Night on Fire

by Ronald Kidd

  Gus leaned back on the bench and explained. “We wanted people to notice them, so we put them in the loft. God’s choir, I call them.”

  There must have been twenty of them. After the riot in downtown Montgomery, a second group from Nashville had arrived to show support for the first group of ten.

  Beside me, Jarmaine scanned their faces and recited the names. “John Lewis. Lucretia Collins. Catherine Burks. Bernard Lafayette. Salynn McCollum. I guess Jim Zwerg and William Barbee are in the hospital. There’s James Lawson—he’s the one who trained them in nonviolence.”

  Jarmaine gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “What?” I said.

  “Next to James Lawson. That’s Diane Nash. She’s here!”

  Watching Jarmaine, I thought it must be exciting and a little unsettling to see your hopes and dreams standing in front of you. They live in a corner of your mind, safe and secure, and suddenly there they are in person, real but unpredictable.

  As we watched, a man came up and whispered something to Diane Nash. She nodded grimly, excused herself, and followed him out of the choir loft.

  Gus played hymn after hymn, and the people sang along. I felt like I was floating in a sea of music, eyes closed, face toward heaven. It felt different from my church. There, the people sat in their own little corner, tuning in and out of the service. Here, you couldn’t tune out if you wanted to. The music grabbed you and wouldn’t let go.

  At eight o’clock, a heavyset man with glasses and a receding hairline stepped to the pulpit.

  “Praise God, we made it!”

  The crowd roared. I wondered how there could be so much love inside the building and so much hate outside.

  The man smiled and said, “I’m Reverend Solomon Seay, pastor of Mount Zion AME over here on Holt Street. Tonight I have the best job in town. I get to introduce the saints of our movement—Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, James Farmer of CORE, and of course the Freedom Riders.”

  The cheer was deafening. Jarmaine and I stood up again to see them. Reverend Seay named the Freedom Riders one by one without notes, and Jarmaine explained that Seay knew them because they had spent the night at his house. Then he introduced Dr. King and the other leaders. As a group the leaders walked over—right above us, close enough to touch—and hugged the Freedom Riders, with the same kind of awe on their faces that I’d seen on Jarmaine’s.

  I realized there might be only a few white people in the room, but some of those were Freedom Riders. After all, the riders weren’t just Negroes. They were black and white, a mix. Wasn’t that the point? Besides sitting in the front of the bus, they also had sat together, an integrated group in a segregated world.

  By getting on the bus with their Negro friends, the white riders had earned their way into First Baptist Church. There were just a few of them, but they belonged here. Maybe I did too. I had walked with Jarmaine into the Greyhound station. I had climbed onto the bus with her. I had faced an angry crowd in Birmingham, and I hadn’t backed down. After a lifetime of watching, I had decided to ride. Wasn’t that worth something?

  As the leaders filed back toward the pulpit, an explosion ripped through the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Gus flew off the bench, wrapped an arm around each of us, and pushed us to the floor. Stunned, we huddled like that for a few moments. When I got the nerve to look up, I saw flames through one of the windows.

  The mob was close now, rumbling dangerously. The sound seemed familiar, and I remembered where I had heard it. It was in Anniston, when the crowd had attacked the bus.

  In the church there were screams and yells. Children cried. Some people crouched under the pews. Others pushed and shoved, trying to get out but with nowhere to go. I tried to imagine what would happen if the church caught fire, and I realized how frightened the riders must have been that day in Anniston—trapped, unable to escape, surrounded by flames.

  Through the confusion, Reverend Seay hurried to the pulpit and leaned toward the microphone. “Folks, we just got word that it wasn’t a bomb. Somebody tipped a car over, and the gas tank blew up. That’s all it was.”

  He glanced toward Gus. “Now, how about some music?”

  Gus straightened up, then struggled to her feet and climbed back onto the bench. Her fingers found the keys, and she leaned into a hymn that Lavender had sung around our house, “Love Lifted Me.”

