the first stone. But Baker knew well enough that Jonesy would pull out if he felt as though the group spokesman had lied about his intentions. Earl had been called.
That’s when things started fuckin’ up, Baker thought.
Earl’s line had been busy. Baker decided on a second’s notice that since Earl couldn’t be reached MJUMBE would deliver its own mail.
‘It’s six thutty,’ he said when King notified him of the busy line. ‘Calhoun was s’pose to git home ’bout six. He prob’bly got wind a the deman’s already. We can’ give ’im too much time to pull no fas’ stuff on us.’
They had started out. Five men in black dashikis crunching through the dead leaves across the quadrangle behind the fraternity house, across the football field to the big white house Sutton students called ‘the Plantation.’ Calhoun wasn’t home.
Calhoun’s absence implied several things to Baker. It indicated that Calhoun knew nothing of the demands. God knew he would have been setting up some counterattack had he heard. It also meant that MJUMBE might have peaked too soon.
As a football player Baker knew a lot about peaking. A team is built up by a good coach to reach its emotional and competitive peak just before the charge down the shadowed runway; when the only sound to be heard is the thunderous clacking of forty pairs of cleats grating against the rough-grained concrete. The team tears down the ramp ready to tackle a moving van. Every inch of your body would be choking with the smell of forty men, practice jerseys, wintergreen, urine, and the sweaty jocks that lay in a corner hamper. Your heart strait-jacketed in your chest, climbing up bony columns of your throat, tightening you into a gigantic ball.
Baker had been a bad coach. He knew now that he should have called the Plantation before he and his cohorts started out. There had been an emotional letdown when there was no one at the Calhoun residence to accept their papers. They had stood on the threshold with hearts the size of a football, ready to slap all authoritative danger in the face. The silly old maid seemed to mock them, though she knew nothing. The air had been let out of them.
Now they sat. Thinking and waiting.
‘Thomas will be here in twenny minnits,’ King said barging through the partially open door.
‘Good,’ Baker said without conviction. He took a look at his watch. In twenty minutes it would be seven thirty. It was getting late.
The MJUMBE spokesman reread the sheet he had handwritten and practically memorized. He would take everyone through their parts again before Thomas arrived.
He looked at his comrades closely; looking for signs of panic or fear; looking for things that he might feel if they were indicated anywhere in the room.
Baker started with the man he knew best. He had grown up in nearby Shelton Township, Virginia, with Fred Jones. Jonesy was a plodder, a man of few words who checked things out very carefully before getting involved. Since their elementary school days Baker had always been the outspoken, active leader and Jonesy the quiet, steady henchman who did his leg work and faithfully stuck by him. Everything about the smaller man signified concentration and determination. Baker knew that as long as he, Baker, kept his word there would be no problems.
Baker had met Speedy Cotton during their freshman year at Sutton. Speedy was a coal-black, West Virginia miner’s son who had been a second-string high school All-American at halfback. They had spent quite a few nights together going over football plays in Baker’s room when they started playing football together and had become even faster friends when they pledged for the fraternity. College was not really of primary interest to Cotton. He wanted to play football and perhaps go on to play professionally. Baker supposed that his political involvement was based solely on their friendship, but the wiry six-foot-two speedster wasn’t afraid of anything and Baker knew that he wouldn’t back down.
The MJUMBE spokesman shifted his attention to Ben King. When it came to courage there were few legends that he could recall that did Ben justice. During their junior year at halftime in the last game Ben had come limping off the field. Pain had been chiseled into the deep creases around the young giant’s mouth and eyes. Baker had watched King conscientiously avoid Coach Mallory and the trainer as he grimaced in the corner of the locker room during the intermission speech. Twice he asked King if someone shouldn’t be notified, but was put off with a frown. Only after the game did the huge tackle permit himself to collapse from the pain. X rays taken that night showed that King’s right ankle had been fractured, but somehow he had played on, had virtually held up the left side of the Sutton line, and insured the hard-fought victory.
The question in Baker’s mind was whether or not Ben could or would keep his mouth shut. The big tackle had a notoriously bad temper and had been expelled from the track team for tearing up the training room during a fit of rage. It had been all Baker could do to avoid a fight between King and Thomas when Thomas, speaking the day before the election, said that ‘certain bullies would not be able to threaten anyone into voting against their wishes.’
Baker knew that there was also a great deal of hatred and animosity between King and the university president. Calhoun had been the one to put King on the carpet after the training-room explosion. Baker nodded thoughtfully, thinking that he would have to watch King as closely as he watched Thomas.
In the dim light of the meeting room a flare ignited in the darkest corner where Abul Menka lit still another cigarette and attracted Baker’s attention. If ever there was a man who puzzled the MJUMBE leader, Abul was that man.
When Baker arrived at the first pledgee meeting of Omega Psi Phi during the spring of his freshman year, the only man present he did not know was introduced by the Dean of Pledgees as Jonathan Wise. Baker had seen Jonathan Wise (who later began calling himself Abul Menka) driving around campus in a new Thunderbird with women hanging all over him, and he could not have imagined the man as fraternity material because the style-conscious New Yorker from the Bronx already had everything. And the perplexing thing was that during the two-month pledge period Abul had done nothing to indicate why he was there. Even during ‘Hell Week,’ the last week of the indoctrination schedule, when their line, ‘The Jive Five Plus One’ was not allowed to sleep, Abul never complained, never reacted even in private to the paddlings they were receiving or confided in the others during their restless nights in the ‘Dog House’ when they waited nervously for Big Brothers to come in and deal with them.
Baker had asked Abul to join MJUMBE as a matter of course because of their common interest in the fraternity, but he had been a little surprised when he accepted. Baker had seen him frequently in the frat lounge with a Black history book or reading material relating to the Black struggle, but the man had never expressed an inkling of political consciousness in the way he spoke. But there was little question of Abul’s dedication to the organization. He was on time for every meeting and faithfully carried out every duty assigned to him.
‘He ain’ got a nerve in his body,’ Baker decided. ‘He’ll go with us all the way.’
The roundup had given Baker a little more confidence in his co-workers, but his personal confidence was slipping. The thought of working with Earl Thomas did not appeal to him. Even if everything looked good. He compared himself to Thomas critically. Earl was six-two, perhaps one hundred and eighty pounds. He had a broad chest and wide shouders like a boxer. Next to him Baker looked like a powerful Black barrel. Football had developed Baker’s arms, neck, and chest until he resembled a tree trunk. Baker’s eyes were deep set and his nose was African flat. Earl was a bushy-browed Indian-looking man with a wide mouth and two inches of kinky hair. The MJUMBE leader rubbed his bald head thoughtfully. When football ended he would grow it again.
Sitting
