In the Shadow of Alabama

by Judy Reene Singer

  “What did you do?” Fleischer screamed at the officer. He was incredulous, grabbing August and propping him up against a seat. He frantically pulled off his own sweater and pressed it against the wound; the dark green wool turned red-brown from the blood. “What did you do?” he screamed again, his eyes nearly popping from his head as he stared up at the policeman. The officer was standing there, confused, his gun still in his hand. His face went slack as he looked at August, then Fleischer, then the bus driver.

  “He threatened to kill me,” said the bus driver.

  Willie jumped to his feet. “Murderer!” he cried in anguish, not caring who was there, or who heard him, or even whether he was going to be shot next. “You murdered him.” He wasn’t even sure who he meant, Fleischer or the cop, or the driver, or maybe all three.

  The policeman looked down at August, at his uniform, as though the deed had finally registered in his own mind. “He’s a soldier,” he said. He looked stricken. The bus driver mumbled something and got off the bus, to be greeted by a small crowd just starting to gather outside, speculating on what had happened.

  Willie dropped to August’s side and took him from Fleischer, who walked to the front of the bus.

  “Somebody call an ambulance,” Fleischer yelled through the door. “Hurry. Call an ambulance. I’ve got a man down.”

  Willie pulled August to his own chest and called his name. There was only a bubbling sound from August’s mouth, a whisper of death. Charlie Hobbs and Leon Hamilton stood in frozen shock as Willie looked down the aisle at Fleischer in disbelief and fury.

  “Look what you fucking did,” he croaked, not caring about ranks or protocol or much of anything. “You got him killed. You ordered him to sit in the front. You murdered him. You’re a goddamned murderer!”

  “No,” Fleischer started. “No, no.”

  Willie couldn’t look at Fleischer. Old rage, plumbed from depths of old pain, filled him. Fleischer was just another motherfucking white man screwing it up. What had been the point to push things? To push until it came to this? He cradled August in his arms and called to him, “August. August!” as if, if he made his voice loud enough, he could summon him back from the dead. He pressed his ear to August’s chest. The blood wet his face and seeped onto his clothes. He cradled his head and wept over him, his own body shaking violently.

  Fleischer was near-hysterical now. “How could you shoot a man like that?” he kept screaming at the policeman, who moved as though in a dream. “What did you do? You killed him. You killed a U.S. soldier!” He was moving back and forth, between the policeman and August, his hands pressed on the top of his head in disbelief and rage. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Sirens called from blocks away, coming closer, bringing more men, more confusion. It was too late for August. It was too late for anything. Blood was everywhere, blood and noise and lights and confusion. The police swarmed the bus and arrested Fleischer and Willie and Leon and Charlie for disorderly conduct and inciting a riot.

  * * *

  The news spread like a drop of ink in a water bottle, curling its way through the streets, swirling across the city in streams of information. Everyone had an opinion. The whites thought it was justifiable: The police were supposed to enforce municipal codes. The blacks were filled with rage: This was more proof, another incident in a long history of brutality.

  Crowds gathered outside the police cars, watching as the men were being driven away, raising their fists and screaming. Willie looked out at them from the window. All he could think of was that he hoped he’d be safe in jail. That Montgomery had gotten dangerous and ugly and that it didn’t take much to turn perfectly ordinary people into a lynch mob. And it wouldn’t surprise him at all to get lynched for nothing.

  Chapter 34

  Even now, I can’t summon tears. Willie’s face is filled with anguish; he bows his head, letting his own tears fall onto his plate. All over his waffle. Perhaps I understand, now, my father’s rage. He was well-intentioned, he was a champion of sorts, for the men he cared for, and he was rejected summarily, harshly, brutally, even. And I feel immensely sorry.

  We sat together quietly for a few minutes.

  “You have to eat something,” I tell Willie, standing up and removing his spoiled food. I scrape his waffle into the trash and open the freezer to get him another.

