The cars ahead pulled aside at last and the bus passed them. But the ordeal was not ended: the convoy was still behind. Then George heard a familiar popping sound. When the bus began to weave all over the road he realized it was a burst tyre. The driver slowed to a halt near a roadside grocery store. George read the name: Forsyth & Son.
The driver jumped out. George heard him say: ‘Two flats?’ Then he went into the store, presumably to phone for help.
George was as tense as a bowstring. One flat tyre was just a puncture; two made an ambush.
Sure enough, the cars in the convoy were stopping and a dozen white men in their Sunday suits were piling out, yelling curses and waving their weapons, savages on the warpath. George’s stomach cramped again as he saw them running towards the bus, ugly faces twisted with hatred, and he knew why his mother’s eyes had filled with tears when she talked about Southern whites.
At the head of the pack was an adolescent boy who raised a crowbar and gleefully smashed a window.
The next man tried to enter the bus. One of the two burly white passengers stood at the top of the steps and drew a revolver, confirming Maria’s theory that they were state troopers in plain clothes. The intruder backed off and the trooper locked the door.
George feared that might be a mistake. What if the Riders needed to get out in a hurry?
The men outside began to rock the bus, as if trying to turn it over, all the while yelling: ‘Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers!’ Women passengers were screaming. Maria clung to George in a way that might have pleased him if he had not been in fear of his life.
Outside, he saw two uniformed patrolmen arrive, and his hopes lifted; but, to his fury, they did nothing to restrain the mob. He looked at the two plain-clothes men on the bus: they looked foolish and scared. Obviously the uniformed men did not know about their undercover colleagues. The Alabama Highway Patrol was evidently disorganized as well as racist.
George cast around desperately for something he could do to protect Maria and himself. Get out of the bus and run? Lie down on the floor? Grab a gun from a state trooper and shoot some white men? Every possibility seemed even worse than doing nothing.
He stared in fury at the two highway patrolmen outside, watching as if nothing wrong was happening. They were cops, for Christ’s sake! What did they think they were doing? If they would not enforce the law, what right did they have to wear that uniform?
Then he saw Joseph Hugo. There was no possibility of mistake: George knew those bulging blue eyes well. Hugo approached a patrolman and spoke to him, then the two of them laughed.
He was a snitch.
If I get out of here alive, George thought, that creep is going to be sorry.
The men outside shouted at the Riders to get off. George heard: ‘Come out here and get what’s coming to you, nigger lovers!’ That made him think he was safer on the bus.
But not for long.
One of the mob had returned to his car and opened the trunk, and now the man came running towards the bus with something burning in his hands. He hurled a blazing bundle through a smashed window. Seconds later the bundle exploded in grey smoke. But the weapon was not just a smoke bomb. It set fire to the upholstery, and in moments thick black fumes began to choke the passengers. A woman screamed: ‘Is there any air up front?’
From outside, George heard: ‘Burn the niggers! Fry them!’
Everyone tried to get out of the door. The aisle was jammed with gasping people. Some were pressing forward, but there seemed to be a blockage. George yelled: ‘Get off the bus! Everybody get off!’
From the front, someone shouted back: ‘The door won’t open!’
George recalled that the state trooper with the gun had locked the door to keep the mob out. ‘We’ll have to jump out the windows!’ he yelled. ‘Come on!’
He stood on a seat and kicked most of the remaining glass out of the window. Then he pulled off his suit coat and draped it over the sill, to provide some protection from the jagged shards still remaining stuck in the window frame.
Maria was coughing helplessly. George said: ‘I’ll go first and catch you as you jump.’ Grasping the back of the seat for balance, he stood on the sill, bent double, and jumped. He heard his shirt tear on a snag, but felt no pain, and concluded that he had escaped injury. He landed on the roadside grass. The mob had backed off from the burning bus in fear. George turned and held his arms up to Maria. ‘Climb through, like I did!’ he shouted.
Her pumps were flimsy compared with his toe-capped oxfords, and he was glad he had sacrificed his jacket when he saw her small feet on the sill. She was shorter than he was, but her womanly figure made her wider. He winced when her hip brushed a shard of glass as she squeezed through, but it did not tear the fabric of her dress, and a moment later she fell into his arms.
He held her easily. She was not heavy, and he was in good shape. He set her on her feet, but she dropped to her knees, gasping for air.
He looked around. The thugs were still keeping their distance. He looked inside the bus. Cora Jones was standing in the aisle, coughing, turning round and round, too shocked and bewildered to save herself. ‘Cora, come here!’ he yelled. She heard her name and looked at him. ‘Come through the window, like we did!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll help you!’ She seemed to understand. With difficulty, she stood on the seat, still clutching her handbag. She hesitated, looking at the jagged bits of glass all around the window frame; but she had on a thick coat, and she seemed to decide a cut was a better risk than choking to death. She put one foot on the sill. George reached through the window, grabbed her arm, and pulled. She tore her coat but did no harm to herself, and he lifted her down. She staggered away, calling for water.
‘We have to get away from the bus!’ he yelled to Maria. ‘The fuel tank might explode.’ But Maria was so racked by coughing that she seemed helpless to move. He put one arm around her back and the other behind her knees and picked her up. He carried her towards the grocery store and set her down when he thought they were at a safe distance.
