Night on Fire (11 page)

My mouth was dry, so I headed for the kitchen and got some water. I needed something to do. Remembering Daddy's words, I turned on the light, drew some water in the sink, and washed the dishes. It would help Mama, but it would also take my mind off strange fruit.

When I finished, I switched off the light and padded back down the darkened hallway, passing the little table where we kept our phone. It was all I could do to keep from lifting the receiver and calling Grant. Maybe he knew what had happened to the Freedom Riders.

I stared at the phone. Finally I took it off the table and, leaning against the wall, slid down to the floor. I cradled the phone against me and rocked it gently.

“Billie?”

I opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed through the window. Mama stood over me, clutching her bathrobe around her.

“Did you spend the night here?” she asked.

“I guess so,” I mumbled.

“Silly girl.”

She leaned over and kissed my forehead, then went back to her room to get dressed.

I thought of the Freedom Riders, and suddenly I was wide-awake. Bracing the phone against my legs, I picked up the receiver and dialed the McCalls' house.

There was a click, and Grant's mom answered.

I said, “Hey, Mrs. M., is Grant there?”

“Hi, Billie. He and his dad are at the office. They went early this morning.”

“On Saturday?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It was something about the Freedom Riders.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up.

I had scribbled Mr. McCall's work number on a pad by the phone. I started to reach for it, then changed my mind. I jumped to my feet, put the phone back, and hurried to my room. I threw on jeans and a T-shirt, then ran my fingers through my hair and hurried down the hall. Mama was just coming out of the bedroom.

“Have to go,” I said.

“Billie—”

The screen door slammed. I was out the door and on my bike, pedaling for town.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I didn't telephone Mr. McCall, because I probably wouldn't have gotten through. When I arrived at the
Star
, he was on the phone. So were Grant and Jarmaine. As soon as they finished one call, they would hang up and dial another.

Mr. McCall saw me, nodded, and kept right on talking. “How many? Are they still in Birmingham?”

He took notes on a pad. “Uh-huh. Bull Connor? Right. So, what'll he do? Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. Kennedy? Really? Okay. Keep me posted, huh?”

He hung up and started to dial again.

“What happened?” I asked him.

He kept dialing. It was Jarmaine, just finishing a call of her own, who answered my question.

“They came back,” she told me.

I said, “The Freedom Riders? I thought Bull Connor was going to … you know.”

Jarmaine shook her head. “It turns out that when he took them from jail Thursday night, he didn't hurt them. He just drove them to the Tennessee state line and dropped them off, luggage and all. Middle of the night, middle of nowhere. He told them, ‘There's the Tennessee line. Cross it, and save this state and yourselves a lot of trouble.'”

I pictured the scene and tried to imagine how the riders must have felt, miles from home, with no idea where they were or what would happen.

“What did they do?” I asked.

“They gathered up their bags, found a phone, and called Diane Nash.”

“So they went home?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Home? Lord, no. She sent cars to pick them up, and they rode back to Birmingham.”

“Really? They're in Birmingham?”

“They
were
in Birmingham.”

Grant, off the phone, chimed in. “They left. They're riding on!”

Mr. McCall, who had just hung up, saw the look of confusion on my face. “There were twenty-one of them, including eleven more from Nashville. They decided to catch the first bus from Birmingham to Montgomery, but when they got to the station, there was an angry crowd, and the drivers refused to go. That's when Robert Kennedy got busy.”

“You know, the attorney general,” said Grant. “The president's brother.”

Mr. McCall nodded. “He was on the phone for hours, talking to the governor and the head of Greyhound. Kennedy threatened to bring in federal troops, and finally they made a deal. Greyhound would drive them, and the highway patrol would protect them. Early this morning, before the mob could gather again, the riders got on a bus and headed for Montgomery with a police escort.”

The phone rang, and Mr. McCall picked it up.

I turned to Jarmaine. “So they're all right?”

“I hope so.”

Next to her, Mr. McCall said, “What!”

