“What’s happening, brother-man? What are you doing over here? Well, come in.”
“Hey, Prez. I just got a strange call from one of the Bricks. Uncle wants to meet and talk about joining the coalition.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“The coalition is a collective governed by a central committee. There is no leader and we all understand that our individual interests are subservient to our manifesto and program. He’s used to playing God.”
“Say no more.”
“They want to meet with at their community church. You know the neighborhood. You know them. I need you to come with us.”
“When?”
“This evening at six.”
*
A sign on the church lawn invited one and all to February Bible Studies held every Tuesday at six, yet they saw no one as they arrived at the church and went around to a side entrance as instructed. When they opened the door, they were met by a blinding spotlight focused on their faces. They squinted and covered their eyes. They were pushed inside and the door slammed behind them. They heard a finger snap and the whole place lit up. Bricks surrounded them pointing an assortment of new and shiny guns at them. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, a heavy door could be heard opening and closing, and footsteps approaching above them and behind them. They turned and looked up into the balcony. It was Uncle.
“Just like that!” he snapped his fingers again, “you could all be blown away. Instead I have chosen to welcome you to our territory and to extend hospitality. In spite of the fact that I have a letter right here in my hands that threatens me with being ‘blown away’ if I do not surrender to your demand that the Bricks become a member of your coalition. It is signed by ‘Brother Gabriel Turner of the Black People’s Party.’”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Gabe.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m saying I never sent that letter.”
“I think you’d say anything right now to keep your punk ass from getting blown away.”
“Listen, brother, there’s nothing I’m afraid of and that includes death. I’m walking around with a couple fragments of police lead in my body right now. Brother Downs here was just shot by the pigs the other day as he ran around your park. So much for looking out for your neighborhood. Is that letter typewritten or handwritten and is it signed?”
“Huh?” One of Uncle’s boys leaned in and whispered something to him. “There’s a signature.”
“I have a pen in my pocket. May I get it? I am going to write my signature on this piece of paper and you will see it is not my writing.” He handed the paper to one of the Bricks who ran it up to Uncle. Uncle looked. He passed it around to about eight different guys standing with him.
“Who would have done this?”
“The pig, my brother. Look at us right now. This is just what they want. They want us to kill each other. Then they win and our people lose. Did you see how well the picnic went last summer? South Side, West Side, black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican . . . that is the future of liberation and we have the power to make it a reality. That’s what the capitalist power structure is afraid of. We can’t let them win. Join us, my brother.”
“My message is that if I see any of you around here without my permission, I’ll have you blown away. That is, unless I change my mind. Go now.”
They had just turned to go and as they walked towards the door, Uncle said, “Wait. Just to give notice, Downs, we have a score to settle when your leg heals up.”
Prez gritted his teeth. The show of guns, the insanely unfair numerical advantage, the bullying; it all made Prez grit his teeth. He spun on his heel.
“Let’s go,” said Gabe, trying to grab his arm.
“And what score is that? With you? Let’s settle it now. If I kick your butt with one good leg, you join the coalition. Deal?”
“What if I win?”
“Motherfucker, you won’t.”
Somebody said, “That nigger real funny.” There was laughter all around.
Gabe pulled him out the door. “Shit Prez! What the fuck was that, man? Are you crazy?”
“No. I just exposed Uncle to be a fraud and a coward. There’s no way he’s supposed to back down from a straight-up challenge. You just witnessed their vulnerability. It’s their intellectual and spiritual complacency. They’ve been following Uncle for so long that they know nothing else. Keep the rap flowing in their direction. They’ll be listening. So will Uncle.”
Sure enough, soon after that Uncle relented a little and allowed the coalition to hold meetings and political education classes on Brick turf. Bricks were invited to the West Side and were greeted like long-lost brothers. The same style of free breakfast programs, free health clinics, free legal aid services, and political education and black history workshops were in operation in both regions. But Uncle still resisted joining the coalition in spite of witnessing first-hand the bountiful benefits of peace and people’s power.
And then came the cataclysm of April 4, 1968.
49
Chicago, April 4, 1968
Prez had taken to meditation surrounded by burning incense in an effort to quell the aching behind his eyes. He wondered if he needed reading glasses or just a break from reading and writing. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his eyes blissfully closed when his phone rang. It was Gabe. He was crying.
“Prez,” he sobbed and sniffled, “they killed him, man. They shot him down like a dog.”
“Gabe? What are you talking about? Who’s dead?”
“King, man, Dr. King . . . he’s been assassinated.”
“Wait!” said Prez. He dropped the phone, ran over to the window, and looked up the street. He could see that there was a lot of smoke west of Washington Park. He could hear sirens, explosions, and gunfire. He ran back and almost yelled into the phone, “It’s a war zone across the park.”
“The people are in rebellion over here, too. If they can assassinate Dr. King, they will not hesitate to kill any of us. The pig has murdered our Dreamer. It’s nightmare time.” He hung up.
