Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  Barnes turned to one of his men. “Get out there and exercise some control, goddammit. I do not want a riot. You want a riot?” He turned to Minnie. “You want a riot? Look, you’ve made your point. I don’t see the use of getting yourselves shot, or worse.”

  Marshall looked across the empty tables at the roiling in the windows, the angry faces. He saw men with sticks walking back and forth waving their arms, shouting. Other cars were pulling in, and more men got out, carrying shotguns.

  “They’ve got shotguns,” Alice said.

  “Oh, Christ,” said Barnes. “Not on my shift.”

  “Ain’t you ashamed a your people, na,” Minnie said. “Folks carrying on that way.”

  “Look,” Barnes said to Stephen, “it ain’t a matter of protest now. I’m gonna have all I can to get you folks outa this without some real harm comin’ to you.”

  Out in the lot, a television crew had pulled in. Marshall saw the van, and the logo across its side panel, and he reached across the table to touch Stephen on the wrist. “Look.”

  Stephen leaned around Barnes and peered out, squinting. “What is it?”

  “TV,” Marshall said, remarking oddly to himself that Stephen was nearsighted.

  Barnes had seen it, too. “Oh, well—that’s just terrific.” Even as he spoke, some of the men in the crowd began pushing and shaking the van. Someone—a woman in a leather coat—hit the windshield with a burning piece of wood.

  Barnes had returned to the man in the cook’s apron, and was arguing with him in the din. Finally he came back over and put his hands down on the table, waiting for the opportunity to speak. “Here’s the story,” he said to Minnie. “They got the TV people pinned in their own vehicle, and they are gonna hurt you people. I’m placing you all under arrest for your own safety. Understood?”

  Minnie said, “You ain’t got to protect me, young man.”

  “There’s a couple of police vans coming. Understand? We have to wait.”

  “Ain’t no need,” Minnie said.

  “We’ll need the keys to your cars so our boys can get them out of here before the crowd figures out what’s happening.”

  For a small space, no one answered him.

  “Look, in a minute they’re gonna be setting your cars ablaze. You see what we’re up against here. I understand what you all want, but it’s gone past that now, and I’m tellin’ you something awful’s gonna happen if we don’t get you outa here quick. There’s elements out there you don’t want to mix with. And they ain’t figures of authority or representatives of the civil courts, neither. You understand? You can’t do anybody any good if you’re dead. Or layin’ in a burn unit somewhere.”

  Minnie turned to Stephen and said something, and he turned to speak to Alice in the other booth. Alice brought her keys out of her purse.

  “Whore!” someone yelled from the windows. There was more breaking glass.

  “Goddamn it,” Barnes said. “Where the hell are they all coming from? There ain’t this many people in the whole town.”

  Alice looked at Marshall and smiled—a perfectly serene expression, as though they were witnesses at some benign spectacle. The crowd now must have numbered close to a hundred people. They were brandishing sticks and clubs and shotguns. Someone hurled a bottle at the windows, and there was more shattering glass. The television van was burning. The crew had gotten out, somehow, and the mob had gathered around it; they were trying to overturn it. Others threw flaming pieces of wood or paper. Someone set off a band of firecrackers, and there was still more breaking glass.

  Barnes signaled the other policemen to approach. “They’re all under arrest.” He turned to Minnie. “Will you walk out with us, or will we drag you out? If we have to drag you, I mean it, this crowd will take us all apart, and this riot will be a massacre.”

  Minnie looked at Stephen, who nodded.

  “We’ll walk,” Minnie said. Then she indicated the man in the cook’s apron. “But that man done vilated the law of the land, and we’re gonna see he pays the price.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” said Barnes.

  They waited while the shouts from the crowd continued. Near the door, two of the policemen were trying to move a man out of the way. The man flailed and swung at them.

  “Jesus Christ,” Barnes said, wiping the back of his neck.

  Marshall murmured the prayer, “Have mercy on us,” and then realized the true import of the words. He said again, under his breath, “Have mercy on all of us.”

