Streets of Fire

by Thomas H. Cook

  ‘Name’s Thompson,’ the man said as he started the engine. ‘Lamar Thompson.’

  ‘Ben Well man.’

  Thompson eased the truck forward, moving slowly toward the avenue and then out into it.

  ‘You some kind of preacher or something?’ he asked when he brought the truck to a halt at the first traffic signal.

  ‘No,’ Ben said, ‘I’m with the Police Department.’

  Thompson smiled. ‘I figured you might be coming along to say a few words over the body. I thought maybe the state provided something like that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want me to do it then?’ Thompson asked immediately.

  ‘If you want to,’ Ben said indifferently.

  ‘You got any idea what this child was?’

  ‘She was a Negro,’ Ben told him.

  ‘I figured that,’ Thompson said. ‘They don’t bury white people in Gracehill. But what about her religion?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Well, I’m a Primitive Baptist, myself,’ Thompson said. ‘You know, an old foot-washing Baptist, what you might say.’ He smiled softly. ‘With us, it don’t matter what this child was, because in the end, she was, what you might say, a child of God.’ He pulled a red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his neck vigorously. ‘So what I mean is, well, I could say a few simple things over her, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘It’s all right with me,’ Ben said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, peering out into the deepening night as the truck moved shakily alongside Kelly Ingram Park and then on ahead into the Negro district. To his right, a string of poolhalls stretched out for nearly a block. A soft green light glowed behind their painted windows, and he could imagine the people inside, lined up along the wall in small wooden chairs or bunched over the tables, their bright, gleaming eyes following the flight of the balls.

  ‘How long you been a policeman?’ Thompson asked after a while.

  Ben drew in a deep breath. ‘Long time.’

  ‘I’ve worked with the Highway Department for a long time, too,’ Thompson said cheerfully. ‘It’s rough in the summer. You spread that steaming black tar all over everything. It steams right up in your face. You blow your nose when you get home from work, it looks like you’re blowing coal soot out of your head.’

  Ben nodded slowly, but said nothing. He could hear the jukeboxes humming noisily in the night air, loud, pulsing, rhythmic, as if they were being played to warn off an approaching danger.

  ‘I used to think about doing something else,’ Thompson went on, ‘but by the time I got to thinking real serious about that, I was near to forty, with three kids and a big car payment.’ He hit the brake suddenly to avoid a small dog, and the coffin slid forward and bumped loudly against the cab of the truck. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Thompson said quickly. ‘Didn’t want to hit that dog, though.’

  The truck moved steadily down Fourth Avenue, then out beyond it, to where more and more vacant lots lined the increasingly bumpy and untended streets.

  ‘They ought to get a crew out here,’ Thompson said. He peered to the right. ‘There it is,’ he said.

  Gracehill Cemetery rested on a small, rounded hill near the far southwest corner of the city. Small unpaved roads snaked windingly among the small gray stones, slowly curling upward toward the crest of the hill. All along the gently sloping banks, tombstones jutted out of the ground in broken clusters, their bases covered by the unmown grass. The mounds of dirt which stretched out from them were decorated by clumps of plastic-flowers rooted in dirt-filled tin cans and quart jars. Here and there a plywood cross leaned unsteadily toward the earth, or a plain brown stone lifted from it, jagged, nameless, accompanied by a small one at the foot of the mound.

  ‘It’s supposed to be right around here,’ Thompson said matter-of-factly. He craned his neck out the window, his eyes searching through the ever-deepening brush.

  The grave had been dug in a slender trench between two others, and when Thompson finally spotted it, he wheeled the truck over, then backed it in, as if preparing to dump the coffin like a load of sand.

  ‘Okay,’ he said as he turned off the engine.

  Ben got out and walked to the back of the truck. The two youths had already lowered the tailgate and pushed the coffin to the edge of it. They now stood above it, their eyes lifted up over the hill, toward the distant twinkling lights of the city.

  ‘Okay, now,’ Thompson said. ‘We’ll just lower it down real slow. Don’t drop her.’

