The 1966 Fall semester had started and Prez was already knee-deep in his research and writing. There were days when it felt like quicksand. He knew it was because he was spreading himself too thin. He was organizing on the west side so frequently, he wondered if he should move there. It would save a lot of travel time. But he would miss the lake. And he really liked Hyde Park. More importantly, he lived a short walk from Eckhart Hall, whose second-floor library he used so much he would wake up in the middle of the night thinking he was there.
One rainy evening as he bounded out the library door and jumped over a puddle of water a girl shouted in a thick British accent, “Excuse me! Hey! Can you help me?” She was standing right in the puddle, her long toes going up and down. She held a pair of Buffalo sandals in one hand and a sheaf of papers tied with cord in the other. Her wafer-thin body looked frail under the lumberjack shirt she wore. Prez wondered how she kept her baggy, torn bellbottoms from falling off her hips. Her little pink mouth was turned up at the corners in a perpetual smile and the whites of her brown eyes reminded Prez of the Cleary marbles he and his boyhood friends would hoard but never expose to the abuses of an actual game of marbles. “Is this Eckhart Hall, where J. Ernest Wilkins studied?”
“Yes. And yes.”
“Terse, aren’t you?”
Didn’t everyone know about the thirteen-year-old African-American math prodigy who entered the University of Chicago at the age of thirteen, received his Ph.D in mathematics at the age of nineteen, and later worked on the Manhattan Project?
“No. I have to be somewhere. Maybe I’ll see you later.”
The very next day his professor made a special request, that he mentor three exchange students from England. Prez agreed to meet them at a place called the Soul Tavern later that evening so that they could get better acquainted. Just as he rounded the corner up the street from the tavern has noticed two white men sitting in a dark-gray four-door sedan. They were parked across the street from the tavern. Prez could hear the squelch of a two-way radio. He paused and leaned against a tree and watched.
The fellow on the passenger side got out and opened the trunk. He took off his trench coat and threw it in. He put on a varsity jacket and a baseball cap. Next, he crossed the street and went into the tavern. Then he came back out and leaned against the fender. Soon after, a young white guy came out and they walked a few paces down the street and talked for a few minutes, at times heatedly. The older guy in the baseball cap opened the trunk and pulled out a dark-green rucksack. He tried to hand it to the younger guy, but he wouldn’t take it. They had a heated exchange. Then the younger guy snatched the backpack from the older guy’s hand and went back into the tavern. The fellow in the baseball cap got back into the car, which then drove off.
Prez waited a few minutes, trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed, before going into the tavern to look for a black girl with a purple scarf tied around her forehead. She was seated at a booth and rose to wave at Prez. That was odd, he thought, as he went over to meet Jenny “call me JB” Broadwell, Percival “everyone calls him Percy” Longstreet, and Elizabeth “please call her Lizzy” Beckert.
“I’m Preston Downs.”
“So, that’s your name, rude boy,” said Lizzy.
“Better than Mister Terse.” He laughed.
“What’s going on?” asked Jenny. “You two are behaving like you know each other.”
“Soon,” said Lizzy.
They all began to talk in some detail about what they aspired to accomplish that summer and how they hoped to make a difference when they returned home. Prez promised to do what he could to acclimatize them to their new environs. All the while his foot was busy feeling around under the table for the backpack. There was something hard in it.
Jenny leaned on Percy’s shoulder. I think I still have jet lag. Percy stroked her face and her hair. From his shirt pocket he pulled out a joint. “This will help.”
“Not in here, man. And if you see the cops, throw it away,” cautioned Prez.
“Let’s get back to the room,” said Jenny.
“I’m going to stay and talk with Preston here,” said Lizzie.
“Everyone calls me Prez.”
“But I like Preston. There’s nothing you can do about that.”
“May I compliment you on your black velour jacket? It really looks good on you.”
“Thank you! It’s my favorite crinkly-comfy dressy jacket.”
They talked so much that midnight crept up on them.
“Okay,” said Lizzy. “Your girl is in Washington, but you’re not engaged.”
“Correct.”
“Well, I have a guy back in London. But I ask myself, suppose we knew the world was ending tomorrow. Here we are now, you and me. The perfect pair. Do we spend our last night alive together or not?”
“That’s such a crazy-ass question, Lizzy. You’re really nuts.”
He took her home.