Darren mumbled the words over and over to himself, marveling at the slurred sound. His tongue was thick and slow, but even behind the bourbon curtain, his mind was working. They had been talking about Bill King’s earlier belief that he was getting out of prison. Soon, he’d written in his personal letter to the governor, underlining the word, Darren remembered. On a hunch, he got on his phone and started looking into Bill King’s prison history. He’d been in lockup since 2010 on drug charges and aggravated felony robbery—he had robbed a rival drug dealer’s safe house, and the other guy had been shot in the process. He’d been up for parole in 2012 and in 2014. Both times, he was denied. According to his testimony at the parole hearings, Bill had already begun his transformation. There were signed letters by prison clergy attesting to the change. Bill King had segregated himself from other members of the ABT, even committing multiple small infractions so he could get sent to solitary, which prevented him from fraternizing with his now enemy. He was studying the Bible and also trying to get his GED, and he was reading works by Nelson Mandela and Dr. King. Letter from Birmingham Jail had changed his life, he said, as he sat in his own jail cell, made him understand that part of what he’d hated about black people for years was their neediness, their steady complaints of I-ain’t-gots; it made his eyes go red with rage, he’d written the parole board.

It was whites in need too. Why did everybody forget that? Where were our marches? Not for me, I mean, I always had a little something growing up Rosemary King’s son. But I saw friends in my county scratching at dirt for food and some kind of way to make a living and here come the blacks talking about me first, and y’all owe us this and y’all owe us that. I carried around that anger for a long, long time ’cause I ain’t had cracked no kind of books, didn’t have anyone at home who acted any better, and I didn’t understand, until I read Mr. King’s book and looked into some other stuff, that they was right. We did owe them for all they got their asses kicked since God was a boy, for all we done treated folks bad. And the ones marching and hollering about we want to eat here and we want to vote and we need good jobs, they was really just trying to raise their families like anybody else. I mean, it was kids in that Birmingham deal. Did you know that? It must be something to have kids my son’s age have to fight for what we was given at birth. Kids, man.

It was all bullshit.

Or it wasn’t.