Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  * * *

  A Texaco station was open in Anniston, Alabama, its big bright star beaming like a beacon guiding him forward.

  Norman carefully pulled close to the pump, turned off the radio, and cut the engine. An attendant wearing a Texaco shirt appeared and pumped his gas while Norman sat in the driver’s seat and counted the bills Uncle Bruce had given him. It was a lot of money. Enough to pay for gas all the way across the country and back, at least, depending on what happened to them. Between this and what Pam and Janice had given him, what Molly had, and what he had saved himself, they were so far, so good with money.

  Norman tucked Uncle Bruce’s envelope under the seat, inside the box of letters from Barry. He left the bus.

  “That’s fourteen dollars and seventy-two cents,” said the attendant. The badge sewed into his shirt said Buddy was his name. “You must have been driving on fumes.”

  “It’s got a sixty-gallon tank,” said Norman.

  “Well, you just put upwards of forty-five gallons of gas in her. That’s fumes, for a sixty-gallon tank. You want to fill up before you get too low. You get a burp of air in the tank, that kills the engine. Maybe you should take some extra gas in the vehicle.”

  He pronounced it vee-hickle, then spit on the concrete beneath their feet. His spittle was the color of stained teeth.

  “Yessir,” said Norman. The glare from the fluorescent lights was fierce and the night bugs flew into the brightness, buzzing and biting.

  Buddy was sizing him up, Norman could tell. He watched him glance at the South Carolina license plate and the CHARLESTON COUNTY SCHOOLS on the side of the bus. “You got a gas can?”

  “Nossir.” How could he have forgotten a gas can? He had everything else.

  “Come on,” Buddy said, and Norman followed him inside the station to the garage bays, where Buddy picked around and found two banged-up but serviceable five-gallon gas cans.

  It took him so long to find them, Norman got nervous. “That’s okay …” he began.

  But the man hefted the cans at his ears and said, “Yep, empty. Won’t charge you for the cans, but you gotta pay to fill ’em up.”

  “Sure,” said Norman. “Thanks. Can I use your bathroom, too?”

  Five minutes later, Norman’s bladder was empty and the gas cans were full. He paid Buddy and opened the back door of the bus. The light from the overhang cast a ghoulish glow on his drums. They peeked out of cardboard boxes with no tops, like colorful rounded mountains rising from the brown earth.

  “You got drums,” said Buddy.

  “I’m a drummer,” Norman replied.

  He shoved the bass drum over to make room for the gas cans, and Buddy helped him lift them into the bus. Molly was completely hidden in the shadows, inside her sleeping bag. He hoped she’d stay that way. He did not want to have a conversation with Buddy about why he had a girl hidden in the back of the bus.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said as he began to swing the back door closed. Molly moaned softly and turned over. Don’t panic, he told himself. He latched the back door, double-timed it to the front of the bus, and climbed on board.

  Buddy watched him and followed him around front to the folding door. He put his hands on the body of the bus, on either side of the door opening, and looked up at Norman with raised eyebrows. “You gonna be okay out there?”

  “Yessir,” said Norman, too quickly. “I’m almost there. Thanks a lot for the gas cans.”

  “That’s a lot of gas for almost there,” said Buddy. His face was very white under the fluorescent lights, his skin very tight over his cheekbones.

  “Yessir,” said Norman as he settled into the driver’s seat, depressed the clutch, and turned the key in the ignition.

  Buddy stood where he was. “Your folks know you’re out here this time of night?”

  “Yessir.” Norman began to sweat.

  “What’s your destination?” Buddy placed one black, shiny-shoed foot on the bottom step but did not board. Des-tee-nation, he’d said.

  “Birmingham,” Norman lied, as he put his right foot on the brake and his hand on the long gearshift lever. “My aunts live there. They’re expecting me.”

  But Norman could not shut the folding door and drive off while Buddy held it open with his foot.

  Buddy rapped his fingertips, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, on the yellow body of the bus. Norman’s pulse raced as he revved the engine. “I … gotta go.” His nerves made his voice shake.

