Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

Norman shifted in his chair. What could he offer to this? “The police are always at our school now,” he finally said, “ever since it was integrated this year. There are fights every day in the lunchroom. I just stay out of there.”

  A log settled on the fire with a chunk.

  “Where I live, there are only black kids now at what used to be the white kids’ school,” answered Ray. “All the white folks started their own school. Private school. They ain’t goin’ to school with us. Stayin’ away — that ain’t gonna help nuthin’. That just means you hold on to the power and keep it to yourself.” His tone was defiant.

  The silence that enveloped them was suddenly ragged. Molly tried to think of what to say. “I would go to school with you,” she said quietly.

  “Would you go to Vietnam with me?” asked Ray, a challenge in his voice.

  The color drained from Molly’s face.

  “What do you mean?” asked Norman. “Plenty of boys — black and white — are going to Vietnam.”

  “I mean the government’s sending more blacks than ever to Vietnam now. They say it’s so we can have a trade. So we can have a job, a steady paycheck. But that’s not true. They need bodies to fight their war. And it’s okay with them if we get killed. So they lower the requirements. If you’re poor and black, got two arms and two legs, and got a brain in your head, you’re going to Vietnam,” Ray finished. “Even if somebody shot you when you were just a kid, just fourteen years old.”

  “I’m fourteen,” said Molly to no one. She was shaking, even though they were just talking.

  “Nobody’s gonna shoot you, white girl,” said Ray. “You ain’t who they trying to get rid of.”

  Molly was breathless. A breeze tugged at the fire. The night surrounded them.

  “What are you saying?” asked Norman.

  “I’m saying it’s not enough to say you’d go to school with me,” said Ray. “It’s not enough to stay away from the lunchroom. It’s not enough to say Too bad or Who shot you, Ray? It’s not enough to feel sorry for me, if that’s what you feel. Because you can’t help me right now. But you white people hold the power, and you can help others.”

  “How?” It was a whisper from Molly.

  “We had some white folks come to our town five years ago,” said Ray, softer now that he was telling a story. “One of ’em stayed in our house. They didn’t just talk. They helped change things and so did we. Some of us died. I almost died. Lots of us went to jail. But we didn’t run away. We stood up to the bullies.”

  He looked at Norman and continued. “Sometimes the bully is a gas station man. And sometimes the bully is the U.S. government. Things need to change in this country. And change ain’t comfortable. It’s easier to stay comfortable, especially if you hold the power. But that doesn’t help everybody else who’s suffering because of the bullies. You got to go after the bullies. I would do it again. I would go after the bullies.”

  There was a long silence between them. Norman broke it when he said, softly, “I don’t know how to go after bullies.”

  Ray turned his head and locked eyes with Norman. “It’s not my job to teach you,” he said. “You got to learn for yourself.”

  Ray got up, added a log to the fire while Norman and Molly watched, poked it with a stick, and walked into the woods. “Be back directly.”

  An owl hooted from a tall tree somewhere. Molly felt teary. “I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice.

  Norman exhaled through closed lips and puffed cheeks. Clearly he was in over his head, out here in the middle of nowhere, Alabama, on the road with a boy who was braver than he’d ever be, a boy who knew things he needed to know. He wanted to go home to his comfortable life. But was it comfortable, really?

  “It’s late,” he finally said. “We have a long way to go tomorrow.” There was no way to articulate what he was feeling. He hardly knew, himself.

  Molly wiped at her eyes. “Okay,” she said. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to keep going. She wanted to turn back the clock, to a time when she was innocent and her life was easier. But somewhere inside herself, in a place she could not yet touch, she knew that easier wasn’t the answer.

  BROTHER LOVE’S TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW

  Written by Neil Diamond

  Performed by Neil Diamond

  Recorded at American Sound Studio, Memphis, Tennessee, 1969

  Drummer: Gene Chrisman

  They were quiet with one another as they crossed into Mississippi the next morning just as the sun burst into a bright yellow lemon behind them. The sunshine lightened their mood.

  “More hills,” remarked Ray. “Bus don’t sound too good.” He was eating an apple.

