Leaving: A Novel (33 page)

Easton lay in the living room alone, but for the cat. He closed his eyes and listened, and at first there seemed nothing to listen to, but then he heard the crickets in the distance, and it made him nervous. He wiped his cheek. There was a particular smell as it cooled off at night that brought him back to sitting by the Edisto River. He took a deep breath, but he could not shake the unsafe feeling that there was something out in the night. He opened his eyes again and strained to hear better, beyond the crickets, but their creaking became louder, as if they were moving closer, filling the streets, surrounding the house. Soon their call occupied his whole mind and all the darkness around him, and he could hear and think of nothing else but their screaming at him from every direction.

The screen door slammed and the sound of the crickets receded. Charles ran in. “Oh God. Oh man.” He jumped onto the couch and slid his feet under the covers. “Get this mangy old cat away from me.”

“Let me ask you something, Charles.” Easton cracked his fingers one by one and let out a long breath. “What do you think it means to be crazy? I don’t mean all wild and crazy—I mean, just how mixed up inside your head do you have to get before you’re not sane anymore?”

“Anyone who lives down here is definitely crazy.”

“No, man. For real.”

Charles sat propped up on the couch and gazed out the front window. The half-moon, like a torn sheet of paper, rose up over the house across the dirt road.

“You thinkin you might be crazy?” Charles asked.

“I’m just asking.”

“You hearing voices? You seeing ghosts of dead people?”

“Naw, man. But I wonder. I mean, how much control over your own feelings are you supposed to have? You know what I’m saying?”

“Because you like White women?”

“No, man, I’m not talking about that!”

“Then what are you talkin about?”

“I mean about feeling confused and angry and all mixed-up like.”

“Okay. I hear you.”

“Yeah?” Easton sat up and looked at the shape of his friend. “I mean, like this thing with Sandra. I didn’t come down here when she offered, ’cause she did me wrong, you know? I was pissed off at her, and now here I am, going down on my own to see her. It’s like I can’t get hold of myself. And all I can think of is, well, I’m gonna walk up to her and spit in her face, you know, ’cause I’m so angry at her for making me come all this way. But I know it can’t be just her, man. I couldn’t have done some stupid drive all the way across the country just ’cause of her.” He shook his head repeatedly like he was trying to fight through a fog. “It’s like this statue we studied about in class: this girl, she got stolen by Hades, the god of the underworld, and when she was down there, she ate some pomegranate, and then, when she was finally rescued and brought back up into the light, she still had to go back down to Hades for part of every year because she had that pomegranate inside her. You know what I mean? I’ve been thinking about that story ever since I decided to come back here. You don’t just think about things for no reason. It must be that I couldn’t help it. I just had to come here, like if I could just get down here, I could dig that little red seed out of my stomach and just…” Easton had his fists out in front of him like he was shaking someone by the shirt. “Man! I’m going out of my mind. I feel like I’ve got no sense of myself.”

“Everybody feels like that.”

“Not everybody.”

“I know I do. I feel like I’m bustin in my own skin sometime, like my whole body wants to yell ’cause I’m not being myself. The only time I feel right is when I’m fightin the fight, like those days out at Woolcrest’s, and now goin to Selma. I feel like I have a purpose. You just have to figure out what gives you purpose. Everybody feels like this. It’s not crazy. Unless everybody’s crazy.”

“I don’t know.” Easton lay back down and put his hands under his head. “I can’t believe everybody’s walkin around feelin like this. This world would just fall apart.”

“It is, brother.” Charles stood up again.

“Where you going?”

“I’ve got to go back outside,” Charles mumbled.

“Already?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you go?”

“I couldn’t see nothin in there.”

“Didn’t you take the flashlight?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The flashlight by the door,” Easton said. “You didn’t take it?”

Charles didn’t answer.

“Ah, man. You one sorry-ass city boy. You’ve got no country sense at all. Maybe you’re right, maybe this ain’t where we belong after all. Maybe this whole thing was a big mistake.”

