Then the police arrived. The traffic slowed to watch. We grew quiet, cautious. The police approached us from the west on three-wheel motorcycles, sirens blaring. Someone yelled, “Rush them.” “Tip them over.” “Knock them down.” We turned, ready for the charge. They drew closer. We hesitated. All the men on the tiny cycles were black.
We stood still. “Stay in your groups,” someone shouted.
The motorcycles began driving around us, forming a loop, herding us like we were sheep. There were only ten or twelve of them, several hundred of us. We could have rushed them easily, knocking them and their little three-wheelers to the ground. We could have used their toy motorcycles to block the intersection, as a barricade between us and the rushing traffic. But because they were black we didn’t know what to do. Whoever sent them after us knew what he was doing. We held out our arms, some of us calling out to them, “Brother?” They didn’t nod or smile or raise a fist. Instead they drove us into a tighter and tighter circle, like dogs who knew we were sheep who were confused. The dogs herded us across the six wide lanes into the small park.
When we turned and looked at the park we saw the lines of policemen, on foot, coming up out of the darkness toward us, swinging their clubs. All of them were white. The slaps of their clubs against their hands filled the early morning air. Then the buses arrived and more white dogs poured out into the intersection. Then the black dogs disappeared. We realized what had happened. Some of us then tried to run.
A boy was clubbed until he tripped. Then the pigs beat his back and head. Two boys ran across the intersection and were nearly hit by a truck. The pigs chased them and caught one by his long blonde hair. He was thrown down to the sidewalk. A woman’s knee was clubbed and buckled backward. The blonde boy’s head bounced against the pavement. The crowd turned in on itself. From the center you could only watch. All around was the sound of sticks hitting meat.
We were surrounded. A woman who did nothing was hit full in the face. She clutched her face, then fell to her knees and vomited. Blood ran from her face into her vomit. I was clubbed from behind, in the legs, across the calves. The pain surprised me.
Then we stopped moving. I held my sides and tried to catch my breath. From behind the white dome of the Capitol, the sun started to come up.
It was finished. With the exception of the two buses parked across the street, the six lanes were unblocked. Now the motorists slowing down to stare at what was happening in the park clogged the intersection, and the traffic trickled through more slowly than when we were on the street.
I looked at the boy whose forehead had been clubbed. He was trying to joke with the girl with the blue kerchief. Her mouth made a hard line. I looked for Stacey but could see only her back. I decided not to walk over to her. Then someone shouted for us to go through our pockets and wallets and to tear up everything we didn’t want the pigs to get their hands on. Telephone numbers, addresses, the names of friends. Anything that might incriminate anyone. I watched a boy spill out a pocketful of pills.
“Get in your affinity groups,” a woman shouted. “Segregate by sex, and make sure you get in the same jail cell as your group. Keep track of the others. People, remember they are your brothers and sisters.”
I walked over to Ted. He was my affinity group.
“Lou,” he said. He made a V of his fingers and waved them in front of his mouth. I told him I hadn’t brought my cigarettes. He said, “Shit.” He kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. I turned and looked at the rows of policemen.
One policeman chewed a wad of gum and rhythmically cracked his club into his hand. Another rocked slowly on his heels. Two others pointed and laughed. They had spread out their formation. Now they stood an arm’s distance apart.
“Well, what do you think?” Ted said. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Let me have a drag,” I said.
Ted laughed. “I guess we’re waiting for the buses. Either that or they’re planning on beating us all to death.” He laughed again. “You didn’t get hit, did you?”
“No,” I said. I handed him back the cigarette.
“There’s a woman over there,” he pointed, “who got hit pretty fucking bad.” He dropped the cigarette, then ground it into the dirt.
I nodded. The first bus arrived. The circle of police opened toward the bus. One by one we were taken and told to stand facing the bus. Then we were frisked. There were women guards to frisk the women.
I walked toward the opening. “Was Stacey on that bus?”
“Who’s Stacey?” a girl asked.
