Grant Park

by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

  “Y’all okay?” one man yelled. “Y’all need help?”

  Bob just lifted a hand and shook his head. He didn’t want their help. He simply wanted out of Memphis. Two blocks later, they turned onto the side street where his car was parked. Janeka fished his keys out of his front pocket and opened the passenger side door for him.

  By the time she started the car, he was unconscious.

  Bob awoke to the sound of Janeka asking a gas station attendant for directions to the nearest hospital. He touched her arm and she looked around. “I don’t want to go to a hospital here,” he said. “Just take me back to campus.”

  “Bob, we’re in a city. Why would you want to go to some country doctor down in the boondocks?”

  “I don’t want to go to a doctor here,” he said. His jaw had swollen and talking was difficult. “Take me back to campus. Will you do that? Please?”

  With tears in her eyes, she nodded.

  Bob slept again and this time when he woke, the car was parked in front of a diner on a dirt road he recognized. They were maybe five miles from campus. He craned his head to the right and saw Janeka in a phone booth. He touched his jaw. It was a grapefruit. He touched his temple. It was still tacky with blood.

  Janeka saw him looking. She hung up the phone and got back in the car. “You got your wish,” she said. “We’re back near campus. But I had to call for an ambulance. I have no idea where the nearest hospital is.” There was a note of reproach in her voice.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The voice that came out of his swollen and injured face was heavy and slow and sounded nothing like his own.

  “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just gone to a hospital in Memphis,” Janeka said.

  “Memphis is insane,” said Bob in his new voice. “I just wanted to get out of there.”

  She said, “A man on the radio said they’re probably going to bring in the National Guard.”

  “Good,” said Bob.

  “From what he said, it sounds like they’re already blaming Martin Luther King for the riot.”

  Bob turned his head. He didn’t answer.

  “Did you hear me? I said—”

  Bob was watching as some white girl with a Confederate flag emblem on the back pocket of her jeans got out of a truck and went to the phone booth Janeka had just used. “I heard you,” he told Janeka without turning. “He didn’t start it—but he didn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “Bob, what do you mean?”

  Now he turned his ruined face back toward her. “He ran. He abandoned us.”

  “But what could he have done? You saw that crowd. They were out of control.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know I expected better.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you expected too much,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I respect the man and all the things he’s done. But at the end of the day, he is not Jesus, he does not walk on water, and he does not have all the answers. I get tired sometimes of people acting as if he does.”

  This stunned him. After a moment he said, “So you don’t believe in Martin Luther King?”

  Even as he said it, he realized he was speaking in the exact tone of wonder and disbelief he’d have used to ask if she no longer believed in Jesus. The little smirk that twisted her lips just then told him she had heard the same thing.

  “I’m just saying,” said Janeka, “maybe it’s time to try something new. Some new philosophy, some new approach. I don’t know if he’s the right man for these times.”

  The injury to his face prevented Bob’s jaw from dropping. But his mouth came open and he stared at her. He could not believe what he was hearing.

  They sat in silence for long minutes. The girl with the Confederate flag patch finished her phone call, got back in her truck, and peeled out in a great cloud of dust. A moment later, Janeka said, “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  And for some reason, Bob felt his heart lurch sideways.

  “What?” he asked. There was a slight tremble in his voice. From a distance, he could hear the cry of the ambulance siren.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” she said, “but today, all this sort of made up my mind for me.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “It’s not about you. I want you to know that.”

  “What?” he pleaded. Tears were already in his eyes. They slid down, stinging the cuts on his cheek.

  “Bob, don’t,” she said.

  “What is it?” He needed to hear although somehow, he already knew. The siren was growing louder.

  “I’m leaving school, Bob. I just…I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “But why?”

  “I just don’t,” she said.

  “Because of me? Because of us? Did I do something?”

  “Everything is changing, Bob. The whole country, the whole world, everything is changing. I just don’t think this is the right place for me anymore.”