*   *   *

THEY ENTERED SELMA
on Sunday afternoon. It was cold again, as if the sun had hidden its face. Easton could see his breath as he drove through the neighborhood looking for Brown’s Chapel on Sylvan. They eventually found the redbrick building with its three distinctive white stone arches. A large crowd had gathered around the building, and there were four long black ambulances, like hearses with sirens on top, parked across the street.

“Maybe we’re too late,” Charles said as he got out.

“Do you see her?” Easton climbed on top of his car and looked over the crowd. There were only a handful of Whites, but none of them women. “Maybe she’s inside.”

Men, women, and children lined up in silent apprehension. Most of the men wore long overcoats, some fedora caps, sweaters, and ties. The women were also dressed formally, some with large gold earrings. A little boy went to his mother and hid in her coat. His father came and picked him up and brought him to the sidewalk crying.

“Do you see her?” Easton asked again.

“Who?”

“Sandra. I don’t see her. I’m going inside.”

“I’m lining up,” said Charles. “This is what I came here for.”

A man in a tan overcoat walked to the top of the chapel steps and addressed the crowd. A deep, concerned line ran down the middle of his forehead to the top of his nose.

“If you’d listen up here, please.” He raised his hands, and an invisible wave of silence swept over the crowd. “We’re going to get into two lines. One behind me—I’m John—and another behind Hosea. Remember: we are a peaceful people marching to Montgomery. Ignore the taunts and protect yourself as you’ve been shown. If they become violent, do not let yourself be cheapened by becoming like them. We have the moral high ground, and there will be newsmen and cameras, but Wallace has said he will not let us march to Montgomery.” He stroked his thin, downturned mustache. “If anyone wishes to stay back, we won’t hold it against you, I cannot promise you anything.”

Easton jogged up the steps of the church, and Charles walked over to the front of the line. Before going inside, Easton turned and watched the marchers leave, the two lines of people, silent, walking into the distance like a slow funeral procession.

When they’d turned the corner and were out of sight, Easton entered the church. There were a few people praying, some by the podium, while others sat silently looking at the floor. One woman put out bandages, scissors, and tape on a table. Easton walked up to her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d seen a woman I’m looking for, a White woman.”

“What’s her name?”

“She’s blond, with some freckles on her cheeks, skinny, and about your height.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sandra.”

“Sandra? Yes. I may have met someone like that, but I don’t know where she is. I just arrived last night with supplies and it has been pretty busy around here. She may be on the march. The march started, you know?” She looked at Easton with her eyebrows raised, like a mother telling her child it’s time to go to school.

“Yes. Thank you.” Easton walked around the side of the pulpit and looked out onto the main floor.

“She’s probably on the march,” the nurse said again.

“I already looked.”

“Well maybe she was going to join up with them at the bridge.”

Easton took one more look around the church and then nodded. He jogged back outside, down the steps, and up Sylvan. At Water Street, he saw the ambulances trailing the march. He ran and caught up to them just as they turned onto Broad Street.

“Make sure you got your runnin shoes on,” someone yelled to him from the sidewalk. Easton turned and saw a team of White men leaning against a building.

He smiled at them and then ran between the ambulances and up to the tail of the marchers. He could see ahead of him that John and Hosea had just started up the incline of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The two lines of marchers moved to the sidewalk even though the highway was completely empty in both directions. There was no traffic on the bridge that day, and the police kept the ambulances from following them.

Easton moved through the line slowly. After passing a few people, he stood on his toes to see if he could spot Sandra farther up front. He didn’t see her, but if she was wearing a scarf over her head like many of the other women, there would be no way to distinguish her until he got up close. He pushed past more people and then jumped up to see again. As he came down, he landed on the heel of a little girl in front of him and nearly knocked her over. Everyone looked at him, too tense to speak.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He picked up her white purse and handed it back to her. She took it and just stared at him, her eyes already wide with fear. He moved forward through the center of the two lines. The protests he was used to were always full of singing and shouting, but everyone here seemed peculiarly quiet and moved aside for him without a word. He’d made it more than halfway to the front of the line when he reached the top of the bridge. The marchers suddenly slowed. He looked down the decline, and there, less than a hundred yards away, blocking the street, were helmeted state troopers with gas masks, their nightsticks out in front of them. Behind them were men on horseback, guns in their holsters.

