Read Online Short Century by David Burr Gerrard - Free Book Online Page A

imagined fighting them by hand, or devising elaborate ruses that allowed Emily to escape. Sometimes these ruses involved me sacrificing myself; other times I survived and became a hero. Very silly stuff. As I say, I’m not proud of it.
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    One day in the fall of 1967—my junior year at Yale—I decided to come home one weekend unannounced. Actually, I can figure out the precise date—October 7 th , 1967, a Saturday. It was a few days before Emily’s birthday, and my intention had been to surprise her and thereby get out of going to the Chappine on her actual birthday. My father would not like it and would do everything he could to force me to go, but I figured that I could claim a test or something. The world was getting more relaxed, and so could my father.
    Though I don’t think I was ever a racist—certainly not in the way my grandfather was—my understanding of and ability to relate to black people did take some time to percolate. Enough discomfort with racism had gotten through to me now that I always dreaded meeting Fred, our black doorman. Sometimes I tried striking up a conversation with him, but I never knew what to say. The previous summer, I had told him I sympathized with the race riots in Detroit and that I thought that black people might be justified if they rose up in New York or New Haven. Of course I neglected to mention that at the same time I was imagining saving Emily from these same riots. Throughout this conversation he kept opening the doors for people who were just passing by, and I could tell that he thought I was trying to trap him or something. I wound up saying something embarrassing about how much I respected him and then I just went upstairs. The few times I had come home since, I tried to do so during hours when I knew he wouldn’t be working. He would be working today, so I spent most of the walk up Park Avenue trying to think of what I would say.
    As it turned out I needn’t have bothered because when Fred saw me he looked confused, and I knew something was wrong.
    â€œYour friend James went upstairs half an hour ago. He said he was here to see you.”
    I instructed myself not to panic; maybe Hickham had dropped by to see me, on the off-chance that I might be home. But that was extremely unlikely, since I was at Yale and came home only rarely. No, by the time I was in the elevator, I was convinced that Hickham was raping my sister.
    When I arrived at the apartment upstairs I heard Emily saying, “No, no,” fairly insistently. I opened the door to find them both on the white sofa. They both sat up having seen me, but Hickham was slow to disentangle his hand from Emily’s blue blouse. By the time his hand was free I was at the sofa and in the middle of a punch. Nearly half a century later I can still hear the pop-crack of the breaking of his nose, and the thud he made when he fell onto the Persian rug, which still bore its stains of candy bar and apple. Despite my bad knee, and despite Emily’s pleas that I stop, I jumped over the couch, knelt by Hickham, and grabbed him by the throat. I’m doing my best to remember whether I squeezed; I’m fairly certain that I did not.
    â€œYou think women want to be raped? You think violence is sexy?” He shook his head no, and I punched him in the stomach.
    â€œArthur!” Emily said, now grabbing my arms and trying to restrain me. “Arthur, leave him alone.”
    It did not take me all that long to let him go.
    Emily crouched down next to James and held both of his shoulders. She looked at him and then she looked at me. The two looks were very different, and both were very familiar to me. When he had taken a moment to recover, he lunged for me with his right fist, but Emily restrained and then soothed him.
    â€œIt’s all right, James,” she said. “It’s all right.”
    â€œI’ll call the police,” I said. “He needs to be locked