And in the very instant of his seeing it, there is a bang and a 30.06 bullet, a bullet with enough stopping power to fell a buck dead in its tracks, strikes King on the right side of his face and he drops like a sack of flour and gore flies up and paints the overhang of the balcony and everybody ducks and Malcolm just stands there impotent, useless, and pathetic.
For 40 years, that failure had been with him. He had never told anyone, he had sought no psychiatric help, he had said nothing. He had simply lived with it, this secret shame that haunted his dreams, the knowledge that he had seen, yet done nothing.
Not again. Not this time.
He might die tonight—no, he almost certainly would die tonight—but he would not just allow the thing to happen in front of him while he failed to act. Not again. That much, he swore.
Malcolm knew that whatever it was he did, he had to do it now, while he was still free. Once they chained him to the hood of the van, he wouldn’t have a chance.
But what?
He thought of all the hours of television he had watched as a boy and a young man, all the times he had seen the likes of Joe Mannix and Little Joe Cartwright move like lightning and disarm men who had the drop on them, knock the gun away in one quick motion, deliver a solid haymaker in the next. But that was television and besides, after having his car rear-ended this morning, after sitting in that chair for 16 hours, after blowing out candles on his sixtieth birthday cake, Malcolm knew one thing for sure: there was no lightning caged in his bones.
But he had to do something. He couldn’t not do something. Not again.
Think. Think.
He was struck by the sheer ridiculousness of what he was demanding of himself. He was no action hero. Indeed, as a man who spent his days crafting arguments on a computer screen, he was about as far from an action hero as it was possible to get. All day, he had tried to use the skills he did have to move Pym, had tried to use logic and provocation to persuade this strange and somehow tragic man to see what he refused to see, but that had netted him nothing. Pym refused to see, refused to be moved. So Malcolm’s options had come down, absurdly, to trying to think of what Joe Mannix might do in his place.
Malcolm went through the door, hands held high. Behind him, McLarty handed one of the assault rifles to Pym, who slung it over his shoulder.
Malcolm took inventory, tried to see everything, to view it the way an action hero would. There had to be something here that could help him. He felt the pistol poking him in the back and realized he had stopped just outside the door.
He walked around toward the back of the van. Except that it wasn’t a van anymore. It was a tank, its every surface and window covered with armor plating. The plating had even reduced the windshield to a mere slit of glass. Neon hate slogans festooned its sides.
WHITE AND PROUD!
NOBAMA!
WHITE AMERICA, RISE!
One of the panels carried a crude rendering of the Confederate battle flag. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” McLarty had come up on his side.
Malcolm did not speak.
Think. Think.
Now he stood behind the van, the back door of which still hung open. The back seats were gone. The cargo area was filled with two rows of barrels, linked by a profusion of wires running across the floor. This, Malcolm supposed, was the bomb.
McLarty had pulled the van up into a narrow alley closed off at the front. In that tight space, the doors to the cab could not be opened wide enough to accommodate someone of Pym’s size. And the sliding door could not be opened, covered as it was with armor plating. Pym would have to climb in through the back, between the drums that constituted their bomb. And they would have to pull the van out into the open space on the other side of the warehouse if they intended to chain Malcolm to the grill.
They seemed to realize this at the same time Malcolm did. They looked at each other. McLarty shrugged. “Didn’t think about that,” he said. “Go on and climb in. I’ll watch this guy.”
Pym nodded. He pocketed the little pistol and began to shrug the assault rifle higher on his shoulder as he braced to climb into the van.
Now.
The thought and the action were simultaneous. Malcolm jabbed his elbow into Pym’s side. It didn’t hurt him much, but it surprised him. His hands went automatically to his stomach. Malcolm yanked at the rifle. The gun slid free.
