Mary Pat can feel the crowd turning on him before he even opens his mouth or they theirs. Who is he to stroll down here in his fine suit and slick haircut and expensive tie and shoes and explain to them what’s what? They know what’s what.
“Hey, Teddy,” some guy shouts, “where do your kids go to school, Teddy?”
Teddy ignores the voice, even though the guy keeps asking the question about every fifteen seconds.
By this point, Teddy’s almost reached the stage, but the crowd swarms the steps so he can’t walk up. He turns to one of the organizers, Bernie Dunn, who wears a brown suit far less expensive than Teddy’s, and says, “Are they going to let me up?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Bernie says. “Listen to me, Teddy. I—”
“They need to let me up on the stage,” Teddy says.
“No, they don’t. You’re not hearing us. It’s despicable what’s going on, Teddy.”
“I understand your point, but—”
“But nothing. We’re not going to have some judge tell us how to run things, tell us where our kids are going to go.”
“I understand, but you have to agree something had to be done.”
“They’re gonna rip our neighborhoods apart, parish by parish, and you’re letting them. Hell, you’re helping them.”
“Are you going to let me talk?” Teddy asks.
“No.” Bernie seems a little surprised himself. “We’ve heard all you have to say.”
And Bernie Dunn turns his back on a Kennedy.
Everyone adjacent to him does the same. The next cluster of people follows suit. And on and on through the crowd. When the surge reaches the SWAB Sisters and Mary Pat, Mary Pat feels light-headed as she turns her back on Senator Edward M. Kennedy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It’s like turning her back on the pope.
Those who don’t turn away from Teddy turn toward him, and Mary Pat can hear it getting ugly quick.
“Where do your fucking kids go to school, Teddy?”
“Where do you live, Teddy?”
“You’re an embarrassment to your brother and to your people.”
“Go back to Brookline, you fucking faggot.”
“You’re not one of us anymore!”
“Fuck you, nigger lover! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
They hear the commotion and turn back to see the MDC cops and the security guys hustling Teddy toward the building named after his brother. Mary Pat is baffled by the back of Teddy’s suit. It’s almost completely white now, as if he’s been shit on by a flock of birds. It takes her a second to realize it isn’t bird shit.
It’s spit.
The crowd is spitting on a Kennedy.
Mary Pat feels ill.
The crowd keeps spitting on the senator until his guards and the two cops get him into the federal building. The front of the building is clear glass, so Mary Pat can see them hustling him toward the elevators, and that should have been the end of it — everyone should have regained their sense — but then a pane of glass the size of a semitruck shatters.
The crowd lets out a roar of approval. Joyful shrieks split the air like birdshot.
Half a dozen police officers rush into the crowd from the edge of the plaza. It serves as a reminder that an entire police station sits less than a block away, so no one rushes the building. The cops don’t swing their clubs or anything stupid, they just hold their hands at arm’s length so the crowd will take a few steps back. They say a lot of “Now, now, we understand” and “We get it, we do,” as if they’re talking to children having a tantrum.
The crowd keeps yelling — at least a hundred voices screaming about Garrity and Kennedy and hell no we won’t go — but the violence stays confined to that one pane of glass, unless you count the spitting.
“Well, they heard us,” Carol says to the other SWAB Sisters. “They sure as hell heard us.”
Joyce O’Halloran’s daughter, Cecilia, approaches the group of women with a scowl on her face. She’s got her mother’s sharp cheekbones, thin lips, and lack of chin. Her eyes are red with recent tears.
Joyce seems to notice her without really
“Can you hear that?” Cecilia says, pointing at the crowd, her eyes growing redder.
Joyce lights a cigarette and stares at her problem child. “Hear what?”
Mary Pat notices now. The chants of the crowd have coalesced. At first it was a smorgasbord of “Re-sist!” and “End dic-tator-ship!” and “Southie won’t go!” but now it’s one unified chant:
“Nig-gers suck! Nig-gers suck! Nig-gers suck!”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joyce says.
The child’s eyes widen. “You don’t hear that?”
Joyce’s thin lips grow thinner, and she blows her smoke almost directly into her daughter’s face. “I hear a lot of things. I hear people laughing at you and your nipples poking through your hippie T-shirt. When you wear that to the colored school next week, let me know how they treat you.”
