by Gini Koch
“Anyway, now she says she found one of them Panther newspapers in his room. Out of her mind with worry. All you hear on the news is like Dr. Watson says. Gunfights with the police. California, Chicago, probably here in New York next. Seems like anywhere black folks try to organize themselves, there ends up some kinds of trouble. He been coming home late, leaving real early. Was supposed to come in and work today, but he never showed up. Do you think you could go up there, have a look around, see if he’s getting in any kind of trouble with those Panthers? Find out what’s going on?”
Sherlock looked at her, at the pleading in her eyes. “Why would you want us to do that? Isn’t there someone else you could talk to? We don’t exactly fit in in Harlem, Mrs. Hendrix.”
“I know. My sister and I can’t go up there. Mothers and aunties chasing after their boys. Wouldn’t be right. We’d be taking away his manhood. I read this thing Doc wrote about you in Collins. Thought you might notice something if you talked to the Panthers. See if they look like the type to be fighting. If you do talk to Joseph, he might listen to you. Hasn’t got a man around the house since the police knocked his daddy round his head for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, then arrested him. Here, let me give you my sister’s address. I’ll let her know to expect you.”
Sherlock looked at me. I shrugged, trying to tell him no. No, please, no.
“I’m not sure when we’ll make it up there—sometime in the next few days, I guess. I’ll see how long our errands take today but we’ll see what we can see. I can’t make any promises.”
“Even if you just go have a look it’ll be a big relief to me.”
I WAS BOILING over with anger that Sherlock had agreed to go to Harlem. First, he shouted at me about telling the world about his genius, and now he was dragging us uptown on a fool’s errand likely to get us robbed, shot, or worse. I had to get into the right kind of light-hearted mood for spending time with the Factory hangers-on.
We walked in silence over to Max’s. Andy waved us over and then we were forgotten as soon as people shuffled to make space for us. We were at the end by Ingrid, who harangued us with her stories of her epic poetry reading a few nights before.
I watched Andy suck down a white cross with his coffee. He didn’t even nod back at me. I knew he’d been in hospital again for some follow-up surgery, but he wasn’t going to talk to me about it.
Ingrid’s voice was grating. “Oh, and did you hear, Viva’s writing a book? It’s supposed to be a surprise tell-all, but she keeps calling everyone to get their secrets, but she got all wired and told Andy she was recording her calls. Says she’s publishing as fiction so we can’t sue her. I told her it could be an art project, a comment on the falling value of conversations, making a book factory out of her phone calls, the rest of the book is essentially manufactured but she can’t see how that would work. She’s lost it since she went to Paris. Trying to scam some money out of us. Oh, and did you hear about poor Candy Darling? Beaten out by Raquel Welch, of all people, for this movie, and you want to know why? They said Raquel-goddamn-Welch would make a better transvestite than our very own Candy Darling. Isn’t it just not right? Hey, Doc, you haven’t got a pick-me-up, do you?”
I looked at Sherlock and he flicked his eyes at Andy, and then at Ingrid. I had never realized I could be so stupid. “Sure thing, darling. Here you go.” I palmed her a white cross and stood up. “We have to go, um, to another meeting. Sherlock’s...”
“I’m giving someone a hand. An investigation.”
“Like Perry Mason? I used to love watching that as a kid, when my dad wasn’t home. ‘I don’t like people who prey on other people’s weaknesses.’”
“Not... quite... Oh, God, John, look at the time. Will you excuse us?”
I had to hold my face straight, half from anger at both the Factory two-faces and Sherlock, half trying to keep from laughing at Ingrid. People who don’t know their place in the world. Ingrid and us, being flung out of the orbit of the sun like a dirty rock in space.
“WHAT DID I tell you? Nothing but petty politics and recycling the same old camp stories.” Sherlock walked over to a phone booth and pulled up the yellow pages. “We could go up to Harlem, get our favor to Mrs. Hendrix out of the way? I’m sure there are baked goods in it for us.”
“What the hell, Sherlock? Couple of white boys in Harlem? We can’t go up there. Not on our own. We’ll be arrested by the cops for looking for cocaine or horse. That’s if we’re lucky. Most likely we’ll be beaten up or stabbed. Why would you agree to that, at least without asking me?”
“You’re clean now, aren’t you, John? Dropped everything off with the boring artsy elite? Come on. It’s daytime. We’ll be fine.”
I didn’t want to go to Harlem. I mean, sure, I was glad the blacks had made strides, with Martin Luther King and all that stuff. I didn’t want to see any more riots and beatings on the television. It was just terrible what had gone on down south, in Alabama and Arkansas. Those peaceful marchers and the little girls. Those people were a thousand miles away from Harlem, though. Harlem had its own problems. Knives. Guns. Gangs. I knew. I’d seen it with my own two eyes.
WHEN MY PAPERS came through and my tour finally finished and I came home from the war, I didn’t have any place to go, really. My parents died before I finished college and joined the Army to pay for medical school. The ETS interview officer asked if New York was still my home of record, so I said, “Sure, sure it is.”
