People kept “Amen”-ing, and “Waal”-ing, so I figured I was getting by. Finished her off by saying Abraham had a son after
age one hundred, so you never know what God has in the storehouse for you. Isaac whispered to me to remember that Leviti cussed
and Deuter ronomied.
My grandfather’s massive, waxy-looking hands worked as if our young necks were in them and he might strangle them. Veins in
his temples throbbed. He looked at Isaac, and said, “And what’s that you say, Isaac Newton Farris? What’s your interpretation
of the message today?”
Isaac, being typical Isaac, said, “Well… I… actually think Dexter summed it up well.”
A few people nearly rolled in the aisles laughing. We’d winged it. Later people said, “You know, you boys ain’t all that dumb.
Your day’s coming.” A slow—and I mean a very slow—smile crept across Granddaddy’s face.
Martin Luther King, Sr., didn’t play. He’d leave the pulpit to collar us; or he’d send a deacon to retrieve us, inside the
sanctuary or out. Often we were out, across the street, at Carter’s Sundry. He believed sparing the rod meant spoiling a child.
If he was preaching and you got up to leave he would challenge you.
“Where you going, Brother So-and-so? Do you not need to hear the rest of God’s word?”
Evidently what my grandfather saw in me and Isaac at that age brought him little comfort in the way of succession. I don’t
think we did anything any different from any other youths. Nobody else’s youths were expected to sit through these stifling
Baptist services; because of who we were different standards were applied. We resented it. We’d see other kids on walkabout,
not coming at all, coming down with Sunday morning flu, and we’d say, “How come we have to do it when they don’t?” Martin’s
public face was more in keeping with tradition, as were cousin Al’s and Derek’s, Uncle A.D.’s sons. Martin was shrewd; he’d
put up a good front, usually avoided Granddaddy’s belt. I envied him. I knew deep down he didn’t have any plans to be a preacher
any more than we did, but he didn’t bridle against it so openly. When time came to pray, he’d pray hard. Pray to be spared
becoming a preacher. He’d say something like that out of the side of his mouth to get us going, we’d laugh, get called out,
feel the sting of a strap later. Martin would shake his head like one of the octogenarian deacons: “Umum-um, them boys ought
to be shamed of themselves.”
We had a program called children’s chapel, a kind of Sunday school, actually one of my Uncle A.D.’s ideas, a prerequisite
to grown-up church that gave children a chance to worship with children, and taught you how to prepare to graduate to full
service. That was nice. I enjoyed it more so because you were around your peers. We’d still do our running around, but when
my father was scheduled to preach, somehow we’d end up in the front row of the balcony, forearms resting on the railing, listening
intently. Daddy had a style; he’d mastered it, and it mastered the listener. Even a child was charmed not only by what he
said but also by the way he said it. It wasn’t haphazard, came from work, study, talent. And he never once asked if we would
preach.
My mother would tell us—usually it would be Isaac and me, or Martin and me—“Don’t do thus-and-so because this could happen.”
“Don’t play in the street,” or something very simple, and Martin would automatically respond, “All right, Mother.” Isaac would
say, “We better not. Aunt Coretta said not to.” If Mother said, “Martin, Dexter, and Isaac, don’t you all go around that corner,
because there’s a saber-toothed tiger on the other side,” Martin would say, “Uh-oh. Mama says a tiger’s over there.” Isaac
would say, “I ain’t scared, but Aunt Coretta won’t like it if we go.” But I’d say, “Let me see it then! I want to see what
that tiger looks like!”
My mother would get frustrated because I seemed to have a great need to know why. Some parents say you’re not supposed to
ask “why?” as a child.
“Because I said so, that’s why.”
That was my mother’s unfailing reaction—and Yoki’s too, as the younger version of her. I was the type that came across like
I was questioning authority, but I had a need to explore and see how things worked. That was just me; some people may have
taken it wrong. I think Mother even took it as me being defiant. But I didn’t feel defiant. She didn’t have much tolerance
for foolishness either way. She’d spank us—“whip” us, as they call it in the country. My father wouldn’t. He didn’t spank
us. She would. Daddy might sit down and explain things. “This is why you shouldn’t do that, son.” He would deal more on a
mental level, try to get us to understand why things were.
