Richard and Eli were still asleep when he left the apartment. He’d be back later for his stuff—right now he just needed out. He couldn’t imagine what he’d say to Richard and he didn’t care. Let’s finish what we started. Well, it was finished now.
Sam crossed Tompkins Square Park and headed west on Tenth Street. It was one of those days when everyone on the street treated him like he was invisible. Pedestrians jostled him, trod on the backs of his sneakers, jabbed his ribs with their elbows. It was like he’d become a ghost, a disembodied spirit. Maybe he had. March was a week old, and though the cold was still fierce, the light was brighter, whiter, more penetrating. Rusted fire escapes zigzagged from the brick tenement façades like abstract art installations. Saturday—but people were already rushing up and down the avenues on their mysterious urgent business. Everybody but Sam. He was down to his last twenty with no idea where he was going to get more. What the fuck, as Richard would say.
He went in the first diner he came to, sat at the counter, and ordered up the three-grease special—eggs, bacon, and hash browns. It was too early to call Leon or anyone else. For company, he had Crime and Punishment and his notebook. He flipped open the novel, tried to pick it up where he’d left off, and quit after reading the same sentence five times. He cracked the notebook and, while shoveling in the grease with his left hand, started writing.
Everything happens for a reason—that’s what my grandmother always said. God’s plan, I guess. His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there has to be a reason for all the shit that’s going down right now. The brownstone explosion. Kim’s rage. Richard’s—what should I call it—attempted rape? uncontrollable lust for my irresistible ass? Random events—or—or what? The hand of God? The end? The beginning?
Maybe this is what a revolution feels like. Attack and counterattack. Incidents and accidents. Fire and backfire. Fire—seriously? Is this the moment of truth when the Movement morphs into a real revolution—with guns and bombs and blood running in the street? Or are Kim and her cronies just fantasizing like a bunch of—well, like a bunch of students who don’t know shit about shit and have no idea of how little they know?
Which is it?
There’s no doubt that something’s happening. Something that maybe has never happened before. It’s in the air—in the water—in the clouds blowing off the dark fields of the republic—in the grit ground under our heels on every sidewalk. We’re different—from them—from our parents, our teachers, even from the kids who don’t have a clue and maybe never will. You can tell who’s on which side just by the vibration. Our brains are wired differently. We hear the weeping guitar, they hear noise. We see beauty, they see money. We want peace, they want law and order. They tell us we are privileged, but we don’t want our privilege. We want to be free. We are free. FEEL FREE—that should be our battle cry.
But is it really a battle or just a mood?
Sam put his pen down and looked around at the men hunched over the counter beside him. The guy to his left—fortyish, balding, paunchy—was reading the Times, and there it was, above the fold right smack on the front page: A grainy shot of a smoking crater on a downtown block under the headline: town house razed by blast and fire. Jesus. Until now, Sam had half-believed Kim was making it up. When he tried to read over his shoulder, the guy glared nastily and twitched the paper away. Excuse me, sir, Sam wanted to say, but do you think the time is right for violent revolution? He buried his head back in the notebook and kept writing while the food congealed on his plate.
Everything’s connected: the war in Vietnam, the systematic state-sanctioned slaughter of America’s black men, corporate greed, imperialistic expansion. The media. The message. Everything’s connected, but extreme polarization makes it impossible to tell truth from lies. Let’s say Kim’s got it right. Let’s say there is a revolution—that Kim succeeds in uniting the Panthers and the Weatherman and together they bring down pig-state Amerikkka. Then what? Huey Newton becomes president? Abbie Hoffman secretary of state? Do they even have a plan beyond blowing everything up? Have they stopped to consider that a bunch of kids might not have the experience to run a country? Maybe they’re all just crazy—delusional—spellbound by all the media attention—victims of their own fantastical groupthink? It’s happened before—it could be happening now. The coming days will tell.
