George had read short reports of the violence in the next day’s papers, but he was disappointed to see the story overshadowed by the rocket flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Who cares? George thought sourly. The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been the first man in space, less than a month ago. The Russians beat us to it. A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.
Then, in Atlanta, the Riders had been cheered by a welcoming crowd as they got off the bus, and George’s spirits had lifted again.
But that was Georgia, and now they were headed for Alabama.
‘Why did King say we’re not going to make it through Alabama?’ Maria asked.
‘There’s a rumour the Ku Klux Klan are planning something in Birmingham,’ George said grimly. ‘Apparently the FBI knows all about it but they haven’t done anything to stop it.’
‘And the local police?’
‘The police are in the damn Klan.’
‘What about those two?’ With a jerk of her head Maria indicated the seats across the aisle and a row back.
George looked over his shoulder at two burly white men sitting together. ‘What about them?’
‘Don’t you smell cop?’
He saw what she meant. ‘Do you think they’re FBI?’
‘Their clothes are too cheap for the Bureau. My guess is they’re Alabama Highway Patrol, under cover.’
George was impressed. ‘How did you get to be so smart?’
‘My mother made me eat my vegetables. And my father’s a lawyer in Chicago, the gangster capital of the US.’
‘So what do you think those two are doing?’
‘I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’re here to defend our civil rights, do you?’
George glanced out of the window and saw a sign that read: ENTERING ALABAMA. He checked his wristwatch. It was 1 p.m. The sun was shining out of a blue sky. It’s a beautiful day to die, he thought.
Maria wanted to work in politics or public service. ‘Protestors can have a big impact, but in the end it’s governments that reshape the world,’ she said. George thought about that, wondering whether he agreed. Maria had applied for a job in the White House press office, and had been called for interview, but she had not got the job. ‘They don’t hire many black lawyers in Washington,’ she had said ruefully to George. ‘I’ll probably stay in Chicago and join my father’s law firm.’
Across the aisle from George was a middle-aged white woman in a coat and hat, holding on her lap a large white plastic handbag. George smiled at her and said: ‘Lovely weather for a bus ride.’
‘I’m going to visit my daughter in Birmingham,’ she said, though he had not asked.
‘That’s nice. I’m George Jakes.’
‘Cora Jones. Mrs Jones. My daughter’s baby is due in a week.’
‘Her first?’
‘Third.’
‘Well, you seem too young to be a grandmother, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
She purred a little. ‘I’m forty-nine years old.’
‘I would never have guessed that!’
A Greyhound coming in the opposite direction flashed its lights, and the Riders’ bus slowed to a halt. A white man came to the driver’s window and George heard him say: ‘There’s a crowd gathered at the bus station in Anniston.’ The driver said something in reply that George could not hear. ‘Just be careful,’ said the man at the window.
The bus pulled away.
‘What does that mean, a crowd?’ said Maria anxiously. ‘It could be twenty people or a thousand. They could be a welcoming committee or an angry mob. Why didn’t he tell us more?’
George guessed her irritation masked fear.
He recalled his mother’s words: ‘I’m just so afraid they’ll kill you.’ Some people in the movement said they were ready to die in the cause of freedom. George was not sure he was willing to be a martyr. There were too many other things he wanted to do; like maybe sleep with Maria.
A minute later they entered Anniston, a small town like any other in the South: low buildings, streets in a grid, dusty and hot. The roadside was lined with people as if for a parade. Many were dressed up, the women in hats, the children scrubbed, no doubt having been to church. ‘What are they expecting to see, people with horns?’ George said. ‘Here we are, folks, real Northern Negroes, wearing shoes and all.’ He spoke as if addressing them, although only Maria could hear. ‘We’ve come to take away your guns and teach you Communism. Where do the white girls go swimming?’
Maria giggled. ‘If they could hear you, they wouldn’t know you were joking.’
He wasn’t really joking, it was more like whistling past the graveyard. He was trying to ignore the spasm of fear in his guts.
The bus turned into the station, which was strangely deserted. The buildings looked shut up and locked. To George it felt creepy.
