The Fundamentalist's Daughter, an American Story

By Nicholas Aharon Boggioni

From Jim Crow to Barack Obama, The Fundamentalist's Daughter peeks behind America's thinning veil through the interplay of past and present and the commonality of two dissimilar families. The novel begins when aspiring writer Adam Lubin travels south to retrace his father's Freedom Summer footsteps. Intellectually immersed in a racist Jim Crow past, en route home he becomes entangled in the real fundamentalist present after meeting Crystal Cunningham, daughter of a doctrinaire Southern Baptist minister. From Ann Arbor to Birmingham to New York, the story parallels the Lubin and Cunningham families, dissecting America's culture war along the way.

A passionate chronicle of ambition, tragedy, and renewal, its tone converts from youthful adventure to edgy suspense. Provocatively, the story intertwines new love and old friendship, family dynamics and individual anxiety, all seamlessly framed within the deplorable integration of politics and religion weaving America's 21st Century tapestry of contradictions. The broad themes are distilled in daily life's small details, revealed by a thoughtful, realistic narrative.

REVISED 2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781462812042

Nicholas Aharon Boggioni

Nicholas Aharon Boggioni is educated in history, literature, business, and law. A Marine Corps/Vietnam vet and later anti-war activist, following service he studied in Nevada, Connecticut, California, and Ohio. A New England native, he calls Chicago home.

Book preview

THE FUNDAMENTALIST’S DAUGHTER

An American Story

NICHOLAS AHARON BOGGIONI

Copyright © 2016 by Nicholas Aharon Boggioni.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2006904333

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4568-7610-4

   Softcover   978-1-4568-7609-8

   eBook   978-1-4628-1204-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Revised version of The Nativist’s Daughter, 2006

Rev. date: 09/15/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

559346

CONTENTS

The Past Is Prologue

The Home Front

Birmingham, Montgomery, And Beyond

The Fundamentalist’s Daughter

Crystal Cunningham

Ann Arbor Summons

Return To Routine

Laying The Foundation

The Last Supper

The Day After

Big Jim

Gotham: The New World Still Beckons

We Are All Immigrants

The Professor At The Empty Table

Let Me Tell You Today’s Specials

The Brothers Cunningham

The Day After, Déjà Vu

Dilemma’s Disillusionment

Shall We Overcome?

The Other Side

Fathers And Sons

Onward

Beginnings Renewed

New York Redux

The Sense Of It All

The Year After

Epilogue

Jim Crow To Barack Obama

Epilogue Ii

Barack Obama To Ta-Nehisi Coates Post-Racial America?

Acknowledgements

About The Author

To my mother, Jeannette

(1924-1969)

Thank you for sitting in the back of the bus and for inspiring me always.

To Leelah Alcorn, May Peleg, and many others in their search of liberty.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning

we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot,

like an individual novel, a book for each person.

Anaïs Nin

~~~~~~~

Awaiting his arrival while displaying the pose he had dubbed her devil with a blue dress on, she tucked a small package behind her back. She loved getting him little gifts, and he’d always enjoyed receiving them, though the process provided its real meaning. When he finally popped up from the subway, recognition became mutual when her look met his halfway, so to speak, for she seldom ventured halfway into anything, one of the countless reasons she filled his life with expectation. Approaching, her body radiated love for him and the joy of the moment, which on this occasion was centered on a boisterous 8th Street.

You’ll never guess what I’ve got here, she said, whipping out the brown paper covered surprise knowing he wouldn’t, something he had learned the first time he’d handled a wrapped gift and blurted out its contents. The vividness of her immediate mood swing had registered on her disappointed face and indelibly on his never-to-do-again list.

Well, it’s not a refrigerator, right?

Oh, sweetie, you’re not even close.

In search of strong coffee the couple turned east en route to Café Orlin, where 8th converted to St. Mark’s, and she handed him what he privately surmised was a book from Amis’s Books located nearby—a first edition Portnoy’s Complaint, one he knew that she knew he’d wanted to get, having discussed that very thing the week before. Sticking to his budget he had opted to think about it, which she knew meant he either wanted someone to convince him to make the purchase or, if not, that his only thoughts would be to avoid going back and not buy it. He tore open the package.

You got the Roth book! His exclamation was genuine, despite his Holmesian deduction. He really did want to get it for his dad as a Chanukah gift, but it wasn’t cheap.

Mom sent me some money… and… well… you know, I couldn’t think of anything else to spend it on.

Rent? Food?

Oh come on, life’s too short.

