Hard Revolution

“I know what I’m doin’,” Ro

“Go on,” said Jones. “I’m go

“Lock the apartment, man, you go out.”

“Yeah, all right.”

Jones thinking, Now I am really go

Thank you, Dr. King. Thank you for this opportunity.

Jones went to his bag, had all his clothes and shit inside it, which he kept beside the sofa where he slept. He withdrew his old.38, had the bluing rubbed off the barrel. Jones had wrapped black electrical tape around the grip; his hands tended to sweat when he was working, and he needed to have a tight hold on his gun. He released the cylinder, checked the five-shot load, and snapped it shut. He dropped the pistol into the right pocket of his Zanzibar slacks. He found a crumpled-up stocking in a bedroom drawer, belonged to Ro

He went down to 7th Street and walked south.

There were hundreds of young people out on the street, looting stores, hollering and laughing, having fun. Boys and girls, and some older people, too. Cops trying to contain the rioters, having little success. Firemen hosing down burning buildings, ducking the occasional rock and bottle thrown their way.

Leventhal’s Furniture Store, at Q, it wasn’t much more than a shell now. The store had been stripped of goods and was burning inside. The apartment houses nearby were burning with it.

Leventhal’s, thought Jones, stepping around a flaming mattress. Jew name, wasn’t it? Like most of the stores down here, owned by Jews. Long after they’d moved out the neighborhood their own selves, they were still doing business on 7th, selling jewelry and furniture and stereos and appliances to blacks. Selling credit, really, and high-interest credit at that. Jones could see the glee on the faces of the looters as they broke into another store. Wasn’t much about Dr. King anymore, was it? It was about getting things for free, and getting back at every motherfucker, Jew and white man alike, who’d been bleeding them and stepping on their necks their whole goddamn lives. Leastways, that’s the way Jones saw it. His people, getting a little bit back.

His people. Truth was, Jones didn’t give a fuck about them. When this was done, they’d go back to their sad-ass lives. While he, Jones, would be driving south with cash in the pockets of his new outfit, maybe under the wheel of that white El D he’d seen across town. Had electric windows and everything.

He passed a brother in the street, wearing shades and fatigues, imploring some other young brothers to drop the stolen shit they were carrying and go home.

“Dr. King wouldn’t want this!” shouted the man.

Jones laughed. Now he’d seen it all.

A black man stood outside his deli, holding a pistol at his side, watching the neighborhood burn. His store was untouched. Jones passed other stores and heard dogs barking and growling viciously behind their doors. These stores, too, had gone untouched.

People ran around him and bumped and said not one thing. He coughed and rubbed at his eyes. The police had started using gas. He was sweating some, too. The fires in the buildings were throwing off serious heat.

Down by the big-men’s shop, he saw Ro

You fucked up, cuz, thought Jones. You have lost your job now, too. But I can’t help you, can I? You’ll be out in a few days, if you’re lucky, and you can put your life together then. In the meantime, I got work to do.

Down below L, past the Cavalier Men’s Shop, which had been picked clean, Jones could see a row of police and squad cars blocking off Mount Vernon Square. This was the line dividing black residents from the commercial center of downtown, white D.C. Isn’t no surprise, thought Jones. They’re protecting the master’s castle, like they always do.

Jones cut right and then right again, going north of Massachusetts Avenue. He had parked his car over here the night before. He had heard talk on the street that 7th was going to burn the next day. Fu

THE HOUSE IN Wheaton had gone quieter through the morning and into the afternoon. Olga sitting at the kitchen table, smoking her Larks, watching the news broadcasts on the little black-and-white Philco set on a rolling metal stand. Olga telling Alethea how sorry she was for her “people,” not meeting Alethea’s eyes as she spoke. Frank lumbering around in his robe, reading the sports page, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, like it was any other day. Only their son, Ricky, had talked to her not as a Negro woman but as a woman. Asked her, also, if there was anything he could do to help her get back home.

“Your father’s going to drive me,” she said. “Thank you.”

He hugged her outside the kitchen, unselfconsciously, as he had when he was a child. She had always been fond of him. Maybe there was hope in the young. Maybe she and the Vaughns and everyone like them needed to die out before this sickness was erased. It was a shame it had to be that way. But she had the feeling it was so.

Alethea stood in the foyer by the front door, waiting for Frank Vaughn to come downstairs and drive her back home. She could hear his muffled voice coming from his and Olga’s bedroom, and the music behind the closed door of Ricky’s room.

Up in the bedroom, Vaughn slipped his.38 Special into his shoulder holster and went to the small nightstand on his side of the bed. He opened its drawer and used a key on a green lockbox. Inside the box was another gun: a cheap.32 automatic holstered in a clip-on. He removed it from its holster, checked the magazine, and palmed the six-shot load back into the laminated-wood grip. He clipped the reholstered.32, which he had taken off a pimp in Shaw six months earlier, onto the belt line behind his back. He folded a cloth handkerchief into a small square and dropped it into the pocket of his pants. He shook himself into his Robert Hall suit jacket, gray with light blue stripes, and looked himself over in the mirror.

“Why do you have to go in?” said Olga, looking at him from across the room, leaning against the frame of their master bathroom door.

“I’m workin’ a case.”

“Today?”

“Homicide never sleeps.”

“Haven’t you been watching the news?”

Vaughn formed his mouth into an O, gave Olga a theatrical look of surprise. “Why, is somethin’ goin’ on?”

“Don’t be an ape.”

“I’m not goin’ near the trouble spots, Olga. Don’t worry.”

“Promise me, Frank.”

“Okay, I promise.”

It was a lie.

“Come here,” said Vaughn.

She crossed the room and put her arms around his waist. He lowered his face and kissed her on the lips. He pushed himself against her to let her know he was alive. He thought of Linda Allen and her warm box.

“I might be late tonight, doll.”

“Call me. So I know you’re all right.”

Vaughn left the room and stepped onto the second-floor landing, glancing at Ricky’s closed door before going down the stairs. Alethea Strange was waiting for him in the foyer, buttoning her coat over her uniform dress.