The Rock and the River (8 page)

“There's still rioting. The projects are a mess.” Stick shifted his weight to his other knee.

I rubbed my forehead. “Everything's burning.”

Stick grabbed my hand away from my face. “What happened to you?”

“Fell in broken glass,” I murmured.

“Where?” He looked in my face. “Don't tell me—What were you thinking going down there?” He stood up and smacked me lightly on the side of my head. “Sam.”

I tugged at a loose thread on my bedspread. “I had to get Maxie home. Things just started happening. I don't know.”

“She got home all right?”

“She's here. We couldn't get to her building. I didn't know what to do. I can't believe this is happening.” I swallowed hard.

Stick laid his hand on my head. “It's all right, Sam.”

My throat felt tight. I kicked off my covers and moved out from under his hand. “No, it's not. Stick, why didn't you come home?”

“I was with some friends.”

I could guess which ones. “What did you tell Father?”

“He doesn't know I'm here. I have to get back. I just wanted to make sure things were fine over here.” Stick moved to the window. He slid the panes up and stuck his leg out, then he slipped into the dusky morning.

Once on the ground, he leaned back in. The faint sun rays at his back cast his face in shadows. “Don't tell them I was here.”

“Stick, wait.” But he was gone.

 

Reverend Downe held a memorial service for Dr. King at our church a few days later. Everybody came. By the time the service started, people were standing on the steps outside, pushing to get in. We sat in our usual row, Father, Mama, Stick, and me, smashed all up against one another. I folded the stack of tissues Mama handed me and slid them into the breast pocket of my suit. I wasn't going to need them.

“Good afternoon, friends,” Reverend Downe began. “Thank you for joining me today. When tragedy strikes, we
must not forget to take time to breathe, to pray, to mourn. Now, let us take the time to remember the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We have lost a leader, a brother, and with him, a piece of ourselves. Because Dr. King carried a piece of each of us in him. Today, we take the time to recognize that a piece of him remains alive in each of us as well. Today, we must not only mourn his death, we must celebrate his life.”

Reverend Downe's sermon brought the house down. I'd never seen so many tears in one room. The sobbing mixed with the constant hum of “Lord Jesus” and “Amen.” Dr. King was one of the only people who basically everyone had to respect, no matter what.

I still couldn't believe he was dead. For as long as I could remember, most everything about our lives had been pointed toward him, toward the movement. What would happen now? Dr. King's speeches and his life were all about peace and brotherhood, about finding justice. And we listened. Yet, all we had learned was that when you stand up, you get shot down.

Mama kept reaching over and squeezing my hand. Was she trying to comfort me or herself? Either way, it didn't help. Her fingers pressed against the cuts along the sides of my hand, reminding me of things that hurt.

The choir began singing “We Shall Overcome,” and
everybody joined in. Everybody but me and Stick.

In the midst of the familiar refrain, a voice behind me broke from the chorus. I turned around. Somebody's short, wrinkled grandma stood there, eyes folded shut, hands raised with the Spirit, murmuring over and over, “We're ready for the overcoming, Lord. We been singing for it long enough.”

I turned back front, but I could still see her, swaying with a rhythm of her own. I mouthed the words, because Father was watching, but no sound came out of my throat. “We shall overcome,” my lips whispered. The tune hung empty over my ears; the words tasted stale in my mouth. Then they slipped away, and I couldn't find them again.

 

Mama cried softly on the way home. The weather had turned cold again, nearly overnight, as if even the sky knew something terrible had happened.

We drove past the school, past the edge of the park. Stick slid down in his seat so his knees touched the back of Father's seat. Beyond the park's chain-link fence, a small crowd gathered. I recognized some of them—Raheem, guys from the breakfast, guys from school. They wore leather jackets, like the one Stick had worn into our room the other night.

A tall man with a smooth Afro stood on a crate, speaking
through a bullhorn over the people. “The cops don't own this neighborhood.”

“No, they don't!” the crowd called.

