Hard Revolution

Whatever it was that had turned his lights off, and despite his lack of enthusiasm, Stewart had made Martini a part of his plans. He figured that if something went down, Martini would act without thought and also act with authority. After you’ve been programmed to kill, thought Stewart, the instinct never left you.

Martini had said that whatever Stewart had in mind was okay. He had said it without enthusiasm, like he said everything else, but agreed to come along. Stewart had brought Shorty in, too, soon as he’d done his straight time. Prison had made the little guy crazier than shit, and that could be useful, too. Not that he’d ever been normal or anything close to it. Walter Hess didn’t need no Marine Corps to teach him how to kill.

Stewart hit his smoke, hit it again, hot-boxed it so the paper collapsed under the draw. He crushed the cigarette under his boot. There was an Olds 88 in the garage beside the Dart, waitin’ on its tires to get rotated. It was time to get back to work.

He stopped by his car, a ’64 Plymouth Belvedere, double red with a white top, parked along the cinder-block wall of the garage. Stewart babied his ride, a customized 440 with a Max Wedge head scoop, Hooker headers, three-inch pipes, a 727 automatic trans, and chrome reverse mags. On the left front quarter panel, in white script, was written the word “Bernadette.” He’d named the car after one of his favorite songs.

Stewart noticed a smudge on the hood. He grabbed at the hip area of his belt line, where a clean shop rag always hung, and pulled the cloth free. He rubbed the smudge and removed it. Now she looked right.

WASN’T LONG BEFORE Stewart had the Olds up on the lift and was using an air gun to loosen the lugs on the wheels. The old lady who owned the car would be by soon to pick it up.

He had his sleeves rolled up high on his biceps, and as he worked he periodically checked his arms to regard their size. He had always been a big boy. The army had made him big like Kong.

Barry Richards, that fast-talking DJ on WHMC, introduced the brand-new Miracles record, “If You Can Want,” saying, “Go ahead, Smokey,” before the tune kicked in. It wasn’t no “I Second That Emotion,” but it was okay.

Walter Hess gave Stewart much shit about his newfound love of R amp;B. It was true that Stewart had been a rocker way back when, but something had changed in him early in the decade, when he started going to the Howard, down off 7th Street below Florida Avenue, to see the live acts with his friends. Most of the time they were the only whites in the place, but the colored kids were so into the show that there never had been any kind of trouble. None to speak of, that is, outside of the occasional hard look. Stewart always sat in the balcony, where he was less visible, just in case. Because of his size, he stood out too much as it was.

Early on, he caught the big-name acts. For fifty cents, in the early years, you got live performances and a movie, too. Comedians, sometimes, like Moms Mabley and Pigmeat Markham. But mostly musicians, and it was them he would remember most: James Brown and the Famous Flames, Little Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, the Impressions, Joe Tex, and Aretha when she wasn’t much more than a little girl. Hell, she was so young then, her father had to be onstage with her, like a chaperone. Stewart had gotten tired of the hits he’d been hearing on the radio, especially that British shit, but what he saw at the Howard put a hot wire up inside him and got him buying music again.

He liked all kinds of R amp;B. But when he was looking to spend money in the record stores, he kept his eye out for the labels Tamla, Gordy, and Motown. There wasn’t nothin’ better than the Motown sound. Those blue-gum singers they had down south, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett and them, some of their stuff was okay, but when they got to grunting and sweating they were way too niggerish for Stewart’s tastes. The Motowners, they dressed high-class, in tuxes and gowns, and wore their hair like whites. What they were singing about, you could tell it wasn’t just meant for colored. Hell, they could have been singing about things that happened in white people’s lives. Sometimes, you closed your eyes, you could even pretend that they were white.

Not that Stewart had given up on rock completely. He and Shorty, sometimes with Martini in tow, still went out to the clubs. And Link Wray remained his man.

Stewart had missed Link’s long run at Vi

Eventually that club had to close. Link moved to the Famous, on New York Avenue, across from the Rocket Room, another rough-and-tumble joint. Stewart followed him and continued to drink there and in other bucket-of-bloods just like it. There was the Anchor I

Inside these establishments, Stewart felt safe with his own. It was like he was with his car-club boys in the parking lot of Mo’s, the Chantels were singing from the dash radio, and the calendar still read 1959. But outside the club walls, the attitude had changed. Coloreds weren’t looking away when you stared them down. They walked real slow across the street, almost daring you to hit ’em. Young ones especially had that laughing, fuck-you look in their eyes. Clearly they weren’t going to take any shit from white boys anymore.

There were other changes as well. Greasers were no longer cool. Hot rods were out, muscle cars and pony cars were in, and Elvis was for squares. Stewart lost the Brylcreem in his hair and let it grow, just a little, over his ears. Some of Stewart’s friends got into pot. A few got into worse. Walter Hess still drank beer and sometimes Jack, but somewhere along the line, probably in prison, he’d started in on amphetamines, too. As for Stewart, he stayed with beer and hard liquor. He liked Ten High bourbon and ginger ale. On certain nights, when he wanted to get way outside his head, he went with gin and Coke.

In their day, Stewart and Hess had relied mainly on their fists. Now they never went into the colored sections of town without some kind of weapon. Buzz kept a derringer in his boot; Shorty always carried some kind of knife. They wore the same accessories in the after-hours bars they frequented on 13th and 14th Streets, down in Shaw. Of course, the races in those joints mixed, as a certain tension release came with the late-hour buzz. The patrons were a drunken blur of black and white. The whores were mostly black.