Hard Revolution

“Girl, you got a quick hand.”

“Tired of listening to that ’Bama.”

“He was from Georgia.”

“Same thing to me. Anyway, you play him all the time at your crib.” Darla smiled as “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone” came up through the shelf speaker. “This is more like it right here.”

Just another thing go

“Aw, don’t be like that,” said Darla, looking at the frown on Strange’s face.

“Motown,” said Strange dismissively.

“So?”

“Ain’t nothin’ but soul music for white people, you ask me.”

ALVIN JONES, KENNETH Willis, and De

“Go on in, boy,” said Jones to De

“Told you I don’t need nothin’.”

“Go on.”

“And do what?”

“You the detail man. Use your eyes. Come on back and tell us what you see.”

“Why would I?”

“’Cause me and Ke

They were on a single-digit street off Rhode Island Avenue, in LeDroit Park. The market was just like many others serving the residential areas of the city. It catered to the needs of the immediate neighborhood in the absence of a large grocery store. A green-and-gold sign hung over the door. The door was tied open with a piece of rope. The lights were on inside.

“Go on in your own self, then,” said De

“Can’t do that,” said Jones. “It would ruin the surprise we got pla

“Well, you go

“You could use the money, right?” Jones, on the passenger side, looked in the rearview at De

De

Jones adjusted himself in his seat, looked at Willis behind the wheel, looked back in the mirror at De

“What’d you say?”

“All the time I been knowin’ you, been hearin’ you talk. How the white man be exploitatin’ the black man, all that. How these crackers come into where we live and open their businesses. Suck all the money out of our people and never put anything back into the community.”

“You got a point?”

“I bet you walk in there, you go

“Yeah,” said De

“More than you.”

“And what you go

“Go

“I heard that,” said Willis.

“Let me ask you somethin’, man,” said Jones, still eyeing De

“Last day of March,” said De

“And what happens on the first of the month in these places, all over town? I bet you have a market just like this one over in Park View, so you must know.”

“The owner collects,” said De

“What I’m sayin’. People in the neighborhood got to pay their debt on that day, otherwise they go

“And you ain’t have to do nothin’ but look around,” said Willis.

“Be a different kind of thing for you,” said Jones. “A little bit somethin’ more than talk.”

De

“Ain’t nobody asked you to,” said Jones. “What I been tryin’ to tell you this whole time.”

“Go on, bro,” said Willis. “We keep lippin’ out here, they go

De

“Get me a pack of double-Os while you in there, too,” said Jones.

“You got money?” said De

Jones waved him away. “I’ll get you at my girl’s.”

De

“Damn,” said Willis, “you are good. All that shit about exploitatin’ our people, him bein’ nothin’ but talk… you lit a fire in his ass.”

“I can talk some shit, can’t I?”

“What if he has a change of mind?”

“He walked in there, didn’t he?” said Jones. “Ain’t no way he can change up now.”

Upon entering the market, De

A twelve-inch Philco black-and-white TV, its rabbit ears wrapped in foil, sat on the far end of the counter, the tuxedoed image on its screen flickering amid the snow. Even through the poor reception, De

“We have a big show for you tonight… Charleton Heston, Peter Genarro, popular singing group the Young Americans, Frankie Laine, Lana Cantrell, fu