~ ~ ~



It was cold that night but the rain was fine and dry like ash blown in from the southwest all its way from that motel balcony in Memphis, and the torchlight was still the red haze of the mind’s fires not yet lit. When they first drove up to the rally it wasn’t clear how many had heard the news, only that most hadn’t, especially those who came early so they could be within touching distance, or spitting distance a few feet back, or shooting distance a few more feet back.

An aide hurriedly scribbled some brief remarks for him—and then please Senator let’s get the fuck out of here. But stepping from the car, taking the first step up to the platform to address everyone, each and every face before him black, he crumpled the speech and stuck it in his overcoat pocket and just went up and told them. He’s dead. Shot and killed tonight, he told them — and then he talked not for a minute or two or five but nearly ten, talked over the roar of gunfire heard in his mind’s ear four and a half years since Dallas, “so go home tonight,” he told them, “and yes say a prayer for Dr. King and his family, but say one too for our country that we love,” and for those close enough to see, the pain in his eyes was his passport to theirs, the signal of truth and his right to say it and theirs to hear it.


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