Grant Park

by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

  “Child, you soaked to the bone,” said Nanny Parker as he mounted the steps to his house. “You going to catch your death.”

  She was standing on her covered porch, one arm folded across her middle, drinking from a mug of coffee and watching the water come spitting from the sky. Even rain was not enough to drive her inside. Miss Parker practically lived on that porch.

  “Morning,” said Malcolm, through bitterly chattering teeth as he stood under the overhang and fumbled in his pocket for his keys.

  “I heard Mozell and Sonny back there in my yard early this morning. Looked out and saw they done took all my trash down to the dump in Sonny’s car. Thank them for me, would you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell me: Was you there when Dr. King spoke? Did you hear him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He had his keys in hand.

  “So, are you goin’ to the march tomorrow?”

  This amused him and he struggled to keep it from showing. Oh, he was going to the march all right. She could damn well bet on that. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said.

  It stopped him. “You?” he said. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Oh yes,” said the old woman, her eyes shining. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “It’s going to be a mess down there,” said Malcolm. “At your age, I mean…maybe you should stay home.”

  She lifted the mug to her smile, gazing out over the rain. “My age ain’t got nothin’ to do with it,” she said. “Them sanitation men doing a mighty work of God. We need to stand behind them.” She gave him a meaningful look. “We all need to stand behind them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Malcolm. He was racking his brain for another objection, a way to tell her she shouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. But he came up empty. Then he realized he was just standing there, and she was still looking at him. “Try to march up near the front,” he said. “You’ll…you’ll have a better view.” It was the best he could come up with.

  Her gaze questioned him. Malcolm pushed the door open to escape. “You stay dry, now,” he told her.

  It had been a moment when he should have said something, a moment when he should have done something. But he didn’t say and didn’t do, so it became a moment—a tiny, seemingly insignificant slice out of time—that he would live with until he died. For 40 years, the guilt of what he had not said or done, the guilt of all that happened afterward, culminating in that awful instant when he had a chance to save Martin Luther King and didn’t, had sat heavily as rocks upon Malcolm Toussaint. In that one pivotal moment, he had failed his father, failed Miss Parker, failed history itself.

  He supposed he’d had some inkling of his failure even then, right in the moment, as he walked into the house to escape her questioning eyes. But he had fought it down. Nerves, he’d called it.

  Conscience, more like.

  But Lord knew he’d had his chances, even after.

  The march didn’t even happen the next day as scheduled. It started to snow that same night. By the time Malcolm woke up to get ready for another night on the graveyard shift, it had been falling for hours. He washed and dressed, bundled himself in his heavy coat, grabbed his bicycle, and went out into the frozen dark. For a moment, he just stood there on the sidewalk in front of the house, breathing in cold air beneath the falling sky.

  Snow. Of all things, snow. Malcolm lifted his gloved hands and watched a few flakes settle there and dissolve. They were big as silver dollars. He could not remember the last time it had snowed this late in March. Shaking his head, he hopped on his bike and rode. It was slow and slippery going, even though there was not yet much accumulation.

  The snow was still falling nine hours later when Malcolm got off work. It had piled itself deep and there was no question of being able to ride his bike home. He was standing in front of the hotel with it, wondering what he would do, when Ronald Whitten came up behind him. “Come on, kid,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”

  Malcolm pondered turning the offer down; he didn’t like being around white people any more than he had to. But then what would he do? How would he get home?

  “Okay,” Malcolm said, his voice stiff. “Thank you.”

  They walked to the lot behind the building. He lifted the bike into the bed of Whitten’s old pickup truck and climbed into the cab as Whitten cranked the engine. Even for the truck, the streets were a difficult go. It slid and slipped slowly east through a world leeched of color, movement, and sound. Parked cars had become only humps of snow. Garbage heaps had become white mountains. You had to guess where the streets were because curbs lay buried.