The driver opened the door of the bus.
George did not see where the mob came from. Suddenly they were all around the bus. They were white men, some in work clothes, others in Sunday suits. They carried baseball bats, metal pipes, and lengths of iron chain. And they were screaming. Most of it was inchoate, but George heard some words of hate, including Sieg heil!
George stood up, his first impulse to close the bus door; but the two men Maria had identified as state troopers were faster, and they slammed it shut. Perhaps they are here to defend us, George thought; or maybe they’re just defending themselves.
He looked through the windows all around him. There were no police outside. How could the local police not know that an armed mob had gathered at the bus station? They had to be in collusion with the Klan. No surprise there.
A second later the men attacked the bus with their weapons. There was a frightening cacophony as chains and crowbars dented the bodywork. Glass shattered, and Mrs Jones screamed. The driver started the bus, but one of the mob lay down in front of it. George thought the driver might just roll over the man, but he stopped.
A rock came through the window, smashing it, and George felt a sharp pain in his cheek like a bee sting. He had been hit by a flying shard. Maria was sitting by a window: she was in danger. George grabbed her arm, pulling her towards him. ‘Kneel down in the aisle!’ he shouted.
A grinning man wearing knuckledusters put his fist through the window next to Mrs Jones. ‘Get down here with me!’ Maria shouted, and she pulled Mrs Jones down next to her and wrapped her arms protectively around the older woman.
The yelling got louder. ‘Communists!’ they screamed. ‘Cowards!’
Maria said: ‘Duck, George!’
George could not bring himself to cower before these hooligans.
Suddenly the noise diminished. The banging on the bus sides stopped and there was no more breaking glass. George spotted a police officer.
About time, he thought.
The cop was swinging a nightstick but talking amiably to the grinning man with the knuckledusters.
Then George saw three more cops. They had calmed the crowd but, to George’s indignation, they were doing no more. They acted as if no crime had been committed. They chatted casually to the rioters, who seemed to be their friends.
The two highway patrolmen were sitting back in their seats, looking bewildered. George guessed their assignment was to spy on the Riders, and they had not reckoned on becoming victims of mob violence. They had been forced to join the Riders’ side in self-defence. They might learn to see things from a new point of view.
The bus moved. George saw, through the windscreen, that a cop was urging men out of the way and another was waving the driver forward. Outside the station, a patrol car moved in front of the bus and led it on the road out of town.
George began to feel better. ‘I think we got away,’ he said.
Maria got to her feet, apparently unhurt. She took the handkerchief out of the breast pocket of George’s suit coat and mopped his face gently. The white cotton came away red with blood. ‘It’s a nasty little gash,’ she said.
‘I’ll live.’
‘You won’t be so pretty, though.’
‘I’m pretty?’
‘You used to be, but now . . .’
The moment of normality did not last. George glanced behind and saw a long line of pickup trucks and cars following the bus. They seemed to be full of shouting men. He groaned. ‘We didn’t get away,’ he said.
Maria said: ‘Back in Washington, before we got on the bus, you were talking to a young white guy.’
‘Joseph Hugo,’ George said. ‘He’s at Harvard Law. Why?’
‘I thought I saw him in the mob back there.’
‘Joseph Hugo? No. He’s on our side. You must be mistaken.’ But Hugo was from Alabama, George recalled.
Maria said: ‘He had bulging blue eyes.’
‘If he’s with the mob, that would mean that all this time he’s been pretending to support civil rights . . . while spying on us. He can’t be a snitch.’
‘Can’t he?’
George looked behind again.
The police escort turned back at the city line, but the other vehicles did not.
The men in the cars were shrieking so loud they could be heard over the sound of all the engines.
Beyond the suburbs, on a long lonely stretch of Highway 202, two cars overtook the bus then slowed down, forcing the driver to brake. He tried to pass, but they swerved from side to side, blocking his way.
Cora Jones was white-faced and shaking, and she clutched her plastic handbag like a lifebelt. George said: ‘I’m sorry we got you into this, Mrs Jones.’
‘So am I,’ she replied.