Chapter 20

Another car rounded the corner and Jenks lowered the shotgun, commanding Gann to stay just where he was. This car double-parked behind the Buick, and four uniformed men got out, State Police. Gann, it seemed, had not been the only one to phone for them.

One trooper, in Air Force sunglasses, approached Gann and Jenks. 'All right, all right, all right, what's going on here?'

This man...' Gann explained, over-riding Jenks' growl. This man has just threatened to kill me. He's concealing an illegal weapon beneath that robe.'

That's no surprise. Okay, Goblin, hand it over.' Swearing restrainedly, Jenks surrendered the sawn-off shotgun to the state trooper. 'That's what you call yourselves, isn't it?' he jeered, once the gun was safely in his possession. 'Goblins and dragons and wizards? Chrahst, if you want to know the truth, you Klansmen are a bigger pain than all the niggers in this state put together. Come on, come on, let's look for the little black wagon. I'll tell you something, Goblin: I don't exactly love niggers—come on! —-but I sure as hell don't love you bastards. Shooting people. Inciting to riots. Running around dressed up like a bunch of goddam fairies. Chrahst!'

Once again Owen set off after Roderick, who had entered the station.

'And where do you think you're going, little friend?' the trooper asked.

'Excuse me, Officer. I took it for granted that you understood I'm not a Klansman. As this man can assure you, I'm an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.'

'And he is too, I suppose? Or did he come from the Attorney-General's office?'

'C.I.A.,' said Jenks.

'Officer, this man was on the point of killing me the moment you arrived. He had found out, you see, about my ...'

'I believe it, I believe it,' the trooper said, snapping open a pair of handcuffs.

'It's true. There's a man in that bus station I must find now. He may be dangerous. That's his car, that Buick. He's wanted by the police for questioning.'

'Come along now, the both of you.'

'Officer, here—these are my credentials. Look.'

'Chrahst, what we have to put up with from you bastards!'

'This is my badge.'

'And this is mine, wise guy. If you want to be booked for resisting arrest on top of everything else ...'

'On top of what else? Name one reason for arresting me.'

The trooper took off his sunglasses and stared at Gann. 'Well, Jee-sus Chrahst Almighty! Nobody's ever going to believe this.'

Owen could see it was useless. He let himself be led off to the wagon, handcuffed to Jenks, who was enjoying himself immensely.

In the commotion that the mad Klansman had caused by sitting down beside the coloured minister, Bessy had been able to get Clara out of the bus station, but Clara was not in any condition, with her head bashed and bloody, to be carried farther, nor was Bessy, wheezing and dizzy, in any condition to carry her. She and Fay laid Clara down on the concrete of the boarding platform.

'Oh Lord!' said Bessy, glancing in through the glass door of the station. 'It's him, it's that F.B.I, man—and he's talking to a cop.' For a moment she considered sending Alice to him, but she feared that the girl, despite the promise she had made, would betray her for she knew, from long experience with Fay, how easily a child can turn traitor, or simply forget. 'Come along, Fay, Dinah—we got to get moving again.'

'Moving where? Fay asked petulantly. I think you've forgotten all about the circus.'

'On to that bus.' She reached up and pulled at the chromed bump protruding from the side of the bus, and the door opened. Alice scampered in; then, all three of them groaning— Clara in pain, Bessy from the exertion, and Fay imitatively— she and Fay hoisted Clara to the long seat at the back of the bus. It was a touring bus, the back seats being raised a few steps above those in front, and they could not be seen by anybody on the platform.

'Are we going on a trip now?' Fay asked.

Bessy nodded.

'But you forgot our suitcases.'

Bessy reached into her bosom to touch the money Roderick had given her, wedged securely into her bra. She smiled. 'We don't have to worry about those suitcases, honey. We got

enough other things to worry us.'

Clara groaned. Kneeling beside her with difficulty (why did they made the aisles of a bus so narrow?) Bessy felt her pulse. It seemed faint and rapid. Was that a good sign? She could not remember what Feminine Hygiene had said to do in cases like this.

'I want a drink of water,' said Fay loudly. 'I want a...'

Bessy clamped a hand over her mouth. 'Hush, child! We got to stay here sitting on the floor and be quiet as mice until them men that hurt Clara go away. Dinah, that goes for you too.'

'But I want a drink,' Fay whispered.

'We'll just have to wait,' Alice counselled, whispering too. 'But now, here's your baby. She's thirsty, too, you know.' Alice handed Fay the plastic doll. Fay began to nurse it, cooing.