  The two men didn’t speak much—what did they have to talk about? The overheated cab of the truck was filled with blue smoke from Whitten’s cigarettes. Country and western music provided the background to Whitten’s occasional cursing when the truck slewed sideways on the slick white surface.

  There would be no march today. It was as if nature herself had intervened, had doused the trash fires, stilled the angry words, frozen all of Memphis in place.

  “You’ve been doing good work.” Whitten spoke out of nowhere.

  Surprised, Malcolm glanced over. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Most of ’em I hire, I’ve got to back after ’em, check up on ’em. Never had that problem with you.”

  “Thank you,” said Malcolm again.

  “Good work habits,” said Whitten. “That’ll carry you far.”

  “Turn up here,” said Malcolm.

  “You learn them work habits from your daddy?”

  “I guess,” said Malcolm.

  “What’s he do?”

  “Sanitation worker,” said Malcolm.

  Whitten arched an eyebrow. “The ones on strike?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad business, that strike.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” said Malcolm. It was the most noncommittal thing he could think of.

  “They may have a legitimate beef, you know, but they’re going about it all wrong.”

  “Right turn,” said Malcolm, hoping the white man would shut up.

  Whitten obeyed, still talking. “Pushing the mayor in the corner, bringing in that Martin Luther King—who does that help, you know? I’ll tell you who: the communists. Now there’s even talk the city may have to cancel the Cotton Carnival.”

  The Carnival was a Memphis tradition, a misty-eyed homage to the “good old days” of dutiful slaves and benevolent masters. It was the highlight of the city’s social calendar, climaxed with the crowning of the new cotton king and queen. Whitten shook his head, miserable at the thought of cancellation. “Now what those men should do…” he began.

  Malcolm cut him off. “Right here,” he said. He was still three blocks from home. But he’d had enough of listening to Ronald Whitten.

  The truck slid as Whitten applied the brake. Malcolm was lifting the lever on the door even before the truck came to a full stop. “Thanks for the ride,” he said, opening the door.

  Whitten was squinting at the sky. “Been here all my life,” he said. “Ain’t never seen it like this, especially in damn near April.” He looked at Malcolm. “You don’t make it to work tonight, I’ll understand. Hell, not sure I’ll make it myself.”

  “Yeah,” said Malcolm. He slipped out of the truck, lifted his bicycle from the back, and stood there in snow that came halfway up his shin, watching as Whitten picked his way gingerly down the street, a fantail of slush spraying off his back tires.

  Then he hoisted his bike and started walking. It was a tough slog, what with the weight of the bike and the depth of the snow. Malcolm’s breath, ragged and loud in his ears, was the only sound in all the world. Memphis was entombed in a stillness that felt sacred. The angry city had become a blank slate, a sheet of white paper, a chance to do it over and get it right.

  And perhaps it was the recognition of this that made him pause when he got home and look over to the house next door, remembering what he had no
t said and had not done 24 hours before. But Miss Parker was not out on her porch. She was always out there. Rain, heat, sleet, snow, it didn’t matter; she sat out there all day witnessing life. But this morning, when he was looking for her, when he was half-hoping for her, the porch was empty.

  Would he have said what he should have said, done what he should have done, if she had been out there? Would he have told her emphatically to stay away when they rescheduled the march? Would he have taken this second chance? Malcolm had never been able to answer the question—not then, and not 40 years later.

  He stood there a moment watching the empty porch. Finally, he hoisted the bike and slogged his way up the stairs. There, he stamped snow from his feet and shook it from his body as best he could, then opened his front door and let himself in. Behind him, snow tumbled from the sky, hiding all signs of human movement—footprints, tire tracks, bike treads—beneath a shroud of forgiving white.

  Except that, as it turned out, nothing would be forgiven. In the end, they would all be denied the balm of grace and mercy: Memphis, the sanitation men, Martin Luther King, Malcolm Toussaint.

