Funny how we only remember the good things.
I wound up staying on at Coalition HQ only for two more days. The first was mostly taken up by a replay of those same two cops coming around and asking all the staffers, myself included, minor variations on the questions they’d asked after André’s killing. The second day was really only a morning, because right away the Reverend gathered everybody back by his office and, essentially, said goodbye.
Standing beside him was his somber but ever-radiant wife, in a black-trimmed white dress with a white corsage. She might have been going to a funeral. Or the prom.
“We have been forced to prematurely shut down our get-out-the-youth-vote campaign,” the Reverend said, the resonant voice lacking its usual fire. “The organizers of Saturday’s rally have asked me not to speak, in light of the various tragedies, as well as what has come out about Harold Jackson and André Freeman, and... well, I don’t have to go over the embarrassing, disheartening details that you’ve all read and heard in the media.”
Then with obvious sincerity and a good deal of warmth, he thanked them for their dedication and hard work, adding, “I will be regrouping in the near future, with a smaller staff. Our mission of non-violence, education, and brotherhood... and sisterhood... continues.”
They all applauded, wildly at first, but rather quickly ran out of steam.
Smiling, he took his wife’s white-gloved hand and said, “In the light of so much tragedy and disappointment, I am pleased to give you some happy news. My new chief administrative assistant will be Mrs. Marianne Lloyd.”
That got a nice round of applause, too, and Mrs. Lloyd gave her own little speech about being proud to join her husband in the fight.
“My children are grown,” she said, “but the world they live in could still use some work. And Raymond and I are both ready to roll up our sleeves.”
A little more applause, and then everyone went about emptying their desks and filling boxes that had thoughtfully been provided.
My desk didn’t have anything in it, so I helped Ruth. She was in the same maroon vest, matching pants and navy blouse as the first day. Same hoop earrings, too.
She gave me a glum smile and said, “So what do you think, John? Will I be offered a position on the Reverend’s new scaled-down staff?”
“No. But you weren’t going to stay on anyway. You’re just pouting.”
Her smile lost its glumness. “They say the truth hurts, but when it comes out of your mouth, it just makes me smile.”
“I was put here to spread joy. You know, we really should celebrate.”
“Celebrate? Celebrate what?”
“Not having to go to a dull rally this Saturday.”
Of course, she had no idea how un-dull it might have been.
“Okay,” she said, “so we celebrate. Any ideas?”
Within two hours, we had piled into the Impala SS and headed for the Lake of the Ozarks and a resort where I’d stayed last year after a job.
That evening, in bed, after making love in the glow of a fire, she snuggled up and said, “They’re going to blow up my building.”
“What?”
“Our building, Mother’s and my sisters’ and mine. At Pruitt-Igoe. The whole dangerous, rat-ridden place is coming down, which is for the best. But some of it stayed nice. It was home. And now I need someplace else for my mother and me and the girls.”
“Your mom is welcome here at the lodge. In her own room.”
Ruth grinned. “And my sisters?”
“How old were they again?”
She batted my chest playfully and said, “Thanks for your concern, Jack, but we’ll find something. I’ve applied at several law firms and, with any luck, we’ll be able to afford someplace really nice.”
“You deserve it.”
The last evening of our stay, McGovern lost. It hadn’t taken long. We’d been watching in our room and she switched off the set with the remote, saying she had no stomach for any network post-mortems.
We were back in bed when she said, “Now another four years of Nixon. Doesn’t that suck.”
I said I supposed it did.
But I wasn’t thinking about the next four years. I was enjoying the right now of sharing a bed with a beautiful woman, getting daily rubdowns, plenty of swims, taking long walks in the woods. Scarfing down delicious food, too. Life sucked less suddenly.
Hadn’t I managed not to kill the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd and still get paid for it?
Felt good doing something nice for a change. Or maybe felt nice doing something good for a change.
You tell me.
Author’s Note
I wish to thank my son and daughter-in-law, Nathan and Abby Collins of St. Louis, Missouri, for answering my location questions and pointing me toward research materials. That said, the St. Louis of this novel is one of my imagination and any blame for geographical blundering is my own, with no apologies forthcoming.
I would like to cite the book The Days and Nights of the Central West End (1991), Suzanne Goell, editor; Richard Rothstein’s American Prospect article, “The Making of Ferguson” (2014); and Mark Groth’s blog, St. Louis City Talk, for information on the Ville.
Quarry was created in 1971 at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in Iowa City, and first appeared in print in 1976. An odd and oddly satisfying aspect of writing new Quarry novels for Hard Case Crime has been continuing a series that began as contemporary but is now a period piece. I don’t consider these new books, with their ’70s and ’80s settings, to be historical novels exactly — more like my autobiography published in installments with more sex and violence. Well, more violence.
One autobiographical aspect of Quarry in the Black is the Leonard Nimoy rally for McGovern in October of 1972, which my wife Barb and I attended at NIU in DeKalb, Illinois, as supporters of both McGovern and Star Trek. In the ’90s, I was thrilled to meet Mr. Nimoy when we were both developing comic books for the same company.
Half a dozen years ago, I saw George McGovern standing in the lobby of a hotel in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and was able to chat with him briefly and shake his hand. I introduced him to Barb and said we’d both voted for him. His smile was bitter-sweet as he said, “I wish there’d been more of you.”
“So do we, Senator,” I said.