Although nominally attached to General LeMay’s personal staff since returning to the United States, Nathan had actually been posted to a desk in Nebraska in the middle of the winter. He had been promoted, his service file noted with a glowing commendation for gallantry by LeMay, and he had been assigned a position in the Intelligence Division at Offutt Air Base. It went without saying that he was forbidden to speak to ‘unauthorized personnel’ about his experiences, not that he wanted to talk to anybody about it.
At Offutt he was respectfully shunned by all and sundry.
He would have been bitter about it; but he would have ostracized himself too if he had been in the other guys’ boots.
“You’re a bright young man, Nathan,” Caroline Konstantis said. “You know the Air Force is never going to restore your operational status.”
“With respect, Ma’am,” he said stolidly, “until I see that in writing from the Air Force Department I know no such thing.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you why, politics aside, the Air Force will never let you fly again,” the woman returned unapologetically. “One, it is an established principle of command that one does not ask a man to do more than one can reasonably expect of him. Two, the safe and efficient discharge of operational flying duties requires teamwork of the highest standard, inherent in which is the absolute trust of each and every member of a given team in the other members of the aforementioned team. Three, since your return to the United States you have been treated like a pariah by your fellows; this must have been intolerable and you have deported yourself with extraordinary self-control and dignity but while you remain in the service this is not going to get any better. Two and three above mitigate against any return to operational status. Do you want me to go on I’ve got a list as long as my arm?”
Nathan shook his head.
“So that’s it?” He grunted wearily.
“No,” the woman smiled. “This is hard for you. The Air Force was your family; now it is not. But you are a young man with his life in front of him. The future is what you make it, Nathan.”
“Yeah, sure,” he snorted grimly.
Right then if a big bomb had dropped on Offutt Air Base it would have been fine by Major Nathan Zabriski.
Chapter 67
The stage could not possibly have been constructed to support so many bodies, swaying and singing, clapping and cheering in the afternoon heat. However, it was one of those days when regardless of its structural shortcoming it might, if the worst came to the worst, be held up by God’s will alone.
Such was the tenor of Dwayne John’s thoughts as Dr Martin Luther King stepped up to the battery of microphones and the great, seething mass of people in the park quietened and stilled, knowing perhaps that history was in the making and that they were privileged to be its witnesses.
Dwayne and several men who shared his physical dimensions and presence had been at Dr King’s shoulder and guarding his back all through that long, exhilarating day, walking beside him from the Ebenezer Baptist Church down Auburn and Jackson Avenue towards the downtown park now thronged with well over a hundred thousand souls. Most of the faces, moving like the waves of an ocean were black but perhaps one in ten were white, more so the farther one looked towards the boundaries of Bedford-Pine Park.
Dwayne was not alone in thinking of fables such as the Sermon of the Mount, or of Moses coming down from on high bearing tablets of stone. The gathering was one of biblical proportions and the mood ecstatic, celebratory as if a new age had dawned.
He had heard Dr King preach many times, address big crowds, and retain his calm, magisterial dignity in the face of heckling rednecks; today his voice rang with a new musical, quivering command.
“This is a speech I had hoped to deliver on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last year. It is a speech that I will deliver again when we, my brothers and sisters, march on Philadelphia and I stand on the steps of the Philadelphia Capitol!”
The hairs stood up on the back of Dwayne John’s neck.
He and Dr King’s other ‘minders’ had been ordered to stand at least two full paces from their charge and he ached to edge closer. Glancing past the great man his fellow bodyguards all mirrored his anxious eyes.
“Five score years ago a great American signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.”
The crowd was in the palm of the preacher’s hand.
“Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God's children. There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
Martin Luther King paused, his head turning to gaze out across the multitude before him as he collected his resolve.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”
There was a ringing poetic rhythm to his words as they rang out across Bedford-Pine Park like irresistible waves. The tide of human affairs had turned and no man could stand against the incoming waters.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
The stage was nakedly exposed, overlooked on all sides and the night stick hefting policemen around the park and at the front of the stage were visibly intimidated by the size and the mood of the crowd.
“I have a dream today.”
Dwayne’s whole being was seized by those five magical words.
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”