The Summer We Got Saved

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  Tab climbed up to the first seat and sat down. “No, go on back. We need to go to the very back.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because—go on back and we can lie down and get some sleep while we wait for the others to come.”

  “How many others?”

  “There won’t be many. Mr. Spivey is coming. My father. I think Dora and some of the other Fisk students. Miss Wilma, that old lady from down in south Georgia—mostly students who’ve been up here at the conference this week.”

  “I mean, will there be others like me?”

  “I’m sure. Now go on to the back. I don’t want my father to see us just yet.”

  “Why? He’s gonna see us sooner or later.”

  She pushed on the small of Tab’s back. “Better later than sooner. By then, we’ll be too far down the road. Go on back and we’ll pretend we’re sleeping.”

  “But I’m wide-awake now.”

  “Pretend.”

  Both of them lay pulled up into balls on the bench seat that ran the width of the back of the bus. Dominique was asleep, or pretending sleep to avoid questions. Tab held her white patent-leather purse tightly, fingering it to remember what she had brought along: a lipstick, comb, some Life Savers if she got hungry before they could order their hot dogs, and Aunt Eugenia’s cat’s-eye sunglasses.

  A half hour passed. The sky off to the east began to flush pink. They heard voices gathering outside the bus, eight, maybe ten people. Mr. Spivey was louder than the others, even though he was trying to keep it quiet. Dominique’s father was greeting them all as if they were going on a picnic. She could hear laughing and joking.

  They all got on the bus and huddled up front around the driver. “Let’s get rolling,” somebody said. “This is all that’s coming—not enough, but this is all. We got to get going if we want to meet the others there just as it opens.” The driver, Dominique’s father, cranked up. The top of the bus scraped and screeched out from under the branches of a sweet gum. Tab and Dominique were still lying across the back bench seat, their heads together, looking down the aisle at the backs of the others. Most of the windows were pulled open or permanently stuck that way. Cold mountain air rushed in at them. Tab curled up to stay warm.

  “It’s been over an hour. We can get up now. We’re more than halfway.” Dominique sat up in her seat, pulling a comb out of her dress pocket to reshape the hairdo. Tab remained where she was, pretending to sleep. They jostled along, Dominique looking out the window at the passing scenery, humming, waiting for the inevitable. Maybe it was one of the songs they usually sang at night after supper: “This Little Light of Mine,” or maybe Dominique’s favorite by the Platters, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Tab couldn’t tell which, and she wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t let on that there might be creeping into the back of her mind the thought that Dominique was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go, that she had never had any intention of going, that Dominique had duped her as easily as Tab had sometimes tricked the twins, or Charles Junior, into doing her bidding. She stayed where she was, her head cradled in the elbow of her arm, goose bumps rising on the back of her neck, a knot forming in her stomach. The bus trundled on down the mountain road, the sun rising behind them.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Sit-in

  EVENTUALLY, REVEREND CALDER looked in the rearview mirror and saw his daughter. The others had not. He didn’t stop suddenly. They were still coming off a steep grade. There were still curves ahead, thin and winding. He didn’t say anything to the others. He waited until he found a place to pull over, yank up the hand brake, and turn off the engine.

  “I see we have a stowaway.” He talked into the mirror. The others looked at him—some still half-asleep, others immediately aware—and then at the mirror and then to the back of the bus. His voice had not been antagonistic. It was proud, almost as if he had stopped the bus to show her off. “Fervor for a cause must be tempered with reason.” He still talked to the mirror. “Although I admire your conviction, I am somewhat at odds with your methods. If you had wanted to come, you should have asked me.” He was not jeering at her. He was like the parent whose child had hit a home run in Little League: too modest to brag, but aware of what was obvious to all.

  The others were shaking their heads, some smiling to boot. One or two were not so sure. “She’s too young,” one of them said. “She could get us in trouble,” another one said, and they all took a moment before that became very funny.

  “You wouldn’t have let me come if I had talked to you,” she said, her voice loud from that distance.

