Night on Fire

by Ronald Kidd

  Daddy explained in that soft, gentle voice of his, the one he used to reassure me. “Sweetheart, you know why. It was black and white together.”

  “Mama said black and white should be separated.”

  “She’s right. It’s better that way. Maybe this proves it.” It’s what I had been taught in a thousand little ways—separate entrances, separate drinking fountains, separate ways of talking to people and looking at them. It had been passed to me, and I had taken it. But today, seeing what had happened in my town, I thought of Lavender’s question: Would I pass it on?

  At supper that night, Mama served roast beef. Afterward she brought out some apple pie. I took a bite, then pushed my plate away.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Mama studied me with a pinched, worried expression. After Daddy and I had gotten home, I’d gone to my room and a few minutes later had heard the two of them arguing. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could tell Mama was angry. Happy Mother’s Day.

  Mama glanced at Daddy, then back at me. “Your father told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?”

  What was there to say? My town was different from the way I’d thought it was. Maybe my father was too.

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  I could see her struggle to find words. “Bo Blanchard and those other people … what they did was wrong. It was vicious and mean. But the Negroes—”

  “Freedom Riders,” I said. “They weren’t all Negroes.”

  “Maybe they were a little bit wrong too.”

  “They just wanted to ride the bus.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Mama, “this is the way we are. We’ve lived like this for a hundred years. Things are changing, but they take time.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Daddy said in a quiet voice. “If the Freedom Riders hadn’t come here, would anyone have gotten hurt?”

  “Well, no,” I said.

  “Then don’t you think they might share some of the blame?”

  In the parking lot of Forsyth’s Grocery I had seen something awful. Was it here too, in my house, at our table? There were no angry mobs, no fires or threats, no clubs or chains—just apple pie, two cups of coffee, and a glass of milk. We weren’t burning buses or beating people up. We weren’t doing anything. Maybe that was the problem.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Everybody talked about it at school the next day. They called it “the burning bus,” like it was a movie or TV show. They were excited, and all I could think about was the way the passengers had been stretched out on the ground, bleeding and moaning. I tried to explain, but no one wanted to listen.

  “They got what they deserved,” said one girl.

  “I wasn’t surprised,” said another.

  Someone else said, “We’re good people. We just don’t like to be pushed.”

  The words had a hollow ring, and I realized why. Kids were just repeating what their parents had said. I pictured dinner tables all around town where opinions were dished out like casserole.

  The strange thing was that while the rest of us talked about it, the teachers didn’t say anything. They acted as if nothing had happened. Turn to page forty-three. What’s the value of x? Describe the Peloponnesian War. While they droned on, I thought about what I’d seen and heard.

  The ambulance called by the officer had arrived as Daddy and I left. Grant, who stayed to watch, told me the driver refused to accept any Negroes at first, but finally the white riders convinced him, and he took the most seriously injured to Anniston Memorial Hospital.

  Grant and his father followed the ambulance to the hospital, where the riders were given rooms and the situation calmed down for a while. But when the sun set, a crowd gathered outside the hospital. Things got ugly, and the Ku Klux Klan threatened to burn the place down. At that point, hospital staff asked the riders to leave. The riders called around desperately, trying to find someone who would take them.

  Finally, in the middle of the night, a caravan of cars pulled in from a Negro church in Birmingham. The riders limped out of the hospital and, while the police held back the crowd, were helped into the cars and driven off into the darkness.

  I learned something else from one of the boys at school. He told me the Klan had struck a deal with the police. The police, he said, had allowed the crowd fifteen minutes to do what they wanted to the bus passengers before stepping in. That would explain why the officers had leaned against the patrol car while the riders were beaten and the bus was burned.

  While I was talking to the boy, Janie Forsyth walked by. The boy snorted and looked away. She continued down the hallway, and the others turned their backs to her.

  “What are they doing?” I asked the boy.

  “Sending a message,” he said.

  I rode home from school that day with Grant. When I told him how the students had treated Janie, he shook his head. “That’s stupid. They just do whatever their parents do.”

  I thought about Mr. McCall moving through the crowd with his notepad, and Grant close behind with the camera.

