Night on Fire

by Ronald Kidd

  His hands were warm. They seemed strong and sure. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought they lingered a moment longer than they had to.

  I wanted to ask, What are you thinking? When you look into the darkness, what do you see?

  I heard rustling sounds again. Grant was doing what he loved. It was so much a part of him that he could do it blind. I wondered what it was like to be so sure of yourself.

  A few minutes later he turned on the light.

  “I made two of them,” he said, “in case you want an extra.”

  On the table were twin pictures of me. My skin was pink. My hair was red. My eyes sparkled, and my grin flashed. Behind me, the Greyhound bus glinted silver and blue, ready to take me on a journey.

  Grant picked up the photos and handed them to me. “These are yours.”

  I took them, then thought about it and handed one back.

  “You keep this one,” I said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We always tried to make Mother’s Day special.

  Daddy and I woke up early that Sunday and tiptoed into the kitchen, where we made sausage and hockey pucks—I mean, pancakes. We were out of syrup, but there was an old jar of strawberry jam left in the back of the fridge, and we pulled that out. I picked some buttercups from the yard and put them in a pickle jar. Daddy woke up Royal and brought him into the kitchen. Then I set everything on a tray and led the way to Mama’s room.

  In the hallway I turned to Daddy and whispered, “Isn’t there a song?”

  “Huh?”

  “For Mother’s Day. You know, like ‘Deck the Halls’ for Christmas, or ‘Auld Lang Syne’ for New Year’s.”

  Daddy thought about it. “Not that I know of.”

  He held open the bedroom door, and I walked through, singing “Happy Mother’s Day to you …”

  Okay, it was weak. But Mama beamed anyway, like she was at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York City, where Life magazine said Miss Harper Lee liked to eat. I was just happy to see Mama smile.

  Daddy got the Sunday paper, and after breakfast I sat next to Mama on the bed and read it with her while Daddy played with Royal on the floor. Mama and I went through the comics, of course, including my favorites, Flash Gordon and Peanuts. There was a cartoon saying “Every day is Mother’s Day”—Mama liked that—and a sappy poem in the ad for Long’s Funeral Home.

  The sun shone on the bed. I rested my head on Mama’s shoulder. Daddy ruffled Royal’s hair. It was just the four of us in our own little world. Daddy winked at me. Royal laughed. Mama glowed. Sometimes I think it was the last good moment.

  When we finished the comics, I slipped into the other room and brought back the straw handbag, which I’d wrapped in tissue paper the night before.

  “Ducks!” said Mama when she tore it open. “I love ducks!”

  “I thought you loved peacocks,” said Daddy.

  Mama hugged Royal and me; then Daddy presented his card and gift. The gift was so big he couldn’t get it onto the bed. Mama had to open it on the floor. She ripped through several miles of ribbon and wrapping paper, and underneath found a giant cardboard box, which Daddy helped her open with his pocket knife.

  “A vacuum cleaner!” said Mama finally. “How romantic.”

  Personally, I didn’t think it was that romantic. Maybe Mama didn’t either.

  Daddy shrugged. “You’ve been talking about keeping the house clean. I thought this would help.”

  Mama flashed a stiff little smile. “Lavender will be thrilled.”

  Down the other side of our hill, toward town, was the Wayside Baptist Church, where we went on Sundays. It was a little brick building with a sign out front.

  God couldn’t be everywhere, so he made mothers.

  It was another one of Pastor Bob’s gems. There was a different message each week. Daddy said the guy spent more time on the sign than he did on his sermons.

  That morning, Mama carried her Bible in the straw handbag. We took Royal to the nursery, then sat in our usual spot on the aisle five rows from the front, which I liked because you could see out the window. I watched Jimmy McReedy work on his motorcycle next door, revving the engine every so often and drowning out Pastor Bob. It was just as well, because the sermon was about Mary, the mother of Jesus. The problem was, I think Pastor Bob got her mixed up with another Mary. I have to say, though, I couldn’t blame him. Let’s face it—there are too many Marys in the Bible.