I know it sounds weird, but I think what’s at the heart of this revolution is the same thing that tore the country apart in the Civil War: slavery. Only this time it’s not just the enslavement of black by white. This is an uprising against every kind of slavery. The enslavement of poor by rich. The enslavement of the third world by the first. The enslavement of gay by straight. The enslavement of women by men. The enslavement of men by their own manly bullshit. The enslavement of everybody by money—or lack of money. Internal and external slavery. Mental and economic slavery. If we can end all of those slaveries, if each one of us can free ourselves, if we can love another, then and only then will we truly be free.
But it has to be universal. No one’s free if anyone’s enslaved.
I keep coming back to Tutu and Leon. Tutu was born with nothing and she’ll die with nothing but she has a kind of power—the power of her voice. Leon is an invisible grocery store bagger, but his singing can break your heart and heal your soul. Why aren’t they free? Like I told Richard last night—it all comes down to the power of harmony. Not unison but harmony. Voices blending into something bigger, fuller, higher, more inspiring than any single voice could ever reach by itself. Every voice equal—not the same but equally valued. That’s the real revolution. If Leon is as free on the street as he is in his church, if Tutu’s as powerful in the dining room as she is in the kitchen, then we’ve won.
We will win. We have to. The world is going to be ours. We will inherit, whether they like it or not. We have started this revolution—peaceful or violent remains to be seen—and the world to come will never be the same. We’ll never be the same. We can’t be stopped. We’re everywhere. Without real leaders or a clear ideology, we have spontaneously risen up, taken power into our own hands, refashioned the world. In fifty years, when they look back, they might hail us or hate us. But one thing is certain: this era, this year, this season, this moment unfolding around us right now is the dividing line between before and after.
Sam covered page after page, never lifting the pen. He let it gush from his fingertips. He forgot about Richard. He forgot about Vermont. He forgot to call Leon. I don’t have the answers, he scrawled. But at least I’m asking the questions. Taking it in and getting it down. This is what I live for.
richard picked up on the first ring.
“Are you alone?” Kim didn’t even bother with hello.
“Just me and Eli—Sam was gone before I got up. No idea where he is.” Crawling back to mommy if I had to guess. His hand still hurt from the bite. What if Sam had given him rabies?
“All right. Good. It’s going down this afternoon—four o’clock—north end of Central Park. They’ll pay you three K—not a penny more. You ready?”
“You know it.” Jesus, could they even get the guns out of the warehouse by then?
“What about the mule?”
“Leon’ll be there.”
“Leon?” Kim gasped. “Sam’s Leon? Tutu’s grandkid? That Leon?”
Richard felt the blood pounding in his ears, but he kept his voice steady. “He’s perfect. Got a car—clean record—one hundred percent certified Negro.”
There was a pause while she turned it over. “Cool,” she finally exhaled. “Everybody comes out ahead. Okay. They’ll be in a late-model black Olds. Right where Lenox enters the park.”
“He’ll be there.” What if he says no? There was no Plan B.
“Okay.”
“Sweetheart, you’re going to be the queen of the underground.”
“Don’t fuck me over, Richard. Everything’s riding on this.” God, if Sam ever found out.
“Don’t sweat it, Kim. Inconspicuous-looking car—Leon at the wheel—and you know what in the trunk. It’s covered.”
“It better be.”
leon was about to take a shower when the phone rang. “Leon, my man, Richard Rines here.” Who? “You know—Sammy Stein’s roommate?”
It took a moment to click. “The producer’s son.”
“Bingo. In fact, that’s what I’m calling about. I’ve been thinking over what we talked about last night—you know, introducing you to my dad—maybe set up an audition?”
“No way.” Leon beamed, dancing from foot to foot.
“Totally way. Your voice is amazing, man. But first” —static nipped at his ear— “I was wondering if you could do a little driving job for us.”
“Us?”
