The Rock and the River (11 page)

I started toward my room.

“Sam.” I turned back. “No more talk about the Black Panthers, is that clear?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“I need you to stay away from them.”

“Good night,” I said, and headed to my room. I closed the door behind me and stood in the center of the room, looking around as if I hadn't spent every night of my life in this space. My gaze fell on the block tower. I lunged for it, tugging away blocks so hard, the small section of wall tumbled to the floor. My hands trembled as I withdrew the gun. The cold weight of it startled me, and I let it fall to the carpet. I wrapped it in one of Stick's shirts.

I took a shoe box from the closet and stuffed the gun and shirt inside, then glanced around the room. I shoved aside a stack of books underneath my bed and pushed the box up against the wall, hidden from view. Then I rebuilt the tower, smoothly aligning its walls to toughen it against future invasions.

I lay in bed, reading the papers I'd picked up at the meeting. One was the Panthers' newsletter from Oakland. The front-page article was all about that kid Leroy had spoken about, Bobby Hutton. The one who died in Oakland, surrendering to the police. He was the same age as Stick. The article said he hadn't done anything. Just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong color skin. Like Bucky.

I pushed the papers away and they floated to the floor.

Too much was happening too fast. Nothing seemed right anymore.

I tucked the covers tighter around me. Stick's vacant bed seemed bigger, emptier than ever. For the first time, I understood that he really might not be coming home.

W
HEN I WALKED OUT OF SCHOOL
the next day, Maxie was waiting for me. The schoolyard noise and chatter around us seemed louder than ever. The world suddenly felt so much bigger than the two of us.

“I missed you at breakfast,” Maxie said. “The meeting was incredible last night, wasn't it?” Her eyes shone as she gazed up at me. She grabbed my hand.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “Pretty amazing.” I'd barely slept all night, for thinking about everything that was happening. I was more confused than I'd ever been.

“Ready to go?” Maxie tugged my hand.

I pulled my fingers free. I hated to do it, but I had no choice. About anything, it seemed. “I can't walk with you today.”

“Why not?” Her eyebrows dropped into a V when she frowned.

“I'm in trouble. I have to go straight home.”

Maxie moved closer to me. “What happened?”

I stepped back. “My dad found out.”

“What did he say?” She tipped her head back, gazing at me so openly that I longed to pour the truth right into her. I wanted to hug her close and tell her everything. She could take it. Looking at her, I knew she could carry the weight of the world and still walk tall. It was me who was weak.

“I can't really go into it right now. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow, then.” Maxie smiled, but the light didn't reach her eyes as they searched my face.

“Sure,” I said, moving away.

“Sam?” Maxie called. She motioned me back. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” I kissed her cheek. My lips held on as long as I could let them. Maxie fixed her deep gaze on me. She didn't believe me. I walked away quickly, before I had to lie to her again.

 

Father was waiting when I got home. He sat in his usual place at the dining table, the phone against his ear, with the cord stretching behind him from the kitchen. He glanced over when I came in and motioned me toward the couch.

I hung up my jacket and went to the couch, but I didn't sit down. The living room was strewn with books, papers, signs, and things in preparation for the demonstration Father would hold during Bucky's trial the following week.

I moved through the familiar clutter differently this time, as if I had never seen it before. It wasn't unusual—our house always came alive with protest paraphernalia in the weeks before a demonstration, but I had never really paid attention to it before. Sure, I'd painted my share of signs and stuffed enough envelopes that I was certain every part of my hands had been paper cut at one time or another. These things were a part of me, so much a part that I'd taken them for granted.

The whole room spoke of the movement. The story of Father's work, the work of so many others, spelled out on our walls. Their triumphs and failures, the soul they carried, the injustices they strove to change.

I went to Father's desk and gazed at the frames that filled the wall. Photos of demonstrations. Texts of speeches. Newspaper clippings that mentioned Father's name; the earliest ones, from back when seeing his name in print was a novelty. Mama still collected the news pieces, though there were now too many to have on display. My gaze landed briefly on the stack of clippings Mama kept atop Father's
file cabinet, then I returned my attention to the wall.