  “No, I wouldn’t have.” He sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and checking the side mirror for traffic coming down the mountain. “Well, what’s done is done. I suppose you must have a baptism of fire one of these days, since we have chosen this rather arduous path and will continue on it for some time.”

  “There’s more than one.” She blurted it out, blunt as a rusty knife.

  Now he twisted in his seat as Dominique poked Tab with her elbow. She rose slowly. The others turned around to look. “THE LORD, IT’S LITTLE TAB. YOUR AUNT KNOW YOU COMING WITH US? IF SHE DON’T, GONNA BE THE DEVIL TO PAY.”

  “Of course she knows, Mr. Spivey.” Dominique lied in such an offhanded way, Tab thought for a moment she might really have asked Aunt Eugenia’s permission.

  “Most of the time I am admiring of your leadership abilities, Dominique, but this—this is too much.” But from the tone of Reverend Calder’s voice, it was another accolade for her. She was leading and her sheep were following. “Come forward, Tab,” and when she hesitated, he added, “Come along now.” She stood up, brushing the felt skirt so the poodle would stand straight. They were all watching her, staring at her as if she were some strange sight they had never seen before. In the meetings and at mealtimes, they had given her passing glances, maybe said hi as they came and went. Now she thought they were seeing her for the first time. She slipped her purse over her arm, clasped her hands together, and walked slowly up the aisle. She had been a junior bridesmaid in a cousin’s wedding the summer before last. It was the same walk, the same positioning of the hands. Not since that wedding had so many people looked at her with such high expectations.

  She wasn’t halfway up the aisle before one of the students declared, “I say she stays. Anyone dedicated to the cause has a right to prove it.”

  “Still too young,” another one said.

  “She’s dressed nice enough,” a black girl said. Tab realized that they were all black except for one boy, the white lifeguard, and her thought was that now Tina would know the whole thing. She stopped at the edge of them—they were all bunched up in the front seats. Dominique’s father motioned for her to come forward all the way to him.

  “I’ve seen you sitting at the edge of our morning meetings with Dominique. You know what you’re getting into by virtue of being at those meetings, don’t you?”

  She kept her flower-girl pose and nodded her head, but of course she didn’t remember a thing about the meetings. Half the time, she had played tic-tac-toe with Dominique. The other half, they had played battleship. And sometimes she hadn’t even been there. She and Dominique had been swimming or playing Ping-Pong instead, but Dominique’s father had seen them there every time, soaking up every bit of it, every bit of his rhetoric, every bit of the cause. He had seen them as dedicated, as caring. In other words, he had not seen them at all; certainly he had not seen her.

  But here on the side of the road in an old school bus that was halfway to Nashville, she couldn’t cry or run away or say that she had only the haziest idea of what he was talking about. All her options were gone, and she realized Dominique had known they would be. She turned to look back at Dominique, whose hands were folded, her smile a smirk. Tab turned back to Dominique’s father and said the only thing left to say. “Yes, sir. I know what I’m getting into from going to the meetings.”

  “It’s either take her with us or take her back,” one of th
em said.

  “We can’t go back. We told the others we would meet them before the store opened,” another one said.

  “WE COULD LEAVE HER IN THE BUS.”

  “Look at her, all dressed up to come with us. There’s not going to be any trouble at this Woolworth’s—hasn’t been since we started. They close the counter when we sit down, and that’s that. We stay an hour and then leave. Let her go with us,” said Dora, the student from Fisk.

  Reverend Calder told Tab to go back and sit down. He would think about it as they drove on in to Nashville. They were definitely not going back. There were claps and cheers from the rest of the bus. Tab turned on her heel and marched back up the aisle to sit next to Dominique and stare straight ahead. “You got me into this.”

  “I knew you’d want to come,” Dominique said. She smiled out the window, seeing the grocer at the store down the street where she lived in Connecticut. He was piling groceries into her mother’s cart, glancing up at Dominique, who must have been all of five years old. “You baby-sitting for the maid?” He put a box of Tide down beside her and rubbed her head. “Cute little pickaninny.” And Dominique had pointed. “She’s my mother.”

  “Sure, kid.” He had smiled and winked at her mother, and her mother had said nothing, had pushed the cart out the door and said nothing.

