The Waking

by H. M. Mann

  I close his fingers over the bill. “Call it the price of the map and the advice.”

  He pockets the money with the slightest little shrug. “You’re somethin’ else, Cinders Mann. And one day I’ll figure out what that somethin’ is.” He shakes my hand.

  “Any other advice?”

  “Yeah. Wait till the train slows to a crawl before you get off. You weren’t meant to fly, boy.”

  “Okay.”

  As the train slows through North Birmingham, I step off at 14th Street while Red continues on. I hope he goes to see his son. At least one father ought to see his son after so many years.

  I don’t see many folks out at all. They all must be at church or inside trying to keep cool. After riding for so long with a steady breeze, I feel the weight of the heat on me immediately, and I start to sweat, my shirt clinging to my back. I am hungry, thirsty, and stank, like, I guess, anyone back in the day or maybe even some country boy come to the big city looking for work. I hope I don’t stand out too much.

  I turn north, going up 14th, hearing the faint sounds of hymns and organs from the churches that I pass, feeling the heat bearing down on my neck. I cross over on Sixth Avenue to 16th and thank the city planners for laying out Birmingham with some sense. There are still some one-way streets, but at least the names of the streets have some logic, numbered streets going roughly north and south, numbered avenues going roughly east and west.

  I take Freedom Walk through Kelly Ingram Park, trying to stay away from anyone having a picnic so I don’t bring them flies, and I see sculptures of attacks on demonstrators, sculptures of men with hoses and dogs, sculptures of preachers, and sculptures of children in jail. They actually wanted to go to jail and stay in jail. Not like today. I wonder if my generation has the guts to do anything like that. Eventually the path takes me to the center and a spring of hope, a fountain of healing. Kelly Ingram Park is like Freedom Corner expanded with grass and trees and peace. The white sculptures jump out at you, but they don’t need to speak. They speak in their silence.

  I look at the 16th Street Church, where those four little girls died almost fifty years ago. Lots of bricks there. I wonder how many bricks it took to heal all the wounds, or if bricks can even heal any wounds. Whites bombing blacks, so-called Christians bombing Christians. I close my eyes and see KKK members singing hymns across town then heading to 16th Street to do their Lord’s work. Four children, all dressed up, all looking sharp for Sunday School, hair perfect, skin soft, eyes full of hope, giggling probably, smiling at each other. Happy. They probably died happy. I hope they died happy.

  Steal away … steal away to Jesus.

  Yeah. Are you feeling this, too?

  Can’t help it.

  Music’s playing up in the sanctuary while they giggle. Then … a blinding flash of light. I open my eyes. I hope it was fast, like in the blink of an eye. Little children shouldn’t have to suffer.

  Steal away … steal away … home. When are you going home, Manny?

  When I’m ready.

  And when’s that gonna be?

  I don’t know.

  I wander up 16th and find myself at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Up several flights of steps is a rotunda topped with a dome that reminds me of Mellon Arena. I walk up all those steps, the wings of the building seeming to usher me in, to wrap around me like arms. I’m sure there’s an admission charge, but I have some money. A sign inside the door tells me of the eight-dollar admission charge except on Sundays from one to five. I nod at a woman inside, who taps her watch and mouths, “Five minutes.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I find a spot to sit on the steps as several families just coming from church start walking up the steps. I smile at a little girl with pink bows in her hair, her white dress fluttering in the breeze, her little black shoes so shiny, and she smiles back. Her mama, though, leads her up the other side of the stairs.

  I know I look a sight, but I can’t look that dangerous. “How y’all doin’?” I say in my best country voice.

  The father only nods and takes his place next to his wife and daughter near the front door. The little girl hides behind her father’s legs but peeks out at me giggling every now and then.

  When the doors open, I head for the men’s room. After checking all the stalls and finding them empty, I roll up my sleeves and use pink soap to scrub the dust off my arms, face, neck, and hands, running a soapy paper towel on my armpits for good measure. I smell kind of … pink.

