There had been twenty-four black-and-white negatives in the Bible, but Theo had multiplied them into over a hundred prints, each with several different exposures, some cropped to focus on individual faces. Theo had clipped most to light tables around a conference table. Some were blown up and attached to the walls.
“That’s Lamont, with Johnny Merton,” I murmured to Karen, as we started with the first picture on the first negative, which showed three black youths, arms linked across one another’s shoulders, wearing the berets that wannabe revolutionaries used to sport. “You can see Johnny’s tattoos. I’m guessing Steve Sawyer is the third man. I’ve never seen a picture of him when he was young.”
Their faces were solemn but joyful, getting ready for a big adventure. Lamont didn’t appear in any of the other pictures. It had been his camera, after all. He had several shots from the beginning of the march, including one of Martin Luther King, Jr., at the front and Johnny nearby.
“That might be a collector’s item,” I whispered to Karen. “When this is all over, Miss Ella might sell it, get a little comfort for herself.”
We moved on to look at Harmony Newsome’s ardent young face. She was arm in arm with a solemn-eyed nun.
“Frankie,” Karen murmured.
Lamont had also photographed rictuses of hate in the crowd. He’d gotten one of the vilest of the racist signs—BURN THEM LIKE THEY DID THE JEWS—that littered the park, and he’d caught a can of pop just as it exploded in a cop’s face. Onlookers, their faces indistinct, seemed to be cheering.
As the violence increased, the pictures began to get blurry—there had been too much crowd motion for an unsteady hand with a little Kodak—but almost every frame told some recognizable piece of the story. We looked at a man throwing something, both the missile and the man indistinct. In separate prints, Theo had done as good a close-up of both as he could. The missile remained a blur, but the man’s face might be identifiable.
“I think that must have been the Hammer,” I said, looking at a snake-covered forearm pushing Dr. King’s head down. “Dr. King was hit by a brick that day. Maybe Johnny was trying to get him out of the way.”
Harmony Newsome appeared in the next shot, clutching the side of her head. Her hand was covering something round and whitish that seemed to be stuck there. In the next frame, she had crumpled to the ground, the round whitish thing having fallen from her hand. Theo had focused on it and blown it up so we could see it was a ball with spikes of some kind in it.
Following that close-up, we saw a cop in riot gear, squatting to retrieve the spiked ball. In the next frame, he was standing and stuffing the ball into his trouser pocket. Both shots were blurry, but you could still tell what he was doing.
At the next light table, I cried out loud. My uncle Peter, his face in clear focus, was pointing a finger—in congratulation? in admonition?—at the man who’d thrown the missile and who seemed to be clasping his hands over his head in a kind of victory dance. His features were indistinct, but Theo had done his best with different exposures, different croppings. The square jaw and shock of thick, curly hair made me think it was a young Harvey Krumas, but I couldn’t be sure.
“That ball.” I walked back to the light table with shots of Harmony Newsome lying on the ground. “I want to see it as clearly as possible. And the cop. We’ll never see his face, but his badge is turned to the camera. Can you get the badge number?”
Theo had loaded all his different exposures and prints into a computer program. “Always is best to start with negatives,” he said, “but maybe here is enough information to tell us this story.”
Karen and I stood behind him while he fiddled with the images. On the ball, underneath the nails, you could just make out the big swooping F followed by the o. Nellie Fox.
I sucked in my breath. I’d been sure without the picture, but it was still hard to have it confirmed. Those holes that I thought my father and my uncle Bernie might have punched so they could hang up the ball and use it for batting practice, those came from nails. Someone had pounded nails into a baseball. Somehow had thrown it at the marchers and gotten Harmony Newsome in the temple. And then someone had retrieved the ball and removed the nails.
I felt a sick apprehension as Theo focused on the four-digit badge number of the cop in riot gear. When we finally could read it, I let out a little sigh. I didn’t know whose it was, but I still could reel off my father’s by heart. At least it hadn’t been him pocketing a murder weapon at a crime scene.
46
DISCOVERY