I had just finished at CUNY back in 1962 when my number came up. I had good enough grades and an acceptance to med school. Turned out my parents were just about broke once the funeral home and the lawyers all had their cut. Dying is surprisingly expensive. I had just enough left over to pay for my undergrad degree fees. That’s when the letter came. I could defer if I was studying, but I couldn’t afford even a single day.
I had two dollars in my pocket and I put them down on a pint of whiskey and a pack of smokes and sat up, drinking coffee with whiskey in it and smoking cigarettes, trying to think of what I could do.
I scrubbed up the next morning, put on a white shirt and a tie and took my jittery, half drunk self on down to Whitehall Street, a month before the date on the letter in my back pocket. I had my degree and my transcripts in my hand. I asked the sergeant if the Army would put me through medical school in exchange for service putting together the kids blown up over in Vietnam.
He said he sure thought they might be interested in that. Brought me upstairs and sat me on a bench.
I SPENT THE next eight weeks crawling through mud and being shouted at by men who had to call me ‘sir’ and who didn’t really care how many push-ups I could do, and then I was in Bethesda for my accelerated battlefield surgery training.
I don’t know what most doctors go through—all the time I’ve spent with doctors has been up to my elbows inside of bodies that have been blown up, shot, or burned—but my residency was spent in blistering, steaming heat looking at men who had been burnt to a crisp by white phosphorous and napalm. Weapons that Charlie didn’t have.
I got my full medical license in a Quonset hut handed over by the CO. The incoming alert went off before he could even pour me a drink, and I shoved the certificate in my pocket as I went off to get scrubbed up. Two years of blood-spatter later and I got off the bus at the Port Authority with twenty-five dollars and that crumpled-up medical license in my pocket.
I didn’t have anywhere to go and I didn’t care about anywhere except that it be not Vietnam. I wanted a slice of pizza, an icy grey cold winter and a bottomless cup of real coffee and that was it. I didn’t have any change for the subway and I was tired of being cooped up after the bus, so I turned my feet south and walked down the long blocks of Seventh Avenue towards the YMCA.
“I’M SORRY, SIR, but we’re all full up. Hold on, let me call around and see if there’s a bed at another Y.”
New York looked pretty much the same in May of 1967 as it did in 1962. Dirty, like the leachate dripping f
rom the bottom of a dumpster. Flashing lights. Longer hair on the men. Brighter colors. Mostly, though, just the same yellow cabs and bright lights and people walking fast, more important than you were, to get where they were going.
“Okay, here we go. I called around and the only place there’s a bed tonight is at the Y in Harlem. You can take the A-C-E train or the 2-3 up to 135th Street and it’s between the two stops, right on 135th Street.”
“Harlem? I can’t go to Harlem.”
“Oh, honey, we integrated all the YMCAs this year. It’s all right. If you want a bed at a Y that’s your best bet. Plenty of hotels around if you want to spend your money on that.”
She turned back to her crossword and I didn’t have much choice but to put my bag on my shoulder and go find a hot breakfast that would leave me with two dimes for the subway and 135th Street.
“REDS, WHITES, HORSE, whatever you need, young man, I got.”
I knew negroes in Vietnam, but this was a different kind of jungle. It was dark and terrifying. Garbage was spilling out of the cans on the street. People were out and walking all around but aimlessly, like they didn’t have anywhere to go. It was late, and I was the only white person in sight. A lifetime lived in New York—I wasn’t counting my time in country—and I’d never, ever set foot in Harlem.
I knew colored people, sure. We had negro porters at school and a couple of nurses in Vietnam, and I’d heard of a good surgeon from another unit. I was friendly with the people that worked the dining halls at CUNY. But Harlem was something I hadn’t ever experienced. Everything was loud. There were men sitting on stoops and women walking around and everyone was talking as though they all knew each other, like the street was their living room. They shouted across the street at each other and said all kinds of incomprehensible things.
I wasn’t a racist—I signed a petition supporting the Civil Rights Act in Vietnam, and I thought that Martin Luther King was right about just about everything. It wasn’t fair that blacks and whites had separate schools, not to mention all the lunch counters and all that. Still, I wasn’t exactly comfortable in this situation.
I’d walked forward like I knew where I was and where I was going, heading for the corner to turn on to... what street was that, 133rd? I couldn’t see the sign in the dark. I couldn’t tell any of the men on the street’s faces apart without more light. Were the streets darker here? A man in a red sweatshirt, too warm for the April night, walked up to me, and started talking.
“Hey, man, I’m talking to you. I know you’re only up here for one of two things. You either want brown sugar or some color, brown, white, or red, so tell me what you need.”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just fine.”
“Man, look, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean nothing, but you got a look about you. You looking for some good soul food, maybe? Come on, man, I’m just trying to help you out.”
I turned onto the street, trying to get a glance from the corner of my eye. Damn, I thought, that’s 134th Street. I’ve got to go up another street with this guy following me.
“I don’t need anything, thanks. I’m just going up here.”
“Up where, man? I can show you. I know where you should walk, and where you shouldn’t, know what I mean? It ain’t safe up here for honkeys. Not safe at all. Might need some protection, know what I mean?”
