by Randi Pink
It was a shameful waste of time, she knew in her gut, but she didn’t want those evildoers to take this from her, too. When she was done, she mounted the bike and headed toward the parts of town Miss Ferris had sent Isaiah and Angel to hand out books.
As she pedaled, she visualized those seven young girls in the patty-cake circle. All the way on the other side of Greenwood, they were likely oblivious to what was approaching. She couldn’t remember all of their names, but she could see them in their beds. Stacked head to foot, burning away into unsuspecting ash. She pedaled faster, passing more destruction than she ever knew could exist.
The farther she got from her own massacred block, the quieter Greenwood became. Pedaling through a choked, dry throat, she could’ve been leaving the entire setting behind her. As the blocks became less affluent, the smoke cleared and heat cut.
She felt a tinge of guilt knowing she’d be the one to wake them with such horrifying news. Slowing her pedaling, she began to feel sharp shooting pains in her thighs and forearms. Then the warmth of dripping blood wrapped her hands, and her palms slid back and forth across the handlebars. Somewhere in the commotion, she’d pierced deep, long cuts into her body. The long white shirt was pink in places and bright red in others. It crossed her mind that they might not open the door for her. She herself looked terrifying.
But there was no choice. She leaned the bike against the side of a redbrick house with dirt as grass and began banging on the front door.
“Wake up!” she yelled. “Greenwood is burning! Greenwood is burning!”
As soon as the lamplight came on inside of the home, she went on to the next house and repeated her lament. After many houses, she found herself in the same spot where she’d met the girls in the circle.
She thought of Truly’s small family, caught off guard and forever fractured because of it. A new energy came over her. She would not stop until she found each of the girls. Until she witnessed their deliverance to some semblance of safety.
Louder and with more passion than before, again she yelled, “Greenwood is burning!”
ISAIAH
With Mount Zion in eyeshot, Muggy and Isaiah, along with the rest of the crowd, ran toward the refuge of the church. In silence, they fell into a familiar stride, running on the same feet like they were on Mr. Monty’s drum line. Isaiah couldn’t help but feel comforted by this familiarity. He didn’t want to feel that way, but the sentiment seeped in all on its own.
“You socked me one,” Muggy said, not angry but not amused, either. “Sucker punch if you ask me.”
Isaiah couldn’t apologize for punching him. He should’ve done it long ago, and an apology would be insincere at best.
“You deserved it, Muggy.”
The Muggy that Isaiah knew would’ve bucked that comment to the ends of the earth. Thrown a tantrum of blamelessness and created a scene of some sort, right there in front of their newly tormented town. But in response that night, silence.
Their displaced neighbors collapsed onto the steps of the church one by one. Some holding tight to frightened children and others alone in hushed shock. Running to the cross, Isaiah thought, where the burdens of their heavy hearts rolled away. Muggy stopped at the foot of the entrance, and for all their years of friendship’s sake, Isaiah stopped alongside him.
“They’ve burned my father’s shop,” Muggy said in a voice too calm for his fiery personality. “It’s the only street that smells in any way normal. Like Fourth of July barbecue.”
“Sorry.” Isaiah meant it, but it was all he could say as he watched the crowd. The knees of the truly Godly buckling underneath the evil of lesser men.
“I came looking for you,” Muggy said before reaching back into his satchel. “Found this.”
He lifted Isaiah’s singed journal and handed it to Isaiah with the care given a newborn. Isaiah saw himself, hurrying through his faultless home like a madman, stuffing necessities and memories into his father’s duffel bag. How could he have forgotten this? he wondered. There was no rhyme or reason.
“And this, for what it’s worth…” Muggy handed over the dusty flute that had been unblown since he’d told Isaiah it was a lame instrument.
Isaiah lifted the case from Muggy’s soot-blackened hands and held it. The casing was warm and fogged along with the night. He wanted to open it, but there was no time. Instead, he tucked it safely under the front steps of the church.