~~~~~~~

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Confucius

THE HOME FRONT

M ight it be better to die suddenly and having thus died not knowing one is dead and therefore spared the prolonged physical and emotional consequences of a diagnosed termination? Then again, that doesn’t allow for an intimate farewell to family and friends, albeit more a benefit to others—the living. Staring himself down in the rearview mirror as if finally expecting some resolution to this philosophical dilemma, Adam Lubin snapped back to awareness… the traffic light had changed. Had a horn blown? Damn it, he muttered, impulsively glancing at the empty passenger seat where only books sat ( The Elementary Particles , Carry Me Home, The Corrections ) and murmuring Jason. A white 1995 Toyota Camry, generic but durable, the well-worn car interior itself had many stories to tell, including that its original owners were friends of the family.

Evoking Ann Arbor summers past, his father’s dignified delphiniums swayed rhythmically to the soft touch of his hand as Adam hurried toward the front door of his house. Well, his parents’ home; he’d not lived there since returning from Michigan State four years earlier—Class of ’98. Approaching the shrub-guarded steps while executing an instinctive inspection, Adam registered how the front yard had never looked better. And being early evening in late June, the angling sun just then cast shadowed illusions sympathetic to the doorway’s parched paint, visually rejuvenating the matured wood, reconfirming his ever-instructive father’s declarations about timing. Timing… the life-altering potential of which Adam would soon confront firsthand when visiting his father’s past, spinning his days beyond topsy-turvy not once but twice and taking him into a future far different from the one he’d been systematically planning on three-by-five note cards.

Meanwhile, the Lubins’ Georgian Colonial exhibited an aged shade of red brick highlighted by black shutters and balanced by symmetrical windows letting out as much as they took in. Sure, the wood trim craved fresh paint, but the graceful old house possessed an enviable head-turning charm, slowing Sunday drivers. Beyond its physical persona it had been a wonderful place to come of age, providing the warmth and security of a supportive family and the independence and free rein indispensable to timely flight. Amy and Len Lubin had closed on the place the day after Adam’s eighth birthday. Secured by tenure and buoyed by his Warren Court book’s critical success, Len had then turned to transforming the house’s mundane yard into a mosaic of gardens. Caring little for interacting with weeds and insects, Amy on the other hand continued her many years work for a non-profit outreach program luring underprivileged kids into the world of music. Herself a so-so pianist, she nonetheless valued the power of music and its positive enrichment of those kids’ lives. Semi-retired, she now spent her time indoors, perfecting skills of an amateur chef to the culinary delight of friends and family.

Adam, called out his overprotective mother pulling open the front door. A slender but strong-willed, independent woman, Amy Jacobson Lubin usually let her husband have his way on important matters, such as the government’s stance on the World Court or precisely why Star Wars was erroneous—the Reagan-Bush venture, not the movies. Otherwise, she made the routine decisions: what house to buy, which plumber to use, where to invest their savings. Len’s partner in the unending battle for a fairer society, like many independent women of her generation she had somewhat subordinated herself to her husband and later to her sons. She remained intellectually sharp, however, and her salt-and-pepper hair fashioned a striking backdrop to fiery eyes still reflecting deep passion for a just world.

Jeez, mom, you scared the… heck out of me.

Oh, come in, come in she gestured effusively, I just made your favorite apple chicken. Staying for dinner?

