Exile Blues

by Douglas Gary Freeman

  “When I turn twenty-one.”

  “Well, I’ll be . . . Hot damn!” Preach slapped his hand on his thigh. “Hot damn, boy! Hot damn! Ha!” Preach began unfurling the newspaper page that had gotten crumpled during the time he had begun his inquiry, and through the multiple pulls on the wine bottle. He said, “Dat boy’s smart!” The other kids looked on and smiled. Any of them could have answered that easy question.

  Some of the older boys and girls had paired off and were engaged in various forms of communication, verbal and otherwise. A couple of the bigger guys had begun a non-contact sparring session that Prez thought had the promise of escalating into a serious full-contact contest. That petered out quickly under the scorching weight of the day. A quartet of boys with a trio of girls began harmonizing under the shade of one of the big oak trees. Against this backdrop, Mr. Richardson came out of his drugstore with a bag full of garbage in one hand and a sandwich and soft drink for Preach in the other.

  “I’ve told you, Mr. Chambers, that you should be putting real food in your stomach, and not that stuff you keep hidden in your brown paper bag. That stuff will eat a hole right through your stomach and destroy your liver if you’re not careful.”

  “Why, thankee Mistah Rich’son. You’s always so nice to me.” Preach hastily and messily refolded his newspaper and sat on it again.

  Preach munched on his sandwich and slurped down his soft drink. The vocal septet was singing an a cappella compilation of Platters songs. Everyone else seemed to be just lazing around laughing and talking, when screech! Car doors slammed shut.

  “Why don’t you niggers move along, now?”

  The cop who got out on the driver’s side was a huge, red-faced, cigar-chomping, beer-bellied man who wore his police cap cocked to one side.

  “I said fa you niggers to move along, now! Git!”

  The cop who alighted from the passenger side was practically a twin of his partner, only smaller. His police cap, however, was cocked in the opposite direction. He was also more intimidating than his bigger partner. His billy club, which he continuously slapped into the palm of his hand, seemed larger. And so did his gun. It had a barrel so long, it stuck out the end of his holster.

  “Are you niggers deaf? Did y’all hear me say git?”

  The stillness was defeating and strangling.

  “Whew. It be a hot one today, don’t it, Mr. Officer?” said Preach, once again unfurling his newspaper to the page containing the advertisement for the 1959 Chevrolet Impala.

  “Yo’ car!” he continued, squinting down at the car from his perch, “It’s yo’ car in the paper, see!” The big cop came over to the mailbox and snatched the paper away from Preach.

  “Lookit!” exclaimed Preach pointing to the Chevrolet advertisement in the paper, “Ain’t that yo’ car? How come you gotta top on yours?”

  “Look here, Teddy, he’s right. The old nigger ain’t so dumb after all. It’s not every day someone can identify the model of a car under all the black and white paint, big letters, and lights.”

  As the other cop came to look at the paper, Preach continued. “Well, thankee kindly, sir, fa sayin’ I ain’t so dumb.”

  All the kids remained stone quiet, stone still, and stone staring at the cops. Preach continued, “Hm. Too bad they got the ad wrong.”

  “Whaddaya mean wrong? We got a ’59 Impala, and that’s what’s in the paper, here,” replied the big cop.

  “No, No! I means da part ’bout da decade being ober.”

  Preach looked down at the kids and winked.

  “Listen, old nigger, maybe you ain’t so smart after all. Of course, it’s the end of the decade. It’s the end of the fifties. It’s 1959!”

  “Do tell,” said Preach. “You ’gree wid dat, sir?” speaking to the other cop who remained silent except for the sound of his billy club slapping his palm. “A decade be ten, right. Mr. Officer?”

  “That’s right . . .”

  “Ha! Gotcha!” exclaimed old Preach as he slapped his palm on top of his thigh. “Gotcha!”

  The smaller cop took out his billy club and started beating Preach from behind, then the big cop joined in. Preach fell off the mailbox. The wine bottle in his pocket broke and gouged a deep wound in his leg. The cops kept hitting him.