The bus grew hot. It smelled of sweat and dust and cigarette butts, but Bessy feared to open a window. More to calm herself than to ease Clara, she began wiping the blood from her face with a handkerchief. There were several deep cuts. Alice, watching this, started to cry. Lord, Bessy thought, in another minute I'm going to he crying myself.

Outside there was a shriek of sirens. A new hubbub broke out in the station. The sun, approaching noonday, beat down through the tinted rear window of the bus. It got hot as hell.

I'm going straight down to hell when I die, she thought, and I'll deserve it. And what was the price of my soul? The vanity of a bronze casket and a marble stone. A lot of consolation they'll be when I'm burning in hellfire. Vanity of vanities!

She pushed herself up to her knees and started praying for all she was worth. There really wasn't anything else she could do.

Alice, embarrassed, turned to look out of the window. There were people swarming all about the bus. In the midst of them was her father. He was searching through the crowd—for her, certainly.

She knew she should hide herself down on the floor of the bus but she stayed at the window, fascinated with horror. At last, he noticed her there.

Smiling, he beckoned for her to come out of the bus.

The demonstrators were herded, against their protests, back into the bus. Those who refused to leave the station of their own volition were carried on. A state policeman rode in front beside the driver. He was to stay on the bus with them till they

reached the Virginia-Maryland line. At the last possible moment, as the bus was pulling out, the police stopped it and helped Peter Boggs, still in his Klan robe, to board it.

'But this man has been injured,' the minister protested.

If he stays in this station he'll probably be injured a lot worse,' the policeman explained. 'For his own sake, you'd better take him with you. Besides, he's the one that insists on going with you. You can leave him—and anyone else who's been badly hurt—at the state patrol emergency aid station, just the other side of the tunnel. But the rest of you people are going back to Washington, and it won't do you any good hollering about it.'

'We'll take you to court on this, I promise you.'

'Right. And you'll owe it to us, mister, that you'll be alive to go to court. Good-bye, Reverend.'

Leaving the city, the bus stopped and started with unwonted abruptness. No doubt the driver was expressing thereby his own protest at being pressed into service. At the fifth wrenching halt, Clara's eyes opened. 'What the hell?' she said.

'It's okay, Clara,' Bessy said, touching her hand. 'We're taking you to a first-aid station. You rest now. You're going to be all right.'

'Shit,' said Clara, her voice almost girlishly weak. She closed her eyes.

The young white couple in the seat ahead of them turned round to peer over their headrests. 'How is she, do you think?' the girl asked.

Bessy shook her head. She didn't want to talk to the demonstrators, fearful lest they discover that she was not one of them.

'They could have got her a doctor right at the bus station,' the girl said indignantly. 'She might die before we're able to get her to the emergency aid station.'

'Like Bessie Smith,' the boy added.

'It's shocking,' said the girl.

'But even so, you have to admit that the cops treat you better here than they do in Georgia, for instance. Americus was bad news.'

'What about Selma?' the girl asked.

'Man,' said the boy. 'Yeah, Selma.'

Though both were clearly Northerners, their accent was strangely hard to place. As they went on comparing notes on the jails they'd visited, Bessy began to get the paranoid suspicion that they were making fun of her own thicker speech.

'How come,' she asked, when she could no more contain her curiosity, 'you two come down here and let folks kick you around and get put in these jails? How come you don't stay at home?'

The boy's smile included Fay, who was sitting across the aisle from him. 'I don't know myself sometimes. Sometimes I think I'm just being dumb. Other times I know that I do it because I have to.' He seemed quite sad.

'I'm dumb too,' Fay said, smiling back. 'And I do it because I have to.'

'Hush,' said Bessy.

This your first demonstration?' he asked Fay, who knitted her brows with earnest incomprehension. 'Is this your first sit-in?'

'You'll have to ask Bessy,' Fay said cautiously. 'And I can't do anything unless you pay first. Hey!' 

'What?' said the boy, rather startled. 

'You've got chin-whiskers!'

With an embarrassed laugh the boy turned away to gaze out of the tinted window as the neon-lighted walls of the tunnel flickered past.

At the first-aid station everyone was allowed off the bus to have coffee and sandwiches inside a wire enclosure. Fay, Bessy, and Alice were allowed into the' little brick building to see Clara, who was lying on the cot next to the renegade Klansman. He had stiff, spiky hair, white with streaks of yellow, like a nicotine-stained moustache. Like many of the demonstrators he had been wearing only overalls and a denim shirt beneath his white robe.