Adam’s presence brought out her best, infusing feelings pharmaceutical giants dream of bottling up in pill patents. Described as a wonderful son, he was independent minded but attentive, going out of his way when it came to his mother’s needs, putting as much thought into getting her just the right birthday gift as he did into one of his prized essays. Trim like his mother and a smidgen shorter than his father, Adam’s dark, wavy hair and deep brown eyes had made him quite an attention getter among the girls in high school and the women at college, having what his boastful mother declared were movie star good looks. But he further possessed a genuine modesty reflecting a well-grounded upbringing, seeming not to recognize what stared back at him in the mirror. It wasn’t narcissism that put bounce into his self-assured walk, but intellectual self-confidence derived from years of hard work and serious study—not that he was without many of those imperfections marking the species. But Amy’s assessment that he was a good boy developing into a fine man hit the mark, and his parents were as proud of him as they were protective.

Leaning past his mother with feigned exaggeration, he warmed rhetorically, Dinner? Apple Chicken? What do you think? They clutched. And where’s dad? I need him to review my outline of his ’63 trip.

Shrugging her small but broad shoulders Amy quizzed in return, And where do you think your father is in June?

Oh yeah, I should’ve gone round to the backyard… and speaking of backs, did he have trouble spreading his annual mountain of mulch? I still feel bad that I couldn’t be here to help.

Smiling just so, she willfully confessed, You won’t believe this, but he paid the kid Christopher from up the street to spread it this year.

No way, rebutted Adam.

Oh yes, she verified with a look as well, and of course he watched, dogged, and directed the poor boy. You’d think throwing mulch on the ground took special talent. They exchanged knowing smiles. For each new season Adam could recollect, his father had worked single-mindedly well past sunsets and good sense meticulously spreading a gigantic mound of shredded tree mulch over ever-expanding flower gardens, Adam sometimes wondering if his dad’s commitment to excellence failed to make the necessary distinctions.

Against their will Adam’s parents had turned sixty. Committed civil rights and anti-war activists in the 1960s and beyond, Len even having gone South during the age of Freedom Summer, they now were committed to their only child, the living son—Adam’s two years younger brother Jason having been killed at seventeen by a drunk driver. Meeting at a protest rally, they had married amidst 1968’s turbulence, though their relationship represented anything but, and they now were in it for the duration. But even though they’d finally showed signs of slowing down, there had been a recent brouhaha over Len’s Detroit newspaper editorial suggesting that two of our language’s more despicably politicized words were unpatriotic and un-American, which he’d argued were substantively meaningless other than as malignant manifestations of those abusing them, shutting off debate and the exchange of ideas. Len loved his country no less than the next guy, but suggested Americans become more introspective, lower the flags, and momentarily mute the choruses of God Bless America long enough to look around—at both the good and the bad—and decide whether or not the latter was smothering the former just as regional differences were further homogenized by the churning dispersion of Walmarts, Olive Gardens, and a GAP sadly less generational.

Hey, boy, his father called out wandering into the kitchen, what’s up? Professor Leonard Lubin stood a lanky six foot three. Although his closely cropped hair and beard had grown brighter, he retained youthful good looks and vitality; he loved using a line from Wonder Boys: Fit as a fucking fiddle. Nudging Adam, So, I see you somehow sniffed out mom’s apple chicken. They’d always been close. Even when battling in academia’s publish or perish arena Len had made the effort to be a good father, though his emotional and physical affection came to him naturally, having skipped his own father’s generation. That they were a close-knit family made Jason’s loss all the more profound, like a fine-tuned, interdependent instrument suddenly minus a key component, continuing by sheer force of will. Adam worked diligently to fill that empty pair of shoes.

Yeah, I picked up an all-points bulletin, Adam joked in return, leaning over the sizzling chicken drowning in cream sauce and buttressed by floating apple wedges and half-submerged broccoli, while their aging Golden Retriever Mystic sniffed his hand hoping for what Amy called dropage. And dad, I’ve got my timeline of the key places you hit when you went south. I’d like to double-check my sequencing. Washing his garden-stained hands in the kitchen sink behind Amy’s disapproving look, Len reflected, his inner gaze streaming backwards. "You know, boy, that was decades ago and the mind ain’t what it used to be. Oh, and they were the ones doing the hitting."

