Careful Who You Tell That To ...

It’s Black History Month so I thought I’d post this short excerpt from my novel, Sunshine Blues.

First the setup:

Gloria, one of the novel’s two main characters, is a 16-year-old runaway who is pregnant. Her boyfriend, and the father of the child, is a soldier in Vietnam. Perhaps a bigger problem for Gloria is that she has recently learned that she had an African American father, Clyde Bonaventure.

In this scene, her father’s best friend, State Senator Logan Carlton, is offering her some advice. Carlton, incidentally, was inspired by Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, a colorful and very foul-mouthed politician whom I covered a few times as reporter for the Detroit Free Press in the 1970s.

I could not bring myself to post this without redacting the N word. (It’s not redacted in the novel.)

This begins with Gloria and Carlton sitting in his Lincoln on Grand River Avenue in Detroit in the winter of 1968:

Carlton pushed the front seat back. “I met Clyde durin’ the war. We both signed up for this colored outfit in the Army Air Force. The Tuskegee airmen.  You probly ain’t never heard of it, but lotsa black folks have. We didn’t know each other at first ’cause Clyde, he flew fighters, and me, I was a navigator on a bomber. Our bomber unit never made it to Europe. But eventually, me and Clyde got to be good friends.”

Gloria already knew most of this but she hadn’t heard what came next.

“We were in one of the first fights for civil rights. See, after the war, when Clyde got back to the States, the fuckin’… sorry… the Air Force didn’t want n-----s in the officers club.”

“Saying n----r’s worse than saying fuck,” Gloria said.

His eyes opened wide, then he snickered. “You know, you are absolutely right.” He scratched his neck. “We put up with a lot durin’ and after the war. White officers gettin’ promoted but we didn’t. They set up separate, colored officers clubs. White boys called them Uncle Tom’s cabin. We mostly just swallowed all that shi… crap, but at the end of the war at Freeman Field in Indiana, we made a stand. We went into the whites-only officers club, a whole bunch of us. Direct violation of orders.

“And Clyde? He was the biggest pain in the ass of us all, ’cause he’d been a hero, shootin’ down four Nazis. One more and he woulda been an ace. Most of those white boys hadn’t seen any combat. He embarrassed them so they went after him. Clyde got court-martialed. He chose to leave the military, though they didn’t give him much choice. Me and mosta the others backed off. Chickened out.”

Carlton looked down at the floor.

“You probly heard lotsa things about your father, and most of it’s probly true. The women at his clubs didn’t teach Sunday school. Clyde never paid no mind to city ordinances or liquor license rules. If you’re black in Detroit and play the numbers, or bet on baseball or football, you dealt with one of Clyde’s boys. You need a loan, and your credit’s in the crapper, you went to Clyde. Hell, the banks don’t wanna make loans to nig… people like us.

“The law saw Clyde as an outlaw, though they never caught him. But in my book, he’s right up there with Martin Luther King.” Carlton stopped and rubbed his chin, grinning. “Well, not that high, but he had a lot more guts than me when it came to standin’ up for what’s right. And I’m a state senator.”

Carlton reached to turn up the heat in the car and shifted to another subject. “Where’d you go to church today?”

Gloria couldn’t remember the church’s name. “Um, it was a Baptist church. The minister was Aretha Franklin’s father.”

“New Bethel, Reverend Franklin. Not sure what to make of him. Does some good things though I hear tell he’s quite friendly with some of the young women in the congregation, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.”

Shaking his head as he smiled, Carlton drummed the dashboard with his fingers. Gloria thought he was afraid to say what he really wanted to say.

“That first time we met you, me and Clyde were lit up. Been drinkin’ for a coupla hours. I hope you don’t judge us by that. You should judge Clyde by his good works. Hard to find a black pastor in town who hasn’t received donations from Clyde. And when folks went south for the struggle, you know, the freedom riders, Clyde supported families here. Did the same thing for some men in prison, or men who went to Vietnam. Howard, the man who’s puttin’ on your storm windows? He got out of prison coupla of weeks ago. He’s just one of many I put to work with Clyde’s money. Clyde’s been the principal financial supporter for my election campaigns.”

He took his eyes from her to look out the front window. She felt his apprehension. “Since that first time we met you, we learned a lot about you… ’bout what your stepfather did to you…”

Gloria felt herself flush. Her fingers dug into the leather upholstery.

