by Richard Dry
“Fuck you.” Li’l Pit punched at Love’s face, and when Love pulled back, Li’l Pit rose up and reached over the top of the seat, attacking Love, hitting and grabbing at his head.
“We sposed to be on a run,” he yelled. “We sposed to be going back.” Love batted his hands away. When Li’l Pit couldn’t reach anymore, he kicked and punched the seat from behind.
“Settle down,” the bus driver called to them. “I’m not going to have any of that on my bus.”
“Stop it, dog. Stop it.” Love stood up, went around to Li’l Pit’s row, and grabbed at his arms.
“Naw! Fuck you!” Li’l Pit punched at him through his tears, but Love caught him by the wrists. “What you doin? Let go of me, faggot! Let go of me!”
“Quiet down back there,” the bus driver said over the speaker.
Love pulled his little brother toward him and hugged him from behind, restraining him like they’d done at Los Aspirantes. He sat in the aisle seat with his brother wrapped in his arms like a straitjacket. Li’l Pit slammed his head backward against Love’s chest, aiming for his chin, but Love knew this trick and avoided the blow. He held on tightly, and finally his brother stopped struggling. His body still shook, and his tears dropped onto Love’s arms as he hyperventilated.
After a few minutes, Li’l Pit’s chest heaved in a long, deep breath, and the convulsing also stopped. He began to hum in a monotonous tone, accompanying the hum of the bus engine. Finally, after many miles, his throat tired, and there was only the steady hum of the bus as it traveled through the darkness. They sat like that in the calm, numbing silence, uninterrupted for minutes on end, and then broken only by the occasional flash of headlights and rush of a car speeding in the other direction on the two-lane highway.
“I want to go back,” Li’l Pit said quietly.
“We can’t go back. Nanna don’t want us there. It’s just us now.” Love relaxed his grip on Li’l Pit’s wrists but knew better than to let him go altogether.
“Why you doin this? Why didn’t you just let me be with Mama?”
“’Cause you my heart, bro. I want to see someone I love do good.” He let Li’l Pit pull his hand away to wipe his nose. “’Sides,” Love continued, “I don’t have anyone else I can trust to do your job. I need someone to watch my back. That’s your new job. You watch my back. You got a new job now, okay?”
A Jeep passed them and they looked over. When the tailights faded away, they saw their own dim reflections in the window, like two ghosts looking back at them.
“Okay?” Love asked. He squeezed his brother once to get a response. Li’l Pit nodded and put his wrists back into Love’s hands.
CHAPTER 2B
MARCH 1965 • LOVE EASTON 19
EASTON FIXED THE water pump properly in Jackson, and they drove to Meridian by nightfall. They stayed at a boardinghouse run by a Mrs. Walker. She had lost her domestic job for registering to vote, so she had made her home into a motel by nailing a VACANCY sign onto her front porch. During Freedom Summer, the year before, the COFO workers from the movement felt obliged to keep her house full until the fall. But she rarely had any paying guests anymore, so she was very pleased to see Charles and Easton. She was an old woman with a limp, an injury she’d gotten from fighting with her past husband when he was drunk. But even with her limp, she was quick to set up a cot in the living room with a bucket on the floor for spitting, though she was the only one who chewed tobacco.
In the evening after supper, Easton drew a picture of her and gave it to her before they went to bed. For the gift, she said she’d cook them breakfast for free in the morning, although Easton told Charles she would have done that anyway. Easton lay on the cot while Charles shared the couch with a longhaired cat. They all had their eyes open and stared at the ceiling in the dark.
“I can’t believe you grew up around here,” Charles said.
“I didn’t grow up anywhere near here. South Carolina’s five hundred miles away.”
“Yeah, but it’s the South, man. All these places is like going into a time machine.”
“No it’s not.”
“I mean it, man. I feel like standing up and screaming at these folks, ‘What you crazy people doing down here?’ Don’t you know what I mean?”
“South Carolina wasn’t like this.”
“It had to be something like this.”
“I don’t know. It always seemed different. At least in the South you know who likes you and who doesn’t.” Easton turned on his side and closed his eyes. He lay in silence for a moment, then a dog barked twice and a bottle broke somewhere outside, which reminded him of his father, Papa Samuel, but he pushed that thought out of his head with a picture of Sandra, sitting the way he had sketched her that day on his bed, the top of her dress pulled down over her shoulders.
“I got to go,” Charles said. “Where’d you say the bathroom was at?”
“Bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Out back.”
“You mean outside?”
“Just watch out for them spiders. And them cottonmouth snakes that live in the bottom of the pit.”
“That’s not funny.” Charles pulled on his socks.
“You don’t have to worry about none of that. The smell will kill you ’fore you sit down.”
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into coming down here.”
“You’re the one who wanted to come before me.”
“That was for the movement, but you let Sandra drag you down.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Damn right I don’t. And I don’t think you do, neither.”
“Maybe not. But when the feeling’s this strong, it’s like you know it’s got to work out right. It feels like everything is riding on it.”
“I don’t know how you get so excited about a White girl.” Charles slipped on his shoes.
“So,” Easton said, “you like girls with a big booty and nasty hair?”