  Norman grimaced as he drove. “It’ll get us there. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m worried,” said Molly. Her hair was tidy in its ponytail once again. She tuned the radio as they drove, looking for AM stations playing the Weekly Top Forty records.

  They stopped for gas in Southaven. Norman once again checked the oil and added a quart. Ray and Molly wordlessly watched a brown-skinned girl with hair that glistened in the morning sun walk down the road past the service station. She carried a baby on her hip. As they pulled out of the gas station and began to pass her, Molly spoke up.

  “Maybe she needs a ride, Norman.”

  “Who?”

  “That girl!” The girl watched the bus drive by. Her baby, black curls bouncing, waved at the bus.

  “She probably lives here,” said Norman.

  “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a ride,” said Molly. “She might have a long way to walk.”

  Norman kept driving. Molly watched the girl and her baby recede as the bus windows clicked past her like movie frames.

  “Now we’ll never know what happened to her! Just turn around, Norman!”

  “No! She’s none of our business! She’s just walking down the road!”

  Ray tossed the core of his third apple out the window and said, “You mean you’re not gonna offer her a ride? She’s a girl with a baby.”

  “Because I said I’d get you to Memphis for breakfast!”

  “I don’t live in Memphis,” said Ray. “I live in Mississippi. You can drop me right here, right now.”

  When Norman didn’t answer immediately, Ray said, “Stop the bus, man. I’m off.”

  “Gaaaaa!” Norman beat on the steering wheel. “Fine. We’ll pick her up.”

  He turned around in the Farm Bureau parking lot. They headed back toward the service station. The girl was gone.

  Norman pulled into two spaces at the far end of the Winn-Dixie parking lot and put the bus in park. Ray stood in the aisle and hoisted his knapsack. Molly started to cry.

  “What?” Norman stood up and faced them both.

  “I don’t like good-byes,” Molly said.

  “Look, man,” said Norman. There was nothing he could do about Molly. It was hot. He was frustrated. He began unbuttoning his white oxford shirt. His white T-shirt gleamed underneath it. “You don’t have to get off. You said yourself last night it would be easier to find a ride south from Memphis.”

  “Don’t want to ride with nobody who won’t pick up a body in need. Two bodies.”

  Norman draped his shirt over the back of the driver’s seat. He wiped his palm across his forehead. Sweaty.

  “I will,” he said flatly. “From now on I’ll pick up every hitchhiker I see. But I would like to point out that she wasn’t thumbing a ride, and she’s gone now, so she probably walked from the service station to her house.” He gestured at the shotgun houses lining this stretch of road.

  Ray looked at the houses and then at the Winn-Dixie. Molly blew her nose into an Aunt Pam napkin. Ray turned his attention to her.

  “You sure do …” started Ray, trying to find a word that wasn’t cry.

  “Emote,” finished Norman.

  “Yeah,” said Ray.

  “You can leave if you want,” said Norman. “I’ll pick up the ‘bodies in need,�
�� whether you stay or not.”

  “Promise you’ll do it,” said Ray. “It’s important.”

  “I promise.”

  Molly stood up from her seat behind the driver. “Look! There she is!”

  The girl came out of the Winn-Dixie with her baby and a paper sack.

  Ray gave Norman his fiery stare. Well?

  Norman sighed and opened the bus door, clambered down the steps, and waved at the girl, who was still far away. “How far you going?” he shouted.

  The girl looked behind her, then back at Norman, stunned then scared.

  Ray hopped off the bus. “That’s not how you do it! You all lily white and tall and got a bus and calling to this girl. You’re in Mississippi, man!”

  He strutted to the girl and had words with her that Norman couldn’t hear. He pointed to the bus. They talked and the baby played with his hands. The girl smiled. Molly stood on the bottom step of the stepwell, at the folding door, and watched.

  Soon the three of them — Ray, the girl, and the baby — approached the bus.

  “This here is Emily,” said Ray. “And her baby, Christian. Emily, this is Florsheim and Molly.”

  Norman winced at the name.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Emily. Baby Christian gurgled and hid his face in Emily’s neck.

  “She ain’t going far, and I told her we can tote her.”

  “Happy to,” said Norman. “How far?”