  Buddy pursed his lips and finally said, “Who you got back there, son? Huh?”

  “Nobody!” Norman said, but he knew Buddy wouldn’t believe his lie.

  “Then you won’t mind me having a look, now, will you?”

  “Wait —” Norman started.

  “Graaaahhhhhhh!”

  Before Buddy could take a step onto the bus, a figure leaped, hollering a night-of-the-living-dead scream, from where he’d been hiding, four seats back. “Graaaahhhhhhh!”

  Every muscle in Norman’s body froze. Buddy jerked his foot off the step like it was on fire.

  The figure rushed to the front of the bus, grabbed the shiny metal door handle with both hands, and yanked it to the left with such a mighty force that the door flattened into Buddy and slammed him in the face. Buddy stumbled backward and fell hard into a gas pump, hitting his head on the glass and sliding to the concrete. He brought a hand up to his head and sat there, dazed.

  “Go!” shouted the figure next to Norman. He was a young black man. He wore stiff green pants, a white T-shirt, and silver dog tags on a chain around his neck. He looped one arm around the stanchion at the top of the stepwell while the other hand held fast to the door handle.

  Norman’s panic propelled him as he shoved the engine into gear and jumped his body into action, pumping, jerking, lurching, squealing, turning the bus so tightly he thought for one terrifying moment it might tip over, then racing it down the vacant street and into the black night.

  The figure held on to the stanchion and swung fully into the stepwell as the bus careened away. He slammed into the half-high barrier wall on the front passenger side, and scrabbled to find his balance, all the while yelling:

  “GO GO GO!”

  AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH

  Written by Nikolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson

  Performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

  Recorded at Motown Studios, Detroit, Michigan, 1967

  Drummer: Benny “Papa Zita“ Benjamin and Uriel Jones

  Performed by Diana Ross & the Supremes

  Recorded at Motown Studios, Detroit, Michigan, 1969

  Drummers: Uriel Jones and Richard “Pistol” Allen, of the Funk Brothers

  “Norman!” Molly shrieked from the back of the bus as she struggled to get up. They must have had an accident, she had to wake up, had to get to her cousin. “Normaaaaan!”

  “Stay there!” screamed Norman as he tried to stop the bus from swinging wildly back and forth and skidding off the road into a ditch. He was horrified to realize they could smash into a telephone pole and burst into a fiery furnace with a full tank of gas.

  “Go!” the stranger urged once again. “Get away before he can come after you!”

  Norman yelled at the stranger. “Who are you?”

  “Norman!” Molly wailed. She had grabbed on to a bus seat and was finding her footing. “Turn on the lights!”

  “Everything’s fine! Go back to sleep!” The bus was dark, with only the instrument panel lighted.

  Molly got halfway up and fell back on her bottom. “What are you doing?” A night drive through the North Alabama mountains is inadvisable. Were they there already? “What’s happening?” She got on her hands and knees.

  Norman was half standing in a crouch over his seat, his legs shaking with the effort, looking ahead, looking in all the mirrors, looking to the right and left, his right foot riding the accelerator.

  It was like saddling a bucking bronco that got tired of fighting. Finally, the bus
began to behave and calm itself under Norman’s ministrations. Molly got to her feet and began making her way to the front in the dark. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine! Fine!” called Norman. “Everything’s fine now!”

  He did not turn on the interior lights. All he needed at this point was Molly to rev up her emotion machine.

  “Please go back to sleep!”

  Molly kept coming up the aisle. Norman cast a glance to his right. The black man in army fatigues squatted in the stepwell where the silver partition wall hid him from view. He stared at Norman but did not look scared.

  Molly had almost reached her usual seat behind the driver. Norman swung the steering wheel left a half jag, which threw Molly off balance. She landed in a seat on the right side of the aisle with a thump.

  “I need a bathroom, Norman! Why are you driving like a crazy person?”

  “Deer,” said Norman. “You don’t want me to hit a deer, do you?” Think, Norman, think.