  “So do you,” I said.

  I pedaled on ahead of him, eager to get home and see the afternoon paper. When I arrived, it was on the front porch, courtesy of Arthur the Arm. I tore off the string and opened the paper. Reading the headline and seeing the pictures confirmed it: what seemed like a bad dream had really happened.

  Mob Rocks, Burns Big Bus

  In County Racial Incidents

  ANNISTON – Racial mob violence that drew the nation’s attention to Anniston Sunday saw a Greyhound bus burned and sent at least a dozen passengers to Memorial Hospital.

  The article, written by Mr. McCall, went on to describe what had happened in front of Forsyth’s Grocery. Next to the story were some of Grant’s pictures.

  “Congratulations,” I shouted to Grant. “You made the paper.”

  He rode up behind me and looked over my shoulder. His father’s front-page article was good, but what brought the scene to life were the photos. They told the story in a few terrible images.

  Smoke billowed from the bus while the Freedom Riders sprawled on the ground outside. A highway patrol officer raised his pistol to warn the crowd. A fireman, too late to help, inspected the charred seats inside the bus. The ambulance driver tried to give first aid while one of the riders was carried off on a stretcher.

  “Congratulations?” said Grant. “I wish it had never happened.”

  We sat on the front steps and read the other articles. There had been two groups of Freedom Riders, one on Greyhound and another on a Trailways bus. The Trailways group had made it through Anniston and as far as Birmingham, but an angry crowd waiting at the station had attacked the riders, some of whom were now in critical condition. There were photos, and one showed a group of men clubbing a rider until his face was a bloody mess. The men in the photo looked a lot like the people who had attacked the bus in our own neighborhood. The faces were different, but the looks of anger and fear were the same.

  Grant spotted another article next to the photos. “Hey, listen to this,” he said. “The FBI is investigating what happened. They’re in town talking to the Klan. Some people are saying the FBI is here because of Robert Kennedy, the attorney general. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “If Robert Kennedy’s involved, then so is his brother, John F. Kennedy. The president knows what happened on our street!”

  Grant pointed to an article. “They’re even talking about it in Russia, on Radio Moscow. They’re using it as propaganda, saying what a bad place the United States is. They mentioned Anniston by name.”

  The thought of people in Moscow knowing about my town gave me the creeps.

  A few minutes later, Grant’s mom called him and he headed home. I looked down at the paper and saw the photos again. One of them showed the crowd, and I recognized Uncle Harvey Caldwell. His expression reminded me of that day at Forsyth’s when I had told him about the Freedom Riders. It was th
e first he had heard of them. Maybe he told some friends and they had told others. Maybe it was all because of me. I’d been trying to push the thought away, but it kept coming back.

  I gathered up the paper and went inside, where Lavender was feeding the baby. When I set the paper on the dining table, she glanced at it, and a look came over her face. Or rather, it was no look. Her face was blank, like she’d pulled a curtain across it.

  I didn’t know what to say. “I guess you heard what happened,” I told her.

  She nodded, then dipped a spoon into the little jar of baby food and fed it to Royal.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think what they did was awful.”

  She took a towel from over her shoulder and dabbed his chin.

  I watched her face, looking for signs of the Lavender I knew. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  She grunted. “Nothing to say.”

  I wanted to ask what Jarmaine had seen at the Greyhound station, but Lavender wasn’t supposed to know Jarmaine had been there. For that matter, Lavender might not even realize I knew her daughter.

  “I met Jarmaine,” I said.

  The curtain lifted for a moment. Lavender seemed nervous, and I wondered why.

  I said, “I talked to her at the spelling bee. Then I went to see Mr. McCall at the Anniston Star, and she was there. I like her.”

  “She’s a good girl,” said Lavender.

  “Is she at the paper today?”

  “No.”

  “What does she do after school?” I asked. “Is she at home?”

  Lavender nodded. “She’s all alone.”

  There was something about the way she said it. I thought she’d been saying those words in her head for a long time, like the refrain to a sad song.

  I said, “I wish you could be with her.”

  Lavender blinked, then dipped the spoon into the jar and fed Royal.