  “Just a mile up this road, back the way we came, jag right, then left.”

  Norman took the grocery sack and Ray took the baby, who stared at him with wide brown eyes. Emily stepped onto the bus where Molly met her with still-damp eyes. She raised a hand in greeting and Emily nodded, then hesitantly took a seat opposite Molly, so she was at the front of the bus sitting behind the same half-high silver partition wall Ray had banged into two nights ago.

  Ray, arms outstretched, handed Christian back to his mother, and Norman started the bus. Ray sat in the seat behind Emily. No one spoke.

  A mile later, then a jag right and left, they were in front of an AME church.

  “Right here,” said the girl.

  “At the church?” asked Norman.

  “You can turn around easily here, in the parking lot,” Emily said. “I live next door. My father’s the pastor.” The lawn next door was freshly clipped. Azaleas grew across the porch in front of the house. A sidewalk traveled in a curve from the church to the parsonage.

  “I get off here, too,” said Ray.

  “Wait!” said Molly.

  “We’ve got people here who can get him home,” said the girl with a smile. “Thank you for the ride.”

  Norman opened the door for them and stood up.

  Ray followed Emily as she got off the bus with Christian. “I’ve got him,” she said when Ray tried to take him. So he picked up the paper sack instead and saw that it held a bottle of milk.

  “Good luck, man,” said Norman, a catch in his throat. He stuck out his hand and Ray took it.

  Molly’s eyes filled with tears. “I hope … I hope you’ll be all right over there,” she said.

  “You got the address of my company,” said Ray. “You write, I’ll write back.”

  “Okay.” Molly sniffed. This would not do. Ray was not Barry. But Ray was … Ray. She knew someone who was going to Vietnam. It was heartbreaking.

  She started to say something more, but Ray was gone as suddenly as he had come.

  Norman watched him follow Emily to her porch, where a door opened and someone — someone who had been waiting there for Emily and Christian — ushered them all inside.

  Norman thumped back into the driver’s seat, grabbed the steering wheel, and rested his head between his hands. “The world is a scary place,” he said.

  Molly already knew this. She said nothing.

  “Those white kids at school,” continued Norman, lifting his head. “The ones fighting in the lunchroom …”

  Molly wouldn’t go into the lunchroom anymore, either. “What about them?” she asked finally.

  Norman engaged the clutch and put the bus in gear. “They don’t know anything.”

  TIME IS TIGHT

  Written by Booker T. Jones, Al Jackson, Jr., Donald “Duck” Dunn, and Steve Cropper

  Performed by Booker T. and the MGs

  Recorded at Stax Records, Memphis, Tennessee, 1969

  Drummer: Al Jackson, Jr.

  It was a quick drive up the interstate highway into Memphis. They breezed past the state sign: WELCOME TO TENNESSEE!

  “Finally!” said Molly. She used the local road map to find the address. “Can we just drop off these cymbals and go? Please?” She used her most plaintive voice. “We could get to Little Rock before dark. And we could eat somewhere. I’m starving.”

  “Sure,” said Norman. He swung the bus onto McLemore and they saw the sign: STAX, in bright red letters above a theater marquee. And under that, SOULSVILLE, U.S.A.

  “There’s a record store!” said Molly.

  They found a place to park the bus on the street, a block away. Windows up, doors locked, cymbals in their black case and in Norman’s arms, Norman and Molly walked back toward the theater. The neighborhood looked abandoned, with vacant storefronts and weedy sidewalks. Two shirtless brown-skinned boys shrieked and sprayed each other with a hose in front of a house with metal awnings over the windows.

  Norman and Molly reached Stax, and it took a moment for Norman to realize: “It’s a theater! That’s a marquee! There’s a ticket window!”

  The door was locked. When it finally opened to their insistent knocking, a woman with a bouffant hairdo poofed atop a pale face pancaked with makeup greeted them. She wore a sleeveless shirtwaist dress with large pockets, low heels, and red lipstick. A cigarette hung between her lips. She plucked it from her mouth with two fingers, turned her head, and blew smoke into the dark lobby.

  “May I help you?”

  “We’re here to return these symbols to Al Jackson,” said Norman. “Roger Hawkins sent us.”

