His friends and supporters have chipped in generously to finance this convalescence in Rome, in the hope that the merciful Roman winter would grant him a reprieve, allowing him to return to his world—to his fiancée and friends, to his poetry. But he knows there’s to be no return from this journey. The symptoms are recognizable—blood, phlegm, a wasting away, a hollowing of chest and body. Hasn’t he nursed and lost his mother and brother to the disease’s ravaging clutches?

He has asked the friend accompanying him to buy him some laudanum for seasickness—a drink of that could put an end to his suffering. Who would have thought the human heart capable of containing so much misery?

The sea outside, the very air, heaves and strains.

9

In the basement of a church in Oakland, a to-be father who will never know his son serves a much delayed breakfast to hungry children. There are three tables, each with twenty kids, and they’ve been waiting for food the last thirty minutes. They’ve been led in their daily pledge already—I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible; I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my people in their struggle for liberation; I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred—and one of his Panther comrades has given them an impromptu lecture on resistance and history, but they have less than half an hour to get to school, and they are restless and ravenous.

He arrived at the church early that morning only to find the storeroom ransacked—the flour strewn around, the fridge emptied, the eggs smashed, the milk spilled—and one window busted open. There had been little time for anger or investigation, but he’s sure he knows the perpetrators: the pigs in uniform.

He’d immediately set about trying to forage supplies for some kind of breakfast to feed sixty hungry kids, leaving his comrades behind to clean up the mess—he refused to even consider turning the kids away. He stopped at the pad to scrounge for whatever cash he could find and managed to procure grits and sausages and a few cans of orange juice concentrate.

He’s in the kitchen dishing up the next batch of plates, listening with pleasure to the laughter and joking in the next room that returned once breakfast was announced, when there’s an abrupt silence. And then the bellow: Who’s in charge here?

Sounds of a scuffle, chairs and trays being shoved aside, shouts and screams, the whimpering of kids, the protests of his comrades. He rushes to take a look, finding trays on the floor, an orange-yellow mess of grits and juice. The children cower in their seats, their faces frozen in fear. His two comrades are lined up against the wall. Covering them, with guns out, are three White cops, weaving and blustering, while a fourth stands guard at the entrance to the basement.