New York

Lionel was studying his uniform in one of the station’s bathroom mirrors. He had never been so full of right angles. When he had stepped out of his bedroom that morning, his mother put her hand to her mouth in astonishment. He looked exactly like his father did in the snapshots from his first days on the job.

“She always did like the uniform,” Lionel’s father said. He was sipping his coffee at the kitchen table, the sports page in front of him.

“Well, it’s just a uniform,” Lionel said.

“Son, that’s not just a uniform,” Maurice said, and the sternness of his voice made Lionel realize what would come next. “No, sir. Not that one. The guard at the bank, he’s wearing a uniform. Man who sells tickets at the box office, that’s a uniform. You’re working for the railroad; you’re in the brotherhood, son. And that’s not just the Pullmans. That’s all trainmen. Nuh-huh. That’s more than a uniform you have on.”

But to Lionel it was a job—a summer job cleaning up after mostly rich white slobs all day up and down the East Coast and doing everything possible to make sure they didn’t have to lift a finger for themselves. Yes, it paid particularly well, and he was grateful for that. (Maurice had only to make a few calls to get Lionel straightened away with the Penn Central Railroad.) But he wouldn’t be grateful for having to be on his feet for sometimes twelve hours straight at a time, and he wouldn’t be grateful for too many days of his first summer after his freshman year in college in a thickly starched shirt and jacket and a hat that cut into his scalp by the fourth hour of his shift, or for wearing shoes as stiff as toolboxes.

For Lionel, it was hard enough living back at home after enjoying so much freedom down in North Carolina for two semesters, at Winston-Salem State. He could handle only so much forced reverence being slung his way between now and the middle of August.

“What you have on your back is about tradition,” his father had told him, as Vera set down the sausage and eggs. His mother tried to offer Lionel a sympathetic smile that said, There’s nothing you can do but let him talk. “It’s about respect. The union. Men who knew the only way they could get respect themselves was to say, ‘Here is who we are, here is our service to you, and here is what we are going to demand for a job well done.’ Pullman porters are, or were, the only union black men had in this country, and you want to know what’s so special about the uniform? Boy, learn your history. Don’t go in that first train car like you don’t understand what I’m saying, because you do.”

“I’ve been listening,” Lionel said, and began to eat.

“All right, then.”

“Most of the time,” Lionel said, and smiled, revealing his first mouthful. Maurice then folded the sports section and hit his son over the knee with it.

“It’s an honor and a privilege for any man to be on that train, and I know you understand that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Senator Kennedy,” Maurice began, but then he hardly knew where to start. “Bobby Kennedy stood up for the black man when no other white man would.”

“Yes, sir,” Lionel said.

“Your father always likes to sell President Johnson short,” Vera said. “LBJ has done a lot for Negroes, too. And don’t you forget that, either.”

Maurice shook his head. “You can’t mention LBJ in the same breath as Bobby,” he said. They had this conversation over and over.

“Well, we’re not going to talk about all that this morning,” she said.

“No, no, we’re not,” Maurice said. “But you’re on a train carrying the man who was well on his way to being the next president of this country. Well on his way, winning California like that. The Golden State. The big prize. And a damned important president he was going to be—for all of us. Not just black folks. Like Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy looked into the soul of this country and—”

Vera put down her coffee and raised her eyebrows in a way that made clear that this morning was not the time for sermonizing. Maurice smiled and waved his hand in the air. “Anyway, son, if you see that coffin, you say a prayer for Bobby Kennedy, you hear?”