He tucked the receiver under his chin, grabbed a pad, and began taking notes. “Uh-huh. Right. Oh my God.”

Grant and Jarmaine glanced at each other.

Mr. McCall scribbled. We waited. Finally, he replaced the receiver and looked up at us. His face was pale.

“There was a riot in Montgomery,” he said, and referred to his notes. “A crowd was waiting for the bus, and they attacked the riders as they got off. Men had pipes and chains, women swung their purses, and children scratched with their fingernails. Meanwhile the cops were off to the side, calmly directing traffic. Twenty people were hurt, some seriously. A few are unconscious.”

“Is the riot over?” asked Jarmaine in a small voice.

“Seems to be,” said Mr. McCall. “The riders were taken to the hospital. The crowd gathered up the suitcases and built a bonfire in front of the bus station.”

Jarmaine stood motionless, her expression stony. Tears ran down her cheeks. Grant put a hand on her shoulder.

She said, “How can people do that?”

Mr. McCall shook his head sadly. “I don't understand. I truly don't.”

“You think the riders will keep going?” I asked.

Jarmaine blinked, and her expression changed. She gazed at me, her eyes flashing.

“They won't stop now,” she declared.

“There's a mass meeting tomorrow night at First Baptist Church in Montgomery, to show support for the Freedom Riders,” said Mr. McCall. “The riders will be there. So will the Negro leaders. Martin Luther King is coming in from Atlanta.”

Jarmaine said, “Dr. King? Really?”

“Isn't he a preacher?” I asked.

“Dr. King is more than just a preacher,” Grant told me. “He leads protests, like the Montgomery bus boycott. He's an activist.”

The way Grant said the word made it sound like an honor. I'd heard Uncle Harvey Caldwell talk about Martin Luther King, but when Uncle Harvey called him an activist, it sounded different.

“Are you planning to write this up for the paper?” I asked Mr. McCall.

“You bet,” he said, flipping through his notepad, “but I need more information.”

He turned to Jarmaine. “We'll put a news flash in this afternoon's paper. Then, once we've got all the facts, I'll do an article for the Sunday edition.”

Mr. McCall went back to his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and fed it into his typewriter. Grant reached for the phone. Jarmaine headed to the door, and I followed. She took a seat out front, on the bench where I'd found her that first day. That had been less than two weeks ago, but it seemed like another lifetime in a different town, a place where people were kind and wouldn't hurt you. Thinking back on it, I wondered if that town had ever existed.

I sat down next to Jarmaine. She opened a brown paper bag, pulled out some peanut-butter crackers, and offered me one. She ate one herself, looking over the trees toward Montgomery, where the riders were healing and getting ready to continue their trip to New Orleans.

“I'm going,” she said.

“Huh? Where?”

She turned and gazed at me. “To First Baptist Church. To the meeting. To see the Freedom Riders and hear Dr. King.”

“For the newspaper?” I asked.

“For me.”

I said, “Will your mother let you?”

“I'll leave early tomorrow morning. By the time she finds out, I'll be gone.”

I bit into the cracker. “It's a long way to Montgomery. If your mother doesn't drive you, how will you get there?”

Jarmaine shrugged. “I'll take the bus.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

That stupid rooster.

He woke up at sunrise every morning, which was fine during the week. On weekends, though, I liked to sleep late—or as late as Mama would let me before rousting me out of bed to help with breakfast.

When the rooster crowed that morning, I remembered it was Sunday. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. It was pink and orange, the color of the horizon.

In an hour or so, Mama would come in. We'd go to the kitchen and make Daddy's favorite coffee cake. Then all of us would dress up and go to church, where Pastor Bob would pray about loving our neighbors.

I loved my neighbors. I loved my town. But how far did love go? Did it stretch to Fifteenth and Pine where Jarmaine lived? Did it stretch to Birmingham or Montgomery?

Maybe love wasn't the answer. If you asked the Freedom Riders, they might say they just wanted respect.
Ignore me, even hate me, but let me live. Give me a chance
. Surely people could understand that. Somehow, though, my town didn't.