I described her. The girl shook her head.
“I don’t know, man,” she said.
I walked back toward Ted. Some of the groups in line for the buses put their hands on top of their heads. POW’s. Ted stood with his arms folded, still kicking the dirt. “Look,” he said. Half the policemen were walking back to their buses.
“Want to try and run for it?” Ted asked. He was serious.
The second bus for the prisoners was pulling up now. Some of the groups were lying on the ground, passively resisting.
“I don’t know about you,” Ted said, “but I didn’t come all the way out here for a bus ride. There’s got to be twenty, twenty-five more spots where people are demonstrating. The pigs can’t bust them all.”
I took a deep breath, then nodded.
“We’ll run together, then apart.” He drew the lines in his palm with his fingers, then made an X at the point where we’d meet.
I nodded again. Ted began to move.
I was right behind him. At first we were walking evenly, blending in with the groups that were lining up for the bus. Then Ted dropped to one knee. He pretended to lace his boot. I squatted next to him.
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go,” he said, standing. “Now.” He broke for the line of policemen. I ran beside him, and then I cut to my right, and Ted was no longer in my field of vision. One pig shouted and another swung his club, but I leaped past them and was running toward the trees and bushes, deep into the park. I didn’t think anything was behind. The horse approached me from my left. As soon as I could see it I knew I was caught. I ran to my right. I might have shouted. It came alongside me effortlessly, quickly. My head filled with its smell. In the stirrup I saw the black boot. Light reflected off something. I could hear the animal’s terrible breathing and the sound of its hooves on the ground and the pounding of my own breath and heart, and then I felt the club, across my back, and I think I was somehow relieved as I stumbled forward and threw up my hands to block the club as it swung down furiously toward my face. I turned my head. I felt a shock of pain and light, a sudden blinding whiteness, and I know I made a sound then.
I was too numb to feel the other blows, from the two pigs on foot who had chased me. I was relieved because I understood that they could only beat me, and the beating didn’t crush what else I felt inside. When they were tired of hitting me, they bound my hands and lifted me from the grass. I tried to look at my second shirt to see if there was any blood on it. I couldn’t focus my eyes. Then I was aware that the side of my face felt very wet, and then I realized just how bad I was bleeding.
Ted escaped, though he was arrested later at another action in another part of the city. They put him in the Coliseum because by then the municipal jails had overflowed. In all, that day over ten thousand were jailed. Stacey had gone on the first bus with the other women like I’d thought. She told me later that she learned a great deal from the experience of being imprisoned. She said the women tried to talk and relate to their guards, and inside the cells everyone held hands and sang songs of protest.
My head had to be shaved. They stitched my wounds closed. For a while I had dizzy spells and blinding headaches, and I still have some problems with language and can’t hear clearly from one ear.
I don’t know what we accomplished or didn’t accomplish. I realize now that some things have changed, that some things haven�
�t.
Now we are scattered like the tacks.
World Without End
“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” Peter said as he steered his squeaking Chevy down Hampton Boulevard, a Winston bouncing on his lip. Glory be to God on high. It was Sunday morning, Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of the tourist season. Most of Norfolk’s residents and visitors were eating breakfast or still in bed, asleep. Lena and August, who had flown in from Chicago on the discount airline the night before, sat next to Peter on the car’s blanketed front seat. Lena wore a black hat and was as thin as a bird. Gus was gray and as round as a house cat. “Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.” And on earth peace to men of good will. The old Chevy groaned and rumbled down the street, tires delving into every pothole. From behind a large cloud the sun tried to shine.
“I’m glad my boy still knows his prayers,” Lena said, patting Peter’s bony knee. He was wearing blue jeans and an open-necked blue shirt.
“You need new shocks,” August announced. His hands firmly gripped the dashboard. “We’ll never make it to church in one piece. This is worse than a roller-coaster ride.”