Prez dressed and rushed out. The realization that where he lived in Hyde Park was indeed a different world from the poor black neighborhoods that surrounded Hyde Park hit him hard. All around the boundaries of his neighborhood there was smoke and shooting. Sirens screamed through on their way to the ghetto. Shotgun-toting riot police stormed through Hyde Park, merely glancing at him as he ran down the street. If he had been across Washington Park, they would have shot him dead, he thought. Just as he reached South Cottage Grove and was about to cross the street, he saw a few of the Bricks, concealed behind bushes and balusters with guns drawn.
“Don’t cross the park. They’ll kill you,” one of them shouted to Prez.
Prez ducked behind a car. “Who?”
“The cops, man. They shooting anything that goes through the park. They shot three already.”
“Shit, man! Are they dead?”
“Don’t know. Can’t get to ’em.”
“They’re still lying in the park, you mean?”
“Right.”
“Who are they?”
“Don’t know.”
“Fuck, man! Where’s Uncle?”
“He be here soon. He down in Woodlawn making sure those niggers stay cool.”
After a few minutes Prez said, “Look, we can’t wait. Those people might still be alive and bleeding to death.”
“You can’t go, man. Uncle say stay out of the park.”
“So fucking shoot me.”
Prez sprinted across the street and dove behind some bushes. Then he realized he had no idea where the downed people were. He hollered, “Where are they?”
“Two up at the lagoon. One over around Fifty-eighth.”
Fifty-eighth Street was straight acro
ss from where he was. He poked his head up to look and listen. He could see flames licking the underbelly of the evening sky, making it shimmer with an eerie burnt-orange color. He could see smoke so thick it was like a curtain that fluttered and bent with the wind. Prez got down and started crawling in the dirt. He looked up and an army truck full of soldiers rushed by. None of them bothered to look toward the park. After the fleeting shock of seeing the army in the ghetto passed, he realized that none of the police cars he saw fly by bothered to look over into the park either. He surmised that there was nobody sitting and targeting people in the park and that the people who were shot were the result of random shootings. He forced himself to accept that theory and got up, bent as low as he could, and started jogging from tree to tree and from bush to bush toward Fifty-eighth and South Park Way. He came upon a circular paved area with a water fountain at the center. Just beside the fountain he saw the body. “Oh, Christ,” he shuddered. It was a little girl. He sprinted over to the fountain and hid behind it, then rushed out, picked her up, and carried her behind a bush. He put her down and saw that his sleeves and jacket front were covered in blood. She had two little pig-tails with colorful barrettes at the ends. Her face was too peaceful to be the face of a dead child. But she was not breathing. She had no heartbeat. A child with no heartbeat! A child covered in blood!
“No!” screamed Prez. “Oh, Jesus, no! Brennie-Man! I’m sorry I couldn’t save you! I’m sorry!” He wept uncontrollably. He blew his nose on his undershirt. “I’m going to take you home, little girl. We’ll go and find your mama. I’m going to take you to her. I couldn’t take Brennie-Man to his mother, but I’m going to take you. Don’t worry, we’ll find her.” He picked her up and started walking. He walked straight across South Park Way to Fifty-eighth Street, crying like a baby. “Did anybody lose a little girl? I’m looking for her mama. Whose little girl is this? She wants her mama. Does anybody know her mama?”
Halfway down the block, he dropped to one knee, sobbing. “Please, somebody. Anybody. This little girl wants her mama.” He dropped to the other knee and fell towards the ground. He rolled over on his back cradling the little dead girl on his stomach. He held her and swayed back and forth. “She wants her mama. She just wants her mama. Please, where’s her mama?”
Hands reached down and took the little girl from his grasp. A woman screamed, “Roslyn! Oh my god! Roslyn!”
Prez lay on the ground wailing and wailing. “She just wants her mama. She wants to go home.” He tossed and turned on the ground. Hands picked him up and sat him on some steps. The sirens screeched, the bullets popped, the smoked weaved in and out of his lungs, causing him to cough and choke. His eyes burned. He heard a voice tell him to get inside somewhere because the mayor had just told the police to shoot to kill blacks on sight. He rose from the steps and stumbled back towards the park. He was like an old mule down on his grandfather’s farm, just following a familiar path without really knowing where it was going.
Someone screamed for him to “Get down, they’re shooting, man! What the fuck is wrong with you?” But he was in a stupor and kept plodding along. He didn’t remember entering his building, climbing the stairs, opening his door, or drawing the bathwater. He just remembered being awakened by his chattering teeth as he sat shivering in an ice-cold tub. He jumped out, wrapped himself in towels, his bathrobe, and a blanket. He sat on his sofa by the window and looked up toward the park. Then he fell into a deep sleep.
50
Chicago, April 6, 1968
Prez was jarred awake by the ear-splitting trill of the telephone. He turned over abruptly and fell off the sofa. He was confused. What time was it? What day was it? His Bulova watch told him it was 7:45 a.m. on the sixth day of the month. He made a mental note to look for a watch that told him the day and grabbed the phone. It was Professor Mackey summoning him to his office for a 9:00 meeting.
As he walked towards Mackey’s office the campus seemed vacuous in a way that had nothing to do with it being a Saturday morning. In the office, he sat on one of the two chairs on the visitor’s side of the professor’s desk. The professor’s office reflected the grayness of the day even though Mackey had gone to great lengths to create a workspace bursting with African paintings, carvings, and various framed kente cloths.
