It takes a long time to heal from something like what Joanie went through—I guess what I went through too. We'd been together so long and babies were something we assumed we'd have. Guess I should know better than to assume.

But life moves forward. I worried that Joanie shouldn't take the bar when she did. I thought it was too soon after but she said she didn't want to wait. And I have to admit that studying for it actually calmed her. School, books…the law…those was things she felt better with. I think it was the first time I saw her come to an important test looking confident and sure of herself and her smarts. It was good to see.

Even with the added stress and strain on her, she passed that thing with flying colors. Didn't surprise me one bit that she did either. I offered to take her out to dinner to celebrate but she wanted to have a party.

"Most people have a housewarming party when they get a new house," she explained to me. "This would be the perfect time to have it. Combining celebrations, so to speak."

I wasn't sold. Joanie hadn't spent much time around Sherry and Sherry's belly was getting out there real good by then. And Rachel's bump was starting to show a little. Some men go overboard in protecting their women and some women get offended—with cause—by being so watched over. Joanie wasn't one of those. Joanie needed a little more looking after. I know it made her upset sometimes when I did it but Joanie had some issues I don't think all women do.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" I asked her. "I mean…it's been a rough month or so."

"James," she replied narrowing her eyes. I probably should've been immune to that look by then but I will fully admit that I never really got over turning to stone when she turned it on me.

"Joanie," I said back with a look of my own. Inside I might have been withering from her glare but it didn't mean I could back down. "You know I have to be like this."

Something in her eyes shifted then and she turned her back to me. I could see her shoulders rise and fall with two very deep breaths. Then she turned back to face me. I'll admit it scared me plenty that I couldn't read her face when she did.

"I know," she whispered and even the whisper was wavering so I knew her voice was about to crack if she tried to actually speak to me. "And I know you do everything you do for me out of love. I know I have given you good reason to worry for me."

Her hand was turning the gold star over and over on its chain. I stayed quiet. Sometimes Joanie needed a prod to get talking but once she was talking it was best to not interrupt her.

"You've always been so strong for me," she went on and then took another deep and shuddering breath. "I won't lie, James. Seeing Sherry and Billy getting closer and closer to…"

Her voice trailed off and the frustration was clear in her frown.

"I want my friends to be happy, James. I do. I know it's going to hurt to see. But life is not going to stop because something sad happened to us. And if it did, it would serve us no good purpose. I need to move forward. I can't hide from this. I don't want to feel like crying when I see a baby on its mother's hip in the store. I don't want to be sad when I see my friends happy. I don't want Keith to make me feel sad. I especially don't want to resent Rachel's happiness after what they just went through. I don't. And hiding away from everyone isn't going to get me to feeling better about this."

I opened my mouth to start to argue with her. It was so soon, too soon in my estimation.

"Don't, James," she said as she moved toward me and put a hand on my arm. "You already know how to help me. You know I have to move on. You know if I wait for it to feel right I'll stay hidden forever. It'll never feel right and it'll eventually get built up so much neither of us will have the courage for this. You know all this. It's what you do. You've told me."

I just nodded. She was right. There's something to that old saying about getting back on a horse that just threw you. Not that her pain was coming from being around these people but she was right that she had to get back to her life. I nodded at her.

"Tell me what you need me to do."

"Stay close," she replied. "I don't expect for this to be easy. I might need you to rescue me from myself more than once."

"Close to you is my favorite place."

I can tell you now the party was a success in every way possible. I think it perked Joanie up a great deal to see everyone and maybe even seeing Rachel and Sherry in a place where the focus wasn't them and their bellies. She smiled and laughed and had cooked like a madwoman.

She was right, as it turned out; this party was good for her. It was necessary and needed. I stayed close like I said I would. She had a couple rough moments where things sort of overwhelmed her but I was close by and all she needed was a hug or a kiss on the top of her head.

There was sadness in a few eyes. I think Uncle Eli was looking as forward to the baby as Gladys and Mr. Cohen were. But they were healing too and somehow I think that night put more to rights than anything else we could have done. I probably mentioned once or twice how smart my Joanie was. Sometimes I think I forgot it myself.

After the party we settled into a nice summer. Joanie went right to work for her dad and uncles and I had my summer off. I wasn't just sitting around though. I worked with a couple of youth groups and tried to keep busy any way I could. There was a lot to do around the house too so I was busy fixing things up and painting. It was a nice house but old and not everything had been maintained very well. But I had time and, while we weren't rich or anything, we had the money to get supplies to fix things. I could swing a hammer and I learned a whole lot about plumbing that summer.

