Edge of Eternity (54 page)

Salinger came into the room. ‘Everybody,’ he said, ‘the President looked at the papers this morning, saw the photographs from Birmingham, and felt sickened – and he would like the press to know it. This is not an official statement, but it is an off-the-record briefing. The key word is “sickened”. Put it out right away, please.’

Maria looked at Nelly and they both raised their eyebrows. This was a change.

Maria picked up the phone.

*  *  *

By Monday morning, George was moving like an old man, cautiously, trying to minimize the twinges of pain. The Birmingham Fire Department’s water cannon produced a pressure of one hundred pounds per square inch, according to the newspapers, and George could feel every pound on every inch of his back.

He was not the only one hurting on Monday morning. Hundreds of demonstrators were bruised. Some had been dog-bitten badly enough to need stitches. Thousands of schoolchildren were still in jail.

George prayed their sufferings would prove worthwhile.

There was hope now. The wealthy white businessmen of Birmingham wanted to end the conflict. No one was shopping: a black boycott of downtown stores had been made more effective by the fear of whites that they might get caught up in a riot. Even the hard-nosed owners of steel mills and factories felt that their businesses were being damaged by the city’s reputation as the world capital of violent racism.

And the White House hated the continuing global headlines. Foreign newspapers, taking for granted the Negroes’ right to justice and democracy, could not understand why the American president seemed unable to enforce his own laws.

Bobby Kennedy sent Burke Marshall to try to make a deal with Birmingham’s leading citizens. Dennis Wilson was his aide. George did not trust either. Marshall had undermined the Civil Rights Commission report with legal quibbles, and Dennis had always been jealous of George.

Birmingham’s white elite would not negotiate directly with Martin Luther King, so Dennis and George had to act as go-betweens, with Verena representing King.

Burke Marshall wanted King to call off Monday’s demonstration. ‘And take the pressure off, just when we’re gaining the advantage?’ said Verena incredulously to Dennis Wilson in the swanky lounge of the Gaston Motel. George nodded agreement.

‘The city government can’t do anything right now anyway,’ Dennis responded.

The city government was going through a separate but related crisis: Bull Connor had mounted a legal challenge to the election he had lost, so there were two men claiming to be mayor. Verena said: ‘So they’re divided and weakened – good! If we wait for them to resolve their differences, they’ll come back stronger and more determined. Don’t you White House people know anything about politics?’

Dennis pretended that the civil rights campaigners were muddled about what they wanted. That, too, infuriated Verena. ‘We have four simple demands,’ she said. ‘One: immediate desegregation of lunch counters, restrooms, water fountains, all facilities in stores. Two: nondiscriminatory hiring and promotion of black employees in the stores. Three: all demonstrators to be released from jail, and charges dropped. Four: for the future, a biracial committee to negotiate desegregation of the police, schools, parks, movie theatres and hotels.’ She glared at Dennis. ‘Anything muddled there?’

King was asking for things that should have been taken for granted, but all the same it was too much for the whites. That evening, Dennis came back to the Gaston and told George and Verena the counterproposals. The store owners were willing to desegregate fitting rooms immediately, other facilities after a delay. Five or six black employees could be promoted to ‘tie jobs’ as soon as the demonstrations ended. The businessmen could do nothing about the prisoners, because that was a matter for the courts. Segregation of schools and other city facilities had to be referred to the mayor and the city council.

Dennis was pleased. For the first time ever, the whites were negotiating!

But Verena was scornful. ‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘They never ask two women to share a fitting room, so they’re hardly segregated in the first place. And there are more than five Negro men in Birmingham capable of putting on a tie. As for the rest—’

‘They say they have no power to reverse the decisions of the courts or change the laws.’

‘How naive are you?’ said Verena. ‘In this town, the courts and the city government do what the businessmen ask them to do.’

Bobby Kennedy asked George to put together a list of the most influential white businessmen in town, with their phone numbers. The President was going to call them personally and tell them they needed to compromise.

