by Tom Blair
Sunday morning I was heading down to the station house to make sure all was well before we caught the train in the afternoon. Then the radio call, an explosion at the 16th Street Baptist Church, right across from Ingram Park. A big explosion.
I was off. Didn’t have my uniform on, turned on the siren and the lights. Within ten minutes I was pulling up to the church. Three other squad cars were already there, parked in the middle of the street. One wall of the church had collapsed, bricks and concrete all across the sidewalk and halfway into the street. No fire but a lotta smoke. A hundred colored people rushing around screaming.
A quick nod from my guys and I knew they recognized me without my uniform. I climbed the front steps of the church and walked in. At first I was sorta thinking, This is what you get when you stir things up. Toward the back of the church there was a staircase down to the basement. I heard screaming and started down. Through the dust and smoke I could see a dozen or so coloreds, some men, some women, all dressed in their Sunday best, wailing.
I didn’t have my uniform on, so the look I got was not the same as usual. It was a look of despair. Over in a far corner a colored man in a dark suit was holding a girl. He was sitting on the floor covered with dust and rubble. This little girl, maybe ten years old, was dressed all in white. Pretty little thing, ’cepting part of her head was missing. You could see her brain. This fellow cradling her real careful looked up, he stared at me. Tears were running down his face. I stared back, but not at him. I wasn’t looking at the girl, either. I was staring at her shoes. White satin shoes, a single strap each, with little brass buckles. That’s when my thinking started to change.
Brenda and I didn’t go to New York. Everybody on the force was working sixteen-hour shifts. Birmingham was the talk of the world. TVs in most every country were showing pictures of the bombed church and the four colored girls who were killed. World leaders rubbed our faces in it. Mao Tse-tung sent the Birmingham coloreds his regrets and told them to persevere. Malcolm X threatened bullet for bullet. Even some of our white folks were saying the coloreds weren’t being treated right. ’Course, the KKK threw gas on the fire, and Governor Wallace gave everybody matches.
There were more of them than us. More coloreds than cops. Gotta tell ya, when you got fewer than two hundred policemen holding back five thousand spitting-angry protestors, angry ’cause somebody killed four little girls going to Sunday school, even when you got dogs and fire hoses, you could lose. The whole city could get burned down real quick. But I was thinking about something else. I was thinking about white satin shoes with little brass buckles. It just couldn’t be right. The Nazis were evil. Seeing the white satin shoes at Dachau proved it to me. Was something evil in Birmingham? I didn’t think so. But if the little girls dying wasn’t right, what was wrong?
For days after the bombing everybody on the force was working sharecropper hours, just trying to keep the coloreds and whites apart and things calm. Then a church service for three of the girls was announced, to be held at the 6th Avenue Baptist Church, near the one that was bombed. Martin Luther King would give the eulogy. Our captain figured King would get everybody riled up and there could be looting and burning for a week. Our mayor and the captain put their heads together and decided we’d arrest him as soon as he said something to incite. ’Course, if we had a bunch of police there, he wouldn’t be saying anything. So it was decided I’d go to the church service, but I’d be wearing my civilian clothes so’s I’d look like one of the Northerners that was down for the funeral. Soon as King said something to stir up the blacks I’d blow my whistle and my buddies would pour in and arrest him.
More people attended than the church could seat, but most everyone got in. I stood way in the back. Better for my guys to hear the whistle. King spoke for ten minutes, no more. A lotta whites had been talking about bombings and shootings and lynchings. Even Governor Wallace said we needed some first-class funerals to fix things. What did King say? Let me tell you. “We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality.” I can quote it pretty good, ’cause I read it and reread it in the newspaper. Not a Birmingham newspaper, but a New York newspaper Brenda got me at the library. At the time he said it, when I was standing in the back of the church, my brain kind of stopped. It was something I just couldn’t understand. It was something I just couldn’t believe a colored could say after us whites had killed their little girls.
