Them

by Nathan McCall

  “I’m sorry,” the selection chairman said, somberly delivering the decision. “The committee has deemed that such linguistic lapses are unbefitting of the crisp doctoral eloquence of Martin Luther King.”

  The rejection had been a major blow, one that haunted Reverend Pickering to this very day. Now, after years on the front lines, he was tired of being passed over for one thing or another and seeing his contributions to the Movement routinely ignored. He was especially vexed by both the gall and the success of young bucks like Cliff Barnes—Johnny-come-latelies who reaped the bounty of all his suffering, and without having to shed a drop of blood!

  When Barnes wound down his prepared speech, the audience applauded again. He nodded acknowledgment of their good taste and appreciation and took a few triumphant steps back to hand over the mike.

  Now it was Pickering’s turn, and he stepped forward. The reverend was a tall, high-bellied man with deep razor bumps and dark skin that had the kind of oily texture you see on the faces of people who drink too much. His hair was thick on the sides, topped with a thin, stringy crown. He wore a shiny beige suit and matching shoes.

  As he stood before the civic league gathering, a host of anxieties tugged at him. After four decades in the pulpit, the reverend feared he might be losing his thunder. His church membership was tapering off. His worshippers were being lured away by the new breed of celebrity preachers, clerical capitalists who served up fancy words like candied yams. With their manicured nails and tailored suits, the celebrity pastors preached a gospel of prosperity that appealed to black folks with hefty mortgages on expensive houses and fat bank notes on late-model cars.

  One night, as he knelt in prayer, Reverend Pickering told God his ministry badly needed a boost. Now he suspected he was about to come upon God’s reply. That was what Reverend Pickering was thinking when he took the mike. He was thinking God was about to speak through him.

  Ministry or no ministry, God or no God, he was not about to allow himself to be upstaged by some greenhorn politician, some young boy with nothing more to offer the people than a fancy Yale law degree. He intended to show this boy how to speechify.

  The preacher stepped forward and started slowly, almost reluctantly, just like King used to do back in the day. Speaking in a thick southern drawl, spiced with low and rhythmic Baptist cadences, he ran off, rapid-fire, a long list of despicable deeds, carried out at the behest of this country’s leaders, that had led to untold suffering and hardship throughout the world. These were loathsome, callous leaders, he said, whose salaries they—black people!—helped pay.

  From there, the reverend flowed into a freewheeling, half-hour rant against misguided domestic policies, unfettered graft by lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill and rampant corporate greed. Then, with the audience hanging on his every word, he deftly steered the ship back to its local port.

  “I don’t know bout y’all,” he bellowed, “but I’m sick-and-tied a dis! And I’m sick-and-tied a bein sick-and-tied!”

  Reverend Pickering took a strategic pregnant pause and lowered his voice to a near whisper. (He used to love the way King did that; it left folks eating out of his hands.) He spoke so softly that people seated in the middle pews had to lean forward to hear.

  “There are those who say we should step aside!” He pounded the lectern. “Uh-uh! Uh-uh! Y’all might step aside, but I’m not!…I’m a fighta from the ooolll school!”

  As the preacher went on, Barlowe beamed in hard, trying to get a read on this man’s heart. He studied the meaty nose, wide and long, and the bulging eyes—maybe the most fiery eyes he’d ever seen.

  “I’m tellin you that, insofar as Gawd is my witness!”—Pickering pounded the lectern again, harder this time—“I shall not be moved!”

  When it was timed just right, that simple phrase, peppered with a dash of pastoral passion, had worked charmingly during the Movement. It usually got folks all fired up.

  This evening was no different. The people clapped heartily, louder than they had clapped for Barnes.

  Pickering proceeded to milk the cow: “We must fight like the biblical David, who took on big, ol Go-li-a wit no weapon, save for a flimsy slangshot and a sturn faith in Gawd…I’m tellin ya, is time for l’il David to dust off his slang!”

  There were more approving shouts, screams and wild applause.

  He tilted his head skyward: “I saaaiiiddddd is tiiimmmeee for li’l David to dust off his slang!!”

  Before long, the crowd was on its feet. Some folks shoved clenched fists in the air, in a Black Power salute. Others stomped, shook their heads and banged the pews like conga drums.