Peter glanced at his parents, exhaled a thick stream of smoke, shook his head, and smiled. “Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te.” We praise Thee. We bless Thee. We adore Thee. Pleased with himself, Peter downshifted as the car neared a red light. So far the visit was going well. He idled in neutral. And he’d do whatever he could to make things stay that way. “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti,” he said, nudging his mother. I confess to almighty God. Then Peter beat his chest three times and said, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. The Chevy lurched forward as the light turned to green.
“My Petie,” Lena laughed. “He’s giving us the whole Mass.” She turned from her husband’s frown and faced her son. “So you’re a regular parishioner at this church, Petie?”
“Sure, Mamma.” Peter flicked his cigarette butt out his open window and looked away.
“It’s a nice church we’re going to, not one of those new ones that look like a gymnasium?”
“Beautiful,” Peter said, eyes on the road. “Stained glass everywhere you can see. More statues than a cemetery, even more than Chicago’s Holy Name. So gorgeous that when you walk inside it takes your breath away.” The Chevy hit another pothole.
“This ride is taking my breath away,” Gus said with disgust.
Peter and Lena ignored him. “But not so beautiful as our parish back home,” Lena said. A furrow of worry creased her brow.
“Of course not, Mamma. Nothing can ever beat what’s back home.”
Lena adjusted her hat and beamed.
“A church is a church,” Gus said. The blanket beneath his legs had begun to bunch up, revealing the tips of two springs that poked through the upholstery. “What do you think, God cares about the furniture?”
“God cares about furniture,” Lena said.
“Yeah, maybe the collection basket.” Gus pounded the dash and laughed.
“He cares,” Lena said. “Why else did He make Jesus a carpenter?”
“Two points, Mamma.” Peter licked two fingers and slashed them in the air.
His father’s thighs discovered the exposed springs. “Petie, you got to do something about this car. How can you take a girl out and expect her to sit on this? She’ll rip her dress.”
“Father Luigi still asks about you,” Lena said. She shook her head at August, then pointed out his window at a tall magnolia tree. “He says, ‘And how is Petie, good old Petie, my favorite altar boy, how’s Petie now that he left his good parents and moved down to the South all because he didn’t look hard enough for a job in Chicago or maybe because he just wanted to get away from his poor mamma—’”
“Father Luigi says all that?”
“Every Sunday, Petie. He stops us outside church. And sometimes we see him on Thursday nights after he meets with the parish council.”
Peter tried a different street. “You’re a deacon now, Papa? Mamma said something about Father Luigi asking you to become a deacon?”
Gus wrestled with the springs, his thumbs trying to push them back beneath the upholstery.
“Eucharistic minister,” Lena said. “He doesn’t think he’s worthy.” She smiled at her husband, then tried to stop his hands. “He gets up and reads the Gospel sometimes, but he doesn’t want to give out Communion. Why should he, he’s no priest.”
“Things change, Mamma. That’s legal now.”
“It used to be a mortal sin and now they even let Nick Guiliani touch the Host.” Nick Guiliani owned the neighborhood Shell station. “Whenever I see him passing it out with his greasy hands I change lines. Don’t we, August? Holy Communion should come from a priest, not Nick Guiliani.”
“Before you open your mouth, Mamma, you could whisper, ‘Hey Nick, fill her up!’”
Gus chuckled as Lena said, “You take it in your hand, Petie. I’ll do it the old way with Father Luigi, but when I get stuck in a line with an ordinary person I take it in my hand. You don’t know if they wash.”
“It still goes in your mouth, Mamma.”
“Yeah, but I give the germs time to jump off on my hand.” Lena nodded and looked at her hand. “We talked all about it one night during parish council. Your papa thinks I’m crazy.”
“What did Father Luigi say?”
“He thought she was crazy too,” Gus said.
“No he didn’t,” Lena said. “He changed the subject. Whenever I talk to him, he changes the subject. That was the night he first asked me about you.”
Peter turned back toward Hampton Boulevard. Azaleas of all colors bloomed in front of the houses lining the streets. Absently Peter said, “So what did you tell him about me? Good things?”
