by David Rowell
“She’s lucky she has you,” Delores said.
As they waited, Delores wondered how Ethel was holding up. The day had surely exhausted her. And what about all the poor children! There was still so much ahead for all of them: the arrival in Washington, the burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Where were Ethel and the children going to spend the night? she wondered. Was President Johnson putting them all up in the White House? How many rooms did Ethel need for a family that big? How, Delores wondered, could she face going back into their house, their swimming pool, their bedroom, without Bobby?
“You knew what tires you had,” Carlos said in approval. “You are wife of tire man. You know.” He was rolling the new tire from the truck to Delores’s car.
“Well, if he saw something besides a Firestone on this car, he’d have a heart attack,” Delores said. “Or shoot it.”
Carlos smiled. “He shouldn’t notice difference,” he said. “This one is new, but your others look good. Not much different. Maybe this one a little shinier. Best thing you can do is drive through big mud puddle, let them all get dirty.” His smooth, bald head was beaming in the sunlight, and he let out a full, proud laugh. Then he set out his tools to remove the flat, but his hands froze when he spotted Rebecca, who had just crept out of the car and hidden herself behind Delores’s leg.
“Oh my gracious,” Carlos said. “Little Rebecca. Beautiful Rebecca.” He looked up at Delores, incredulous. “She was in accident?”
“She fell from the monkey bars this morning,” Delores said. She did not want to say more, but neither did she want to sound unconcerned, so she added, “And she’s been so brave. Just a lot of bad boo-boos and bruises, but nothing more.”
Carlos took a step to have a closer look, but Rebecca retreated farther behind Delores’s leg. Angela and Faye and Betty Jean would be looking for them shortly. Delores did not want to give in to impatience, but now Arch’s complaint about how easily Carlos stopped working as he talked was already making her anxious.
“Poor, poor girl,” he said. He forced himself to smile, showing his one gold tooth, and said, “Rebecca, I am sorry for you. But that does not change that you are still beautiful girl. Does it hurt to smile, if you go like this?” He stretched his mouth wide with his oil-tipped fingers, revealing the rest of his teeth. Rebecca hid completely from view, then peered around to see if his smile was still waiting for her. It was.
“I don’t smile like that,” she said.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Carlos said. “You should smile big and wide, even with bruise.” He stretched his lips even farther, and Rebecca giggled this time before she could catch herself.
“No,” she said.
Carlos looked at Delores, and he could tell by the way the corners of her mouth strained that she had had a difficult day. He began to position the jack under her car, his eyes closed in what looked like a mockery of rapt attention before he had it in position. “She will be smiling again soon, and feel much better.”
“I know,” Delores said quickly.
When he had the back of the car elevated, he removed the bolts from the tire. Then he methodically spun the tire, searching. “I no see—ah, here is our little friend. Is nail.” He reached in and held up the nail with some admiration for the damage it had managed to do.
“It was bad luck,” Delores said, “but we’ll be back on the road in no time.”
Rebecca stepped closer to Carlos and stared at the nail, which he put in his shirt pocket.
“Bad nail,” he told her. “Bad, bad nail. Tell me, Rebecca, were you on the way to come see your friend Carlos at shop?”
Rebecca said no. Then she added: “We’re going to see a train.”
“Oh, train,” he said, and Delores watched his face for any recognition. “The train for Robert Kennedy?”
Delores nodded.
“Now he was great man,” Carlos said. “Always talking about the poor. He say many important things. Things that need to be said, but only he say them. Now that, that is tragedy.” He fastened the new tire and began to tighten the bolts, first with his fingers. “My wife and children go see train. In fact”—he looked at his watch—“they go there now. To wait.”
When he picked up the lug wrench, he said, “I wanted to see train, too, to pay respect. But of course, Mr. King, he no like the Kennedys. As you know.” He smiled at this, as if to say to Delores, But that’s okay. “I ask, but is Saturday. And as I say, with him, Kennedys . . .” He began to spin the wrench around. “Okay, soon will be fixed and ready to go.”
