Free The Whites: A Novel by Richard Price

the white radicals, the Suburbans we called them,” his father said. “I don’t think they trusted each other, or at least the blacks didn’t trust the whites. And Charley Weiss, my boss in the TPF, after two days standing around waiting for the go-ahead, he finally gets on the bullhorn, says, ‘You have fifteen minutes to vacate the building or we’re coming in after you.’”
    “Dad,” Billy said.
    “Now, the, the Afro-Americans, they been around the block a little more, and they know we mean what we say, so after a little trash talk from the classroom windows, they pretty much come right out. But the Suburbans? They never had any dealings with the police before, so it’s all a big adventure for them: ‘Come and get us, pigs.’”
    “Pigs?” Carlos looked up from his waffle.
    “Dad.”
    “And whenever we had to go in someplace, Charley Weiss always put me in the first wave, ‘Send in the Big Guy,’ he used to say. Riots, blackouts, demonstrations—‘Send in the Big Guy.’”
    “The Big Guy,” Declan whispered, his face shining.
    “And so we went in, and we went in swinging. It was ugly, and some of us were sick about it after, but we cracked some heads that day . . .”
    “Dad . . .”
    “Some of those kids were crying and begging us to stop, but you get to this place in yourself, you’re so pent up with all the damn waiting, your heart’s pumping so hard . . .”
    “Hey, guys . . .”
    “I put one kid down who tried to snatch my radio, rammed him in the ribs with my baton like they taught us, it hurts like hell, let me tell you, he’s laying on the ground, looks up at me, says, ‘Mr. Graves, stop, please stop . . .’ I take a good look at this kid, I’m . . . You got to be kidding me. Turns out he was the son of the people who we bought our house from when we moved out to the Island. Nice couple. Nice kid, too. Last time I’d seen him was about four years earlier, he must’ve been fourteen, fifteen, but we recognized each other that day, we surely did.”
    “Did you feel bad, Grandpa?” Declan again, the story a little over Carlos’s head.
    “Yeah, I did. I started yelling at him, ‘What the hell did you grab my radio for?’ He says, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ I get him up, march him out of the building, take him around the corner to Amsterdam Avenue, and I tell him to go over to the St. Luke’s ER, just get lost.”
    “My mom works at the ER,” Carlos said brightly.
    “I tried to tell myself that these kids had it coming, that they were trying to bring us down as a great nation, but yeah, I felt bad. That day I felt bad.”
    Knowing the worst was over, Billy finally retreated into his coffee, marveling, as always when he heard this story, that when his father finally retired, twenty years after those bloody sit-ins, his first job as a civilian was director of student safety at the same university.
    “Anyways,” Billy Senior rising, “I have to go pick up your grandmother at the bank.”
    Declan looked to Billy, then back to his grandfather. “Grandpa,” he said not unkindly, “Gramma’s dead.”
    Billy Senior stopped at the door, turned to the table. “That’s not a very nice thing to say, Declan.”
    Billy watched his father go out to the driveway and get in the keyless sedan, knowing he’d sit there until he forgot why he was sitting there, then come back inside.
    Up in the bedroom, Billy stashed his Glock, stripped down to his boxers, and fell into bed. Fighting off sleep, he stared at the ceiling until he could hear Millie’s muffler-shot old beater coming down the street, signaling the start of her workday, which consisted of impersonating a housekeeper and, more importantly, watching daytime TV with his father. She would sit as close to Billy Senior as she could without jumping on his lap, while constantly touching his arm and commenting on the screen action, all in an effort to keep him in the here and now, which was becoming an