  Still others hissed, “Yeessss! Yeessss! Yeesssss!”

  By the time he crossed the midway point, Pickering had achieved what he had set out to do: As oratorical matches go, he thought, he chewed that young boy up and spit him out like a pork chop bone.

  Barnes watched and listened with grudging admiration, itching for another crack at the old warrior. But it was too late. The momentum had swung to the reverend now.

  As for the people, this was the moment they had been waiting for. They were outraged, restless, ready to attack somebody—now.

  Even Henny Penn and his hoodlum crew joined in. They were so charged they forgot where they were. Just when the crowd began settling down, Henny rose to be recognized. Everyone turned and studied him.

  Henny Penn was a sturdy, handsome man. He kept his hair cropped short and meticulously neat—parted down the middle, New York style. He sported a mustache so thin and straight it looked like it had been drawn by a stylist skilled at eye shadow work. This day, Henny wore a red velour jogging suit.

  Henny wasn’t shy about speaking his mind, not even in a gathering of decent folks. He shouted, at the top of his lungs: “I say we kick they asses! I say we run them crackers outta here!”

  Somebody invoked the ghost of Malcolm. “By any means necessary! By any means necessary!”

  A few supportive shouts came from other young people scattered in various corners of the sanctuary. “Yeah! Yeah! Any means necessary!”

  Reverend Pickering calmly watched and listened, waiting for the commotion to die down some. Then he signaled for the people to take their seats.

  “Hole on. Jus hole on a minute.”

  When they were settled, he turned and faced Henny Penn across the room, looking him squarely in the eye.

  “Tell me somethin, son.”

  Henny sensed a lecture coming. He rolled his eyes. “Whut?”

  “Son, whut make you thank bein ignant is a political act?”

  Henny tugged his jacket collar and glowered at the preacher.

  Reverend Pickering spoke with a patience that bordered on condescension. “In the Movement we never stooped to vi-lence. When I was wit Dr. Kang, me and Andrew Young and John Lewis took all kinda beatins upside the head. Whut we did in them times took a kinda courage you young folks nowadays don’t know nuthin bout.”

  Henny Penn cursed under his breath. “Sheeeitt!” He snorted and nodded to his crew. “I thought these niggas was serous. Fug dis. C’mon!” He straightened the wrinkles in his jogging suit and led his minions through the door.

  Several other young people, impatient, edgy, got up and followed. Tyrone stood, too. Barlowe tugged at his pants and pulled him down.

  Meanwhile, Clifford Barnes glanced nervously at an assistant, who returned a knowing nod. Barnes held up an arm, high enough to be clearly seen checking his watch. Then the councilman politely excused himself—“I have another commitment pending”—leaving the preacher to handle the flak.

  When the politician had disappeared, Pickering pointed toward the door. “Dis fight ain’t for the faint-hearted, no!”

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his brow and returned to the mission God had set him to.

  “In all this time, nuthin’s changed, my friends. Nuthin has changed, and nuthin will ever be the same.”

  He thought of his good friend Jesse Jackson, and
revved up the grandiloquence another notch. “Dese newcomers can’t cohabitate! They gonna come in and nihilate!”

  Those words charged the crowd again. Applause sailed up to the church rafters. Shouts and screams seemed to rain down from the heavens, as people leapt to their feet and roared.

  Elated that he could still electrify a crowd, the preacher stood there recalling days long gone by. He pined for those days again, the days when righteous warriors took to the streets and boldly challenged stubborn segregationists.

  Those days would return—he could feel it. The fire in the room was a heavenly sign. It was a sign that he’d come to the right conclusion that night when he knelt down to lay his burdens in God’s expansive lap. The Lord was telling him—he was sure of it now—that he needed an old-fashioned civil rights march. Surveying this pumped-up crowd, he could tell the people here needed one, too.

  Reverend Pickering hadn’t had a good march since 1987, when he and Hosea Williams led 25,000 people up to Forsyth County to face down the Klan. What a grand march that was!