Learned a lot of other things that summer too. Not all of them was as common as how to stop a faucet leaking. I know I said before that there was some sort of tension in the city that year. Some folks were blissfully unaware. They thought with the unrest of the last few years everywhere else that if we was going to have trouble then we'd've had it by then. The rest of us, I think, knew better. Detroit may have taken longer to reach her boiling point but you leave any pot over a fire long enough and it'll boil over or boil away and catch fire.

We got most of the way through July without too much going on. I remember talking a lot to Sam that summer. He said they were trying to curb some criminal activity in a certain neighborhood. Mostly taking down the prostitution and gambling and after hours drinking. I know more than once I asked if they knew what they were doing.

I'll explain a little. Detroit wasn't some segregated city by any mandate or law but it was divided up by race all the same. Things was starting to change in some areas but when you hit the poorest places, they was still mostly black. Ain't no other way to say it. These days when places get broken up by socio-economics, it's pretty blended. You'll get white, brown and black all shoved into the same slums. Not then.

The area the police was targeting was black. With all the unrest and all the tension and all that felt like something was just about to break loose all summer to that point, I wondered if it was really such a good idea to target an all black area. Sam agreed with me. He didn't have a choice about doing it really. The order came from well above his pay grade but he had a bad feeling about it all the same. I think the both of us with all we knew of the situation and how people felt at the time about cops and authority…I think we knew something bad was going to happen.

Now I don't want you to get me wrong. What happened was different in a lot of ways from other cities that had these problems. For always being blamed on race, this might've been the most integrated thing that the motor city ever did. Even if that don't make sense to lots of folks. Detroit's a different sort of town sometimes. Ain't saying it's better or worse than anywhere else but different. We had our big race riots in the 40's. That was over housing and really people should've still been ticked about that situation. This…this had to do with so many things and civil rights or how the races was treated different was just a small part of it all.

So we moved through the summer with some of us preaching a little more caution than others. I know I tried to keep Jesse close to home that summer. Emma didn't need worries like that. She had Sarah Jean to keep track of and most days little Michael too. And I knew that if anything went bad in the city and Jesse got in the middle, it would near to kill poor Theresa. Yeah they was still together then. Damned cute too.

I ain't saying Jesse listened to me, pain in the ass that he was. But I warned him all the same. Pretty sure Sam did too. But you know, kids never think the bad stuff will happen to them. Hell, most never think bad things'll happen at all.

So we got into July and past the fourth and the big cookout with Joanie's folks. And we made it to the cabin in the U.P. a time or two as well. Took Lou and the kids up one of those times. Jesse wanted to come with us but we couldn't leave Al with no one to work the shop and besides, I remembered what me and Joanie did on the beach up there and there was no way I was bringing him up with Theresa there. No way in Hell.

Roll your eyes at me but she was all of fifteen years old and there was no way I was going to tempt fate like that.

This date don't mean too much to many anymore but if you're my age and lived here in the D, as the kids say nowadays, this date makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

July 22, 1967. It was peaceful enough I guess. A Saturday and hot…people was having cookouts mostly because you couldn't stand to be inside at all let alone fire up a stove while you was there. Everybody was grilling out or eating potato chips or ice cream. I was sitting on the porch with Al while we ate some burgers I'd grilled and downed a few Stroh's. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

"Damn if it ain't hotter'n Satan's left testicle today," Al remarked.

It was too. Michigan's like that. Hot enough to cook a person in the summer and cold enough to turn your blood to icicles come winter. You can tell when the heat or cold is extreme anywhere when it's the main topic of conversation. And right about then we wasn't talking about much but how hot we was. How sweaty and uncomfortable. Rachel was managing alright being only four or so months along but poor Sherry—that girl was darned near eight months and she was miserable.

Now I say July 22nd is the date that will send chills down a longtime Detroiter's spine and that's not quite so. The 22nd was the last day of peace. Because at roughly 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 23rd all hell broke loose. If any of us had a shred of innocence left in us, it would be gone when the smoke cleared.

Now I didn't know what happened in the wee hours of the 23rd. I was trying to get some sleep through the ungodly heat. We had every fan in the house in our room and pointed toward us and still we couldn't stand blankets or pajamas or anything else touching us. And we weren't getting good sleep either one of us. But we was trying.

The plan when we got up was to head to Emma's for Sunday dinner. She wasn't going to be doing the cooking though. Sam was planning on grilling to save anyone from being cooped up in a hotter than hell kitchen.

Shortly after Joanie and I rolled out of bed, the phone rang.

