Devil's Night

by Ze'ev Chafets

  “Well, you can still get a Saturday Night Special and play the numbers,” a white reporter said, laughing. A black radio newsman, who overheard the remark, scowled but said nothing.

  A few minutes later, Young and Jackson came in, accompanied by Conyers, Costa and a Henderson aide. They were there, Jackson said, to formally endorse the mayor. Conyers seemed uncomfortable with his about-face, and embarrassment played hell with his normal eloquence. “Any previous promises to support anyone are abrogated,” he said, “and any other assumptions, implied or otherwise, that I endorse him, of course, don’t exist.” Costa beamed, pleased that his fourth-dimensional powers had elevated him to such lofty company. Henderson’s man, asked if his presence meant that Henderson also supported Young, confined himself to a laconic “It does.” Most of the talking was done by Jackson, who said that endorsing the mayor “will regroup our family.”

  There was no doubt which family he meant, or who wasn’t in it. Jackson, the favorite son of the black political clan, was telling Detroit that Big Daddy was still pater familias. Tom Barrow was, at best, a stepson.

  Barrow’s people tried to put the best face on things. They charged that Jackson’s endorsement had been bought, and that Conyers was trying to protect his congressional seat from the wrath of the Young machine. “They brought the big guns out on me, and that means we got the big boys upset,” Barrow said.

  In fact, Barrow had a point. The mayor, who had barely campaigned in previous elections, was, by his standards, running hard. Bringing in Jackson was an indication that he was taking the challenger seriously; in past years, he wouldn’t have bothered.

  A few days later I bumped into Young at the City County Building. He was in a good mood, but cautious about his chances. “Things look pretty good right now,” he conceded, “but you can never be too sure of anything in politics. It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”

  The mayor’s caution was based on arithmetic. “We’ve got eighty-five percent of the white vote,” Barrow’s advisor, Geoffrey Garfield told me. “To beat us, Coleman needs eighty percent of the black vote, and with the city in the shape it’s in, there’s no way he’s gonna get it.” Young, who was counting ballots when Garfield was still learning addition and subtraction, knew that he would need a large black turnout. He also knew where to find his voters—in church.

  Throughout the campaign, the mayor refused to attend Candidate Nights or to press flesh in the neighborhoods. He spent his weekdays acting mayoral, cutting ribbons on new projects and issuing statements about municipal affairs. But every Sunday morning, the normally irreverent Young donned a double-breasted silk suit and, at the head of a ten-car motorcade, made the rounds of the city’s churches.

  One Sunday toward the end of the campaign I joined the cavalcade, which commenced at Sacred Heart, a downtown Catholic church with a decidedly Baptist flavor. Its choir is accompanied by drums, an organ and a saxophone, and the worshipers clap and sing along in fine down-home style. A song was just ending when Young swept in, accompanied by Barbara Rose Collins, who was running for reelection to the Common Council.

  Things had not gone well for Collins since her near defeat of George Crockett the year before. In the spring, her son, Tony, had been shot in a street altercation. A few months later, he was caught holding up a suburban sporting-goods store, and was awaiting sentencing. Her son’s problems had distracted Collins, and she had not run her usual strenuous campaign; now, she was counting on Young’s coattails to carry her to victory.

  Young and Collins were seated on the pulpit. A priest read from Second Timothy: “You, for your part, must remain faithful to what you have learned, because you know who your teachers are.” Young nodded, appreciating the sentiment, and he took up the text to remind the congregation of what they had learned in Detroit. He talked about the achievements of his administration and blasted the press. “There are people who don’t admit the progress that we have made,” he said. “They have eyes, but they will not see. They have ears, but they will not hear. They have mouths, but they will not speak the truth. And,” he snapped, “on top of that, they’re liars,” The crowd cheered, Young thanked the priest for allowing him to deliver his message, waved to the congregation and left. The whole thing had taken fifteen minutes.

  The mayor repeated his speech in four more churches that morning. Everywhere he was greeted as an old friend. Some of the ministers seemed to take a special pleasure in welcoming the profane, “not too moral” mayor of Motown.