“What’s nasty about their hair?”
“I’m talking about objective beauty,” Easton said. “I’m talking about hair that isn’t all in knots, and smooth skin that isn’t chapped all the time, and little firm asses and blue eyes. You’re gonna tell me that sparklin blue eyes that look like a swimmin pool aren’t prettier than brown holes you can’t even see nothin in but your own reflection?”
“Like yours, you mean.”
“Yeah, like mine. Sure. I’m not beyond self-awareness.”
“You got about as much self-awareness as a floor mat. Haven’t you ever been with a Black girl?”
“No, man, I couldn’t.”
“What you mean you couldn’t?”
“I don’t know. There’s something about just the thought of it, makes me feel kind of wrong, you know, kind of unnatural.”
“Man, you are one sorry-ass nigger.”
Easton threw his shoe at him and apparently hit something vulnerable.
“Aw man, that’s cruel. I’ve got to go.” Charles stood up. “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, send out the National Guard.”
“Don’t hold your breath before you go in,” Easton called out. “You’ll only end up having to take a deeper one right in the middle of it all.” Charles shuffled off through the kitchen and out the back door.
Easton lay in the living room alone, but for the cat. He closed his eyes and listened, and at first there seemed nothing to listen to, but then he heard the crickets in the distance, and it made him nervous. He wiped his cheek. There was a particular smell as it cooled off at night that brought him back to sitting by the Edisto River. He took a deep breath, but he could not shake the unsafe feeling that there was something out in the night. He opened his eyes again and strained to hear better, beyond the crickets, but their creaking became louder, as if they were moving closer, filling the streets, surrounding the house. Soon their call occupied his whole mind and all the darkness around him, and he could hear and think of nothing else but their screaming at h
im from every direction.
The screen door slammed and the sound of the crickets receded. Charles ran in. “Oh God. Oh man.” He jumped onto the couch and slid his feet under the covers. “Get this mangy old cat away from me.”
“Let me ask you something, Charles.” Easton cracked his fingers one by one and let out a long breath. “What do you think it means to be crazy? I don’t mean all wild and crazy—I mean, just how mixed up inside your head do you have to get before you’re not sane anymore?”
“Anyone who lives down here is definitely crazy.”
“No, man. For real.”
Charles sat propped up on the couch and gazed out the front window. The half-moon, like a torn sheet of paper, rose up over the house across the dirt road.
“You thinkin you might be crazy?” Charles asked.
“I’m just asking.”
“You hearing voices? You seeing ghosts of dead people?”
“Naw, man. But I wonder. I mean, how much control over your own feelings are you supposed to have? You know what I’m saying?”
“Because you like White women?”
“No, man, I’m not talking about that!”
“Then what are you talkin about?”
“I mean about feeling confused and angry and all mixed-up like.”
“Okay. I hear you.”
“Yeah?” Easton sat up and looked at the shape of his friend. “I mean, like this thing with Sandra. I didn’t come down here when she offered, ’cause she did me wrong, you know? I was pissed off at her, and now here I am, going down on my own to see her. It’s like I can’t get hold of myself. And all I can think of is, well, I’m gonna walk up to her and spit in her face, you know, ’cause I’m so angry at her for making me come all this way. But I know it can’t be just her, man. I couldn’t have done some stupid drive all the way across the country just ’cause of her.” He shook his head repeatedly like he was trying to fight through a fog. “It’s like this statue we studied about in class: this girl, she got stolen by Hades, the god of the underworld, and when she was down there, she ate some pomegranate, and then, when she was finally rescued and brought back up into the light, she still had to go back down to Hades for part of every year because she had that pomegranate inside her. You know what I mean? I’ve been thinking about that story ever since I decided to come back here. You don’t just think about things for no reason. It must be that I couldn’t help it. I just had to come here, like if I could just get down here, I could dig that little red seed out of my stomach and just…” Easton had his fists out in front of him like he was shaking someone by the shirt. “Man! I’m going out of my mind. I feel like I’ve got no sense of myself.”
“Everybody feels like that.”
“Not everybody.”
“I know I do. I feel like I’m bustin in my own skin sometime, like my whole body wants to yell ’cause I’m not being myself. The only time I feel right is when I’m fightin the fight, like those days out at Woolcrest’s, and now goin to Selma. I feel like I have a purpose. You just have to figure out what gives you purpose. Everybody feels like this. It’s not crazy. Unless everybody’s crazy.”
“I don’t know.” Easton lay back down and put his hands under his head. “I can’t believe everybody’s walkin around feelin like this. This world would just fall apart.”
“It is, brother.” Charles stood up again.
“Where you going?”
“I’ve got to go back outside,” Charles mumbled.
“Already?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you go?”
“I couldn’t see nothin in there.”
“Didn’t you take the flashlight?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The flashlight by the door,” Easton said. “You didn’t take it?”
Charles didn’t answer.
“Ah, man. You one sorry-ass city boy. You’ve got no country sense at all. Maybe you’re right, maybe this ain’t where we belong after all. Maybe this whole thing was a big mistake.”