“Dad, actually. There’s this crate of LPs that never got delivered— Aretha’s latest album—and you know how hot Aretha is right now. Well, all the regular company drivers are tied up this weekend, and when I told Dad about you . . . and how you have a car and everything . . .”
“My uncle’s car.”
“Right. But if you could borrow it—and get those records from the warehouse and bring them into town—Dad would like totally owe you.”
“Owe me?” Leon tensed. That’s not how it worked.
“With Dad, it’s all about favors. He never forgets. This will be your foot in the door—the rest is up to you.”
“Wow. You sure don’t waste any time, Richard.” But he was wondering: Why me?
“Like I say, those records are flying off the shelf—”
“So when do you need this job done?”
“Today? Like this afternoon?”
Leon thought it over. It sounded kinda fishy, but what did he have to lose? He had the day off from the supermarket and he still had the keys to his uncle’s car. Granny would kill him if she ever found out, but she wasn’t due home until that night. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he finally said.
He could hear the hard swallow on the other end of the line. “Cool. Cool.”
“So where exactly am I driving?”
“Teaneck, New Jersey. But don’t worry, my cousin Eli will go with you—he works in the warehouse part-time. You just pick him up in front of the Orange Julius on the corner of Broadway and 181st Street—right by the entrance to the bridge. Say two o’clock? He’ll make sure you find it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“And of course we’ll pay you. I think Dad said three hundred bucks—once you make the drop.”
“The drop?”
“You know”—more static—“deliver the records.”
“Right. Wow. Thank you, Richard. Orange Julius. Broadway and 181st Street. Two o’clock this afternoon. I’ll be there.”
“Groovy, man. You’re not gonna regret this.”
Leon hung up the phone and clapped his palms together. First the Rabbi—then Irv Rines—and now the money for the demo. Everything was coming together. Leon stretched his neck as long as it would go, raised his eyes, and whispered to the ceiling: “Thank you, Lord, for answering my prayers.”
kim pushed down the cradle, let it up again, fed in another dime, and dialed Jesse’s number. Jesse was in the Weather Bureau—central leadership—one of the higher-ups. They weren’t supposed to communicate by phone—too risky—but Kim was desperate. She was on the verge of giving up when Jesse answered. “Heading out the door,” he said. “We’re meeting at Diomedes Diner on Fourteenth. Those who are left.”
“Lee?” Kim breathed.
“Gone. Her and two others—everybody’s freaked. You need to be there. War council.”
The diner was ten blocks uptown so she started walking. War council—Jesus. Those guys were so full of themselves. Too bad they sucked at revolution. Until yesterday, Kim had thought Lee knew everything about everything—but it turns out she didn’t know shit about making explosives. The bomb she gave Kim to plant in the downtown draft center had also misfired. It was set to go off at midnight when the Whitehall Street office building was dark and empty, but instead the fucking thing blew up in a cleaning lady’s face at nine o’clock. Kim only found out about it because she’d gone down there after slamming out on Sam. She’d had a bad feeling after the town house blast, so she decided she better return to the scene of the crime. Though it wasn’t a crime—it was a necessary act of revolutionary provocation. Or that’s what it was supposed to be. It was nearly midnight by the time she got there but the street was pulsing with ambulances and police car lights. Kim lingered in the shadows outside the building for as long as she dared, eavesdropping on the cops and emergency crew. The bomb evidently blew when the cleaning lady jostled it. A piece of shrapnel lodged in her right eye and blinded her. Of course she had to be black and the mother of four children. Now her blood was on Kim’s hands. Not to mention that she’d be in federal prison for the rest of her life if the pigs ever caught her. After that, she couldn’t sleep—and anyway, where would she go? So she killed the night making the rounds of greasy spoons, fighting off horny assholes, trying not to think, not to blame herself, not to crack. When it got light enough to see, she found a pay phone and made the calls. First Jeff. Then Richard. Then Jesse, who told her about the war council—as if those turkeys knew anything about fighting a war.
