Leaving: A Novel (34 page)

As he got closer to the Selma side of the bridge, the men whom Easton had seen lounging against the building earlier now blocked the way. They attacked the fleeing crowd with whips and electric cattle prods, but the horsemen and tear gas behind the marchers forced them into the ambush.

The little girl he’d stepped on earlier was in front of him, her braided pigtails whipping from side to side. Easton crouched with his hand on his head and followed her through the posse. They seemed to leave her untouched. But then his eye caught the eye of one man with a bullwhip, and as if that momentary connection had irrevocably fated them together, the man hollered and ran toward Easton, his hairy arm raised. With a reaction deeper than thought, Easton ducked behind the little girl and shielded himself. She screamed, as much at Easton as at the attacker. The whip sliced the air and cut her neck. The man froze in a moment of shock, and Easton dashed past the girl.

He ran forward again blindly, not knowing any longer which direction it was to the church. He ran through the streets of Selma with screams behind and around him. He ran as fast as his tired legs would take him, and as if a tunnel surrounded him, he saw nothing but the light of a clearing far off in front of him that he had to reach. He ran for that clearing, but never seemed to close in on it as the noise continued to suffocate him. He turned the corner on to a side street and there was a loud crash behind him. He put his hands over his ears as the throbbing became a ringing and the ringing became a high squeal, like the long, pained whistle of a train. The tunnel around him narrowed, and the clearing in the distance became more and more remote until finally it closed and there was nothing ahead of him but darkness.

*   *   *

WHEN HE CAME
to, he was inside of Brown’s Chapel again, in a makeshift infirmary where doctors and nurses bandaged people’s ribs and wrists and carried others out on ambulance stretchers. His face was pressed into the white uniform of a nurse’s stomach as she wrapped his head with cool, wet gauze. The relief was so great that he wanted to reach out and put his arms around her and fall asleep against her belly as he used to in Ruby’s lap. She stepped away to dip more gauze in a bucket of water, the back of her neck visible below a straight line of blond hair. It was Sandra.

She hadn’t been on the march at all. She’d been safe in this church with all the angels looking over her. He could feel his head start to throb again and he closed his eyes. This was the woman he’d traveled two thousand miles to see. She looked different, though. He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t hallucinating. She wore glasses and had cut her hair. She directed another nurse to bring her a pair of scissors.

She finished wrapping his head and looked at him, her face filled with concern. He turned away. She dipped a towel in the bucket of water and wiped down his chest, which he realized was naked.

“You need to go to the hospital,” she said. “You probably have a concussion.”

“I thought I saw you at the front of the march.”

“No. I’ve been here. We listened on the walkie-talkie. Your tooth’s broken. Doesn’t it hurt?”

He reached up to touch it. “I thought you would be in the march.”

She shook her head. “SNCC decided not to be a part of it because we knew something like this would happen. I didn’t even know you were coming.”

He lay back in the chair. He was sure there was somebody laughing nearby—or were they crying? He didn’t want to open his eyes to figure it out.

“What happened out there?” she asked him.

“We were surrounded. Ambushed.”

“Oh God,” she said. “God. I knew this would happen.”

He opened his eyes just enough to see her face close to his, washing the cuts off his cheek. She was focused on the job, concerned, but like a careful archaeologist. She went to the sink and wrung out the towel, then returned to stand in front of him.

“Why weren’t you marching?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the one who said I should come.”

“I thought you decided not to.”

“I did.”

“But you came.”

He stared at her face, her puzzled look, as though she could not even fathom his motivation. He couldn’t tell her, not if it wasn’t obvious to her already. But to come all this way and not be sure, not force the point.

“I came for you.”

“For me?” She stepped back from him with the towel to her chest. “You didn’t come for me.”

“Yes I did.”

“Not for me.”

He didn’t reply.

“But I didn’t ask you to come for me.” She shook her head as if she were being accused of causing an awful accident. His head pounded again. He could see in her eyes the same frightened look she had when she’d left his bedroom, as if she were being forced into some obligation. She would only resent him more now. He must have seemed pathetic, like a beggar—exactly what he had sworn he’d never be, especially to her.

Charles trudged into the infirmary cradling the little girl whom Easton had used as a shield. He laid her on a table and then went back outside. Easton grabbed the towel from Sandra’s hand and covered his face.

