Maywood, Illinois
April 4, 1968
      I was itching to play ball. Spring was finally here. I could tell by the warm breeze that hit me when I walked out of school today. The whole neighborhood had caught spring fever. Back doors to houses were wide open, and I could smell just about everyone’s mama cooking dinner. Mrs. Ramon was cooking pot roast, and Mrs. Jones had meatloaf in the oven. My mama was getting the oil ready for fried chicken and promised to have a piece of cobbler waiting for me after dinner if I got home before the street lights came on. I contemplated staying inside and waiting for that cobbler she’d promised, but I saw Thomas Jones and Frederick Shea running to the park; I would have just about died if I couldn’t run after them.
I threw off my dress shirt and slacks and pulled on a pair of jeans and my brother’s striped orange and white T-shirt that was too big for me. Once my brother, Mike, saw my theft, he tried catching me to punish me with force. I ducked out of his grasp, though, and ran past Mama to the back door. Mike wouldn’t raise his hand to anyone in front of Mama, and I knew it. The screen door swung shut. A metal net was the only thing between me and my angry big brother.
I grinned up at Mike, adjusting my cap. He scoffed and turned away from me. He would forget the theft after he did all his homework. I stood on the porch, still triumphant over my thwarted beating. My smile faded as something swelled in my chest. For a moment there was something more than spring fever in the air. For a moment something felt wrong.
      “Make sure to come on back before the streetlights come on! Don’t forget about that peach cobbler!” Mama called from the kitchen.
“Okay, Mama!” I called back, springing off the porch. I tucked on my blue baseball cap and jogged the four blocks, then rounded the barber shop to get to the park.
The park was about two blocks long. It was all grass except for the triangle of red dirt and fence that was laid out for baseball.  I nearly turned around when I saw the crowd of girls that were on the sidewalk next to the park, playing hopscotch and jump rope. Lori Summer saw me and gave me a grin that happened to be missing a tooth or so. Lori was only seven-years-old. I knew her because my little sister, Renetta, played with her and Lori sometimes comes over to my house to have her hair done by my mother, since her mama is usually too sick to do such tasks. Lori was nice girl, as far as girls were concerned, and her mother was nice, too. Lori’s mother had been sick ever since anyone could remember, and just about everyone was surprised when she got married and had little Lori. Lori did everything in the house, since her mother couldn’t, and her father worked sun up to sundown.
Joe and Thomas waved me over from the baseball fence on the north side of the park.
“What is it going to be? Two on one?” Thomas said. We stood ready for an evening game, and Thomas did bring up a valid point: three people didn’t make for a fair game of baseball.
“We could ask one of the girls to play?” Joe proposed.
“Yeah! Lori’s going hit the ball all the way to the white side of town,” Thomas said, rolling his eyes.
      “Don’t talk about her that way,” I said, a little too sharply.
      “Yeah, back off Melvin’s wife,” Joe joshed.
      “Man, shut up!’ I snapped at Joe. “Lori really could hit the ball to the white side of town, but you can’t even hit the ball into the grass.”
      “Hey!” Joe crossed his arms.
      “I ain’t got all day—Melvin, you’ll be umpire until Joe scores a homerun,” Thomas said. “Then you’ll be pitcher until I score a home run and you get to be up to bat.”
We listened to Thomas’ convoluted form of baseball and I performed as umpire until Joe scored a run and I changed to pitcher. When Thomas made his home run, I was up to bat. We continued this cycle until the sky turned to a deep haze of blue.
“I’m going home,” Joe said.
“Great.” I smiled at Thomas. “It’s back to one-on-one. Leave your bat with us.”
“Nah, I’m heading home, too. My dad’s getting home early,” Thomas said.
“Oh, I’ll stay out for a little longer.” I shrugged. “Until the streetlights come on.”
“Alright, cool cat.” Thomas nodded.
“See you when I see you!” Joe yelled as he departed.
I stood alone, leaning on the baseball fence. I tried climbing the fence once, only to fall in the red dirt. Some of the girls laughed at my fall before they went, home themselves. The girls began leave the sidewalk. Soon Lori was the only one left with her jump rope. She walked up to me, getting her patent leather shoes in the red dirt. I nearly backed away from Lori since I was so surprised; she was breaking a carefully constructed barrier in that moment. Boys had baseball corner, and girls the sidewalk, but Lori wasn’t the kind of person to adhere to boundaries. She was the type to break them.
“How Nettie doing?” Lori asked kindly, with a slight lisp on account of her missing teeth.
I straightened and fixed my cap, mumbling, “She fine. And how’s your Mama?”