Len had been a celebrated undergraduate activist at the University of Michigan and later had regaled wide-eyed Adam and Jason about how he almost didn’t graduate, having spent so much time organizing in Ann Arbor and deep in enemy country—or, as he once preferred cynically to locate it, at home and abroad. But it had been worthwhile and now served as a reliable source of personal satisfaction, despite unfinished business. Still hanging in his study was a black & white photo he’d snapped of Bull Connor in action, Birmingham’s then brutal and ironically titled Public Safety Commissioner (and KKK member). His own Guernica, Len often mused. Having witnessed so much, the sum of subsequent experiences barely balanced the scales of that personal moment in time, such as the poignant recollection of a skinny little girl whose tightly braided hair had strained this way and that against many multi-colored clips and clasps. Though she had never uttered a word, profound commentary found publication on her upturned face as tears of the next oppressed generation welled up like melting chocolate. There was a dose of irony not only in his son’s pending venture, but also in that Len now spent his days as a University of Michigan professor. Completing his doctorate in history at Wisconsin, he’d thought about returning to the East Coast, Boston, if not New York City, closer to his native New Jersey, but for other reasons. Instead, he’d gone full circle in a different direction.

Partly in recognition of a pivotal period in his dad’s past Adam planned to write a book documenting his father’s journey into what Len’s younger version had described as the abyss. Growing up in a household where civil rights lessons substituted for religion, supplemented by stories he’d eavesdropped while snuggled on the carpeted stairs in Indiana Jones PJs, Adam now wanted to see it for himself. His childhood image of the Deep South went well beyond the condensed digest version others had barely learned in school. While most kids read about that famous little engine that could, Adam and Jason overheard about the KKK and the brave people who said it couldn’t. In short, he hoped to use his father’s experience as a cornerstone for a book he’d tentatively titled Race in America: Then & Now. Despite those childhood civil rights lessons, however, Adam’s grownup views remained incomplete, and he approached his journey with as much of an open mind as possible in light of his family history.

And might there be more to it, such as those restless nights when he eyed the future no less guardedly than any thoughtful person coming of age following 2001’s catastrophic burst? Generation X, Y, or Z, despite the overabundance of Red White & Blue what lay ahead of the American Dream of this country’s youth left far too many of any age sleepless. It was a time when even America’s native-born expatriates discovered that New York not only wasn’t Paris in the Twenties, but not even New York in the Thirties—where at least the starving artist could find a place to live and afford the coffee. Regardless of his upbringing’s privileges Adam sometimes lost himself in his own speculations as the nation’s uncertainty compounded itself by a radical rightward shift. Nevertheless, he would push forward with his goals. He was his father’s son and his mother’s good boy and he had talent. Unlike some peers consumed by a culture of materialism and borderline social narcissism on display at Abercrombie & Fitch, he took life a bit too seriously.

Having done extensive study about the Civil Rights Movement and Jim Crow segregation, true to his book’s proposed subtitle a firsthand look now was in order; he would travel to where his father had then, putting places to the names. Amy and Len shared mixed feelings about his trip, but they wouldn’t think of standing in his way. Adam, on the other hand, sometimes got the feeling that along with their youth, they missed those days of rage and righting of wrongs and that their lives had become routine, let alone disillusioned as Republican dogma spread its dense shadow over a society growing ever less self-critical while cheering, however ironically, for its favorite survivor. A society, despite September 11 and the the world has changed pronouncements, that took ever more for granted, had grown fatter in more ways than dietary, and where wastefulness had regained a good reputation—all the while politicians railed over the pros and cons of raping the Alaskan wilderness to further fuel unnecessary consumption.

Adam’s youthful impatience to retrace his father’s steps symbolized anything but boredom, often keeping him up late in the night dissecting his bedroom ceiling’s unidentifiable flaws. Like a new suit, at times his outer self-confidence concealed inner self-doubts and the kind of questioning that eventually would make him a wiser man. The coming trip also energized Len, though the elder Lubin wouldn’t admit it: fathers aren’t to envy sons. And along with maturity and the realization that they had less and less time, Adam’s parents now measured it more carefully, no longer racing headstrong toward self-imposed agendas or compulsory accomplishments.

Seeing you’re here, said Len, go ahead and set the table. I need to change my shirt. After we eat we can review your outline, adding with a wry, over-the-shoulder grin, and check it for historical accuracy.