  “Where the hell’re you all from?” Barnes asked Stephen.

  “Here,” Stephen said.

  “Never saw you before in my damn life.”

  “Washington,” Stephen said.

  “You’re a little ways from home, then, ain’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “This is our home,” Alice said.

  “Just thought you’d go out and cause some trouble in it.”

  “No, sir,” she said. “We thought we would come in and have something to eat.”

  Barnes turned to Minnie. “Ain’t you a little old to be getting yourself into this kind of foolishness?”

  “Old,” Minnie said. “And tired.”

  “Well, you see?”

  “It’s whut ah’m tired of,” she told him. “You ain’t got to guess.” Her eyes moved, taking in the angry faces at the windows.

  “You just gotta give people some time,” Barnes said.

  “Time. Whut they teaching these chirrun? Listen to ’em. Time. Look lak time is a luxury we ain’t got.”

  The police vans pulled in, two of them, sirens going.

  “Okay,” Barnes said. “Let’s do this right.” He got his men to form a double file, on either side of the protestors, and they all made their slow way out into the parking lot, under the roar of the mob. There was a lot of jostling and pushing and shoving. Fights were going on a few feet away, and they seemed to be separate, somehow, like little fires burning around a larger one. In the distance, on a small rise opposite the pier, the television people were working to set up their cameras. Their truck continued to burn, sending up a big, many-layered column of black smoke. Someone spit at Minnie, and someone else threw a bottle, which hit Albert on the side of the face. Albert went down, sagged between the two files of policemen. They tried to hold him up, and the mob pressed in. Albert turned, bleeding, as if to confront the person who had hurt him. The men holding him lifted and pulled him along, the crowd pressing closer, shouting epithets, spitting. Albert was bleeding badly from the side of his face, and he looked very wobbly getting into one of the police vans. Alice got in with him, already attending to his wound, and Ty and Ollie followed them. Marshall was ushered into the first van, with Minnie, Stephen, Diane, and three others.

  “Well,” Diane said, sitting on the bench across from Marshall, “you ever see the inside of a jail?”

  He shook his head no.

  “You’re about to.”

  The van doors were closed. The sudden dark was frightening. And then people began banging on the metal walls, the doors. The noise was incredible. Across from Marshall, next to Diane, Minnie sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring into space. She seemed not to hear the noise, now. Stephen was directly across from her, at Marshall’s side. He leaned across the small space and took her hands. She looked up but didn’t seem to see, and he let go. The three other young men were Reg, Cole, and Mike, each of whom Diane called by name, asking if the others had made it into the second van.

  “Niggers, niggers, niggers…”

  The roar went on and the van began to rock violently, the mob trying to push it over on its side. Through the small space looking into the front seat, they could see torches, fires burning.

  Stephen began singing again, waving his hands like a conductor.

  Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round, turn me round, turn me round…

  They joined in, and the terrible clattering and rocking continued, but then there was a commotion in the
front seat, people struggling, doors slamming, and curses, shouts. Two of the policemen were in the front, they had gotten in and closed the doors, and now gradually the van edged forward, still being rocked wildly, still in the din of fists and sticks beating against its sides.

  The singing went on. It came from them with a force, like an element of some new spirit in their bodies, something given from somewhere so that they might withstand the storm of hatred outside. Marshall looked at the round, exhausted, singing face of the old woman, Minnie, who sat there clapping her small hands and shaking the enormous coffee-colored, flawlessly smooth flesh of her arms, and he found that he had the voice for this song, that it came flying out of him like a gust, the words and the breath rising with the others, drowning out the terrifying roar of the mob. He felt the strength flow through him from these others, and it seemed to him that no force could stop them, really, not now. Surely the rage outside would, in the end, have to give way to this fellow feeling, this rush of grace, this rightness. He looked at the faces ranged across from him, looked at the happiness in them, the courage, singing, and he had a wordless rush of knowing what a beautiful country they would build together when at last the ignorant and frightened were made to see. The van was slowly gathering speed. Stones and sticks and bottles rattled against the doors, in no rhythm anyone could use, though they used it anyway, clapping and singing, and then they were free of it all, and there was only the sound of their voices, the whir of motion, the van speeding along the road, and on—out of the way of harm.