I studied the photo of Father smiling, his arm around Dr. King's shoulders, shortly before the speeches began at the March on Washington. The steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the background, where Dr. King would deliver his famous speech. How strange that he would never speak anywhere again. I squinted at Mama's neat print along the matte of the frame:

 

Roland Childs and Martin Luther King March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28, 1963

 

“Do you remember that day?” Father asked softly. I hadn't heard him come up behind me. I dropped my gaze away from the photo, but something drew my attention back to it.

“You had just turned nine,” he said.

I looked at Father's face in the picture as I answered.

“Some of it.” The white steps. The people. The heat of the summer sun beating down. They all ran together in my head sometimes, all the different crowds. But that day had its own separate space in my mind. I had never seen so many people, or been so hot, or stood in one place for so
long. I remembered the huge white monuments poking up above the heads around me.

Stick had lifted me up for a minute so I could look over the people next to us. All I saw was people, as far as I could see. I thought everyone in the world had come to Washington, that we were celebrating the end of all the protests. I couldn't imagine that there was anyone left in the world to hurt us.

Remembering the extreme joy I'd felt at that moment made the ache within me now seem ten thousand times worse. I crossed my arms over my stomach.

“Did you know that day that you were doing something famous? Something everybody would always remember?”

“Yes,” Father said. “In his speech, Martin called it ‘the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.' Yes, we knew.”

I nodded.

“It was just one of many powerful experiences we shared, but it's the one the world remembers.

“Planning it took everything out of us,” Father said. “We were all so tired that day. Tired of marching, demonstrating, organizing. The whole thing.”

I tilted my chin toward my shoulder so I could see him behind me. He stared at the photo, didn't acknowledge me at all as he spoke into his memory. The look in his eyes
mirrored something I felt within me. His words filled me up just a little, knowing maybe I wasn't so alone.

“But something happens once you get out there,” he said. “When you see the faces, their hope, their dedication. We left everything we had on those steps, but we took something away with us too. Something more valuable.”

He blinked, like he was emerging from the photo back into the room. “Sam, our words and our bodies were all the weapons we had. But the whole country took notice.”

He met my eyes, but I drew them away. I stepped around him and went to sit on the couch.

“People are more afraid of ideas than of guns,” he said, with his back to me. “Don't forget that.” He cleared his throat and began stacking papers on his desk.

“I'll need you to come straight home after school this week. This is a big one, and I'm going to need your help, all right?” He lifted the paperwork and carried it over to the coffee table without waiting for my answer. Did he really need my help, or was this just his way of keeping me off the street?

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

He smiled, a glimpse of his usual self. I latched on to it, tightly as a life raft upon a churning ocean.

“I'll show you.” He came over beside me, clapping his hand against my shoulder as he sat down. He seemed so
pleased. I didn't want to let him down. And I wanted to do something for Bucky. This was better, anyway, wasn't it? Safe. Familiar.

Father and I worked for over two hours outlining the whole set up, pointing out problems and things we needed to do. He'd been doing it right in front of me my whole life, but I'd never fully realized how much work he did to get these demonstrations going. Now that he was trying to involve me, I started to see a whole other side of the movement. There were calls to make, letters to write, permits to secure, and other things I'd never thought of. I had a lot to learn.

 

The next day, I hurried out of school, hoping to avoid running into Maxie. The sky had clouded over and a light mist was falling as I left the building, but the rumbling in the sky hinted at a coming storm. I felt secretly grateful. Later, I could always tell Maxie that I'd rushed home because of the weather.

When I reached the steps, though, she was waiting. She stood leaning against the railing, one arm crossed over her stomach with the other elbow resting on it and her chin in her palm. She sighed when our eyes met, as if she'd been waiting all day for me.

The soft sound hit me like a fist in my stomach. I dropped
my gaze and walked past her without saying anything.

Halfway down the steps, she caught me. Her hand grasped my elbow. I shook my arm free, but her fingers closed around a handful of my jacket. I stopped. I had to.

I listened to the gentle whisper of her fingers against my sleeve. If I shook her off again, she'd let me go. That's how she was. But I didn't want to hurt her.

“What gives?” She stood two steps above me, so she could look me straight in the eye. I avoided her gaze, the hurt and confusion within it. She stepped down in front of me. She slid her arms under mine and rested her cheek against my chest like she was listening to my heartbeat. It touched me that she wanted to be close. But right then, I didn't have it in me to give her what she needed.