“The cops don't rule this block.”

“Not this block!” On the other side of the park, a police squad car rolled slowly past, blipping the lights and siren every few moments. The crowd made no move to disperse.

My pulse sped up. I knew what could happen, and I didn't want to see it. I couldn't stand to witness another awful thing. Yet I couldn't tear my eyes away.

“Who rules this block?” the man on the crate said.

Fists raised. “We do!”

“Who owns this 'hood?”

“We do!”

“Let me hear it.”

They punched the sky. “We do!”

The leader's head bobbed up and down in rhythm. “That's right, sisters and brothers. We are not slaves any longer.”

“No, we ain't!”

“We must not let them hold us to a lower standard. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

Father steered the car around the corner, heading away from the park. “Those kids are going to get themselves
killed,” he muttered. The words dug into me, their truth and their wrongness colliding deep in my chest.

Stick breathed on the glass, watched it fog up, then dragged his knuckles through the slick grayness. His eyes flicked to the back of Father's head, then dropped. The scar line on his forehead twitched and tightened. They weren't in the same car. They weren't even on the same road.

T
HE NEXT DAY, FATHER FLEW TO ATLANTA
to attend the real funeral service, the one with the coffin and the crowd. Mama and I watched it on television. Mama's hands twisted against each other as we watched. She was going to get wrinkles from all that wringing.

Stick was out.

I couldn't stand being in the house either, so I went looking for Maxie. The streets were still a mess. A lot of stores were closed. Others had nailed sheets of plywood or metal in place of missing windows. The gutters, a mess of glass and garbage. If anything beautiful had ever existed here, it was long gone. Gone from people's eyes, and from the very air they breathed. Only the ugliness remained. The only tangible mood was as a swirling drain, sucking away any remnants of hope. The stink of ashes lingered in the humid air. People moved like shadows. The rain-cloud
sky painted everything an uncertain gray.

An elderly couple swept up broken glass and debris along the sidewalk in front of their barbershop/beauty parlor. The woman dragged the thin broom with slow, deliberate strokes. The man bent low, holding a sheet of cardboard as a dustpan for her. I slowed, because I felt sure he would crumple to the ground. But he straightened, balancing the cardboard long enough to dump the load into a trash bin. He sighed with accomplishment while she readied a new pile, then he bent again into their slow waltz of sorrow. I should have stopped to help them, but I couldn't let myself do more than see.

I found Maxie sitting with a group of girls in front of her building. She leaped to her feet when she saw me, breaking away from her friends.

“I have to get away from here,” she said, gazing up at me with eyes that were holding back tears. I hugged her, partly because I didn't want her to see the shame I suddenly felt. I was glad I'd come, but I'd been selfish, thinking only that Maxie would make me feel better. Things must have been even worse for her. I hated seeing the neighborhood in shambles, but it wasn't my home.

Maxie and I went down to the park near the school. She took my hand as we walked, her soft fingers gripping the edges of my palm. Neither of us had much to say. We sat on
a thin metal bench and watched squirrels dart between the budding trees.

“Raheem is with the Panthers now,” she said at last.

“I thought he always was.”

“It's different now.” She pushed her hair over her shoulders, her fingers twisting through the curled black strands. “It's just different.”

“Yeah.” Stick had been gone more than ever lately. The house was quiet, everything in it a reminder of things now lost.

Maxie rolled her lips in and out. “I'm really afraid now, Sam,” she whispered. “Are you?”

“A little,” I admitted. She leaned her head against my chest and I laid my arm over her shoulders. “I don't know what's going to happen.”

“What does your dad say?”

I sighed. “He thinks nothing's changed. ‘All the more reason to press forward.' ‘We shall—'” I couldn't say it.

The top of Maxie's head brushed against my chin. “We shall overcome?”

“Yeah, that.”

Maxie pulled away from me. “There's a meeting on Wednesday.”

The thousand thoughts swarming inside me cried out in unison at her soft words. I took her hands. “I'll be there.”