  “‘The right place?’” He tried to laugh, but something strangled and desperate came out of him instead. “What is the right place, Janeka?”

  She sighed. “I want to go to a black school,” she said. “Maybe even an all-girl school like Spelman.”

  “What about us?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking away. And he heard it for the lie that it was. She knew, all right. She just could not make herself say.

  And she still had not answered the most important thing. “But why?” he asked again.

  The siren grew louder, grew until it filled all the spaces, and then abruptly shut off as the truck pulled next to them in a crunch of tires on dirt and rocks. Janeka sprang from the car as if escaping it. Bob heard her tell the attendant, “He’s right here,” and then two young white men in white uniforms were looking through the car window at him.

  “What happened to you, bud?” one of them asked.

  “He was in Memphis,” said Janeka, and at that, he saw one of the white men shoot the other one a look. “We were both in Memphis,” she corrected.

  “Can you walk, bud?”

  The attendant opened the car door and put a hand on Bob’s upper arm. He came out stiffly. His eyes never left Janeka.

  “Why?” he asked her again.

  She pretended not to hear. “Some big guy jumped on him and beat him pretty badly,” she told the attendant, who was leading Bob toward the back of the ambulance.

  “Yeah,” replied the attendant in a dry voice. “I can see that.”

  “Why?” Bob asked, still staring at her.

  “Seems like he’s asking you a question, miss,” the attendant said.

  She said, “Bob, we can talk more later. I still have your keys. I’ll park your car at the dorm and leave them with the monitor.”

  They were helping Bob into the back of the rig. He climbed in with the painful, uncertain steps of an 80-year-old, turning slowly and sitting on the stretcher. Janeka stood there, looking small. The attendant put an icepack in Bob’s right hand, then lifted Bob’s hand to Bob’s temple. Bob hardly noticed. He made his strange new voice as loud as he could, as emphatic as he could.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why? Why?” His eyes had filled again with tears. Blood dripped from a reopened cut on his chin. The ambulance attendant was strapping a blood-pressure cuff on Bob’s forearm. Now, like Bob, he paused and waited.

  Janeka came closer. She leaned into the rig, put her mouth next to his ear.

  “I understand,” she whispered, “that you’re hurt and that you’re angry. But you know this is for the best. Everything is changing, Bob. Nothing is the way it used to be even a year ago. You saw that today, didn’t you? The old ways, the old stuff, it just doesn’t mean anything anymore. It doesn’t work anymore. Maybe in another place and time, you and I would be…could be…” She gasped, unable to go on. She tried to step back, but he grabbed her hand.

&n
bsp; Her eyes met his. “Don’t,” he said. “Please.”

  She gave him a look he would carry to his grave—pain sorrow resignation pity. Maybe even love. Maybe. And she leaned in again and whispered in his ear.

  “I have to,” she said. “I have to be with my people.”

  She pulled back. And Bob heard himself whisper, “I thought I was your people, too.”

  He didn’t know if she heard him. The ambulance door closed in the same instant he said it.

  And just like that, she was gone.

  twenty-one

  Pop and Sonny straggled through the door of the little house a few minutes after Malcolm did, dragging the signs that proclaimed their manhood. They looked stunned.

  Malcolm was sitting in Pop’s chair in front of the television. He got up without being asked and Pop sat down. Malcolm and Sonny sat side by side on the ratty couch. No one spoke.

  The television screen was filled with bedlam—police firing teargas, rioters throwing bricks, kids running past the broken windows of downtown stores. Pop watched this for a moment, listened to the reporter narrating the disaster. Then he reached across and turned off the television. The silence was fat and heavy.

  “You was out there in all that mess?” As if he were just waiting for Malcolm to deny it.

  “You know I was there,” said Malcolm. “You saw me.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Pop. “Was you out there throwin’ bricks and breakin’ windows? Was you one of the ones done that?”

  “He was out there, all right,” said Sonny. He spoke in a voice of low menace. “I can see it in his eyes.”