Somewhere, Malcolm had seen—maybe he read it, maybe he saw it on television—that Timothy McVeigh had had a failsafe for his terrible device. There were multiple fuses, but in the event they failed, there was also some sort of contraption—a blasting cap, Malcolm supposed it was called—that could go off with the impact of a bullet and set off the unholy bomb. These two had aped that Opie-faced killer in so many other ways; Malcolm prayed to God they had also aped him in this. He lifted the rifle toward the rear of the van and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He pulled the trigger harder.
Nothing happened again.
Then Malcolm was on the ground, his skull throbbing from the impact of a rifle butt. McLarty, who had hit him, didn’t even look at Malcolm beyond the instant it took him to snatch the rifle back and thrust it at Pym.
“How fucking stupid are you, Sergeant? What kind of soldier are you, you can’t even keep hands on your own fucking gun?”
He smacked Pym on the back of the head with his open palm.
“You fucking idiot! Do you realize what almost happened here because of your carelessness?”
“What the hell, Dwayne?” Pym stared incredulously at the smaller man.
McLarty reached up and smacked Pym again on the back of the head. “Fuck fuck fuck, Clarence!” he snarled. Dwayne McLarty had become something…feral.
“Ow!” cried Clarence. “Dwayne, I told you not to hit me any—
McLarty cut him off by hitting him. And this time, McLarty smacked Pym hard enough that the big man hunched his head and bent double. When he did, his eyes met Malcolm’s. It was like looking into a cauldron. Rage burned there. Hatred burned there. Shame burned there. And hurt—years and years of hurt—burned there, too.
McLarty screamed. “Goddamnit, Sergeant!”
Pym’s burning eyes met Malcolm’s. Malcolm said, “What will your mother think, Clarence?”
He might have said more, but all at once, Pym was roaring like some wounded beast and bringing the rifle up. Malcolm closed his eyes and cringed, wondering how bad it would hurt, wondering if he would hear the shots.
But all he heard was the voice of Clarence Pym. It said, very clearly, “I’d run if I was you.”
Malcolm opened his eyes. He saw Pym flip the safety selector on the AK-47 to fire mode.
Oh, shit.
Malcolm was coming to his feet as Pym was straightening up. Malcolm was running as Pym faced the bomb inside the van. Behind him, McLarty screamed, “No no no!”
Malcolm ran.
The rifle chattered.
The van exploded.
twenty-six
That morning after getting off work, Malcolm rode his bike downtown.
He was aware of the eyes on him, white people watching, their faces hard with suspicion—and also, he realized with a jolt, fear. A police officer riding shotgun in a cruiser eyeballed him hard. Malcolm pretended not to notice and kept on riding.
He rode until he got to an office building on Front Street with a Western Union in the lobby. He chained his bike to a lamppost outside and walked in. Some stubby white man in a straw fedora was ahead of Malcolm in line. He turned, shifting a bitter-smelling cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other as he stared at Malcolm with frank interest and even franker malice. Malcolm stared back. Eventually, the man turned away.
When the white man had finished his business and Malcolm reached the counter, he asked for a telegraph blank and then wrote out a message and handed it to the white woman in the cat’s-eye glasses on the other side.
Writing to apologize. STOP. Behavior was inexcusa
ble. STOP. Understand that now. STOP. Would like to return to school. STOP. Please give me another chance. STOP. Promise you won’t be sorry. STOP.
She glanced up at him and he could see the questions dancing in her eyes, but she didn’t ask. “Who’s this going to?” she said.
Malcolm gave her the name and address of the dean at the white college who had suspended him. He paid for the telegram, went outside, and retrieved his bicycle. He rode past the white man with the smelly cigar, who was making his way very slowly, leaning heavily on a cane. Malcolm felt the burn of the man’s gaze in the center of his back.
He rode south through the wasteland of yesterday’s violence. National Guardsmen stood on street corners smoking cigarettes, chatting together. They glanced up, appraising him as he passed. A personnel carrier went in the opposite direction, its treads rumbling and squeaking. The soldiers all turned their heads.