"Jimmy?"

"Hi Emma. You miss me so much that you can't wait a couple hours to talk to me?"

"Could you help Jesse with the grilling today?"

"I thought Sam was doing the cooking."

"He got a call early this morning," she said and I knew Emma pretty damned well or else I wouldn't have caught the fear in her voice. "I don't think he's going to be back for a while. There's riots, Jimmy. Before he left he said it sounded worse than '43."

"Emma, I want you to come here."

"I couldn't…everyone is coming here today."

"Then we'll change our plans," I said matter-of-factly. "You get Sarah Jean and have Jesse drive you two here. Now that I think about it, have Al and Rachel come here too. I'll call everyone else. It's quiet here."

Once I got off the phone with Emma, I called over to Billy's house. Sherry answered and she didn't sound good.

"Sherry, is your husband around?"

"No," she replied sounding something close to frail. I should clarify a little about Sherry. She looked, on the surface, to be unflappable and tough as nails. I suppose in a lot of ways she was tougher than some but she was as susceptible to fear and worry as any of us. And being big enough to move slow and having all them pregnancy hormones and all wasn't helping her none.

"Is he off covering this stuff?"

"Yeah…he left a while ago. They say it's bad."

"Still calm and clear where you are?"

"Quiet like any other Sunday," she said sounding calmer for having someone to talk to. "Will said the worst was on 12th."

"Do you feel alright to drive? I want you to come over here for the day."

"I can drive."

"See you soon, Sher."

I called Lou who was in the shower so I told Theresa that Sunday dinner was at our house now. And Buck and then Ike. Soon we had a houseful just waiting for news.

I'll tell you now that our house was in a neighborhood that never saw violence in the days that followed and for that I am grateful. But we had called Joanie's folks and if we'd had to flee, Bloomfield Hills was waiting for us.

We knew that Billy wouldn't have a report in until the evening news so we had the radio on all day. At that point it all seemed centered in that few blocks area down by 12th. We knew there was looting and fires and gunshots reported. Joanie had gotten a couple calls from her dad and Uncle Eli about potential clients but they told her to stay where she was and not go down to see about them. Nothing there that couldn't wait a while for it to be safe. None of us expected things to go on like they did but then there was plenty who never expected the riots to start in the first place.

The Tigers was playing that day. I think against Baltimore. I'm not sure how anyone got to the stadium but then now that I think of it, the violence didn't move toward the corner that soon. Pretty spectacular thing happened after the game was over. I can't even remember if the Tigers won that day or not. You can probably look that up somewhere so it don't really matter.

But after the game, Willie Horton became one of my favorite all-time Tigers. I always kind of liked the guy. He was a good player and being in the line of work I was, I had cause to know how dedicated to the community he was. Willie was a talented ballplayer and eventually got his number retired by the team. He's one of the statues in the outfield of the new yard. I honestly think if he did nothing in his whole life but what he did that terrifying and disorienting Sunday in July, that he would have deserved that statue.

Willie Horton left the field at the end of the game. He did not take off his uniform. He walked out of the stadium and toward the center of the riots. Once he got to the worst of it, he climbed on a car and commenced to pleading for some cooler heads to prevail.

It didn't stop anything. People kept burning things and looting and beating on each other. But sometimes it's important to do the right thing even if no one notices you doing it. Good man, Willie Horton.

Sometime that evening the phone rang. I answered it and Billy was near to frantic. He'd called his place and his wife wasn't there. I got him calmed down and explained I thought it was best if we was all in one place where we could look out for each other. He agreed. It had just frightened him to not know where she was. He'd been in the worst of it that day and something like that would scare anyone.

A while later Sam called. He didn't seem surprised at all that his family was at our house.

"I'll get Emma," I told him.

"Wait. Before you do…thank you. I always knew I could count on you. You took care of her before I came into the picture."

"I'll always take care of her. It's the least I can do for her…and for you."

"I don't know when I'll be able to come home. This doesn't look to be settling down and there's already talk of the National Guard being brought in. Keep her with you as much as she'll let you."

"I will. You stay safe. I warned you once that we don't take kindly to anyone hurting her."

I handed the phone to Emma then. I know he put on a brave voice and kept things positive with her but I heard it when I talked to him. He was scared. I'd never seen him really scared before. I'd seen him hurt and sad and angry and a host of other things. But never had I seen or heard real fear in him. He was scared that day. He was scared he wasn't ever coming home.

And so it begins. I have been dreading this...it's not going to be pretty. I'm sorry for all that will happen. I can do many things but changing history is not within my power.-J