“Anything else about this man?”
“Nothin’, I guess. Except -”
“What?”
“Man was carrying a book.”
Jones smiled. “He say anything to you?”
“Nothin’ important. Knowledge is power, somethin’ like that.”
“That’s bullshit right there,” said Jones.
“
“Street’s the only teacher you ever gonna need. And books are for faggots, too.”
“I aint’ no punk.”
“I can see that,” said Jones. “Listen, you and me didn’t talk today, hear?”
“For two more dollars, we ain’t never talked
“Boy,” said Jones, reaching for his wallet, “you about to drive me to the poorhouse and drop me off out front, all those brains you got.”
THE TROUBLE STARTED after dark, at the Peoples Drug Store at 14th and U, where trouble was not uncommon. Fourteenth and U’s four corners marked the busiest and most notorious of all intersections in black Washington, a major bus transfer spot in the middle of D.C.’s Harlem, a hub for heroin addicts, pimps, prostitutes, and all manner of hustlers, as well as law-abiding citizens and neighborhood residents just trying to move through their world.
The Peoples Drug sat beside the Washington, D.C., office of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, housed in a former bank. The SNCC and NAACP offices were nearby as well.
Hostility between juveniles and the store’s black security guards had become a regular occurrence at this particular Peoples in the past few weeks. On this evening, the guard on duty, employed by an outside service, confronted a group of young men who were swinging a dead fish outside the store and bothering passersby with lewd gestures and remarks. The security guard told them to move on, but the boys did not comply. They called him “punk” and “motherfucker,” and when he retreated, a couple of them followed him into the store. The manager phoned the police. A physical altercation ensued between one of the boys and the guard, and the boys were expelled. The manager locked the front door. By now a crowd had begun to form outside the Peoples. As was common in the inner city, word had spread quickly via the “ghetto telegraph,” and the story had mutated to suggest another beat-down of a black boy at the hands of the authorities. Confusion and curiosity turned to anger as the crowd grew. The crowd pushed against the plate glass of the front show window. The glass imploded just as MPD patrol wagons and squad cars began to arrive.
Available units had been called to the scene by radio. Derek Strange and Troy Peters were among the first to arrive. Strange got out of the car with his hand on his nightstick. He and Peters joined the other uniforms who had gathered around the lieutenant in command. The men were instructed to use their presence, rather than physical force, to restore order and protect the commercial properties on the strip. The crowd, now numbering in the hundreds, continued to swell as the men received their instructions. “Do not draw your guns unless it is absolutely necessary,” said the lieutenant. Strange felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. His hand involuntarily grazed the butt of his.38.
Strange and Troy joined the police line in front of the store and spread out several arm lengths but remained side by side. From what Strange could see, he was the sole black officer on the scene. He heard screams of “Tom” and “house nigger,” and felt a pounding in his head. He brandished his stick and slapped it rhythmically into his palm. He did not look the crowd members in the eye.
A missile broke the pane of the Peoples door. Rocks, cans, bottles, and debris flew around them. A Doberman pinscher was unleashed into the crowd by a local store owner, further inciting the mob. A sergeant screamed at the civilian to get his “goddamn dog” out of there, but it was too late. A full bottle of Nehi grape soda hit a cop car, cracking its windshield. Two police went into the mob and pulled out a man, cursing and kicking, and threw him into the back of a wagon. A second man was cuffed and put into the wagon. Kids poured lighter fluid against a tree and set it aflame. They laughed and cursed at a fireman who put it out. Pebbles hit a squad car with the force of shot and twelve-year-old girls screamed out horrible things at the uniforms and Strange’s hands felt damp upon his stick. He looked at Peters and saw Troy’s wide eyes and the sweat bulleted across his forehead. For the next twenty minutes it was like a flash fire that they were powerless to stop. A young officer drew his gun in fear, and the noise grew louder and Strange knew then that they had lost control. Their lieutenant ordered them to pull back.
But suddenly, as if spent from its own rage, the crowd began to calm down. Stokely Carmichael, wearing a fatigue jacket, arrived from the SNCC office, was given a bullhorn, and instructed everyone to “go home.” He told people to disperse and clean the street of what they’d thrown, as this was, after all, their neighborhood. They did not move to clean a thing, but as he spoke the crowd quieted further and moved slowly away from the scene.
Police stood in the emptied street, surrounded by shattered glass and other debris. Smoke roiled in the strobing light of the cherry tops idling in the intersection. A boy rode through on a bicycle, his kid brother sitting on the handlebars, both of them laughing. A young officer lit a cigarette with a shaking hand.
“Troy,” said Strange.
Peters’s face was drained of color. He stared ahead, his feet anchored to the street.
“Come on, buddy,” said Strange, tapping him on the arm.
They walked together to their car.
LIKE THE MAN who lived in it, James Hayes’s apartment was clean and unpretentious. Its furniture came from a downtown store and would still be stylish in twenty years. The kitchen had been outfitted in new harvest gold appliances. A color television sat in the living room along with a console stereo. The shirts hanging in the bedroom closet were dry-cleaned and custom tailored. All of these possessions were of some quality but deliberately understated. The man showed no flash.
James Hayes had lived here on Otis Place long enough to have seen boys like Dennis and Derek Strange run the alleys and streets of Park View and grow to be men. He didn’t talk to the young ones until they came of age, and when they got involved with him it was always of their own volition. He was not a good man, nor was he bad.
Hayes sat in his living room with Dennis Strange, having a couple of Margeaux cognacs, listening to a record, enjoying the music and each other’s company but saying little because both of them were high. They had shared a joint of gage, and now the cognac was working on them, too, giving them that warm liquor thing on top of the head thing that blurred the edges of the room. Dennis had swallowed a red an hour earlier and was just about where he wanted to be. He had left the apartment before his parents came home from work, because he hadn’t wanted to look them in the eye.
“There it is, right there,” said Hayes. “Hear him growlin’?”
“Man can do it.”
“They say Sam was soft. If the only Cooke you own is
Dennis smiled and nodded his head. Like Dennis’s father, Hayes went for that old sound, the R amp;B singers with the gospel roots. Dennis had spent many a night up here, listening to Sam Cooke’s Keen sides, the Soul Stirrers with R. H. Harris, the Pilgrim Travelers with J. W. Alexander, Jackie Wilson, and others. He was not religious, but he often got the feeling he got in church, listening to these records.
Dennis felt comfortable here. When they weren’t deep inside their heads or into the music, he and Hayes often had long discussions about politics and the black man’s future in America. Hayes was smart and sensible and put his words together right. Dennis knew enough to realize that James Hayes was a father to him in ways that his own father could not bring himself to be. He listened, for one, and was not quick to