  I lost track of the sermon and glanced at the people around me. I’d grown up with them. They seemed almost like family. There was Clyde of Clyde’s Hair Heaven. A few rows behind him sat Mrs. Jutson, the clerk at Mason’s. On the other side of the church I spotted Mr. Tolbert, the band director and my homeroom teacher. He caught my eye and smiled. Maybe his mind was wandering too.

  Daddy had a saying: they aren’t all good people, but they’re our people. He meant the folks in town and around it, the ones he sold insurance to, the ones I’d grown up with and gone to church with and said hello to when I passed them on the street. They were part of me, like summer days and the honeysuckle in our yard. After what happened later that day, I often wondered if it was still true.

  I looked around the church and realized that all the faces had one thing in common. They were white. That started me thinking about Jarmaine. If she walked through the door of our church, what would happen? Could she sit in the sanctuary the way she and her friends did at the spelling bee? What would Pastor Bob say? Would he preach about love like he was doing this morning?

  I thought about Jarmaine’s church, which probably was as black as mine was white. Were they also talking about Mary? Was their Mary white like ours? If she was black, did that mean Jesus was black?

  Lavender didn’t work on Sundays, so after church Mama started for the kitchen.

  I told her, “It’s Mother’s Day. Daddy and I can make dinner.”

  She squeezed my shoulder. “That’s all right, Billie. I’ll take over now.”

  We had ham and biscuits, then boiled custard, which was like eggnog but better. Mama kissed Royal and told us how proud she was to be our mother and Daddy’s wife.

  Afterward, I washed the dishes and Daddy excused himself, saying he had an errand to run. Then I grabbed the Sunday paper, plopped down on the sofa next to Mama and Royal, and looked through the sports section.

  Reading the paper reminded me of the Freedom Riders, and I remembered this was the day they were coming through Anniston. I pictured Jarmaine at the Greyhound station and thought she must be excited.

  They’re making history, she had told me. Could it be true? How do you make history by riding on a bus? I’d been watching buses drive by for as long as I could remember. The people on them were going places. Were these riders different? Did they have dreams like I did? If you had a dream, could you make history?

  I wanted to catch a glimpse of them and realized that I could. Jumping up from the sofa, I headed to my room, where I opened my drawer and got out the bus schedule. On Sundays, only one bus went from Atlanta to Birmingham, and according to the schedule, it had just arrived in Anniston. I allowed for some time to load passengers and figured the bus would be leaving the Greyhound station in a few minutes, which meant it would come through our neighborhood soon.

  I called to Mama, “I’m going outside,” then flew through the door and ran to Grant’s house.

  “Come with me,” I told him. “Bring your camera.”

  We hopped on our bikes and raced down the hill to Forsyth’s Grocery, where the little dirt parking lot would give us the best view.

  As we parked our bikes in front, Grant asked, “What’s this all about?”

  I was going to tell him, but at that moment the bus appeared at the top of the hill.

  “Just start taking pictures,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I could tell right away that something was wrong.

  The bus weaved back and forth. As it drove down the hill, I saw dents on the side. I heard a rattlin
g sound and then a thump-thump, thump-thump.

  The strangest part was the cars and pickup trucks. A line of them followed the bus, snaking back all the way to the top of the hill and beyond.

  “Hey, there’s my dad!” said Grant, pointing.

  I saw Mr. McCall’s car, third in line.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Working on a story. He went downtown after lunch. He didn’t say what it was, but I noticed he didn’t call his photographer. I guess it didn’t seem like a big enough story.”

  “I guess he was wrong,” I said.

  Grant glanced down at his camera. A look crossed his face—part happiness, part determination.

  The bus drew near, and I saw what had caused the thumping. The tires were slashed and had gone flat. I knew the bus couldn’t go much farther, and sure enough, right in front of the grocery, it pulled to the side of the road.

