by Caryl Rivers
The upper half of Charlie’s body appeared, leaning Pisa-like from the door of his office.
“Mary. Sam. Jay.”
The summons was issued in the half note above normal tone that meant Charlie was excited about something. The three of them went into his office.
“Any of you hear about possible trouble at Reverend Johnson’s house?”
“I haven’t,” Mary said. “His nephew didn’t mention it.”
“Nothing, Charlie,” Sam said. Jay shook his head.
“He’s had a couple of crank calls this week,” Mary told the editor. “‘Nigger, stop making trouble,’ that sort of thing. He didn’t take them too seriously.”
“I just had a call from a guy who said there might be trouble over there tonight. Wouldn’t give his name. He sounded like he was calling from a bar.”
“Maybe it’s another crank,” Jay said.
Maybe. But I’ve notified the police, and they’re going to send a car by at regular intervals.” He looked at Mary. “You’re going to be there tonight?”
“Yes, there’s a meeting tonight. Jay’s going with me.”
“I’ll go too,” Sam chimed in. Charlie looked at him sternly. “Have you finished the story on Belvedere and the space program?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, keep on it. I want that story for tomorrow.”
“Charlie, you wouldn’t send me to Birmingham. Now we might have a real story, right here in Belvedere, and you want me to keep writing about fucking Alf G. Fucking Guttenheim.”
“Blade staffers do not use that kind of language, young man —”
“Charlie —” Sam pleaded.
“Oh, all right, you can go. But I want that space story. Our readers like space.
“I promise. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
“I’ve been working since noon,” Jay said. “Do I get overtime?”
“No overtime. But you can come in late tomorrow. Just think of all the experience you’re getting.”
“Experience,” Jay grumbled as they walked out to Sam’s car. “I make eighty-three fifty a week, and I work night and day. What am I, crazy?”
“You’re three-fifty a week ahead of me,” Mary said.
“You’re crazier than I am.”
When they reached the minister’s house, they found that twenty-five people were already there; the minister ushered them into the living room. James Washington was there, as well as Don, the young woman who had been with him at the church, and several students from Howard University. The minister’s nephew opened the meeting by outlining the details of the petition that would be delivered to the city council demanding rejection of the urban renewal plan, and its replacement with another plan that would involve the input of a citizens’ committee of Negro residents.
“We’ve put out feelers to the county commissioners, and they don’t want to get involved,” he said, “so we have to plan to go all the way with this.”
“What do you mean, all the way?” asked one of the women.
“Civil disobedience, if it comes to that. We have to be prepared to sit down on the street in front of City Hall, if need be.”
“Do you think it will come to that?” the minister asked. “I’m not sure the people here are prepared for that.”
“We can bring quite a few people up,” the young woman told him.
“Then they’ll say it’s outside agitators,” said a man who was sitting on the couch.
Don laughed. “Sure they will. That’s what they always say. ‘Our Nigras were happy until those agitators came in.’”
“This isn’t the South,” objected the man on the couch. “There’s no police dogs up here.”
“No,” said the young woman, “but you have papers in triplicate that do the same thing. Nice and polite and legal. Up here, they sic lawyers with briefcases on you.”
“And the bite they take out of your behind can make a German shepherd look like a pussycat,” Don added.
“Civil disobedience, I don’t know…” one of the women said.
“It may not come to that. But if it did, we’d get good coverage. The national media would be here, like they were in Cambridge, over on the Eastern Shore. We’ve got to get the media for this to work. We haven’t got the votes on the council and not a prayer of getting them unless we really put the pressure on.”
James Washington raised his hand. “I think we ought to do everything we have to do,” he said. “What can we lose? I’ve lived here all my life. I own a house here. I have as much right to live in this city as any white people do.”
“They’re not saying we can’t live in the city,” one of the women told him.
“Yes, they are. Who’s going to sell you a house? Or me? A decent one, anyway. Maybe they’ll sell us a dump at twice the rate we ought to pay.”
“Most of the white neighborhoods have real estate covenants that won’t let people sell to Negroes,” Don said. “Some of them won’t let Jews in either.”
“But there could be trouble,” one older man objected. “People could get hurt.”
“We’re not saying we’ll have to use civil disobedience,” Don told him, “just to let everybody know we’re willing to. If that’s what it takes.”
Mary was sitting in a chair by the window, taking notes. The window, on the street side of the house, was open, and despite her concentration, she gradually became aware that something was not quite right. What was it? Cars. There had been too many cars moving up and down the quiet side street. They slowed as they passed, then sped up again.
“See anything?” Jay asked, in a low voice.
“Not right now. But have you heard the cars?”
Jay nodded. He walked out the front door and stood on the porch. The street was quiet. He went back into the house again.
“Maybe we’re just jumpy,” he said.
At that moment a car drove down the street, slowed in front of the house, then sped up again.
“That’s what they’ve been doing. I think I’ve seen that car before.”
A car turned at the corner from the main road, and this time it slowed down, then stopped in front of the house. A minute later, another car pulled up behind it.
“Trouble,” Mary said.