  I can’t believe you’re doing this.

  You don’t want me to be stank, do you?

  I can’t smell you.

  You wouldn’t want to.

  I run the water over my hair and dry it with a paper towel, which comes out dirty and dusty. I smile at my reflection, rub the dark circles under my eyes, and wish I had a toothbrush. Why didn’t I bring one? I gargle a couple times, but I’m sure my mouth is still sour. I’ll just have to sit or stand away from folks as much as I can. I roll down my sleeves and button them.

  My first stop is a little theater where I watch a short history of the city of Birmingham with about twenty other people, all of them dressed nice, all of them quiet, like this is just an extension of church for them. In a way, I guess it is. I pull out a notepad and take some notes, just to have something to do with my hands.

  “Are you a reporter?” an older woman behind me asks when the video ends.

  “No ma’am.”

  She stands. “A writer then?”

  I could be, I guess. “I’m more of a poet.”

  She nods. “This is a good place to get inspired. Enjoy the tour.”

  I follow the other folks through a section called “Barriers,” but I can’t get past the “white” and “colored” drinking fountains. I am rooted in place. The same water supply feeds into both, but the white fountain is fancier and even refrigerated, while the colored fountain is just an attachment to an ordinary faucet over a plain white sink. Which one would I drink from? I step as close as I dare and realize that I’d have to stoop much lower to drink from the colored fountain. Cold water or tap water? Water’s water, isn’t it? And doesn’t tap water cool you off quicker anyway? And would they be side by side like this? I imagine a line of white folks to my left, and a line of black folks to my right, and I see myself wandering down the middle, hearing “No cuts” and “The line’s back here” from both sides.

  I look around. I am the only person standing here, and the rest of the folks I was with have gone on ahead to a courtroom. I catch up to them as they begin moving away, leaving me to see a white sculpture of a black man sitting in a chair. There’s something unsettling about carving black people in white stone or plaster-of-Paris or whatever it is. Maybe that’s the effect they want. This man must be the defendant, and he doesn’t look too happy. I’ll bet he has an all-white jury to go with those all-white laws.

  I hurry through “Confrontation Alley” hearing all sorts of voices, some angry, some soft, and stop short when I see a KKK rally with a burning cross. Burning a cross. I don’t remember much from Sunday School and the Bible at Ebenezer, but I don’t think there’s a single verse in there about burning a cross. The Catholics burn lots of candles, but I think they respect the wood of the cross more than soaking it in gasoline and setting it on fire. It’s almost like setting fire to the American flag if you really think about it.

  I leave the original “hoods” and enter the “Movement” section. I see Rosa Parks, Freedom Riders, and another burned-out bus. I don’t know if I’d ever take a bus in Alabama, and not because I generally hate enclosed spaces. Those folks walked for over a year to make changes. I can use my own two feet.

  Then I see a jail cell with several folks holding onto the bars and peering inside. I edge closer to their backs and hear someone say, “These are the actual bars, Em.”

  When they leave, I step closer and listen to the voice of Dr. King, who was arrested many more times than me, reading his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the o
ne he wrote on the margins of newspapers and on toilet paper. Toilet paper. There’s a man who had a physical need to write. He had no mattress or linens, so he had to sleep on Birmingham steel slats. And he found time to write a letter that will echo forever. If I had only been writing during my stays in jail, I might have written something decent, maybe even—

  “Come on,” a voice says.

  I look over at the little girl with the pink bows standing next to another white sculpture of a black person, this one upright in a group of eight other sculptures.

  “Come join the march,” she says cheerfully.

  I walk over to her as she plays a little hide-and-go-seek with me around the sculptures, and when I look around, I am side-by-side with “marchers,” most black, a few white. The one next to me could be Auntie June in her Sunday best wearing white gloves and holding a purse big enough to swallow an entire pew. The sculpture is too tall to be Auntie June, and she’d need more wrinkles, too.

  “Look!” the little girl says, pointing at the sculpture next to “Auntie June.”