  Indeed, Reverend Pickering’s whole adult life had been defined by the march. Those marches during the Movement had brought a deep sense of purpose to his life. He missed the camaraderie of walking, arms locked with Martin, Coretta and countless other frontline soldiers, heading to the battlefield. He missed the rapt attention from news reporters and camera crews, who zoomed the eyes of the world on them.

  High drama. Excitement. Danger. That was what the march was all about!

  He longed for that excitement again. He needed it. Now the challenge was to convince the people that they needed what he needed. He had to lead them to it carefully, like a wife leads her husband to believe her idea is actually his idea.

  Looking around the room, he sensed he was almost there. He pressed forward with a message aimed to close the deal.

  “We can’t step aside, no matter how powful the forces! We mus stand and fight!”

  People shouted: “Yeah! Yeah!”

  The preachers behind him flung their arms skyward and did the Holy Ghost dance.

  “Yeah!! Yeah!!! Is tiiime!”

  “Preach, brother!!

  “Make it plain!!”

  “Weellllllllll!!!”

  The people got so fired up that Reverend Pickering was tempted to lead them—right then and there—into the streets for an impromptu, warm-up march. And why not? They were ripe as week-old apples, just plucked from the tree.

  But he resisted the urge. People needed to be properly trained, organized. He calmed the crowd and prepared to launch a discussion about what should be done.

  Barlowe sat erect, antsy. He suspected the preacher was about to lead the gathering to some frightful course of action that they might regret later on.

  Reverend Pickering picked up steam. “I’ll share wit y’all somethin Mah-tin tole me yeahs ago—I’ll never forget—we were campaignin down in Missippi for votin rights! He came to my hotel room late one night, and he was troubled! He couldn’t sleep! We had been beggin ol Pharaoh to do right by us! And ol Pharaoh—the white mayor in dat Missippi town—told us ta go straight ta hell!”

  He paused. “Well, Mah-tin came to my room and we talked thangs through! Finally, after hours a pokin and probin for slutions, we came to the clusion that there was but one thang left to do!

  “I’m tellin ya dis evenin that Mah-tin didn’t wanna do it, and neither did I! But we knew we had to! And ventially he looked me in the eye—I’ll never forget—he looked me in the eye and said dese wurds: ‘Owen, I’m fraid we gon have to march.’”

  The reverend gazed out over the church gathering and paused to let the idea sink in and mix real nice like a Brunswick stew. Then he stirred the pot a little. He said what they were all waiting, now dying, to hear.

  “Now I’m sayin to you people tonight: Lawd knows I don’t wanna do it! But I’m fraid we gon have to march!”

  There were cheers, and loud, thunderous applause. People standing around the walls pumped their fists in the air and yelled.

  “Yeeaaahhh!!! Yeaaahhh!!! Yeeeaaahhh!! We gotta march!!”

  Mr. Smith and Zelda and Tyrone all stood and clapped heartily. Barlowe stuck to his seat. Glancing around the room, he could see it coming. This train was starting to move.

  He couldn’t bear to sit there quietly. He had to speak up, say something that might slow things down and give folks more time to think.

  Not knowing exactly what he would say, Barlowe raised a hand. After a few minutes basking in the glow of applause and cheers, the preacher recognized him, reluctantly.

  Barlowe stood. He looked around the room, then turned and faced the reverend. He cleared his throat. Then: “You don’t know me, but my name is Barlowe. Barlowe Reed. I don’t wanna take up much time, but it seems to me that before we go marchin there’s some things we need to talk about.”

  Pickering beamed in, curious, skeptical.

  “Yeah. We listenin. Whut we need to tawk about?”

  Barlowe shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, I share the concerns bout the neighborhood. But I’m confused: How we gonna protest folks payin their own money to live where they wont?”

  People looked at Barlowe, then turned to each other. They really hadn’t thought about that.

  Tyrone tapped him on the arm. “Whut you doin, man? Whut you doin?”

  Barlowe ignored him. “And one more question…”

  “Yeah. Go on.” Pickering strained to conceal his irritation.

  Barlowe pointed southward. “Right there, just a few blocks up the street, is Martin Luther King’s old home. And the next block down is his grave.”

  Now there was complete silence in the room. Folks were anxious to hear the point.

  “I was thinkin bout the fact that we talkin bout marchin to keep folks out. King fought so people could get in…So if we march, what are we sayin? Are we bein hypocrites?”