“It’s not a stupid instrument,” Muggy admitted. “If you were going to be in band, I wanted to be in it, too. That’s all. If you were going to hand out books on a bike, I wanted to do it, too. And if you were going to fall in love with a dancer, you’d leave me all alone.”
Isaiah locked eyes with Muggy’s. “Look around you, Muggy,” said Isaiah before placing a gentle palm around the back of his neck. “I would never leave you alone. We’re all we’ve got.”
“Isaiah!” Over the turmoil, he heard his ma’s voice calling out to him. “Isaiah! We need your help!”
Muggy nodded as Isaiah skipped three steps at a time to get to her. She’d transformed the sanctuary into a triage of sorts, just as Isaiah knew she would. Elderly church mothers being tended one by one in the front-most pews. Small children tucked away in the pulpit in a tight circle with the kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Merritt, in the center holding their attention. And the injured in the back being wrapped and bandaged by Dr. Owens, Mr. Tate, and his son, Timothy.
Isaiah’s ma motioned him to Mrs. Turner’s severely burned hand. He’d last seen her on Memorial Day, handing out free red and white flowers at her shop. Hers was the shop where his father bought his ma a single yellow long-stemmed rose every Friday for no reason at all. Sometimes the roses lasted more than two weeks and she’d be able to gather together a skinny bouquet for their kitchen counter—the dull, drying ones nestled right next to the fresh, plump, new ones.
Isaiah thought of all the flowers cut by Mrs. Turner’s hands. All of the birthdays brightened, anniversaries remembered, the babies welcomed to the world with the work of them. All of the random Fridays. Now they were cooked flesh with cloth melted into their crevices.
“We don’t have sedatives here,” his ma told him in a rush. “We need help holding her so Dr. Owens can tend the wound.”
“She bandaged it while it was still sizzling,” Dr. Owens announced to Timothy. “I need a few still moments to pick the remnants before the cloth heals inside. Five minutes would do.”
“Mrs. Turner,” said Isaiah’s ma, “bite down on this stick, please. And look away.”
Isaiah grabbed ahold of her right upper arm while the other men held the other and both legs. As the doctor worked, she screamed so loudly into the thick stick that it echoed in the sanctuary. The children could no longer be distracted by Mrs. Merritt’s entertainments. Their curious little eyes popped up from the height of the pulpit to investigate. Mostly everyone else’s, too, with the notable exception of the cluster of elderly mothers set apart in the front.
That’s when seventy-eight-year-old Mother Williams, always the first to testify on a Sunday morning, began to sing:
“A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify,
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky.”
Never to be outdone, eighty-year-old Mother Jackson joined in, followed closely by Mother Evans.
“To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfill.
O may it all my powers engage,
To do my Master’s will.”
Then the entire church, some only humming loudly along, united with them.
“Arm me with jealous care,
As in Thy sight to live;
And O Thy servant, Lord, prepare,
A strict account to give.”
The sanctuary sounded like a Sunday. Holding down Mrs. Turner’s thrashing arms, Isaiah briefly closed his eyes and envisioned it. Sunlit maroon carpets so thick he could kick his initials into it. Testimony after testim
ony singsonged for everyone to know and amen. And Angel. Spinning Greenwood’s thirty-five blocks into something much more confusing and complicated.
“Help me to watch and pray,
And on Thyself rely,
Assured if I my trust betray,
I shall forever die.”
“Where is my Angel?” he said to himself aloud as the doctor gave the okay to release Mrs. Turner, who had nearly passed out from pain.
ANGEL
After what seemed a very long time, Angel had only found the oldest of the seven girls, Hattie.
Angel crouched to her knees to meet Hattie’s gaze as her parents looked on in terror. “Can you point me in the direction of the others?”
Wrapped in a child-sized knit blanket, Hattie pointed at three houses across the street and three more to her immediate left. “They all in there,” she said in a small, concerned voice.