  Chapter 11

  They sang together for the hour it took to arrive. When the van stopped, they grew quiet. For a moment, no one spoke. There was a small wave of fear. The idling engine ceased, and then there were footsteps on the gravel outside. The doors swung open. Barnes stood there, and behind him was a dim green tangle of trees and undergrowth, a field in a bath of sun through the wall of clouds in a lowering sky. “All right,” he said. “Everybody out.”

  Stephen led the way, helping Minnie. When they were all out, standing in the gravel in the iron-gray light, the van doors were closed and the vans pulled away.

  “Where are we,” Diane said.

  “You’re in Howard County,” said Barnes. Then he took a step back and addressed them all. “Your vehicles are parked right over there. You can take them and go home. Understand me? Or you can drive the fifty miles back to the restaurant and we can do this all again, or else just let the mob tear you limb from limb. Because, folks—that’s what they were gonna do to you this afternoon. Now, you made your point. Call your damn lawyers and do whatever it is you think you have to do. But I’d appreciate it if you took your little protest somewhere else, and if you don’t want a snootful of real bad trouble, that’s what you’ll do. I’m a good police officer, believe it or not. I’m hired to keep the peace and protect the citizenry, and that’s just what I did today. I got you out of there with a minimum of bloodshed. Now, unless you want something else from me, I suggest you go on home where you belong.”

  “I can bring TV people with me,” Alice said, low. “We can go back there tomorrow.”

  “It might surprise you-all to know that I’m on your side,” Barnes said. “I’d like to see you Negroes get an even break. But I get paid to keep the peace—”

  “You get paid to enforce the law of the land,” Stephen said quietly.

  Barnes stood there a moment. Then he muttered, “Some people don’t know when they have it good.”

  “You said your say,” Minnie told him gruffly. “Na git. Les’ you gwine arrest us.”

  He shook his head, turned and walked over to his car, got in, and rode away. Minnie walked slowly, with Stephen’s help, to Alice’s car. They all gathered around Minnie—Diane, Albert, still bleeding from the side of his face, Ty and Reg, and the others.

  “Y’all g’on home, na,” Minnie said in a breathless voice. Diane hugged her, and then the others did, too, one at a time. She stood and accepted this homage with some small impatience. “G’on home, na,” she said again as Marshall put his arms around her. “Say a prayer.”

  Marshall, Albert, and Stephen got into Alice’s car.

  “Ain’t nothin’,” Minnie said, getting in herself. She waved to Diane and the others, who were pulling out onto the road. Then their car stopped and Diane yelled from the passenger-side window, “Which damn way do we go?”

  “That way,” Stephen said, pointing.

  “See you,” Diane called.

  Alice leaned across Marshall to wave at her.

  They drove back toward Washington without saying much. As they crossed the bridge into Virginia, they could look to the right and see the Washington Monument shining on the gray sky, and Alice remarked that it looked as though it glowed from the inside.

  About a mile on the other side of the river, Minnie began to experience chest pains. She held both delicate hands over her expansive chest and tried to breathe. The sound of it made everyone quiet. Minnie gasped for air, and seemed to cough, then leaned over onto Stephen’s shoulder. He put his arm around her while Alice sped through lights and made the turns to get to Arlington Hospital—the emergency room, where the man at the registration desk seemed reluctant, a little cowed by the number of people with this patient, who seemed to be sagging from sheer discouragement and whose eyes now seemed to fix on everything that passed in front of them, as if searching for something they desperately needed in order to keep taking in light. At length, Minnie was wheeled into the corridors of the hospital, and the wait began. Albert called Emma to tell her he would not be over that evening. Marshall phoned his mother to say he wouldn’t be home, but his mother didn’t answer. Alice got in touch with her father, who didn’t understand what she was doing with those people at that hour on a Saturday when she had been going out for a picnic with her fiancé. She did not trouble herself to explain it to him over the telephone. She hung up on him, then turned to Marshall and shrugged. He was thinking that she would make a good wife, and that he would definitely go ahead with it, now. From certain angles, she was almost beautiful. He had this thought, then tried to push it out of his mind. These strangely icy and detached moments made him uneasy, and shaky inside. He said a Hail Mary for Minnie, then fixed his attention on what Alice was telling him.