“I don’t know why I came,” he said. He stood up, his head still dizzy. He staggered to his shirt, which hung from the handle of a cabinet. He put it on, and when Charles came in again, he took his arm.

“Come on, man,” Easton said. “We’re leaving.”

“What?”

“I’m taking off.” He was bent forward as if he couldn’t hold up the weight of his head.

“Where are you going?” Sandra said, but Easton didn’t answer her, saying instead to Charles, “Are you coming, man?”

“But we’re right in the middle of it,” Charles said. “There are a hundred and fifty officers with rifles and shotguns out on the street.”

“Well, I’m taking off. I’ve had enough. You were right. You’ve been right all along.”

“About what? Where you gonna go?”

“Wherever.”

Charles hesitated and looked at Sandra.

“You can get a ride with me or someone else around here,” she said to him.

Easton turned sharply and stood up straight with a rage greater than his pain. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to the wall. He gripped her so hard that she shrank down.

“Why are you doing this?” he yelled. “Tell me why you are doing this!” A sharp pain shot through his head with every word.

“What?”

“I mean all this! Why did you come all the way to Alabama? I don’t get it. I don’t get why you are here with all of us. Why don’t you get out of the way and let us take care of our own problems? You’re one of them. You’re the enemy, don’t you see that? When all these niggers look at you, you know what they see? They see some spoiled rich White girl who’s coming in for a little guilt time, and then you’ll go back into your daddy’s safe White world.”

“Hey, brother,” Charles said. “Let the sister be.”

“I am not your brother,
brothah.
” He pushed Sandra away in disgust. “And she is not our sister.”

He looked around the room, and everyone was staring at him as if he’d changed into some sort of werewolf.

“Why don’t you stay?” Sandra said. “You’re hurt.”

“No. I’m not hurt. You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. Don’t ever think about me again.” He stormed toward the door, hiding his face as he passed the little girl, a nurse dabbing at her bleeding neck with iodine.

*   *   *

THE PAIN THROBBED
inside Easton, compounding the confusion. He drove the residential streets of Selma until he realized that the main road was the blocked bridge. He pulled into a gas station, parked by the air pump, and stared at the wooden fence in front of him, his mind still trying to come to some resting place, some sure decision about what he needed to do.

Nothing seemed to pull him, as though he were an empty shell without a clear sense of himself. What did he know for sure about who he was? He wasn’t certain how he felt about Sandra or the movement or school or art. It all seemed to be about something else that wasn’t him. Every direction he wanted to turn felt full of half-truths and ulterior motives that he couldn’t bear. There wasn’t one thing that felt pure and true to himself. What did he have at that moment that he knew was good and pure and himself? He had the car, which he’d built with his own sweat and the knowledge of how to do it. And he had the trip, this trip that had destroyed everything, but was inside him. It was still inside him. Seeing Sandra had only made it worse. In some way, he had to get it out. He leaned his pounding head onto the steering wheel and closed his eyes.

It was getting into evening, and the crickets were creaking softly beyond the station and the houses. Somewhere between resting and dreaming, Easton pictured Ronald’s face again, and then he remembered the night five years ago. He was almost fourteen, lying in bed, falling asleep. His room was right next to Ruby’s, so he was awakened when Ronald climbed in through her window from the porch, breathing hard and laughing. It was a few days after Ronald’s article about the pesticides came out in the paper.

Easton got out of bed, crept to the door, and peeked into Ruby’s room. It was lit by the moon, and he could see their shapes. His half sister slept naked in the summer, and he often watched her make love to Ronald. She held open the muslin spread at the top as Ronald tunneled his way down, kissing and tickling her pregnant belly.

“Shh. Love E right in there,” Ruby said.

Easton stepped back behind the wall for a second, holding his breath as Ruby got up and closed the door. But as soon as he heard her walk away, he crouched down onto his knees and looked through the keyhole.

Laughing, Ruby flung herself onto the bed as Ronald undressed, carefully folding his slacks into quarters and placing them on his shirt and socks. He got in bed and they began to kiss.