George noted other exciting signs. Mass meetings in Birmingham churches on Monday evening collected an amazing $40,000 in donations to the campaign: it took King’s people most of the night to count it all, which they did in a motel room rented for the purpose. Even more money was pouring in by mail. The movement normally lived from hand to mouth, but Bull Connor and his dogs had brought a massive windfall.

Verena and King’s people settled in for a late-night session in the sitting room of King’s suite, discussing how to keep the pressure on. George was not invited – and he did not want to learn things he might feel obliged to report to Bobby – so he went to bed.

In the morning he put on his suit and went downstairs to King’s ten o’clock press conference. He found the motel courtyard crammed with more than a hundred journalists from all over the world, sweating under the Alabama sun. King’s Birmingham campaign was hot news – again thanks to Bull Connor. ‘The activities which have taken place in Birmingham over the last few days mark the non-violent movement’s coming of age,’ King said. ‘This is the fulfilment of a dream.’

George could not see Verena anywhere, and the suspicion grew on him that the real action might be elsewhere. He left the motel and went around the corner to the church. He did not find Verena, but he did notice schoolchildren coming out of the church basement and getting into cars parked in a line along Fifth Avenue. He sensed an air of forced nonchalance about the adults supervising them.

He ran into Dennis Wilson, who had news. ‘The Senior Citizens Committee is having an emergency meeting at the Chamber of Commerce.’

George had heard of this unofficial group, nicknamed the Big Mules. They were the men who held the real power in the town. If they were panicking, something would have to change.

Dennis said: ‘What are King’s people planning?’

George was glad he did not know. ‘I wasn’t invited to the meeting,’ he said. ‘But they’ve cooked up something.’

He parted from Dennis and walked downtown. Even strolling alone he knew he might be arrested for parading without a permit, but he had to take the risk: he would be of no use to Bobby if he hid in the Gaston.

In ten minutes he reached Birmingham’s typical Southern-town business district: department stores, cinemas, civic buildings, and a railway line running through the middle.

George figured out what King’s plan was only when he saw it going into operation.

Suddenly Negroes walking alone, or in twos and threes, began to congregate, brandishing placards which they had until now kept hidden. Some sat down, blocking the sidewalk, others knelt to pray on the steps of the massive art deco City Hall. Conga lines of hymn-singing teenagers wove in and out of segregated stores. Traffic slowed to a halt.

The police were caught unawares: they were concentrated around Kelly Ingram Park, half a mile away, and the demonstrators had blindsided them. But George felt sure that this air of good-natured protest could last only as long as Bull Connor remained off balance.

As morning turned into afternoon he returned to the Gaston. He found Verena looking worried. ‘This is great, but it’s out of control,’ she said. ‘Our people are trained in non-violent protest, but thousands of others are just joining in, and they have no discipline.’

‘It’s increasing the pressure on the Big Mules,’ George said.

‘But we don’t want the governor to declare martial law.’ The Governor of Alabama was George Wallace, an unyielding segregationist.

‘Martial law means federal control,’ George pointed out. ‘Then the President would have to order at least partial integration.’

‘If it’s forced on the Big Mules from the outside, they’ll find ways to undermine it. Better that it’s their decision.’

Verena was a subtle political thinker, George could tell. No doubt she had learned a lot from King. But he was not sure whether she was right on this point.

He ate a ham sandwich and went out again. The atmosphere around Kelly Ingram Park was now more tense. There were hundreds of police in the park, swinging their nightsticks and restraining their eager dogs. The fire brigade hosed anyone headed downtown. The Negroes, resenting the hoses, began to throw stones and Coke bottles at the police. Verena and others of King’s team moved through the crowd, begging people to stay calm and refrain from violence, but they had little effect. A strange white vehicle that people called The Tank drove up and down Sixteenth Street, with Bull Connor bellowing through a loudspeaker: ‘Disperse! Get off the streets!’ It was not a tank, George had been told, but an army surplus armoured car Connor had bought.

George saw Fred Shuttlesworth, King’s rival as leader of the campaign. At forty-one he was a wiry, tough-looking man, smartly dressed with a trim moustache. He had survived two bombings, and his wife had been stabbed by a Ku Klux Klansman, but he seemed to have no fear, and refused to leave town. ‘I wasn’t saved to run,’ he liked to say. Although a fighter by nature, he was now trying to marshal some of the youngsters. ‘You mustn’t taunt the police,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t act like you intend to strike them.’ It was good advice, George figured.