  Molly rubbed her eyes. “Bathroom” was all she said.

  The bus once again purred and growled its usual straight-ahead noises, so Norman sat fully on the driver’s seat, but he did not slow down. He was not about to stop yet — what if Buddy was hot on his tail? He was not about to carry this stranger with them through the night, either. Ahead he could see no stores or towns, just lonely road with the occasional car or lumber truck coming the opposite direction, headlights glaring into theirs.

  “I don’t see a place,” he said.

  They came to a junction and Norman turned right, as much to hide from the possibility of Buddy as anything else.

  Two miles up the road, Molly pointed to a driveway with an ornate arched metal sign that gleamed in the headlights. She ordered Norman to stop.

  “That’s a cemetery!”

  “I can’t wait.”

  He didn’t have a better idea. It would be a perfect spot to hide the bus until Buddy went home for the night. He hoped they hadn’t hurt him. Norman turned into the pebbled driveway. The bus rumbled and weaved on a rutted dirt road past white obelisks and gray crypts and engraved stones, past trees with low branches covering stone benches and hovering over angels with wings and archangels with trumpets.

  “Far enough!” said Molly. “Stop! I have to get off.”

  As soon as Norman stopped the bus, Molly popped up to the front.

  “Wait!” Norman said, but there would be no waiting from Molly.

  Norman jumped from his seat to block Molly, grabbed the door handle, and hoped the stranger would jump out as soon as he opened it. He forgot that opening the folding door would turn on the stepwell light, which was very bright. It illuminated the stranger like a sudden spotlight just as Molly pushed past Norman, grabbed the stanchion, and swung herself around it to take the steps.

  “Holy —” Norman began, but he was drowned out by the screaming. Molly screamed and so did the stranger, which made Norman scream, and then the three of them stood there at the front of the bus, screaming as loud as they could at one another. Loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Don’t hurt us!” Norman yelled. He grabbed Molly and pulled her to him.

  “I’m not hurtin’ nobody,” said the stranger, his hands up like he was under arrest. “I just want a ride.”

  “How did you get in here!” Molly’s breath was shallow and short. “Have you been hiding in here since we left Atlanta?”

  “I got on when you stopped for gas. I didn’t know you were in the back asleep. I just need a ride. I was gonna ask, but then I saw —”

  “The deer?” asked Norman, pointedly.

  The stranger stared at Norman, and Norman returned his gaze.

  “Yeah,” said the stranger. He put his hands down.

  A cicada flew in through the open door and found the dome light above the stepwell. Molly swatted at it and retreated to her seat behind the driver. Now what?

  “What you did back there …” began Norman.

  “Yeah,” said the stranger.

  “What did he do?” asked Molly.

  Norman thought for a moment and answered, “He helped.”

  “Can you give me a ride?” the stranger asked.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Wherever you’re goin’.”

  Norman pulled at his earlobe. “Molly?”

  Molly started for the back of the bus. “Please turn on the dome lights,” she said in a snippy voice. “I need my bag of essentials.”

  Norman obliged.

  The seconds ticked by in a quiet eternity as Molly got her bag in the back and walked to the front, where she waited for the stranger to get off the bus so she could make her way out. The night air was cool, and there was no moon. Sparkling stars covered the night sky like a diamond blanket over the “Rest in Heaven” section of the cemetery.

  Molly shouldered her bag. “Don’t come over by the Angel Gabriel. I need some privacy.”

  “You got it,” said Norman.

  “And after that, some supper.”

  “It’s after midnight!”

  “I know.”

  An hour later, the three of them had introduced themselves (“like civilized people do,” insisted Molly) and had consumed the sodas Marvin Gardens had put in the ice chest, along with the peanut butter sandwiches and cookies that Pam had packed for them. They ate them on a long granite ledger stone the length of a dining room table — or a person — marking the grave of Simon Tallow, age nineteen, who had died in 1864, fighting for the Confederate States of America.

  Darling, we miss thee was etched in the stone.