Lena stared at her hands, her lap, the car’s roof, out the windshield, all the time shrugging and looking hurt and sad. Peter realized his mistake. He gave the Chevy gas.
“What could I say, Petie? What can a mother say? That her son doesn’t think the upstairs flat is good enough for him, His Royal Highness, so he has to move out into a dangerous neighborhood full of hoodlums and ends up wasting half of his paycheck on rent?”
“Mamma, that was nearly two years ago.”
“Let me finish. You asked me a question, so the least you could do is hold your breath until I’m finished.” Peter reached across the dash for a cigarette. August’s thumbs again fought the springs. Lena nodded her head and smoothed her dress. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg, my son. Don’t think anything you do ever escapes your mother’s eyes.”
“Lena,” Gus said, “get to the point.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry, Augusto.” Lena called her husband Augusto only during arguments. “You’re on vacation now. You unloaded trucks fifty weeks for this. Relax. Remember, the doctor told you you don’t have a strong heart.” The Chevy bounced over another pothole. “Your son throws away his good money on an opium den on South Halsted and you don’t think his mother sees? Then he met that girl— That stewardess— That hussy—”
“Lorraine wasn’t a hussy, Mamma.”
“She moved in with you, didn’t she? You didn’t marry her, did you? What do you think, I was born yesterday? I don’t want to open old wounds, but you had only one bed in that apartment, Petie.”
“You’d actually take a girl out in a car like this?” Gus had succeeded in getting the springs beneath the upholstery, but the last bump popped them out again. “I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t be caught dead. She’d have to wear a suit of armor.”
“Dominus vobiscum,” Peter said. The Lord be with you. “Et cum spiritu tuo.” And with thy spirit. With his right hand Peter made a broad sign of the Cross over the steering wheel.
“But then she got wise,” Lena said, “and never came back from a flight to Albuquerque.”
“Tucson,” Peter said.
“What’s the difference?” Lena said. “You gave her so
me thrills, and the hussy packed her bags. So you had your fun, some pleasure, a little enjoyment.”
“Lena,” Gus said, “it’s a Sunday. Don’t describe.”
“It’s only natural, Augusto. We raised a healthy boy. His blood is red like everyone else’s. Just as long as he doesn’t get disease. Don’t pretend to be such an innocent.”
“The church is around here somewhere,” Peter said, taking a drag off his cigarette and letting out the clutch.
Gus pointed to his heart. “Me? Pretend to be an innocent? Lena, I’m more faithful than Lassie. You believe too many of Monty’s stories.”
“I know you served your country, Augusto, but you were stationed in France for two years. I go to movies. I’m a modern woman. I wasn’t born with blinders on my eyes.”
“Maybe it’s the next block.” Peter exhaled a line of smoke.
“I’ve never strayed,” Gus said. “Even before I met you I was faithful. I swear to God. Nowadays I don’t even look.”
“Oh, I could see what Little Miss Airlines was doing to our Petie.” Lena turned to her son. “First you grew that ugly mustache. Then you started wearing those stupid clothes. How can you sit down when your pants are that tight? And you wouldn’t button all the buttons on your shirts. Was it the thin air up in the clouds that made her think that was sexy? Then you lost so much weight I thought we’d have to put you in the hospital. Didn’t she know how to cook? I know you had a stove, I cleaned it with my own hands. But I suppose the kitchen was too far away from the bedroom.”
“Lorraine was a vegetarian, Mamma.”
“I cook vegetables. August, tell Petie that I cook vegetables.”
“Petie, she cooks vegetables.”
“What you need is to come back to Chicago where you can meet a good clean Catholic girl. Somebody like Rosamaria D’Agostino.”
“Mamma, Rosamaria D’Agostino joined the Carmelites. She teaches kindergarten in South Bend.”
“Are you sure you know where this church is?” Gus said.
“She would have married you if you asked her,” Lena said. “God was her second choice.”
The Evening News Page 12