Midnight Read online

  “Now just a minute, Mr. X, are you saying that the Los Angeles police department has been guilty of this kind of behavior and nothing was ever done about it?”

  “Not only has this sort of brutality been practiced by the L.A.P.D., it has been condoned, sometimes overtly but always covertly, since the creation of the L.A.P.D.”

  Flick.

  “We’ve got a big one here, Pam. As you can see, the whole structure is burning. So far as we know, no one has been injured in any of these fires, but we can definitely say, at this point, that the Korean businessmen of South Central Los Angeles have suffered heavy losses.”

  Bop slumped into his uncle’s favorite chair. Another sunny day in Torrance, while South Central “El-A” was burning up. What a helluva scene. One half of the city is burning, people are raiding grocery stores, bizarre shit is happening, and they got it all on TV.

  After an hour of flicking back and forth he decided to smoke a joint.

  May 3rd, tomorrow, I’m outta here; may as well get high. He strolled to his room with the sound of the newscasters following him. “The National Guard has been called in, and there appears to be a downturn in the number of fires, Pam, is that what we’re seeing here?”

  “Yes, Tom, I think we can definitely say that there are fewer fires being set, but I don’t think we’ve turned the bend in the road yet. President Bush, in his address to the nation, said.…”

  Fuck Bush.

  Bop sat in front of the TV, rolling up joints from the last grams of his stash.

  Flick … flick … flick … flick … smoke … smoke … smoke.…

  Uncle David and Aunt Lulu pulling into the driveway surprised him. Damn! Four o’clock already.

  They lumbered in, hauling bags of groceries.

  “What they doin’ now?”

  Aunt Lu stood next to him with her fists on her hips, a characteristic pose, ignoring the sour-sweet incense of the marijuana he had just smoked. They had a hands-off attitude towards his habits, so long as he didn’t bring off-beat characters into the house.

  “Same-o same-o. Looks like somebody has proven a point; they ain’t happy.”

  Uncle David paused in front of the TV for a moment, glared at the screen, and shuffled off to change into his house clothes. Aunt Lulu placed the steaks in the freezer, stashed the ground beef, pulled out pork chops and began heating water for a spaghetti dinner. She was banging pots ahead of time.

  Bop continued staring at the madness on television, silently arguing with the people on the talk shows, the interviews with the man in the streets (“There’s no justification for burning up our fair city”), high.

  “Sho’ smells good. Aunt Lu.”

  “You oughta break down ’n come on in here ’n get yourself a plate.”

  Uncle David was occupying his head-of-the-table spot, wolfing down spaghetti with meat balls, ravaging the stack of pork chops on the platter in front of them, swallowing it all with huge gulps of Pepsi.

  “Don’t try to force him in here; that means it would be less for us.”

  They shared a laugh at one of Uncle David’s favorite jokes.

  “We’re asking all of the citizens of our city to cooperate.…”

  Flick.

  “What people have to recognize is that this pot has been simmering since 1966. The Kerner Report identified the root causes of the first Watts rebellion, that the white media insists on calling a ‘riot,’ even today. The Christopher Commission Report pointed the finger again at some of the same basic problems, especially concerning the police, but it seems that the Christopher Commission Report was ignored just as consciously as the Kerner Report was ignored.

  “How many studies does it take to show that thousands of people are dissatisfied with the situation here? They’re sick, angry and disgusted at the lack of real economic opportunities. They’re fed up with the vicious flow of drugs that’s being poured into the black and brown communities.”

  Bop squirmed. There was a time, pre-Chester Simmons, when he had only been concerned about the profits gained from the crack trade, not the consequences.

  “Bop, lawd knows I’d be the last person in the world to pull up moral on you, the way a lot of these funky chump preachers do, but I got to say this.… Any motherfucker who would peddle hard drugs in our communities is psycho-wacked and should be put under the jail.”