  It was the first time Molly had ever eaten at the same table as a black person. No white kids at school would do it, but everyone at the H&H in Macon did it, and Superman had kissed her hand.

  His name was Ray, the stranger told them.

  “What’s with the army pants?” Norman finally asked.

  “Fort McClellan,” answered Ray. “It’s near here.”

  “You stationed there?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Silence.

  Are you discharged? Are you a deserter? Molly dearly wanted to ask the questions but settled for “Where are you from?”

  “Mississippi,” Ray said. “If you’re goin’ that way, that’s the way I wanna go, too.”

  “We’re going to Muscle Shoals, Alabama,” said Norman.

  “But we’re also going to Memphis, Tennessee,” said Molly, “and that’s right above Mississippi.”

  “Molly …” began Norman as Molly’s face reddened. She had impulsively showed off her map knowledge.

  “Can I come with you?” Ray asked. “I can drive. I got my license. I drive a stake-bed truck on our farm; it’s bigger than your bus.”

  When neither Molly nor Norman replied, Ray tried again.

  “I’ve been driving longer than you have.”

  “How old are you?” Norman asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “I just turned seventeen.”

  “Me, too,” said Molly.

  “You’re fourteen,” said Norman.

  They fell silent while the night creatures sang around them. They were unpracticed at conversation.

  Ray pointed at Norman’s shoes. “I used to have a pair of those,” he said. “Mine were white.” He wiped sandwich crumbs from his face with his hand.

  Another awkward silence. Then Norman said, “Can you drive for a while, then, Ray?”

  “I sure can.”

  “Norman,” said Molly. She looked at Ray apologetically and he returned her gaze with a fiery look. He wasn’t afraid of her. She set her jaw and made herself glare back, although it made her nervous. He tugged on his ear and looked away.

  “It’s either that, or we sleep in the cemetery tonight,” said Norman.

  They climbed on board the bus, and Norman handed Ray the directions. “It’s pretty simple.”

  “I know the way,” said Ray.

  “Okay if I sleep?” asked Norman.

  “I�
��ll stay up,” said Molly. “I’ve slept.”

  “We’ll trade off,” said Norman. He tossed his pillow and blanket on one of the seats. Ray nodded.

  Six hours later, as the sun crept between the pines and swelled into the summer sky, a school bus with South Carolina tags pulled into the parking lot at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It parked out of sight of the main road. By the time someone arrived to unlock the studio and start the day’s sessions, three teenagers were sleeping soundly on a bus in the shade of some longleaf pines.

  THE ROAD OF LOVE

  Written by Clarence Carter

  Performed by Clarence Carter with Duane “Skydog” Allman

  Recorded at FAME Studios, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, 1969

  Drummer: Roger Hawkins

  They woke up roasting. It had been so cool in the night, they had closed most of the bus windows. Now it was noon and the heat inside the bus had them broiling.

  “We need a fan!” was the first thing Norman heard from the back of the bus — Molly — combined with a rapping on the bus door.

  “Anybody in there? Open up!”

  Ray dove under the seat he’d been sleeping on. Molly shut her mouth and made herself small next to the drums. Norman ran in his stocking feet to the folding door and opened it. “Sorry!” It must be the police. “I can explain!”

  It wasn’t the police. The man at the door had long hair shaped like a bowl on his head and sideburns to his chin. He wore brown slacks with cowboy boots, a brown patterned shirt open at the collar, and a black leather jacket.

  “Peace, man,” he said, holding up two fingers in salutation. “I was starting to get worried I had the wrong bus. We didn’t expect you so soon.”

  “Uh?” Norman was confused.

  “Come on in,” said the man with a wave. “Wash up! We’ll feed you. I’m Rick Hall — welcome to FAME.”

  “Uh … yessir,” Norman answered. “Thank you, sir.”

  He cast a look at the seat where Ray had been. It was empty. He couldn’t see Molly, either. “We’ll be right there,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” said the man. “Bring the cymbals with you.” He walked back to the building that proclaimed itself to be: