In the days and weeks following the burial of Brennie-Man—Brendon Fraser Whitaker, Jr.—there was a marked difference in the neighborhood’s mood and behavior. The adults were constantly ill at ease. Negro parents forbade their children to set foot in Lincoln Park. To compensate, there were more house parties. The streets in front of their homes became their playgrounds. But those same streets became ominous trails of evil when police cruisers drove down them. The cops would stop mid-block and glare. They wanted the hate in their eyes to be seen. They wanted you to know they knew where you lived.
And they knew exactly where Prez and his family lived. Sometimes they would spend what seemed like a whole shift parked in front of their apartment building. At other times they would roll right down the back alley behind the church and park facing his building. One Friday night there were even two cars, one in the front and one in the back alley. Mattie was scared out of her wits and called Ellis, who, mercifully, was at the precinct. She was able to give Ellis the numbers of the two squad cars. He was furious. He and his partner hopped in an unmarked car and rolled down the back alley, parking right behind the patrol car. Ellis flashed his headlights. The officers in the squad car didn’t move. He flashed again then put his car in gear and nudged the patrol car with his front bumper. Still there was no acknowledgment from the officers in the squad car. Ellis backed away, put it in gear again and rolled hard into the rear bumper of the squad car, knocking its occupants forward with a jolt. Now their doors flew open and they emerged quite angry, their hands reaching for their holsters. But Ellis’s partner was already standing beside the passenger door of his unmarked car holding a Tommy gun. This froze the two white officers. One of the officers looked at the other and motioned to get back into the car.
“Just a minute. I haven’t dismissed you.” Ellis emerged with deliberate slowness from behind the wheel. He placed his hands on his hips in a sweeping gesture that exposed his Walthers in a double shoulder holster under his jacket.
“I had a look at the roster and the schedule before I left the station house, and you boys are supposed to be off. You know what else? I could find nothing that authorizes you boys to be parked in this back alley. Now you need to tell me what you are doing here and under whose authority.”
“We were having a lunch break, Lieutenant.”
“Well, I tell you what, the two of you will be having a very extended lunch break as soon as I write my report. You’re going to be suspended without pay for insubordination and disrespect to a supervising officer while in uniform and while on duty.”
“But you already said you checked and saw that we are off duty.”
Ellis walked up to the big mouthy one. “Yes, but I am on duty—very much so.”
He didn’t bother to check the car out front. He knew it would be long gone.
*
Mattie had already been considering moving. That incident made it a certainty. She had spoken with Ellis, with her neighbors, and with her best friend Lois about it. She was hesitant to take her son Preston out of another school before he could finish it. And both her sons had fared so well in that neighborhood. They had lots of friends and the adults were truly neighborhood parents; they looked after everyone’s children. But the horrifying Lincoln Park events and the constant police harassment left her no choice. She had to get her sons, especially her oldest, away from there.
With the rental section of the classified ads under her arm and her best walking shoes on her feet she set out that Monday morning on a mission to find a new home for her sons and herself. Prez also had something to attend to that day.
*
The August sun was baking the day. Prez wetted his bandana under the cold faucet in his kitchen before venturing out. As he rounded the corner onto East Capitol Street from Fourteenth with his crew in tow, neighborhood youth noticed. When they saw Prez in the lead, they wondered what was going on, so the little procession became two swarms that moved down both sides of the street. When they reached the corner in front of Mr. Richardson’s burned-out pharmacy and looked down East Capitol, they could see another group of youths approaching. Kids from around the park took notice and everyone converged on the corner expecting a rumble. Tala was somehow among them. When the crowd recognized Freddie Snaps and the Serpents, the dead-dry heat of the August air became electrically charged. But something was different. Prez was not standing ramrod straight with a fist pointed at his adversary.
A circle formed with Prez and Freddie Snaps in the middle. Freddie Snaps stepped forward. Then Prez stepped closer. As people wondered who would throw the first punch, Prez untied the green bandana from around his neck and held it out. Freddie Snaps did the same with his black bandana. They exchanged them. They grasped each other’s hands and shook. They hugged. Then they turned to face the crowd, holding each other’s hands high with their green and black bandanas. Debra started to cry. She may have had a clue but she was still shaken. Everyone else was shocked; everyone, that is, except Tala, who recognized Prez’s potential to be extraordinary from the day they first met. She couldn’t wait to tell her father.
“It is time,” said Prez, “for us to stop fighting each other. My friend Brennie-Man is dead and it wasn’t the Serpents who did it. Al got all shot up right here on this corner and it wasn’t the Serpents who did it. Old Preach Mouth is dead. The cops killed him too, right here on this corner. We know who did those things. And we know none of us burned down Mr. Richardson’s Drugstore. So it’s time for us to stop fighting each other because I don’t think we are enemies. I think we are really brothers and sisters. I think we need to start acting like it.”
“A new day. A new hope for us to succeed. That’s what this is,” began Freddie Snaps. “Prez is correct to analyze things the way he has and we have got to get right because so far we haven’t been. There are too many more important things for us to think about than fighting each other. We cannot do anything about freedom unless we do it together. Hey, everybody. This is a really good thing happening here. Snap out of it.”
He started to clap his hands rhythmically.
“I’ve been going down south with my mother and Deb’s mom. There’s a lot of stuff happening to try to desegregate the South and win equality for the Negro. Sometimes we forget that we too are in the South. I’ve been to sit-ins and I’ve been to marches. Here’s a song we sing sometimes:
“Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me
And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave”
When Freddie Snaps got to the end of the song, he invited everyone to join in. “C’mon, y’all.” Soon the whole street corner reverberated with the words, “And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave.”
*
Later that evening after the boys were in bed and Mattie and Celia were sitting on the front stoop catching the night breeze and listening to the neighborhood’s ambient noises, Celia said, “I saw one of Preston’s little friends today. Cute little child. Quite mature looking for her age, though.”
“You’re talking about Miss Debra Wilbanks. Hmph! That girl cannot keep her lips off my Preston Junior!”
“Oh my,” Celia giggled. “You know about that?”
“Girl, the whole neighborhood knows about it. I’m surprised you saw her. They meet around the corner and then they kiss like they’re slurping licorice sticks or something! Oh yes, I’ve been told. Who do they think they’re fooling anyway? And Preston Junior always gives it away.” She mimicked her son, “‘Hey Mama, I’m just going out to meet some friends.’ Some friends, he says. Lordy, I tell you, Celia. But I’m not worried because that boy has a good head on his shoulders. And Miss Deb, as the boys call her, so does she. I believe she has a good heart too. I just wish these children would stop behaving like they invented their little sly maneuvers. We did!”
“Sure did, Mattie. If they only knew!”
“I try to give my son credit for being smart and mature. He’s known all along that his school principal is more than a former pro football star, that he’s Debra’s father and that Debra’s mother is the famous lawyer Wilhelmina Wilbanks of the NAACP? He’s carried himself well, I think. But he thinks people have honor and they don’t. I don’t want the moment he realizes that to be the moment of his death. He’s all torn up inside. He needs healing. Away from these streets. I really do feel badly about taking Preston out of his school, especially since he only has one year before he’s in high school, but I know what he’s into around here. We’re moving.”