Angel said, “Thank you, sweet girl,” before standing to speak to Hattie’s parents. “Only the necessities. Changes of clothes for all of you, food that will keep, and cherished photos. Nothing else, you hear?”
They nodded, staring off at the blazing distance.
“After you’ve got everything, meet me right here on the lawn,” she told them. “If I’m not here yet, you”—she gave Hattie’s father her full attention—“knock on five doors. Tell them what I’ve told you, and send them right back here.”
He nodded without words as Angel backed away from them.
“Miss?” asked Hattie’s mother. “Can I get you a cup of water? Or a fast change of clothes? You look like you’ve been through hell.”
Again, Angel look down at her spoiled clothing. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, still backing away. “But I’ve got work to do.”
Angel started with the house directly to their left and began to bang. Quickly, the porch light illuminated, and a curious eye peeked through the side curtain. “Greenwood is burning!” she yelled into the frightened eye, and she moved along to the second and then the third to do the same.
Crossing the street, she kept yelling, hoping to awaken more without having to knock. “Greenwood is burning! Greenwood is burning! Greenwood is burning!”
At first, her mind refused to register the weighty three words forcefully bursting through her lips. They were words of utility, not meaning. Three words strung together for the sole purpose of waking those who still slept, that’s all. But as tiny lights from inside sleeping homes blinked on, one by one, she thought: Greenwood Is Burning.
She stopped running and stood still with her breathing. Way off in the distance, she saw an airplane approach. Slowly circling, out of reach and range. She tilted her head as she watched it. To Angel, the airplane looked like a dirty bird circling its prey. It would be unheard of, an attack from the air. And Greenwood stood no chance against it.
A moment earlier, she’d known it couldn’t get any worse. Drunken men or evil men or drunken evil men laughing as they bounced torches up and down quiet streets would be enough. The smell of burning juniper and the burning bodies of her and Truly’s father would be enough. Freshly popped purple verbena shriveled back into dust would be enough. But this …
Focusing her eyes, she saw the thing that the airplane was circling so meticulously. In the crosshairs, the shining bell tower with the gold cross that was shined weekly. The plane’s likely target—Mount Zion Baptist Church.
“Dear God, what have I done?” she said before turning Blue around and yelling to Hattie’s father. “Wake as many as possible! They’re about to bomb the church from the sky!”
“Ma’am!” he yelled after her. “Where should we all go?”
She didn’t answer nor did she look back. She couldn’t bear to see young Hattie, still holding on to her tiny baby blanket for security, so displaced. Besides, what would she tell him? Her initial thought was the Mount. She’d sent countless families there already with the fleeting hope that it may be spared. If she didn’t reach them in time, she’d sentenced them all to certain death, just like she had her own father.
The menacing plane continued circling the bell tower like a lioness locked on prey. She pedaled so fast the bike screamed back at her, cautioning its age and breakability, but she ignored it. Selfishly, she now wished she’d taken Hattie’s mother’s offer of water. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed steel wool and sandpaper in a single gulp. Angry at herself, she pedaled even faster toward the church. Approximately seventeen blocks remained between her and Mount Zion’s evacuation.
She leaned left to cut through the Avenue, which she’d been actively avoiding. Logic told her that they’d certainly target the thriving community center. That was the whole point, she’d long surmised, to steal it all. Possess that which didn’t belong to them, from the drugs in Williams Drugstore, to the carvings in Mr. Morris’s woodshop, for the people of Greenwood to continue to serve at their leisure.
Angel wanted to protect her heart from witnessing such inequity happening in real time, but a turn through town would shave off three blocks. As soon as she saw what was the start of booming Greenwood Avenue, tears streaked her temples. More burning, yes, there was that, but more than that was shameless looting and robbing of hard work. White men stacking crates of stolen tools from Mr. Odom’s hardware shop into their automobiles. Sipping taken sodas and licking pinched ice cream from Williams. They even thieved bagged suits and hats from Mr. Massey’s dry cleaner.
