Night on Fire (10 page)

“About that time, the police got there. I can't imagine what took them so long. You know what they did? They joked with the crowd. Didn't arrest anybody. Told that man to get off the ground, then waved the bus on through. When it left, people ran for their cars and followed it out of town. There must have been thirty of them, like some kind of caravan.”

“Did you see Mr. McCall?” I asked.

“I certainly did. He was in the middle of it all, watching and writing in his notebook. I would have talked to him, but I didn't know what the crowd would do.”

Jarmaine looked up at me, then back at her Dr. Pepper. She lifted it and took a sip. I could see her hand shaking.

We sat there for a minute; then I told Jarmaine what I'd seen—how the caravan had come over the hill and the slashed tires had given out, and the crowd had finished the job they'd started at the station. When I described Janie Forsyth, Jarmaine perked up.

“You know what they're calling her, don't you? The Angel of Anniston.”

Janie Forsyth, the unlikeliest hero. An angel who wore glasses and won spelling bees.

There was something I'd been trying to say. Thinking about Janie, it finally spilled out.

“I think it was my fault,” I said.

“What was your fault?”

“The bus, the riot—I think I caused it.”

“That's crazy,” said Jarmaine.

“I told them about the Freedom Riders,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don't understand. Who did you tell?”

I described the Tall Tales Club and my trip to Forsyth's with Lavender.

“The men were talking about what had happened at the grocery—you know, about your friend Bradley. They were being mean to Lavender. I wanted to do something, so I mentioned the Freedom Riders. I said they were coming to Anniston on Sunday. The men seemed surprised. I don't think they knew. I'm the one who told them. I did it.”

Jarmaine didn't say anything. She was thinking.

I said, “Word travels fast. They probably told their friends. Somebody made a plan. It was my fault.”

Jarmaine shook her head. “The Freedom Riders want people to know. That's the whole point. You helped them.”

“I did?”

“You spread the word. What people did about it was their problem, not yours.”

I helped the Freedom Riders. Maybe instead of feeling guilty, I should feel proud. Then I thought of Daddy, standing in the crowd with Uncle Harvey Caldwell. What would he say?

“What do we do now?” I asked Jarmaine.

“I wish I knew.”

“My father was there,” I said. I don't know why, but I had to tell her.

She stared at me. “In the crowd?”

“He didn't hurt anybody,” I said quickly. “He was just watching.”

Jarmaine looked past me, out the window. “You know what they say, don't you? All you need for evil to win is for good people to do nothing.”

I pictured Daddy standing there with his arms crossed. The bus burned, and the riders got beat up and nearly killed. All the while, he just watched.

Then it hit me. “I did the same thing. I stood by and watched.”

Jarmaine nodded. When she spoke, I could barely make out her words. “I did too. I saw the mob at the station, beating on the bus, yelling bad things. I didn't even cross the street. I was too scared.”

Children shouted in the distance. Someone plucked a banjo. The fan creaked as it turned one way, then the other.

“You know what I think?” said Jarmaine. “There are two kinds of people in the world—the watchers and the riders. You and me? We're watchers.”

“I want to be a rider,” I said.

“So do I,” said Jarmaine.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was Boat Day in social studies class. At least, that's what the kids called it.

Mr. Duffy, our teacher, had been talking all year about the Greeks and Romans and Mesopotamians. He had arrived at the Middle Ages in March. Gutenberg invented the printing press in April. The climax came in May, when Columbus sailed three boats to discover America, the event that all of world history had been leading up to.

Each year when his class studied that event, Mr. Duffy brought in his models of the
Niña
, the
Pinta
, and the
Santa Maria
, which he had constructed out of toothpicks when he was thirteen years old.

Boat Day.

Mr. Duffy was a short, balding man who loved history and tended to sweat. He paced back and forth at the front of the class, describing Columbus's ships and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Think of it, kids,” he said, pointing to the models. “I did this when I was your age. You can accomplish great things—all of us can.”

As Mr. Duffy gave us a guided tour of his boats, I sat in the back row, thinking of things I could accomplish and the courage it could take.

Someone giggled.

It was Arlene Nesbitt. She sat next to Bubba Jakes, and he was whispering to her.

Mr. Duffy stopped his presentation. “Mr. Jakes, is there something you'd like to tell us?”

“No, sir,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

Arlene glanced over at Bubba. “I'll tell them.”

Grinning, she looked around at the class. “We were just talking about the boats. We wondered if the Negroes sat in back.”

The others laughed, and Mr. Duffy suppressed a smile.

“Let's stay on the subject, shall we?”

It made me mad—not just their laughter but my response. I didn't want to sit quietly anymore.

“What is the subject?” I found myself asking.

Heads swiveled around. People stared at me.

I said, “It's history, right? Well, what about the history taking place right here?”

“Miss Sims—”

“Two days ago, something happened in our neighborhood. People all over the world are talking about it. And what are we doing? Looking at boats made out of toothpicks.”

Nobody said anything. Shifting in her seat, Arlene looked nervously at Mr. Duffy. “I like the boats.”

“Columbus discovered America, but what about now?” I asked. “What's it like to live here? What's it like to ride on a bus and sit in back?”

Around me, people shook their heads and whispered.

“Some of you disagree with the Freedom Riders,” I said. “I'm not sure what I think myself. But you have to admit, they're brave. They don't watch or laugh. They do something. They won't stop. They're not going away.”

Mr. Duffy got a funny expression on his face.

“Oh,” he said, “but they already have.”

I looked up, confused.

He said, “Didn't you hear? It was on the news this morning. The bus drivers refused to take them farther because it was too dangerous. So the Freedom Riders went to the airport and took a flight out of Birmingham. Now they're in New Orleans. The rides are over.”