  The bus pulled up across the street from Woolworth’s. It was still early and there was no traffic. It looked much like the Woolworth’s in Bainbridge. Even the displays in the windows looked familiar: sets of plastic bowls, Kewpie dolls, school supplies, lunch boxes, and summer kites. It gave Tab a feeling of comfort. This was the same store, just a different town. Whereas before she had been happy at the thought of being left in the bus, now she was anxious to go with the others. She could almost taste the hot dog. Reverend Calder had turned off the engine. He was talking in low tones to the others, intermittently glancing back at her.

  “How old are you, Tab?” one of them called back to her.

  “Sixteen,” she replied.

  “Sixteen? You aren’t any more sixteen.”

  “I will be—in a few years.”

  “You know what you’re suppose to do when we get in there, don’t you?” Dominique asked.

  “I know as much as you do.”

  “I doubt that. You’ll never know as much as I do. Were you listening at all when they were discussing it, how to be nonviolent?”

  “As much as you were. Besides, why do you care? You got me in this just so you could have a laugh.” They saw three cars pull up behind them and park.

  “I thought so. You’re supposed to keep your cool, not talk back, just sit there quietly. Got that? If they let you go in, that’s what you’re supposed to do. No matter what they do, you’re supposed to sit there and take it and take it and take it and—”

  “Oh shut up. I got the picture.” But she knew they wouldn’t think about bothering her or haranguing her in Woolworth’s. She was half-listening to Dominique and at the same time watching the colored people who had just parked get out of their cars, the men in ties and suits, the women in heels and dresses, hats and gloves. Ridiculous to get that dressed up to go to Woolworth’s, no matter what they were trying to prove. One of them came on the bus. Again there was talk and glancing back at her.

  They saw the manager of Woolworth’s arrive and open the double doors on one side of the store. He went inside and locked them behind him, all the while glancing at their bus and shaking his head. This had been going on for two days now.

  “Probably gone in to call the cops,” Dominique said.

  “If he has, I hope you’re the first one they get.”

  Reverend Calder walked back to them. “You’re in luck, Tab. Not enough people are here to fill the counter seats, so we need you. You’re going in with us. I can’t leave you in the bus by yourself and we’ll only be in there a short time, until we’re relieved by another group that will take our place.” He smiled before he turned back down the aisle. “Now, aren’t you two glad you made up after that ruckus in the dining room?”

  Tab started to say no, she was not glad, that she would be happy to stay in the bus and lie down on the floor so nobody would see her. Instead, she nodded and said nothing. She was remembering that there was a cousin of her mother’s who lived in Nashville, wondering if he ever came to shop at this Woolworth’s. She opened her purse and got out Aunt Eugenia’s cat’s-eye sunglasses and peered through them, watching as the manager of Woolworth’s came to the door and opened it for business.

  Muted colors greeted them as they passed through Woolworth’s swinging front door. A diffused light filtered in through the front windows. Stale cigarette smoke and the odor of yesterday’s grilled cheese sandwiches hung in old air. This Woolworth’s was like all the others she had ever been in—wood floors creaking underneath, a hint of Midnight in Paris as they filed past the cosmetics counter, candy piled behind glass cases smudged by wishful fingers. Just like home. Why was she here?

  They took seats on the line of stools that ran the length of the lunch counter, settling in to looking at themselves in the mirror that covered the wall in front of them. Dominique was to her left, Mr. Spivey to her right. The mirror was almost covered over with signs advertising what was good about the place: COKES: 5 CENTS. MILK SHAKES: 25 CENTS. CHILI DOGS: 30 CENTS. No one was behind the counter. No one else was in the store. They sat quietly. She took a paper napkin out of its metal container and placed it on the counter in front of her. Habit.

  A woman in a light green uniform pushed open the swinging door that led to the kitchen. “Breakfast ain’t served. We ain’t open ’til later.”

  “We’ll wait,” Reverend Calder said.

  She disappeared back into the kitchen.

