My husband and I are supposed to be going to Paris in February.
He's just like afraid to go with me.
Hey.
Oh let's see, what will we do?
OK.
My father was killed in a robbery when I was 21.
And my mother, I'm an only child.
And my mother was very protective.
So my mother did not allow me to go
to the trial of the man who shot my father because she
didn't want the man to see me.
She was very frightened.
And I often wondered what that would have been like
if I had been able to look in his face and confront him.
So when Dexter King, Martin Luther King's son
met James Earl Ray, I was fascinated by that.
And I watched it on television.
And then afterwards, I came away feeling kind of empty about it.
So this is "When Dexter King Met James Earl Ray."
"There was a tender in them both, a place picked raw.
As Southern men do, the clasping of hands that know weather.
Eye linked to eye, unflinching, the flat tongued
muttered how do.
How do you.
And the scripted respect, the pudge cheeked preacher
inquiring idly after the dying man's days.
Whole wars in them with just a single rupture.
Their halos florid, over glowing,
some news reporter hissing unexpectedly into a mic,
say it.
Say it.
James Earl, liver-toned, wobbly on old bone.
One lazy eye, perked for it.
The King rolls his R's, throats elegant,
sweats bullets into his collar.
Having shaved too keenly, his beard
is peppered red and whispering blood.
And still the pleasantries.
Exactly how does one go from commenting on the weather,
it's hot, awfully humid, smells more like rain,
hope it lets up.
To asking him did you frame my father's head
in your gun sight?
Did you empty his dinner chair, lonely my nights,
pull back on that trigger?
Jesus, he looks just like his daddy, James Earl thinks.
I bet he can call on God and turn the other cheek
with the best of them.
Go on, get it out, boy.
I'm dying here.
Camera spin.
The men are like fools, silent, damn respectful.
Exactly a yardstick between them.
And it's the wind up, the pitch.
Sir, I have to ask you.
Sir, my kind sir, excuse me, I hate to bother you, sir.
But I have to ask for the record, did you kill my father?
And if the answer is yes, will there
be a throttling, an errant sob, a small silver pistol
slipped from an inside pocket?
And if the answer is no, will there
be a throttling an errant sob, a small silver
pistol slipped from an inside pocket?
Time has a way of growing things all huge,
lifting up our soul to shove in the splinter.
But surprisingly, James Earl resists
double take and the wide-eye.
No, I didn't.
No, sir.
That settles it then.
That settles it.
And we're locked in on this limp drama
long after the credits have rolled
and Hollywood Squares has taken over.
Long after the network has anthemed and dimmed
to the snow.
Time for a Twinkie and a brew.
Time to fall asleep with a clear head.
Time to celebrate the slow sweet of Southern men.
It's time to rejoice in the fact that nobody killed nobody.
And high time to forget that somebody died anyway."
[APPLAUSE]