  “Several years ago, Coleman came to a group of us preachers and asked us to pray for him,” a Baptist pastor told his flock. “He asked us to pray that he stop smoking and stop cussing. We told him, ‘Mayor, we’ll pray for you to quit smoking, but not to quit cussing—’cause there’s some folks need to be cussed out.” The congregation laughed, and Young chuckled, eyes crinkled shut and shoulders working.

  On the way out of the St. Stephen’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mayor spotted me in the crowd of reporters and stopped for a minute.

  “What the hell you doin’ out here?” he asked with mock surprise.

  “Working, same as you,” I told him. Young laughed. “Well, if you’re the same as me, this ought to last you for the next four years,” he said, and climbed into his limo.

  That morning, Barrow was also hitting the churches. Since I already knew Young’s “eyes and will not see, mouths and will not speak the truth” routine by heart, a Free Press reporter and I left the mayor and went to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a subdued, middle-class institution, where the challenger was scheduled to appear. We were seated in the corner of a small balcony that enabled us to see the pulpit without, apparently, being seen.

  Barrow received a polite reception when he was introduced to the congregation, and he began his remarks by bowing his head slightly and saying, “I want to give honor to God, who is the head of my life.” Several old women sitting nearby nodded their heads emphatically; Barrow is the kind of young man that devout old ladies appreciate.

  The challenger launched into his usual “time for a change” message, emphasizing the need for city services and sound fiscal management that would concentrate on improving the quality of life. But then, unexpectedly, he veered off into a defense of his own racial authenticity. He mentioned the fact that he had been born in Black Bottom and raised on the east side, in a black neighborhood, and he recalled boyhood trips to the segregated South. “I remember having to drink out of the colored water fountain,” he said, his flat Michigan inflection taking on a southern tone. “The water pressure was so bad that we had to put a Popsicle stick under the button to get a drink.” The story reminded me of Helen Livingstone Bogle’s struggle to get a telephone at the Art Institute; some people just don’t make convincing victims.

  “They say I’m gonna turn this city back to white folks,” he thundered. “Well, that’s ridiculous. We don’t need anyone from outside the city to tell us how to run our own lives. Y’all know that it’s easy to sit out there and tell us what to do!” The Free Press man raised his eyebrows; Barrow, the apostle of cooperation and harmony, was trying to out-Coleman Coleman.

  After services, Barrow stood around outside shaking hands. When he saw the Free Press man he smiled broadly and waved him over. “Things are going just great,” he beamed, speaking in his normal Michigan tone. “You should have been in church this morning; I got a wonderful reception.”

  “I was in there,” the reporter said. “You couldn’t see me, but I saw you.”

  A troubled look came over Barrow’s open face, but he recovered quickly. “Hey, let me show you the latest computer printouts on our telephone surveys,” he said, opening a loose-leaf folder. “All our numbers show us running much stronger than anticipated among Coleman’s constituency.” Barrow went over the list of figures, an accountant safely in his element once again.

  “When you say Coleman’s constituency, you’re talking about black voters, right?” I asked.

 
“That’s right,” he said, and then the troubled look returned. “Hey, we’re not writing off anyone,” he said. “I’ve got a whole lot of black folks supporting me.”

  A horn blew and a black man stopped at a traffic light and called Barrow’s name. “Hey, man, how you doin’?” Barrow shouted back. The driver smiled and yelled, “Good luck, Tom.”

  “See what I mean?” said Barrow. “Things are really coming together. We’re going to win, man, we’re definitely going to win.”

  As the race came into the homestretch, polls continued to show Young leading by a substantial, but not decisive, margin. However, there was one more hurdle for the mayor to cross—Devil’s Night, which fell only eight days before the election.

  Both Young and Barrow were keenly aware of the potential importance of Devil’s Night. In recent years there had been a steady annual decline in the number of fires. A further drop would underscore the mayor’s contention that things were turning around and that he had the city under control. On the other hand, serious arson couldn’t help but strengthen Barrow’s quality-of-life message. For the challenger, there was nothing to do but wait; but Young had an army at his disposal, and he deployed it to ensure tranquility.