  “Just think about the consequences of the crack trade; you ain’t talking just about some goofy fifteen-year-old suckin’ on a pipe, you’re talkin’ about families being fucked up for generations. Think about it. In order to reduce our communities to the slave level again, every means possible have been used.”

  “We’re talking one-on-one with John Charles Clark, noted African-American historian. We’ll be back after these commercial messages.”

  “Boy, sounds like he knows what he’s talkin’ about.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said he sounds like he knows what he’s talkin’ about.” Uncle and Aunt had joined him in the front room, carrying bowls of ice cream with them. It was dessert time.

  “Yeah, he’s making sense.”

  “Once again, ladies and gentlemen, our distinguished guest, Dr. John Charles Clark. Dr. Clark, are we to understand that drugs have deliberately been used to create … uhh problems in the African-American and Latin communities?”

  “Yes. It’s one way of creating a caste system that is totally dependent on a destructive source of energy. We have to understand several things at once: the interrelation of things here, the savings-and-loan ripoff, the politicians who bounced checks, the corruption and disrespect for law and order has sent out a powerful message to the man in the streets. Them who has should get and them who has not shall not.

  “The Reagan-Bush white code that has fostered the new racism, livened up the anti-Semitic climate, produced the David Dukes and others, paved the way for racial intolerance, is alive and thriving.”

  “Bop, turn that off for a li’l bit.”

  Bop turned to look at his Uncle and Aunt; they were uncharacteristically solemn, ice-cream bowls empty.

  “We ain’t gon’ miss too much; we already know most of that shit anyway.”

  He remoted the television off, feeling puzzled by their expressions. What’s happening?

  “Well, tomorrow is the big day for you; you gon’ be gittin’ outta here to go to the real Big Foot country.”

  Bop smiled. Uncle David could make anything sound comical. Or super-serious, depending on his voice tone.

  “Yeahhh, tomorrow evenin’ at 8:45 P.M.”

  Aunt Lulu checked her watch, as though recording the time.

  “You goin’ to Africa, for whatever reason you goin’, and we want you to know that we’re here for you if you need us.”

  Uncle David looked uncomfortable. Aunt Lulu filled in the gap.

  “I think it’s a real good idea, Bop. I wish more of our young people would take a trip back to the motherland; it might help them to have more self-esteem and pride. What I’m concerned about is what’re you going to do when you return?”

  Bop stared at his Aunt’s shoes for a minute. What’re you gon’ to do over there? What’re you goin’ to do when you return? Big tune questions.

  “Yeah, Bop, whatcha gon’ do when you get back? I mean, after all, you just goin’ over there for thirty days. Right?”

  He knew he was dealing with a crucial moment; they were asking him, after months of being supportive, for a commitment.

  “I’m coming back here to go to school. I been doin’ lots of thinkin’ about it and I think.… I think I want to go into journalism.”

  They stared at him for a few pregnant moments and then exchanged their own special code-looks. Uncle David set his empty ice-cream bowl down beside his chair and folded his hands across his belly. “Journalism, huh?”

  Bop felt the pressure of the question.

  “Yeah. I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinkin’ over the past few months about writin’, you know, doin�
�� news stories, reportin’ ’n stuff like that.”

  “Well, I don’t think there’s a helluva lot of money in that field, unless you get to be Ed Bradley or one o’ them niggers with starched drawers ’n shit. But one damn thing is certain: any of it beats gang bangin’.”

  “Yeah, no doubt about that.”

  “Journalism sounds good to me. Bop. And the school-work you’ll have to do will be good discipline.”

  A huge, awkward gap followed Aunt Lulu’s statement. Bop felt compelled to fill it in. “Yeahhh, I know it will; I’m lookin’ forward to it.”

  It was time for them to go to bed. They were early-to-bed-early-to-rise people. Uncle David made his famous walrus yawn. “Well, looks like it’s ’bout that time.”

  Bop felt like crying, looking from one to the other. They were such deep people, no shuck or jive or pretense about them; they were real. The sudden realization that he was leaving the two best people in his life made him feel sad.