“Well, we weren’t going to tell him, to tell you the truth,” Delores said. “You’re right, he gets very worked up about his politics. But I think Bobby would have made a great president, myself. I want to be there just as much for Ethel, though, too, with all that she must be going through.”
“Yes, he would be great president. Bobby Kennedy care about the poor, the disadvantaged. The Negroes, Mexican people. All people. And he and his brother were very tough with Fidel. Fidel feared them. They would have killed Fidel if they could have. And that would have been a joyous day for all of Cuba, if you ask me. Bring back freedom for Cuba.”
He had stopped tightening the bolts. “Same tire. He will not notice.”
“I’m sorry he won’t let you go,” Delores said. “It would be for such a short time, too. The train is just going to whiz by, really.” Delores looked at her watch. “I hope it’s on schedule. I think everyone ought to be able to pay their respects.”
Carlos looked down at the ground, unsure what to say for once, and then he noticed that Rebecca had climbed into the driver’s seat. “My wife will be there. Maybe you will see her. You’ve not met.”
“No, we haven’t,” Delores said.
“We were married in Cuba, and then we come here because with Fidel, is too hard for the businessman. You cannot be success, or you have too much power, and power is problem for Fidel. Only I come here first. For almost a year I am here and not see her. Then finally she come. The hardest time of my life, not to be with my wife. We were still young. And she had our baby in Cuba. When she come here, she have big boy in her arms and say, ‘Carlos, this is our son.’ Now that was the happiest day of my life. I cry and I cry, right there in airport, and she say, ‘Oh my gosh, now I have two babies.’ ”
“Well, maybe I will see her. I’d like to say hello. But if you think we’re about done here, we’ll get on over there.”
“Yes, yes,” Carlos said. “Mr. King will be looking for me. He always says, ‘What take so long?’ He likes very quick, very fast.”
“He certainly counts on you,” Delores said, reaching into her purse. “Now I need to pay you for it.”
“Let me tighten once more, to be sure.”
After counting out the money, Delores reached out to stroke Rebecca’s hair, and was startled not to feel her. She spun around, and her panic caused Carlos to stop what he was doing. “Rebecca?” she said, but as she spoke she spotted Rebecca’s legs sticking out from the car. Rebecca was lying down on her back, her body underneath the large steering wheel. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were slightly parted. “Rebecca, let’s wake up, honey. Time to go see the train.”
Delores cupped her hands around Rebecca’s face and watched her breathe out little darts of air.
“Rebecca, let’s wait and sleep after. I’m not going to be able to carry you the whole time like that.” She put one hand underneath Rebecca’s head and sat her up, but Rebecca slumped against the seat, unresponsive.
“Rebecca, wake up, honey!” Delores cried out. Carlos, who had come to stand behind Delores, now leaned inside.
“She is all right?”
“She’s not waking up,” Delores said in a loud, trembly voice. “She’s so limp. Rebecca! Rebecca, wake up! Right now.”
“Here,” Carlos said, and ran around to the other side of the car. “We’re going to help her. Maybe because of accident? Little Rebecca, wake up for your mommy. You give Mommy big scare.�
�� He tried to scoop her into his lap, but Delores still had her by the shoulders and did not want to let go. Rebecca felt like a large puppet, all limbs and heavy head. Her skin was cool and dry.
“Is not good,” Carlos said, and tried to look into Delores’s eyes. “We should take her to hospital. Is not good we can’t wake her up. She hit her head?”
Delores’s body began to quake. “Rebecca, wake up, Rebecca!”
“We drive her in my truck. Tire is not yet tight enough. Here, I lift her. She’s going to be okay. Do you have water, at all? Any cold water? We splash her face. It might wake her.” Carlos held Rebecca against his chest, her head flopped over his shoulder. A few shoppers had stopped on the way to their cars, trying to make out the commotion.
“I think is accident,” Carlos said. “Her head.”
Inside the cab of the truck, Delores held Rebecca’s face. “Please, Rebecca. Wake up, baby girl.”