  Malcolm was yanked to his feet as much by guilt as true indignation. “You don’t see shit, nigger!”

  Sonny stood more slowly. He faced Malcolm. “Call me out my name again, boy.”

  So much churned inside Malcolm Toussaint then. So much anger, so much shame, so much confusion. He had broken a store window. He had faced down a brother. He had saved a whitey he hated. And now there was this: his space invaded by this garbage man of impotent dreams. He said emphatically, “What you gon’ do about it, nigger?” And braced himself to fight. Wanted to fight.

  But Pop spoke. “Bunch of young fools ruined our march. We out there tryin’ to show manhood. We out there tryin’ to show dignity. And all that get throwed away ’cause of a bunch of hard-head, dumbass young motherfuckers. So I ask you again, June, was you out there in all that riotin’? Did you have anything to do with it?”

  Malcolm looked at his father. Pop’s eyes were cold with fire.

  He heard himself say, “I took a stick, okay? I broke a window.”

  And all of a sudden, he was sprawled on the couch, his hand cupping the pain in his jaw. His father had knocked him into the cushions and now stood over him, index finger cocked like a gun, voice coiled with fury.

  “You took a stick. You broke a window. And I think you halfway proud of yourself for that.”

  “Ain’t proud of—”

  His father bulldozed the interruption like a locomotive through a snow bank. “You took a stick. You broke a window. You turned our march—our march, goddamn it—into a riot. And you ruined every goddamn thing we worked for. You and all the rest of them young punks.” He turned away, one hand plowing through his short-cropped hair. “I hope you happy, June. I hope you real happy.”

  “We were trying to help.” Malcolm came fearfully to his feet, one hand massaging his jaw.

  He flinched when his father wheeled around. “Help? Is that what you call it?”

  Sonny shook his head. He even laughed. He said, “You know, boy, I used to admire you. You whip-smart and you done read all them books and you know a whole lot of shit. Here I am, a grown-ass man”—another laugh, sour as lemons—“but I used to look up to you. I used to think you was really somethin’. But now I come to realize: you ain’t shit, is you, nigger? You really ain’t.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” demanded Malcolm. He had had enough of them. Both of them. “You want us to march up and down the street singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ like y’all do? You want us to kneel and pray to blue-eyed Jesus while white folks beat the shit out of us? Is that your plan? Is that what your Dr. King tells you all to do?”

  “It’s called nonviolent protest,” said Sonny.

  “It’s called cowardice,” Malcolm said evenly. “But I guess that’s what you got to expect from a bunch of handkerchief-head, plantation niggers. The rest of us, we don’t believe in that Uncle Tom bullshit no more.”

  “You think we Uncle Toms? You think we cowards?” Pop’s eyes were livid. “Marchin’ in that street? Tellin’ them white folks they got to respect us now? That make us cowards?”

  Malcolm met his eyes. “You think it makes you brave? You think it makes you men?” A tiny smirk hooked one corner of his mouth. “Some of us, we don’t need no goddamn signs to know we’re men.”

  And at that, the room went cold and still. Pop’s face changed. He stared at Malcolm hard, stared as if he did not know him.

  Malcolm wanted to say something else, desperately felt the need to say something else, something that might wave away the terrible words as you would a stink in the air. But he couldn’t think of anything.

  “Pop,” he began.

  And then there was a knock at the door.

  Sonny was closest. He threw one last look at Malcolm, his eyes furious. Then he opened it. Melvin Cotter stood there.

  You could see in his face that he knew he had walked in on something. His wide eyes went from Sonny to Pop and, finally, to Malcolm, who said, “What are you doing here?”

  Melvin said, “I thought you should know. The old lady got hurt.”

  Something cold thumped Malcolm’s breastbone from the inside and it was a moment before he realized it was his heart. His fists fell open. “What?”

