Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 15 — The Smoke

“… shoot to kill….”

– Mayor Richard J. Daley’s order to police during rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

April 5th. It’s hot. St. Paul Federal’s 40-foot tall time and temperature sign reads 82 degrees, a record. And to the southeast, hundreds of fires burn out of control between Chicago Avenue and Roosevelt Road. A three-and-a-half mile stretch of Madison street is being leveled by arsonists. Rioters are erecting a barricade at Western Avenue. They’ll soon turn it into a pyre.

“…Shoot To Maim Or Cripple Anyone Looting….”

Space

The color of the sky reminds Joey of the time he took two Crayolas in one hand — one Yellow-Orange and the other Blue-Green — and tried to see what color he could produce if he pressed down really hard on the paper. He came up with something he couldn’t even describe — not that he’s all that good with words to begin with but even if he was, he probably couldn’t have invented one for that color. And for this sky.

This sky would have been crystal clear blue had not that black Martin Luther King gotten himself killed last night.

The public schools hadn’t even opened up today. The priests at Holy Cross High had decided against sending the boys home early when trouble started on the West Side late in the morning. At about two, Fr. Micelli had announced over the PA system that those who’d driven to school or were being picked up by their parents ought to give students who normally ride the CTA a ride home. “And go straight home,” Fr. Micelli concluded. The guys in Joey’s American History class all looked at each other. Fr. Micelli sounded scared.

Madison Street, April 5th, 1968

Space

Joey isn’t scared, though. Hell, Galewood’s white! And, as every Galewood kid is aware, with Sam Giancana living in Oak Park, Tony Accardo in River Forest, and Jackey Pontone right here in the neighborhood, this is as safe a place as any in Chicago. You think Momo Giancana is gonna let them moolenjohns come in here and burn everything down? Come on!

Madison Street, April 6th, 1968

Space

Joey thinks: D’em priests doan know what they’re talkin’ about. So, as usual, he hitchhikes home from school. A good way to save money. He pockets the 35 cents bus fare each way every day. By the end of the week he collects $3.50 that way. Good for a couple of bottles of Ripple Red for the weekend. Ma’s such a cheapskate with the allowance.

So he stands in front of the Dominick’s on Belmont and sticks out his thumb. It’s weird, man. All these cars passing by with their headlights on in broad daylight. Da hell is goin’ on?

A guy in a ’59 Caddy Sedan de Ville, the kind with two bullet-point brake lights on each razor sharp fin, pulls over. A spade behind the wheel, of course. What is it with spades and their Caddies?

“Thanks, man,” Joey says as he settles into the cracked leather passenger seat.

“S’okay,” the spade says. “I jes didn’t think y’oughtta be standin’ out there today.”

“Naw, man,” Joey says. “The is the Northwest Side. Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen here.”

“Okay, you say so. But some o’my brothers ain’t feelin’ too kindly to some o’their white brothers today, dig?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll be alright,” Joey says, hoping his tone of finality will dissuade this spade from giving him any more “brotherly” advice.

The spade’s about 40 or so. Has those muttonchop sideburns and a two-inch ‘Fro. Dressed all up as a mailman. Probably coming home from work. Maybe. But where the hell would he be living around here? Plus, he has more cologne on than a French whore. Lucky it’s hot out and the windows are open.

Joey glances around the enormous sedan. Pretty good shape. This tootsoon has a little pride — hasn’t let his wheels go all to shit. He’s probably got a Irish house, though. Pigsty.

But, man, that back seat is huge! Joey thinks: If I had this car I’d get Mary Ellen Foley in the back seat in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!

As Joey completes his survey of the Caddy, his eyes catch those of the spade. Is he lookin’ at me? Da fuck’s he gonna do?

“You wanna hear some music?” the spade asks.

Joey resists the temptation to roll his eyes. He doesn’t wanna hear all that jungle music, that James Brown shit. Maybe some Supremes, okay. But none a that humpa humpa humpa crap. Joeys says nothing but the spade flips on the radio anyway. Dex Card and the Silver Dollar Survey. “The Look of Love” by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.

