workroom the phone rang and rang. His wife looked on from the hallway, shaking her head. Can’t you find somewhere else to play with these kids? The tussle, which had gone on for ten minutes of giggling and tickling, was the first good wrestling bout he’d had with the children since they left Chicago; in fact, it was the first time they’d had his undivided attention in weeks, so he was hardly about to stop.
They were happy to he home again, the wretched flat on South Hamlin just a horrible memory now, a place that all summer long drained the gaiety from his children and epressed his wife. No, moving them there was what the Movement required at the time, hut he swore he would never. God willing, subject them to that sort of hardship again. If he regretted anything about his life, it was the way the Cause took such a devastating toll on his personal life and the roles he cherished the most, those of father and husband. Every so often he felt tempted to call his schedule suicide on the installment plan. The crowds and faces ran together. On so many mornings he awoke in a different hotel in a strange city, and for a few bewildering moments he sat up in bed wondering where on earth he might be. And the meals his admirers served him? How they played hob with his waistline! He remembered one in particular — the food itself, not the occasion or his hosts. There was a hundred-year-old bottle from Oporto, lobster on Canton china as thin as a wafer, frittura mista, and pale game served so ingeniously, so artfully, it looked as though each slice had been cut from butter. Yet, if the truth be known, he preferred catfish, pigs’ feet, and collard greens. At least at home now he could relax for a little while and eat whatever he pleased. And, thank God, he didnt have to shave. Daily use of the lye-based depilatory powder his sensitive skin required often left his face tender, smarting and feeling raw, stinging in the outdoor air. But now that they were back in Atlanta, he knew his tortured skin would have a few days to heal.
His children were calling, beckoning him back from his workroom, where he’d finally hurried to answer the phone, to the living room and the makeshift handball court they’d created by pushing back furniture and rolling up the rug. His work space was on the same floor, a back room where his gray metal desk was barricaded in by a file cabinet, a confusion of boxes, shelves loaded down with books, his notes for Where Do We Go from Here? mounds of correspondence, and the phone he held burning against his ear. His hands began to shake as he listened, thinking how when he awoke each morning he could never know what new catastrophe awaited him, what novel, Job-like species of pain hunkered in the shadows, or what manner of crisis, personal or political, he would be put through next. On the other end, as his Marty and Dexter shouted for him to join in their game, the agent in the Atlanta office was reporting almost gleefully the latest bounty the Bureau learned had been placed on his head.
Usually, he suspected, they didn’t call when they discovered someone bent upon killing him. The policy was, he was sure, to simply sit back, wait, and see if the assassin made good on his promise. But this was different. The amount to be collected for killing him was $50,000. “Pretty high, eh?” the agent said. “Bet you didn’t know you were worth that much …”