Well, Amy said, I guess your timing wasn’t perfect… off by ten minutes. Adam gladly went about setting the old mahogany table, instinctively placing each setting where it had always been, less one. The table stood imbued with unique history, the Lubin family past, its many nicks and scratches substituting for those metaphorical warts and all. So much had transpired on it, over it, and around it, making it something of an anchor steadying the ship during that ghastly time, back then often covered with prepared food delivered by friends, thoughtfully encased in tin foil. A family otherwise having so much going for it, Jason’s loss constituted an incalculable exception. His brother’s death challenged him more than he understood at the time, as during the drive over when thinking about his upcoming trip south, struggling with a definition of future, of something that doesn’t actually exist and in Jason’s case, never will.

Eyeing Adam shortcutting with silverware and glasses precariously stacked on elegant red plates—proper presentation wasn’t reserved for guests—Amy anxiously ventured, So are you really sure you want to travel alone now that you and Rachel are, uh, well, no longer together? She said this nonchalantly while searching through the cupboard for the dried cranberries Len liked in the salad, even though she felt anything but while awaiting the hoped for answer she knew wouldn’t be forthcoming. Adam and Rachel Stein, a Methodist despite her name, not that it mattered to the secular Lubins who, albeit non-religious, were not anti-religious, had met during their senior year at Michigan State, becoming pretty much inseparable until a little more than a month ago.

"I’ve gotta go now, mom, he said somewhat defensively. Everything’s set at work for my vacation and a little extra time beyond. There’s no way I can reschedule without jacking people around who’ve already gone out of their . . ."

Okay, okay, you know how I worry… and would even if Rachel were still going.

Sorry mom, it’s just that, you know, this is so important to me and not simply because of the book. Trying to lighten the moment for her sake, "Jeez, it’s not like I’m hiking into some rainforest."

Whether or not Adam was prepared for the unexpected soon to reshape his future represented the kind of unknown that parents hope they have prepared their kids to handle. But little did any of them suspect that an unimaginable combination of passionate sex and relentless religious fanaticism lay in Adam’s near future, and how it would thereafter entangle him with a family whose home front represented the polar opposite of his, rerouting his pre-planned future. That Adam’s ambitions would tragically intertwine with someone else’s dreams of escape, however, is getting ahead of the story. His father then reappeared wearing a crisp, lightly starched, short-sleeved shirt.

Breaking off a piece of crusty baguette Adam pronounced the dinner as delicious as ever. I hope I can find something like this down South, he added with a deliberate chuckle aimed at his dad.

Well, Len mocked, I hear you can finally get decent bagels and Jewish rye in the bigger cities… but only in the frozen-food section.

Ha! Stop it, dad, you’ll make mom more nervous.

Amy rolled her eyes while father and son leaned across giving understated high fives. No need to mention that in the Lubin house TV seldom played a part in family meals, even when the professor wasn’t at the table.

Standing before the kitchen sink fully stuffed and wondering about dessert, Adam rinsed plates as Len loaded them into the temperamental dishwasher. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, he said, So dad, I hear you had some kid spread the mulch this year. You know, I thought things looked, well, you know, kinda different when I came up the front walk.

What, what do you mean? Len stuttered, leaning up on his toes, peering out the window.

Just kidding… and I thought you said you were mellowing as you got older… you know, not sweating the small stuff.

First off, don’t speak in clichés; but if you do, well, just how the hell do you define small stuff? Scolding with a broad smile, Len continued, spreading his arms along with his grin, But yeah, it’s just goddamned mulch. I guess I should blame your grandfather.

Nah, dad, your gardens look great, and like you told me, if you’re going to do something that you really don’t have to, still do it right.

Let’s go into the study and look at that list.

