centered on one man who radiated like a sun. Now that he was gone, no one could agree on what that presence had
meant.
The loyalists squabbled. Factions emerged. Rumors flew. By Monday, the day the city council was to select a new
mayor to serve until the special election, the coalition that had first put Harold in office was all but extinguished. I went
down to City Hall that evening to watch this second death. People, mostly black, had been gathering outside the city
council’s chambers since late afternoon-old people, curiosity seekers, men and women with banners and signs. They
shouted at the black aldermen who had cut deals with the white bloc. They waved dollar bills at the soft-spoken black
alderman-a holdover from Machine days-behind whom the white aldermen had thrown their support. They called this
man a sellout and an Uncle Tom. They chanted and stomped and swore never to leave.
But power was patient and knew what it wanted; power could out-wait slogans and prayers and candlelight vigils.
Around midnight, just before the council got around to taking a vote, the door to the chambers opened briefly and I saw
two of the aldermen off in a huddle. One, black, had been Harold’s man; the other, white, Vrdolyak’s. They were
whispering now, smiling briefly, then looking out at the still-chanting crowd and quickly suppressing their smiles,
large, fleshy men in double-breasted suits with the same look of hunger in their eyes-men who knew the score.
I left after that. I pushed through the crowds that overflowed into the street and began walking across Daley Plaza
toward my car. The wind whipped up cold and sharp as a blade, and I watched a handmade sign tumble past me. HIS
SPIRIT LIVES ON, the sign read in heavy block letters. And beneath the words that picture I had seen so many times
while waiting for a chair in Smitty’s Barbershop: the handsome, grizzled face; the indulgent smile; the twinkling eyes;
now blowing across the empty space, as easily as an autumn leaf.
The months passed at a breathless pace, with constant reminders of all the things left undone. We worked with a
citywide coalition in support of school reform. We held a series of joint meetings with Mexicans in the Southeast Side
to craft a common environmental strategy for the region. I drove Johnnie nuts trying to cram him with the things it had
taken me three years to learn.
“So who did you meet with this week?” I would ask.
“Well, there’s this woman, Mrs. Banks, over at True Vine Holiness Church. Seems like she’s got potential...hold on,
yeah, here it is. Teacher, interested in education. I think she’ll definitely work with us.”
“What does her husband do?”
“You know, I forgot to ask her-”
“What does she think of the teachers’ union?”
“Damn, Barack, I only had half an hour....”
In February, I received my acceptance from Harvard. The letter came with a thick packet of information. It reminded
me of the packet I’d received from Punahou that summer fourteen years earlier. I remembered how Gramps had stayed
up the whole night reading from the catalog about music lessons and advanced placement courses, glee clubs and
baccalaureates; how he had waved that catalog and told me it would be my meal ticket, that the contacts I made at a
school like Punahou would last me a lifetime, that I would move in charmed circles and have all the opportunities that
he’d never had. I remembered how, at the end of the evening, he had smiled and tousled my hair, his breath smelling of