GREG WATCHED DROVES OF PEOPLE leave the jail on Wednesday, including one of his friends from the neighborhood. It had been two days since they had all been arrested, and it seemed that only Greg would remain in detention. He was on lockdown, so he didn’t have access to information about what was going on in the outside world—the releases were the only sign of what was happening beyond the jailhouse walls. He wondered if anyone was looking for him. But then again, he had given the cops a fake name. How would anyone even find him?
Time stood still. He had been spending his days doing push-ups, watching TV, and eating food that he wouldn’t have fed his pit bull. He did have some good conversations with his fellow prisoners, though. One of the most memorable was with a middle-aged white dude whom Greg walked the cell with in circles one night when neither of them could sleep.
“What are you in for?” the man asked him.
“Man, I’m in here for my people,” Greg said.
Greg knew that he had done something big, etched himself in Baltimore’s history. He had even signed a few autographs once people figured out who he was, what he’d done. But he couldn’t stop thinking about that moment with the fire hose. Why hadn’t he just kept throwing bottles at the police? The reality was he had nothing against the fire department; he never saw them as a source of oppression or pain. They didn’t sit around letting black people burn in buildings, taking two hours to respond because they stopped for sandwiches on their way to a low-income neighborhood. He told himself that even if he’d directed his anger that day at the wrong people, in that moment he didn’t owe anybody anything. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He had been taught that anybody who didn’t bring him harm didn’t deserve harm from his hands. Besides, firefighters were some of the only men in uniform Greg had respect for. They had shown up when the smoke rose from the Dawsons’ rowhouse.
After these thoughts circled through in his mind for a few days, he decided he didn’t regret what he’d done, but he wouldn’t do it again. He decided that one day he’d make amends.