You knew he was an academician qua intellectual or vice versa on entering his large study, a sanctuary where instincts led to searching out a card catalog and lowering one’s voice to a whisper. Books, books, books were Len’s passion, his first love among possessions: history, literature, law, public affairs, and an array of other subjects cradled in specially crafted, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. A historian and teacher of American constitutional law, over the years his intellectual interests had shifted to literature. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, he’d confess he’d learned more about life and death, people and places, and the competing images of society’s multifarious faces through good literary fiction. For the American secular Jewish experience, he looked to Roth, Malamud, and Bellow, while turning to Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, and Hughes for classic African-American drama. And who better exposed the ugly underbelly of Apartheid South Africa than Nadine Gordimer had? He hadn’t pushed his bookishness on his sons when they were growing up, though he had hoped their wall-to-wall presence would rub off. Nothing pleased him more than Adam majoring in history and journalism, and more so now that he wanted to write.

Adam carefully unfolded a cardboard chart encircled by extensive notes. Okay, dad, here’s what I’ve laid out based on our discussions, including locations, events, dates, as well as related issues and developments linked to those events.

Great job, boy, I can see you’ve done your homework.

Thanks, dad. Confidently, Adam recited each of the sites on his chart, centered on his father’s June 1963 trip to Birmingham, Alabama (followed by Montgomery, and Albany, Georgia). According to his notes, Len Lubin and four others—two fellow students from Ann Arbor, an older organizer from nearby Toledo, Ohio, and an experienced activist from New York—the Village, not the state—drove down in a large van. Unlike today’s luxury laden vehicles, their ride was a beat-up panel truck once having served a plumber, its gutted interior housing bench-type seats installed against each sidewall, Len recalling how they’d looked more like paratroopers en route to a jump. They probably appeared just as anxious, and it would have made for a momentous but predictably lesser-known Norman Rockwell portrait.

A few months after returning home, September 15, 1963, to be exact, the KKK bombed Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, murdering four Sunday-school girls. For the very worst among us the Stars & Bars had remained above half-mast that day. The outline further noted that his father had spent time organizing and registering voters. What struck Adam was how they’d purposely slept at a different house each night, doing their best to conceal the van, better understanding his father’s enemy country reference. On the good-news side the ugly van hadn’t stood out in the black districts, where the five got a personal look at the underside, along with a hot meal, warm hospitality, and a welcomed good night’s sleep.

You know, dad, Adam said, looking at his father with a recognizable but unexpressed respect, I might be able to retrace your steps, but I’ll never be able to walk in them.

Uh-huh.

I mean, you must have been scared at times. But then again, when I read about black school kids marching up the street toward a cordon of bigger-than-life-sized white cops and how those kids proceeded to cross that line of deeply feared authority, it’s harder for me to… well, you must understand.

Okay, okay, said Len, but even though things definitely have changed for the better, just use common sense as you would here or anywhere else. No place is perfect. They looked at each other and then back to the chart, Adam’s ringing cell phone suddenly breaking the tension. Before he could answer, a finger-wagging Len all but lectured, And don’t ever leave hotel, motel, or whatever without that damned thing!"

Gotcha… hello, yeah, hi Garret, I’m here with my dad going over my trip chart.

Adam and Garret Roberts had been best friends since sophomore year in high school. Despite Garret having attended Ohio State, their friendship had continued. He now taught English to resistant high school juniors outside Pittsburgh. Okay, Adam said, I’ll call you tomorrow. He hung up or whatever it is one does with a cell phone. Garret had been a substitute fellow traveler to Rachel Stein. As it turned out, neither could go, Garret having a summer school teaching commitment.

What did he want? Len asked casually, but with intention.

To make sure we get together before I leave. He’s got some stuff he wants to give me, plus addresses of relatives in Montgomery.

Sounds good.

What they didn’t know was that Garret would ask Adam to come back by way of Beaufort, South Carolina, so that he could pick up invaluable books from an elderly aunt.

So dad, do you think I should touch base with local officials when I get there?

Well, I wouldn’t contact any Chamber of Commerce types. Those people want to bury that past as deeply as they can… bad for business. But you might stop in at the larger newspapers to let them know you’re one of them and that you’re doing historical research. Leave it at that, historical research. Don’t say anything about me. There were things Adam didn’t know about his father’s trips, confrontations and line crossings far beyond metaphorical—including a South Carolina expedition and its pedal-to-the-metal escape still out of print in the family scrapbook. Some parts of the dead past are best left interred.