  The mayor declared the customary three-day dawn-to-dusk curfew for kids under eighteen. He also ordered the mobilization of every city vehicle, including garbage trucks, for street patrol duties. A volunteer force estimated by City Hall to number thirty thousand citizens was raised to keep watch over the neighborhoods, and a special command center was set up to enable motorists with car phones to dial WATCH and report fires. As an incentive for kids to stay at home, a local cable television station agreed to unscramble its signal so that the Pistons–76ers’ game would be available to nonsubscribers.

  On the eve of Devil’s Night, Martin Luther King Jr. High School hosted a citywide youth rally under the slogan “Celebrate Halloween Right.” Homemade posters decorated the lobby. One pictured Batman holding a burning figure: “This may be you as a result of an arsonal fire,” it said. Another, showing Lucifer with pitchfork in hand, was captioned, “Stop the Devil from Destroying Our City.” Teachers and parents mingled with senior city officials, including the newly appointed fire chief, Harold Watkins, a tall, mocca-skinned man in a navy blue uniform and braided cap that made him look like the admiral of an African fleet.

  In the large, modernistic auditorium, hundreds of kids listened to a performance by the police r&b band, the Blue Pigs (“We have an arresting sound”), who performed hits such as “That’s My Prerogative,” substituting anti–Devil’s Night lyrics for the original. Then, winners of a citywide essay competition took the stage to read their compositions. “Many Detroiters have left our city because of Devil’s Night and its consequences,” trilled a grammar school girl in a starched red dress and pigtails. “Let’s turn back the hands of time to when there was no guns, gangs or cocaine,” implored a junior high school coed. “Do the right thing, that’s where it’s at/Don’t kill kids with baseball bats,” declaimed a high school rapper.

  The mayor was introduced to enthusiastic applause. “Devil’s Night is becoming more like any other night,” he said. “This year we should cooperate to see that there are less fires on Devil’s Night than any other night of the year. Now, will you help me to prove that those who say Detroit is dead are wrong?” Children and parents cheered and Young began to hand out prizes to the winners. “This is pathetic,” said a radio reporter. “In what other American city do kids get awards for writing about not burning down their own town?”

  Young’s short speech struck me as an amazing gamble. I had expected him to lower public expectations, so that he could claim a post–Halloween success. Instead, he had belittled Devil’s Night and called for fewer fires than usual—a demand that would inevitably become the standard by which this year would be judged. “You think he knows something we don’t?” I asked the reporter, who shrugged. “He’s God,” he said. “Maybe he’s planning to make it rain.”

  It didn’t. Devil’s Night was crisp and clear, and there was a feeling of expectation in the air as a group of fire buffs gathered for their traditional preholiday dinner at a McDonald’s on the far east side. There were eight of them, including two firemen from nearby Farmington, members of an informal Devil’s Night society that has been meeting for years. Over Big Macs and milk shakes they plotted their evening’s activity. The plan was to fan out to various parts of the city and to inform each other of good blazes by car phone.

  I was invited to ride with Harvey and Si, two ex-Detroiters in their early fifties who now live in the suburbs. Like the others, they were equipped with a shortwave radio, street maps and a cellular phone. The didn’t intend to miss a thing. “If we catch one good house fire, the night will have been worthwhile,” Si said.

  We hadn’t been cruising for more than fifteen minutes when a fire was reported on the west side. Harvey expertly navigated the freeways and pulled up in front of a flaming wood house several minutes before the fire trucks arrived. The street was filled with neighborhood people who greeted the suburban voyeurs without apparent resentment.

  Next to the burning building a thin, youthful black man stood on his lawn and sprayed the side of his white-shingled house with a garden hose. The wind was blowing the other way, but the fire was close enough to cast him in dramatic outline, and press photographers crowded around. He ignored them as he sprayed, a look of intense, fearful concentration on his face.

