Wittman towered over the podium. He reminded me of William Jennings Bryan when he gave his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention. Wittman had the same religious fervor that I imagined the upstart Bryan had when he delivered his closing line to his speech on using silver to value the US dollar: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Then the crowd went wild, rushed the stage, and swept him in as their presidential nominee. Bryan would later lose to William McKinley.
The Save Our Pensacola crowd edged towards the same level of hysteria. Wittman was charismatic and a master of twisting his opponents’ words and programs. He knew how to manipulate this audience and the media.
He shouted, “We CAN do better!”
“Yes, WE CAN,” I heard a familiar voice yell from the back. Bowman Hines walked into the room, welcomed by applause and a hug from his brother-in-law.
“Jace is so right,” said Hines, dressed in the same dark suit that he wore to his wife’s funeral, “which is why I’m handing Save Our Pensacola a check for $10,000.” Facing the audience with his arms spread, he continued, “This is our town, our land, and we are the only ones who should decide what we do with it.”
More applause. I noticed the reporters were lapping it all up. The park project was in trouble.
“This check is just a down payment on my commitment. My late wife would have never wanted to see such valuable property handed over to some outsider. Sue would want me to stand with her brother against this boondoggle.”
I couldn’t remember Sue ever taking a stance on the maritime park.
“Sue loved nature,” Bo continued. “I donate this money in her memory so that we can have an open waterfront park that the entire city can enjoy.”
Hines spied me in the audience. He pulled back his shoulders and stuck out his chest as if daring me to say or do anything. He said, “We will stand together as one community and take back our park for our families and future generations to enjoy. Let Kettler build his ballpark elsewhere.”
As the crowd cheered, Wittman’s daughter, Julie, slipped into the room. Thin, with the broad shoulders of a swimmer, she had the same athletic figure as her late aunt. She must have arrived with Hines.
Wittman said a few more words, thanked the crowd, and walked over to the “legitimate” reporters with Hines, who motioned for his niece to stand at his side. He wanted the entire family in the photo that would grace tomorrow’s front page.
Hines beamed confidence. He smiled and answered every question, all the while keeping his arm around his niece’s shoulder. He wanted to project that he was the hero who had suffered an unbearable loss, and with his family by his side, he would rescue the city in the name of his beloved wife.
I walked out and headed to the hotel’s bar, 600 South. Pensacola had only a few high-class bars. This was one of them. The waitresses had no visible tattoos, wore short black dresses, and noticed when your glass was three-quarters empty. Plus, 600 South didn’t have a running club.
I ordered a Jack and coke to celebrate my surviving three near stonings in one day, a new Walker Holmes’s record. As I sipped my drink, an African-American man sat down beside me. He was slim but well-built, possibly a triathlon athlete. He had too much muscle to be just a runner, and he carried himself like he was either a cop or Marine Corp officer. Being in no mood to do anything but drink alone, I ignored him.
“You Walker Holmes?” he asked after the bartender handed him his Crown Royal, no ice.
“Guilty,” I said, looking ahead as I watched through the mirror behind the bar the Save Our Pensacola supporters milling in the parking lot.
He extended his hand. “I’m Alphonse Tyndall, Mr. Holmes. Joyce Blake is my aunt.”
I shook his hand and turned toward him. “How’s your aunt?” I asked.
“She is living with my mom in Memphis,” he said. “Still hurting, but doing much better. I wanted to buy you a drink and thank you for helping her when no one else would.”
Three years ago, an Escambia County deputy ran over Joyce Blake’s son, Andre. The patrol car’s dashboard camera captured the teenager’s homicide. The video shows the vehicle chasing Andre, who is riding a bike, and the officer shouting at him to stop. We hear the enraged deputy muttering about him being a black kid as he catches up with Andre and tries to shoot him with a Taser from his window, and then we see the officer suddenly veering into him and pinning him under his car.
It was a senseless tragedy that never should have happened, but Sheriff Frost blamed bad parenting for the death. He claimed the boy was snooping around a construction site at three o’clock in the morning and his deputy was just doing his job.
A coroner’s inquest agreed with Frost. I did not. I lost sleep over the boy’s death. I saw it as my failure. His death was only the tip of a much larger iceberg. Poverty, racial disparities, and a failing public education system were at the root of the problem.
In break rooms, at lunch and dinner tables, and on internet forums, people blamed Andre or his mother for his death. “Why wasn’t he at home at 3:00 a.m.?” “Why didn’t he stop?” “He’s a thug; he was packing a gun.” They wanted to blame his mom because they didn’t want to admit the same thing could happen to their children—that is if they lived in Brownsville where their teenagers rode bikes because they didn’t have cars, and if their children felt they needed a gun to protect themselves but knew if they were found carrying one, they could end up in prison