In the war I knew which side was right and which side wrong. I was on the right side. But it wasn’t right just because it was the side I was on. It was the right side because Americans stood for good things. Nazis and Japs did bad things. Dachau with its piles of skin stretched over skeletons showed me why we were fighting. In Birmingham I wasn’t sure about what I was doing. My mind churned on it for a spell, then I came to think that maybe the only reason I thought us whites were right was because it was the side I was on. I was a white, so we were right.
And I started to have a lot of confused thinking about Pa. No person I respected more. Most hardworking, honest man that God ever gave breath to. So if Pa said something, it was right. Pa told Billy and me coloreds weren’t like us. They weren’t smart like us and they didn’t work hard like us. You had to be good to them, like you would be good to a mule or a horse. But if you didn’t keep a close eye on them they wouldn’t work. And you had to keep a bridle or a yoke on ’em, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the right thing. As kids JJ and Sarah thought there was a Santa Claus ’cause their ma and I promised them that there was. If some kid’s pa tells ’em something, they’re gonna believe it.
It was late one night, I had worked two shifts, when Brenda and I talked serious about the coloreds and all the hubbub. I asked her what she thought. She didn’t say much. It was maybe a week or so later that Brenda put the note in my lunch pail. There it was, on a small folded piece of paper in Brenda’s handwriting: Prejudice is the child of ignorance. Brenda wrote out the name of the fellow who said it, some fellow who had been dead for hundreds of years, some guy named Hazlitt. Brenda wrote something else—that ignorant didn’t mean stupid. It just meant you didn’t know. Made me feel better. Pa wasn’t stupid. Pa wasn’t mean. Pa just didn’t know better.
By the middle sixties things had pretty much settled down in Birmingham. They had big problems later in Washington and Detroit and LA. Wouldn’t say we were happy about it, but it made us feel a little less poorly about ourselves. By ’66 we even got ourselves a colored policeman. JJ went off to college in ’67, dropped out a year later. Said nothing he was learning meant anything to him. I looked at his books and couldn’t say I disagreed. Anyway, he wanted to join the army. I never talked much about the army, so JJ didn’t get the notion from me. Some recruiter was telling him the good stuff. We were at war in Vietnam, and I didn’t see anything wrong with him joining up. If the country’s at war, that’s what young guys should do.
In the spring of 1968 JJ went off to Benning and from there to Vietnam. He visited us twice before he shipped out. Looked real good in his uniform, better than I ever looked. That same year Brenda finished up her night classes and got a job as an assistant librarian. It didn’t pay a lot but I was real proud of her. She had three people working for her.
Sarah was smart like her ma. Got herself a scholarship to a school I never heard of before, Berkeley, out in California. Found it on a map, it was in Oakland. That’s where my brother Billy met his wife, a wife that didn’t ever look us up. It never crossed my mind that Sarah would want to go to college. But she did real good, and by the third year she was a professor’s assistant. Not quite certain what that was, but they paid her to stay out there during the summer. Just about every week she’d call all excited and tell Brenda and me about all the excavating she did, looking for fossilized bones and stuff older than dirt.
After a long year JJ was back from Vietnam, with sergeant stripes. I never got close to be
ing a sergeant. Making sergeant is probably what made him re-enlist. In ’70 the army sent JJ on his second tour in Vietnam. It was half a year later on a Saturday afternoon when the captain and a minister knocked on our apartment door. Two weeks later we had JJ’s funeral at the Woodlawn Methodist Church, the same church that Brenda and I were married in. Other than the 16th Street and the 6th Avenue Baptist churches, the only church I’d been in since we got married.
Brenda kept working, but there was no happiness. Her eyes were pretty much always red, red like she’d been crying. Later she told me. Told me she would take a shower so she could bawl and scream her hurts without anybody knowing.
I didn’t cry. No, I didn’t. But my insides were twisted sick with anger. I wanted to punch somebody, I wanted to kick somebody, I wanted to make somebody hurt because of JJ. The guys on the force told me they were sorry and all, but they didn’t stop laughing at jokes, didn’t stop playing catch with their sons, didn’t stop sleeping sound at night.