  “Ow! Ow! Ooh. Oh, Jesus, you killin’ me!” Blood flowed from his head and mouth.

  The girls began screaming, “They’re killing him, they’re gonna beat him to death. Make them stop. Do something!”

  First Alvin Proctor, then some of the other older boys rushed the cops and grabbed their sticks from them. They threw the sticks to the other side of the street and backed away. Mr. Richardson came rushing from his drugstore and exclaimed, “My god! Have you killed him? Call an ambulance! Aren’t you going to call an ambulance?”

  Just as he turned to go back into his drugstore to call for an ambulance, they heard a gunshot.

  The kids reflexively jumped, ducked, and raised their arms to shield themselves.

  “Who’s shot?” “They shot somebody!” “Who’s hurt?” “Is anybody hurt?”

  Alvin Proctor was lying on the ground beside a tree.

  “Oh my god!” said Mr. Richardson. “You can’t just go around shooting people.”

  He and some of the kids rushed over to Alvin, who was unconscious, but breathing. He had been shot in the shoulder. The impact had sent him reeling backward, causing him to hit his head against the tree and knocking him unconscious.

  The girls were screaming and crying, the boys were shouting at the cops. Three additional squad cars arrived before the ambulance. The cops, guns drawn, shoved the kids away from Alvin and made them face a wall with their hands behind their heads.

  “If any of you move, we’ll shoot!”

  The ambulance put the old man on the stretcher, Alvin on the floor, and careened away with sirens blaring.

  “Who are you?” asked a sergeant of Mr. Richardson.

  “I own this drugstore,” came the reply.

  “I see,” replied the sergeant, looking up at the sign. “Did you see what happened, Mr. Richardson? It is Mr. Richardson, isn’t it? Well, good. Did you see anything?”

  “Well, of course I did. Your police officers were beating that old man, then they shot that boy!”

  “Which officers do you mean?”

  “Those two right over there.”

  “You mean they both discharged their sidearms? It appears the Negro boy was only shot once. Is that right? Once? Well, how can both of my officers shoot him if he was only shot once, Mr. Richardson?”

  Mr. Richardson fell into a silence. A thick silence heavier than the heat and humidity on that Washington summer’s day. A silence that made them all sweat more profusely than before. From the wall upon which the kids were lined up came a voice. It was a voice that broke through other voices around it advising it to be quiet and reminding it of the virtues of silence at a time like this.

  “I said I saw who did it. And I saw how he did it.”

  “Who said that?” asked the sergeant.

  “Oh my,” said Mr. Richardson when he realized it was Prez. “He’s just a child. I don’t even think that boy is thirteen yet. Certainly not fourteen. He’s just a child.”

  “I’m no child. I saw what happened. And I saw who did it. And I saw how he did it. And I’m not afraid to say it.”

  “Be quiet, Prez!”

  “Are you stupid, man?”

  “You wanna go into the paddy wagon, man?”

  “You’re gonna end up in a lot of trouble.”

  “No, he’s gonna end up dead.”

  “Listen, Prez. I know what you’re thinking,” whispered one of the older guys. “But, man, this ain’t about being brave. This is about being smart. Just don’t say anything else.”

  Prez listened, and understood. This was some
thing he had to do, though. He had to stand.

  There was a large crowd of kids gathering across the street. They were starting to shout at and heckle the cops. Saying things like, “Get off our block.” “Leave ’em alone.” “This is Block-boy territory. You’d better get in your cars and get outta here!” “B-Boys forever.”

  Prez was shaken. He hadn’t heard anything about B-Boys for a long time. Ever since he was a kid and his daddy was still alive. He wanted to turn around and look to see who was saying those things. But he was scared and hated to admit it to himself. Even though he was able to make his mouth move and say what he had so far, he was afraid to move his body because he didn’t want to get shot. The more he felt his inner self shake from the fear of the awful violence the police could unleash, the angrier he became, until he heard his voice say, quite loudly, “I said I saw who shot Alvin and I saw how he did it and I’m not afraid to say it!”