A few people were out in the riot zone, curious onlookers come to see the destruction for themselves, insurance adjusters with clipboards in hand, men with hammers and plywood nailing up the gaping maws of looted stores, merchants and proprietors scraping push brooms against the sidewalk. Glass glittered in dustpans that were emptied into cardboard boxes because no trashcans were available. Mounds of garbage towered over alleys and side yards.
People watched him as he passed. Without knowing anything about him beyond the color of his skin, their eyes found him guilty of all this. And he was. He always would be, more than they could ever know.
Malcolm fixed his gaze on a point in the middle distance and rode toward it.
Finally, he reached home, hauled the bike up the familiar stairs, and up to the familiar door. He walked in. His father was in the kitchen making breakfast. Pop looked up, but did not speak. Malcolm stood in the doorway separating kitchen from front room and watched. He could not make himself cross the threshold.
Behind him on the television, a white man with a brush cut and black frame glasses was excoriating Martin Luther King for, he said, starting the violence and running away. He called him a hypocrite. He called him a coward. He called him “Martin Loser King.”
Pop said, “You gon’ eat, or you just gon’ stand there?” He was dishing up two plates. Oxtails and eggs.
Malcolm sat down. “Look, Pop…”
“What happened with that old lady?”
“She died.”
Pop had been scraping eggs onto a plate. He stopped and some emotion Malcolm couldn’t quite read filmed his eyes. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. He went back to fixing the plate, passed it over to Malcolm.
Malcolm lifted his fork. “Look, Pop, I want to talk to you about…”
“She wasn’t a bad old lady. I know me and her ain’t never got along, but still…”
Malcolm put his fork down. “Pop, would you listen to me?”
His father regarded him with sober eyes. Finally, he said, “Junior, some things, you got to leave them alone.”
“Pop…”
“What’s that y’all young ones say? ‘Let it all hang out?’ Can’t always do that.”
“But I just wanted to say that I didn’t mean…”
“Don’t,” said his father. Malcolm stopped. The older man looked at him. Then he shook his head. “You think I don’t know what you see when you look at me, June? Tired old man ain’t never been nowhere, ain’t never learned nothin’, ain’t never done nothin’, ain’t never gon’ be nothin’. And you, look at you. You shiny and new like a penny. You the future. I guess the future always look down on the past. I guess that ain’t no big surprise.”
Malcolm felt the tears leaking onto his cheeks. His voice was ashen. “Pop, listen to me…”
Pop plowed right through the barrier of Malcolm’s protests. “But see,” he said, “you might be future and I might be past, but we tied together, you and me. We tied together ’cause we live in this house. We tied together ’cause we blood. I’m your father and you my son. Ain’t nothin’ gon’ never change that fact. So what’s the use, you sayin’ somethin’ to me right now? About yesterday, I mean. That’s done. That’s over. And here we are, still in this house, together, still father and son. That’s why I say, Junior: some things, you can’t do nothin’ about. Some things, you just got to leave them alone. Look past them. Live with them. Do you understand what I’m saying?” His father was watching him closely.
Malcolm nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.
“Good,” said his father. “Now eat.”
Malcolm did not know whether to be grateful or ashamed. He did not know whether he had escaped something or been set free. He picked up his fork and began to eat. His father did the same. They ate together in the darkened kitchen of the little house. They didn’t speak about the awful thing Malcolm had said. They never would.
The letter came five days later.
Malcolm was dozing in his room when his father came in with the mail and shook him awake. “Thought you might want to see this,” he said. And he dropped a large envelope on the bed next to Malcolm. The return address showed that it had come from the dean’s office at the white college.