One day my brother, Martin, Isaac, and I came across a treasure trove. Plastic toy guns! Immediately we were having a ball,
playing army, playing war, playing gangsters, cops and robbers, the Untouchables, cowboys and Indians. There are a lot of
different ways boys can play with toy guns. We were going “bang! bang!” feigning death throes, the things boys do when they
play with guns, me, Martin, and Isaac. Daddy must have been watching from a window, must have stood watching us for the longest
time; I wish I knew what all was going on in his mind. He came out, sat down heavily, gathered us at his knee.
The indoctrination of children who are being exposed to violent instruments of war—he didn’t want to see it happen to his
sons, his nephews, or anybody, but it was hard if not impossible to stop it, even within the borders of his own home in the
society in which we came up. He knew this; it weighed on him. That’s why when he came outside he sat so heavily and sighed
so deep.
It was me who most enjoyed playing with toy guns. Any kind. Water guns, cap pistols shaped like six-shooters, shaped like
.45 automatics, you name it, I was fascinated. Whenever we were around policemen I stared at their holstered sidearms. I don’t
think Marty was that keen on it at all, not as keen as me. I’d stick a toy gun in my pants pocket in a minute and practice
my quick-draw, like cowboys on TV, James Arness as Matt Dillon on
Gunsmoke
, or Chuck Connors as the Rifleman. I’d make a mock badge out of tinfoil off chewing-gum wrappers and pretend to be a sheriff.
I’m sure Marty got sick of me bang-banging away, insisting he was dead. I didn’t often get chances to play with toy guns because
we weren’t given any to play with; you had to come upon them in our forays into the neighborhood, but this one time, someone
had given us these plastic toy guns all our very own and we were getting good wear out of them.
My father extended his palm and asked us for the guns. Martin gave up his right away. I hung on to mine, frowning as my father’s
hand closed around the barrel and he gently tugged. “Dexter, let it go, son,” he said. I wanted to ask why I had to give up
the gun when I was having such fun playing with it. My father looked at me levelly. When my father looked at you like that,
you had better be right in your position. Slowly my fingers relaxed and I released the gun.
Daddy laid them down in front of us, then said, “Boys, sit here with me for a little while.”
He was always kindly in speaking to us, unlike Granddaddy, who often roared.
“Why do you suppose we, as young men, are fascinated by firearms?”
“Fascinated, Daddy?”
“Why do we enjoy them? Holding them, pointing them at each other, pulling them out, waving them around, twirling them around
our fingers, making the noises that a gun makes?”
“Bang! Bang! Like that, Daddy?”
“Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, that’s the way the machine gun sounds, Daddy!”
“Yes, Dexter-wexter. Why do you think we enjoy it, Marty-bopy?”
“To kill bad people?”
“And how do you tell who the bad people are?”
“They’re the people who get shot!”
“Not always. Not always.”
“By how they look?”
“… No.”
“Then… then… I don’t know.”
“Me neither.”
“Then we’re together,” my father said. “I don’t know either. But I do know this: You should only use your imagination. Never
use real guns. Never even use toy guns.”
My disappointment must have been obvious.
“I don’t want you playing with these. All right?”
Silence.
“Is that all right?”
“If you say so, Daddy,” said Marty. My father nodded at him. Then… “Dexter?”
“I won’t play wif ’em, then,” I said, sounding unconvinced, I’m sure. “But everybody else will anyway, Daddy. They all will.”
Then Daddy sighed again and sat there, silent for a while, before saying, “The guns these toys represent have one use. They’re
not like Granddaddy Scott’s .22 hunting rifle. These represent handguns; they’re only used to kill or maim people. If you
saw what they did to people, you’d be sad. Suppose somebody shot somebody you loved?”
I looked at him as if to say, No, that could never be, thinking as a child, that “bang-bang” meant you were “dead,” but you
could get up and argue about whether you were “dead” or not.
“You don’t want another human being’s death on your conscience,” my father said. “You want to have life. I’d rather see you
boys play sports like football than play with guns. I’d rather you play a musical instrument, debate, or even fight… but not
with these…”
He talked with us for a while longer. The way he spoke was so effective that at the end of it he actually had us destroy those
plastic guns. We put them in a metal trash can and burned them, melted them down. I didn’t fully understand it then. I liked
the toy guns, and the real guns police and security officers wore. But I was moved by what my father had said. He had such
a cool way of explaining things that it was almost like we were happy to do what he had asked us to do, even though I still
didn’t quite know why.
