Eureka Man: A Novel (27 page)

Key-su pulled on the sleeves of his orange
and black windbreaker and then pointed to Queenie.

At fifty-seven, Queenie was the oldest man in
the room. He took out an index card from his inside jacket pocket,
and said, “Key-su, you asked for some figures. I got most of them
for you. Let's see. Last year thirteen men died in the hospital.
Five from cancer, three from heart attacks, four from stab wounds
and one died after a gall bladder operation. There were seven
suicides in the prison and we've had two this year. The beatings in
the Home Block, because they don't keep those kinds of records on
paper, I couldn't get. What I can tell you is that medical
responded to one hundred twenty-one incidents in the Home Block
last year.”

Queenie turned the card over and read
silently until he found what he was looking for. “I almost forgot.
Working in the major's office I'm always hearing something new.
Well, I just heard when the clocks get moved ahead in the spring,
visiting hours are going to be cut back from all day to three hours
a day. Um-hm. It's true, baby,” he said to Doza, who twisted his
face in disgust at the news.

LaMumba played with a plait on the side of
his head. When he spoke, his rich baritone reverberated in the
room. “Evening, Brothers. I've been sitting here listening to your
articulations, and I'm reminded of something a philosopher by the
name of Aristotle once said about democracy. He said when you have
a small number of very rich people, the poor people will use their
democratic rights to take property away from the rich. This analogy
is very fitting to the situation we presently find ourselves in, my
brothers. You see, the guards and this administration are rich in
power, but small in number. We prisoners are poor, but large in
number. It's high time we exercise our democratic rights, Brothers!
Now the fourth president of these United States, a man by the name
of James Madison, once said that when a large part of the
population suffers, it will sigh secretly for a more equal
distribution of life's blessings. Suffering as we are from the
oppressive boots on our necks, we must do more than talk and
secretly sigh about our conditions. There is power in numbers, and
we have them. We, being the majority, need to use our powers to
bring about reform.”

LaMumba paused before he said, “All we need
is a plan, Brothers. First, we need an approximation of how many
young bucks, Puerto Rican, white, black and otherwise, we can
depend on when the time comes. Then we need to decide when and how
and what our demands will be. Do we kick it off on a weekday or
weekend? Morning, afternoon or night? Do we take hostages and how
many? And what about a leader? We need a strong leader and we need
captains and-”

“Whoa, whoa! Hold up!” Queenie said, looking
stunned and animated. “Are you talking about what I think you're
talking about?” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “Are you
talking about a riot?”

LaMumba rolled his eyes, displaying
incredulity.

Key-su said, “Let the brother finish.”

“Yeah, but...all right. Go ahead.”

LaMumba's voice was low and polite without
any hint of impatience. “That's exactly what I'm talking about,
Brother. And if it will ease your mind, I have read everything
that's ever been written on the Attica riot. I know exactly what
those brothers did wrong and what they did right. We will not
repeat their mistakes.”

LaMumba looked at Key-su who gave him a
sign.

“We already have a thorough plan to make them
meet some of our demands without any of us getting killed,” he said
at last. “Now what's on you mind, Queenie?”

Clean-cut and black as polished ebony,
Queenie touched his throat. “Okay. Whatever happened to diplomacy?”
he asked with a mock frown. “I mean, a riot's rather extreme,
wouldn't you say? I was thinking more on the lines of a work strike
or a sit-in or something. Maybe we could get the workers in the
license plate factory to shut the place down. That in itself would
get the public's attention, not to mention the people in the state
capitol. Look at all the bonuses and overtime those guys are
getting. That should tell you something! License plates are in
demand, honey!”

Key-su looked at LaMumba, gave him another
sign and said, “Let me respond to that. The bonuses and overtime
are the very reasons those bootlickin' niggahs, 'scuse me, those
brothers, will never go on strike, Queenie. The reality of the
situation is that eighty percent of them have fifteen to twenty
years or more in, and they're not thinking of rocking no boat
that's going to leave them without a job. All they want is a
motherfuckin' bag of commissary every week and their evening
sit-coms. Now I agree with you, if it could be done, it could be
effective. But I guarantee you that the minute one of us, or anyone
else, approaches one of those workers in an effort to tally up the
yeas and nays, that person's going to wind up in the Home Block and
on the next transfer bus. Now who here would like to head up that
census taking?”