  The memory of it was never too far away. Especially since Marie died. He had thrown himself into work and work had thrown itself right back at him and instead of healing, it was anger that had built in him like trapped fire. He had gone to bed night after night and seen Martin Luther King die right before him or sometimes (which was arguably worse) be saved right before him. Then Donte Stoddard had walked out of that fast food restaurant, innocent of any crime on the books, but black, young, and male in an instant when those were dangerous things to be, and he had been executed for no good reason and Malcolm had written about it, had held the cops accountable (which, after all, was his job) and the same stupid fucking white racist assholes had written the same stupid fucking white racist emails they always write when things like this happen and…

  and…

  …and he had finally had enough of it, had more than he could bear, and now here he sat, chained to a chair in a forgotten warehouse by some fat lunatic, and he was probably going to die in some ridiculous attempt to assassinate a man who didn’t even need assassinating because he was never going to be elected president, not in this racist fucking country, and it was all just…just…

  Malcolm’s head hung. His muscles ached. His spirit ached. He was exhausted. No, he was spent. Body and soul, there was nothing left.

  Somewhere behind him, beyond his line of sight, lay the body of the little drunk who had almost saved him. Malcolm was only dimly aware that Clarence Pym was pacing now, agitated. For the fifth time in fifteen minutes, he checked his watch.

  “After 3:00,” he muttered, raking a hand back through his unruly cowlick. “Where the hell can he be?”

  And it was at that moment that the man-sized metal door rolled up with a loud clatter and Dwayne McLarty stepped through, pushing some frightened-looking black woman about Malcolm’s age. His jaw was swollen and purple. So was hers. The butt of a pink pistol was visible in McLarty’s waistband. He looked pleased with himself.

  Pym, astounded, wheeled around on his friend. “Dwayne! Where the hell have you been?”

  nineteen

  “Who are you?”

  Malcolm whispered this to the woman. She was sitting on the floor behind him, her feet duct-taped together and her hands duct-taped behind her to the crossbar of Malcolm’s chair. Pym and McLarty were paying them no attention. They stood a few feet away, excitedly bringing each other up to date.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” McLarty had asked, pointing to the angry red slash on the left side of Pym’s face.

  “I could ask you the same question,” Pym had said, pointing to McLarty’s swollen and empurpled jaw.

  “Yeah,” McLarty had said, “but I asked you first.” So Pym had dutifully, if somewhat reluctantly, shown McLarty the body of the little drunk who tried to save Malcolm and explained how he had no choice but to kill him.

  “I didn’t want to,” he’d said in a soft voice, “but I had to.”

  “You didn’t ‘want’ to?” repeated McLarty in a mocking, prissy little voice.

  “No,” admitted Pym.

  Whereupon McLarty stretched on tiptoes and roared in his face.

  “Stop being such a pussy, for Chrissake! What did you expect, Sergeant? What the fuck kind of soldier are you, anyway? We are at war with these people. In war, people get killed.”

  “I know that!” shouted Pym. “You don’t have to yell at me, Dwayne! Stop yelling at me!”

  “I’m Janeka,” the woman whispered back. “You’re Malcolm?”

  He was surprised. It struck him that she had not used his full name, as she would’ve if she were just someone who recognized him from television or the newspaper. She spoke with a familiarity he didn’t understand. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “Bob Carson is…” And here, there was a tiny hesitation. Then she rephrased it. “I know Bob,” she said. “We were having lunch when this guy grabbed us from the restaurant. He gave Bob some computer disk. He told him he would kill me if Bob didn’t take it to his newspaper and make them put it online.”

  “It’s a video,” said Malcolm. “These two are some sort of half-assed white supremacist group. They kidnapped me this morning and recorded some kind of manifesto they want to put out to the world.”

  “But why?”

  “They say they have a bomb and they’re going to blow up Grant Park tonight. They want to kill Obama.”