“At hospital she will be fine,” Carlos said. “The doctors will know what to do. I take her to Mercy,” he said, referring to the hospital that loomed over downtown. Delores had never been to Mercy. Of the two hospitals in town, Mercy was the one, she knew, filled with patients who had no insurance, patients who were stabbed by a family member, patients dropped off at the emergency room by cars that stopped for only a few seconds, then kept going. But it was the closest, and maybe once there, Rebecca’s doctor would come.
The black truck screeched out of the congested lot as Carlos gripped the wheel tightly, stealing a glimpse at Rebecca every few seconds. “I will call Mr. King when we get there, tell him to come. You tell doctor what is wrong. She will be all right. They just need to wake her. They will know how. Little Rebecca, do not worry. I will get us there. Is going to be all right.”
Carlos was speeding but well in control, cutting around a Volkswagen, a station wagon with lumber sticking out of the back window, a van with a crudely painted, menacing-looking Viking holding an oversized sword. They got on the boulevard and soon reached the Kmart, where, stuck behind cars at a red light, both Carlos and Delores watched a stream of mourners cross in front of them on their way to the train tracks. One woman held a sign that read: “RFK: Never Forget.”
Delores repositioned Rebecca so that she could kiss her forehead, and when the light turned and they could move again, Carlos accelerated in such a way that pushed Rebecca hard against her mouth.
“I go fast as I can,” he said, as a way of apology. “It won’t be long now. Is going to be okay. Everything will.”
New York
One of the porters who had delivered ice to Lionel’s snack car had reported that Rosey Grier was in one of the cars “bawling like a baby,” though he had said it without judgment. Big Rosey was a hero to most of the porters, and they had all taken comfort in learning that he was one of the ones who had caught the gunman.
Inside Lionel and Big Brass’s car, the mood continued to be subdued, though both men observed, now that the trip was clearly going to take so much longer than planned, the male passengers loosening their ties slightly and trying to move their mouths away from set frowns. The men with the press tags around their necks wrote in their notepads, and sometimes they stopped and talked to each other or pointed out the window to a sign or someone hanging off a bridge for a better glimpse. Lionel took Big Brass’s cues on everything, including Big Brass’s own hushed demeanor.
“Understand, this ain’t like no other day,” he whispered to Lionel. “You see me being solemn, and that’s what’s right for this day. Trip to Savannah or Philly, that’s another story. If you’re a passenger, I’m going to be your friend. If even for two minutes, while you’re waiting for your drink. You’ll see. You’ve got to make them feel like they’re your only customer in the world—if you want the tip, that is. And you want the tip. But this day, this is something else. All we can do is get everybody through it.”
The long crowds of mourners from state to state felt like they’d been plucked from a dream to Lionel—he’d heard so much about the train that would carry the senator’s body, but no one had said much about all the people who would turn out to see it. When no one was ordering anything from the bar, he and Big Brass stole glances out the window behind them. There were flag patrols and Boy Scouts, nuns and bikers, crowds huddled under express ramps and in long green fields where families held hands, the women sometimes weeping as they waved. There were girls in two-piece bathing suits and men who had worked themselves into their old military uniforms stored in the closet and held a crisp salute as the train went past. There was a family of seven that had lined up according to height.
A week earlier, Lionel’s father had read a newspaper article about a recent Kennedy rally and collapsed the paper noisily against his lap. That meant that whoever was in the room was supposed to stop what he or she was doing and listen.
“This is going to be the first chance you get to vote for the president,” he said to Lionel, who was sitting on the couch and had put down his sketch pad with some irritation. “And I don’t know if I’ve lived through a more important election than this one.”
Lionel admitted that was true.
“You cast your vote for Bobby Kennedy, and you’re casting your vote for the whole Negro race,” he said. “Bobby Kennedy is all we’ve got right now.”
Lionel turned away from the window and shook his head at Big Brass in marvel. He hadn’t followed Kennedy’s campaign the way he wished he had; after Dr. King was shot down, he had mostly tuned out the news and retreated into his drawings and notebooks when he wasn’t preparing for the semester’s final exams. But since Kennedy’s assassination, his parents had watched the nightly news accounts for hours at a time and read aloud the stories in the newspapers, and they kept talking to Lionel about what all this likely meant for the country—and how profoundly the country might have changed if Kennedy had gone on to be elected president.
