Night on Fire

by Ronald Kidd

I clenched my fists, and Jarmaine must have noticed. She put her hand on my arm, but it didn’t stop the voice inside my head.

  “You want us to sit in back?” said the voice. “You want to kick us off? Maybe you want to burn the bus.”

  Jarmaine squeezed harder. The little girl played with her doll while her parents watched us. The doll reminded me of one I’d gotten when I was younger, during a brief frilly phase between football games. The little girl looked familiar. In fact, she could have been me. Her parents could have been mine.

  They were just watching. It seemed harmless, but I saw now that it was a weapon. Watching can hurt. It can be painful, even if you don’t lift a finger. It has weight. I felt it now, heavy against me, pushing us back, enforcing the rules. I had used it myself without even knowing it.

  The passengers watched. The little girl played. The bus rode on, bound for Birmingham.

  We came in next to the railroad tracks, in the poor part of town. There were shacks and shanties, places that made Jarmaine’s house look like a palace. Children played in yards that were mostly dirt. They looked up when they heard the bus coming, the way I did at home. Here and there people were dressed for church, like flowers growing through the pavement.

  We turned downtown and passed the Trailways station. I remembered how, on Mother’s Day, a second group of Freedom Riders had taken a Trailways bus through Anniston and made it as far as Birmingham, to this station, where they were attacked and beaten by an angry crowd. I’d seen photos of it in the paper, but today I had trouble putting those pictures together with the neat building on that quiet city street.

  The Greyhound station, just up the road, was a low structure that took up most of the block. This was where, after the riot, the original Freedom Riders had decided to stop. It was where the Nashville students, when they came on Wednesday to continue the ride, had been arrested and taken off to jail. They had been dumped at the border Thursday night and had come back to the station on Friday, but the buses wouldn’t take them. Finally, with a police escort, a bus had driven them out of town just yesterday morning. The convoy must have come right down the road we were on, sirens sounding and lights flashing, headed off to meet a mob in Montgomery.

  Our bus pulled into the loading area behind the station. The driver opened the door, and people gathered their things to get off. All Jarmaine and I had was her basket, so we were first down the aisle. The little girl stared as we walked by.

  “Have a good trip,” I told her.

  The driver gazed at us. I took a deep breath. Then we stepped off the bus and into Birmingham.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The lobby had a high ceiling that was lined with wood. Along the front entrance, windows stretched the full height of the building, and the morning light streamed in. On the floor were rows of wooden seats, like church pews. The ticket counter, baggage claim, and telephones lined the walls. Through a doorway to the left, I saw the restaurant that Jarmaine couldn’t use. A security guard was stationed by the door, the only sign that there had been trouble. Workers, all of them white, stood behind the counters. A Negro custodian swept the floor and dusted the seats.

  I checked the big clock above the ticket counter. It was almost eleven. The Montgomery bus was scheduled to leave at eleven thirty, so we had a half hour to wait. Without thinking, I sat in the white waiting area. Jarmaine hung back, eyeing a section in the corner marked Colored Only, where a well-dressed group of men, women, and children were crowded.

  “Sorry,” I said, getting to my feet.

  I started for the corner, but Jarmaine stopped me. She looked nervous but determined. Her eyes darted back and forth.

  Finally she said, “Let’s sit here.”

  Jarmaine took the place beside me. She held the basket in her lap like a shield.

  The security guard scanned the room. He wasn’t much older than some kids I knew at Wellborn High. When his gaze came to rest on us, he slowly walked over.

  “You’re not allowed here,” he told Jarmaine in a rough voice, as if trying to prove he meant it.

  She hugged the basket to her chest.

  “You hear me?” he said.

  “We’re not moving,” said a voice. I guess it was mine.

  “You can stay,” he told me. “She has to go.”

  Jarmaine said something, but I didn’t catch it. Neither did the guard.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I said, have you heard of Boynton versus Virginia?”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “It’s a Supreme Court case,” said Jarmaine. “Last December they ruled that segregation is unconstitutional in bus and train stations where there’s interstate commerce.”

  He didn’t answer. She might as well have been speaking Chinese.

  “Have you heard of the Freedom Riders?” asked Jarmaine.

  “The troublemakers? Yeah, they were here. Bull Connor fixed them.” He squinted, eyeing Jarmaine and then me. “Are you with them?”

  “Yes,” I answered. Well, we were in a way.

  “Aren’t you kind of young?” asked the guard.

  Jarmaine said, “We’re students like them.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “my friend and I are sitting together. We’re not moving.”

  There was confusion in his eyes. I saw something else too. It was fear—not of two girls but of the Freedom Riders. The riders had been mocked, beaten, and arrested, but the security guard was afraid of them. They hadn’t fought back, and they had earned a kind of power in spite of it—or maybe because of it. The thought made me determined to stay. I didn’t want to let them down.

  The guard eyed us again, then walked away. For a minute I thought we had won, but he came back with a stern-looking older man. On the pocket of the man’s shirt was a badge that said Station Manager.

  “We don’t want trouble,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “Neither do we.”