  They weren’t huggers ’n kissers, people who peed on your leg and told you it was raining. They were f’real.

  “Aunt Lu, why don’t you fry some catfish tomorrow for my goin’ away dinner?”

  He almost laughed at the lights that flickered in his uncle’s eyes.

  “You want some catfish for your memory bank, huh?”

  “Much as you can fry”

  “You got it.”

  He sprawled in his uncle’s chair, nursing a cold Beck’s, staring at the riot on TV.

  Wowwww, these motherfuckers is serious.… My last night in town and they’re trying to wear their shit out.…

  “The National Guard is patrolling the streets, we got a dusk to dawn curfew on, and the fires are still going on.”

  “Well, Pam, all I can say is that I’m sure a lot of people have learned a lesson from this.”

  Bop felt himself laughing aloud. What bullshit these people talk. If anybody had learned any fuckin’ thing they would’ve learned it the last time we had to shake the town up.

  The longer he watched the news shows and the talkathons, the more aware he became of how far they were deliberately wandering away from the root causes of the ’92 riot.

  A few newscasters gave them the impression that it was simply an African-American rite. “Jerry, you’re saying that these people have done this sort of thing before?”

  “Well, not exactly the same way or for the same reasons, but it’s been done before. Remember Chicago, New Orleans, New York?”

  Increasingly, within a four-day span, reasonable African-American representatives were being made to sound like fiery fools.

  “What we have to understand here, which you people seem to want to forget, is that the fuel for the fires was poured on when four white policemen were exonerated for brutally beating an African-American man named, ironically, King. The fuel for the fires was lit by fifty-some baton blows. Nobody seems to have counted the kicks and stomps.

  “Many of us, African-Americans and brown-skinned South Americans, know what it feels like to be humiliated on a public street by the L.A.P.D., to be pulled out of our vehicles in front of our wives and children and forced to sprawl on the sidewalk for ‘probable cause.’”

  “Sir, are you saying that the police shouldn’t carry out the business of preserving the law, of keeping the peace and preventing criminals from being apprehended?”

  Bop remoted the TV off as the super-articulate black man began his reply. “Of course, you know that I do not mean that the police shouldn’t protect and serve us. What I am saying is that they shouldn’t oppress and degrade us. What I’m saying.…”

  Yeahhh, I know what you’re saying, brother, and you ’re saying it very well, but they don’t hear you.

  The sudden vacuum left by the absence of the television sound was filled by the screaming of distant fire trucks. He listened to the sounds for a few minutes, suddenly remembered he had one last, fat joint in his bedroom, and made a beeline for it.

  The side yard gleamed in the moonlight. He imagined that he could see and count the leaves on the trees and bushes. The moon shimmered silver. Bop sprawled on the concrete terrace, staring up at the moon, taking delicate hits on the joint, the events concerning King, the riot, and a dozen other things flickering through his dope-filled mind.

  The whole scene was like a crazy movie. A crazy video by an amateur videoman named, ironically, Holiday. Just a white guy noodlin’ around with his new toy who happened to catch about three minutes of an ass-kicking that cost the city of Los Angeles about nine hundred million dollars.

  Plus, a trillion dollars worth of negative publicity.

  The hip people knew something gruesome was about to go down when the trial site was changed from L.A. County to Simi Valley, home of many cops, retired cops, and whites sympathetic to the most fascist tendencies within the L.A.P.D.

  “Shit! They didn’t even shift the Manson trial outta town, and they knew that motherfucker wasn’t gon’ git a fair trial. If they’re really talkin’ about fair trials.…”

  A cloud bank drifted across the moon’s face … ten whites, one assimilated Asian, and one first-generation Latina

  “Hey, man, you know that bitch is scared shitless that they gonna withdraw her green card. You know which way she got to go.”

  A fair trial?

  The head training officer of the L.A.P.D., somebody named Bostic, showed conclusively when and how the cops who had brutalized Rodney King could have handled it. He used an old-fashioned school pointer to stop the tape and show when King could have been subdued, handcuffed, and arrested, rather than brutalized.

