I grab it and run halfway across the street. In the schoolyard they are all frozen still, and facing backwards looking at me, as if the National Anthem was being played. I heave the ball back over the fence. It drops out of sight. There is silence for a moment; and then I see the ball streaking back to the infield, propelled by the hidden left fielder who caught my toss. I feel a thrill, an electric connection to that ball, also a sharp sense of having let the mightly athletes know that I am alive.
In the meantime a yellow school bus has turned into the block. The driver is hunched over the wheel, peering at house numbers. There are people already in the bus. It passes our house, screeches to a stop, backs up.
I want to announce the bus’s arrival, but by the time I get to our door it is open and people are coming outside. I find my mother in the kitchen and ask her if I’m going. I ask for confirmation. I expect her to say of course, and my heart sinks when she prims her mouth and says, “Your father’s in charge.”
“Please, Rochelle,” he says, “don’t start that.” Whenever my mother says my father is in charge he gets very upset. He is packing the egg salad sandwiches in their wax paper into a khaki rucksack. He likes to carry things camping-style to keep his hands free to read a newspaper or a book. He settles his glasses with the back of his hand. “Don’t you want your child to hear one of the great voices of our time? Don’t you want your son to have that to remember? I don’t see that it’s such a terrible thing to inflict on a child — that he sees Robeson, a great people’s artist.”
“Pauly, I told you my feelings. You do what you want.”
“There’s a problem?” Mindish says, nibbling a piece of cheese.
“There’s no problem,” my mother says. She puts the mayonnaise in the icebox, wipes the table, walks out of the room.
“Am I going?” I ask my father.
“Yes, yes,” he says irritably. Nothing is really official without my mother’s endorsement. It makes us both uneasy to have something decided without her approval. My father follows her upstairs. “Get ready,” he calls to me, one of those vague orders demonstrating his lack of authority. Its real meaning is that I shouldn’t follow him upstairs.
I wait in the hall. And though the front door is open and people are spilling out of the door onto the porch, and friends like Mindish are milling about, and everyone is talking and anticipating the trip, I hear enough of what’s being said upstairs to understand the issue. It’s a small house.
“There is nothing to be afraid of, Rochelle! If I thought there was the slightest chance of violence, do you think I would allow you to go, let alone the kid? Be sensible.”
“Don’t speak to me of being sensible,” my mother says. “He’s seven years old.”
“Well, let’s just go,” Paul says. “Mindish is taking his daughter. There’s a dozen kids downstairs. There’s a court order protecting the thing, for God’s sake.”
“Court orders,” Rochelle says bitterly.
There is silence for a moment. “And you call yourself a progressive,” my father says, a change in tack. He commences a speech about the forces of reaction and what they thrive on. My mother says wearily, “Oh, Pauly, you’re such a fool sometimes.”
People are calling from the front door. “Let’s go! Come on, let’s go!”
I am really more interested in this conflict of wills than in whether or not I go to the concert. The truth is the prospect bored me; now that some mystery is attached to it, I’m more inclined to put up a fuss if I can’t go.
Somewhere in the silences of their conversation upstairs, my mother relents. “Danny,” she says, coming down the stairs. “Go get your thin blue jacket. And tie your shoelaces, and pull up your socks. And go to the bathroom even if you don’t have to.” She is frowning, looking grim. She has reddened her mouth with lipstick. My father descends behind her, lighting a cigar.
A week before Paul Robeson was supposed to have sung at the Lakeland Picnic Grounds in Peekskill, New York. A local mob blocked the approaches, burned up the camp chairs, attacked the audience that was there, and the concert never came off. After a week of protest meetings, and a court order, Robeson was going to try again to sing in Peekskill. Robeson was a Communist, a proud black Communist. Thousands of people were going to sit in the open air, in the country, and testify by their presence Robeson’s right to sing and their right to listen. Governor Dewey had called out the State Troopers to guard the grounds. In this age of witch hunts, when men were being sent to jail for their political beliefs (like Foster, like Gene Dennis), it was going to be a triumphant affirmation of the right of free assembly, it was going to be a great moment for the forces of progressivism and civilization.
I learn all this on the bus. My father tells me. He is exhilarated, happy. Everyone sings Robeson’s songs in anticipation of hearing him. It is very nice. I’m glad my mother let me come. The bus roars along through the Bronx, heading north across Van Cortlandt Park to the Saw Mill River Parkway, and everyone is singing Peat Bog Soldiers. We are the Peat Bog soldiers, marching with our spades to the bog. Only my mother doesn’t sing. I sit on her lap at the window. Next to me my father sings. The whole bus sings. The bus seems to surge along in rhythm. The window of the bus is streaked with dried rain.
It is a long ride. My eyes grow heavy with the backward-moving scenery. Before we get to Peekskill, the singing has stopped. The people in the bus are quiet. In Peekskill, I see men standing on the road shouting and waving their fists. There is a line of police holding them back. “Go home kikes!” someone yells at our bus. I hear the sound of military music. I did not know there was a band at the Robeson Concert. But my father, standing up to peer back through the rear window of the bus, says it is an American Legion Band. They are parading to protest the concert.
It is hot and unpleasant in the concert grounds, and a long time goes by without any concert. I have long since finished my egg salad sandwich and I’m hungry again. The crowd is immense. I sit between my parents. They are surrounded by their friends. Around the friends sit thousands of people. If something bad was going to happen, it would have happened already, everyone reasons. I can’t imagine what harm could come to us here in this friendly crowd. They are like an army. Our own people are cool. They are relaxed. They kid around. My father reads something aloud from a book, something funny, and everyone laughs and comments on it. My mother is smiling. She sits cross-legged on the grass, with her long, pleated skirt billowed over her legs so you can’t see them. She holds me against her side. My father waves his cigar as he talks. He talks constantly. Every once in a while he settles his eyeglasses firmly on the bridge of his nose. Ben Cohen, lying on his side on the grass, holds his pipe and listens to him. Dr. Mindish listens. Nate Silverstein, the furrier, listens. It is clear they all have respect for him. No, not so much respect as fondness. Fondness for him and respect for his energy. He seems tireless, full of electricity, restless, constantly speaking his thoughts and postulating his ideas.
Finally, a long distance off, there is a shout, a cheer, and then a massive roar as Robeson appears. I can’t make him out too well. His voice comes to me larger than his small figure in the distance, but it is a deep voice, an incredibly deep resounding voice, and it reminds me of Williams who lives in our cellar. They are both black. I wonder why Williams did not come with us. Robeson sings spirituals. He sings Old Man River. He sings Peat Bog Soldiers. He sings I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me. He is accompanied by a pianist. I wonder if he lives in the cellar of his house.