Once upon a time, on an island where rivers meet the sea, a traveler fitted for adventure in roaring canyons of concrete could find the great city of New York. From across one of the many bridges by which it tied itself to the surrounding land, the island city seemed a glittering glass geode, but visitors alighting on its ground would find all manner of fright and bedazzlement: the lords of finance swathed in chalk-striped flannel; the wraiths of art in thin black raiment, their faces studded all around with the silver of the vendors; the tired creeping students beneath the weight of books; the heirs and heiresses brittle and upright in their long black cars; and millions more of every hue and vestment, peasants and nobles, holy men and bourgeoisie, all mixed together in the streets.

The sign-painters used to say of the island city that it never slept, and so it did not. One who sallied forth in the night could sample a broad palette of cuisine, or stand in the caverns where musicians played, or take a glass of spirits with sawdust swirled around his shoes, and so it often was that the city tossed its restless twinkling head on its watery pillow at this abundance of pleasures. But just as a young girl accustomed to her own way in things will stamp her foot in its pursuit, so with the unruly city. All of its citizens mingled together under the spires and colored lights, true, but not always peacefully did they do so. Not always did women travel safely home of an evening. Not always did disagreements end in a shaking of hands. Not always did the strongest locks hold forth against the burglar’s raid. Frequently, the citizens drew guns and knives on one another; frequently, the citizens did not all have enough to eat. On occasion, the weather grew unseemly hot, or those touched in the mind wandered forth from their caretakers to rave and sleep in the little streets, or children disappeared. The citizenry elected kings from their own number, but the kings could do little to keep order in these times, and so, as the custom goes in cities, the kings in their turn hired minions. The citizens knew these minions by many names, some calling them “New York’s Finest” and others “the pigs,” but most knew them as The Men In Blue. The Men In Blue themselves had great toil to stand between the city’s people and chaos, and on many days they did not prevail.

So it went in this city, and so it has always gone in cities, that the young will leave their names on the sides of the great buildings and the thieves will plunder the trains for their riches. Many years went by in the city of New York, and the great part of its citizens grew accustomed to its noise and madness, only shaking their heads at it or expressing pride in their own survival. A few citizens said aloud, at the street corners and to the scribes in the city, “This is not right.” One said, “Too many citizens have died,” and another said, “Too many citizens go hungry,” and still another said, “Too many citizens hate one another and remain ignorant of one another’s customs.” Nevertheless, most of the natives kept their eyes on the ground and said nothing.

Over a period of years, the noise and madness worsened. More flinched at the displays of flesh. More began to kick the wasted forms of the opium-takers, instead of stepping over them grimly as before. More began to fold up their belongings and make their escape over the bridges that encircled the city. More began to say, “This is not right,” and when they said it, they now shouted and pointed their fingers as well. Just when the wise men in the university towers said, “The citizens cannot live here prosperously anymore,” a man stepped forth who coveted the throne. This man, Lord Giuliani, had a grim aspect indeed from the decades he had spent in the prosecution of criminals; his hair wound tightly about his head, and his teeth sheared off words as he spoke them. Lord Giuliani gathered those who might support his desire to assume the title of king, and he said to them and to the scribes in the city with great determination, “It is as you say. This is not right.” The citizens and the scribes turned one to the other and said, “At last, a would-be king who speaks the truth,” and when the time came, they took the crown and gave it to Lord Giuliani along with their confidence and made him their king.

Once ascended to the throne, King Giuliani set about searching for that thing which might make life in the island city right. Soon after his election, he appointed Count Bratton to watch over his minions, The Men In Blue, and Count Bratton brought to his king a plan. Seemingly simple, this plan, and yet every king previous had dismissed it as a trifling design only. But the new king regarded it and said, “Yes, this indeed will bring right closer,” and so Count Bratton instructed his minions to follow his elementary plan. With The Men In Blue gathered before him, he proclaimed, “Henceforward, you shall attend to miscreants and felons alike. Henceforward, you shall stop those who broke windows and those who broke bones in equal measure. Henceforward, you shall stand in the streets to make them safe, and you shall clean the streets of opium and those who possess it in even the tiniest pouch, and you shall patrol the streets for those who may carry weapons on their persons or who seem bent on mischief or trespass. The King and I have added to your number, to your power. Go forth and bring back right to this island city.” And so The Men In Blue went forth in greater numbers and with greater strength, and slowly the citizens began to smile, to walk about freely after the sun fell in the west, to live in places where they could not have lived in an earlier time, and loudly they gave praise to the King and said one to another, “This is right.” Still, as at any time among a large number of people, a few muttered, “No, this is still not right.” But these voices did not ring out loudly, and the scribes ignored their complaints, instead committing King Giuliani and Count Bratton to history with essays and strings of numbers, proving that the new peace had truly come to pass. After some years, the time again came to decide who would rule the city, and even those citizens who had at first scoffed, and those who had said, “This will not be right,” cast their ballots to leave the crown on the head of King Giuliani.