I just sat there. I didn't know what to say.

Arlene said, “That's good, isn't it? The people are safe. The trouble's passed.”

She was wrong. The world was a mess. Bad things happened, even in Anniston. Good people stood by and watched. Some of them laughed.

I wanted to be a rider, not a watcher. But the riders got scared and ran away. They weren't so brave after all. They were like the rest of us—drifting along, seeing problems but not really doing anything.

Mr. Duffy went back to his boats. I barely noticed. I was sinking into a deep hole. What was the use? Why bother? What good was hope? Why have dreams if you don't do anything about them?

The Freedom Riders had given up, and so had I.

A hole is a nice place to be. It's dark. It's warm and comfortable. You don't have to move or think or feel. You can't get hurt.

I stayed there all day and into the next. My body walked and talked and rode a bike. Things moved around me, but I didn't care. I was in the hole.

When I got home from school on Wednesday I went straight to my room. I had homework but didn't feel like doing it, so I looked through my record collection. I wasn't in the mood for an itsy-bitsy bikini or a hound dog. I wanted dark. I wanted sad. I found it in “Teen Angel,” a song about a girl who gets run over by a train. At the end, her boyfriend moans, “Answer me, please.” Like the boy in the song, I needed an answer, and I wasn't getting one.

I played the record thirty-seven times, then went out on the front porch and slumped in the swing, rocking back and forth, back and forth. After a few minutes Grant came pedaling up the driveway, dumped his bike, and hurried over.

“Billie!” said Grant.

He peered into the hole from far away, his head the size of a BB.

“I've got the paper,” he said breathlessly. “You need to see it.”

“You've always got the paper. Why don't you just staple it to your forehead?”

“There's an article about the Freedom Riders!”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “They're done. It's over.”

“That's just it,” he exclaimed. “It's not over.”

He held the paper up so I could see it. The article, just a headline and one sentence, was tucked in a corner of the front page.

BULLETIN

BIRMINGHAM (UPI) – A group of Negroes from Nashville, Tenn., attempted to resume anti-integration protests today at the Birmingham Greyhound bus terminal but police would not let them get off.

The word “Nashville” sent an electric charge up my spine. The corpse sputtered to life.

Grant said, “My dad's at his office, trying to get more information. He's working on a story.”

Someone else was working on it too, I was sure.

“We need to find out,” I said. “Come on!”

We raced to the phone, and I dialed the
Star
. Jarmaine was there, just as I had hoped. Grant leaned in so he could hear.

“Is it true?” I asked her. “Are the Nashville students coming?”

“They took a bus to Birmingham to continue the ride,” she said, breathless. “They got there this morning, ten of them.”

“Is Diane Nash with them?” I asked, remembering their leader.

“Mr. McCall says she's in Nashville running things. He's been on the phone with her. But there was trouble. Bull Connor, head of the Birmingham police, wouldn't let the students off the bus. When they finally got out, he arrested them and took them to the city jail. That's where they are now—in jail, singing freedom songs.”

There was pride in her voice and determination. I tried to imagine what it must be like in jail. If I had been there, I didn't think I'd be singing.

“What's going to happen?” asked Grant.

“They'll keep the Freedom Rides going,” said Jarmaine. “And this time, no one will stop them.”

Over the next two days, Grant and I followed the new Freedom Riders. Through phone calls with Jarmaine, we learned that the riders had stayed in jail all day Thursday. Then, in the middle of the night, Bull Connor woke them up, herded them into cars, and drove them off into the darkness. No one had seen them since.

Friday after supper, I called Jarmaine and asked, “Where do you think they are?”

Her voice sounded choked off and distant. “Have you heard of Billie Holiday?”

“Billie? Like me?”

“That's right. She was a singer. Died a couple of years ago. They called her Lady Day. We have some of her records. She had the most amazing voice. So beautiful. So sad. She was a drug addict. People mistreated her. You could hear the pain in her songs.”

“I'd like to hear them sometime,” I said.

“There's one song called ‘Strange Fruit.' I can't sing it, but I know the words:

“
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
,

“
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
,

“
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
,

“
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“I think you do,” said Jarmaine.

My mind, groping for an answer, slammed up against a wall. The wall was tall and wide. I think it had always been there. On this side of the wall we smiled and prayed and helped each other. We were nice. And on the other side? I tried to imagine what was there. It was dark and mean. It was filled with shadows. People whispered about it. I didn't dare look.

Jarmaine said, “You've heard the stories. I know you have. A mother is hungry and steals something. A man speaks disrespectfully. He looks at a white woman the wrong way. Then, late at night, they disappear. Someone finds them a few days later, hanging from a tree. Strange fruit.”

I shivered. “You mean lynching? It really happens?”

“If you grew up the way I did, you wouldn't ask that question.”

“You think the Freedom Riders might have been lynched?”

She said, “They disappeared in the middle of the night. This is Alabama. What do you think?”

Alabama
. To me, it meant football. The Crimson Tide. Coach Bear Bryant. It meant my town and my neighborhood, places I loved. But for Jarmaine, the word was different. It scared her, I could tell. How could two people live in the same place and see such different things?

When I got off the phone I went to the window. The neighborhood looked calm, like it did every Friday evening. Next door, Grant and his parents sat on the porch, talking and sipping lemonade. The crickets chirped. The wind blew and the trees swayed.

Just another night in Alabama.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I went to my room and lay down. Closing my eyes, I saw the Freedom Riders dangling from trees. Nearby was the burned-out shell of a bus.

I guess I fell asleep, because when I woke up, the room was cool and someone had put a blanket over me. I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and went to the window. The McCalls' house was dark. Somewhere, in another dark place, Bull Connor was dealing with the Freedom Riders.