“Your breath smell like tomatoes,” she whispered. He nodded but did not stop kissing her. They moved together for a while and then threw the covers off their sweaty bodies. They were joined only at the hips and where their fingers traced along each other’s warm skin.

Easton went back to his bed and touched himself, thinking of his half sister’s dark black body heaving in pleasure. With the song of crickets returning to lull his mind, he fell asleep. Not long after, from within a dream, he heard tires rolling slowly over the pebbles outside the house. Car doors opened but did not shut. The porch stairs creaked. He sat up and stared at a small circle of light across the ceiling, not sure if he was yet awake. The crickets still screamed in his ears. Then something crashed through the window in the other room. Easton jumped up and ran into the room to see.

“What was that?” he asked. A chair lay on the floor in the middle of broken glass.

“Get under the bed, Easton,” Ronald said. He stood and pulled on his slacks, his eyes wide. A man with a light strapped onto his forehead entered though the bedroom door and another man climbed in the broken window. Easton rolled under the bed frame as he’d been told. He could see everything as his face rested against the dusty floorboards.

Ronald charged at the man in the door, and a dark bar hit him in the head. Wetness sprayed Easton’s cheek and Ruby screamed from the bed above him. More men ran into the room from all sides. Easton heard the swish of the bar through the air again, and Ronald fell to the floor beside him, holding his head.

“Stan, weh dat gun?” a voice asked.

“Here.”

“You tell me how our chilren spose to eat. I got four chilren, you ugly piece of black shit.” The shot from the gun shook the floor and Ruby screamed again.

The men surrounded the bed, their dirty boots lined up close to Easton’s face. He moved under the middle of the mattress and shut his eyes.

“Free piece of poontang,” one of them said.

“We aren’t like that,” a second man said to him. “We done what was right. We done justice. Now let’s go.”

“But she saw everything. She seen who we are.”

Easton watched one pair of boots lift from the floor, and the bed creaked as the man crawled upon it.

“You don’t live here no more. You hear? Go far away. Leave for your own good.”

There was no answer.

The man crawled off the bed and they all left the room.

Easton listened to the boots shuffle out of the house and down the porch. Doors slammed shut, the car started, and the engine whined in reverse. Easton slowly reached up to his cheek and wiped at the wet spray of Ronald’s blood.

*   *   *

A MAN KNOCKED
on the passenger window and Easton jumped. It was a White gas-station attendant. Easton rolled down the window a crack.

“You should get on home,” the man said. He was young, Easton’s age, his hands dark with oil. “There’s a curfew for Negroes and they’ll arrest you, even if you’re drivin.”

“How can I get toward Montgomery? They got the bridge closed down.”

“Just take this road and turn left. It follows Route 80. You can get back on after a few miles down.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” The man wiped his hands in a rag and walked back to the station.

Easton started his car and backed out of the parking lot. He didn’t decide to go anywhere for sure, just to get going, but he knew he couldn’t return to California yet; something was still unsettled. So he drove east through the backwoods as he was told, until he reached the next town and got onto the highway.

His sense of being in a dream remained. The dusk of evening lit the side of the highway, dense with stripped trees just beginning their budding. The white, gray, and brown branches pointed in a thousand directions, but they were beautiful and calming in their stillness. Row after row of trees waited confidently for the spring to renew them, their bare arms toward the sky. After his dream, the recent past of the march was not as sharply in focus for him as the more distant past of his childhood. But now it was not the childhood of Ronald’s death or of Papa Samuel’s beatings; it was the clouded, removed feeling of drifting through a less complicated world.

The sky was large and open above the road as he traveled farther into the countryside. Hidden in that thicket by the highway were wooden shacks and brick tract homes. Somewhere a boy searched for something to do, trying to start fires by striking rocks together and then, with frustration, throwing the rocks at lizards that dashed for cover under the mulch of pine needles and dried leaves. Somewhere in the woods, as in Norma, there was a distant river running over brown rocks, and lakes with catfish twitching their whiskers in the stagnant pools. Easton remembered standing as a child with Ronald by the side of those pools, holding a stick for a fishing rod, to which he’d tied a piece of string and a hook. Even with no bait, at least once a week, a catfish would bite that hook as it snapped the surface of the water like a mosquito. At least once a week, he’d hold that fish in his hands, remove the hook, and take it home to show his mother and father.