Charles Johnson - Dreamer

Into this chaos stepped King.

He emerged from his car into a shower of spit, rocks, beer bottles, and firecrackers. For just an instant I saw fear and bewilderment flicker across his face. No, for this he was not ready. This might well be his day to yield up the ghost. Certainly it would be the longest, most treacherous walk of his career. He was completely surrounded by enemies, the forces of Gog and Magog, people he did not know but who believed they knew him, and what they knew they hated enough to kill. Christ had never encountered rabid crowds like this at Golgotha. Enveloping him on all sides — like devils in a circle of hell created for him alone — twisted white lips spewed obscenities, white fingers clawed through the crowd to tear at his tailored blue suit. Out of nowhere a brick came singing through the air. Dazed, he dropped to his knees. Immediately Jesse Jackson and other Movement lieutenants drawn from the Vice Lords and Saints threw themselves between King and the crowd, forcing his head down until the injured philosopher stopped seeing double, rose again to his feet, rocking a little back and forth on his heels, and whispered more to himself than anyone else, “I’m all right, don’t worry about me. I’ve been hit so many times I’m immune to it. This is what we wanted. Keep moving …”

They pushed deeper down streets packed with hysterical white homeowners. Reporters and cameramen from the conservative Tribune and Daily News darted around them, wearing protective helmets and keeping their heads ducked. King, dwarfed on all sides, blood and sweat spangling his brow, pulled off his tie; he unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and did not so much walk as he was carried forward by the crowd inside a girdle of gang members, all sworn to nonviolence, who hove close to the sidewalks, providing a flesh-and-blood barrier for the minister’s troops to march in rows of eight on pavement hot enough to fry an egg. Then: over the heads of the crowd I saw a knife hurtling toward the minister. The blade, missing King entirely, buried itself in a bystander. The blue-helmeted police saw nothing. They were dodging rocks and debris, hitting the ground en masse, incapable of holding back hecklers whose numbers swelled to five thousand as the marchers stepped over broken glass and at last reached their destination, the Halvorsen agency at 3145 West 63rd Street. There, beneath the company’s sign ( REAL ESTATE INSURANCE sales management appraisals ), in front of its long glass window, King, rubbing his forehead, kneeled down to pray.

Amy’s voice crackled over my radio. “Matthew, I can’t see anything from here! What’s going on?”

“They’re heading back your way,” I said. “Get Chaym into Doc’s car—”

“What?”

“Just do it!”

Somehow the marchers safely retraced their steps to Marquette Park. In the bedlam of chartered buses and automobiles tearing away, wrecked cars tipped on their sides, their leather interiors blazing, we switched Smith and the minister; Doc rode hunched down in the backseat of the Chevelle to his flat on the West Side, and Smith traveled in the car in which King had come, a gang of whites chasing after him with sticks until the driver put pedal to metal and left them in a cloud of carbon monoxide.

Within minutes of our arrival at South Hamlin Street, no sooner than I had the minister upstairs and Smith back in the Chevelle out of sight with Amy in an alleyway, the apartment and hallway filled with Movement workers, all maneuvering to get the minister’s attention. At the kitchen table he sat still shaking from his most recent brush with death, his suitcoat draped over the chair behind him, his shirtcuffs bunched up to his elbows, tie unbraided, and his head canted left as a young woman with skinny legs washed the wound on his forehead, then smoothed a Band-Aid just above and to the right of his eyebrow. While she ministered to him, smacking him lightly on the shoulder when he moved, he smoked cigarettes end-on-end and talked steadily to his captains in the packed room in which two weeks earlier I’d introduced him to Smith.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” His eyes squeezed shut for a second; the blow to his temple had brought on the worst headache he’d felt in years. “We’ve been in demonstrations all over the South — Mississippi, Alabama — but I’ve never seen mobs as full of hate or as hostile as the ones we saw today. Nothing like this!”

One of his staff members, a lean minister standing to his left, agreed. “There is a bright side. The boys you picked from the gangs to be march captains acquitted themselves pretty well.”

“Yes … yes, you’re right. I saw a couple of them with broken noses and bruises”—he rubbed his own nose—“but none of them struck back. Lord, I hope the reporters put that in the newspapers. It proves the opposite of what they’ve been saying — what Daley and J. H. Jackson said about demonstrations igniting violence on our side.”

I interrupted, wanting to tell him about our last two weeks with Smith. But the instant I called his name, he cut me off.

“Matthew, I didn’t see you standing there! Do you have a minute? There’s something I must speak alone with you about, if you don’t mind.”

He grabbed his coat and squeezed through a crush of people in the hallway, leading me into the bathroom, then closed the door, which muffled the chattering and constantly ringing phone outside. The minister lowered himself onto the covered toilet seat and, fumbling inside his coat pocket, looked up.

“Sometimes this is the only room where I can go to get a little peace and quiet.”

“I understand, sir.” (And I did: his namesake, Martin Luther, was reported to have experienced illumination while seated on the throne of Denmark.)

“I’m pleased by how you’ve handled your project. After the demonstration those hooligans took off after him, not us, and he didn’t suffer a scratch. You know, with a little more work this can become a great institution.”

King located what he wanted in his coat. An envelope containing five one-hundred-dollar bills for Smith’s first month. We’d agreed cash payments would replace checks. There would be no paper trail. No trace of his alter ego’s existence.

“He does favor me, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, sir — even more now than before.”

“Do you have other plans for him tonight?”

“Tonight?” I looked at my wrist, realized I didn’t have a watch on and was staring at skin, but not knowing what else to do I looked for a full three seconds anyway.

“Around seven, yes,” Doc said. “I’d like to send him out to a Negro church in the suburbs — Calvary AME — to pick up an award they’re giving me. Do you think he can do that?”

“I’m not … sure. This was his first day … You can’t be there?”

“Oh, maybe, if things settle down here. I’ll do my best to get away, but I’d like Chaym there just in case. He won’t have to give a speech or anything. Just shake hands and say thank you. Do you think he can handle this? I’d hate to disappoint the parishioners at Reverend Coleman’s church who invited me.”

“We can try,” I said.

Then he wanted to use the bathroom. Stepping back into the hallway, I saw Amy by the front door, not downstairs at the car where I’d left her and asked specifically that she take care of Chaym. I could tell she’d been crying. I led her outside to the stairs, away from the others, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Chaym kicked me out of the car. Matthew, he can be terrible sometimes!” Amy leaned into my shoulder and cried a little more. I closed my eyes, inhaling her perfume, feeling her fingers on my chest, her belly against mine. Instinctively, as I held my breath, both my hands lifted to pull her closer, but I resisted that impulse, and simply stood motionless until she was cried out and moved away, wiping her eyes. “Sometimes I’d like to hit him, except it’d feel like hitting Dr. King.”