We lost JJ, but Sarah found a fella. Called us one day and tells us she met some special guy that was in her class. Told us she was going to marry him. Didn’t ask us, just told us. And this fella didn’t take time to travel east to meet us so’s we could look him in the eye before he married our girl. Making it worse, Sarah told us they just wanted a small wedding with a few friends at something called Half Moon Bay. Said there wouldn’t be family at the wedding. I never hinted to Brenda, but I think maybe we were an embarrassment to Sarah. Once Sarah told Brenda that the father of the guy she married was the biggest lettuce farmer in California. Not impressed a bit, who needs lettuce? Maybe rabbits. Real farmers grew real food. The kind of food that people who worked hard and sweated wanted to eat.
Brenda and I had saved up a nice bundle for JJ’s college. Since JJ didn’t use it and Sarah pretty much paid her own way with scholarships and things, we sent Sarah and her husband a check for $5,000 as their wedding present. Told them to use it as a down payment on a house. I wanted her husband to know that Sarah’s daddy was doing better than okay.
A few years after Sarah got married Brenda got the cancer. A woman’s cancer, a bad one. She didn’t go like Ma, didn’t go peaceful-like. We had two years of all sorts of medicines and stays at hospitals. The last bedrid weeks were real bad. A lotta tubes, lotta pain, lotta embarrassment. That’s when I met Sarah’s husband, he came to the funeral with Sarah. We all sat in the church where we’d had JJ’s funeral.
Emory passed a few months after Brenda. A year before his doctor told him that his liver was turning rock hard and that he had to stop drinking. I could have guessed what Emory was going to do, sent the doctor a bottle of scotch and told him to enjoy life. Neither of Emory’s ex-wives showed up for his funeral. Just me, some old-fart neighbor of Emory’s in a wheelchair, a bartender friend, and the minister gave a damn. I took a bottle of scotch Emory had given me for Christmas a few years back and after the service we each had a short one. Emory would have liked that.
I retired from the police force the year after Brenda passed. A surefire mistake. It made missing Brenda much worse. Spent the first week at home packing her things in boxes. Spent the next week unpacking them. Just couldn’t give her belongings away, no way. So there I sat in our living room. Most evenings when the sun went down didn’t get up to turn on the lights. Just sat there in the dark wishing I would have told Brenda things I didn’t.
Finally did something to help stop the hurting. I got myself a part-time job at Eastwood Mall. Sarah thought it was a good idea. Spent the day walking around in a uniform that made me look like a real policeman. Didn’t carry a gun. Helped parents find their lost kids and herded teenagers toward the exits. Didn’t do anything important. But it kept me busy, kept me not thinking too much.
That first Christmas I was working at the mall Sarah sent me a round-trip ticket to California. After the holiday rush I took a week off and got on a Delta flight in Birmingham that went up to Atlanta, then all the way out to San Francisco. The flight to Atlanta was the first time I’d been on a plane since ’45, when I flew from Paris to England. Didn’t have to lay in a litter this time. Had a seat next to a window, right over the wing. This really sweet gal with a big smile came by and gave me a Coke and some peanuts. Got off in Atlanta and sat in a terminal that made the train station in Washington look teeny. The flight out to San Francisco was really something. Delta even showed a movie. Didn’t think it was fair, I had to give two dollars to get some headphones so I could hear what they were saying.
Sarah and her husband met me at San Francisco Airport. Parked outside was this shiny station wagon with wooden sides. I got pushed in the back with their kids. Drove clean through the middle of downtown San Francisco. Streets ran up and down these steep hills that I couldn’t believe a car should be on. Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and pulled into a little park and stopped for a spell. Had a great view of the bridge and the whole city. Sorta reminded me of 1943, looked like the George Washington Bridge going into New York.