  Reverend Seay boomed, “Come on, now! I want you to lift your voices and mean every word of it.”

  A few people sang. More joined in. Little by little, the panic ebbed as people heard the familiar words.

  But the flames didn’t stop, and neither did the mob. At the pulpit, the leaders huddled. A group of them, including Dr. King, headed toward the narthex.

  “Where are they going?” asked Jarmaine.

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  We scrambled up the aisle. Reverend Abernathy, a rugged-looking man with broad shoulders and a neat mustache, led the way through his church, with Dr. King at his shoulder and James Farmer behind. Reaching the narthex, they turned right and went down a staircase toward the basement, talking earnestly. We followed at a distance, hoping no one would see us.

  The staircase had two flights, and on the landing between them was a little window looking out onto Ripley Street, just above the sidewalk. We paused there and gazed outside.

  It was a street-level view of hell.

  People crowded up against the church, yelling, drinking, screaming to the skies. Some had wrapped chains around their fists. Others gripped pipes and bats. Through a forest of knees, I saw a man crouch down and pour gasoline into a bottle, stuff one end of a rag into it, and light the other end. Grinning, he stood up and threw the bottle toward the church. There was a crash and the flash of another fire. Beyond the flames was a sea of angry faces.

  I said, “What are we going to do?”

  “Follow Dr. King,” said Jarmaine.

  At the bottom of the staircase, off to our left, church members scurried around the kitchen, wearing aprons and hairnets. A few of them pulled food from a massive refrigerator, while others stirred giant pots on the stove using big wooden spoons, trying to pretend this was just another church social.

  Straight ahead, opposite the staircase, was a small room with a sign above it: Office. The leaders filed inside. I expected them to shut the door, but between the boiling pots and the heat outside, the basement was sweltering, so they left it open. Reverend Abernathy offered his desk to Dr. King, who sat down and hung his coat on the back of the chair. Abernathy and Farmer leaned down, and the three of them talked in low voices.

  Jarmaine asked, “What are they saying?”

  “Let’s get closer,” I said.

  As we stepped off the staircase, a young man appeared next to us. Just a few years older than we were, he looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Jarmaine spoke for us. I was happy to let her. “Looking around. It’s a beautiful church.”

  “It’s nicer upstairs,” he said. “Why don’t you go up there?”

  He looked toward the office, where Dr. King was on the phone, and I remembered where I had seen him.

  “You drove Dr. King,” I said. “We saw you in front of the church.”

  He eyed me uneasily, then asked Jarmaine, “Who is she?”

  “She’s my friend,” said Jarmaine. “We came to see Dr. King. What’s he like?”

  “He’s a great man. He even asked me about my school.”

  Jarmaine grinned. “What did you tell him?”

  The young man smiled sheepishly. “School’s hard. He said to keep trying. Keep the faith.”

  I glanced around and noticed a couple of chairs against the wall just outside the office door, where people could sit and wait to meet with the pastor.

  I said, “We’re kind of tired. You think we could sit in those chairs?”

  He looked at the off
ice, then back at Jarmaine.

  She said, “We’ve come a long way.”

  The young man ducked his head and nodded. “I guess so. Sure, go ahead.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He stood there awkwardly for a moment. There was a crash somewhere outside, and he blinked. “I’d better go.”

  He hurried upstairs. I walked over to the chairs and sat in one of them. Jarmaine followed and settled in beside me.

  I said, “He liked you.”

  “Shhh.”

  We heard snatches of conversation coming from the office. “… dangerous … troops … the governor …” There was the click of a telephone receiver and the whir of a dial. A few moments later, Dr. King said in that unmistakable voice of his, “Yes? Mr. Attorney General? Sir, the situation here is desperate. You’ve got to do something.”

  Jarmaine’s eyes opened wide and she whispered, “He’s talking to President Kennedy’s brother, Robert Kennedy.”

