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nigger who'd forgotten his manners, his mouth and his place.
        Nathan
and I had never really seen a difference between us; not until then.
     
           
        In
January 1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United
States. He walked into a minefield. Three months in office and armed Cuban
exiles made a bid to overthrow Castro's Marxist government in Cuba. Khrushchev
vowed to give Castro all the aid he needed. The following month the U.S. agreed
to give more money and military aid to South Vietnam.
        A
week later white mobs attacked the freedom riders at the bus station in
Birmingham, Alabama.
        I was
fifteen years old, and foremost in my mind were girls - girls like Sheryl Rose
Bogazzi, Linny Goldbourne and Caroline Lanafeuille - but something out there
told me that the trials and tribulations of a 9th-grader were the least of the
world's concerns.
        As I
turned sixteen, Nathan there beside me, America seemed to hang on the edge of
the abyss both at home and abroad.
        We
heard about someplace called the Bay of Pigs, and for thirteen days people
honestly believed, I mean really believed, that the world would end.
Like Dean Rusk said, 'We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other guy just
blinked.'
        More
than eleven hundred Bay of Pigs invaders were jailed for thirty years and
Castro tried to ransom them for $62,000,000. A month later, May '62, and JFK
sent his Marines into Laos. In July, Martin Luther King was arrested for
marching illegally in Georgia, a stone's throw across the state line from where
I sat in Greenleaf Senior High.
        In
September the shit really hit the fan.
        Whites
stormed the University of Mississippi when James Meredith was scheduled to
enter and enroll. Governor Ross Barnett ordered the State Troopers to stop the
kid from getting in. JFK sent the Deputy Attorney General and seven hundred and
fifty Federal Marshals down there to ensure that Meredith was given safe
passage.
        Later,
Ross Barnett was urged to rebel against JFK by a vast crowd of whites in
Jackson Stadium. The Ole Miss College Band, all decked out in Confederate
uniform, brought that crowd to their feet for a rendition of 'Dixie'.
        James
Meredith would not attend his first classes until October, and even then two
hundred arrests would be made.
        In
the same month JFK - a man who would be alive for only thirteen months more -
imposed an arms blockade after telling the world that Russia possessed missile
sites in Cuba. He lifted that blockade in November, and in December eleven
hundred and thirteen of the original Bay of Pigs invaders were ransomed for
$53,000,000.
        Seemed
the world had twisted on its axis. Seemed people had gotten their ideas all
choked up with McCarthy and discrimination and Castro and how Marilyn might
have been murdered because of who she loved.
        These
things were real, but not so real as to actually reach us where we lived.
        Not
until December, Christmas coming, and it was carried home so swiftly, so
mercilessly, that there was nothing we could do but face the truth.
        The
world had gone mad, and finally, at last, that madness came to Greenleaf.
    ----
        

Chapter Three
        
        Ironically,
it would have been Nathan's birthday today.
        More
ironically, Mr. West chose to speak to me. I could not remember the last time
he had spoken directly to me. Perhaps two weeks, maybe a month. Down here in
D-Block you lost track of time. Left without your exercise for forty- eight
hours you didn't know if it was day or night. I'm sure they changed the times
the lights were put off and on. Disorientating. You got confused.
        Anyhows,
Mr. West came down, he looked through the grille, and he said: You're a
fucking animal, Ford. What are you?
         And
I said: An animal, boss.
         And
he said: Sure as shit is shit you're an animal.
        And
then he