For several seconds the room was as quiet as
sleep. Then the thunder crashed and boomed and the room went dark
again. When the lights came back on a minute later, four of the
seven had their backs to the wall.

Suave shuffled to the center of the room.
“Ain't every Latino niggah thorough, but I got forty who are.”

“And I got a good thirty-five raw and ready
young niggahs I can count on in a heartbeat,” said Doza.

“The problem with so many of the white guys,”
Sonny Corleone said, “is a lot of them aren't doing much time and
don't want to get caught up in a full scale brawl. They're not
going to mess up their chances at parole. That's not saying I don't
know some men who'll get down, because I do. But I got to know what
the deal is before I go approaching any of them about something
like this.”

Champ said, “There's a good four or five
hundred soldiers from Philly and Pittsburgh in this joint who'll go
off in a second.”

“We need to make some decisions and fast,”
Key-su said. “First, we need to appoint a leader. Then we need to
decide if that leader is also going to serve as our spokesman when
the time comes. Will he have full say on tactical procedures? On
the timeline? Designating captains? Assigning duties,
etcetera?”

Key-su was so overwhelmed with conviction
that he could not speak calmly of these things until the matter was
official. He paced the middle of the floor while the others sat in
silence letting the minutes tick by. Long before Early knocked on
the door and said they had ten minutes before the guard would be
making his rounds and locking the stairwell, Champ urged Key-su to
say what he could not: that not only had the leader been selected.
He was the one.

But he knew. He had to know.

THE NEXT MORNING at breakfast-grapefruit sections,
scrambled eggs, toast, jelly, apple juice-Champ walked down the
right aisle instead of the left and sat at a table with two white
men, one hollering, “Dude, you were awesome in your last fight!
Thought you were going to kill that guy.” The other saying, “What
do you mean, Larry? You bet on the Italian Stallion.”

“Phil, don't belittle me in front of the
Champ,” Larry said.

Champ buttered his toast and said, “You two
heard the news?”

“What news?”

Champ lowered his voice. “Something about a
work strike? Everybody's talking about it.”

“We're pushing for a sit-in, Champ.”

“At least you're not talking about a full
scale riot. Don't need something like that.”

“Nah. Things aren't that bad around
here.”

Champ raked his scrambled eggs with his fork
and said, “Not yet anyway. What you guys think about them freezing
our pay?”

“Come on, man! Where'd you hear that?”

“Got it from a good source.”

“I'm stuck at twenty-two cents an hour,”
Dubois Phil said. “What about you, Champ?”

“Thirty-two.” Champ drank the last of his
apple juice. “Hey, listen, I don't know who's in charge of
organizing this little sit-in of yours, but I want you to know I
support you guys.”

Two weeks later Champ's propaganda proved to
be a half-truth. The administration wasn't freezing pay raises;
they were merely slashing pay hours from eight a day to six.

“See! They knew better than to freeze our
pay!” one man said.

“We ain't never worked eight hours a day
anyway,” said another.

When the same rumor mill whipped up details
about a full-scale riot going down, panic and bravado festered like
a boil all over the prison. Weeks of conversations and debates on
the yard, in the gym, at the dinner table, and in the classrooms
and church pews, turned into signs of ill omen.

Someone said to a friend, “Whatever happens,
we're sticking together.”

And the friend answered, “I've got your back
and you've got mine.”

A sugar daddy said to his trick, “Let's do it
in broad day light while they're busy protesting, 'stead of at
night.”

And his trick said, “Okay but make sure you
got something sweet for me afterwards. I ain't 'bout to miss a good
protest and go hungry too.”

Then the born-agains took it up, saying the
same people who had insisted it was a no-win situation were now the
ones advocating fire and brimstone. “May as well go with the flow
and save Jesus the trouble,” said Deacon Bob.