  “…I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake. And he ought to have been there today. It’s his goddamn job.”

  They all waited for news of Minnie. The man at the desk wanted to know what their connection to her was, and Alice said, “We’re friends of hers, okay? All of us.”

  She turned to Marshall and said, “What in the world goes through people’s minds, anyway.” She seemed about to cry.

  He put his hand on her shoulder, and felt abruptly as though it were the wrong thing to do. It felt too comradely, as though they were both men, and yet he couldn’t position himself to do it differently. With his free hand, he took her hand and held it. She let her head rest on his shoulder. Across from them, Albert sat talking in low tones with Stephen. He was holding a handkerchief to his face. The bleeding had stopped, and he was developing a black eye. Several more people came in with their own injuries and problems, and the time drew on into evening and then night. Marshall called home again, and Clark Atwater answered.

  “Where are you?” he said. “Your mother’s frantic.”

  “I’m fine. I’m with Alice.”

  “Well, your mother’s frantic.”

  “Could you please put her on?”

  “She’s using the bathroom.”

  “Tell her I’m fine, and I’ll be home in a little while.”

  “What’s that mean—a little while?”

  “Mr. Atwater, I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll tell her. I don’t know that it’ll make her feel any better.”

  Alice and Stephen were sitting side by side in a far corner of the waiting room. Albert was sitting across from them, reading a magazine, the tip of his nose nearly touching the glossy page. There w
as no news. Marshall sat down on Alice’s right, and she reached over and took his hand.

  “We’re going to be married,” she told Stephen.

  “Congratulations.”

  A nurse had given Albert an ice bag to put on the side of his face. He held it there, his face. buried in the magazine.

  “What a day this has been,” Alice said.

  They were quiet, then, for a long time. They watched others come and go—there had been an auto accident in the vicinity and several people were brought through on stretchers. Once Stephen went to the desk and inquired after Minnie, but there wasn’t any news. Alice talked about her, about growing up under her stern, black, loving gaze. Stephen talked about how he had come to know Minnie through the old woman, Eva, whose funeral they had gone to in the morning. Eva had been a churchwoman, an important person in the church. It was very important to Minnie, and it had been to Eva, too. Minnie had been attending that church since she had lost her husband, some time shortly after the war started. Her husband had joined the army at the age of thirty-seven, and had died on a ship in the Pacific during the battle of Midway. She never got over that, Stephen said. She often talked about him to Eva.

  “I never heard her talk about him at home,” Alice said.

  There was a small, awkward pause.

  “She never wanted to talk about him. She wouldn’t allow us to mention him.”

  “Well,” Stephen said gently. “That’s just Minnie.”

  They waited. Finally, a doctor came in to them and spoke to Alice. The patient was resting comfortably; there had been some worry about her heart, but she seemed all right in that respect. They would keep her overnight for observation, but apparently she had simply shut down from exhaustion.

  She was asleep, and it was best to let her sleep through the night.

  Alice thanked him. They all went out into the dark. Stephen and Albert would take a bus into town. Alice offered to drive them there, but they refused. It was just as easy to ride in on the bus. She and Albert embraced, and said their good-byes, and then she embraced Stephen. Stephen helped Albert along the walk, toward the bus stop. They looked odd, Albert was so much taller than the other, who seemed to lean into him, a bolster against gravity.