Dreamer (24 page)

Withersby rubbed his nose, looking up from his notepad. “He shot that idea down. I think he's suspicious of psychoanalysis.”

“Comes from his college days,” Groat agreed. “He's probably worried some shrink'll go right to those two times he tried to commit suicide when he was a kid.”

“Yes, but look at Malcolm Little. He was better on that
score.” Withersby glanced from Groat to me, then to Smith. “During the last year of his life, before those Muslims shot him onstage at the Audubon Ballroom, he was looking into analysis to understand how for seven years he could have preached that doctrine of Yacub, the black scientist, being the inventor of the white race. He told photographer Gordon Parks he'd been mad and sick earlier. Actually, what he said—I've got the report right here—was, ‘I was a zombie—like all the rest of them. I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march.‘”

Groat rocked his head. “I read that report. It's sad it took so long for him to come to his senses. But, you know, I think Little made a lot of sense. I'm all for integration, but you ought to see some of the slime me'n Vincent spend our time investigating, scumbags like Carlo Gambino, the Gallo brothers, and Joe Columbo. I mean, do colored folks really want to integrate with them?”

“Why,” Smith asked, “are you telling us this?”

“Because we think you can help King before it's too late. As you can tell, he won't—or can't—slow down. Not even for a day. You know, it's funny how some men try to kill themselves. Not all of them take pills or stick a shotgun in their mouths. Some I've seen force policemen to do it for them. Others, the workaholics, do it slow. They do it by taking on tasks they know they can't finish, projects they know will put them six feet under. I think that's what we've got here. Damn near every hand is turned against this man. And what does he do? Plan night and day to bring all the poor together in April to disrupt and shut down the federal government, despite his pal Rustin telling him there's no way he's gonna get Irishmen, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Chicanos, and Negroes to put aside their differences and form an alliance. He brought some of their leaders together a few weeks ago, and what they said was, ‘Our problems are different from yours.' A sane man
might have second thoughts, he might wonder if he's over-reaching himself, especially since his antiwar work's depleted most of his funds. He'd probably wonder, I'm saying, if this last, greatest dream of his—this jump from race to class, from local crises to a national one—might turn into a nightmare when he brings all those poor people to Washington to demonstrate and fill up the hospitals and jails. He'd ask himself, What if there's violence? How do we feed them? Where will they sleep? Or go to the toilet? Now me, I believe in what he used to stand for. I'm a Democrat, I voted for Kennedy. King's done some good work, but there's a problem. It's the company he keeps. Ex-Communists and fellow travelers. In Washington they figure if he's not red, he's awfully doggone pink. Maybe a security risk. And dammit, I think they're right. He's calling for an Economic Bill of Rights, the redistribution of wealth, and a guaranteed income. Listen to this note King made to himself in fifty-one. ‘It is a well-known fact that no social institution can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.' Now, that sure as hell sounds to me like what I hear coming from behind the Iron Curtain. What do you think?”

Smith and I did not say.

“Thing is, me'n Vincent can't figure how he can be so red when Daddy King is a capitalist. And what about that fellah A. G. Gaston, the black insurance man who paid five thousand to bail King out of jail in Birmingham? Gaston's worth ten mil. He says the
Wall Street Journal
is his Bible, and he published a book called
Green Power,
arguing that money was the key to solving the race problem. You'd think the Reverend woulda noticed how even he depended on creative free enterprise, right?”

“What in God's name”—Smith squinted at Groat—“do you people want?”

