in-volved,’ King added.
The sarcasm that dripped through the receiver as King slowly drawled his way through the monologue was beginning to grate on Earl’s nerves. Something very screwy was going on; something that Earl felt an immediate need to pinpoint. But too many ideas were dashing through his head. There was no real way to slow down the thoughts that were turning him into a huge knot. What were the demands? Why hadn’t he heard anything from anyone? Faster and faster the questions came, obscuring the words King breathed slowly through the telephone.
‘What did you say?’ Earl asked. ‘I missed that last part.’
‘I ast you hi long it’s gon’ take you to git down here.’
‘Down where?’
‘Well, we in the frat house on the third flo’.’ King said.
‘I guess I can be there in ’bout twenny minnits,’ Earl calculated.
‘Right on!’ King laughed. ‘We’ll be waitin’!’
The call was terminated. Earl felt for the first time the beads of sweat that had been sprung loose from wells at his hairline. Blood was circulating again in his left ear now that the phone had been unclamped. A very sick smile was spread over his face.
There was nothing he really felt capable of doing or saying at that moment. It was sixth grade all over and he was watching his girl being walked home from school by someone else. Everyone in the world was waiting, watching to see what he would do. There was nothing that could be done. Odds had warned him. Lawman had warned him. The pulse of the campus had told him. ‘MJUMBE is up to something!’ the messages read. But Earl Thomas was not a hasty young man. He had been drawing up a list of demands and researching every item carefully with the Board of Trustees and members of the administration. When he went after Calhoun he was going to be damn sure that everything was perfect. Now the whole thing was shot to hell.
‘Where the hell is Victor Johnson?’ he asked out loud.
Victor Johnson was the editor-in-chief of the Sutton University Statesman, the campus’s weekly newspaper. Earl often referred to Vic as the editor-in-everything because the bespectacled senior seemed to be the only one who ever did any newspaper work on campus. Wasn’t a coup newsworthy any more? Wasn’t the story of the president of the Student Government Association being shot down worth the print? They printed shit like the ZBZ sorority’s news.
Earl slumped heavily on the side of the bathtub. See! See! he heard stumbling through his head. Here you sit inna damn bathrobe splashin’ aftershave on yo’ mug while some two-faced muthas run ’roun’ an’ pour freezin’ damn water down yo’ goddamn back! An’ you can’ rilly even ac’ su’prized cuz evybody tol’ you …
Earl started counting backward. He was trying hard to remember the various dates he had marked on his political calendar; still searching for that one elusive idea that felt so important but could not be captured. Today was October 8th. School had opened on September 9th. He had been elected the previous May and had taken office on June 1st. He had promised the students then that by the end of the coming September he would have a list of their prime grievances drawn up and ready for their approval. It had taken longer than he had thought it would. The old bylaws and old Student Government constitution hampered everything that he wanted to do. He found himself struggling like a man in quicksand; the harder he fought the deeper he sank. It had been as bad as Lawman had predicted: ‘It’s impossible to move faster within the system than a turtle with two busted legs.’
The truth was that it was his inability to make any headway that was really upsetting Earl about King’s call. The message meant that MJUMBE was running head on into Ogden Calhoun, the university president, with nothing to back it up. MJUMBE’s act might have been courageous, but it was definitely unwise politically. Calhoun hadn’t lasted at Sutton for nine years for no reason. He knew what could and could not be allowed. He had kicked more student reformers out of school than the presidents of any other five schools combined.
Earl switched off the bathroom light and flip-flopped in his shower shoes down the second-floor hall to his room. He strode past the room of Zeke, the handyman, with the record player playing Mongo Santamaria full-blast, and past Old Man Hunt’s room, where absolutely nothing was ever going on.
‘So the great Sutton revolution has finally begun,’ he muttered sarcastically, flinging his door open. ‘And Earl Thomas has been kicked the hell out.’
At that point another real question arose. Why had he been called? To hell with why Lawman and Odds, his best friends, had not called. Why had Baker let Ben King call? Earl Thomas and Ralph Baker, the MJUMBE leader, were political enemies. Earl had defeated Baker for the post of SGA president. What was going on?
The chain of events that had wired Earl for the phone call were at that very moment wiring others to the fuse slowly smoldering on the campus of Sutton University. The meeting. Phone call. Busy signal. Calhoun not home. Second call. Earl speaking. A million possible combinations were spiraling across a background of human skin; dominoes that stretched out and were nudged, forced to collapse into one another until a whole line of white dots drilled into black rectangles stumbled jointlessly through a massive collision and lay silent.
Earl pulled his pants on hurriedly. He wasn’t sure how much he could do. Maybe nothing. There would be little sense in his asking MJUMBE to halt plans that were off the ground. No one would wait. There would be little point in his explaining to the MJUMBE leadership how much work he had done to get things together. No one would wait. At least he was involved. That was something that would allow him a little say-so. It was much better to be invited in than to have to control the situation from outside. The students would be watching very carefully to see what happened between him and MJUMBE. MJUMBE would doubtlessly be watching to make sure he didn’t get away with anything. Everyone would be watching him.
‘Ice. Ice. Ice.’ He muttered to himself. ‘I got to be very cool.’
The train was moving, gaining speed as it left the comparative safety of the yards. The first stop would be a funky frat room on Sutton’s campus. Earl knew that if he wasn’t cool the train might go no further. He wondered if he could take it. Baker and King laying down the rules. Earl Thomas caught in the middle. He definitely did not dig the plot. But he realized that he had no real choice. He was not the train’s engineer. He was a passenger.
Mjumbe is the Swahili word meaning messenger. On the campus of Sutton University, Sutton, Virginia, it was also the identifying name for the Members of Justice United for Meaningful Black Education. MJUMBE.
The name was chosen by Ralph Baker, a six-foot two-hundred-pound football player who had organized the group and served as its spokesman. Baker sat in the third-floor meeting room of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity house waiting for the results of Ben King’s phone call to Earl Thomas. He was also reliving the day.
The day had really started for Baker at four o’clock that afternoon. He had left a note in the frat house lounge after breakfast notifying the four other MJUMBE chieftains of a four o’clock meeting. When he came into the lounge at four the others were waiting.
‘Brothers,’ he had said, ‘the time has come.’
