The people around Dr King were largely deaf to the Atlanta Police Department’s pleas; they had heard it all before and no such concerns were ever raised in connection with the crowds at football or ball games, or at parades on Independence Day or other festivals when the majority of the participants were likely to be white.
Dwayne John was a little uncomfortable about the arrangements, especially those in Bedford-Pine Park where Dr King would be in one place — on the raised and relatively exposed open stage — for the best part of an hour while he and the preceding keynote speakers addressed the crowd. Moreover, while there would be a number of police officers in the park, mostly around the stage, none of Dr King’s bodyguards — of whom he was one — was armed.
Talking again to Miranda had taken the edge off his unease.
Talking to Miranda had made him mellow.
That was yesterday; today he was standing in the empty park eying the surrounding buildings trying to convince himself that he was worrying about nothing.
‘I miss you, Dwayne,’ she had said and he had ached to wrap her in his arms. In that moment all the unspoken worries about how the people around them might view their friendship if publicly it was ever acknowledged to be something more, came into sharp focus but oddly he did not care and in his heart, he knew that she felt exactly the same way.
Maybe, back on the West Coast things would be easier, simpler for them.
However, that was a thing for the future.
Today he was thinking about Friday afternoon’s rally.
Chapter 65
When Sabrina Henschal had welcomed Sam Brenckmann back to Gretsky’s he had been in a bad way; much as he and Judy had been after they escaped the North West after the war. It had been an exhaustingly emotional day and every time she thought about it she very nearly shed a tear even now, a fortnight later. Judy had been beside herself, Sabrina had been as bad and between them they had almost crushed the life out of Sam as they had cried over him.
For the sake of propriety Sabrina had tried very hard to keep her hands off Sam in the days since; but it was not easy. Sam had been special to her from the first day she laid eyes on him; and after the first flush of lust and infatuation had passed their relationship had morphed into something little brother-big sisterly. By the time Miranda Sullivan had lured the poor, gullible boy up to San Francisco and allowed that bastard Johnny Seiffert to get his claws into him Sabrina’s feelings had, although she hated to admit it, turned positively maternal towards Sam. Sam was one of those lovely guys who needed a strong woman to protect him and the last couple of weeks she had just wanted to hug him forever.
Judy was not the jealous, possessive type. However, Sabrina would have put one of her own eyes out with a stick rather than do anything liable to make Judy suspect, for a moment, that she was trying to muscle in on her and Sam. That was not what Sabrina was about.
All she wanted was for Sam to be safe.
Sabrina was getting soft in her old age; that was what it was. That probably explained why she was finding it increasingly hard to raise any great ire about Miranda. The ‘bitch’ had put everything on the line to bust Sam out of that concentration camp at San Bernardino…
That morning Sabrina was awakened by Tabatha.
Not quite two months old and oblivious to the craziness of the last few weeks her ‘goddaughter’ — how weird did that sound? — wanted her breakfast and by the smell of things, cleaning too. Sabrina had the baby in her room every second or third night because both Sam and Judy needed their sleep; and selfishly, she completely adored Tabatha much like any doting grandparent would.
While Judy had not been bothered about getting married; she had needed for Tabatha to be baptized. Both objects had been achieved two afternoons ago in a small Lutheran chapel off Santa Monica Boulevard. Judy had gone quietly religious lately, remembering her childhood church-going days. Sabrina had assumed it was her friend’s way of coping but actually her faith was deep if not loudly proclaimed.
Sabrina squinted myopically at the clock.
It was horribly early and one day she would have a stern talk to Tabatha Christa Brenckmann about what time a girl ought to start her day. Nevertheless, Sabrina pulled on a shift, gathered up the squalling infant and carried her downstairs, cooing and humming reassuringly all the way. While she warmed baby formula in a pan with a wrinkling nose, she replaced Tabatha’s diaper. Thereafter, she ambled about the old house feeding her goddaughter, rocking her tenderly. Later, with winding — Tabatha invariably burped healthily — successfully achieved she took the baby back to bed.
Hopefully, Tabatha would sleep a couple of hours before she had to surrender her back to her mother; at which point the best part of her day would be over. It was all very strange. She had not spoken to her own kids for years. Now and then pictures arrived in the post, with explanatory brief notes attached. She had two grandchildren in New Mexico, boys, for whom she felt absolutely nothing and yet she was totally connected with Sam and Judy — she loved them to death — and Tabatha was her soul grandchild.
The baby gurgled in her arms in the big bed.
Breakfast at Gretsky’s happened all morning and sometimes the afternoon, also. Judy was still half-asleep at ten when she joined Sabrina in the kitchen.
The two women exchanged kisses.
“I gave her a second small feed about twenty minutes ago,” Sabrina whispered, desperate not to rouse the sleeping baby in the big wicker basket on the long oak table at the center of the room.
July paused to gaze awhile at her daughter.
“Sam said Doug was coming over later today?” She asked presently, with a resigned murmur.
“He says the guys from Columbia are advancing him a ‘starter loan’, or something, that will let him start rebuilding The Troubadour.”
Judy tried not to frown. ‘The guys from Columbia’ already owned a large piece of Sam and they probably believed he was going to be in their pocket forever. Or at least until the World blew itself up again. She honestly did not know whether to love or hate Doug Weston, the beanpole, outlandish, manic club owner and would be promoter to whom Sam was, albeit guardedly, devoted much in the fashion of a sibling with a crazy older brother who has been disowned by the rest of his family.
Sabrina had been even more suspicious about Doug Weston before she had discovered Doug had got himself on a murder rap on account of having shot a biker who was about to brain Sam with a chain. After he had got out of the penitentiary at Irvine, Doug had hung out at Gretsky’s for a few days.
The older woman was aware of her friend’s wry look.
“What?” She protested mildly, mouthing rather than voicing the retort.
“Nothing.”
Sabrina huffed. “I can’t help it if a guy gets the wrong idea about me.”
Judy smiled.
Nothing that had happened that night The Troubadour burned down, or since, had driven Sam and Doug Weston so much as a fraction of an inch apart. The two men, so different in temperament and ambition, the one driven the other quietly content to walk his path in the world, were like two sides of the same coin. Even Sabrina had accepted that Sam and Doug Weston were out to conquer the world together, or not at all.