Good point. Tomorrow I’ll go online and get addresses.

They got back to work, Len now even gladder that he had missed Mississippi’s 1964 Freedom Summer. Some of his best friends had gone and were changed permanently, such that at the time he’d angrily written an article—personal, not historical—describing Mississippi and Alabama as deadly twin sisters of repression joined at the border.

Father and son spent another hour going over each item in detail, Len as much concerned about his son’s welfare as his accuracy. Even though the officially segregated South was history, Jim Crow’s malicious misrule reigned not so long ago, compelling him to worry about his son, despite the logic of what he said otherwise. Some things stick with you, even though times really had changed, and just as Len’s restless thoughts wandered even further back, Amy stuck her head through the French doors.

Okay, are you two going to be holed up in here all night? I’d like to spend some time with my boy, too. Oh, and I put up decaf to have with Adam’s favorite walnut brownies that I just happened to make. All three smiled in unison.

Come in, come in Len said without insisting, I’d like you to look over the nice summary Adam constructed. Looking at his son with an explanatory expression needing no amplification, Len knew that Amy’s interest in this particular past was prologue only to her increased concern about Adam. We’d like your approval on some of the plans, he said, Adam nodding agreement, including the idea that he should check in with some newspaper editors. Leaving the doors open behind her, she took a seat at the round table, looking from Len to Adam, eyeing the chart suspiciously.

That’s probably not a bad idea. It’ll provide a track of your travels and, at which point she reached over and covered Adam’s hand with hers, their eyes meeting, make you less of an outsider—a notion that’s still a disproportionately big deal down there. The déjà vu all over again of Adam’s trip held no nostalgic value for Amy: zip. Len could take down the Bull Connor photograph anytime, as far as she was concerned. She realized that her fears were unrealistic, but after Jason’s death, everything took on added depth and dimension.

Thanks, mom, and don’t worry… I’m leaving my favorite carpetbag at home. Laughter somewhat cleared the tension-filled air.

But what will you tell them about your father’s work, you might not want . . .

No, no, interrupted Len, we went over that. He’ll just tell them he’s doing historical research, nothing else.

Good, now let me see that summary.

Following coffee, brownies, and some HBO, a satisfied Adam headed home thinking he knew how his parents felt, particularly their worries. Len and Amy knew otherwise, standing silent sentry at the open door watching him drive away.

Adam’s two-bedroom apartment put meaning into nondescript, though it served his needs. Its second bedroom housed overstuffed bookcases, cardboard file boxes marked Birmingham, Montgomery, Albany stacked in four corners, and bulletin boards layered three-deep with clippings and notes. A recycled kitchen table sat in the room’s center, serving as a multi-purpose desk, its large rectangular top stacked such that it resembled Wyoming’s plateaus. What the place lacked in style it almost made up in function. Coated in anonymous white paint reserved for rental units, the living room walls did display an eclectic collection of framed posters and photographs taken either by him or Rachel, as well as one of the two of them snapped by Amy, convincing himself it remained because he was busy making other plans.

Adam appreciated Ann Arbor’s unmalled downtown daily springing to life, people afoot, independent restaurants, bookstores, locally owned shops, and all the rest making a city’s core—large or small—a vibrant place. Still, he longed to move to New York, the center of the universe. Sometimes when describing Ann Arbor, he would depict it as a small slice of Manhattan, simply one of its countless diverse neighborhoods. Though a long way from Greenwich Village, it shared some of its small-scale, low-rise charm. Secretly, he hoped his book would propel him into New York’s intellectual circles. Well, he had admitted, if only to himself, at least within subway distance. Notably, Adam’s images of living in the City typically had the spring and fall as seasonal backdrop. Hating hot weather, he usually saw himself strolling the Village or Midtown in denim jeans and a black sport coat.

While it seemed obvious that his parents had lived fulfilling lives, he sometimes believed that for his father it wasn’t enough, that he had expected to accomplish more, should have accomplished more. True, Len’s scholarship proved exceptional and his work in past movements and as a well-regarded professor represented substantive achievements setting him apart from