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"The blues are finally a people who are going to take care of business."

Emmett knew it would work and that something like that had to work if the cities were to be saved. To be saved in an ideological age where ideas lived a greater life than man and words were juggled in a gigantic hoax and where he needed more than the skeleton to make the vision walk. He needed to lift off something that was neither beauty nor truth, but only a plaster false face, if he was to be one of the only ones to discover the grin of the skeleton.

The only ones were those that had reached their own rock bottom and got up. They always got up. They searched for brothers and sisters, not friends. They did not play the role of crowd in remakes of the Law & Order vs. Riot movie. They didn't sell their vision-- to sell their vision would have been to pretend it was theirs. They didn't put themselves on, fall guy. They were wise to the educated fools who look to confront fake situations where pretensions can be made to self-defense. They killed who had to be killed. They were sick and tired of being sick and tired. They dug that the goin' up better be worth the comin' down. They deceived deception with truth. They were spreading the cheeks and kissing the little brown asshole of democracy. They dealt with all real things in all moments of agony and joy. They didn't waste their efforts in games which kill time, deaden awareness and brutalize feeling. They did not let themselves be suicided by a Judas-goat society. They were no longer lonesome for their heroes. They took care of business. They did not nickle-dime bomb make-believe numbers. They did what was necessary (not unnecessary) to end the desperation of illness, hunger, nakedness, addiction, poverty, eviction, jail, oppression and the money conspiracy which decimated the streets and backwoods. They were all innocent. They were felons. They were good at it. They did not intend to spend any more time in penitentiaries. They did not use the courts for redress. They were silent about almost everything. They remembered Michael Collins and what his comrades had done to him. They did not own it. They loved. They were the offspring of mid-twentieth-century broken consciousness. They were beyond the possibility of defeat. "They, that unnamed, 'they.' Well, nothing moves a mountain but itself. And they-- I've long ago named them me."

Then Emmett Grogan sat down to write a book for all the heartbroke lovers he left behind awaiting release. And for Kenny Wisdom and his suntan. [end page 498]