But the sight that made Angel most angry was also the most unexpected—white ladies ravaging sweet Mrs. Turner’s beloved flower shop. They’d walk in grinning and emerge holding beautiful bouquets of fussed-over flowers. Angel paused, wasting precious moments to watch the strange sight of white women in Deep Greenwood in the wee hours of the morning. She watched as their men cleared the way for them. Checking shops and boutiques twice over and then sending the women in to take what they wanted before it was all destroyed.
Angel knew that the women would pretend themselves blameless afterward. Hiding in their homes, knitting and rocking or whatever on earth they did across the Frisco tracks. But there they were. Right alongside, stealing the work of Greenwood’s hands.
Angel honed in on one long brunette woman. She was long in everything—height, hair, even her nose was long, nearly touching her upper lip. She held a handful of purple dresses taken from Trisha’s Boutique. It was as if she’d carefully shopped the racks for everything purple. And then she emerged from Mrs. Turner’s flower shop holding tight to a bright purple bouquet.
What this long woman didn’t care to know was Mrs. Turner would’ve happily given her the bouquets, free of charge. Mrs. Turner didn’t care one bit if her patrons could or could not pay. More than money, she longed to inject beautiful into the forgotten places. And here they were, scrambling to steal from the most giving among them.
Then, bouquet in one hand, and dresses in the other, the too-long white woman pointed obnoxiously at the sky and began to leap up and down like an eager child. When Angel followed her finger, she saw the bottom of the airplane preparing to drop its bomb, and she pedaled on for dear life.
ISAIAH
Isaiah found Angel’s mother in the back corner of Mount Zion with Vice Principal and Mrs. Anniston and baby Michael at their side. She was inconsolable, and Isaiah imagined he knew why. Like nearly blind Mrs. Edward, there was no way Angel’s father could’ve made it out in his condition. Isaiah imagined he’d rather die than be carried out of the house by his wife and daughter, as Isaiah himself would have.
“Mrs. Hill.” Isaiah approached her with caution. “I’m so sorry to—”
Vice Principal Anniston held up his hand to stop the statement and stood to take Isaiah away from her. “She’s just lost her husband,” he confirmed, still speaking in the same authoritative tone he used as vice principal of Washington High. “She needs time. I assume you’re asking about Angel. If I’m correct about this, she’s doing what any of us would expect her to do.”
“What?”
/> “Out there somewhere.” Vice Principal Anniston smiled. “Helping.”
Without another word, Isaiah turned on his heels and ran toward the exit. Standing frantically on the front steps of the church, he squinted through smoke-filled air and scanned the town. His instinct was to run out into the night, searching for her, but which way could she be?
His feet carried him to the bottom steps and then halted in defiance. Wrong, his feet told him. You’ll just get it wrong.
Then he saw a figure piercing the smoke in the distance. The figure wasn’t walking; it was instead riding a strange contraption that looked like …
“Blue,” he said before loping toward her.
Nothing else mattered to Isaiah, only cutting the distance between them and holding her tightly in his arms. The closer he got to her, though, the more he realized that this was no lovely reunion. This was an emergency, and it showed all over her face.
“What is it?” he asked after seeing the fear deep down in her eyes. “My God, Angel,” he said to her bloodied clothing and painful-looking cuts. “You’ll need stitches all over.”
“The plane,” she said without halting her pedaling.
Isaiah had to jog to keep up with her, and he was now running in the direction of the church. “We’ve seen it. It’s circling.”
“You don’t understand, Isaiah,” she said, pleading with her eyes. “It’s circling the Mount.”
True terror entered Isaiah’s body, and again, his feet took over, leading him back to the church at the highest possible speed. As they reached the front steps, Dorothy Mae and Muggy stood together looking horrified.
“What is going on?” asked Dorothy Mae, her hands shaking at her sides.
“Look up,” he said to Dorothy Mae, remembering her longing to fly. “Angel thinks they’ll drop a bomb. Is it possible?”