  He was suddenly more afraid of being afraid than he was actually afraid.

  “The short cop from car fifty-four. He shot Alvin! I saw him.”

  Prez was still facing the wall. Sweat was dripping from every pore he possessed. He could feel his body shaking and hoped that no one else could see how scared he was. His head hung and his eyes were squeezed shut; he was waiting to be shot. He thought it best to get shot in the back. That way, you couldn’t see it coming.

  “What did you say, boy?” growled the sergeant.

  Prez could hear footsteps rapidly coming in his direction. He hung his head even lower and squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. The rapidly approaching footsteps brought a solemn, fearful hush over the whole group along the wall.

  From across the street Prez could still hear the crowd: “Butch lives!” “Get off our block!” “B-Boys forever!”

  Prez still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His legs were getting stronger. He stopped shaking. He wasn’t going to be shot in the back, he decided. He wasn’t going to be shot without fighting back, even if he couldn’t win. He was going to fight the bullet. As the footsteps were practically upon him, he spun, ready to fight, ready to let his fists go with the fastest and mightiest barrage of punches anyone had ever seen. For old Preach-Mouth. For Alvin. For Butch. And somehow, for his daddy.

  “Preston. Come with me, son.”

  It was his mother’s boyfriend Ellis. Detective Ellis Perkins of the Washington, D.C. police department. His rank was lieutenant, so he outranked all the other cops at the scene. He grabbed Prez by the arm and yanked him along toward his unmarked police car.

  The kids along the wall turned and began shouting.

  “Hey, who are you?” “Where you takin’ him?” “You some kinda cop or somethin’?” Only Tons and Lightblood knew that Ellis was Prez’s mother’s boyfriend.

  Ellis turned around, still yanking Prez along, and went back to the group lined up along the wall.

  “I am Detective Perkins of the D.C. Police Department.” Ellis met the looks of astonishment on some of their faces with, “Yes, there are some Negro detectives on the force. The boy has to come down to the police station and tell what he said he saw.”

  “But I saw the policeman with the hole in his holster shoot Alvin, too,” one of the older kids said. “So did I,” said another. “Me, too,” said a third, who added, “he didn’t even take his gun from the holster. He just kind of lifted the whole holster. Or spun it, or something, and just shot right through the hole.”

  “What are you kids talking about a hole in a holster?” asked Ellis. He knew that the standard-issue police sidearm was a revolver with a four-inch barrel and the standard-issue holster was one that completely enclosed the barrel. He went over to the sergeant with whom he had a heated exchange. The sergeant then went over to the two cops from car fifty-four and they got in their car and sped off.

  “That’s not what I ordered you to do!” screamed Ellis in the face of the sergeant. With his nose practically touching the sergeant’s, Ellis spat his Army Master Sergeant venom. “I gave you specific orders, Sergeant!”

  “You git right outta mah face, you hear? I don’t give a shit about your war decorations, or your college education. You still a nigga! Detective or no. You still a nigga! Git the hell outta mah face! You Nazi nigger!”

  Ellis turned from the sergeant, grabbed Tons from the group of kids and put him into the back seat of his car with Prez. Then he came back over to where the other kids were being held by other cops. He placed himself between the kids and the cops, then said, “The rest of you, I want you all to leave, now. I want you to get out of here. Go across the street where your friends are and then go home.”

  Some of the cops began moving towards the kids and Ellis turned to confront them, brandishing two ebony-handled Walther P38 semi-automatic pistols. He had taken them from a dead German officer. His reputation as a master marksman was well known on the force. As was the fact that having served under the current chief of police in the war—the same man who had planted many of those decorations on Ellis’s chest—had gotten Ellis the special permission to pack those sidearms. But the white cops on the force hated seeing that German-made weapon. They’d say, “That’s a goddamn Nazi gun you got there! You a Nazi? You must be. You like their guns. You a Nazi nigger!” What Ellis liked was the accuracy of the weapon, and the quick reloading. Once at the police range he had put two cliploads of bullets, fourteen rounds, into a six-inch area of a target quicker than anyone else could fire six and reload their revolver.