Malcolm sat up and broke the seal eagerly. He pulled out a course catalog for summer classes. Clipped to that was a neatly typed letter from the dean. It began: “I am in receipt of your telegram asking for readmission. I have given it serious consideration and I have come to this conclusion: if you are willing to buckle down and take your obligations seriously, I am willing to extend you another chance.” It went on to advise him that he would need to take summer courses this year and next to make up for the work he had missed during his suspension. He would also need to agree to work to pay off the cost of cleaning his graffiti off the wall. He was to report back to school next month.
“They lettin’ you back in?”
Malcolm was surprised to realize Pop was standing above him. “Yeah,” Malcolm told him. “I go back next month.”
Pop smiled. “That’s good, Junie. That’s real good. I ain’t even knowed you applied to go back.”
“I guess I didn’t tell you,” said Malcolm. “I met Martin Luther King last week. We talked. He’s the one who told me I should take my ass back to school.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. It was at the hotel, the night after, well, you know… He was standing out back where I usually take my breaks.”
Pop said, “What’s he like?”
Malcolm considered this. He thought of the sad, exhausted eyes. He thought of the grim determination. “He gave me a lot to think about,” he told his father. Pop looked at him, waiting for Malcolm to say more. Malcolm shrugged, unable to put words to what he was trying to convey. “That’s it,” he said, almost apologetically. “I’ve just been thinking about a lot of things since then, is all.”
Pop regarded him for a long moment. He said, “King coming back to town tonight. He say he got to have another march in Memphis; he got to prove it can be nonviolent. I was goin’ over to hear him. You want to go with me?”
Malcolm didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes,” he said.
They rode the bus over to Mason Temple that evening under a sky mottled with black and gray clouds. When Malcolm and his father got off on E.H. Crump Boulevard, they stepped into the sort of wind that would rip an umbrella inside out, snatch it from you, and fling it down the street. So they didn’t even bother with opening the one they had brought, simply turned up the collars on their coats, adjusted their hats, and staggered doggedly against the pushing and shoving of the air.
Lightning blasted the world white and then came thunder, crashing so hard and so close Malcolm could feel it like a solid thing against his chest. The rain had not come yet, but it would. It was only a matter of time.
A car rushed past. It was full of men his father knew, probably going where he and his father were going. He saw Pop glance over and knew he had seen the same thing. It made the guilt flare up like a toothache that just won’t stop.
“You didn’t have
to do this, Pop,” he said. “You could have rode with Sonny.”
Sonny had not explicitly said that Malcolm was not welcome in his car. But his silences and his ice-water stares had spoken more clearly than words ever could. And that was when he came around, which was not so often now as it once had been.
“Yeah,” said Pop. “I could have.”
“He’s your best friend, Pop.”
A bolt of light stabbed the earth and the thunder detonated again, more ferocious than before, so loud that Malcolm almost missed what his father said in response. Almost.
“Yeah, but you my son.”
It was a simple declaration, little more than a statement of fact, but it set emotions colliding in Malcolm’s chest so hard he actually gasped. He felt ashamed of himself. And he felt a sudden, overpowering love. He draped an arm across his father’s shoulder, surprising them both. There was a moment. Then his father did the same.
Staggering together against the wind, father and son walked toward Mason Temple. The rain had just begun—stinging darts that felt like tiny knives against the skin—when the building came in sight.
The room was not full. The weather had kept the crowd down. White men with microphones and TV cameras were arrayed before the pulpit—crews from national television networks. A union leader was addressing the crowd.
Malcolm and his father were still standing just inside the door, shaking the water off, when there came a sudden burst of applause. Malcolm craned his neck to see what had caused it. He saw Ralph Abernathy entering the auditorium by a side door. Malcolm looked for King. He saw his father looking for King, too. But King was not to be seen. Abernathy had come alone. Disappointment and confusion rumbled up from the crowd in an audible murmur.
“King not gon’ be here?” his father asked.
Before Malcolm could even hunch his shoulders to indicate his own bafflement, Sonny was there, holding out a flier for Pop. “Mo? You seen this?” He spared less attention for Malcolm than he would have a chair or a table.
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