“This right here is Robert Kennedy’s America,” Big Brass whispered. “These are working folks. And he got shot because some people were afraid what he might do. What he would do. Same with his brother, same as Reverend King. And seems like that’s how it is now in this country—take down the man who wants to help the people who need it the most.” Big Brass poured himself a soft drink and held it in his mouth before swallowing. “Makes you wonder how we supposed to go forward. Someone answer me that. How we supposed to keep electing leaders to lead this country if they’re just going to get killed every time? Can anyone answer me that?”
A reporter who had paid his respects to Mrs. Kennedy mentioned to Big Brass that she was doing very well, considering. While everyone else around her was falling apart, the reporter said, Mrs. Kennedy was trying to cheer people up. She told a joke to one of her girlfriends that the reporter didn’t quite follow, but the point was, she was telling a joke. But Big Brass didn’t believe that. That just couldn’t be.
Lionel’s lower back had turned stiff, and he couldn’t remember when he had kept a hat on so long. The work was already monotonous.
Here and there he had time to think about Adanya. He wondered if she looked different somehow, though it had been just three weeks since he had seen her. But women talked about the glow, and if he saw her now, he wondered if he would recognize it. Could anyone else?
They had met the first week of that freshman year. A half-dozen students from his dorm were meeting up with some girls they had met at the first football game, and Lionel’s roommate dragged him along to make the numbers work out. They met at a restaurant called Tubby’s, Adanya seated in front of him. When Lionel introduced himself, she smiled and pointed to her throat, then shook her head. Lionel didn’t understand until the girl next to Adanya put her arm around her and said, “We’ve been in rush, so we’ve been singing and shouting all week, the way they make you do. And Adanya lost her voice completely. They haven’t made their selections yet, and she’s worried no one is going to pick her because she can’t say anything. But I told her they wouldn’t turn suc
h a cute face down.” The girl then reached over and squeezed Adanya’s cheeks before Adanya playfully slapped her away.
“Well, at least you know you won’t end up saying the wrong thing,” Lionel said. Adanya smiled, and as Lionel talked for the rest of the dinner, she kept on smiling. He asked her questions she could answer by shaking her head, and then for fun he asked her questions she couldn’t answer that way. When he asked her what she planned to major in, she pantomimed playing the piano—she was a music major. When he asked her where she was from, she pointed to the floor. It took him a while to understand that she was from right there in Winston-Salem.
Within a few weeks they were spending all their time together, and he had already been fed twice at her parents’ dinner table. In the evenings she would play piano in one of the music hall practice rooms, and he would bring his books or his art pad and sit in the corner of the cramped room and draw his characters. Lionel was planning to introduce what would be the first black superheroes in comics. His favorite creation was Reginald Warman, aka Black Justice, who had no superhuman powers to speak of but had trained as a detective and won international weight-lifting competitions; he was kicked out of the force by a corrupt white police chief who was caught by Warman taking payoffs from the city’s most notorious gangsters. The police chief planted drugs in Warman’s locker as a way to get him locked up, but this costly mistake gave birth to Black Justice, and Black Justice had been a thorn in the chief’s side ever since, always apprehending the criminals before the chief’s inept police force could. Black Justice’s calling card, which he had pinned onto a suit jacket of one of the criminals he left piled in a heap for the police to arrest, was a black X made of iron.
Lionel had reams of characters with intricate biographies and stacks of notebooks that charted their current visual incarnation. Adanya liked hearing Lionel chronicle their stories—some written down, many still forming in his mind, though she had no particular interest in comics. She admired him for wanting to do something no one else had been able to do, for his conviction that there was a place in such a white-dominated business for him and his characters. That spring semester, they became pinned, and sometimes they laughed at how ludicrously secure they felt in their relationship, in each other. The plan was that they would wait to get married until after graduation, and the idea of children hovered out there on the horizon, real but plenty far away. She wanted to come to New York and, like her mentor, Alice Coltrane, start playing with New York jazz musicians on the scene. And with the two major comics publishers, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, based there, New York was the natural place for him as well.