  After awhile, they could hear sounds behind them and see in the mirror other customers coming in to shop or to gawk. Some stood off by the candy counter and watched. Others edged closer. Tab sat with her sunglasses on, her hands in her lap, gripping purse straps. Why in the world was she here, alone with all these people she didn’t know?

  If she were back at Highlander, she would be getting up and going to breakfast now. She tried to concentrate on things other than the images in the mirror, the ones from out in the store, images that seemed to be coming closer to her, looking intently at her.

  On the counter opposite them, silver milk-shake mixers caught the light and mirrored the overhead fans that circled slowly. She knew what was underneath each one of the square metal tops that lined the space next to the mixers: red cherries, nuts, crushed pineapple, strawberry sauce, caramel sauce, and finally chocolate sauce—a bigger lid for that one. The kind of ice cream didn’t make that much difference; it was the topping that mattered. “Mr. Spivey,” she whispered. She had forgotten they were supposed to remain silent. “Ever had caramel and strawberry mixed together on top of chocolate ice cream?” He looked at her and shook his head because he couldn’t hear her, and she realized it was just as well. He had never sat here before anyway, so he didn’t even know what was beneath the silvery metal tops constantly wiped clean by the soda jerks and then lifted up with each new order, one scoop at a time, to be poured over the ice cream, something extra you could live without, because the ice cream was good enough, but you got something extra anyway.

  She glanced up at the mirror. Dominique was frowning at her.

  Half an hour passed. Half an hour of sitting there, not saying a word. All the while, more and more people were coming into the store. She noticed a blue blur back near the main entrance and looked again, letting her eyes focus on it. Policemen had come in, four of them, and they were standing there watching. The letters on their sleeves, the insignia on their caps—all reflected backward in the mirror.

  She wished their time would be up. They obviously were not going to get chili dogs. Another group should relieve them soon, but she didn’t see them. She didn’t see one black face in the store except for her people.

  A loud group of boys—some
about her age, she judged from the mirror—had come in and were standing around the toy counter, pretending to test out some of the toys. One of them picked up a baby doll and turned it over and back again, the doll making a whining “Maaamaaa” sound. He wore a leather jacket and had sideburns like Elvis, and he smiled at her when he saw she was watching.

  The waitress came out again to get some napkins and was turning to leave.

  “We would like service.”

  “Well, you ain’t getting none from me.”

  A black lady who worked in the back came to the door and stuck her head out.

  “You a disgrace to the race.” She was a nice-looking colored lady with a crisp white uniform, probably been working at this Woolworth’s for years, and she thought they were wrong. She was the kind of colored person Tab knew—kind and caring and Christian. What had they gotten her into, the likes of Dominique and her father? The image in the mirror had on ridiculous-looking sunglasses.

  Suddenly, Tab realized the boys at the toy counter had moved up closer, were spread out in a line behind all of them. Some older people were mixed in with them. One of them down the line, near Dominique’s father, said, “Did you hear that? Even the coloreds think you ain’t worth killing.” One of the boys from the toy counter was almost touching her shoulder. She could smell tobacco and see the pack of Camels sticking out of the Elvis boy’s jacket pocket.

  She looked along the mirror. There were people in back of all of them now, three or four deep, laughing and calling out things to them, asking them where they came from, asking why they had come to this town. Why didn’t they stay home in their own town if they wanted to cause trouble? Each remark seemed to give credence to another and then another, getting louder and louder. She noticed a girl standing in the crowd; she had on an angora collar like Tab’s. Suddenly, one of the bystanders down the line picked a catsup bottle up off the counter, unscrewed the top, and began pouring catsup on Reverend Calder’s head. Sounds of much laughter erupted from the crowd. The Elvis boy bent down and whispered something in Dominique’s ear. Her expression never changed. Seeing no response in the mirror, he leaned over to Tab. “What’s a white whore doing in amongst the niggers?” His next words, she had never heard before. No one had ever said words like that to her before. Who would? She wasn’t even sure what they all meant, but she knew they were insulting, as every word he said was meant to insult. She wheeled around on the counter stool to hit him, was grabbing the top of her purse to whack him as hard as she could. Her arm was in the process of coming around when Dominique caught it and held fast.