* * *
THEY ENTERED SELMA on Sunday afternoon. It was cold again, as if the sun had hidden its face. Easton could see his breath as he drove through the neighborhood looking for Brown’s Chapel on Sylvan. They eventually found the redbrick building with its three distinctive white stone arches. A large crowd had gathered around the building, and there were four long black ambulances, like hearses with sirens on top, parked across the street.
“Maybe we’re too late,” Charles said as he got out.
“Do you see her?” Easton climbed on top of his car and looked over the crowd. There were only a handful of Whites, but none of them women. “Maybe she’s inside.”
Men, women, and children lined up in silent apprehension. Most of the men wore long overcoats, some fedora caps, sweaters, and ties. The women were also dressed formally, some with large gold earrings. A little boy went to his mother and hid in her coat. His father came and picked him up and brought him to the sidewalk crying.
“Do you see her?” Easton asked again.
“Who?”
“Sandra. I don’t see her. I’m going inside.”
“I’m lining up,” said Charles. “This is what I came here for.”
A man in a tan overcoat walked to the top of the chapel steps and addressed the crowd. A deep, concerned line ran down the middle of his forehead to the top of his nose.
“If you’d listen up here, please.” He raised his hands, and an invisible wave of silence swept over the crowd. “We’re going to get into two lines. One behind me—I’m John—and another behind Hosea. Remember: we are a peaceful people marching to Montgomery. Ignore the taunts and protect yourself as you’ve been shown. If they become violent, do not let yourself be cheapened by becoming like them. We have the moral high ground, and there will be newsmen and cameras, but Wallace has said he will not let us march to Montgomery.” He stroked his thin, downturned mustache. “If anyone wishes to stay back, we won’t hold it against you, I cannot promise you anything.”
Easton jogged up the steps of the church, and Charles walked over to the front of the line. Before going inside, Easton turned and watched the marchers leave, the two lines of people, silent, walking into the distance like a slow funeral procession.
When they’d turned the corner and were out of sight, Easton entered the church. There were a few people praying, some by the podium, while others sat silently looking at the floor. One woman put out bandages, scissors, and tape on a table. Easton walked up to her.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d seen a woman I’m looking for, a White woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“She’s blond, with some freckles on her cheeks, skinny, and about your height.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sandra.”
“Sandra? Yes. I may have met someone like that, but I don’t know where she is. I just arrived last night with supplies and it has been pretty busy around here. She may be on the march. The march started, you know?” She looked at Easton with her eyebrows raised, like a mother telling her child it’s time to go to school.
“Yes. Thank you.” Easton walked around the side of the pulpit and looked out onto the main floor.
“She’s probably on the march,” the nurse said again.
“I already looked.”
“Well maybe she was going to join up with them at the bridge.”
Easton took one more look around the church and then nodded. He jogged back outside, down the steps, and up Sylvan. At Water Street, he saw the ambulances trailing the march. He ran and caught up to them just as they turned onto Broad Street.
“Make sure you got your runnin shoes on,” someone yelled to him from the sidewalk. Easton turned and saw a team of White men leaning against a building.
He smiled at them and then ran between the ambulances and up to the tail of the marchers. He could see ahead of him that John and Hosea had just started up the i
ncline of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The two lines of marchers moved to the sidewalk even though the highway was completely empty in both directions. There was no traffic on the bridge that day, and the police kept the ambulances from following them.
Easton moved through the line slowly. After passing a few people, he stood on his toes to see if he could spot Sandra farther up front. He didn’t see her, but if she was wearing a scarf over her head like many of the other women, there would be no way to distinguish her until he got up close. He pushed past more people and then jumped up to see again. As he came down, he landed on the heel of a little girl in front of him and nearly knocked her over. Everyone looked at him, too tense to speak.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He picked up her white purse and handed it back to her. She took it and just stared at him, her eyes already wide with fear. He moved forward through the center of the two lines. The protests he was used to were always full of singing and shouting, but everyone here seemed peculiarly quiet and moved aside for him without a word. He’d made it more than halfway to the front of the line when he reached the top of the bridge. The marchers suddenly slowed. He looked down the decline, and there, less than a hundred yards away, blocking the street, were helmeted state troopers with gas masks, their nightsticks out in front of them. Behind them were men on horseback, guns in their holsters.
Easton stopped in his tracks. For a second, he forgot all about Sandra. The marchers continued forward, though more slowly and closer together, down the bridge toward the troopers. Easton fell into one of the lines and for the first time felt trapped within the river of people around him. He could no longer see in front of him or to the side. A middle-aged woman with a long, lean nose blinked at him as she took his hand. His arms began to shake, and he felt squeezed between this woman and the back of a man’s jacket. He considered turning around, but the people were like a strong current forcing him ahead. He tried to walk on his toes to see what was happening. Photographers ran down the open street of the empty bridge, swarming around them like mosquitoes. Down below, the troopers slapped their nightsticks in their palms. Easton lowered himself back on his heels and stared again into the man’s jacket. And there, on that black wool canvas, not more than six inches from his face, he pictured Ronald, bloody and beaten. The cold memory flashed into Easton’s mind and made him shiver. He brushed at his cheek. But too much remembering was impossible, for the immediate danger kept him in the present.
