They drug him from his car, coming from one of the meetings, broke his arm in two places.”
“Who?” Jay asks, though by now he’s already guessed.
“Some of the ILA boys.”
The ILA is the International Longshoremen’s Association, the white union down at the docks. The Brotherhood of Longshore men belongs to the blacks. The two labor groups were ordered to integrate a few years back and are still operating under a gov ernment consent decree to do just that. But the process has taken longer than anyone expected, except for maybe the longshore men themselves. “Some of them ain’t too happy about us talking about a walkout,” one of the men says, his ashy elbows propped on the back of the first pew, his hands in two tight fists. “We supposed to all be brothers now, part of the same union. Govern ment say so. If some of us strike, we all got to.”
“ILA ain’t having none of that,” one of the dockworkers says.
From what Jay has read in the papers, talk of a strike originated in the Brotherhood’s camp. The two unions technically operate under the same voting body, pay into the same pool of funds, but the black workers are routinely paid less than their white brothers, and the Brotherhood is using a new round of negotia tions with the shipping companies to get more pay. They’ve got enough white ILA men promising to join their ranks, enough for a bona fide strike.
“They got some good white ones down there,” one man says.
“But the rest of them crackers is up to no good,” another man says, pulling a gnawed toothpick from his mouth. “They trying to scare us out of a strike. And the police ain’t doing a damned thing about it.”
“He drove himself to the station,” the janitor says. “My boy looking worse than he do now. They wouldn’t do nothing, wouldn’t let him fill out a report, nothing. Even though Darren says he saw the men who did it.”
“Police making a bigger mess out of this than it is,” somebody chimes in.
“They’re doing everything they can to make trouble for the mayor,” Reverend Boykins adds. “The police department has made no secret of the fact that they don’t like her.”
“We gon’ strike either way,” the man with the toothpick says. “We talking about walking out as early as this week. Soon as we get the votes.”
“Place wouldn’t be nothing without us.” An older man speaks, his chest puffed out, gray hairs peeking out of his union T-shirt. “All the money they making off our backs, and we ain’t seeing none of it. Folks can’t put food on the table, businesses can’t sell ’less we load and unload them ships. It’s time they start paying us what we’re worth, least what the other boys is getting.”
“I mean, what was all that ‘we shall overcome’ stuff,” Ashy Elbows says, glancing vaguely in Jay’s direction, “if I can’t pay my rent?”
The men are all staring at Jay, waiting. He doesn’t understand what they want from him, what exactly they think he can do about any of this. Reverend Boykins seems to read his mind. “We understand you know the mayor, Jay.”
Kwame turns to Jay and winks.
Jay feels a stream of sweat running down the center of his back.
Yeah, he knows the mayor.
Of course, she’s been trying to forget him ever since she ran for office, paying a whole slew of consultants to bury her past. A couple of reporters tracked him down during the mayoral race, asking all kinds of questions about their days together at U of H. But Jay didn’t say a thing, not one word about the fact that she joined SNCC when she was twenty-one, then the more radical SDS a year later. He didn’t say anything about the guns she kept in her dorm room or about the marches she organized single-handedly. Cynthia Maddox was just a girl he went to col lege with. Maybe they’d had a class together, maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d had a cup of coffee together one time . . . it wasn’t for him to say.
“We figure,” the Rev says, “maybe you can talk to her.”
“And say what exactly?”
“We need to send a message, son. Let the city know these young men are serious about a strike. And if some of the ILA keep acting ugly, our men are going to need police protection. The mayor is going to have to get off the stick, talk to the chief and get some uniforms down there watching these boys.”
“You been involved in this type of thing before, Mr. Porter,” the janitor says. “I followed your other case, the one against the police department a few years back. If the city sees you repre senting my boy in this thing—”
“Wait a minute. You’re not talking about a lawsuit, are you?” Jay asks.
“A lawsuit is just the thing we need,” Kwame says. “Blow this issue wide open in the courts, drain the city’s resources, make ’em know we mean business.” He stands suddenly, getting pumped by his own rhetoric. “We got to take charge of this opportunity, shut the motherfuckers down if we have to.”
Kwame has badly miscalculated his audience and forgotten he’s in a house of the Lord. Reverend Boykins shoots him a look of disapproval. Even the sweat-stained dockworkers seem turned off by the sudden outburst. They don’t want a revolution. They want a bigger paycheck. “Well, now, let’s hold on there, Mr. Mackalvy,” the Rev says. “Let Jay talk to the mayor first.”
“You’ll do that for us, Mr. Porter?” the janitor asks, a hand on his son’s one good shoulder. Jay looks at the boy’s father, then at the Rev, the closest thing to a father he’s ever had. He nods without thinking. “Yeah . . . I’ll do it.”
The meeting moves on after that to talk about strategies for the strike, getting the word out to black day laborers that they are not to cross the picket line, should it come to that, and decid ing whose wife or mother will make sandwiches or some chicken while they’re on the line. Jay tunes out most of it. He can tell they’ve finished with him, but there isn’t any way to leave with out him seeming rude. A few minutes later, they end the meeting with an awkward prayer, the men fidgeting, uncomfortable hold ing hands. Jay ducks out as soon as he can, nodding once as the Rev asks, “You’ll call on her, won’t you, son?”
Outside, Kwame stops him on the church steps, his face flushed with the heat and excitement of the meeting. “It’s just like old times, huh, partner?”