He looked back and saw that the bus was now emptying rapidly. The door had at last been opened, and people were stumbling through as well as jumping from the windows.
The flames grew. As the last passengers got out, the inside of the vehicle became a furnace. George heard a man shout something about the fuel tank, and the mob took up the cry, shouting: ‘She’s gonna blow! She’s gonna blow!’ Everyone scattered in fear, getting farther away. Then there was a deep thump and a sudden fierce gout of flame, and the vehicle rocked with the explosion.
George was pretty sure no one was left inside, and he thought: At least no one is dead – yet.
The detonation seemed to have sated the mob’s hunger for violence. They stood around watching the bus burn.
A small crowd of what appeared to be local people had gathered outside the grocery store, many cheering the mob; but now a young girl came out of the building with a pail of water and some plastic cups. She gave a drink to Mrs Jones, then came to Maria, who gratefully downed a cup of water and asked for another.
A young white man approached with a look of concern. He had a face like a rodent, forehead and chin angling back from a sharp nose and buck teeth, red-brown hair slicked back with pomade. ‘How are you doing, darling?’ he said to Maria. But he was concealing something, and as Maria started to reply he raised a crowbar high in the air and brought it down, aiming at the top of her head. George flung out an arm to protect her, and the bar came down hard on his left forearm. The pain was agonizing, and he roared. The man lifted the crowbar again. Despite his arm George lunged forward, leading with his right shoulder, and barged the man so hard that he went flying.
George turned back to Maria and saw three more of the mob running at him, evidently bent on revenging their rat-like friend. George had been premature in thinking the segregationists had had their fill of violence.
He was used to combat. He had been on the Harvard wrestling team as an undergraduate, and had coached the team while getting his law degree. But this was not going to be a fair fight with rules. And he had only one working arm.
On the other hand, he had gone to grade school in a Washington slum, and he knew about fighting dirty.
They were coming at him three abreast, so he moved sideways. This not only took them away from Maria, but also turned them so that they were now advancing in single file.
The first man swung an iron chain at him wildly.
George danced back, and the chain missed him. The momentum of the swing threw the man off balance. As he staggered, George kicked his legs from under him, and he crashed to the ground. He lost hold of his chain.
The second man stumbled over the first. George stepped forward, turned his back, and hit the man in the face with his right elbow, hoping to dislocate his jaw. The man gave a strangled scream and fell down, dropping his tyre iron.
The third man stopped, suddenly scared. George stepped towards him and punched him in the face with all his might. George’s fist caught the man full on the nose. Bones crunched and blood spurted, and the man screamed in agony. It was the most satisfying blow George had ever struck in his life. To hell with Gandhi, he thought.
Two shots rang out. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked towards the noise. One of the uniformed state troopers was holding a revolver high in the air. ‘Okay, boys, you’ve had your fun,’ he said. ‘Let’s move out.’
George was furious. Fun? The cop had been a witness to attempted murder, and he called it fun? George was beginning to see that a police uniform did not mean much in Alabama.
The mob returned to their cars. George noticed angrily that none of the four police officers troubled to write down any licence plates. Nor did they take any names, though they probably knew everyone anyway.
Joseph Hugo had vanished.
There was another explosion in the wreckage of the bus, and George guessed there must be a second fuel tank; but at this point no one was near enough to be in danger. The fire then seemed to burn itself out.
Several people lay on the ground, many still gasping for breath after inhaling smoke. Others were bleeding from various injuries. Some were Riders, some regular passengers, black and white. George himself was clutching his left arm with his right hand, holding it against his side, trying to keep it motionless because every movement was excruciatingly painful. The four men he had tangled with were helping one another limp back to their cars.
He managed to walk to where the patrolmen stood. ‘We need an ambulance,’ he said. ‘Maybe two.’
The younger of the two uniformed men glared at him. ‘What did you say?’
‘These people need medical attention,’ George said. ‘Call an ambulance!’
The man looked furious, and George realized he had made the mistake of telling a white man what to do. But the older patrolman said to his colleague: ‘Leave it, leave it.’ Then he said to George: ‘Ambulance is on its way, boy.’
A few minutes later, an ambulance the size of a small bus arrived, and the Riders began to help each other aboard. But when George and Maria approached, the driver said: ‘Not you.’
George stared at him in disbelief. ‘What?’
‘This here’s a white folks’ ambulance,’ the driver said. ‘It ain’t for nigras.’
‘The hell you say.’
‘Don’t you sass me, boy.’
A white Rider who was already on board came back out. ‘You have to take everyone to hospital,’ he said to the driver. ‘Black and white.’
‘This ain’t a nigra ambulance,’ the driver said stubbornly.
‘Well, we’re not going without our friends.’ With that the white Riders began to leave the ambulance one by one.
The driver was taken aback. He would look foolish, George guessed, if he returned from the scene with no patients.
The older patrolman came over and said: ‘Better take ’em, Roy.’
‘If you say so,’ said the driver.
George and Maria boarded the ambulance.
As they drove away, George looked back at the bus. Nothing remained but a drift of smoke and a blackened hulk, with a row of scorched roof struts sticking up like the ribs of a martyr burned at the stake.