  In the street, in front of the house, I spotted John Aboud, the owner of the Tailwind. He had a minicamera on his shoulder, and he was bent on one knee, filming the scene. He looked up and waved in recognition. It had been almost a year since our last meeting.

  “How’s it going, John?” I asked.

  “My cousin was killed six weeks ago in a video store,” he said, giving me an update on his family body count. “That makes seven. And he had four kids, too.” He stared briefly at the flames leaping from the roof of the house to the telephone wires, sighed and then put the Minicam back on his shoulder.

  A few minutes later the fire trucks began to arrive, and we watched for a while as they battled the blaze. The man with the garden hose ignored the engines and continued to spray his house. I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Harvey. “Come on,” he said impatiently. “They’ve got this one under control. There’s supposed to be four houses going up on the east side.”

  “Four?” asked his partner, Si. “That’s music to my ears.”

  The report was only half true; when we reached our destination, a narrow residential street, there were two houses ablaze. One, reputedly a crack house, had already burned to the ground, leaving only a chimney. The other, which belonged to a family, was going fast. Its residents had already been taken to a shelter by emergency workers.

  A television crew stood in the street, recording the scene while a blond reporter in a trenchcoat went from neighbor to neighbor, trying to get someone to say that the crack house had been torched. No one knew anything. “Coleman says we don’t have an arson problem here,” he said to a group of onlookers in a bitter tone. “Tell that to the lady whose house got burned down.”

  “What you care, man?” asked a woman in a bathrobe and house shoes. “You don’t live ’round here noway.”

  “Coleman gonna win, and if you think I’m lying, my mother is a bitch,” said a teenager, and a laugh went up. A look of disgust passed over the reporter’s face, and he walked away shaking his head.

  “The only people who support Coleman are his constituents,” Si observed as we drove toward the next fire.

  “The intelligence level of these people is so low that they don’t know they need a change,” agreed Harvey. He dialed a number on the car phone. “Hey,” he said into the receiver, “we had a good one over here, you got anything good over there?”

  For the next few hours we hopped from fire to fire. A commercial building (“Probably for the insurance,” said Harvey), a few abandoned houses, se
veral dumpsters. Harvey and Si were still waiting for the big one, and they were getting restless.

  Finally a call came over the radio—an apartment building was ablaze in Highland Park. “Bingo,” said Si happily. “I know just where that is. We used to live around there.”

  The apartment building was deserted, but flames shot out of its windows, and fire fighters clambered along the roof. Across the street, an old lady sat on the steps of the Greater Emmanuel Church of God in Christ. “I heard my church was on fire so I came right down here,” she said in a determined voice. “I’m on the Mothers Board, and I’m not letting anything hurt my church. I intend to sit here until the last fire truck leaves.”

  Several people had gathered around the lady. One of them was a cop from New Jersey who had come to Detroit especially to observe Devil’s Night. “I have an M.A. in public safety,” he said, “but tonight I’m getting a Ph.D. in reality.”

  Si and Harvey smiled at the compliment. “You picked a good year to come,” Harvey said. “This is much better than last year. But what the heck, good year, bad year, there’ll always be a Devil’s Night.”

  The next day Bill Bonds, an outspoken anchorman on ABC-TV affiliate WXYT, delivered a furious commentary on the fires of Devil’s Night. “It was like a vision from hell,” he told viewers. “Well, people say, those yo-yos burn down their city every year, don’t they? But this year is different; this year, I’ve heard the words ‘who cares?’ ”

  That more or less summed up the suburban attitude. But in the city, with a week to go before the election, Devil’s Night flared into a raging political controversy.

  Tom Barrow struck first. Accompanied by reporters and press photographers, he toured the burned ruins, had his picture taken with victims and blasted the mayor. For months he had been talking about the declining quality of life and attacking Young for concentrating on grandiose buildings in the business district at the expense of the neighborhoods. Now he hammered home his point. “Just look at downtown,” he said in an I-told-you-so tone. “Everything’s fine down there. Nothing burned down there.”