But the sign-painters have also said in their time that a crown can gather weight and overwhelm the man who wears it, and it came to pass that King Giuliani’s crown grew in heft and tarnish, and so too the badges of The Men In Blue. The mien of the King began to darken and sour. The scribes who had so lauded his reign began to whisper rumors about; the Queen kept her own castle, they said, and the King had many a private audience with his handmaiden, Lady Lategano, whom the scribes despised. The King entered into battles with the scribes, frequently trying to stay their pens, frequently speaking words he should have swallowed, frequently acting foolish and unseemly as a monarch should not. Then, too, he envied Count Bratton his successes with The Men In Blue, and himself wished to take credit for these, and after a time of unease in the court, the King exiled Count Bratton for daring to lead the minions under his own shield, and the Count found himself without power. The King appointed in his place the Marquis du Safir, a far more pliable lord whose back would bend before the King’s will more easily than that of the count. Still, although the King had grown snappish and swollen with his accomplishments, most of the citizens admired his crown yet and felt glad that they had chosen him as its wearer. The Marquis du Safir ruled The Men In Blue, and The Men In Blue minded his command, and for some time the new peace continued as before. The voices of dissent continued, though, and where they had turned deaf ears to the voices before, now the scribes paid them heed.

At last – as, dear reader, you well have guessed the sign-painters to say – the crown must overtake its wearer and crush him, and so it went. The King preoccupied himself with matters of little substance and argued with the regional consuls and drew the strings of the city’s purse tight when Chancellor Crew requested more gold for the schooling of the children there. He spent much of the day laying blame, and many more snarling, and very few attending to the activities of the minions. Nor did the Marquis pay The Men In Blue much mind, since the polishing of his many medallions and pins required all of his attention. Now, as the years had passed, The Men In Blue had seen and done much and exerted themselves greatly in service of their King, but now their King had turned to other concerns, and to tell the truth they did not hold the Marquis in much esteem, in the way they had the Count. The Men In Blue had grown somewhat tired and complacent, having seen and done so much, and they began to decline. Many of them grew fat; others, maddened by the foibles of the citizens they protected, grew violent. A few among them assumed certain facts about those citizens with dark skin, and they acted according to these mistaken assumptions, harassing the darker-skinned citizens as they walked down the streets, holding them down, beating them with their nightsticks, and calling them ugly names. One sweltering night, a darker-skinned man named Abner Louima, who had come to the island city from an imperiled island nation to make his way in the world, crossed paths with a brace of The Men In Blue, and they behaved in just such a way towards him. These minions, thick of neck and impassive of face, brought him into the jail and tortured him for quite some time, and did unspeakable things to him with an instrument of plumbing, in the name of the King, and this they told Mr. Louima.

The citizens reacted in horror, joining their voices with those of the few who had warned before to say, “This is not right.” In this matter also the King challenged the scribes and said, “The few do not represent the many,” but to this the scribes wrote, “The few are themselves too many in this thing, and this is not right.” The King and the Marquis promised investigation and retribution against the tyrannical four who had abused Mr. Louima, but they did not tell the truth, and the minions continued unchecked as before. While this skirmish continued, from the outskirts of the outrage there strode a familiar broad figure with an imposing pompadour and an angry and righteous way of speaking. He walked among holy men, this figure, but most among the citizens knew him as Reverend Al. Frequently seen as a figure of fun, in fact Reverend Al had long taken it upon himself to speak for the darker-skinned of the citizenry, and things about him had their strange beauty – his voice, one, and his eloquent fury. Reverend Al refused to fall silent. He refused to walk away. He refused to kneel before the King, for once he too had coveted the throne. He stood before the palace, surrounded by the scribes, and he bellowed, “This. Is. Not. Right!” The Marquis defended the minions in a fearful sort of way, but the King dismissed Reverend Al with a wave of his hand and admitted no wrongdoing. The King disappeared then with Lady Lategano into his inner chamber, and as the sun fell in the west, Reverend Al continued to stand so in front of the palace and fulminate. “The minions hate my black brothers, and they have said so. Do you not care, Your Majesty?” he called at the palace gates, but the King did not answer.

The minions continued to misuse their power in this manner. All over the city, the citizens muttered, and lighter-skinned and darker-skinned alike muttered, and the dark-skinned felt indeed afraid. It came to light that, in fact, the darker-skinned had felt afraid for some time under The Men In Blue. “They suspect us,” they told the scribes, “and think wrongly about us, and make us to seem guilty, and always they have done so. This is not right.” The scribes duly reported the stories of the darker-skinned, and Reverend Al folded his arms where he stood before the palace as the lighter-
skinned lowered their eyes and said, “God in heaven. It is then as Reverend Al has said, to our shame, and truly we too must say that this is not right.” The scribes each day seemed to lay bare more shame, more evidence that the minions cared, not for the citizenry as they had sworn to do, but only for themselves. The Men In Blue, it seemed, had consorted with painted women during their hours of work, against the law of the land – this, after the King had banished pleasures of the flesh from the city. The Men In Blue had sold opiates also, sometimes in places where children learned and played. The Men In Blue had beaten people savagely, at times for no reason. The King denied these things that the scribes said, but still those who lived in the city began to see that the scribes told the truth, and they said, “Well, Your Highness, you yourself must admit that this is not right.” The King snarled, “Do you not appreciate the good I have done?” And as the citizens stammered, “Yes, but,” their liege snapped, “Well, then,” and took himself off, and the eyes of Reverend Al watched him as he went, and though he said naught at that moment, his eyes said, “This is not right,” as they always seemed to do in those days.