  “I’m so sorry,” Willie says through soft tears. “I was angry.”

  “It was a time for anger,” I say, popping his new waffle into the toaster. When it’s ready, I put it on a fresh plate and place it in front of him.

  “You have to eat,” I remind him. “Or your sugar will drop too low.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says and picks up his fork, then sighs. “You know, there’s a time for anger, and a time to let it go.”

  I suddenly reach out to touch his hand, compelled to say something. “It’s a poison.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Willie responds and tilts his head at me. Suddenly I sit back to sort through what I’d just said.

  We poison ourselves and we poison each other. A cruel remark, the turn of a shoulder, the indifference to someone’s pain. I remember how often I flinched under my father’s comments, but I never realized how much it could fester, infiltrate in its insidious, toxic way, through his life my life, a family.

  A culture.

  * * *

  A furious General Markham was notified right away that four of his men had been jailed. He was known as a fair man, forward-thinking and protective of his base, and he was not about to have any of his soldiers incarcerated. He immediately called for a conference with the police commissioner that very evening. The commissioner admitted that perhaps the policeman should not have been following the orders of a bus driver, but really, it had been necessary to keep law and order. “This is my city,” the commissioner said, and he ran things the way he saw fit. The soldiers belonged on base, General Markham insisted, and he wanted them to be given over to his custody or he would take legal action against the policeman, against the entire Montgomery Police Department, with the full support of the United States Army Air Corps behind him. Maybe even the president. He was in the middle of a war, and he didn’t have time to play with a chickenshit police department. It was an ultimatum the Montgomery police couldn’t refuse.

  The men were released.

  Willie never thought he’d be so happy to see the MPs come for him.

  * * *

  “I want a full report,” General Markham said to Fleischer as soon as he and the men arrived at the base. He had ordered them into his office for a debriefing, and they had lined up at stiff attention in front of him. He settled himself into a brown leather chair, ready to take notes. He was a tall man, slim, with silver hair and silver-framed glasses, and the way he uncapped a gold pen and waited for Fleischer to speak reminded Willie of a high school principal. Willie could barely steady himself, he was so spent with rage.

  Fleischer cleared his throat, but no words came out.

  What are you going to say, motherfucker? Willie thought. August is dead. He stood stiffly at attention, his back hurting from standing so stiff, so tight with anger, his hands clenched into fists. He waited for Fleischer to speak.

  The room was silent; they could hear planes outside, flying over the base. Night training for someone. Jeeps rolled by outside; voices called out.

  “Sergeant Fleischer?” the general repeated. “I’d like to hear what happened. Your own version.”

  My own version is that this is just another white man with no feeling for the way things are, Willie thought. August is dead. He didn’t have to die today. He stole a sideways glance at Fleischer. The motherfucker had pushed August into the arms of death. Had risked the life of a man to make a point. What kind of point was this motherfucking—Jew!—going to make in Alabama, for Christ’s sake? In Alabama! What was he going to change? Who was he going to change?

  “Yes, sir,” Fleischer began, but still said nothing. He seemed to be trying to sort
it all out, maybe trying to figure out in his dumb-shit white-man mind how it had turned into that.

  What can you say? Willie thought.

  “Go ahead, Sergeant,” the general said.

  Fleischer swallowed. “We were coming back from church, sir,” he started, seemingly unaware of how the words sounded, the odd juxtaposition of a Fleischer who looked like, well, like a Fleischer, coming back from church.

  The general apparently thought so, too. “Church?”

  “Yes, sir,” Fleischer said, sounding relieved that he could say something that made sense. “We go every week to help Pastor Booker.” Then he stopped talking, lost again on the bus.

  “Sergeant?” the general said.

