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Show RIVER and get drunk and go out to the levee and snipe into the projects. Nobody can prove if s the police and so far they haven't killed anybody. There's nothing I can do about it: all the power is lodged behind the off-duty cop's right to take pot shots off the levee. Sometimes the blacks shoo|t back and then everybody loves it. i The cops love shooting at the blacks and the blacks like shooting back at the cops. But somebody is going to die. Then all hell is gonna break loose." We wandered back to where Ralph lived in the old kitchen part of the restaurant. He showed me how to shower ushjig a contraption of Rube Goldbergian complexity that hooked up to an ]old commercial sink. When I was done Ralph suggested that wel catch a ministers open house. We loaded everybody back into the Continental, the brothers included, and drove up through the ghetto. There were rows of ancient shacks and shanties gone gray/black with age, their stoops and porches | covered with tenants sitting in the afternoon sun. The sense of being in a swamp was overpowering: the sagging tenements looked like they were sinking into the ground. Crossing an invisible line into the white neighborhoods, we were suddenly amongst other creatures of the swamp. Paunchy white freeholders cut lawns and washed cars. I kept expecting to see alligators among the Pontiacs. When we pulled up to the preacher's house there were so many Buicks and Cadillacs parked around that there was hardlylroom for the Continental. I began to wonder about the open house, pondering whether the preacher would welcome somebody at his open house that the river had literally washed up, not to mention Ralph and his wild horde. I told Ralph I thought I'd sit this one out. "C'mon," he said. "The preacher'd like to meet you." - 3 1 - |