“What are we going to use for weapons when we take over?” I asked him once.

“We’ve got atomic bombs stockpiled and waiting for the day.”

“How can you believe that crap?”

He did not answer, but said instead: “You are the living example of what the Man has done to my people.”

“I just try to think things out for myself,” I said.

“You can’t think. The handkerchief over your head is too big.”

I smiled.

“I know,” he continued. “I know all there is to know about whites because I’ve been studying them all my life.”

I smiled some more.

“I ought to know,” he said slowly. “I have supernatural powers.”

“I’m tired,” I told him. “I want to go to sleep now.”

Claude started to leave the room, then he turned. “Listen,” he said at the door. He pointed his finger at me to emphasize the gravity of his pronouncement. “I predict that within the next week something is going to happen to this country that will hurt it even more than Kennedy’s assassination.”

“Goodnight,” I said as he closed the door.

He opened it again. “Remember that I predicted it when it happens,” he said. For the first time I noticed that he had been deadly serious all along.

Two days later several astronauts burned to death in Florida. He raced into my room hot with the news.

“Do you believe in me now?” he said. “Just two days and look what happened.”

I tried to explain, as much to myself as to him, that in any week of the year something unfortunate was bound to occur. But he insisted that this was only part of a divine plan to bring the country to its knees. He said that he intended to send a letter off right away to Jeane Dixon in D.C. to let her know that she was not alone because he also had the same power. Then he thought that he had better not because the FBI knew that he had been active in the Brotherhood before he got out.

At first it was good fun believing that someone important cared enough to watch us. And sometimes when the telephone was dead a long time before the dial tone sounded, I would knock on his door and together we would run through our telephone conversations for that day to see if either of us had said anything implicating or suspect, just in case they were listening. This feeling of persecution brought us closer together and soon the instruction sessions began to go on almost every night. At this point I could not help but believe him a little. And he began to trust me again, like a tolerable little brother, and even confided that the summer riots would break out simultaneously in Harlem and Watts during the second week in August. For some reason, something very difficult to put into words, I spent three hot August nights on the streets of Harlem, waiting for the riot to start.