  The door popped open, and the driver came stumbling out, with another man right behind him. They hurried across the parking lot and into the grocery, maybe to ask for help. I saw that the cars were pulling over too, parking every which way alongside the road.

  Have you ever stumbled onto a wasps’ nest? I did once when I was little. It was an accident, but the wasps didn’t know that. They were mad.

  That’s what the people reminded me of. They swarmed out of their cars, carrying sticks and clubs and chains. One group gathered along the side of the bus and started rocking it back and forth, trying to turn it over.

  Frightened, I reached back for Grant, but no one was there. I looked around, worried, then spotted him in the crowd. He was taking pictures. I saw Mr. McCall nearby, observing the crowd and scribbling in a little notebook. Father and son were both trying to understand in the ways they knew best.

  I was trying to understand too. These were some of the same people I’d seen on the street and in the grocery store. I’d seen them in church that morning. I was part of them, and they were part of me. It was as if my right arm, without warning, had suddenly started punching.

  There was a crash as a young man broke a bus window with a metal crowbar. Next to him, a teenager gripped a baseball bat, maybe one he had used in a game on Saturday, and smashed another window.

  When the group realized they couldn’t turn over the bus, they started for the door, trying to get inside. A man stood in the opening. He was white and seemed to be a passenger. The group hesitated. The man ducked back in, pulling the door shut behind him. The crowd pounded on it, but apparently the man had locked it.

  “You can’t keep us out!” shouted the young man with the crowbar.

  He broke out the rest of the window, then dropped his crowbar and tried to pull himself up through the jagged opening. Glass cut his hands, but he didn’t stop. Someone reached out through the window and pushed him back. He growled like an animal. His friends gathered behind him, yelling threats—ten, then twenty, then fifty of them.

  I had no doubt who they were threatening. On the other side of the window huddled the Freedom Riders, black and white people traveling together, people Jarmaine had said were trained not to strike back no matter what happened. I wondered if they had ever imagined anything like this.

  Certainly I never had—not in my neighborhood, in front of Forsyth’s Grocery, the store that carried Bunny Bread and baseball cards and all the latest records.

  My gaze swept over the scene and up the hill, where the crowd had parked their cars. I saw a car I hadn’t noticed before. It was a beat-up DeSoto, the one we had bought from our neighbors. Suddenly I got a terrible feeling in my stomach.

  I scanned the crowd and realized for the first time that there were two groups—one beating on the bus and one watching. The watchers milled around, some of them shouting encouragement. Besides men, there were women and children, several still wearing their Sunday best. There was old Mrs. Todd, who shopped at Forsyth’s Grocery. Beside her was Clyde of Clyde’s Hair Heaven. One woman had a beautiful pink dress with a red carnation pinned to the front.

  “Communists!” she yelled.

  Next to her, a little boy picked up a stone and threw it at the bus.

  That’s when I saw Daddy.

  He was speaking with Mr. Young, a man who lived down the street. Daddy talked and nodded, keeping his eyes fastened on the bus.

  What did he see? What did he think? What would he do?

  He glanced around, and his eyes met mine. He looked away, embarrassed, then looked up again. This time, his gaze, warm and steady, connected us like a cable. It was the gaze I’d grown up with, the one that had told me everything was all right. Except now it wasn’t. The scene dropped away—the sound, the violence, the mob. There were just Daddy and me, like so many times before.

  I caught a flash of white out of the corner of my eye and turned to see two highway patrol cars pull up at the edge of the parking lot. The doors opened, and the officers got out. They looked around, but instead of stopping the crowd they leaned against one of the cars, arms folded, sunglasses glinting. They watched, talking calmly to each other.

  “Hey!” I yelled to them, waving my arms. They didn’t see me.