“Ooh, I love this song,” the spade says.

Joey wrinkles his nose. He loves the song, too, but it’s creepy to hear this old man say he loves it. And then he starts singing along with it!

I can hardly wait to hold you,

Feel my arms around you.

Ugh! Joey thinks for a moment that he’ll just tell the spade he has to get out at Oak Park Avenue, over near Pitzaferro’s. He could stop in and get a slice, wait a while, and then try to hitch a ride with a white guy. Just as he’s about to open his mouth, the spade starts talking.

“I think all men should be brothers,” he says.

“Right on,” Joey says, contrary to what he’s thinking.

“I don’t know why we all have to hate each other.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“We should love each other.”

Joey thinks, Jeez, I thought that Luther King guy was dead. What’s all this love your brother shit?

Joey also thinks it’s getting hotter than ever in this car. He tugs at his tie and undoes his short collar.

“That’s it,” the spade says. “Make yourself at home.”

Joey thinks: Da fuck does that mean?

The Caddy is long past Pitzaferro’s now. The spade stops at the red light at Nashville Avenue. He looks out the corner of his eye at Joey. He bites his lip. Joey’s getting dizzy from the heat and the cologne. The spade reaches over and puts his hand on Joey’s thigh. He leans a bit closer to the passenger side. Joey’s mouth is open, like a guy who’s seeing a car crash happening right before his eyes.

“You wanna mess around?” the spade asks.

“Huh?” Joey says. It comes out as a shout.

The spade pulls back his hand. “Sorry, brother. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You fucking crazy nigger!” Joey screams. “Lemme outta here!”

Joey throws the door open and runs like hell down Nashville Avenue. He never even slammed the Caddy’s door shut. He hadn’t even picked up his books. Fuck it man!

Some four blocks down, near Diversey Avenue, Joey makes himself a promise. He will never, ever, ever tell a soul what just happened. And he hopes to God in heaven that nobody saw it happening.

***

Joey’s gotta get the stink of the incident out of his mind. Okay, the rehearsal dinner is tonight. Gonna be at Biancalana’s after the church. Joey decides he’s going to order the braciole.

A warm spring Friday after school like this should be a great big deal. Maybe start out with some softball at Park Nine until dinner. Then, after eating and showering, run back down to Park Nine where the guys’ll hang outside The Shack in their weekend best clothes, waiting for the girls to come by, at which point one or another will whisper to the group to watch its language and knock off the spitting.

They’ll talk to the girls about music. The Beatles have a new song, “Lady Madonna.” It has a line that still makes them titter despite their outward teen cool — “Baby at her breast.” Funny, man. Or they’ll talk about clothes. A kid nicknamed Demento was the first of them to wear those new bellbottoms. He’d split the neighborhood — most declared him a fag but a significant minority deemed him hip. Or TV. Some guy will say “Didja see Buffalo Springfield on the Smothers Brothers?” and immediately another will say, “Fuck that, man, them Smothers Brothers are commies,” after which a fierce debate ensues as to which karate chop and automatic pistol extravangaza is better: “The Man from UNCLE” or the “Green Hornet.” Invariably, one guy’ll karate chop another guy on the back of the neck and a tussle will follow. At around 8:30 or nine o’clock, the group will pool its money and a designated pair of will go down to Schmidt’s Drugs at North and Austin to await the arrival of some Samaritan kind enough to buy them a bottle of Ripple or Richard’s Wild Irish Rose. No matter how many of them share that bottle, it will be certain to intoxicate each as if he’d drunk a vat of the stuff. There were Fridays when they’d get only a couple of sips each from the bottle; nevertheless, by 10:30 one of them will be sure to marvel, “Man, that shit fucked me up!” To which the rest will agree with drunken nods. By that time, the girls would be long gone. It’ll be time for the guys to dream and lie. “I’m gonna make it with Lynette next week,” one will say. Or “I got a thing goin’ with Lorelei.” If a new girl had joined them that night, they’d analyze her in detail. “You think she’s goin’ with anybody?” “She got some tits, man.” “Yeah, she’s cute; I’d make it with her.” “I dunno; is she clean?”