“I made it through Vietnam. I think I’ll survive walking a few blocks in New York City, buddy.” I know I should have just ignored him, but his chattering just got to me. It just made it worse. Now he knew that he’d got me talking.
“Think so, huh? Different kind of jungle up here. You been killing the yellow man, maybe the black man don’t appreciate that, you know what I’m saying? Maybe the yellow man, the red man, the black and the brown man, maybe we all got to stand together, huh?”
People were watching, now. I knew I’d draw stares, my white face standing out, but his constant shouting made me the center of attention, and I was bone weary and just wanted to get some sleep. “What do you want?” I asked him. “I just want to walk down the street without being harassed.”
“Brother, I’m just trying to keep you safe. You want to walk down that street you best turn around and go down them subway steps, take the train downtown or out to Queens. Only one reason for you to be up here, and that’s to participate in the local economy. Contribute to our economic activity. See? I ain’t stupid, just because I be using words like ‘ain’t.’ Now, you looking for something I can help you find it, otherwise, you might become a less willing participant in the economy, you know what I’m saying?”
I didn’t like the way he was talking. Worse was the attention I was getting. It wasn’t just stares, but I could swear that at least one person was following us as we walked down the street. I couldn’t turn and look, though, because I didn’t want to look like some racist honky. I wasn’t. I mostly didn’t want to get shot.
I picked up my pace, slinging my duffel bag full of stuff I didn’t want over my shoulder. Uniforms. Ribbons, Paperwork. My medical degree. Everything I owned, and most of it was from the damn Army.
“Oh, you got some step in you, ain’t you? Maybe you got some good fighting moves, too. That’s what’s going to protect you, huh?”
I saw two beat cops ahead of me. I’ve never been a friend to the police, but I’d never seen a sight that made me so relieved. It was like the weight of the street was off of me, except this guy who would not shut up.
“Hey there, something bothering you, friend?” The dulcet tones of Brooklyn were never more welcoming to me than now.
“No, I’m okay, officer, but...”
Before I could even answer the man had his arm behind his back and his face against the brownstone on my right. One of the cops was patting him down while the other one was holding him in a way that, I knew from basic anatomy, could dislocate his shoulder in a second.
“Can’t leave well enough alone, can you, boy? You gotta get up in everyone’s face. Shooting your mouth off. Well, you listen to me, son. You got no reason to be chasing people up the street.”
I’d never seen someone roughed up like that by the police, but I figured they were the beat cops up here, they must know the neighborhood. It must’ve been a pretty bad character that was following me. I nodded to the officers and turned to go.
“Now just wait a minute there, you. Stick around. Don’t go anywhere.”
I stopped and turned around—yes, he was talking to me. I stopped and waited, the habit of taking orders from people in uniform, while he shouted at and berated the man. It was awful—he kept calling him all kinds of mean things—but I was torn between thankfulness that I didn’t have to put up with him any longer and discomfort at how the guy was being treated.
“Now you run along, boy. Get out of here and stay out of other people’s business. Now you—what on earth would have you up here anyway? Boy there says you’re looking to buy drugs. That what you doing? You don’t want to be doing that. Look at this place. Trash everywhere. They won’t even respect themselves, so why you expect them to respect you? Well? What are you doing up here?”
“Why is it any business of yours? I’m not suspected of a crime, am I? Has one been committed?”
“Don’t you get fresh with us. There ain’t no reason for you to be up here. We just stopped this guy from jumping you.”
“Really? On a crowded street? Come on.”
“You’d better get a civil tongue in your mouth before we—”
His partner put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, buddy, we’re just trying to watch out for you. Just tell us where you’re going, huh?”
I was tired and I just wanted to get some food and some sleep and make some kind of life tomorrow.
“I’m headed to the Y. I got off a bus at the Port Authority a couple of hours ago and this is the only place I can get a cheap bed for the night. That okay with you, officers?”
It wasn’t good luck in the end that the two pigs had turned up. When I woke up
the next morning my bags had been gone through and I was missing my captain’s bars and twenty dollars. I was down to a buck fifty seven and I didn’t have a job or even an actual address to get a job on.
“HERE’S THE ADDRESS. Should be up by 135th Street.”
I sighed. I made it out of Harlem that time, and I was still here. “All right, but let’s take the 2-3.”
“The A-C-E would be faster.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go up that way. I don’t want to come out by the park.”
five
RACE WAR
THERE WAS A sheet of black-painted plywood over one of the windows at the Black Panther office. Sherlock pointed out broken glass glinting in the corner. “That window’s been broken, but someone’s swept up the street outside. Just a few pieces of broken glass there.”
The bustling office fell into a dead silence when we walked in the door. Two dozen black faces stopped dead and looked up at us as one. Staring. It was terrifying. It was like a needle had been ripped off a record just as we walked in, and their attention was focused directly on us.
No one said a thing. They just stared. People had watched us since we got off the subway, but it wasn’t as obvious as this. We could feel every eye on the back of our necks. These stares were direct and shameless, demanding to know what we were doing there without saying a word.
“Hi,” I tried, trying to sound casual. My voice may have squeaked a bit, under those stares.