  The guy standing beside me almost looks like me.

  “It looks just like you, Mister!” she shouts.

  The marcher wears a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and boots. He’s a workingman with a straight nose and short hair, which seems to be a little dusty.

  “Eve Grace Lemon, you come on!” a voice calls, and the little girl, Eve, skips away.

  I stare at the sculpture’s boots then at my own. We may even wear the same size. I look up at his face. What is that expression? Is he angry? Determined? A little of both? And his hands. They’re fists, his right pumping out in front of his left as he “walks.” It could be me, but it can’t be me. This is so weird. I’m standing next to myself and—

  It can’t be you, Manny. You never stood for nothing in your life.

  Maybe. But I’m standing now, right?

  Barely.

  I look at the other marching sculptures looking at me and start to feel a little dizzy, sweat beading on my face and neck. What’s going on?

  They’re wondering why you’re here, and you’re getting paranoid.

  No, I’m just hungry, that’s all. I’m tired and hungry, and I need to get something to eat. That’s all this is. I’m just a little light-headed.

  You don’t belong here, boy.

  I look once more into my counterpart’s face, into his eyes. They’re focused on a point out in front of him, and he’s using his dusty boots and pumping fists to get to his destination with the fiercest expression—

  You … don’t … belong.

  I do.

  No, you don’t.

  I have to. I know so much more now.

  Which is what? That they wore out some shoes until the white folks got tired of the parade?

  Something like that. Yeah.

  You know as well as I do that nothing would have been done if a few white folks weren’t killed. Remember those civil rights workers, and that lady, oh, and that crazy postman who went on that walk? You think the government would have done a thing if any of them had been black? Open your eyes, boy.

  They are open.

  Then see these marchers as folks who didn’t have anything better to do than wear out their shoes.

  They did more than that. They changed history.

  They changed their shoes, boy, and that’s all there was to it.

  I wander back through the way I came in, weaving in and out of another crowd coming at me, touching the cool bars of the cell, seeing the burned-out bus, hearing the voices, watching the Klan rally, rushing through the little theater and into the rotunda and out into the heat of the day and—

  God, it’s so bright out here. The sky … is blinding, the sun—

  I crumple to the top step of some stairs and put my head between my knees.

  This is where you belong, boy. On the concrete. And it’s too bad it’s Sunday.

  What?

  You know how hard it is to find sunshine on Sunday.

  That isn’t what this is about.

  It isn’t?

  No.

  Then what is this about?

  I don’t know.

  Scared by a silly sculpture. Boy, you’re falling apart. You need you some liquid glue.

  I’m not scared. I’m just … overwhelmed.

  Nah, you ain’t overwhelmed. You’re lost. You’re lost in America. You don’t fit in. You just don’t belong anywhere, that’s all, and it scares you to death.

  Mary. I belong with Mary. And the baby.

  Not that again. Boy, your ancestors sold your ancestors into slavery over in Africa to the other half of your ancestors who worked them to death over here. You have double guilt about all this. Half of you whipped the other half. Do you really want to explain that to your son? How your white ancestors owned your black ancestors? Think how messed up your kid’s going to be over that.

  I’ll help him understand. I’ll be there to help him understand.

  Might not be anything to explain.

  What?

  How do you really know the baby’s yours? Pretty thing like that. Bet she had her pick of real daddies, and the real daddy’s with her right now.

  Not this again. Why don’t you just shut up?

  I ain’t built that way. And anyway, how are you going to make your boy understand? You’re in Birmingham, Alabama, on your way to Mobile. You’re going further away. You could end up like Red.

  I’ll never be like Red.

  Well, if you were trying to get back to Mary, you’d be going up instead of down.

  I’m being pulled to Mobile. I have to go south to get north for some reason. It’s like a magnet.

  Right. You just don’t know which way is up anymore. You’re no more a part of the folks on the Hill than you are a part of the folks here in Birmingham or down in Mobile. You have nowhere to be in this country. Face it. You will forever be divided and separated from every other person in this country.