  Malcolm had his head turned to the left, trying to glimpse the woman on the floor behind him. So he didn’t even see the pistol butt that came down from the right, clouting him hard on his temple. Then McLarty was in his face, his eyes burning with fever fire, his spittle spraying Malcolm’s cheek like a garden hose. “Shut the fuck up!” he thundered. “Shut up shut up shut up! No talking. Do you hear?”

  Malcolm nodded. “Yes,” he told the maddened face that filled his vision. “Yes, I hear.” He was a 60-year-old man with a prostate the size of a grapefruit and a bladder the size of a walnut, and he’d had no access to a bathroom since before dawn. So Malcolm Toussaint was horrified but not truly surprised to feel sudden warmth spreading in his crotch, to look down and see the front of his pants grow dark.

  He closed his eyes. He could have died, then.

  McLarty staggered backwards, cackling with laughter. “He pissed himself! Did you see! This nigger pissed himself! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Clarence, get the camera! Get a picture of this!”

  Pym did not reply. There was a silence. His humiliation subsumed by curiosity, Malcolm opened his eyes and brought his head up a fraction. Pym stood there with his arms folded, facing his friend. “You used,” he said.

  McLarty turned. “Oh, Clarence, come on.”

  “You used,” said Pym again. “You said you wouldn’t. You said you were done with that shit.”

  McLarty threw his hands out, one of them still clenching a pink pistol. “Yeah, I used,” he said. “So the fuck what so the fuck what so the fuck what? Who cares? In a few hours, we’ll both be dead and mission accomplished. What does it matter if I have a little fun one last time?”

  “You said you were done with it,” Pym said again. “You promised me.” He turned and walked away.

  McLarty’s hands came down and he gave a great sigh of exasperation as he followed his friend. “Come on, Clarence. Don’t be that way.”

  The argument continued over near the door.

  After a moment, Malcolm heard the woman’s voice whisper, “Are you okay?”

  It was a moment more before he could bring himself to answer. “I’m sorry,” he said, through the pain drumming in his temple, the trickle of blood on his face. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. It’s just…I’ve been sitting here for nine hours. No bathroom breaks, you know?”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said.

  Malcolm did not reply.

  “You don’t,” she
insisted.

  And this, of course, made it worse.

  “So anyway,” he said, needing to change the subject, “they’re crazy and they want to blow up Grant Park to kill Obama.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “That will never work. The police barricades, the Secret Service, the crowds…”

  “Did you miss the part where I said they’re crazy? And you’re right. They’ll never get to Obama. But how many people will they kill in the trying? Starting with us?”

  “Jesus,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’m frightened,” she told him. “I don’t mind telling you that.”

  “I don’t mind telling you that I am, too.”

  “That little one is just plain mean. He reminds of me some nasty, rabid dog. What about the other one?”

  “His name is Clarence Pym. I don’t know how to figure him at all. He’s got some nasty in him for sure. I called him fat and stupid a few hours ago, trying to get a rise out of him. My ears are still ringing from how hard he smacked me. But then right after that, he brought me a cup of water. I’m not sure he’s all there. Sometimes, he acts like this is all just a game or like he doesn’t get what they’re doing here. You heard him. He’s all torn up because he killed some poor homeless guy who tried to save me, but then he can turn around and talk about blowing up a park full of people like it’s no big deal.”

  “Do you think he’s developmentally delayed?”

  Malcolm thought it over, then shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “In some ways, he seems intelligent. I mean, he can rattle off the box score from any Bulls game you name, especially during the Jordan era.”

  Behind him, the woman—Janeka—made a dismissive sound. “That’s just memorization, not intelligence.”

  “It’s more than that,” said Malcolm, impatient with her for being right. “It’s just…the way he puts things together, I don’t think his problem is a developmental delay. If anything, he’s emotionally delayed. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but that’s how he comes across to me. It just seems like there’s a lot of stuff that a normal person would get that maybe he doesn’t.”