  Within a few minutes, the coffin was in the ground, and Thompson walked to the head of the grave and bowed his head. The two young men bowed theirs as well, while Ben slumped back on a large stone and sank his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Dearest and most gracious God,’ Thompson began, ‘we commend to your care the soul of your servant …’ He stopped and glanced up at Ben. ‘What’s this child’s name?’ he asked.

  ‘Martha Wellman,’ Ben told him.

  Thompson lowered his head again. ‘We commend to your care the soul of your servant, Martha Wellman.’ He folded his hands together gracefully. ‘We know that she was your child, that her soul was saved long before it was even clothed in flesh. For the grace of Jesus Christ is a gift which cannot be refused.’

  Ben’s eyes drifted over to the two black youths. They stood on either side of the grave, their heads bowed reverently, their lips pressed tightly together. Behind them, the nightbound city glittered silently. Ben’s eyes drifted down toward the grave, then back up again. The city lay utterly quiet in the darkness, a grid of streets lit by what seemed in the distance a thousand tiny fires. He wondered how many streets the girl had come to know, which ones she had liked, feared, the last one she’d walked down before she died.

  King had not yet begun to speak when Ben arrived once again at the Sixteenth Baptist Church, but the crowds were already singing and clapping as they filled the streets which fronted the church.

  Ben got out of his car and stood beside it, leaning on the hood, his pen and notebook already in his hand. From his position he could see a group of black leaders standing on the small porch at the side of the church. They were talking quietly and fanning themselves with paper fans from A. G. Gaston’s Funeral Home. Just beyond them, Breedlove and Daniels were squatting together in front of a bush, and even from several yards away, Ben could see that they had both taken out their own pens and notebooks.

  Just as the day before, the crowd suddenly grew quiet, and then King’s voice rang out.

  ‘Today was D-Day in Birmingham,’ he cried, his voice already at that high pitch which it had achieved the day before. ‘But there will be many more D-Days in Birmingham. There will be Double D-Days in Birmingham until we have won our freedom.’

  Daniels was writing furiously in his notebook, when Ben looked up, but Breedlove had vanished. For a moment he looked for him, a pale white face in a sea of black, but it was as if he had disintegrated where he squatted, dissolved into the warm evening air.

  ‘The eyes of the nation are on Birmingham,’ King intoned, and the crowd cheered wildly. ‘The eyes of the world are on Birmingham.’ The cheers grew louder and more ecstatic. The eyes of God are on Birmingham.’ A wave of trembling jubilation lifted the crowd inside the church, then swept out over the people surrounding it, passing back and forth over them again and again like the flow of wildly eddying waters.

  Ben’s pen scurried across the page, the point burrowing into the white paper, scarring it as he wrote.

  ‘So don’t get tired,’ King cried.

  ‘No!’ the crowd screamed in return.

  ‘Don’t get bitter.’

  ‘No!’

  King’s deep, sonorous laughter settled over the crowd. Then, suddenly, his voice rose out of it like a lick of fire.

  ‘Are you tired?’ he shouted.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Are you bitter?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then go out and go out and go out again,’
King cried. ‘And let justice flow down from the mountainside.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Let justice flow down from Red Mountain.’

  ‘Yes, Lord!’

  ‘Let justice rise like the mighty waters.’

  ‘Amen! Amen!’

  ‘Until it is high in the streets of the city.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘O Lord, let justice flow down upon Birmingham like a mighty stream.’

  The furious cheers of the people seemed to be even greater than the day before, and as Ben brought his pen to rest and glanced around him, he realized that they had reached such a deafening pitch that they now drowned out everything, as if their thunderous roar came like an immense and shuddering wave from the deep core of the earth.

  TEN

  Kelly Ryan was slumped behind the single gun-metal gray desk of the Property Room, and he did not move as Ben approached him. His small green eyes peered expressionlessly forward, and his lips remained tightly closed. He wore a plain blue shirt, open at the collar, and with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow, so that he looked more like a farmhand than a policeman.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,’ Ben said as he stepped up to the desk.