  “Yes, sir.” Fleischer’s brows knitted together, and his eyes looked watery. His voice was shaky. How could he have lost a man coming back from church? This wasn’t Germany. Or war-ravaged London. How could he have lost a soldier in America? How was it possible to shoot an American soldier for sitting in the wrong place on a bus? He started to speak, but Willie stopped listening; the furious, screaming words were exploding from his heart, filling his head now. You got a man killed, motherfucker. Killed one of your own men with your pigheaded, asshole stubbornness, thinking you were going to fix the world. But he stood at rigid attention, because that’s what the rules were; you had to stand at attention.

  Fleischer was talking, explaining for probably the hundredth time in four hours, his voice gone flat, his face blank, getting blanker each minute.

  Willie just forced himself to concentrate on the wall picture behind the general. It was a picture of the American flag and the face of the Statue of Liberty superimposed over it. He didn’t want to hear Fleischer talk. They were all the same, these white men; every one of them was guilty and responsible; you couldn’t separate them out. Willie should have remembered that.

  Fleischer finished, and the general took off his glasses and held them in his hands, opening and closing the arms.

  “I believe you,” he said to Fleischer, “and because I believe you, I put the full authority and support of the United States Army Air Corps behind you. This was a terrible tragedy. A needless loss.”

  Fleischer blinked hard. “Private Randolph—he wasn’t, you know—all that sharp, sir.” He tried to explain. “He moved slow, if you know what I mean. But he tried hard to do the right thing.”

  “I see,” said the general.

  “He was a good man,” Fleischer added, his voice cracking. “August was a good man.”

  Don’t you be using his first name, like you was his friend, Willie thought furiously. You got him killed.

  “I see,” said the general.

  The men shuffled in their places. They didn’t want a speech on how good August was. He was dead. It was too late for a speech.

  “Let me ask you,” the general said, putting his glasses back on and leaning forward. “Do you think this could have been prevented?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Fleischer.

  Willie felt his face get hot. Yes, sir, he would have answered. It could have absolutely been prevented. If Fleischer had just let August move to the back of the bus, they’d all be reporting for work first thing tomorrow morning, all doing their jobs.

  “How do you think it could have been prevented?” the general asked. He seemed sincerely interested in Fleischer’s answer.

  Fleischer licked his lips. He looked over at Willie.

  Don’t be looking at me, motherfucker, Willie thought. Don’t be looking at me for answers.

  “Maybe some kind of training—maybe for the police,” Fleischer started. “On how to treat a United States soldier.”

  How to treat a colored soldier, Willie added in his head, ’cause white soldiers get treated with respect.

  General Markham gave a half smile. “You’ll be glad to hear I already recommended that, Sergeant,” he said. He looked at the rest of the men. “You men have anything to add?”

  The men drew their shoulders up even more; their eyes stayed straight on the wall behind the general. What was there to say? That the whole world was fucking screwed up? That things were never going to be different? That talking to a few cops would do shit? They had nothing to say.

  “Thank you for your time, men,” the general said. “Dismissed.”

  They stepped out into a very different day than they had stepped into that morning. Night was drawing upon them; the sky was filling with stars. Planes flew overhead, gliding onto the field in smooth landings; trucks rolled past, jeeps drove up and down the base roads, the “Big Voice” made a few lackadaisical announcements, it all looked normal, it all sounded normal, but it was far from normal. The three black soldiers had seen something, shared something they knew was just a matter of time coming, for any of them. That’s the way things were. If you were colored in America, you would never be safe. Even in the army. The three men marched to a waiting jeep and got in, leaving Fleischer behind.

  Early the next morning, Willie stepped from the barracks out under a torturous and unapologetic sun, standing in its burning rays and looking up at the sky, then across the path to a small, patchy garden. The one August had planted. Tiny tomato plants were uncurling, beginning to stand up next to what he guessed were pansies. He walked over to them. This was what spring was about. Promises. It was all about promises. It was all about promising that this year, things would be better. But it was a terrible lie. The plants would come to nothing, because August would not be tending them. They were sending his body back home for burial. For planting. August did not know that he would be part of the earth this spring instead of these small, struggling plants. Willie stood there for a moment, wondering about spring, and how it comes to nothing sometimes. How these plants would come to nothing, how friendships come to nothing. A breeze shuddered through the small green frills, and they bent their tendrils down, as if in grief. He didn’t know how to care for them, he was not a farmer, but he would not watch them twist in the sad Alabama wind and punishing sun and die from neglect. No. He stood over them for a moment, then picked up his foot and trampled them under the heel of his combat boot.