  It was hard to imagine. There we were, in the basement of an Alabama church, hearing Martin Luther King talk to the White House on the same phone that church members used when they ordered beans and ham.

  Dr. King described the scene outside the church, then said, “No, sir. There’s no police, no highway patrol. We’re surrounded. Federal marshals? Well, if they don’t get here immediately, we’re going to have a bloody confrontation.”

  In the kitchen, pots and pans clattered, drowning out the voices. When the noise stopped, Dr. King was saying, “A cooling-off period? I’ll ask them. But first we need those federal marshals.”

  James Farmer went shooting out the door and up the stairs, a look of alarm on his face. Inside the office, Dr. King finished the call. By the time he hung up, Farmer was back, and someone was with him.

  It was Diane Nash.

  Up close she was beautiful, with high cheekbones, flowing hair, and skin the color of caramel. Jarmaine stared. I guess she couldn’t help it. I elbowed her, afraid someone would tell us to leave, but the two of them hurried on by.

  Inside the office, Dr. King told them, “The Attorney General asked if we could end the Freedom Rides. He suggested a cooling-off period.”

  Farmer answered, “If we do, we’ll just get words and promises.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Dr. King. “We’ve made our point. The nation’s watching. Now they know.”

  “Sir,” said Diane Nash in a sweet, steely voice, “with all due respect, that’s wrong.”

  Beside me, Jarmaine gasped. I wondered how often people spoke like that to Dr. King.

  “Just listen,” said Nash.

  Up the stairs, beyond the windows, I could hear the mob coiling, ready to strike. Chains rattled. Glass shattered. Someone pounded on the church doors.

  Nash said, “If we stop now, we’ll be giving in to that. The Freedom Rides have to continue.”

  Dr. King told her, “Your people may die.”

  “Then others will follow.”

  “Do they know what they’re doing?” asked Abernathy.

  “Sir,” said Diane Nash, “you should know that before we left, all of us drew up our wills. We know that we might be killed, but we can’t let violence overcome nonviolence.”

  “She’s right,” Farmer declared. “We’ve been cooling off for three hundred and fifty years. If we cool off any more, we’ll be in the deep freeze. The Freedom Rides will go on.”

  I glanced at Jarmaine. She looked scared but hopeful.

  Abernathy said, “There are fifteen hundred people upstairs. I think they’ll want to know.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Dr. King.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Dr. King came out of the office and put on his coat. Behind him were Abernathy and Farmer. Diane Nash came last. She noticed us and smiled, lighting up the room.

  We followed them at a safe distance and slipped back into the sanctuary. The church meeting had been going on while we were in the basement. Some of the Freedom Riders were by the pulpit, and Gus was at the organ, rocking through another hymn.

  I wished Grant was there to take pictures and sing along. I remembered how he had looked up at the bus as Jarmaine and I rode by. After what he had seen and photographed that day at Forsyth’s, he deserved to be with us. I could have stopped on the way to the bus station and picked him up. Sometimes I got mad at him for doing things and not including me, and now I had done the same to him. Grant was my friend. He might be more than that, but it would never happen unless I gave him a chance.

  Dr. King went to the front, and Gus ended the music. The people settled down. Fans swished back and forth, and handkerchiefs wiped foreheads, but the crowd was quiet.

  Dr. King leaned over the microphone and said, “The first thing to know is that we’re going to be calm, and we’re going to continue to stand up for what we know is right. We are not giving in. The Freedom Rides will go on.”

  Someone shouted, “Amen!” Others joined in, and Dr. King held up his hand for silence.

  “The second thing to know is that I just got off the phone with Robert Kennedy. He’s sending in federal marshals. They’re going to get us out of here.”

  A cheer went up. I couldn’t help but notice there was grumbling too. Maybe some of the people didn’t want to be rescued. They would stand with Dr. King, flames or no flames.

  There were more speeches and more hymns. I turned to Jarmaine. “I’d sure like to see those federal marshals.”

  She gazed back thoughtfully. “We can, you know.”