“A li'l cooperation,” said Groat. “For Dr. King's sake. Anybody can see he's over the edge. The seeds were in his personality from the beginning. A domineering father. Guilt feelings from his privileged status as a famous preacher's son. The sense that he had a racial mission—a destiny—to fulfill, that he was personally responsible for eliminating the world's suffering. Messiah complex. Maybe his being so short figures in too. And there's hypersensitivity to how others saw him, like at Crozer when he overdressed and wouldn't go to class unless his clothes were immaculately pressed, his shoes perfectly shined, and he was, he says, morbidly conscious of being a minute late because he felt any lapse in perfection confirmed negative Negro stereotypes. He never fails to check the polls ranking colored leaders to make sure he's there, preferably in first place. We're talking about an Alpha male determined to leave his mark on the world, even if it's a burn mark from scorching a city. Somebody who'd sacrifice children, for God's sake, on the front lines of a demonstration in order to impose his will on a community. This country deserves a better—a more balanced—black leader than that. Somebody responsible, like Roy Wilkins or that attorney Samuel R. Pierce Jr. Did you see the Time article on King when they selected him as Man of the Year? If you haven't, you might want to read that. They point out how Wilkins is sharper than King, he's a better organizer at the NAACP, and that's one of the minister's worst problems—organization—which is why he has to keep an old homosexual red like Rustin around. James Farmer at CORE, they said, is more militant, SNCC's leader John Lewis has King beat for militancy, Whitney Young Jr.'s got it all over him for sophistication, and he'll never write a line that'd stand beside James Baldwin's prose. Right about now, I'd say, he's more of a liability to the civil rights movement than an asset. Truth is, I figure he's even dangerous to himself.
Now, that wasn't always so. Once upon a time he was a damned good leader. Do you remember that talk he gave on some things colored people should do, oh, back in fifty-eight, I believe. I've got a copy of it right here.”

“We don't need to see that,” Smith said.

And we didn't.

I remembered it only too well. Few people talked these days about that speech delivered at the Holt Street Baptist Church for the MIA's Institute on Non-Violence. It had brought the young King great criticism from the black world. He'd said the unspeakable; he'd aired “dirty laundry” and risked, some said, giving ammunition—aid and comfort—to the Movement's enemies. His intent, of course, had been otherwise. It had been to chase down truth, as he'd always tried to do. The things he assailed that night were, in his view, the products of racism, but that did not mean they could be excused or ignored. Preparing for his trip to India, he asked the gathering at the Holt Street Baptist Church to consider—just consider—the arguments of their worst foes, as Gandhi did those of his adversaries, and if their charges contained any truth, then he urged black people to make sure the race was “ready for integration.” Their enemies in the South said all that Negroes wanted was to marry white women. He dismissed that lunacy with a wave of his hand but then added, “They say that we smell. Well, the fact is some of us do smell. I know most Negroes do not have money to fly to Paris and buy enticing perfumes, but no one is so poor that he can't buy a five-cent bar of soap.” Then he let go, allowing his blistering sermon to take him where it would, to the things internal to the race that hurt and infuriated him. “We kill each other and cut each other too much!” Our crime and illegitimacy rates, he said, are disproportionately high compared with those of whites. No one, King roared that night, needed to speak good English in order to
be good; however, that didn't excuse schoolteachers who crippled their students with bad grammar. He moved on that evening from target to target, aiming at alcoholism (“The money Negroes spend on liquor in Alabama in one year is enough to endow three or four colleges”); at the conspicuous consumption some blacks saw as “style” (“There are too many Negroes with $2,000 incomes riding around in $5,000 cars”); and even at black physicians more concerned with status symbols than with deepening their knowledge (“Too many Negro doctors have not opened a book since leaving medical school”). Sometimes, he implied, we need to think less about what we should do and more about what we should be. Changing this litany of inherently moral problems, which could not be ignored—and might worsen over time and even threaten the Movement's progress—was, King said, something within black America's power then, irrespective of what the federal government did or did not do.

His 1958 sermon had been worthy of Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, or Elijah Muhammad (at his best). Sadly, it brought less praise than scathing condemnation from many black people who called him an Uncle Tom. Understandably, the minister gave fewer and fewer of those speeches after the 1950s, though it was this side of King, I realized, that interested these Wise Guys most.