  Ryan nodded slowly. ‘They had me on special duty.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Ryan said nothing, but his thin lips jerked down slightly.

  ‘Doing what, Kelly?’ Ben repeated.

  ‘All those girls they brought in today,’ Ryan said. ‘They’re doing VD checks on them.’

  Ben felt the air grow cold around him.

  Ryan looked at him pointedly. ‘Were you in the park?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Must have been really something down there today.’

  ‘It was,’ Ben said. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘They kept me right here most of the time,’ Ryan said. He smiled thinly. ‘They had me running back and forth from the cells, bringing the girls upstairs.’ He drew in a long, weary breath. ‘Is there something you want from Property?’ he asked.

  Ben’s eyes surveyed the rows of metal shelving which lined the walls behind Ryan’s desk. They were almost entirely empty.

  ‘Looks like they cleaned you out,’ he said.

  ‘Just the guns,’ Ryan told him.

  ‘Yeah, I know. I saw McCorkindale signing them out.’ Ben paused. ‘We buried a little girl in Gracehill this evening,’ he said. ‘They sent a man over from the Highway Department. Patterson was surprised it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Well, that’s because I do all the colored cemeteries.’

  Ben leaned forward slightly. ‘Why’s that, Kelly?’

  Ryan looked at him evenly. ‘You never struck me as the nosy type, Ben.’

  Ben shrugged. ‘I was just wondering,’ he said.

  ‘Wondering about what, exactly?’

  Ben did not answer.

  ‘Wondering why I get all the nigger work?’ Kelly asked. There was a bitter edge in his voice. ‘Is that what you were wondering?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Ryan sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. Well, what have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ben said lamely.

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Well, I know that you used to work Bearmatch.’

  Ryan said nothing.

  ‘That little girl we buried,’ Ben added. ‘We found her in that old ballfield off Twenty-third Street.’

  Ryan remained silent, but Ben could see something stirring behind his eyes.

  ‘And I thought you might be able to help me.’

  Ryan turned away sharply. ‘I haven’t worked Bearmatch in two years. If you want to know something, go ask the Langleys. It’s strictly their beat now.’

  ‘I talked to them,’ Ben said. ‘They weren’t much help.’

  Ryan said nothing. He kept his eyes averted slightly.

  Ben continued to stand over him, staring down. He could feel an odd tumult building in Ryan’s mind, and for a moment he simply stood by silently and let it grow.

  ‘Bearmatch was my first assignment,’ Ryan said as he turned slowly toward Ben, his voice almost wistful as he continued, ‘I was fresh as a daisy.’ He started to go on, then stopped himself and drew his eyes quickly to the left, as if he were looking for a way out. ‘I feel old now,’ he added finally. ‘I don’t know why.’ He said nothing else.

  Again, Ben waited, allowing the silence to lengthen slowly. When it seemed stretched to the limit, he broke it.

  ‘You want to have a drink with me?’ he asked.

  Ryan’s eyes flashed toward him. ‘I haven’t had a drink with a cop since they took me off Bearmatch,’ he said.

  Ben smiled quietly. ‘Want to have one now?’

  Ryan looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’

  ‘A little girl,’ Ben told him softly. ‘A little colored girl.’

  It was a small, honky-tonk bar, nestled among the raw metal clutter of two steel mills. Outside, the air quivered with the roar of the blast furnaces, but inside there was only the jukebox and the low murmur of the factory workers who lined the bar itself or gathered in loose clusters around tiny wooden tables.

  Ben guided Ryan to a booth in the far back corner, ordered two beers, then offered him a cigarette.

  Ryan took it immediately. ‘This is a real night out with the boys for me,’ he said with a mocking laugh.

  Ben lit the cigarette and Ryan inhaled deeply.

  ‘I hope there’s nobody working undercover in this place,’ he said as he let the smoke filter slowly out of his month. ‘You don’t want to be seen with me.’

  Ben lit his own cigarette and eased himself back into the padded seat. ‘Why’s that?’