  When he finished, he sat down, having already gone much further than he’d intended. Oddly, Sandy Gilmore crossed his mind.

  The boys from the store looked at each other, mystified. Willie whispered to Ely: “Is dat ol Barlowe—Mr. Conspiracy—up dere changin his song?”

  “Maybe the boy fell down this mornin and bumped his head.”

  This crowd was in no mood for technicalities and complications. Barlowe braced himself for the sure attack.

  The first shot was fired by Clarence Sykes, seated two rows ahead. Clarence turned around, twisting his mouth sideways when he spoke.

  “C’mon, Barlowe. Be serous. We ain’t on no schoolyard here. We playin for keeps, man.”

  There was scattered applause, and a kind of eager hope among the people that Clarence—or somebody, for heaven’s sake—would bail them out.

  Clarence went on. “I been livin in the Ol Fo Wode all my life. I’m committed to stayin here. When you committed, you gotta be ready to stand and fight!”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” More scattered applause.

  The second strike came from Wendell Mabry, who stood straight up from his seat. He had a toothpick in his mouth, and he worked it round and round, beneath the tongue.

  “Barlowe, you know you all right with me and all, but I gotta tell ya, you soundin kinda scary. You sound like you moe concerned bout ol massa than your own people.”

  Barlowe fixed his gaze deep on Wendell’s eyes. He raised up slowly, both fists balled in a knot.

  “What you sayin, Wendell? What you sayin?”

  “You heard me! I’m sayin what I just said!”

  “Which is what, Wendell?”

  “Which is what I just said!”

  Barlowe made a move to get to the aisle, but Tyrone held him back.

  Wendell didn’t shudder or shrink. “So tell us, Barlowe. Whut you propose we do? Nothin?”

  Barlowe squinted, breathing heavy. He wanted a clean shot at Wendell’s throat.

  Finally, when he had calmed down some, he spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m not proposin nothin, Wendell. I was
just askin a simple question, thas all.”

  Barlowe and Wendell faced off like that until Lula Simmons interjected. “Why don’t we just reach out to the new people? Some of them are really nice.”

  Wendell didn’t even bother to look her way. “Lula, why don’t you wake up and smell the coffee?”

  “Now, now,” said Pickering. “Les remain civil heah.” Studying Barlowe, he let out a nervous chuckle. “Son, lemme be the furst to say dis: I give my en-tyre life to the struggle. Got the battle wounds to prove it, too.”

  He yanked off his jacket and started to roll up his shirt sleeve to show his scars.

  “You don’t haveta show me nothin,” said Barlowe. “All I’m sayin is, this feels a little bit like the kind of meetin they used to have to keep us out.”

  Silence again. Heads turned in unison toward Reverend Pickering, waiting for a comeback that would put them back on solid moral ground.

  Pickering stepped away from the microphone. He raised an index finger to his cheek, weighing the young man’s words. Finally, he said, after some reflection, “Tell me, son. How long you lived in dis neighborhood?”

  “Some years,” said Barlowe.

  “Uh, huh. Some yeahs…Well, I been livin here a li’l mo then twenny-five yeahs. And dis church been part a dis community for twenny-three. You follow me?”

  Barlowe said nothing.

  Reverend Pickering continued. “And tell me, young man. Whut is your line a wurk?”

  “What?”

  “Whut do you do to urn a livin?”

  “I work at a print shop downtown.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. A print shop downtown.”

  He was getting geared up to take this young punk to the woodshed. And he would have, too, if Mr. Smith hadn’t raised a hand. Mr. Smith stood and spoke loudly, addressing the congregation.

  “I been livin out chere for thurty yeahs, so I think I have a right to speak on this, too. I ain’t happy bout what I see, neither.” He pointed at Barlowe. “But I know this main. He a good main. Live right cross the street from me. And I can tell ya, he not tryin to be no distraction. He jus tryin to tell us that maybe we gotta be careful, thas all.”

  Mr. Smith never looked at Barlowe once while he spoke. Although the old man had come to his defense, Barlowe sensed he would have preferred they were sitting farther apart—maybe at separate ends of the earth.