  No.

  You know it’s true. Why else would you have been trying to kill yourself slowly with liquid sunshine?

  I wasn’t … I haven’t been trying to kill myself.

  Could have fooled me, but what do I know? I only know you better than you know yourself. Scared, aren’t you?

  I’m not afraid.

  Then let me out for a while, let me run the show. I’ll take us places, believe you me, that are the stuff of dreams.

  No!

  I jerk myself up off the step and don’t stop to catch my breath or what’s left of my sanity until I get to 17th Street and find Bahama Wings & Soul Food. My mouth had been watering for some country-fried steak, cornbread, and greens, but when I get there, I’m not hungry anymore. I should be, but I’m not. I’m thirstier than anything else. I’ll just get a big cup of Coke and rest a little.

  I hear a distant train horn and remember that I have to catch a train. I run to the spot near 14th Street where Red and I had gotten off, hoping a train will come along before the storm brewing overhead breaks into a million pieces. Huge, bulbous, black rain clouds roll over me like waves while I try to look cool sitting on the slight rise near a railroad track. It isn’t easy. Lots of folks drive by on the street in front of me, most breezing on by, but several folks waiting to turn left onto 14th give me hard looks.

  I wait until there aren’t any cars and cross the tracks to the other side, where I get a panoramic view of, well, not much. Backs of folks’ yards, a few dull buildings, a few trees. The clouds are interesting in all their rolling fury, though I’m sure to get drenched. I could use a bath, and my clothes could stand a good washing, so maybe a storm won’t be so bad. I pick at the weeds around me, leaning back every now and then to look for a train.

  Nothing.

  Then it rains, first in sprinkles, then in drops as big as my knuckles. The wind picks up, and by the time a train rolls by, I’m soaked to the bone. I step up the embankment to check out the train’s markings and see “Norfolk Southern” on the l
ocomotive. Not my train. It rumbles by while thunder rumbles overhead. Four trains and several hours later, an L&N train creaks by so slowly I could probably outrun it if I wasn’t so drenched and shivering. I catch the ladder leading up into a silver tanker car and huddle in a little cut near the coupling, locking my legs around a little railing.

  We creak along until we run out of buildings then pick up speed and head straight into the thick of a nasty lightning storm. I wonder if lightning could hit a moving metal train car during the storm.

  You sure know how to pick ‘em.

  Who asked you?

  The wind whips rain into my face, and I spend most of the next hour with my head in my lap, my hands tucked under my legs. I drowse every now and then, jerking awake whenever the car shudders violently from side to side. In a way, I’m glad I didn’t eat. I’d probably be throwing up from motion sickness.

  When the rain finally subsides and the clouds part a little revealing the stars, I relax and look at a peaceful land, so quiet, so full of promise and hope. Flat farmlands, rough cotton patches, pine thickets, greens and browns everywhere, signs of life, signs of growth, the smell of the soil, the smell of freshly watered grass. And if I could capture this feeling, this electric feeling, and bottle it, I’d be an instant billionaire overnight.

  No, you wouldn’t. You’d still be just as poor cuz there’s probably a law against bottling electricity.

  No. I’d still be poor because I’d give it away.

  “America …” I say to the wind. “America is America late at night after a thunderstorm in Alabama.”

  I drowse off and on through most of the journey, tense and alert as we creep through Montgomery, dead to the world as we move past Montgomery. I wake to another storm brewing with the blackest clouds I’ve ever seen. They’re like mashed potatoes with too much gravy. My stomach growls. And I could use a couple pounds of mashed potatoes with too much gravy right about now.

  Then the wind and rain pick up so fiercely that I have to hold onto anything my slick hands can grasp so I don’t fall off, some gusts so strong I’m blown back against the car gasping for air. The morning air is green with flying leaves, and the rain distorts my view so much I’m not sure where the earth ends and the sky begins. And somehow, I have to look through all this mess to find the Mobile River.