  I sat with her a few more minutes, then went into the kitchen, where Mama kept Lavender’s address and phone number taped to the side of the refrigerator. I copied the address on a scrap of paper, tucked it into my pocket, and headed out the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The town of Anniston was really two towns.

  There was the part I knew, with Wikle’s Drugs, the Anniston Star, and Mason’s Self-Service Department Store. Then there was another part, centered around the intersection of Fifteenth and Pine, where the faces were black.

  I rode my bike down Fifteenth, passing Cobb Avenue High School, Golightly’s Barber Shop, and Jubilation Car Repair. When I came to Pine Avenue, I stopped to rest. It was a warm day—“close,” as Mama would say, which meant the wet, hot air pressed against you like a blanket. I looked around and saw low brick buildings. People drifted in and out, shopping and passing the time. A young mother with four children entered a big church building made of gray stones. The sign said Miracle Revival Temple.

  According to the paper in my pocket, Lavender’s house was just a few blocks farther, at 1605 Moore Avenue. When I turned onto that street, a woman with brown skin and gray hair stopped in her tracks and gaped at me as if she’d spotted some exotic bird. I smiled. She just stared.

  The house, a white wooden bungalow with redbrick steps, was old but neat. I could see Lavender’s touch on the front porch in a jar of pansies. She came to my house nearly every day, but I had never seen hers.

  I parked my bike on the sidewalk, went up the steps, and knocked on the screen door. I heard footsteps, and Jarmaine appeared behind the screen, wearing a summer dress. When she saw me, her eyes opened wide.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Visiting.”

  Jarmaine glanced up and down the street. “People might not like it. You know, after yesterday.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” she told me.

  “Mr. McCall wrote about it. Did you see the paper?”

  Jarmaine nodded.

  I said, “You were at the bus station. What happened?”

  She looked past me. I turned and saw the woman with gray hair watching us from the sidewalk.

  Jarmaine pushed open the screen door, her face tense. “Come on in.”

  It was warm in the house. An electric fan turned from side to side, barely moving the air. It reminded me of the way our house had been before we got air-conditioning.

  The living room was perfectly straight and clean. I got the feeling that, like my grandmother’s living room, you only sat in there on Sundays or if somebody died. Beyond it was the dining room, where Jarmaine’s notebook and papers were spread across the table. Her social studies book was battered and worn. I recognized it as one we had used at Wellborn before we got our new textbooks.

  “I’m having a Dr. Pepper,” said Jarmaine. “You like RC Cola, right?”

  “Did your mom tell you that?”

  “She tells me everything.”

  While Jarmaine disappeared into the kitchen, I took a minute to look around. I’d never been in Lavender’s house, but I recognized a dozen details: the way she stacked coasters by the lamp, kept a folded quilt in the rocking chair, lined up family photos on the mantel.

  Jarmaine returned from the kitchen and approached the table. She picked up two of the coasters and used them for the soft drink bottles. Then she settled into a chair, and I sat across from her.

  I took a gulp of RC. It tasted good. Mostly, it tasted cold.

  I said, “You told me you were going to the Greyhound station to see the Freedom Riders.”

  Jarmaine nodded. “I thought it would be exciting. It was awful.”

  She studied her bottle but I could tell she was seeing a very different scene. “When I got to the station, the first thing I noticed was the cars. They were parked up and down Gurnee Avenue like there was a concert or a festival. I had expected just a few people, but there was a whole crowd milling around the station. They were white, and they carried clubs and chains.”

  “Were there any Negroes?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Maybe they were still in church. Maybe they’d heard there would be trouble. Anyway, it was just me. I was scared, so I watched from across the street. When the bus turned the corner, the crowd started yelling. ‘Go home!’ ‘Communist!’ Things like that. Hateful things.

  “The bus pulled up next to the station, and the crowd surrounded it. They beat on the side of the bus. One man lay down in front to keep it from leaving, and another one slashed the tires with a knife. Somebody threw a rock and broke a window. I was across the street, but I could feel the hate. I wondered what it must be like inside the bus.

  “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 ca
used 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.