  Bop closed his eyes as the cloud exposed the moon’s rays. He felt the sparkle of moonbeams in his shuttered eyelids.

  The overwhelming evidence (to most black and brown people) clearly pointed to an abuse of power on the part of the police. But the jury, viewing the three-minute tape of the police hyena attack as a travelogue, voted “not guilty” for all defendants.

  The riot started outside the Simi Valley courtroom when the verdict was announced. There is recorded evidence that even some right-wing whites were stunned by the “not guilty” verdict. Most people expected the police to be slapped on the wrist, at least, and there would be “disturbances” as a result. (Police Chief Gates—better known as the “Commandant” by some people—had put aside one mil for riot overtime, a tip off if ever there was one.)

  It started outside the courtroom and kicked into gear on Florence and Normandie, in South Central. Fifty plus lives were lost, thousands disrupted. The assault on the Korean shop owners was only surprising to the Koreans.…

  “They are the rudest, most insensitive assholes I have ever encountered.”

  And, seemingly, only misunderstood by them—“We work hard, sixteen to eighteen hours a day; they are jealous of us, of our success! They do not understand our culture.”

  “What is this shit about not understanding their fuckin’ culture?! This ain’t fuckin’ Ko-rea, this is America, goddamit!”

  Strangely, ninety percent of the Korean entrepreneurs interviewed by the dominant press failed to understand four basic things.

  1) They were disliked because they were perceived to be rude and basically insensitive to the African-American community they had targeted for profits. Some people also resented the fact that they seemed able to get small business loans from the government easily. The non-Koreans who weren’t familiar with the Korean financial self-help organizations were the most resentful.

  2) They make little effort to understand the historical conditions of African Americans and South Americans. It seemed that they made little effort to relate to anyone else but Koreans.

  3) They were, quite obviously, siphoning money out of the African-American community and not putting any back into the community.

  4) They had largely alienated most African Americans with their siege us-them attitude.

  The constant refrain that their “culture was different” rang hollow. The other Asian groups
who did business in the black and brown communities didn’t seem to have that problem.

  (Once again, demonstrating his ability to alienate the alienated, President Bush, pressured by the corporate pipeline with the South Korean government, immediately made money available for rehabilitation of the Korean entrepreneurs. The stage was obviously being set for the years 2020.)

  The verdict as to how it will finally turn out between the brothers and the Koreans is less predictable than the lottery.

  The chilling air blowing patches of fog in from the west broke Bop’s focus. He stood up, feeling mellow, rotated his hips a few times and went inside. Ain’t no need to get too well rested for a trip that’s gonna take me damned near two days.

  Aunt Lulu had taken his request for a catfish dinner seriously. Twenty pounds worth seriously. Plus spaghetti and meatballs, sourdough cornbread, and a deep pot of succotash.

  “Eat Succotash” suddenly had a deeper meaning.

  Bop took a furtive look at his uncle’s jaws working. Goddamn, this brother can eat up some fish!

  Uncle David had practically reduced his catfish eating to an art. He chewed the catfish into one side of his mouth and gently extracted bones from the other side.

  “Eat all you can, while you can, Bop. I know damned well them niggers over in Africa ain’t got nothin’ that comes close to Lu’s cookin’”

  Bop almost choked on a bone laughing. Niggers in Africa? C’mon, Unc’, get real.

  But the catfish was good, no doubt about that. Aunt Lulu could lay a batter on a piece of fish that would force you to eat a second piece, a third piece.…

  Bop stared at the platter piled high with catfish in the center of the table, the deep bowl of succotash, the skillet filled with cornbread, the platter of spaghetti (Uncle David called it “ghetti”) and meatballs. Yeahh, maybe this is the good life, who knows? He pulled in the fifth catfish fillet under the approving eyes of his aunt and uncle.

  The phone ringing interrupted his tastebud seduction.