Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

“David gave it to me. Walked up to the switchboard one day and handed me a set a keys and told me to go look what’s out in the parking lot. Ain’t that somethin? A free car!”

He wanted to tell her she wasn’t the only person in the world who ever got a car for free, but he let it go. Trying to one-up her seemed like a puny thing to do.

He parked in the shade beside a restaurant called Roberta’s near Algonac that Erkie had recommended, a sun-bleached shack roosting on a pier that jutted out into the St. Clair River. He could see freighters riding low in the silver water, enormous boats named Medusa and Blue Star and Edsel Ford.

Willie ordered smoked chubs and cole slaw; Octavia asked for broasted chicken and onion rings. She explained that her mother had taught her never to order the fish in a dive. Willie’s Aunt Nezzie had taught him that the best fish was always found in places like this, where the paper place mats were decorated with seahorses and the menu was a chalkboard on the wall and the waitresses were all fat.

Their waitress had a big round pink face and she brought a pitcher of beer while they waited for their food. They drank and looked out across the river at the flatlands of Ontario, a soothing breeze skating at them across the water. Someone in the kitchen was listening to the Tigers game on a scratchy transistor radio and when the door swung open Willie heard the familiar voice of Ernie Harwell: “It’s deep. . it might be. . it’s a HOME RUN for Willie Horton!”

He decided the time wasn’t going to get any more right. “Got some good news,” he said. “I got started writing my book.”

She touched his hand. “Willie, that’s wonderful! What happened?”

He looked across the water and realized it would be impossible to tell her the whole truth, so he did the next best thing and told her about remembering the confrontation in the pharmacist’s house in Montgomery. Once he got started writing, he told her, fresh information started finding him. There was a story just yesterday in the Free Press that he’d clipped and put in his wallet. He took the clipping out and smoothed it on the table. “Check this out. This is a review of a documentary called ‘Revolution.’” He read the opening aloud to her: “‘There are so many American scenes — S.N.C.C. and the Haight-Ashbury in particular — that have gone over-reported and under-recorded, to vanish without any real trace in the novel or on film, of how they were. Day-to-day coverage in the press or on television couldn’t do it, and now these scenes are gone, dispersed, or so much changed they do not matter anymore. . ’”

He returned the clipping to his wallet. “I especially like the part about how Snick was over-reported and under-recorded. It’s so true. There damn sure wasn’t any shortage of reporters following us around — but none of them told it like it was. How could they? Most of them were white and even the black ones were just doing a job, not risking their lives for a cause like we were.”

“So,” Octavia said, “once you remembered that meeting at the pharmacist’s house, you was able to start writing?”

“Yeah. I started the next day.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Been writing every morning before I go to work. Sometimes I write more when I get home at night. Sometimes I write all night.”

Octavia squeezed his hand. “I’m so glad for you, Willie.”

“Yeah, me too. You got no idea how glad I am.”

Their food came. It was delicious, as Erkie had promised, and Willie ate with gusto, cleaned his plate and then helped Octavia finish her chicken. Afterwards they sat there gazing at the boats on the shimmering water. The kitchen door swung open with a roar. Al Kaline had just hit a triple with the bases loaded. Octavia lit a cigarette, picked at a fingernail, cleared her throat. “Say, Willie?”

“Yeah?”

“You remember me telling you that Clyde helped me out of a jam?”

“Yeah.”

“Reason I needed his help was cause I got picked up on Kercheval back in ’66—you know, when we had that near-riot?”

“I hadn’t moved here yet but, yeah, I’ve heard about it. What happened?”

“Friend a mine, this artist cat name Glanton Dowdell, he picked me up one night to visit some friends a his on the East Side. You may of heard of Glanton — he painted those murals in Reverend Cleage’s church. So we’re ridin up Kercheval when all of a sudden people’s throwin rocks at our car, and we see a po-lice car on fire. Next thing you know, one a them cars packed with cops, you know, a, a—”

“Big Four.”

“Right, a Big Four pulls up in front of us and just stops. Glanton has to slam on the brakes, and then there’s cops all around us, pointin rifles, yellin nigger this and nigger that and everybody out the car. They lie us down on the street like dogs, then they break open the trunk and start whistlin and laughin. Turns out Glanton’s buddies was some kind a militants and that trunk was full a guns and ammunition.”

“What’d the cops do?”

“They handcuffed us, slapped us around some, called us a lot of salty names. I was scared half to death. I tried to tell em I didn’t know nothin bout no guns but they told me to shut up.” She was biting her lip, and Willie could see she was trying not to cry. “They took us downtown, threw me in a cage with a bunch a addicts and drunks and flat-back hookers, some filthy womens, and I tried to tell the po-lice I had a job at Motown records but they just laughed and told me to shut up, wouldn’t even let me make a phone call.”

She lit a fresh cigarette and blew a huge cloud of smoke. Her voice had started getting shrill. “It was the awfullest night a my life. So degrading. The hookers was all talkin bout how much they charge for a straight lay versus round-the-world, how they pimps beat em with coat hangers — but always on they back so they can still work.” Another cloud of smoke. “I still have nightmares.” A bigger cloud of smoke. “You got no idea how awful the po-lice is in this town. . ”

He was looking across the water. Octavia kept talking but he no longer heard a word she said. He didn’t doubt that her night in jail was hell, but he could not let this slide. This was his first opportunity to assert himself, which was the only way he would ever be able to repudiate his past and make his voice heard. He needed to finish the job he’d begun during that long walk on the Oakland Hills golf course. He needed to finish shedding the skin of the dutiful son, the compliant kid brother, the faceless foot soldier, the meek listener — it was the only way to become the man he meant to become, shorn of all illusions and causes and messiahs, rid of the world that made him, healthy and breathing free in that sick and suffocating place known as America.

“. . oh, Willie, you got no idea what lockup’s like in—”

“You’re wrong, Octavia.”

She froze, the cigarette an inch from her lips. Her face crinkled. “Say what?”

“I said you’re wrong if you think I got no idea what lockup’s like.”

She took a drag on the cigarette. “I’m sorry, Willie, I’m just depress. I know you been thrown in plenty a jails down South.”

“I’m not talking about down South.”

“You ain’t?”

“I’m talking about Detroit.”

“You been in jail in D-troit?”

“I damn sure have.”

“When?”

He didn’t hesitate. “It was a Saturday night last summer and it was so hot I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I took a near cold bath and dragged my mattress out onto the porch, hoping to catch a breeze.”

She reached for a fresh cigarette without taking her eyes off him. He noticed that her eyes were bigger than before. Good.