Kim barely breathed as she darted through the East Village streets, randomly changing direction, ducking in and out of shops and alleys. When she got near the diner, she melted into the shadow of a recessed doorway across the street so she could scope things out without being seen. You couldn’t be too careful—especially now. Diomedes looked like every other shopfront on Fourteenth Street—foul, run-down, sleazy, and depressing. The last place the FBI would come looking for surviving Weathermen. No one entering or leaving; no cars idling nearby; no undercover agents (though how would she know?) in evidence. So she crossed the street and pushed her way inside. They were already there—six of them hunched around a booth, five guys and a pretty dark-haired girl Kim didn’t recognize. She scooted her butt aside to make room for Kim. The men barely looked at her.
She’d missed the beginning, but it made no difference because no matter who was speaking, every other sentence was the same: “I still can’t fucking believe it.”
“Is there any question—any shred of possibility?”
“Zilch. You gotta face facts, man. It’s over.”
“I still can’t fucking believe it.”
“The first bloodshed—now it’s real.”
“We should have tried to stop it.”
“This is war. You can’t stop a war.”
“You think the pigs could have blown the place up—like a preemptive strike?”
“No way. The bomb went off accidentally—there’s no other explanation.”
“You know, the last time I talked to Lee she wasn’t a hundred percent.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she was having second thoughts about the nails. About killing that many innocent—”
“Nobody’s innocent. Not one fucking white person in this country is innocent.”
“So what are you saying? She blew herself up to save them?”
“It’s a theory.”
“Well, as a theory it sucks.”
“So what’s the plan now?”
“I’ll tell you this much—any one of you tries to bail, and you’re done.”
“What are you going to do—pop us with your BB gun?”
“Cool it, you two. Fighting’s not going to bring them back.”
“No, fighting is the only thing that will bring them back. Fighting the pigs.”
“We gotta get out of here. All of us. Lie low for a couple of weeks. I know this place upstate. . . .”
“I have a friend in the Seattle cell. . . .”
“Berkeley is my choice. Anyone have a car?”
Kim felt a knee riding up between her legs. Jesus—these guys were apes.
“I’ve got some more bad news, as if we needed any,” she broke in. All heads swiveled toward her. Kim took a deep breath and told them about the induction center misfire.
“That sucks.”
“Everything sucks.”
“At least the cleaning lady didn’t die—one eye, right?”
“Means and ends—it’s a trade-off.”
“Yeah—but . . .” It was no use. No one was listening. To these guys, Kim was invisible—except when they were trying to fuck her.
They broke half an hour later. The plan was to blow town and hide out upstate for a while. They’d need two cars. No one even asked Kim if she was in. Just as well. Her deal with the Panthers was the game changer. These guys had no clue.
She and the other girl left together—Deedee was her name. A couple of years older than Kim by the looks of her, long shiny brown hair, high cheekbones, and slanting feline eyes, one green, one blue.
“How do you stand them?” Kim asked her as soon as they were out of earshot.
Deedee laughed. “I don’t.” She looked Kim up and down, reassessing. “Were you and Lee tight?”
“I guess.” Kim paused. “I mean, I barely knew her—but she was everything. She was who I wanted to be.”
“Yeah, same here.” They fell into step on the sidewalk. “So are you going upstate to their hideout?”
Kim shook her head. “Got some business to attend to first—then—who knows?”
“Need a place to crash? Cause if you do, you’re welcome to hang out at our collective. The Radical Sisterhood. Women’s liberation, honey, that’s the real revolution. We’re never going to be free until we free ourselves of their chauvinist bullshit.”
“Right on to that, sister.”
“Why don’t you come check it out? It’s just around the corner.” Deedee flashed her a lopsided grin. “You look like you could use some sleep.”
Kim felt the knot between her eyes relax for the first time in two days. Sam. Richard. Eli. Jesse. If she never saw another man again as long as she lived, she would die in peace. Women’s liberation: count me in.