“She resting a lot, but she up most days now. She even cooking tonight.”
I looked down at Lori. “That’s real good,  Lori. Tell your mama everyone says hi.”
“Course, and tell your mama and Nettie howdy!”
“Howdy?” I repeated surprised.
“Yeah, that’s how they say it in the westerns me and Mama look at.” She swayed in the breeze for a moment, looking up at the sky like I had been doing a moment before. “You know what I heard Martin Luther King say?”
“What?”
“’We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope,’” She recited clearly. “I don’t know why, but I keep thinking about what he said. What it means.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s just what he’s been saying, but in a fancy way. It means don’t giving up, even when the going gets tough.”
Lori always searching for the answers to big questions ones. She had been was reading books since she was old enough to hold them. She was smarter than every other seven-year-old I knew.
Lori shook her head. “I like the way he says it better.”
“Lori May! Dinner’s ready!” A voice called from the east. It was old Beth: the mouthpiece of the town. She could be heard all the way to Chicago if she tried. Beth knew where all the kids were, especially when they should be at home. Lori’s mother must have called Beth to tell to her yell for Lori.
Lori looked to the distance, face twisted into an expression of contemplation. “I think Miss Beth is the voice of God,” she said.
With that, the little girl ran from the park back home. When Lori ran, I thought her feet were floating off the ground. I thought she might be really flying, or gliding, at least.
A moment after Lori left, I felt the loneliness stick to my gut. I took off my baseball cap and looked back up at the sky; I watched it turned navy blue and then black. The moon was fixed in the ever changing sky, a constant orb of silver.
Lori was like the moon, constant and bright, even in the middle of darkness.
I heard the buzzes and hums of the street lights warming and soon yellow light would flood the streets. I could run home fast enough. I could get there before the streetlights could flick on or Miss Beth could bellow for me. I picked up my baseball and fixed my cap back on my head. I started the short walk back home. Silence rang through the night, with the evening bugs chirping as a small symphony to the stars. I reached my door smelling the delights of fried chicken and peach cobbler, but the peace I had in that moment was shattered by a unified outcry. Everyone in the town cried out with sadness: everyone on the black side of town.
Fear struck me. My mind whirled, and before I could enter my house my brother charged out of the back door, nearly knocking me over.
“What’s going on, man?” I asked.
Mike looked at me. His eyes glittered, on the brink of tears. “They killed Martin Luther King.” His voice was muffled, and he clenched his fists, angrily stepping off the porch.
My heart sank. “You can’t be serious, man!”
“I just heard it from Kevin! They shot him. They shot him dead!”
“Who did?”
“White Folk!” Mike said, exasperated. “They couldn’t put us back in chains so they killing us instead—that’s a fact. You too young to get it! Ten is too young to get, but it’s a fact.”
Another outcry rang through the night, punctuated by breaking glass.
“What’s happening now?” I asked. “Why they shoutin’?”
“We’re giving to them what they gave to us!” Mike shouted, running away from the house. Our mother called for us as she sat in the kitchen in her own grief, but my brother was already gone.
I followed my brother, but lost sight of him when I entered the white side of town. I saw young men stabbing the tires of white-owned cars with pocket knives. I saw large rocks being thrown into windows. White spray paint spelled out words like ‘murder’ and ‘devils’. I walked among the chaos, among young black men with tears in their eyes and fists raised, rioting for a justice that they thought would never come since their hero and salvation was dead.
Soon cops came, with their sirens blaring. The headlights of their cars washed over the rioters, washed over me. The rioters stood in the light of the police cars in the street and I stood with them. White men stood with guns ready, pointed at young black boys who shouted freedom at them. There would be no standoff in their situation-- it would only be a massacre. My brother pushed himself to the forefront of the crowd.
“Go on!” Mike roared at the men. “Shoot us dead like dogs—just like you shot King.”
I ran to my brother’s side and latched onto his arm in the blinding headlights of the police car. I squinted up at the shadowy figures that had their guns pointed at my brother.
“Don’t shoot,” I said. I thought I’d whispered this, but my voice was louder than I expected in the tense silence.
A shadowy figure looked down at me, gun still raised. His white face looked into my black one, and I knew he was making a choice: whether or not we were human. He was deciding if we were worth not killing.
“All of you get back home!” one of the shadows commanded. “This will be the end of it.”
Men, black and white, turned slowly and solemnly away from the stalemate. The moment had passed with no blood on the street, but I couldn’t help but think that on another night in another time we black boys wouldn’t have been so lucky.