Driving now, past those same flat-faced, shingle-roofed, two-window dwellings we’d seen before, which came into view for a second in the headlights of the car, I leaned back, feeling good. “Reverend Bradshaw, do you realize how amazing this all is? Tucker Caliban! who taught me how to ride a bike. Wow! I can just see my sister. When Bethrah said she was marrying Tucker, my sister couldn’t understand it, she thought Bethrah was too good for him. What a coup!” I smiled and shook my head, glanced at Reverend Bradshaw, and to my surprise, found him sitting sadly, his face gloomy, his head on his chest. “Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, Mister Willson, indeed a coup. It’s wonderful.” He didn’t mean it at all. “You haven’t lived long enough, Mister Willson, to grind away your life for some cause, and then see someone else succeed where you’ve failed.”

“What difference can it possibly make who did it? It was the thing to do; it might have happened anyway. They didn’t even need Tucker to show them. They could have just got up one day and gone about it. So what difference does it make?” We were climbing to Harmon’s Draw.

“I’ll tell you the difference.” He pulled slowly forward, looking very tired; when he spoke he took me by surprise with the sadness and resentment in his voice. “You spoke of the Tuckers not needing you, not needing their leaders. Did you ever think that a person like myself, a so-called religious leader needs the Tuckers to justify his existence? The day is fast coming, Mister Willson, when people will realize there isn’t any need for me and people like me. Perhaps for me that day has come already. Your Tuckers will get up and say: I can do anything I want; I don’t need to wait for someone to give me freedom; I can take it myself. I don’t need Mister Leader, Mister Boss, Mister President, Mister Priest, or Mister Minister, or Reverend Bradshaw. I don’t need anyone. I can do whatever I want for myself by myself.”

I was still too enthralled by it all to realize I couldn’t ever convince him. “But this is what you always wanted, what you Negro leaders worked for. These are your people and they’re freeing themselves.”

“Yes, and they’ve made me obsolete. How would you like to awake to find yourself obsolete? It’s not particularly heartening or pretty, Mister Willson. Not pretty in the least.”

I could only stare at him, seeing his eyes lighted sad by the reflection of the head lamps, his fist clenched.