This and other lessons stuck with me. He was very much a talker, he would talk about subjects with us, was intimate in his
feelings, in terms of our being able to understand the subject and his feelings. You felt like his equal, almost, like he
was bringing you up in the world to his level, not like he was coming down to you. He was soothing to listen to, authoritative
you knew, because he was Daddy, but also deliberate, precise; when he spoke, you listened.
I don’t remember exactly where, it was probably a passerby in later years who didn’t want to believe that my father had mortal
qualities, vices, fallibilities, and shortcomings; these would come out when he was under duress. “Your father never smoked
a cigarette in his life,” I heard from people who claimed to be authorities, “believers” of my father’s life and work. They
were talking about what they’d read. I’m talking about what I’d lived, seen, and felt.
I thought to myself, “Not only are there photos of him holding a cigarette, my sister and brother and I once took his cigarettes
and hid them.” Maybe it was something he wanted to keep private. He struggled with it. He knew it was not good for him, but
it happened.
There was an unbelievable amount of stress on him at the time. He didn’t start smoking until the last few years of his life.
Early in 1968, he seemed more quiet than usual; he was being pulled into causes around the country. Yet he was just a man.
He’d just returned from a trip. Now there were calls from Rev. James Lawson, for him to go to Memphis.
We just wanted him to take us to Pascal’s Restaurant, or to an amusement park, or to the next SCLC outing that spring, or
up to the Ollie Street Y, but he didn’t have any more time.
He planned to take me and Marty on a quick trip around Georgia in March. We just knew it was a trip with Daddy. He was drumming
up support for his Poor People’s campaign. It was then that Yoki, Marty, and I hid his cigarettes. Maybe this was to get his
attention, I don’t know what our motivation was, really, but we hatched an elaborate scheme first to find where he kept his
cigarettes, then take them out and squirrel them away, and surprise him when he couldn’t find them, and tease him. A whole
carton too. We hid his carton of cigarettes in the closet of the guest room. He didn’t smoke regularly that we saw; he only
smoked when he was going through tense times. By the time I turned seven years old, in January of 1968, all his times were
tense. We were children and didn’t know specifics. He’d been to California right after New Year’s, he’d spoken there at a
college. Now he was getting requests to go to Memphis. Memphis I knew nothing about; my mother said some garbage men—“sanitation
workers”—wanted my father to help them. I plotted with Yoki to steal Daddy’s cigarettes. Don’t know why. Yoki’s motives were
nobler. Maybe she didn’t want to see him smoke. I know she ended up smoking when she was older (and has since stopped). She
may have started as a way of communing with him. We hid them, and he came looking for them. He hit the ceiling when they were
not where he had left them. This was the only time I ever saw him angry.
“Where are my cigarettes!”
Silence. Three young faces looking at each other, confirming each other’s impending doom.
“Yolanda! Martin! DEXTER!” No nicknames or “bopys” put at the end of our given names meant serious business was at hand. Our
answering “Sir?” was weak, as I recall. I think that was the first time, probably, all of us saw him truly upset, where he
was obviously angry. Oh, he knew.
Imagine now—you’re going to get your vice, not finding it where you left it, somebody has messed around with it. I’m not sure
if he was addicted to nicotine; to a degree he was, wasn’t a pack-a-day smoker, but he was accustomed to smoking feeling like
a diversion to him, a diversion that in his mind may have been relaxing. I know how I am when somebody moves basic stuff in
my domain and I can’t find it. Imagine if he’s in a fix, needs nicotine, can’t find it, going through a hard time. I’m sure
I would be angry too. At this moment I wasn’t curious to see how much angrier my father could get. I can still see his contorted
expression as he stormed out his bedroom and came down the hall looking for us. “Where are my cigarettes!? Who took my carton
of cigarettes?”
It was obvious what had happened. We started running—down the hall, out of the back of the house; we were so guilty. My mother
always said that Daddy didn’t believe in spanking, but she also said if he had spent more time around us, he might have changed
his mind.