  Ryan smiled sardonically and took another drag on the cigarette. ‘I worked Bearmatch before the Langleys took it over. You might say I handed it over to them.’ He started to continue, but the barman stepped up with the beers, and he stopped until he had deposited them on the table and returned to the bar. Then he lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to the Chief.’

  They drank together for a moment, then Ryan set his half-empty glass down on the table and looked at Ben squarely.

  ‘What exactly do you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Like I said before, I’m working a case,’ Ben told him, a murder. Little girl without a name. In Bearmatch.’

  Ryan lifted his glass again, his eyes peering steadily over the rim. ‘You said you talked to the Langleys?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What’d they say?’

  ‘That they don’t bother with nigger murders.’

  Kelly laughed derisively. ‘No shit.’ He took a quick gulp from the glass then returned it to the table. ‘Those two are wolves. There’s no telling for sure what they’ve been doing over in Bearmatch. Nobody keeps an eye on them.’ He leaned forward slightly, his hand squeezing the handle of the mug. ‘But everybody says they’ve really been kicking ass lately. Busting places up, harassing everybody. Sometimes they make five or six arrests a day over there.’

  ‘Who are they arresting?’

  ‘Anybody they want to,’ Ryan said. ‘From bootleggers to jay-walkers, I guess.’ He took a quick sip. ‘You know what I think? I think the Langleys feed on Bearmatch.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘After me, I guess the Chief figured he needed guys like them for that particular beat.’ He took another drink, then rolled the nearly empty glass rhythmically in his hands.

  A jukebox started up at the front of the bar, and the growling voice of Ernest Tubb swept over the room with ‘I’m Walking the Floor Over You.’

  For a while, Ryan listened to the lyrics, his eyes fixed on a flashing Pabst Blue Ribbon sign near the center of the bar.

  ‘I lost my head,’ he said at last, his voice almost in a whisper. ‘I forgot where I was.’ He finished the beer, then signaled for another. The barman brought it over immediately. Ryan took a quick sip, then fastened his eyes on Ben, as if trying to read something w
ritten on his soul.

  ‘Like I said before,’ he began finally, ‘it was the first thing they gave me. I was fresh to the work. They gave me Bearmatch, and I took it serious. I walked the beat, Ben, walked it like a real cop, you know?’ He laughed. ‘There ain’t an old lady in Bearmatch I didn’t help across the street.’ He laughed again, a thin, high laugh, tense and edgy. ‘Anyway, I come across this young girl one day.’ He shook his head. Her name was Memora.’ His eyes brightened somewhat. ‘They have wonderful names, the colored people. Her baby sister was named Neopoli-tana. After that ice cream, I guess, the one with strips of strawberry and chocolate and vanilla.’ He shrugged halfheartedly. ‘Anyway, I’d run across her just about every day. She’d be tending this little patch of flowers in the front yard. I’d say hello, and she’d say hello. Before long I started taking a rest in front of her house. We’d talk and talk.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘She was the most beautiful thing in the world and I …’ He stopped, and his eyes dropped hack down toward the glass. ‘And I got quite a feeling for her.’ He looked up quickly. ‘You know what I mean?’

  Ben nodded.

  Ryan smiled mournfully. ‘You don’t know nothing until you know a person. You may have an idea about something, ‘but until you get to know somebody, you don’t know what you feel about anything.’ Once again he fell silent, his eyes studying Ben’s face. ‘You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ryan scratched his chin slowly. ‘I’m not one bit ashamed of what I felt for that girl. That’s what they can’t stand down at City Hall. That’s what the Chief can’t stand. That I have never done anything since then to apologize for it or to say I was wrong. That’s why they keep me on with the department. They’re waiting for me to break down and cry over it and say what a fool I was.’ His eyes hardened. ‘I’ll die first,’ he said determinedly. ‘And they can bury me in Gracehill where they’ve made me bury so many others.’ His face grew red suddenly and a trembling swept over it. His eyes widened wildly, then closed slowly as he drew in a long, lean breath. ‘You good for another beer?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben said. He signaled the barman for another round and sat silently until he deposited them on the table.