“Mr. Downs, simply outstanding work. Outstanding! Your thesis, Black Power: The Rhetoric of Hope, the Reality of Powerlessness, is being considered by the McEachern Foundation for a Brilliance Grant.
“Your paper may well be one of the most important of your generation. Your dialectical approach, your systematic and academically objective analysis, the way you construct conclusions based upon actual real-life situations and examples . . . this is classic stuff, Downs. This is how it should be done. Nothing can give a scholarly work more legitimacy than an author who has actually lived through the subject matter. Incredible! Fantastic! Outstanding!”
There was a knock on the professor’s office door. He got up, opened it, and in walked the white guy who had given Percy the bag the night Lizzy was killed. Prez’s heart started pounding. He was sure they could hear it. Their mouths were moving but he couldn’t hear a word they said. He wanted to get up and leave, get some fresh air, drink some water, look up and see blue sky, hear his own voice tell him that everything would be alright.
“Downs, Downs, what’s wrong with you?” Mackey was squatting on the floor in front of him with a very concerned look on his face. “Are you alright?”
“I think I’m over-tired. I hardly slept at all since Thursday.” But he had slept through practically the whole of yesterday, Friday. “And I could be a bit dehydrated from my workout.” But he hadn’t been to the gym since Wednesday. The woozy jelly feeling passed and he felt refreshed as never before. His mind became clear. He straightened himself and sat erect. Mackey stood and walked over to the unexpected arrival.
“This is—” Mackey was cut off.
“I’m Ed Smith from Washington.”
“The James Madison University just outside Washington, to be exact.”
“I live in Washington. That’s what I meant.”
“He’s here to talk to you about an opportunity there,” said Mackey as he cast a you-almost-fucked-this-up glance at Ed Smith from Washington.
“A new Black Studies course is being offered for the Fall semester at James Madison under the aegis of a new Progressive Inter-disciplinary Program. We’d like to offer you a lecturing position while you complete your Ph.D.”
“All your expenses will be covered as a student. The money you make teaching will be yours,” said Mackey.
Prez thought about his high school and undergraduate efforts to get Black Studies programs and here he was being offered an opportunity to actually teach in one. But he knew it was bogus.
“Where is the money coming from for my studies? Not the university. So, from where?”
Mackey and Ed Smith looked at each other. Ed Smith looked hard at Prez and said,
“The National Student Association.”
“Never heard of that organization,” said Prez. “But it sounds promising. I will need a couple of days to think about it. I’ll let the professor know by the weekend.”
For over a year, Prez had always carried the February 15, 1967 issue of Ramparts magazine in his satchel. It was so important to him that he had bought two and mailed one to himself at his mother’s house. An article in it revealed the CIA’s efforts to control and manipulate the progressive — “radical” as the CIA called them—student movement via a front organization. That organization was the National Student Association.
*
After Easter, Prez stepped up his political work. A sense of urgency had taken hold. The Gang Intelligence Unit of the Chicago Police Department behaved like the roving death squads of South American dictators. All coalition members were being targeted for jail, forced exile or death.
But it wasn’t
until he told Professor Mackey that he had decided to decline the James Madison University opportunity and explained that he had noticed he was being followed everywhere he went.
He learned how to allow himself to be followed, be evasive, and proceed to where he wanted to go undetected. That was how he completed his handgun training. Once a week he went to a shooting range in Indiana where he had on short order qualified as an expert with a handgun. His instructor called him a natural point-shooter, even though he taught and promoted two-handed sight-shooting.
One Saturday night he borrowed the professor’s car to take a new girlfriend to the movies and noticed a two-car tail.
“Thanks, Professor Mackey, for letting me borrow your car,” Prez said when he returned the car. “I was followed.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised.” But you are, Prez thought. “Will you ever not call me ‘Professor’?”
“Maybe when I have my own Ph.D.”
They laughed. The professor went to his coffee table and wrote something down on a pad. He placed his forefinger upon his lips as he handed the piece of paper to Prez: If you ever have an emergency, call this number: 979-3965. Keep this with you at all times. Don’t speak out loud about this. Prez took the paper. It felt like a goodbye moment. He started to say something.
“By the way, in a few days a young lady will be coming by your flat to look at it. She may take it over at the start of the fall semester.”
Soon after that, Prez received a visit from a woman who looked like a character straight out of a James Bond movie. She looked at and through everything in his flat. He had to ask repeatedly that she refrain from going through his personal belongings and that she close his drawers. She never listened and he knew she had a job to do.
51
Chicago, December 1968
Prez wanted to leave Chicago and go back to Washington. The academic scene there was getting vibrant, and not just in universities. Lots of policy institutes were opening. He planned to open his own. But he wanted to stick around Chicago at least until Spring because he wanted to write a book about his experiences there. He moved to a larger flat in Old Town. It was a corner flat so he had a view in two directions. The building’s rooftop was part of an intriguing rooftop culture that spanned the block. There was an alley system behind the building that led to three separate streets. He felt safe.
Exile Blues Page 27
