!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
As Jack hitched the derelict Dodge to the Buick, he launched into a story. “Mike, did I ever tell you about the time my brother and I had to drive down to Colorado to rescue my sister?” Not waiting for an answer, he went on. “She had gone off to meet this guy, someone my mother did not approve of. Afraid he was going to take her away to the city, Denver or Omaha. Your grandpa Mike” – they both had the same name – “he told me and your uncle Mike” – again that name! – “to go down there and get her. It was summer, blazing hot. We drove through eastern Wyoming, nobody on the road at all. I’ll never forget, we came across this rancher stuck on the side of the road in his tractor, just resting from the sun. We stopped to see if he was OK. He said, ‘No, I’m not, boys. Been stuck here four, five hours now, can’t get up out of the ditch. You get me out of here, there’s some beer in the back there for you.’ We had a towing rig on the back of our old Model T, got him right out. He had a carton full of beer bottles behind the seat, one of those with the springs visible underneath. We thought they’d be all fizzy and warm, sitting out there in the sun like that for so long. But darned of those weren’t the coldest beers I’d ever had. ‘Course, they were the first beer I ever had, so what did I know?”
“How old were you?” Mike asked.
“Let’s see, I must have been fourteen, maybe fifteen.” Finished hooking up the Dodge, he got in the Buick, and motioned us to sit in back. As we drove away, he did not resume the story.
Intrigued, I asked, “So what happened, to your sister? Did you find her, get her back?”
“Oh, right. We got to Denver, went right to the Brown Hotel, she’d said she was supposed to meet that guy in the lobby. There she was, sitting in one of those leather arm chairs, looked like she’d been crying. ‘He ain’t here, Jack, he ain’t here. He never showed.’ She sure was glad we’d come to get her.” Jack shook his head and chuckled as he reminisced. Then, “So, Jane, I heard Martin Luther King is going to be the commencement speaker at Harvard next month. Do you get to go to that?”
I was looking forward hearing that speech. Ever since she saw all those people on TV getting fire-hosed down South four or five years earlier, my mom had been raving about him. Before I could answer, Mike piped up, “I saw him a few weeks ago, at W.” I stared at him. He hadn’t told me about that.
“Really?” Jack prompted.
“Yeah, it was not a speech or anything. It was a special service at the Chapel, Sunday night, I think in early February.”
“You don’t go to church…” I started.
“Right, but this was by invitation only. He’s good friends with one of my Religion professors, Dr. Klassen. He signed a bunch of us in his class up for that. There were only, maybe, 60 people there. It’s not a big cathedral or anything.”
“Religion?” Jack wondered.
“You know; I’ve been taking a Religion class every semester, kind of like a minor to Biology? It’s not the same as going to church, more like philosophy. Anyway, he basically did a whole service, with hymns, lesson, and a sermon. I see now why people think he’s a great leader, an inspiring man. His words, his cadence, his fire, his sincerity – it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Made me glad I got to go to W.”
We got home late Monday evening. Three days later, Mike was over at my house, having dinner. Dad had left the TV on in the den. Coming from the kitchen to the dining table with the roast beef platter, mom could see the screen. She let out a howl of pain, dropped the platter and roast on the rug, put her hand to her mouth, and started shaking. Turning to the TV, I saw the bulletin flickering madly: “Martin Luther King shot in Memphis this evening, rushed to hospital in critical condition.”
Without a car, Mike took the train back to school, while I flew into Logan that weekend. Tuesday after we got back was his birthday, so I called him. Our conversation seemed off, somehow. Maybe it was the assassination, and the riots that followed in Avondale that Sunday just after I left. Only a couple of miles from my home, stores were trashed, people were killed, soldiers were called out, a curfew put in place. My mother was frightened, grateful that I was not around to see it.
Or maybe it was the books I was reading, the ones by Freidan and de Beauvoir. And the conversations I had with my new friends at school, the ones who told me what I ought to feel about a boy, which was different than what I thought I felt about Mike. We agreed to meet that weekend in Cambridge.
He wrote me a letter, about seeing King at W, how that made him feel, about his sorrow and anger at King’s murder, and the riots that followed. He sent along a poem:
A VOICE ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN TOP
A grey-toned man approached me and
unasked
I answered, Yes, I would, Yes
Yes
I’d follow him
To the bus in the back
of a team of mules
He rides now
covered with kisses
And other near misses
and the one that found him
Will not confound him
But hopefully raise his wishes
that covered with kisses we all might love
as he felt we could and should and
Would
someday
When he’d gone away
To his promised land
where his dreams have dawned
on the mountain top
He spoke to us
unasked
He answered, Yes I will, Yes
Yes
4-10-68
That Friday, I wrapped his present, a children’s book, and wrote a note to go with it:
Mike – at the moment I’m fantastically happy somehow – it’s spring & Phil Ochs & you & me and a lot of other things and not very stable – but one thing that should last is the happy that has to last until/through tomorrow – Sat. Yes, it’s strange to save up “happy” for 1 day – but what is the alternative (Not that it’s saved up – but Sat. is different) Like, after we talked Tues. I was kinda upset, really, – I hate feeling that we are insipid ‘cause maybe then what we feel is insipid too – and upset for seeing you, too. But I didn’t write or scream or crack-up – and I realize I’ve got to figure things out, but they can be figured (I don’t mean to sound mystical – this is what happy-sad bubbling is). And the worst thing to do would be to blow what we have together in bitching and biting – I’d rather run around and be crazy with you.
Besides being basically neat and interesting – your letter about Martin Luther King – it was more, for I had been thinking ‘way before how I couldn’t talk about it with anyone it seemed for the emotion was more than would fit words without sounding dilettantish or silly. Somehow your letter was a vindication of something. I sat in the Memorial Service here realizing that comments how he wasn’t a Harvard man weren’t so horrible for they were primarily trying somehow to find some personal meaning out of something hugely shattering; it’s got to come down to personal terms somehow. Also, I guess that’s the first time I realized that somehow his death was about something much bigger & simpler than death or black $ white; I’m not exactly sure of what it is – I’m not wise or old (?) enough to know, but maybe George Wald is right – the conflict is between a man who loved and one who hated. I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound like Sally College, nor am I responding in any form – but somehow I wanted to write to you about this.
This isn’t really much of a birthday card – but what can I say but what comes to me, right? And there’s too much to say to make anything beyond “Happy Birthday” and “I love you” meaningful –
Love,
Janie
Why should anyone give someone who’s really 19 years old Hector Protector? No overtones, no suggestions – but just that I love it – & maybe it’s me & because it’s also from kids – and because I love you. No, it’s not all the same thing – just related. Maybe Ive regressed from F. Scott Fitzgerald – but then maybe I’ve gotten sublimely beyond him (well, it’s a mystic possibility). Anyway if it’s all happy – and me – the book & the kids & you & me – it’s got to be related.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY –
Love –
Janie
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