  When the woman didn’t register the name, Norman added, “From Muscle Shoals.”

  Immediately, the woman brightened. “Oh! Roger! Yes, of course! Well, come in! I’m Estelle. I own the place. Well, I own it with my brother Jim. You won’t find Al here this early in the morning. We’re lucky if he shows up before noon. But there’s somebody back there, I’m sure …”

  She began turning on lights. The carpet was lavender. The walls were purple. Estelle opened another door and said, “Follow me.”

  The carpet in the hallway was deep green. Before they reached the studio, it changed to a bright red. The studio itself was nothing like the one in Muscle Shoals. The floor sloped, for one thing. “That’s because this used to be the Capitol Theater,” said Estelle, when Molly remarked on it. “We renovated it ourselves!”

  The control booth was on the stage where the movie would have been shown. It was empty and the lights were off. A line of bongos sat near the stage. Acoustical drapes hung on the walls, and folding chairs were scattered here and there. Microphones stood atop long silver poles like soldiers at attention. A Hammond M3 organ caught Norman’s eye. “Wow!”

  “It’s a beauty,” said Estelle. “Booker played ‘Green Onions’ on it.”

  “’Green Onions’!” said Norman, so surprised. “Booker T and the MGs! Far out!”

  “Number three on the Weekly Top Forty,” cooed Molly.

  “And number one on the R&B chart,” said Estelle.

  Norman walked past the organ to the baffle walls that hid the drums, which sat on a platform built just for them. A Rogers kit. A 20" bass, three toms — 12", 16", and 13" — and a Powertone wood-shelled snare. The cymbals included a hi-hat, a crash, and a ride.

  “He’s already got cymbals,” Norman pointed out.

  “There are many kinds of cymbals, dear, as I’m sure you know,” said Estelle.

  “Yes’m,” said Norman. “Should I just leave these on the drum stand?”
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  Estelle looked at Norman as if she were sizing him up. “Why don’t you wait for him in here? I’ve got to get back to the record shop. We open in an hour.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” said Norman. Just to sit in a studio and soak it in, to stare at it all and try and understand how it worked. Bliss. He looked at Molly to see how badly she disapproved.

  “The record shop!” said Molly. “May I come with you, Miss Estelle?”

  “Folks call me Miz Axton,” said Estelle. “Or Lady A. Take your pick.”

  “May I come with you, Lady A?”

  “Of course!”

  Molly left Norman worshipping Al Jackson’s drum kit.

  * * *

  “Do you hear the groove?” Estelle asked Molly. “You can dance to it, if you want.” Molly did not want, but she did want to keep listening to record after record forever.

  “It’s so good,” she said, for the fifteenth time.

  “Here’s just one more,” said Estelle. She put Eddie Floyd’s “People, Get It Together” on the turntable, and Eddie began to sing and tell Molly she was outtasight, whether she was black or white, rich or poor, she’d better get it together.

  “I can’t believe all of these were recorded right here, on this spot,” marveled Molly.

  “Not all of them,” said Estelle, “but that one was. Booker and Eddie wrote it.” She changed the record once again. “And here’s one of my favorites, also recorded right here. ‘Soul Man’ by Sam and Dave — do you know it?“

  Molly clapped her hands. “Number two on the Weekly Top Forty!”

  Estelle laughed. “You’re good!”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, I miss this,” said Estelle, suddenly teary. She grabbed Molly’s hand with both of hers. “You’re just precious!”

  Molly thought to say she was utterly not, just ask Norman, but she knew better. And something else she knew not to say: These records were good, but they were not the Association with their beautiful soaring melodies and complex harmonies.

  Estelle stood up and lit a cigarette. She dabbed at the tear on her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “When I first opened Satellite Records, it was the neighborhood hangout,” she said. “Before Satellite was here, kids had to take the bus out to Sears to look at records — and Sears only had country music. So kids came from all over the neighborhood to go through our records and listen all day long. I played record after record for them, just like I did for you. I told them, ‘This is the hot new beat!’ I even put a speaker outside to lure them in so they’d buy! Kids would dance on the sidewalk!”