Easton stopped in his tracks. For a second, he forgot all about Sandra. The marchers continued forward, though more slowly and closer together, down the bridge toward the troopers. Easton fell into one of the lines and for the first time felt trapped within the river of people around him. He could no longer see in front of him or to the side. A middle-aged woman with a long, lean nose blinked at him as she took his hand. His arms began to shake, and he felt squeezed between this woman and the back of a man’s jacket. He considered turning around, but the people were like a strong current forcing him ahead. He tried to walk on his toes to see what was happening. Photographers ran down the open street of the empty bridge, swarming around them like mosquitoes. Down below, the troopers slapped their nightsticks in their palms. Easton lowered himself back on his heels and stared again into the man’s jacket. And there, on that black wool canvas, not more than six inches from his face, he pictured Ronald, bloody and beaten. The cold memory flashed into Easton’s mind and made him shiver. He brushed at his cheek. But too much remembering was impossible, for the immediate danger kept him in the present.

He let go of the woman’s hand, and though she did not let go of his, he shook himself loose and fell farther back in line. People bumped and jostled his shoulders as they passed. Though he’d slowed, he still reached the other side of the bridge, and Hosea and John led the lines across the street to a grassy strip in the center of the highway.

The marchers stopped ten yards away from the troopers, who looked like flies with round cans of oxygen attached to their plastic gas masks. One of the officers addressed them through a bullhorn: “It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march, and I’m saying that this is an unlawful assembly and you have to disperse. You are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continya.”

Easton started to turn around, but no one else moved, and shame held him in his place.

“Is that clear to you?” the officer yelled.

Hosea asked if he could have a few words with the man.

“I’ve got nothin further to say to you,” the officer replied.

They all stayed put. It wasn’t too late to go back, Easton thought. To one side of the highway was a Volkswagen van with the ABC emblem on it. The press men were separated and placed in front of a car dealership. In addition to the reporters, there were almost a hundred White spectators, and farther back was a place for Negro spectators.

Easton saw a familiar face in the group of White spectators. It looked like Sandra with sunglasses on and a scarf, but he could not be sure. She turned away quickly, as if she had not wanted to be seen, but then he saw another woman who looked like Sandra too, but larger.

He was still looking into the crowd when the troopers moved forward toward the marchers, slapping their nightsticks in their hands like starving men licking their lips. Their ranks began to gather together in the middle to meet Hosea and John head-on like a battering ram. Easton felt the people around him tighten together even more, squeezing the breath out of him. The troopers kept coming as the marchers stood their ground. It did not seem possible: even looking into each other’s eyes, it seemed as though neither side believed it could happen, and yet it seemed unavoidable, like the drivers of two trucks heading toward each other without brakes, bracing themselves for impact. The troopers walked right into Hosea and John, pushing them back. The people in front were smashed into Easton, and the people behind him pushed him forward. The line collapsed into itself, and those in the front were knocked to the ground. There was screaming all around as the troopers continued to advance, stepping on the fallen marchers, beating them down with their nightsticks. At first Easton was in shock, but then others around him turned and ran back toward the bridge.

The White spectators cheered.

He turned and ran as fast as he could, faster than many of the others around him, and yet he heard the officers on horseback now, catching up to him from behind. One swung down with his club and hit him in the back of the head. The blow seemed to smash his brain into the upper palate of his mouth. He fell to the ground and heard shots, and then a cloud of tear gas filled the air. His hands burned and ripped against the pavement. The officers on foot were still advancing. Easton stood up, pressing his torn palms against his ears to stop the pain in his head. Just before the smoke reached him, he turned and saw Charles and two other men carrying an injured woman to the side of the road. He went back toward her but choked on the gas and pulled his shirt over his face. The men on horseback circled below them again and chased the crowd. Easton turned and ran up the bridge, but the sounds of the horses clopping on the pavement grew louder, so he tensed himself, ready for another blow to the back of his head, his temples already pounding with pain.