But this is no ordinary Friday. At Diversey and Nashville, Joey sees a squadrol slowly cruise by. It has a shotgun prominently displayed in a standup rack between the two cops inside. The air reeks of far off burning neighborhoods. Joey’s trying to forget the sissy spade. A voice calls out from Joey’s left: “Ay! Whattsa matter wit’ you? Get the hell home!”

It’s some guy sitting on his front porch with a revolver in his lap. “Whaddya, nuts?” the guy says.

“I’m goin’ home right now,” Joey replies.

“Y’better,” the guy says.

Joey continues walking south. On each block there are fathers and sons sitting on the front porches of their homes, cradling hunting rifles or pistols, some of them grim, some grinning and kidding as if this is a city-wide party. And rather than jump out of their squadrols to seize the weapons, the cops are nodding their approval at the members of this ad hoc militia.

White Men All (Photo by Jo Freeman)

Space

White men all, the cops and the guys on the porches are brothers in arms, holding on to Galewood against what they’re certain will be an advancing horde of colored men, the coal, the jigaboos, the melanzanas, who at this moment are burning down all their own buildings and looting all their own stores and when they’re finished, they’ll turn to the north and the west, toward white homes and businesses, and wreak their havoc on civilization itself. Then they’ll go for the women.

It’ll be a wave of savages, Black Panthers, communists, less-than-humans who want nothing more than to enslave Galewood’s white wives and daughters. And, through no fault of their own, Galewood’s white wives and daughters would become entranced by their superior phallic endowments. If that thick plume of smoke resembles anything at all it is a titanic penis casting its shadow over Galewood. That the smoke is black only makes its specter all the more terrifying.

Space

Joey, of course, is unaware of such semiotics. He’s barely cognizant of how scared people really are, frightened to their cores, ready for a fight, a battle they know has been coming for years. There’ve been opening salvos for the past three summers now. Watts. Detroit. Newark. Gary. Cleveland. One city after another since 1965. Riots even broke out here a time or two.

And there were the marches. Al Raby leading black parents and teachers in circles around City Hall ridiculing the mobile home classrooms the Board of Education had erected around black schools to relieve overcrowding. God forbid they’d ever bus black kids out to underutilized schools in white neighborhoods.

The utterance of the word busing itself has become a lit match that can spark an argument, a fistfight, a riot, a goddamned race war.

Words. Busing. Integration. Open housing. Civil rights. They are triggers. And the good residents of Galewood sense in their guts that the gun is pointed squarely at their heads. They’ll be God damned if they’re going to let black adolescents sit next to their precious white daughters in steamy classrooms. They know what’ll follow.

If a single one of those young bucks named Otis or Tyrone tries to put his fat lips on a single Galewood father’s daughter, that father will dash to his closet, reach up on the top shelf, grab his pistol, and put a slug in that black bastard’s head. And, if by chance, that daughter comes home and announces she’s pregnant by some no good jungle bunny, that father will turn the gun on his daughter herself and then he’ll point the barrel at his own temple and pull the trigger because what’s the use of going on living?

They’re coming. The black smoke overhead blotting out the sun is a warning that can’t be ignored. They have to be stopped now. The Great Society be damned! Lyndon Johnson and all his experts, that goddamned Sargent Shriver and the rest, what the hell do they know? Their daughters are going to big fancy dances and fancy restaurants with nice white kids from Georgetown or Hyannisport. We got the shines burning the city down on their way to Galewood! We ain’t got time for no urban renewal! You wanna give ‘em a chance, you live next door to ‘em!

And so the cops and the guys sitting on their porches with guns on their laps smile and nod at each other, waiting. Waiting.

All Joey knows is that it’s very exciting. He doesn’t know from swimming pools or Willis Wagons. Something big is happening and nothing big ever happens in Galewood.

***

The Following Images Were Shot By Jo Freeman During And After The King Riots In Chicago, April 5th Through 10th, 1968.

For More Images From Jo Freeman, Visit Her Website.

***

Come back for more Black Comedy, Wednesday, on The Third City.

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