Sarah’s house was in Santa Rosa, maybe an hour up north from San Francisco. Real nice, with a two-car garage. Other than the station wagon they had a bright-red sports car. I’d seen Corvettes before, just never gotten to ride in one. A few okay days visiting. One Sunday we had a picnic by the Russian River, all around these Paul Bunyan redwood trees like you couldn’t believe. Some hollowed out so’s you could walk right through ’em, standing up. But mostly things were either too quiet or too noisy during my stay. Both Sarah and her husband worked and the kids were in some kind of nursery school. I could only watch General Hospital and As the World Turns a couple of days before my brain started to turn to corn mash. When everybody got home, with the kids yelling and all, it was on the real noisy side. Headache-noisy. It was a nice visit and everything, but I was happy to get back to Birmingham.
Maybe a year or so after visiting Sarah she called real excited. She and her family were moving to Virginia. Sarah got the head job digging for old stuff in a place called Jamestown. Figured I’d see ’em more, them being closer and all. But I didn’t. Well, I didn’t see her till she came down to put me away with the other oldies.
After a while each month in Birmingham was like the last one. And each year was pretty much the same. After work at the mall I spent more and more time on my easy chair, just napping and thinking. With JJ gone there weren’t going to be any more Butchers. And for sure there weren’t going to be any more Calvin Butchers, my pa’s name. The name I’d wanted to give JJ. Decided to do something about it.
No question, I had more acorns in the bank than I needed. Didn’t need any money for Brenda’s old age. Didn’t have JJ to leave money to. And Sarah and her husband were driving a Corvette, for sure they didn’t need no help. So I sorta gave the money to my pa, to Calvin. I took the bus to the 16th Street Baptist Church and spoke to the minister, a colored fellow named Hamlin. At first he was nervous when I told him about me being there the day of the bombing. But by the time I left he was happy. I gave him a check, the biggest check I’d ever written. I’ll tell you why I did it. Reverend Hamlin had them put a brass plaque on the side of one of the pews, right in the front. You know what it said? Etched real clear was IN APPRECIATION OF CALVIN BUTCHER. Made up for burying Pa next to Ma with no marker. Maybe helped to make up for some other things both Pa and I needed to get right with.
In early ’94 got a call from the governor’s office. A fella wanted to see me. Okay, I said, wondering if I forgot to turn in my police revolver or something. This young guy came by, had a nice suit and spoke college smart. In June they was planning an event in Normandy. There was going to be a big show for the fiftieth anniversary. Each state was sending two veterans who had been there when the fighting was tough and they wanted me to represent Alabama. Told me I was picked ’cause I had a Purple Heart. Figured the real reason was that I was one of the few guys alive not wearing diapers. Anyway, this fellow said the State of Alabama would pay for everything. Wanted to ask him if they would
give me two dollars for earphones so I could hear the airplane movie. I didn’t. And, I didn’t give an answer right away, told him I’d think on it.
In a few days he called back. I said no. Told him I was too old to be traveling around the world. That wasn’t the honest truth. I’d read the materials and stuff he left on his visit. President Clinton was going to be at Normandy giving a big speech. I liked Clinton. He was an Arkansas boy who came from a poor family, worked hard, and made president. But when JJ was in Vietnam, Bill Clinton was hiding in college and saying bad stuff about our GIs. Didn’t think he should be standing tall and proud at Normandy. Shoulda let his generals do the speeches.
It was the winter of 1995 that I gave up my security job at the mall. Well, that’s not really the truth of the matter. My boss told me I was too old, told me to quit. So I did. Watched some TV if there was a movie or a baseball game. If it wasn’t too hot or too cold, I’d take a walk. Pretty much every morning I’d go down the block to a little coffee shop. Everybody knew everybody, so we talked real friendly, like we were family. Then I stopped going. I was just tired. So I’d sit and think. Thought a lot about a lotta things. Mostly thought about my life. ‘Course I did wonder some what I could have done better. Not much, I figured. I’d worked pretty hard, joined the army, raised a family. I might not have always known the right thing, but whatever I thought was right, I tried to do.