CHAPTER 20: NO WAY!!

Why must we always kill our prophets before we listen to them?

Jame Thompson, Pastor, West Branch, Iowa

It was four-thirty when I left the county jail. Friday traffic, which at this hour would normally be building up to serious congestion, was surprisingly light. I pulled into the lot and parked. Vincent was not in sight, so I went to the office. He and Sylvia were standing in front of the small black and white TV on the top of our file cabinet. They didn’t turn around when I came in.

“What the hell’s so important on the boob tube?” I asked

Neither of them moved, but Sylvia said, over her shoulder, “Someone shot Doctor Martin Luther King.”

“No way,” I said.

Vincent said. “Truth, bro. King was on the balcony of his motel in Memphis and some whacko from somewhere across the street shot him. Just happened. It’s like the whole country has gone nuts.”

I moved closer to the TV and the three of us watched and listened. Commentary after commentary, speculation after speculation. The news kept flashing back to earlier scenes on the motel balcony of Doctor Kings’ entourage, some kneeling beside the fallen body, some pointing, some yelling, some weeping.

“Switch channels,” I said. Vincent did. All the stations’ commentators with their serious faces, their astonished faces, their grieving faces. Cameras occasionally switching from Memphis, panning to crowds of people in cities across the country looking confused or shocked or both. In Black neighborhoods already a gathering anger. One broadcaster said, it was like a shadow was cast over the country. I thought of Dila yesterday after hearing of Doctor King’s speech and saying, “Oh dear.” The way she’d said it, so surprisingly sad. Was she having some kind of premonition? For her sake and mine, I guess, I wished that I spent more time listening to his speech or reading about his movement. I felt suddenly ashamed.

Vincent kept repeating, Mi fa cagare, mi fa cagare.”

“It’s awful,” I repeated. The word awful seemed too slight to express the horror of Doctor King’s murder. In Italian it sounded more tragic. President Kennedy and now Martin Luther King, Jr. I was surprised to feel tears welling in my eyes. Not that I didn’t feel the tragedy, but, like a lot of young white guys, I wasn’t into the social upheaval going on. The white dudes that did had beards and long hair. I never volunteered to do community serVictore. Up to now, life for Victor Brovelli was selling cars and maximizing pleasure. So, from where did this grief originate?

Vincent and I went back to work, but with little enthusiasm. We took our ups on the lot. Sylvia worked on the finances. I came back to the office and found Vincent sitting on the couch, his eyes closed, a rugby magazine from Australia open on his lap. Sylvia was standing by the coffee machine. I closed the door, sat down beside him, and slapped his knee, “Your ups.”

“Not asleep, just thinking.”

The sound of knocking startled us. The door opened, and Black Panther Minister of Education, Terrance Bowles, flanked by two men carrying rifles at port arms, entered. I imagined at any moment they’d swing the rifles into firing position. I imagined bullets erupting from the barrels. I imagined my flesh being torn apart. I imagined Vincent and me bleeding to death beneath Pop’s poster of Naples, all because of some white Tennessee fucking racist. Because on this day vengeance seemed to me to be completely logical. There was no way I could make it to Sylvia’s desk in time to get her Beretta before they shot us, if the frigging antique even worked. My voice stuck in my throat. Next to me, I could hear Vincent breathing heavily and Sylvia whispering the Hail Mary.

For a moment Bowles looked at us, perhaps rethinking his position vis-a-vis ducks in the gallery, then he said. “We stopped by to give you a little advice.”

I could hear Vincent sigh with relief.

Sylvia whispered, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“I’m not going to ask you how you are, Mr. Bowles,” I said.

“Good, and no need to offer condolences or crocodile tears. I just want to tell you that it would be a good idea if you white boys closed up shop for the day and headed home. And I mean this minute. If you get my drift.”

And that is how Vincent wound up at the Oakmont Golf Course teeing-off, and I wound up parked in front of the Wee Globe Theater, looking up at the marquee that read Closed Due to Death in the Family.