 

Right away, I regretted walking into the house. Father and Stick stood at opposite sides of the dining table, heaving deep breaths and glowering at each other. Stick wore his black jacket, his shades resting on top of his head. Mama was in the kitchen, not slicing the vegetables laid out on the counter. She looked through the doorway at me as I came into the living room.

“How can you not be angry?” Stick shouted.

“Of course I'm angry. You know how I feel—felt—about Martin. What's been done is utterly reprehensible. But we have to go on.”

“Go on with what?” Stick cried out.

“You've got to hold on to that anger, son.” Father leaned forward, hands balled in fists at his chest. “Let it burn, let it fan the flames of your will, your determination. The movement is bigger than one man, Steven. Martin would tell you that.”

Stick took off his shades and slung them onto the table. They clattered along the wood and came to rest against Father's newspaper.

“It's over,” Stick said. “Everyone knows it.”

“You don't stop fighting because of a setback, even this one. If anything, it's a reason to keep going.” Father's voice vibrated with intensity.

“I'm not saying stop; no one is saying stop,” Stick cried, throwing out his arms. “I'm talking about putting up a real fight.”

“We are fighting, son. It's a long road.”

Stick grabbed the sides of his head, digging his fingers into his hair. “It's not happening. Dr. King tried the peaceful way. They came back at him with bullets. They brought this war on us! It's time to fight back.”

Father shook his head. “No son of mine is getting mixed up in that.”

Stick leaned forward, planting his fists on the tabletop. His eyes bored into Father's. “Then I ain't your son.” The words dropped from his lips like boulders.

“Don't talk back to me,” Father said, his voice rising. “I don't want to hear—”

“I'm a Panther.” Stick broke through Father's tirade with a calm breath.

Father sucked in his belly, sucked back the words that would have come next. “Not in my house,” he said instead.

Stick lifted his fists from the table and stepped back. Father lowered himself back into his chair. They stared at each other. The clock didn't tick. My heart didn't beat. Mama pressed her hips against the counter.

Stick lifted his shades from the dining table and slid them over his eyes. Father sat still, a carved, immovable
statue. Stick crossed the living room without a sound and without a glance in my direction. I tried to call his name, but my voice caught in my throat.

Stick slammed the door, and I knew what forever sounded like.

I let go of the couch and raced after him. I caught him at the end of the driveway and ran in front, stopping him with my hand against his chest.

“What are you doing?” I yanked the glasses off his face. Stick glared at me as he lifted them right back out of my hand. He held out his arms, the shades dangling from his fingers.

“I'm leaving. It's about time, anyway. Get back inside before he kicks you out too.”

“He's not kicking you out. You can't leave. Where you gonna go?”

“I got places.” Stick pushed forward, past me.

I grabbed his arm. “What about me? You can't do this.”

“I don't have a choice anymore, Sam.”

“You always have a choice.” Father's words, coming out of my mouth.

“We both know that's a lie.” He tugged out of my grip. “The truth is, you do what you have to do.” Stick slipped on his shades, tapped the side of my arm with his fist, then walked away.

I didn't know how to follow him this time. I'd been standing too still for too long. Stick didn't look back. Once he turned the corner, I backed up the driveway, my eyes locked on the place I'd last seen him before he disappeared.

I walked back into a different house. I pushed through the stillness, like a blur in a slow-motion picture.

Mama stood in the kitchen doorway, arms at her sides, loosely clutching a vegetable knife in her fingers. She stared at me with dry eyes. Father and Mama watched me come in alone, but neither of them asked after Stick. The silence seemed unbreakable. As I closed the door, the soft
click
of the latch exploded in the air. Mama jumped as if it had been a gunshot. The knife slid to the ground with a sharp ping against the tile.

Without another word, Father laid his head down on the table and wept. The sound of it shook every part of me. I clutched the doorknob in my fist, leaned my back against the cool wood. The order of the universe had changed.