  “Hey, Sarge, he can’t do that, can he?”

  “What about it, Sarge, do we let ’em go?”

  “Can’t we just arrest all of ’em?”

  “Shut up, Patrolman,” said Ellis. “You boys all get back in your cars and head back to the station, now. You too, Sergeant.” The sergeant hesitated. “Sergeant,” barked Ellis, “I am giving you a direct order. If you want to keep your badge, you will obey my direct order and get the hell out of here and proceed directly to the station where I will meet you in the captain’s office.” As the sergeant got into his squad car and drove off, Ellis turned to the other cops and said, “We’ll have to file reports and take this up with the captain now, won’t we?” This made the white cops wince. Their captain was the kid brother of the chief of police.

  As Ellis drove away with Prez and Tons, Prez turned to look out the back window and was astonished at how large the crowd of kids had grown on the other side of the street. They were shouting and gesturing at the cops. The cops, abandoned by their sergeant, made a hasty retreat from the scene.

  *

  Later that evening, Mattie, Ellis, and some other neighbours gathered over at Tons Murray’s parents’ place to discuss the events that had occurred in front of Richardson’s Drugstore. While the adults conversed upstairs, Prez, Debra, Sticks, Dee Cee and some other young people from the neighborhood were downstairs with Tons in the Murrays’ basement, playing music and talking about what had happened. “I saw what the cop did, man,” said Prez. “He didn’t even take his gun out of his holster. He just kinda twisted the whole thing up and pointed it at Alvin, man. I’m telling you. It all happened so fast. Then bang! He shot Alvin, man. For no reason. He just shot him for nothing. That’s why that cop has that hole in the bottom of his holster, so he can shoot people without even taking his gun out, you know, like some kinda quick draw without drawing, you know what I mean? He just shot Alvin, man. For nothing!”

  Upstairs, the parallel conversation continued. “What do you think’s gonna happen, Ellis? Is that cop gonna get away with shooting that boy?” Mattie asked.

  “We put on American military uniforms and went overseas to shed all that blood fighting the Nazis and Tojo just to come back home and get treated like pure . . . pure . . .” Mr. Murray’s strict religious beliefs prevented him from uttering profanity. “Is anything gonna happen to that cracker? Or is it just too bad for another dead Negro boy?”

>   “Alvin’s not dead. He’s a tough kid, you know? They extracted the bullet from his shoulder and what I heard was that he’s going to recover alright. His mother is a wreck, though. You know, losing her husband and all. She said the strangest thing at the hospital. She said something about the cops trying to kill her son like they killed her husband. You remember Detective Proctor, don’t you? You remember he was found shot through the head in what was called a suicide. Well, Alvin is his son. Even the chief came to look in on him.”

  “I didn’t know that, Ellis,” said Mattie. “But are they going to do anything to that cracker cop who shot that boy?”

  Ellis paused to take a deep breath and looked down at the floor before continuing. “They’re saying it was an accident. That it was his ‘faulty’ holster. All they’re doing is issuing Officer Briggs a regulation sidearm and holster.”

  Downstairs, Prez started up again.

  “All those cops coming with all their guns out. I wonder how bad they’d be if they didn’t have any guns. They’d have to treat us with more respect if they didn’t have any guns, you know. Because they’re just white punks with guns, you know. I’ll bet they can’t fight a lick.”

  “Prez, you have to stop talking like that,” said Debra. “All you can think about is fighting. Do you think that really decides who is a better person? Well, do you? Don’t you all remember Reverend Williams’ sermon last Sunday?” Debra asked. “He was telling us all about the preacher down south who’s starting to get us organized so that we can fight for our rights. That preacher, Reverend King, that’s what he says, too. ‘Turn the other cheek.’”

  “Okay, Debra,” said Prez. “Yeah, Jesus did say that. And so did that preacher. I saw him on TV. They both say that violence is not right.”