  Chapter 35

  It was the wash rack as usual. But it was the wash rack with one terrible difference. Despite the daily work, the ratcheting of metal, the hissing of hoses, the squall of planes being shifted from one bay to another, there was an unseemly silence that permeated the air. The men worked as usual, but said little. A few gestures here and there to get the task at hand finished, but little else. No one called out, no one made jokes, let their laughter mix anymore, with the heat and gray-white steam. Losing August was like losing a tooth from the front of your mouth, a huge, painful gap that everyone could see. They didn’t mention his name, never talked about that incident; it was off-limits. Conversation was for the barracks. Where they were safe.

  * * *

  They shunned Fleischer.

  Oh, they were unfailingly polite to him, called him “sir,” or “sergeant,” but the informal friendliness was gone. They avoided his eyes when they spoke to him, ate their lunch in little clusters outside the hangar, looked down when he passed by.

  He slowly changed. Became a loner. He’d always had few friends on base, mostly because he was always involved in his projects, but now he had nobody. Especially not Willie.

  Willie was torn into pieces. What to think? How do you pull out the good and the bad from someone? Things had always been a balancing act between them, a white man and a colored man, caught in a puzzle. Which pieces do you put together and which do you throw away? Willie was angry all the time, and confused. Things had become too difficult to figure out.

  * * *

  Fleischer rarely spoke to his men now, except for issuing orders or discussing a particular problem with a plane. He no longer laughed with them, no longer brought in extra food, didn’t stand with them when they had their coffee break, though he continued to bring in the coffee and supplies, just dropping things off in the radio room, grabbin
g a cup of coffee after it was brewed by one of the men, and then retreating to his office, shutting the door behind him. At the end of the day, he dismissed his men without an extra word, and headed for the bus that would take him home.

  Ruth came to the wash rack once in a while, when she visited the PX. But the warmth was gone from her manner; she gave the men polite nods, then would speak in low tones with her husband before she left. She never said good-bye.

  Everything had changed in the wash rack. Everything and everyone.

  * * *

  A few weeks passed and Fleischer called a meeting. “I’ve been ordered to a follow-up with General Markham,” he said. The men stared at him impassively. Willie hoped that he wasn’t included; he had nothing to add, nothing to say. His anger toward Fleischer had kept him up for nights; he raged against him in the privacy of the barracks, despised him, the anger feeding on itself until it had become the most essential and biggest part of him.

  “I plan to bring up the sacks we worked on,” Fleischer went on. “He needs to know that those sacks came out of this wash rack, and that you men deserve some kind of commendation.” He held up a copy of the Air Force News. A small article in the lower left-hand corner stated that the rate of Vultee crashes was down nearly ninety-two percent in the past three months. The men just stared at him, their eyes dead. Fleischer looked at Willie. “I’ll need you to go with me,” he said.

  * * *

  General Markham looked tired. The Japanese had become unstoppable and the Pentagon was ramping up the pressure to get more men ready to fight. It was the perfect time to bring up the success of the sacks, Fleischer had said to Willie as they drove to the general’s office. But Willie didn’t answer him. Frankly, he didn’t give a shit what kind of time it was. He was planning to finish his tour and get the hell out of the army. Alive. Yes, it would be very nice if he got out of the fucking state of Alabama alive.

  They spoke a few minutes, Fleischer and the general, about how the program was going with the Montgomery police. The commissioner had actually instituted a training program on how to deal with soldiers, especially colored soldiers. General Markham had high hopes for its success. Willie stood, arms and legs at ease, ignoring the conversation, filling his head with something tolerable.