“Can we just walk, please?” I said.

We held hands and left the school. We walked slowly, in silence. I was grateful for Maxie's willingness to simply be with me and not to pry. It took us longer than usual to reach her neighborhood.

We passed the building where the Panthers held their political education classes. My grip on Maxie's hand tightened. She turned to me, questions in her eyes. She seemed so open, so ready. I had to tell her.

“Stick left.”

More questions appeared in the arch of her eyebrows.
I explained what happened, about the fight and how Stick walked out.

“Wow,” she said. “When?”

“Last week.”

Maxie made me stop walking. “Last week? How come you didn't tell me?” She crossed her arms and stepped away from me. “I gotta go through a whole week getting nothing but grumbles out of you before you finally say what's going on?”

“I didn't think it was a big deal.” Now I regretted telling her anything at all.

She kicked the curb. “You didn't think lying to me was a big deal?”

“I didn't lie.”

She glared. “Well, you didn't say the truth, so it's the same.”

“I'm sorry, okay? I thought—I guess I thought it would be over by now.” A clump of grass poked out from a crack in the sidewalk. I trimmed it with my toe, then crammed it back into the crevice.

“What would?”

“You know,” I said. “I thought he would come home. Put the Panther stuff behind him.”

Maxie's eyes glowed. “You can't put it behind you so easy. We know that now.”

I glanced away. “Maybe
you
know it.”

Maxie moved around me. “What are you saying?” She tilted her head as if she was suddenly seeing me in a whole different light.

“I don't know, Maxie. My father says—” I paused.

Maxie planted her fists on her hips. “Says what?”

“He says we could get in a lot of trouble for getting involved with the Panthers.”

Maxie snorted. “He should talk. He gets in trouble all the time. He's been arrested, been to jail, just like everybody else.”

“It's different,” I said. “Getting arrested for protesting—that's part of the movement.”

“So are the Panthers. Except, they don't just march around and complain; they actually do things.”

I searched for better words to say what I meant. “Father says the cops are out to get folks who act militant.”

Maxie threw up her hands. “They're out to get all of us, Sam!”

“But when things are peaceful, it's obvious to everyone that the arrests are for no good reason.”

“They don't need a reason. Maybe they do up where you live, but they sure don't down here.”

“So, if they already come here for nothing, why go and rile them up with real reasons?”

“Like Bucky Willis gave them?”

I closed my eyes until the bombardment passed. Images of Bucky were never far from my mind. Every day they dug deeper, etched on my conscience, never to be erased.

“Shut up about that, Maxie. I was there too.”

“And you still don't care?”

“Of course I do! I told my dad, didn't I? There's going to be a demonstration.”

Maxie's eyes blazed, and she shook her head at me. “You still don't get it. Your dad and them, they took the cops' word over Bucky's from the start. You had to tell them the way it went down, and they almost didn't believe you. Nobody had to tell the Panthers.”

I looked up and down the street. Maxie stood, fists clenched, in front of me.

“Maybe this is why I didn't tell you about Stick leaving,” I said. “I knew you'd get mad.”

“If you would have told me before, I wouldn't be mad now, would I?”

I rubbed my forehead. “I don't want to fight with you,” I said. “I've got enough going on without us going at it too.”

“We both do.” She glanced down the street. “All right. I'm going home.” She started walking. “I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

When I didn't answer, she turned back. “You're coming to the breakfast.”

I paused. “Let's just plan to meet after school.”

“Sam—”

“I don't know, all right? I don't know.”

Maxie tugged on the ends of her hair. “Breakfast never hurt anyone, best as I can tell.”

“If my father finds out—” I shook my head. I didn't even want to think about what would happen.

“Who cares?”

“He's on my back all the time, okay? Mama never wants me to leave the house anymore. There's only me now.”

“You gotta stand up for yourself, Sam.”

“Look what happened with Stick. I can't get kicked out.”

“You don't know what would happen.”

“Oh, yeah? Let's see Raheem go tell your father about the Panthers and see what happens.” Why did I say that? It was an empty argument. Maxie's father didn't even live with them.

“My daddy don't know which way's up,” Maxie snapped. “And if he did, he wouldn't care what we do.”