  The station, buzzing just a few minutes before, was quiet. The old man with the sour expression sat a few rows back, watching with a look I’d seen in the crowd at Forsyth’s Grocery—mean and stubborn, the face of a person who’s been beaten down and wants to fight back. I wondered who had done the beating, and why the man blamed Jarmaine.

  There were two dozen passengers in the station, and it seemed that all of them were staring at us. I thought of the mob at Trailways, and suddenly I was afraid.

  The manager noticed too. “These people are angry,” he said. “They’ve been through a lot during the past few days. Don’t test them.”

  Jarmaine said, “They’ve been through a lot?”

  She glanced around the room and caught the eye of the custodian, who had stopped sweeping and was watching from the corner. He nodded and stood up straight.

  Jarmaine turned back to the manager. He met her gaze, then looked away toward the big windows by the door. I wondered if he had expected anything like this when he took the job. For a minute I almost felt sorry for him. He had parents, the same as I did. He had learned some things from them, and he had absorbed other things through his skin and from the air he breathed.

  “These people don’t want to change,” he said.

  “What about you?” asked Jarmaine.

  He shrugged. “I guess I don’t either.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “They should whip you,” said a voice.

  The words came from a sweet-looking lady sitting down the row from us, someone you’d expect to sew a quilt or bring you homemade jam.

  A low rumbling started behind us. It spread across the room, the sound of frustration and trouble. A young woman got to her feet and, holding the hand of her little boy, came across the room toward us. She had a pretty face, and her son’s cheeks were smudged with jelly. She stopped in front of us.

  “You shouldn’t sit here,” she said. “You never know what people might do.”

  At first I thought she was being kind, and then I saw her eyes. They were like two black holes
, pits you could fall into and never climb out.

  Suddenly the man with the sour expression was behind her. Beside me, I heard Jarmaine’s rough breathing. We watched as others got up and came over. It seemed that half the station was there, staring down at us.

  I thought of what I had learned in social studies about the Bill of Rights—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to bear arms. What about freedom to sit? It seemed like such a simple thing.

  I reached for Jarmaine’s hand. It was damp with sweat. I squeezed, and she squeezed back.

  “We’re not moving,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The woman stepped forward. The people leaned in. We were surrounded by faces and shoulders and fists. Someone grabbed my arm.

  Then there was another face. It was dark, ringed below the chin by a thin, white collar. Beneath the collar was a neatly pressed black suit covering a barrel chest and a body the size of a refrigerator. I remembered seeing him in the corner, sitting across a couple of chairs in the colored section.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked in a deep, smooth voice.

  Startled, the station manager stepped back.

  “Stay out of this, preacher,” he said.

  “I can’t,” said the preacher.

  The security guard said, “We got rules.”

  “I know about rules,” said the preacher. “Love God. Love your neighbor.”

  The guard started to laugh, but it caught in his throat.

  The preacher stepped over beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. He faced the crowd and said, “The riders won’t stop, you know.”

  The guard measured us with his gaze. “Yes, they will. We’ll make them.”

  The preacher shook his head. “They’ll keep coming. Like these girls, like the others—not just from Nashville but from Chicago and Dallas and Los Angeles. They will come in waves. They will stand strong, and they will not move. You can beat them and curse them and even kill them, and they will keep coming—like the ocean, like the tide, rising to your knees, to your chest, to your chin. America will change. It has to.”

  He turned to us. “Where are you going?”

  “To Montgomery,” said Jarmaine. “First Baptist Church, to see the Freedom Riders.”

  The preacher smiled. “So are we.”

  I looked over his shoulder and saw that the people from the colored section were standing behind him. They were dressed in Sunday clothes with flowers in their hair and on their lapels. They moved past the white people and filed in wordlessly, taking seats all around us. The crowd hesitated and stepped back.

  The station manager started for his desk. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Sir, it’s Sunday morning,” said the preacher. “We’re going to church.”

  As the manager picked up the phone, a bus rounded the corner. We heard it pull in behind the station. It was our ride to Montgomery.

  We got to our feet, all of us, and moved toward the door. Watching us file out, the station manager put the phone down.

  Jarmaine and I showed our tickets to the driver and climbed onto the bus. Without saying a word, we sat in front. Our new friends did too. The preacher patted my shoulder and took the seat behind us.

  The white passengers stared and muttered. The bus driver got back on, saw us, and started to say something. He studied my face. I gazed back at him, asking a favor with my eyes. He thought for a minute, then closed the door, got behind the wheel, and guided the bus from the station.

  All of them had baskets. It was a way of traveling I’d never noticed or thought about—proud, self-contained, able to take care of yourself. Just add wheels. Oh, and a seat, preferably up front. The view is better. The door is closer. The bumps aren’t as bad.

  Jarmaine shared her food, and our friends shared theirs—cornbread, greens, sweet potato pie. Soon I was so full that if we had gotten a flat tire, I could have taken its place and rolled to Montgomery.