I had spent my life watching. When you watch, you notice. You think. You get restless. I wanted to do something.

Reaching over to the nightstand, I opened the drawer and took out the bus schedule. The Birmingham bus was leaving at nine fourteen, and Jarmaine would be on it. From there she would connect to Montgomery, where she would arrive by midafternoon. The trip wasn't long, but if you were by yourself, it might seem like an eternity.

It might go faster if you were with a friend.

The thought popped into my head like the flash on Grant's camera, freezing the action and lighting up the shadows. For as long as I could remember, I had watched the bus drive by my house. I had dreamed that someday I'd get on it and leave. I would go anywhere and do whatever I wanted. I would have perfect freedom.

Jarmaine wanted freedom, but it wasn't a dream and it wasn't perfect. It was something to fight for. It was a seat on the bus, and I could help her get it.

If I asked permission, Mama and Daddy would say no. Sometimes, though, you don't ask. You just do it, because you have to.

I put away the bus schedule and went to the window. The sky had turned bright red, flooding the yard with color. A nuthatch sang, and a pair of downy woodpeckers tapped on a tree trunk.

The day was just beginning. It could be any old Sunday, or it could be special. I took a deep breath. I looked off in the distance toward Montgomery.

I was tired of watching. I wanted to be a rider.

I found Jarmaine in front of the Greyhound station, sitting on the curb with a basket next to her. She had seemed so strong the day before, when she had talked about her plans. She seemed smaller now, like a young child.

I thought of a day at the state fair when I was seven years old and wanted to go on the Rotor. It was a giant cylinder where people would file inside and stand against the wall. When the ride started, the cylinder would tilt, then spin faster and faster. The floor would fall away, and the people inside would be pinned against the wall, staring down into blackness, held up by the laws of physics and nothing more. They screamed their guts out. It frightened me, but something about it was thrilling.

Daddy had seen me watching, my hands and face sticky with cotton candy.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“I could never do that.”

“It seems impossible,” he told me, “but thousands of people do it every year. You know how?”

He looked down at me with a sweet smile on his face.

“They take one step, then another, then another. Before they know it, they're inside, whirling around and having the time of their lives.”

I rode the Rotor that day. Daddy was beside me, screaming his guts out, grinning, and holding my hand.

Today Daddy was across town, sleeping next to Mama. I knew because I had peeked through the doorway and seen them. I had gone to my room and taken some allowance money from the top drawer of my dresser. Then I'd put on a dress, tiptoed to the kitchen, and gulped down some orange juice. I'd written a note telling them I was fine and would be back soon, but I hadn't said where I was going. I'd propped the note up on the counter and slipped out the door, feeling like a thief.

“Hey,” I said to Jarmaine.

She looked up from the curb, startled.

“Want to take a trip?” I asked.

“You're going?”

“I think so. I'm scared.”

“So am I,” said Jarmaine.

She glanced over her shoulder at the station, a little brick building with an awning on the front and an alley on the side where the buses pulled in and out.

She said, “My mother wouldn't do this. My grandmother wouldn't. My grandmother's grandmother couldn't.”

“Couldn't?” I asked. “Why not?”

“She was a slave.”

The word hit me like a slap across the face. Jarmaine's great-great-grandmother, maybe very much like Jarmaine herself, had lived in a world where you could be bought and sold like a sack of potatoes. I thought of what I had learned in history class and realized that Jarmaine's idea of American history must be very different from mine.

Jarmaine straightened her shoulders. “I've decided to use the front door.”

“Okay,” I said.

She studied my face. “You don't understand. The colored door is around the side, on the alley.”

I'd seen the signs all my life at the bus station, in parks, at the movies:
Colored Only
. The signs were posted over doors and restrooms and drinking fountains. I'd never thought much about them. They were part of the landscape, like sidewalks and traffic lights. At the city pool, there was even a day called “colored only,” when, once a month, Negroes were allowed to swim there. The next day, the pool was drained, then filled up again so white people could use it.