  I looked back at the crowd and recognized one man, Bo Blanchard. He was a member of the local Ku Klux Klan, a group that was against Negroes or anybody else who disagreed with them. The Klan and its members were supposed to be secret, but Bo Blanchard couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  I saw him step away and sprint for his car, which was parked up the hill. A moment later he came running back to the bus, holding a bunch of oily rags. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and held it up to the rags. They burst into flames. He flung them through one of the broken windows.

  There was a dull whumpf. Flames leaped. The bus was on fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The passengers screamed. One of them, a young Negro woman, leaned through a broken window, gasping for air.

  She yelled, “Oh my God, they’re trying to burn us up!”

  The fire blazed behind her, and smoke began to billow. More passengers stuck their heads through the windows, their eyes wide with fright. I realized that the people in the bus had a terrible choice: face the flames inside or the mob outside.

  Hearing desperation in the passengers’ voices, the mob clustered around the door. One man smacked a lead pipe against his palm. Another broke a bottle and held it by the neck.

  “Burn them alive!” cried one.

  “Fry them!” called another.

  Grant took pictures. The highway patrol officers just watched.

  The smoke turned an inky black, the color of midnight. Suddenly there was an explosion. Flames leaped from under the back of the bus.

  “The fuel tanks!” yelled one of the men. “They’re gonna blow!”

  The mob backed away. Some ran. The bus door flew open, and people spilled out in a jumble of black and white. Most ended up on their hands and knees, coughing and retching from the smoke.

  A young white man approached one of the passengers and asked, “Are you okay?” Then he took out a baseball bat and swung it, smashing the passenger on the side of the head.

  The mob hesitated. Some who had run away moved back toward the bus, carrying tire irons and chains, falling on the passengers and beating them.

  Everyone watched, including me. I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t move. Then I saw a small figure through the smoke. Janie Forsyth, who must have heard the commotion from inside the grocery, weaved in and out among the victims, carrying a bucket of water and a stack of Dixie cups. She dipped the cups in her bucket and fed sips of water to the passengers. Pausing under the S&H Green Stamps sign, she gave a handkerchief to one passenger, and he wiped blood from his face.

  I wondered if she would get beaten too, but no one touched her. They knew her. She was the Forsyth girl. Maybe it was easier to beat up a stranger.

  Another fuel tank exploded, sending flames to the sky and driving the last of the passengers from the bus. A moment later, it was a ma
ss of red and black, burning like a bonfire. I could feel the heat all the way across the parking lot.

  I heard the crack of a gunshot, then another. Fearing the worst, I whirled around. The highway patrol officers were standing nearby, pistols pointed to the sky.

  “That’s enough,” one of them yelled.

  Enough? What did the word mean? Grant had enough baseball cards. I had enough records. Was there enough blood? Enough pain?

  The people in the crowd looked at each other. They eyed the passengers, who were scattered across the lot weeping, staring, stunned. Maybe they noticed Grant and realized he was taking photos. Whatever the reason, they moved off one by one, somehow no longer a mob. They went to their cars, got inside, and drove off. They left in an orderly way, as if they’d just finished up at the grocery store.

  The officers watched the cars go. They didn’t write down names or license plate numbers. They didn’t arrest anyone. One of them pulled a microphone from inside his patrol car and ordered an ambulance.

  That seemed to break the spell. The second crowd, those who had been watching, began to move. Some left. A few approached the bus passengers and, along with Janie, did what they could to comfort the passengers until the ambulance arrived.

  Daddy watched them go, the way he had watched the beatings and the flames. Finally he walked over to me. I thought of how, in an earlier life, he and I had made breakfast, then taken it in to Mama and celebrated Mother’s Day.

  I said in a low voice, “I guess now we know what your errand was.”

  “Clyde told me about it at the barber shop on Saturday,” said Daddy. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  “That was terrible,” I said.

  “It was dangerous. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why did they do it?” I asked.

  This time, “they” didn’t mean Negroes. It meant the people of Anniston. It meant us.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” said Daddy. “It got out of hand.”

  “But why? The Freedom Riders were on a bus, that’s all.”