“It’s okay—” he started.

“It’s not okay. I was raped, and that’s not okay!” Her loud high-pitched voice surprised her. She’d never before used the word “rape” in the few times she’d talked about what happened to her. But Mrs. Lincoln called it rape. So did another woman she’d confided in. Usually she couldn’t talk about it without tears, but now she only felt anger.

Carlton drew back but he recovered and quickened the pace of his words. “I know what happened wasn’t okay. What I meant was that it’s okay that Clyde and I learned about it ’cause…” He swallowed, leaned closer. “Because we wanted to help. Clyde changed after he found out about you. Just before he got shot, he was gettin’ ready to go to the U.S. attorney and confess to shooting those cops, and a lot of other stuff. He was gonna come clean. He wanted to do the right thing. He was afraid you were ashamed he was your father. Kept tellin’ me he’d never been there for you. It tore him up.”

Seeing her distress, he stopped. Then he reached over and very lightly patted her shoulder.

Gloria felt light-headed. Her stomach reeled; a sour taste of chicken soup filled her mouth. A bead of perspiration ran between her breasts. She did not like that Carlton knew what her stepfather had done to her. She didn’t want anyone to know. But since she’d run away from home, she’d begun to understand that she couldn’t keep her secrets bottled up forever. Mrs. Lincoln knew. Gloria had told another woman who’d briefly been her landlady. She’d told Jimmy more about it than anyone because she could talk to Jimmy. Every time she told someone, the burden lightened a little.

But she said to Carlton, “I don’t like to talk about it.”

He nodded and touched her shoulder again. “Just know that you’re not alone. Your father wanted to help, and now, I do too,” Carlton said.

She wondered about his sincerity and why he was talking to her. She said nothing. As the silence lengthened, Carlton changed direction again.

“Have you spoken to the Detroit police about what happened at the motel when Clyde shot those policemen?”

She shook her head.

“Things have changed,” Carlton said. “There was gonna be a federal grand jury looking into it. I don’t think that’s gonna happen now. But I think the Detroit police still want to talk to you.”

“What should I say?”

He shrugged. “Tell them the truth.”

“You mean, I tell them that I saw my father shoot three policemen?”

“If you have to, yes. But my advice would be that you answer each question truthfully, but don’t volunteer anything more.”

Now, she grinned. “I’m good at not talking. Been doing that most of my life.”

“Do you have a lawyer? Frances told me you wanted to get one.”

“No, I don’t have a lawyer.”

But an unexpected thought burst into Gloria’s brain like one of those lightbulbs in the comics. She remembered a hippie friend, Lenny Papineau, from her time on the streets who had talked about his big-shot lawyer father.

“Have you ever heard of a lawyer by the name of Papineau?” she asked.

“Papineau? Cutler and Papineau is one of the biggest law firms in Detroit. I’ve heard of them, but that’s all. Oh yeah, I think Cutler died last year so maybe Papineau’s the main guy now. Do you know him?”

She shook her head.

Carlton straightened up behind the steering wheel and pulled the shifter into drive, keeping his foot on the brake. The Lincoln shuddered.

“You know, I see some of your father in you. You charge straight ahead. You’re smart and quick, like a fighter pilot. More I learn about you, the more you seem like women from past centuries who had to grow up fast. You ever heard of Sally Hemings?”

“No. Who’s she?”

“She was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, starting when she was about your age, maybe younger. She was a slave, three-quarters white, but still a slave. Jefferson fathered several children with her. Those kids woulda been seven-eighths white but they were all still slaves. Jefferson, one of the greatest Americans in history, owned hundreds of slaves. He only freed a few while he was alive, and a few more in his will. He never freed Sally Hemings.”

Carlton’s voice had taken a bitter tone making Gloria afraid to respond, but she did anyway. “Aren’t things different now? We don’t have slavery.”

         “Yeah, but it’s the same fuckin’ country. Sorry. Hasn’t changed as much as white folks think. Did you know there were once slaves in Detroit? Wasn’t just a southern thing. I found this old Ph.D. dissertation at U of M that mentioned it. Finding out your father’s black had to be hard. I’d be careful who you tell about it. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been raised white and or how white you look. You’d still be a n----r to a lotta white people. Didn’t matter how white Sally Hemings and her kids were. They were still slaves.”