  Grabbing my hand, she led me out of the sanctuary, up the stairs, and into the church attic. We could hear distant voices below, but the attic was quiet. We made our way up the ladder, pushed open the door, and climbed through.

  Did you ever wonder what heaven is like at night? I had always pictured it during the day, with bright blue skies and puffy, white clouds. But until I stepped into that tower again, I had never imagined it at night.

  There’s darkness. There’s a breeze that ruffles your hair. There are windows all around. There’s a sky filled with stars. There are sturdy brick walls. In the center, there’s a bell.

  It’s an ancient bell, and on it are the names of the saints. They have worked and planned and persevered. They have been cursed and beaten, driven from their homes and shipped to a cruel land. Their children have been taken away and their families torn apart. They have bent under blows, but they have gotten up again. They have worshiped. They have sung. And on special days, when the world seems about to burst, the bell rings, the sun rises, and the saints dance with joy.

  The thoughts filled my mind, as if poured from a pitcher. I wondered who they came from—Dr. King, Jarmaine, the people crowded together downstairs. Maybe thoughts came from places. In my neighborhood, we thought about ourselves and the way we had always done things. Tradition, we called it. On Jarmaine’s block, there was fear. If you saw a white person, you wondered what was wrong. In this church, around this bell, there was love, mixed with hope and determination and fierce pride. It filled the place, and it filled me. It felt like heaven.

  There’s something else about heaven. If you look down, you can see hell. We had gotten the street view from the basement, and now we saw it from above. Jarmaine and I stood at a window, watching.

  The crowd had turned into a mob, surrounding the church and throwing itself against the doors. Angry faces reflected the light of a dozen fires. Pickup trucks were parked in rows, like coffins. Fists clutched pipes and chains.

  Jarmaine said, “Did you see that?”

  I nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Not down there,” she said, pointing. “Over there.”

  On the horizon, lights winked. They started out tiny, like a swarm of lightning bugs, but soon sorted themselves into columns, two of them, stretching back toward downtown. They were federal marshals, and they had been sent by Robert Kennedy to save us. When the vehicles drew near, they came into view beneath the streetlights.

  Jarmain
e watched them. “Mail trucks?”

  Stepping closer to the window, she gripped the wire mesh, then pounded the bricks angrily. “Mail trucks? Mail trucks!”

  I wanted to speak but was afraid I might laugh or sob. I had expected the marshals to arrive in jeeps, maybe tanks, but not this. What were they going to do? Sort envelopes? Sell stamps?

  The first group of mail trucks reached the park across Ripley Street, and the men got out. They didn’t have uniforms. They wore work pants, open shirts, jackets, and yellow armbands saying Marshal.

  Jarmaine stared at them. “They’re good old boys.”

  Good old boys. It was an expression I’d heard my whole life. Good old boys were men who smiled and said hi and seemed harmless. I’d seen them my whole life—hanging around town, visiting at the hardware store, shaking hands and slapping each other on the back. I knew them as well as I knew myself. They might as well be uncles. Some of them were. As far as I was concerned, “good” meant good. Jarmaine felt otherwise.

  As the other mail trucks arrived, they pulled in behind the first group, blocking them in.

  Jarmaine shook her head. “They don’t even know how to park.”

  The marshals got out, stumbling toward us with no apparent plan. A few of them recognized friends in the mob and stopped to say hello. Then they headed to Ripley Street in front of the church. Once there, they formed a rough line, like something a kindergartner might draw with a crayon. They looked at each other and waited.

  About that time their leader, a man in a coat and tie, came running and shouting orders to them. “Disperse the crowd! Disperse the crowd!”

  The marshals looked at each other, and a few of them pulled out objects that looked like beer cans.

  I gaped. “They’re going to drink?”

  “That’s not beer,” said Jarmaine. “It’s tear gas.”

  The marshals flipped something on the cans, then threw or rolled them into the crowd. It would have been a great idea, except for one thing—the wind.