Night on Fire

by Ronald Kidd

  “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.

  I didn’t think about the signs, but Jarmaine had to. When she went to the bus station, she couldn’t go through the front door. Neither could Lavender or anyone else who shopped at Fifteenth and Pine. If Jarmaine walked through that door, she would be breaking the law.

  “I was planning to do it last Sunday,” said Jarmaine, “but instead I stood across the street. The mob rocked the bus and dented it with pipes. They broke the windows and slashed the tires. The riders could have been killed, and I didn’t even go through the front door.”

  I thought of the times I’d walked through the front door of a store or the library or city hall. I’d never stopped to think about the people who couldn’t, or how it made them feel. I’d just walked on through like I owned the place. In a way, I did. It was given to me, and to all the other white babies, on the day I was born. Meanwhile, across town, another group of babies was born. Their parents worked and bought homes and paid taxes like mine, but they didn’t own the place.

  It was my town. But it was Jarmaine’s too, wasn’t it?

  Each day I did a thousand little things without thinking, while Jarmaine and her friends had to think and weigh and decide. If they didn’t, they could get into trouble. They could be hurt. They could end up like the song. Strange fruit.

  I stood there in front of the bus station and imagined the town of Anniston spread out before me, split in two. White only and colored only. Us and them. Safe and scared. I had lived my life in the safe part, ignoring the rest. When bad things happened, I didn’t notice. When the bus burned, I stood to
the side and watched.

  What would happen if I stepped out of the safe part? Would I be scared? Would I be hurt? If I was, what would I do?

  I’d been asking questions my whole life. It was time to get some answers.

  “You can go through the front door,” I told Jarmaine. “We’ll do it together. Then we’ll go to Montgomery.”

  She eyed me, weighing my words.

  “It might be a hard trip,” she said.

  “I think we can do it.”

  Jarmaine climbed to her feet and brushed off her dress. She picked up the basket, then turned to me.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  I fell in beside her. We took one step, then another, then another.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  No one noticed.

  We went through the front door, and no one said a thing. Maybe it was because the place was almost empty, or because the Greyhound workers were busy.

  I looked over at Jarmaine. She was blinking, and there were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  She glanced around. “When I was little, my mother told me the rules. Now I’m breaking them.”

  We went to the ticket window. A middle-aged man looked out at me.

  I said, “Montgomery, going through Birmingham. Two, please.”

  The man’s gaze slid over to Jarmaine, then back to me. He started to say something, then shook his head.

  He told me the price. I paid my part out of the money I’d taken from my dresser. Jarmaine opened her purse and paid her part, and we took our tickets.

  The man glanced at his watch, then up at me. He ignored Jarmaine.

  “It’ll be the next bus,” he said. “Twenty minutes or so.”

  I thanked him, and when I turned around, Jarmaine was headed for the door to the alley, where the bus would come. I followed her outside.

  “We could wait inside,” I told her.

  “I like it out here,” she said.

  Over her shoulder I noticed a sign on the side of the building: Colored Waiting Area. There were no chairs or vending machines, just an alley. I wondered if Jarmaine really did like it, or if she was just used to it.

  We stood and waited. The heat rose from the blacktop. I looked down the alley to the place where Grant had taken my picture, and I wondered what he was doing. I knew he wasn’t in church because his family didn’t go. Whenever I asked him what his religion was, he always said the same thing: justice.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go inside?” I asked Jarmaine.

  “Not this time,” she said. “That’s something else my mother told me. Choose your battles.”

  Finally the bus pulled into the alley. The door swung open, and an elderly white woman struggled down the steps. Behind her, the driver sprang to his feet and grasped her elbow.

  “Careful there, ma’am,” he said.

  Jarmaine stepped forward and took the woman’s hand, guiding her down the rest of the way. At the bottom, the woman smiled.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  The driver followed the woman down and got her suitcase from the luggage compartment. Then we gave him our tickets and climbed the steps.

  There were just a few people on the bus—a young white family with a boy and a girl sitting next to the windows on one side, two old white men off to themselves, and a middle-aged Negro woman in the last row. Jarmaine moved toward the family, then hesitated. She was looking at a row halfway back, just staring at it, as if some detail might suddenly pop up to let her know it was all right to sit there.

  I wondered how long she had thought about doing this. The whole thing seemed strange. To me, it was just a bus. It was just a seat. To Jarmaine, though, it was a lot more, and today I was seeing it through her eyes.

  Jarmaine took a deep breath and slid into the row. Behind me, the bus driver cleared his throat. Jarmaine studied her hands.

  “She’s with me,” I said and slipped in next to her.

  Jarmaine leaned over and whispered, “You don’t have to sit with me.”

  The driver, arms crossed, gazed at us for a long time. Maybe he thought about the way Jarmaine had helped the old woman. Whatever it was, he turned and took his place in the driver’s seat. He pulled a lever, and the door swung shut.