  “Miss Parker,” he said. “I seen her. She was out there when all that mess started. She was yellin’ for ’em to stop, but ain’t nobody paid her no mind. Then she just kind of keeled over. I think it was a heart attack or somethin’. They put her in the ambulance. She didn’t look good, Malcolm. She didn’t look good at all.”

  All at once, Malcolm could not suck in enough breath. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Where’d they take her?”

  “St. Joe’s.”

  St. Joseph’s hospital was about eight miles north. He could be there in under an hour, easily. Malcolm reached for his bike.

  Melvin did not bother hiding his surprise. “Are you crazy? You gon’ take your bike over there?”

  “I got to go,” said Malcolm.

  “You don’t understand,” said Melvin. “It’s wild out there. Cops still out there bustin’ up everybody black they see. Done already killed some boy. Way I heard, he wasn’t even armed, and they shot him.”

  “I got to go,” said Malcolm.

  Pop spoke. “Fool,” he said, “ain’t no sense in you goin’ out there, ’specially on no bike. Ain’t nothin’ you can do for that old lady. How it gon’ help her if you get your head busted in?”

  “I got to go,” said Malcolm. “I got to see about her.”

  He pushed the bike through the door without another word as his father stood there, too dumbfounded by his defiance to protest it. Malcolm rolled the bicycle down from the porch, hopped astride in one smooth motion, and took off for the hospital without a backward glance.

  The pain he felt was almost a physical thing. He could have stopped her. He could have stopped her. He could have stopped her.

  Instead, he had allowed her to walk, in her church dress and her flowered hat, right into the middle of a riot that he had known was going to happen—that he himself had helped engineer. His reasons had been noble, hadn’t they? His reasons had been unselfish. All he had wanted to do was help the garbage workers, right?

  Black power, right? Black power. Black power.

  Malcolm felt as if he might vomit. He was dazed with guilt.

  He rode north around tras
h fires, down streets of broken glass, past phalanxes of Memphis cops. He rode across an angry city tearing itself apart, but he was lucky: no one stopped him, no one challenged him. He rode to the hospital and made his way to the nurse’s station on Nanny Parker’s floor.

  He asked for her and the young white nurse on duty asked who he was. The lie sprang readily to his lips. “I’m Malcolm,” he said. “I’m…I’m her grandson.”

  The woman consulted a clipboard. “I’m afraid your grandmother had a heart attack, Malcolm. Poor thing. Apparently, she got caught up in that melee down on Beale.”

  Melee. It almost made him laugh. It had not been a melee. It had been a riot. It had been a brawl. And he had been one of its main actors.

  The nurse showed him to Miss Parker’s room. At the sight of her, lying there unconscious but, thank God, alive, he collapsed on the chair next to her bed, undone by grief and relief, but most of all, by an awareness of his own culpability.

  The nurse was still looking at her clipboard. “Is there any other family?” she asked.

  “No,” said Malcolm. “She had some friends with her. They went down to the…to the march together. Do you know what happened to them?”

  The woman shook her head, still consulting the clipboard. “She was alone when the ambulance got there. Perhaps they got separated. I understand it was crazy down there.”

  “She goes to a church,” insisted Malcolm. “My Hope Baptist. I don’t know the pastor’s name, but maybe somebody can look it up and you can contact him?” He hated the idea of Miss Parker lying here, unknown and all but alone.

  It must have shown on his face. The nurse gave him what was meant, he supposed, to be a reassuring smile. Then she disappeared from the door. Malcolm took Miss Parker’s hand. It was bony and cool to the touch.

  The room was a double, but the second bed was unoccupied and for this, Malcolm was grateful. It meant there was no one to throw him wondering glances, no one to ask him questions for which he had no answers, no one to see the tears straggle down his cheek.

  She lay in this bed looking far too small, far too frail, her long gray hair stark against the crisp white sheets. She had no idea he was there, but Malcolm sat with her anyway, sat with her for hours as outside, shadows marched across Memphis and evening settled in. He didn’t want her to wake up in this strange place and find nobody there.