  Outside, the scenery had changed. There were low hills and a blue ridge against the horizon. The trees were smaller, and they were evergreens. Every few miles we’d go through a little town—Pelham, Calera, Clanton. We saw lots of churches, some filled with white people, some with black, none with both. For the first time, I thought it was strange.

  South of Clanton, the preacher checked the white passengers and leaned forward.

  “Those people don’t look too happy,” he said.

  “They’ll get used to it,” said Jarmaine. “You can get used to almost anything.”

  The preacher smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Noah. You know, like the ark.”

  My hand disappeared into his. “I’m Billie. This is Jarmaine. Thanks for helping us.”

  “I gotta tell you, I was worried,” he said. “That security guard scared me. Young fella, trying to make his mark.”

  “Not on me,” said Jarmaine.

  Noah chuckled. “No, indeed.”

  I asked him, “Where did you come from?”

  “God. And Huntsville.”

  “You’re going to Montgomery?” Jarmaine asked. “That’s a long trip to church.”

  He nodded. “Almost two hundred miles.”

  I said, “We’re from Anniston.”

  “Your town is famous,” he said, “for all the wrong reasons.”

  Jarmaine told him what she had seen at the Anniston bus station, and I described the events in my neighborhood.

  “I was in the crowd,” I said. “I watched and didn’t do anything.”

  I hated telling him, but in a way it felt good, like a confession.

  He eyed me thoughtfully. “Were there grown-ups in the crowd?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but the only person who helped was a little girl. Her name is Janie.”

  “Then God bless her,” said Noah. “And God bless you.”

  “For what?”

  “Getting on the bus. And standing up to the station manager in Birmingham.”

  I said, “He wasn’t as bad as the others.”

  “He seemed like a good man,” said Noah, “but he was caught in a vise—heart on one side, rules on the other.”

  It reminded me of my father. He was being squeezed too.

  Jarmaine asked Noah, “What have you heard about the meeting tonight?”

  “At First Baptist? Dr. King will be there. James Farmer, head of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. Fred Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, who works with Dr. King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Ralph Abernathy—it’s his church. And of course, the Freedom Riders. Oh, that’s right,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “you’re with them.”

  Jarmaine blushed, and I jumped in. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—”

  “It’s fine,” said Noah. “If you ask me, we’re all Freedom Riders.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Montgomery was a city of hills. Houses, stores, and tall buildings all seemed to perch on the top or bottom of one. The Greyhound station—a surprisingly small one-story building with tan bricks and a thin, gray sign jutting into the air—was halfway down the hill on Court Street. It stood next to a big granite building with fancy pillars, an American flag, and a sign chiseled in stone across the front: Federal Building and United States Courthouse.

  Yesterday I’d been at the Anniston Star office when Mr. McCall received the call from Montgomery. He had described the riot, and I had tried to imagine it, but only now, arriving on the scene, could I picture what had happened. Jarmaine, who had helped Mr. McCall research the story, filled in the details.

  Yesterday the bus from Birmingham, maybe the same one we were on, came down this hill and pulled in behind the station. Hundreds of people surged around it, carrying chains and ropes and bats. They dragged the Freedom Riders off the bus and swarmed over them, beating them without mercy. Some of the riders were knocked unconscious, bleeding, and the crowd kicked them again and again. Photographers like Grant tried to take pictures, but the crowd smashed their camer
as and attacked them too.

  Jarmaine told me that some of the riders climbed over a wall and tried to take cover in the courthouse. While the flag waved, the mob caught them and pulled them down. The riot lasted for an hour, by which time a thousand people roamed the streets, setting fires and beating anyone with a dark face. Finally, state troopers and mounted sheriff’s deputies arrived and dispersed the mob. They arrested just a few people, including a white couple who had been helping the victims. Somehow the Freedom Riders escaped or were taken to the hospital, with the help of some Negro taxi drivers.

  Blood and violence filled my mind as we glided down Court Street, its sidewalks empty. I wondered where the rioters were. Maybe they were resting or coming home from church.

  The bus reached the station a few minutes after two. The white passengers rose and filed out, while Noah and his friends hung back, letting them go first. It seemed odd, since we had made such a point of sitting in the white seats at the station and on the bus.

  Noah must have noticed my confusion, because he smiled and winked. “Got to give them something, right?”

  His group closed their baskets and gathered their things, then Jarmaine and I followed them down the steps of the bus and into the loading area behind the station. The driver had opened the luggage compartment and was handing suitcases to the white passengers. When he finished, I saw that the suitcases belonging to Noah and his friends were jammed into a corner of the compartment, separate from the bags of the white passengers.

  The driver checked his schedule and headed for the station, leaving the suitcases in the compartment. Noah didn’t seem surprised. He nodded to a young man in the group, who began unloading them.

  Meanwhile I was eager to see where we were going. I approached a white woman standing nearby.

  “Pardon me,” I said, “but I’m looking for First Baptist Church.”

  She led me to the side of the loading area so we could see around the station, then pointed to a beautiful building on the next block with a red, domed roof and a cross on the top.

  “That’s it,” she said. “First Baptist.”