‘Sooner or later the police are going to arrest us, Omar. We’ve got to be prepared. Protect our wives and children if it comes to that. I don’t want to go through that hell again. What do you say?’
Evans rattled on about the right to self-determination and about niggers and Hough and education and the need for discipline, while all Omar thought about was that shiny .38 he’d hidden at the back of the closet in his room after the incident outside the Circle Ballroom. He hadn’t touched the weapon again, in an attempt to erase his memories of that cold winter night in Cleveland.
‘What do you think, Omar? Can you handle the responsibility?’
It was as though Evans was looking straight through him, giving him a second chance. Omar didn’t know if he liked it or not. Evans’s tone was self-assured and authoritative, almost arrogant, but at the same time Omar had the feeling that this black activist was actually looking out for him, actually putting his faith in him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Can you change your life?’
He laughed.
Evans wrote down his address again, this time directly onto the inside of Omar’s left arm, so he couldn’t lose it.
In the kitchen he took a few bites of the catfish his grandmother had fried the night before. He passed over the vegetables and sticky rice. He’d filled up on beer with Reggie. He shook the wet coat off his shoulders, kicked off his boots, and climbed the stairs. He had stuck Evans’s note in his back pocket.
Saturday. Antioch College. You’re in charge.
That was two days away. He wondered why Evans didn’t just phone him. You’re in charge. He was proud and nervous at the same time. Evans was his mentor. For the past couple of months Omar drove to Hough every Tuesday evening and sat in a stuffy elementary-school classroom listening to the small black man tell about the history of his people, about Marcus Garvey, who long ago had campaigned for the emancipation of the blacks, who believed that blacks could only be free once they had returned to Africa, about Malcolm X and black identity, about black Americans’ right to self-defense. But Evans had never put him in charge of security before.
He would take his .38 with him, but that wasn’t enough, not for someone in charge.
‘What was that about?’ His grandmother was waiting at the head of the stairs.
‘Nothing.’
‘That gentleman drove all the way here from Cleveland for nothing?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Don’t mess with me, Jerome. I don’t want your mother to worry.’
‘You just said that Evans was a gentleman, those were your words.’ He put his arm around his grandmother’s shoulders. She was a large, powerful woman. Rose Fuller had helped Mama get a job in the hospital’s linen room. She had raised the younger children, and for every little scrape or ache she prepared a salve or special tea from the herbs in her garden. She was proud to be a southerner by birth, even though she’d only lived down there as a child. Every day she said how much she missed the wide open space, the heat. The humidity, which was like a second skin. That if it had been up to her she’d never have moved to Akron, Ohio, where it was cold for half the year and where it rained and snowed. ‘But your great-grandfather had big plans when he brought us here. He wasn’t scared of anything.’ She told them about the witches in the swampland. And about her Indian mother, who got medicine and herbs from the witches, which was the only reason, she said, that she and a couple of her siblings survived fever and diarrhea. ‘I only realized she was Indian when I went to school and the other kids said so. Until then, as far as I was concerned, she was just black, despite her skin being so light. She talked differently too. Words sounded softer out of her mouth.’ The stories were like make believe, like fairy tales. And that’s how Grandma told them, too: as though her ancestors were mythical figures from an imaginary land. She had a beautiful voice, Grandma. Omar loved Rose Fuller as much as his own mother.
‘I’m going to bed, Grandma.’ He felt the letter in his back pocket.
‘You’re old enough to know what you’re doing, aren’t you?’
‘There’s nothing going on. I’m just going to bed. I’m beat.’ He opened the door to the room he shared with Chris and Billy. The floor was littered with stuff, old magazines and T-shirts and underwear and socks and empty beer cans, but he didn’t care. He flopped onto his bed and closed his eyes. He couldn’t move anymore. ‘Good night,’ he heard his grandmother say in the distance, and he thought of Yellow Springs, Ohio and saw a vast meadow stretched out before him, and cows and trees and cornfields under the clear blue sky. Then he fell asleep.
He saw Don Cooper and Nona walk hand in hand into the Circle Ballroom. Cooper had a dirty bandage tied around his head. ‘Hey, Omar,’ he said. He didn’t let go of Nona’s hand. ‘Hey, Omar.’
He said something back but they didn’t hear him. It was as though he were watching it all from a distance, as though he was seeing himself as well as Nona and Cooper.
‘You think you’re too good for us? Is that it? Is that why you don’t open that mouth o’ yours? I said: “Hey, Omar”.’
He was outside his own body. He looked at Nona in her glittery blue dress. She teetered on high heels and held for dear life onto Don Cooper’s arm. Omar tried to say something to her, something nice, that she looked good, but again his words dissolved into the gray hum of the fan in the middle of the ceiling. She didn’t even see him move his mouth. There was no music. There were no other people.
‘Come on,’ Nina whispered in Cooper’s ear. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Bye, Omar,’ Cooper said, with a theatrical wink.
‘Omar. Wake up.’ He heard Reggie’s voice from way off. He opened his eyes. He was still lying there on his back on his bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed. He hadn’t budged since he fell asleep hours ago. He was cold. His muscles hurt.
‘Your grandma said you were here. What’s going on? You were supposed to pick me up at six.’ Reggie was standing at the foot of the bed.
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty. If we’re still going to do something … ’
‘Easy, man. I … I … I … ’ He thought of that note from Evans. ‘I have to get something to eat. You go on.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We’re not going out?’
‘I got stuff to do.’
‘You look bad, man. Go fix yourself up first.’
‘Evans came by.’ He propped himself up. ‘For a job, Saturday. Sorry.’
‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘Want me to go with you?’
He shook his head. ‘Better not.’
‘How come?’
He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to protect Reggie or just wanted to keep Evans’s jobs for himself.
‘See you at the factory, okay?’
After Reggie left he put on clean clothes and splashed cold water on his face. He crept downstairs and left the house by the front door.
The keys to Sandra’s old VW were still in the ignition. He got in and started the car. He felt in his pocket. Five twenty-dollar bills. It wouldn’t be enough for a decent gun but maybe Leo would give him a good deal if he heard that Evans had sent him.
Omar parked halfway up Wooster Ave., got out, and walked to the Hi-De-Ho Lounge. It was getting dark. He looked at the full-leafed lindens lining the street.