“Hello, sisters,” he said. “My name is Cinque.”
“Sin Q?” repeated Lillian, giggling.
“Yes, sister. I need your help. I saw your lights. The police are looking for my friends and I, and we need a place to stay for several hours.”
He spoke formally; he was reaching. Sheila was impressed and amused at the same time.
“Why I’d want to hide you from the police?”
Cinque smiled. He was a fine-looking man. “We’re the SLA. Freedom fighters fighting on behalf of all the People. Maybe,” he added, “you’ve heard of us.”
“What’s going on out there?” yelled Crystal, who’d been left alone with Charles Gates in the front room.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Sheila.
“There’ll be no trouble, I promise you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out five twenties, which he fanned out so that Sheila and Lillian could see them all. They looked real. Sheila and Lillian put their heads together for a little chat.
“What we got in here,” said Lillian, phrasing the decisive argument, “they could take worth a hundred dollars?”
Charles Gates was drafted to help tote in supplies. Soon Sheila was surprised to see all manner of arms and ammunition coming in the front door and being carried through the house to the kitchen, along with suitcases, footlockers, and cardboard cartons. Plus white people. Sheila never had a white person in her house before. They come to the door to sell her Jesus. They read her meters and delivered her mail. But never inside. She kept waiting for another black face, as four white women and a white man came through the door, all partly hidden behind whatever they carried.
“Thank you, sister. You are helping the cause of freedom.” The fact that Cinque uttered this while holding a sloshing gasoline can put a vague fear in Sheila’s insides. The others followed suit as if cued, mechanically thanking Sheila.
“What about me?” said Lillian, jokingly.
They all dutifuly extended thanks to Lillian, who burst out laughing, breaking the tiniest of holes in the white ice. Cinque then explained that they needed to hide the vans somewhere. Charles Gates knew just the place. He said he’d take Cinque.
Outside, Charles Gates said, “You the ones took Alice Galton.”
“We have liberated her mind of fascist oppression,” said Cinque, still grandiloquent.
“Where she at?”
“She is with a combat unit, brother, on special assignment. And that is all I’m at liberty to say at present.”
The sky began to grow light. Darkness would never touch this home again. Lillian, Sheila, and Crystal remained in the front room while their guests occupied themselves in the kitchen.
“You see all that? What you get us into?”
“Me? You the one said let’s take the hundred dollars.”
“Damn, I didn’t know they was a whole army and shit.”
The front door opened, and Charles Gates and Cinque entered.
“Cinque say they need a place to stay about two weeks,” reported Charles Gates.
Sheila snapped her fingers; there was a place for rent around the corner, on Compton. Oh yeah, said Charles Gates, lightly striking himself in the forehead. And we was right there, too. They went out again.
“Hi.” It was two of the white girls, the teensy one and the pretty one. They didn’t know what to say but wanted to say something. This was white gratitude toward blacks: the idea was you were supposed to divine it from their sheer dumb presence. Lillian asked them why they were on the move.
“Long story short, pigs foun’ us,” said the teensy one. “Dey lucky we all left fo’ dey got there.”
Sheila wrinkled up her nose as if she had smelled a mouse lying dead behind the baseboard.
“I believe it,” said Lillian amiably. “You look like you ready for them.”
Gradually the kitchen emptied, and the hall filled with milling SLA members again, peering in at their black benefactors with that mutely abject appreciation. Sheila felt uncomfortable. And she wanted to see what was going on in her kitchen.
“Why don’t you all sit down and I will see what is going on in my kitchen,” she said. She prided herself on being a very direct person. The SLA obediently traded places with the black women.
Sheila had some trouble with the kitchen. One thing, she spent about an hour the day before cleaning it all up with Fantastik and Mop & Glo and all that. The real official cleanup for killing things that can’t be seen with your naked eye. And now there was a bunch of dirty ass shit in here, and stacked on her dinette too. Like who hasn’t got sense enough to stack crates of bullets on the floor, thank you.
Lillian knew her roommate was a fussy person. She saw the look on her face.
“Sheila, girl, it’s just for today. They call up about Compton Avenue and they gone.”
“Yeah, they in here now, though.”
“Sheila, the man just paid the rent.”
“Girl can’t add.”
“Your half the rent.”
“Can’t buy peace of mind.”
“Buy a whole lot of other stuff,” said Lillian.
Charles Gates banged on the glass of the kitchen door with his fist and the three women jumped.
“Here’s Cinque,” announced Charles Gates. “He likes the place. He thinks it’s fine. He’s calling up today.” He sounded breathless, excited. He added, “I’m skipping work today, helping Cinque out.”
“Who cares?” said Sheila sulkily. Someone was honking in the driveway.
“That’s my ride,” said Charles Gates, beaming. “I’m telling them to go on without me.”
“How they know you suppose to be here? Cocky turkey.”
“Charles, what?”
“You never guess who’s in here. Cinque, that’s who. The Symbionese Liberation Army who took Alice Galton. They got guns and they got bombs. You want to see him? They just show up, middle of the night, blam, out of nowhere. I’m, like, wooo. This is different. I’m staying. I’m helping Cinque today. You want to see him?”
The other man looked at his watch. “I gotta open today,” he said, apologetically. “Maybe I’ll come see him tonight.”
LETTER TO THE PEOPLE
~ ~ ~
May 18, 1974 Women’s Bathroom Hollywood Station, Vine Street
It’s an odd note that Tania duplicates in her Palmer script on sheets of blank notepaper she finds in Ray Fraley’s glove compartment, taking whispered dictation from Teko and Yolanda. The brief message will be deposited at several prearranged dead drops around South Central Los Angeles. What it means is that tomorrow another communication will be left in the restroom at the bus station. If conditions are favorable, there may actually be a physical reunion there between the divided forces of the SLA.
They stop at a drugstore off Hollywood Boulevard to buy Scotch tape before getting on the freeway and heading back toward Inglewood. On one occasion Yolanda believes she sees Dan Russell’s van up ahead in the number two lane, and she slows so abruptly that Teko slides off the backseat, landing with his knees on Ray Fraley’s back. Teko curses and snarls but Ray Fraley gives only a sharp inhalation, because he is afraid to cry out.
1466 East Fifty-fourth Street