“Looks like it.”
Sam moved up behind them. “Charlie’s tip was on the level.”
“Unless that’s the welcome wagon,” Jay said.
“Reverend Johnson, I think you’d better put the lights out,” Mary told the minister. There were gasps and cries from the people in the room.
“Everybody keep calm,” Don said, quietly. “Sit on the floor away from the windows. The police are being called. They’re just trying to scare us.”
The minister flicked the light switch, and the room went dark. Looking out the window, Mary could see men getting out of the cars. There was a tinkling sound, and the street light went out, leaving the front lawn in darkness. A dozen shapes drifted out of the shadows near the cars and formed an irregular knot on the lawn. The darkness hid their features, but Mary could tell by the shapes and the way they moved that they were young men.
“Hey, niggers!” one of the shapes yelled.
“Hey, niggers.” Another voice. “You in there?” There was a giggle from the lawn.
James moved towards the window. One of the older women was crying. “Little punks. I’d like to beat their faces in.”
“That’s just what they want,” Don said. “Just stay calm.”
“Listen, niggers, this is white man’s land. You better haul your ass off white man’s land.”
“Whhheeeee-haw!” came a voice.
Don laughed. “Nothing worse than a northern white man trying a rebel yell. Sounds like somebody goosed him.”
“Nigger, go home!”
Mary’s eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, and she could see, now, that the kid doing most of the yelling seemed to be the leader o
f the group. They were barely more than teenagers. There was laughter from the lawn, and the little knot of men moved across it. The lights in the houses on either side went out.
“Did you see a squad car go by, at all?” Jay asked Mary.
“No.”
“Hey, niggers, you hear me?”
“I bet the fucking cops are having coffee down at Art’s,” Jay said.
The boy on the lawn started to chant: “Niggers suck, kill Niggers. Niggers suck.”
Mary turned to Don. “Do you think they’ll try to get in?”
“No. When white people want to kill black people, they come fast and they come quiet. This is just scum, having a little fun.”
Mary looked out the window again. One of the dark shapes bent over, then straightened up, and she could see a throwing motion, which was followed by the trill of breaking glass. One of the windows facing the street had been shattered.
“God dammit, where are the cops!” Sam muttered.
Mary could feel her heart pounding; she was scared, but she was also, she realized, thrilled. This was real life. And she was right in the middle of it.
Jay was standing close to the wall, checking his electronic flash unit. “Can I get through the side door?” he asked the minister.
“Yes.”
“I’m gong to shoot a couple fast ones and then get the hell back in here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Sam said.
“No, they won’t spot me if I go alone.”
“Jay, be careful,” Mary whispered. “Those guys sound tanked up.”
“You want to see the four-minute mile, watch me.”
Jay ducked out the side door and crawled behind the bushes that grew in front of the house. He crouched low and moved quickly along the front wall until he was only about ten feet from where the leader of the group was moving drunkenly about in a parody of a tap dance and singing, “Way down upon the Swanee River.”
From the window, Mary could see Jay moving behind the bushes.
“He’s too close, Sam.”
From his vantage point behind the bushes, Jay could see the face of the boy who was doing the bizarre shuffle. It was an adolescent face, pocked with craters from recent acne, the lips twisted in a rubbery sneer. Jay straightened up, stepped out of the bushes and aimed.
“Work, you mother,” he said to the flash unit. He pressed the shutter, and a flash of light rolled across the lawn and then vanished. Jay took two more shots in rapid succession before the bewilderment on the boy’s face turned into comprehension.
From the window, Mary saw two of the young men move in Jay’s direction. He lowered his camera and pivoted for the sprint back to the door. He slithered past them, but another young man had moved up close to his right side.
“Jay! Look out! On your right,” Mary yelled. He heard her, saw the blurred motion of an arm coming towards him, and tried to duck. But he was too late, and there was a peculiar explosion in the side of his face. Then he felt the damp grass against his face and hands and wondered how the hell the grass got there.
When she saw Jay go down, Mary grabbed for the nearest thing she could find — the lamp on the table by the window. She yanked the cord out of the socket and, clutching the lamp like a club, ran out the front door to the lawn. Jay was curled up, fetuslike, and one of the young men was kicking him viciously in the ribs. She raised the lamp and brought it down on the man’s head and he fell like a dead weight. She raised the lamp again and hissed, “OK, you fuckers, who’s next?” Then there was the wail of a siren, and a boyish voice yelled, “Jeez, the cops!” and in a mass of confusion the boys ran for the cars. Two of them grabbed their stunned companion and half-dragged him across the lawn. Sam had bolted out the door behind Mary and tackled one of the boys, and he was pounding the kid’s head into the lawn when a cop came and pulled him off.
Mary knelt down beside Jay, who had struggled to a sitting position.
“Jay, oh my God!”
Don knelt beside her. “Hey, man, are you all right?”
Jay reached for his camera and ran his finger around the lens. There was no break in the glass.
“I’m OK,” he said. He looked up at Mary. “Did you hit one of those guys with something?”