In the end, Dubois Phil, a hillbilly with a
loud and distinct voice, agreed to be their spokesman. The first
thing he did was shave his shaggy beard down and cut four inches
off his ponytail so he would look presentable when the time came.
Barely literate, he struggled to recite their list of demands. When
a black scholar from Lancaster named Cold Duck offered to be Phil's
partner, Phil said, “Gawd, yeah! How bout you read the demands to
me and I'll say them out loud.”

Cold Duck spent the next three days
clarifying and organizing their list of demands while Dubois Phil
spread the word about the date, time and location of the event.

On the morning it was to go down, the sun
popped in and out of the clouds like a warning sign. After
breakfast, the prisoners returned to their cells and arranged their
belongings until the work-line bell sounded. Then, three hundred
strong crammed themselves into the canteen yard. They brought
books, magazines, radios, guitars, breakfast rolls, coffee,
chessboards, toilet paper, pinochle decks, crossword puzzles,
writing tablets and rugs to sit on. Two brought signs: One read
“Woodstock!,” the other, “Attica!”

Cold Duck saw the Attica sign and pointed to
the owner. “Are you crazy? You trying to start a riot? Get that
thing down!” Several in the crowd thought the sign was right on
time. Those who had to be talked into coming were about to leave
until they saw the sign disappear.

Kitchen and laundry workers, gym rats,
barbers, students and a handful from the maintenance shops came in
enough abundance to effectively shut down their respective job
sites. The secret seven, who had spread encouragement like a farmer
spreading seeds, stayed away.

Cold Duck and Dubois Phil distributed copies
of their list of demands to the demonstrators who were sitting
peacefully, enjoying the vibes, listening to music, waiting.

Someone in the middle of the crowd yelled,
“What do we want!” The crowd answered, “Change!”

Then: “When do we want it!”

“Now!”

The first question was repeated from a chorus
and answered by the masses:

“What do we want?”

“Change!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

After that novelty wore off the demonstrators
went back to entertaining themselves. At half past nine a dozen
guards gathered around the perimeter of the canteen yard fence,
smoking cigarettes, squinting, and talking quietly among
themselves. When a crapshooter pulled a knife in the corner of the
yard, then stood and shouted, “You cheatin' ass niggah!” the guards
turned away as though they hadn't seen the glint of the blade.

Five minutes later the guards and all three
hundred protestors looked up in the dirty gray sky at the whirly
bird hovering above them. The prisoners cheered and waved. Some
wondered aloud if they would be back in their cells in time to see
themselves on the noon news.

After the chopper got its footage and
disappeared, Deputy Superintendent Jack Offen appeared at the
corner gate near the canteen entranceway. He rested the bullhorn on
his beach ball stomach and with his other hand he pulled at the
skin of his red iguana neck before removing his sunglasses. His
close-set pig eyes scanned the crowd before he placed the bullhorn
near his mouth, pressed the trigger and demanded, “What's this all
about?”

Radios faded, the dice stopped clicking, the
crowd hushed. Everyone who had been sitting in the yoga position
sat as straight as a soldier. The sun disappeared behind a cloud.
Dubois Phil and Cold Duck were sitting right in front of the man.
Phil held up a sheet of paper.

“What in the hell is that?” Deputy Jack Offen
asked.

“A list of our demands!” said Phil.

“Demands! Demands for what?”

From the back of the yard a voice shouted,
“Read them! You ignorant jackoff!”

Cold Duck carried the paper to the fence,
curled it up and slid it through. The deputy squeezed his bulbous
red nose and reached for the sheet of paper. When he finished
reading it, he looked at Phil and Cold Duck as they stood side by
side. “I see. Well, we need to talk about this. Some of your
demands may be legitimate. Who's in charge here?”

From the crowd: “We're all in this
together!”

“Yeah, yeah! I understand that! But I can't
talk to all four hundred of you! Now who's your damn spokesman?
Would that be you?” He pointed to Phil who wiped his sweating hands
on the front of his trousers.