But Wilkins as a potential replacement? That made sense, I supposed. The executive director of the NAACP deeply envied King, often called him a liar, and met with the Bureau's Cartha DeLoach to discuss their mutual dissatisfaction with King; Wilkins worried that the minister's escalating conflicts with Hoover, and King damning the FBI for not protecting civil rights workers, would severely impair the Movement's progress. In fact, Wilkins along with a few other Negro leaders led the effort three years earlier to get King to accept the presidency of a small college or the position of
pastor at a large black church in order to retire him as the foremost Negro leader. No, there was no love lost between Wilkins and King, who'd refused the executive director's offer by saying he knew only too well “the hypocrisy of adulation.”

“What,” I asked, “do you want with us?”

“Like I said, a li'l cooperation. But you don't have to do a thing, Matthew. You can rest.” He fanned himself with one of his folders. “We know how well you and the Griffith girl brought along Chaym. Know a li'l about his history too. His kin's from down here originally. On his mother's side, we can trace his family tree back to a free woman named Baleka Calhoun. She came over in a slave ship before Surrender. Belonged to an African tribe called the Allmuseri. They're all dead now, of course, or moved on. He's pretty much the last of his line. Now, what I been thinking is if Zorro—”

“Who?” I said.

A quick, elastic little grin quivered round Groat's mouth. “Excuse me, I meant to say if
Dr. King
was to one day lose his standing as a leader, he'd have to retire, now wouldn't he? And it'd probably be the best thing for him, and for the country—if we saved him from himself, I mean.”

I asked, “How could that happen?”

“It's something we'd like to discuss with Chaym … alone, if you wouldn't mind.”

“I think you'd better leave now,” said Smith. “I'm not interested in anything you have to say.”

Groat chuckled and gave Withersby a sideways glance. “We'll leave, if that's what you want. But I just want to say that it'd be a shame if somebody decided to reopen the investigation into who killed Juanita Lomax and her kids.”

Withersby added, “Don't forget that apartment fire on Indiana Avenue.”

“Oh, that's right! Whoever did that would be facing, oh, what would you say, Vincent?”

“Twenty years, easy.”

Groat gave a headshake and scratched his chin. “Mmhmm. I'd say that.”

Smith looked as if his mind had stopped. The line of his lips thickened. When he spoke, his voice shook. “Listen, I was just starting to put my life back together. Right here, in this place—”

“That's good to hear,” said Groat. “It's something you could come back to, and with a whole lot more money to help you make it better. Do you think we could take a ride and talk a little more?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really.”

“Chaym,” I said, “you can't go with them—”

“Matthew.” Withersby looked square at me. “This doesn't concern you anymore. The best thing for you to do is go back to Chicago. Maybe get back in school. Or maybe you'd like to think about becoming an agent. I believe you'd be a good one. I could help you with your application, if you like.”

“No, thank you.”

Smith looked at me as a man might if a noose was tied round his neck. “It's all right, we're just gonna talk.” Then he laughed, brokenly. “It's just a li'l karma catching up with me, I guess. Check your Deuteronomy 32:35.”

I followed them to the front door, coming close up behind the Wise Guys just in time to hear Smith asking a question that had bothered me from the beginning. “How long have you been watching us?”

“Since the day you arrived at King's apartment,” Withersby said. “You know, it's a shame someone as talented as you has always been in the shadows. But that happens to geniuses, doesn't it?”

“You think that's what I am?”

“I know it, Chaym. And we want to help you …”

After they left, squeezing Smith between them on the front seat of their green Plymouth, pulling away at twilight, I sat on the front porch for hours, drinking a six-pack of Budweiser, waiting for them to return. In the distance, darkness began to stain the horizon, the hills, all the farmhouses, and the blue silhouettes of trees were black against the sky. Then it was night, and the world shrank. Was smaller, it seemed to me. Each time I saw a pair of headlights appear on the narrow, root-covered road, I stepped drunkenly into the yard, straining my eyes, only to see those lights pass the farmhouse by. I returned to the porch, starting on a second six-pack. And waited. The more I drank, the more the palpable dread I felt mercifully dulled, but I was unable to shake off Withersby's words and wanted to shoot him. There was something awful in the way he'd said it,
We want to help you,
as if he knew well the demons of desire and inadequacy that dwelled within Smith, all those decades of never being appreciated, and was playing him, but for what?