“Yeah. A lamp. I broke it too. It was the Reverend’s lamp.”
“What the hell did that little fuck hit me with?”
“A rock, I think,” Don said.
Mary pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it up to his face. “Hold still, you’re bleeding.”
At that instant a flash of light washed over them, and Jay looked up to see the grinning face of Bill McChesney, the other staff photographer, peering down at them over his Rolleiflex.
“Don’t look at me, Jay, look at Mary. How about a little more pain in the expression?”
“Oh, for Chrissake.”
“Come on, Jay, I’d do it for you.”
He did his best John Wayne-shot-by-a-Nazi expression.
“That’s great! Great!”
“Want me to bleed harder?”
“No, that’s OK. Jeez, you are sort of a bloody mess, though.”
“How the fuck did you get here so fast?”
“I was working a story on the cops on night patrol. Best stuff since the double murder in Niggertown.” He looked at Don. “Uh, sorry.”
“Bill, I got pictures of those motherfuckers.” Jay handed his Nikon to McChesney. “Print them for me. Hold it down a little, they may be light.”
“Will do.”
Jay climbed to his feet, helped by Don and Mary. “Is everybody OK in there?”
“Yes, one of the women was hysterical, but my uncle’s calming her down. We’ll see that everybody gets an escort home.”
A wave of nausea rolled through Jay, and he wobbled slightly. Don grabbed his arm.
“You’d better get him to a doctor,” Don said to Mary. She nodded.
“I’m all right.”
“No, come on, Sam will drop you off. We’ve got to write,” Mary said.
The doctor, the husband of the art editor, examined the gash on Jay’s cheek and cleaned and bandaged it. “That’s a nasty cut. You’re lucky. A few inches higher, you could have lost an eye. You’re going to have a hell of a shiner as it is.”
He gave Jay some liquid and a packet of pills. “Wash it out with the antiseptic three or four times for the next couple of days. Now go home and go to bed.”
“Doc, I got to get back to the paper.”
“I’ll call a cab. I don’t want you driving tonight.”
When Jay walked into the city room, Roger came up and looked at the bandage on his eye.
“Shit, you lived. We had a state funeral all planned. Mayor Swarman would give the eulogy, songs by the Rainbow Girls and burial under the birdbath in the park. The birds would piss on you for eternity.”
“Fuck you, Roger.”
Mary walked out of the back shop and waved to Jay. He followed her to the light table. “Page one,” she said. “Clear as a bell.”
Jay looked at the picture. The pock-faced boy stood, jaw agape, staring at the camera. The faces of two of the other men were clearly visible.
“Hey, look at the motherfucker. Not bad!”
“They’ve already picked him up. He has a record for drunk and disorderly. Look at this one.”
Jay saw himself sitting on the ground with his John Wayne grimace. Bill walked over. “I had to push it to get the blood.”
“Yeah, I got photogenic blood. Jesus, my mother is really going to shit when she sees this. I never should have given her a subscription.”
Charlie walked into the back shop and looked at Jay.
“You look like hell.”
“Do I get overtime?”
“Yeah, yeah, you get overtime. But for Christ’s sake be more careful, will you? Good job, though.”
Jay leaned over the light table to look at Mary’s story
.
“Did you put in the part about where you hit the guy with the lamp?”
“What?” Charlie said.
“She cold-cocked one of those suckers. Hit him with a lamp, and he went down like a ton a bricks.
Charlie looked at her. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
“He was kicking Jay. So I hit him with the lamp.”
“You should have seen her. She was waving the goddamn lamp around, yelling, ‘OK, you fuckers, who’s next?’”
“Sam was pounding one of their heads into the ground,” Mary said.
“Oh, my God, I send you people out to cover a story, and you act like it’s D day. Listen, this may get real mean. I want you people covering the news, not making it. Is that clear?”
“Right, Charlie.”
“OK, Charlie.”
Jay suddenly swayed on his feet, and Mary and Charlie steadied him.
“Mary, drive him home and make him go to bed.”
“I’m not an invalid,” Jay protested, but Charlie shook his head.
“I don’t want you smashing into something with your car. We’d have to pay for it.”
“You’re all heart, Charlie,” Jay muttered, and he got his jacket and walked with Mary out to the parking lot. She drove him home and followed him into the apartment.
“How do you feel?”
“My head’s pounding, but I’ll live.”
“Lie down on the couch. I’ll get you a drink. You better take off that shirt, it’s all bloody.”
She vanished into the kitchen, and Jay unbuttoned the shirt. “New one, too, dammit. Six ninety-five.”
He lay down on the couch and put his head against the pillow. She came in with a glass of Scotch, and he took it.
“You really are a tiger, you know. ‘OK, you fuckers, who’s next?’”
She shook her head in wonderment. “I don’t have any idea why I did it. All of a sudden, I was just there, waving the stupid lamp around. But you know, it felt so goddamn good to hit him.”
“Remind me never to get you pissed off.”
“Oh, look, your T-shirt is all bloody too. Don’t take it off, you’ll pull the bandage off.”
She went into the kitchen and came back with a large carving knife.