man in a lime green shirt and dark green pants ran up from the crowd and pushed the policeman hard in the chest. The cop fell down at his sergeant's feet. The sergeant helped his partner up and they both started moving back toward the precinct.
There were twenty or so black men and women surrounding Socrates and yelling at the cops. There were just as many policemen, most of them white, but there were Mexicans and black men in uniform too.
?He just carryin' a sign!? yelled the small man who first came to Socrates' aid. ?Cain't we even say what we thinkin'? Is that what the police supposed to do? Keep a man from speakin' his mind??
The policemen had gathered into a group that stood there in the middle of the street. Their numbers grew only slightly where Socrates' protectors seem to appear from nowhere. Men and women and boys and girls came out of buildings and from around corners as if they had just been waiting for this moment.
It had taken no more than ten minutes. Before that Socrates was alone. Now he was on the front line of a battle.
The policemen moved back toward their headquarters. They were pushed and yelled at and reviled.
Socrates watched them, the chain dangling from his left wrist. All around him men and women were shouting and waving their fists. A glass broke somewhere.
More missiles were hurled and the doors to the station closed. The picture window of the Pick-an'-Save shattered. Three car alarms went off. One of them was a magnified voice that kept repeating ?Stand away from the vehicle!? in a threatening tone.
The street was blocked off with angry women and men. Traffic stopped at the intersections and more and more people came. Socrates was at their center but he didn't wave his fists or shout. He didn't do anything but watch and maybe wonder a little at all those people so ready to break out in violence.
A police car was turned over. A trash can was set on fire at the precinct building's front door. Socrates, who had left home that day ready for death, worried for the first time that he might not die alone.
The police doors flew open after a few minutes of the fire. Cops in plastic-visored helmets and see-through shields came pouring out of those double doors. Three trails of smoke came out over the advancing army's head and the familiar burn of tear gas raked against Socrates' eyes and gouged into his nose and lungs.
Forty-seven policemen plowed into the crowd of hundreds, firing rubber bullets and hurling canisters of gas. They sent nine people to the hospital and arrested twenty-seven more. One policeman had a broken jaw. No one died. The worst injury was Lou Henry, the proprietor of the Pick-an'-Save, who had a heart attack trying to drive a handful of looters from his store.
Socrates saw very little of what happened after that first whiff of gas. He fell back from the fumes and the advancing army of lawmen. Whatever else he saw was on the faces of black people and brown folks who were too angry and tired to be scared.
Socrates called Iula at her diner from his backyard home. He asked her for a metal saw and a transistor radio. She brought them both, temporarily closing down her restaurant for the first time in over fourteen years of business. She told Socrates that she'd stay with him but he told her to go.
?I just need to think,? he explained.
It took four hours to hack through the metal cuff. While he worked at it the scratch radio reported on the violence.
The miniriot flared up sporadically through the day. There was a curfew set anywhere within eight blocks of the police station. There were four cops assigned to a cruiser, each one armed with a shotgun. They looked like space invaders, one eyewitness claimed, because of their helmets and heavy gloves.
By the time morning had come there was a sense of fear spread over Los Angeles. The schools were closed and store owners from all over town had taken up posts at the doors of their establishments, fearing looters but not, it seemed, death. News vans representing every TV station, and many radio stations, were parked on the street in front of the precinct headquarters where the violence had flared.
Late that night Iula brought him a baked chicken dinner with beer and half a blueberry pie.
?You want me to stay with you?? she asked while he picked at the meal.
?Yeah.?
She held him through the night, but in the morning he pulled away. He donned his overalls and his sandwich board.
?I'm afraid they might kill you, baby,? Iula said as he went out the door.
?I hope not,? he replied. ?But if somethin' does happen will you tell Darryl to look after my dog??