Kids gathered around Shuttlesworth and he led them, like the Pied Piper, back towards his church, waving a white handkerchief in the air in an attempt to show the police his peaceful intent.

It almost worked.

Shuttlesworth led the kids past the fire trucks outside the church to the basement entrance, which was at street level, and ushered them inside and down the stairs. When they were all in, he turned to follow. At that moment George heard a voice say: ‘Let’s put some water on the reverend.’

Shuttlesworth turned, frowning, to look back. A jet from a water cannon hit him squarely in the chest. He staggered and fell backwards down the stairs with a clatter and a roar.

Someone yelled: ‘Oh, my God, Shuttlesworth is struck!’

George rushed in. Shuttlesworth lay at the foot of the stairs, gasping. ‘Are you okay?’ George yelled, but Shuttlesworth could not answer. ‘Get an ambulance, somebody, fast!’ George shouted.

George was astonished that the authorities had been so stupid. Shuttlesworth was a hugely popular figure. Did they actually
want
to provoke a riot?

Ambulances were near at hand, and it was only a minute or two later that two men came in with a stretcher and carried Shuttlesworth out.

George followed them up to the street. Black bystanders and white police were milling around dangerously. Reporters had gathered and press photographers clicked as the stretcher was eased into the ambulance. They all watched it drive away.

A moment later, Bull Connor appeared. ‘I waited a week to see Shuttlesworth hit by a hose,’ he said jovially. ‘I’m sorry I missed it.’

George was furious. He hoped one of the bystanders would punch Connor’s fat face.

A white newspaper reporter said: ‘He left in an ambulance.’

‘I wish it was a hearse,’ said Connor.

George had to turn away to control his fury. He was saved by Dennis Wilson, who appeared from nowhere and grabbed his arm. ‘Good news!’ he said. ‘The Big Mules caved!’

George spun around. ‘What do you mean, they caved?’

‘They formed a committee to negotiate with the campaigners.’

This
was
good news. Something had changed them: the demonstrations, or the phone calls from the President, or the threat of martial law. Whatever the reason, they were now desperate enough to sit down with black people and discuss a truce. Perhaps it could be agreed before the rioting turned seriously nasty.

‘But they need some place to meet,’ Dennis added.

‘Verena will know. Let’s go find her.’ George turned to leave, then paused and looked back at Bull Connor. He was becoming irrelevant, George now saw. Connor was on the streets, jeering at civil rights campaigners, but at the Chamber of Commerce the city’s most powerful men had changed course – and they had done so without consulting Connor. Maybe the time was coming when fat white bullies would no longer rule the South.

And then again, maybe not.

*  *  *

The compromise was announced at a press conference on Friday. Fred Shuttlesworth attended, with cracked ribs from the water cannon, and announced: ‘Birmingham reached an accord with its conscience today!’ Shortly afterwards he fainted and had to be carried out. Martin Luther King declared a victory and flew home to Atlanta.

Birmingham’s white elite had at last agreed to some measure of desegregation. Verena complained that it was not much, and in a way she was right: they were making a few minor concessions. But George believed that a huge change of principle had occurred: the whites had accepted that they needed to negotiate with the Negroes about segregation. They could no longer simply lay down the law. Those negotiations would continue, and they could go in only one direction.

Whether this was a small advance or a major turning point, every coloured person in Birmingham was celebrating on Saturday night, and Verena invited George to her room.

He soon learned that she was not one of those girls who liked the man to take charge in bed. She knew what she wanted and she was comfortable asking for it. That was fine with George.

Almost anything would have been fine with him. He was enchanted by her lovely pale body and her witchy green eyes. She talked a lot while they made love, telling him how she felt, asking him if this pleased him or that embarrassed him; and the talk heightened their intimacy. He realized, more strongly than ever, how sex could be a way of getting to know the other person’s character as well as her body.