The King instituted stiff measures to punish those who drove machines after drinking spirits, and said he would take their cars away, and for this purpose he put checkpoints around the island city, and the minions continued their scourge upon those with darker skin. Meanwhile, an evil man terrorized women in the eastern part of the city, and The Men In Blue had had no luck in catching him as he assaulted the women of the city. On a night so cold that spit crackled, The Men In Blue followed a man whom they thought had some knowledge of these crimes against women, and they called this man to them. The man, Amadou Diallo, had come to the island city from a faraway land to make his way in the world, but he knew of these minions, and he avoided them nimbly. Enraged, The Men In Blue emptied their weapons into this man as he stood before them, unarmed, only a short distance away from them and their guns, hitting him so many times that for a moment he stood pinned to the wall by bullets before crumpling dead on the ground. In the days that followed, the King and the Marquis tried to explain and defend and excuse the way in which the minions had fallen afoul of rightness. “Surely, though, only 19 rounds did hit this man, out of 41 fired,” whined the Marquis. “Nay, critics, let the minions do their jobs,” snapped the King. But scarce could anyone who wished to hear them do so over the full-throated howl of Reverend Al, who had by now climbed up on a box in front of the palace and bellowed, “THIS IS NOT RIGHT!” Behind him stood a crowd of the citizens, who also yelled, “THIS IS NOT RIGHT!” Many times did the citizens have cause to give this lament voice in these times, because the minions had truly lost all reason and the King had not corrected them. The King in fact had barricaded himself inside his palace, and from this sanctum he had given his orders for many months. “The men that lie with other men have begun a march to honor one of their slain, Matthew Shepard,” the King would grumble. “I have no need of this. Arm the minions with the gas that brings tears, and put an end to it.” And the Marquis would say, “Yes, Sire.” “The men who wash windows at the street corners pester me and others. Get rid of them,” the King would growl. And the Marquis would say, “Yes, Sire.” “People think they can cross the street anywhere they please in this city. Leave them know they must stay on the sidewalks,” the King would bark. And the Marquis, as he always did, would say, “Yes, Sire.” Thus, the King believed he could rid himself of the nettlesome Reverend Al and those who allied themselves with him, and he sent the minions out to scatter those who dared to protest at the palace gate and to lay about in the crowd with their nightsticks.

And so it came to pass that Reverend Al, and many others who believed that the King could no longer wear the crown and do good at the same time, went to the jail. Reverend Al and other holy men stood in front of the palace gates and said with stony faces, “This is not right,” over and over. Brightly-clad lords and ladies came from the golden land of Hollywood to join with him, and they too said with stony faces, “This is not right,” over and over, and they too went to the jail. Ordinary citizens said with stony faces, “This is not right,” over and over, and they too went to the jail. The scribes set the words into big black blocks of type and went among the people with their words, saying, “This is not right,” and those who took the polls of the citizenry said, “The people have spoken, and they say that this is not right,” and visitors from abroad shook their heads and said, “Surely, in our land, this would not be right either,” and children in schools looked at a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the walls of their classrooms, and their teachers asked them, “Is this right?” and the children answered with stony faces, “No, Mrs. Bowman, this is not right at all,” and as the Marquis hired the minions to squire him and his guests to the wedding of his daughter, and gallivanted on vacations with the rich and famous of another city far away, and as the King sat behind his desk with his hands clapped to his ears, the citizens waved signs that read, “This is not right,” and Mr. Diallo’s mother came to retrieve the body of her son. “I will not accept your false grief or your twisted hospitality,” the mother told the King as she collected her son’s bones. “Your minions have killed my son. This is not right.”

Here, for now, the tale must end. Thus far, dear reader, no justice has visited itself upon these crazed minions, or upon their addled king. Thus far, even as The Men In Blue themselves revolt against the Marquis, no man or woman has walked out of the palace gates to explain the actions of the minions to the citizenry they claim to serve. Thus far, no change has taken place to relieve the fear of the darker-skinned, and the lighter-skinned too have felt fear and anger. Thus far, Reverend Al has not relented, and thus far, the citizens have not forsaken his folded arms and his stony face. Thus far, the island city remains divided and shamed, and this, dear reader, is not right.

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