“He was old, with white nappy hair, broken teeth, sleepy eyes. He didn’t talk much, and when they arrested him, he just said ‘Yessir.’ He couldn’t read or write. He signed his papers with an X. But it was like he’d seen everything and this was his part and he was content with it. I admired him . . .” Terrence watched a gull circle overhead, and Bruno jumped up and chased it away, fearlessly returning to us like a champion. “I admired Moses Shaw, but I sure as hell don’t want to be him, Roxanne. Every furrow he dug with that mule drove him deeper till he can’t see out of it, can’t see over it. Everything he did, every time he drove those mules into the city and picked people up, every time he was arrested, he did it without vision, or maybe even hope. His name didn’t suit him. He wasn’t a leader, a Moses looking for a sign from a burning bush. He just did this one heroic thing, not even thinking, not even knowing it was heroic, taking these people to work, just because it needed to be done, not that there was any reward or satisfaction in sight. But that kind of patience, it won’t answer anymore. We’ll never get what we want, what we deserve—what we need—and I don’t just mean riding the bus and sitting where we damned well want to. I mean freedom for a man to be a man, and not a boy or a sexless uncle, or for a woman to be a woman, and not a victim, or a sexpot, or a fat old mammy. The absolute right to assume that our children deserve the same education as white children, that we deserve the same pay, and we’ll never get that if we wait for it like Moses Shaw. Moses Shaw”—Terrence shook his head—“damned if he didn’t just get to me, baby. More than anyone. More than Elijah Cooke, more than Martin Luther King. Moses Shaw taught me it’s not enough to endure.”

I ran my hand over Terrence’s hair. “You need to write this book, baby. You do.”

“He made me think of all those beaming colored folks who been standing at attention for two hundred years, smiling, Little Black Sambo, Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, like Clarence Goodall, just waiting to serve you fine white folks.”

“That is a pretty cruel thing to say about a man who loved you like a father.”