  I pictured what it must have been like last Sunday—the Freedom Riders huddled inside; the mob outside, pounding on the bus; people screaming terrible things, their faces filled with hate. A few weeks ago such a scene would have been hard to imagine. Now, a week after Mother’s Day, it was easy.

  The bus pulled out of the alley and into the street. We were on our way.

  We took Gurnee Avenue south, past the Star building to Eighth Street. Everything we saw was familiar to me. I’d seen it a hundred times on my bike and from the car when I came downtown with Mama and Daddy, but it looked different from a bus. Maybe it was the high angle, or knowing that others on the bus might never have seen it before.

  Across from us, the young mother was looking out the window. She probably thought that Anniston was a nice town. In the last row, the Negro woman looked out the window too. I wondered what she thought.

  We turned right on Eighth and headed west, out of town. At the city limits, Eighth Street became the Birmingham Highway, the two-lane road where I lived. I saw West Anniston Park, where I used to play on the swing set, and the little green house at the corner of Marshall Street where my friend Alice Cole lived. Wayside Baptist Church came up on the right. I saw from the sign that Pastor Bob had been busy again:

  Shouting “Oh God!” does not constitute going to church.

  A few minutes later we topped a hill, and there was Grant’s house, with mine just beyond. A jolt went through me when I saw Mama and Daddy in our front yard, talking with Grant and his parents. Daddy looked worried. Mama looked sad. Seeing them, it was all I could do to keep from telling the driver to stop. As we rumbled by, Grant glanced up at the bus, then watched as we drove down the hill.

  Forsyth’s Grocery was at the bottom. There was a blackened area in the parking lot made by the smoke of the burning bus. Next door was the little house where the Forsyths lived. Maybe Janie was inside, practicing for the national spelling bee. I wondered if spelling would ever again seem important to her.

  “That’s where it happened, isn’t it? Right there at the grocery.”

  Looking around, I saw Jarmaine gazing out the window. I nodded.

  “I thought it would be bigger,” she said.

  As we rode on, the store receded. Then we turned a corner and it was gone.

  Jarmaine lifted the basket she’d been carrying and set it on her lap. Inside, wrapped neatly in waxed paper, were pieces of fried chicken, some deviled eggs, and pie.

  “Why did you bring food?” I asked.

  “We always bring food on the bus,” Jarmaine told me.

  She glanced at me to see if I understood. I thought about the lunch counter at Wikle’s Drugs, where Jarmaine wasn’t allowed to eat, and I realized the Greyhound lunch counters would be the same. There were different rules for Negroes. The rules had been there all along, but I’d never thought much about them.

  I looked into the basket, and suddenly I was starved. Jarmaine shared the chicken with me, and I recognized Lavender’s recipe, which included a beautiful brown crust and lots of salt. I watched the other passengers while we ate. Jarmaine did too.

  She leaned over to me and whispered, “They’ve barely even noticed us. I thought they’d be upset.”

  It might sound funny, but I was almost disappointed. The Freedom Riders had faced a mob. All we got was a couple of old men and a family.

  I didn’t know it then, but I should have remembered what Mama always said.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The bus sailed along, rocking gently from side to side. Instead of driving on the road, we seemed to float above it, like one of those ocean liners you see in the m
ovies.

  We passed through the town of Bynum. Wellborn High played them in football, and my family and I had driven there for some of the games. At Eastaboga, a little farther along, the Birmingham Highway ended, and we turned onto Route 78.

  I liked being up high. You could see things. We swooped past houses, among rows of pine trees, and over rolling hills. I spotted a horse farm, a junkyard, and a deer processing plant. There were lots of churches. Some had signs but none were as good as Pastor Bob’s.

  We passed the road to Talladega and the little town of Lincoln, then rode a bridge over the Coosa River. Downstream, just out of sight, was a place where Daddy had taken me fishing. Across the bridge were a beauty parlor and a field of rusted-out cars. We got stuck behind a logging truck. I looked up to see a flock of birds shifting like a cloud.

  Somewhere past Harrisburg, the two old men on the bus started watching us. When I gazed back at them they looked away, but a few minutes later they were watching again. One had a sour expression on his face. The other just seemed curious. Every once in a while the sour one would mutter something to his friend.

  Jarmaine saw them too. I realized she must always be on guard, studying people’s faces. I had a feeling she’d been doing it her whole life.

  Soon the old men were watching us more openly. The parents noticed and stared at us too. The mother glanced at the last row, where the Negro woman sat with downcast eyes, then back at us. I looked at the passengers and they stared right back, like we were animals at the zoo.

  I noticed that the bus was quiet. Silence had settled over it like a dirty yellow fog. The tires hummed. I heard myself breathing. Next to me, Jarmaine shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable and knowing it wouldn’t happen.

  A feeling rose up inside me. I wanted to say to them, “Is something wrong? Is my hair messed up? Is my dress crooked? Is there food on my chin?”