A doctor came and examined Clara and the Klansman. He said that they were neither in any danger, but that they would have to go to the hospital for X-rays and a short rest. He touched the bumps swelling on Clara's face, and you could see how much his touch hurt her, but she didn't say a thing. Alice started to cry again, sympathetically.

'Clara,' she said, reaching over hesitantly to put a hand on hers, 'I'm sorry. I really am.'

'So am I, kid,' said Clara, with something of her old manner, and winked.

Alice realised that Clara was smiling. Actually smiling. Not in any sarcastic way nor out of that unspoken inner pain that customarily gnawed at her but a friendly, cheerful, well-intentioned smile. It was queer, she reflected, that the very first time she'd seen Clara spontaneously nice to other people was now, with her head all bloody, after people had been so very bad to her.

'Time to go,' said the state policeman coming into the little brick building.

'Oh, but I can't go,' Fay protested. 'Not unless Clara can come with me. I have to look after her. She's hurt. And this poor old man here too. I'm the nurse, you see.'

The poor old man rolled over in his cot to stare raptly at Fay. 'The name is Boggs,' he said in a shaky voice. 'Peter Boggs.'

'I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Boggs. My name is Fay.' Time to go,' the policeman repeated.

'Are you a nurse?' the doctor asked of Fay, with considerable scepticism.

'Of course I'm a nurse!' Fay said, offended. 'And Clara needs me.'

'I need her too,' said Peter Boggs, and with such earnestness that the policeman could be seen to relent. The doctor, however, remained unpersuaded. Fay began to run a comb through Pete's spiky hair, being temporarily unable to think of any more nurse-like task.

Bessy went to the doctor and whispered in his ear. 'All right,' he agreed at last. 'We'll let that nurse stay with them.' Fay clapped her hands delightedly.

The nurse stays,' the policeman said. 'But you and you'— indicating Bessy and Alice—'have got to come along. Everyone else is in the bus, waiting.' Bessy obeyed him unthinkingly. After a squeeze of Clara's hand and a whispered word of advice to Fay (who was obviously tormenting the poor old Klansman by running her comb across his bruised head) she led Alice out to the bus.

At the very last moment Alice ran back into the first-aid station. Bending down over her cot Alice planted a light kiss on Clara's chin. 'Good-bye, Clara.'

The Negress looked surprised. Then, grinning, she made a thumbs-up sign just like a wounded pilot on the Late Late Show assuring his buddies in the Flying Tigers that he'd be back up in the air in no time. 'So long, kid. Keep fighting.'

Shortly after the bus pulled away, Clara was unconscious again. Fay turned her attention from her to her new-found friend, Peter.

'May I ask,' he asked shyly, 'what your ... uh ... last name is?'

'MacKay,' Fay replied, with some uncertainty. She seldom had occasion to use her last name.

'Miss MacKay, I don't think what you may think of an old man like myself, and I know I have no right to ... uh ... to ask ...'

'Oh, I think you're nice," Fay protested earnestly. And truly, she always had liked men better who were shy.

'You'll probably think I'm off my rocker, coming out with a question like this when I hardly know you. But you see, it's as though you'd stepped down from heaven. Yes sir, you're just like an angel from heaven. And I'm afraid you're going to disappear just as sudden as you came.'

Fay squealed at the unaccustomed compliment.

'I can hardly believe you're real. An Angel. Miss MacKay, do you think you might ever consider marrying ... an old man like me?'

'Why, Mr. Boggs, I'd love to! And can we have lots of babies?'

'I sure hope so.' 

She clapped her hands with anticipation Can we get married today?'

'The courthouse is closed for the Fourth, but I reckon we can find a minister somewheres.'

Fay embraced the old man and devoured him with kisses. In an ecstasy of mingled pain and happiness, he swooned.

Some were singing folksongs, some were sleeping, Bessy among them. It was beastly hot. Alice stared out of the window at the unending dullness of the highway. Occasionally she would be overcome with a strange sense of deja vu, since the bus was taking the same route her father had driven last night. A sign announced that the toll bridge across the Potomac was only a mile ahead. It would be such a relief to leave Virginia! Once in Washington Bessy had agreed that Alice might turn herself in to the F.B.I, headquarters. Why, with luck she might even be able to meet J. Edgar Hoover and get his autograph!

Within sight of the bridge the bus hissed to a stop. There were three police cars parked on the shoulder of the road ahead of the bus—and soldiers everywhere, with bayonets on their rifles. Was it possible that these were the soldiers of Maryland trying to keep the demonstrators out of their state? Civil rights could become very confusing. While the driver, the policeman, and the leading minister left the bus, everyone woke up and the close, hot air buzzed with conflicting theories.

The minister and a white man in a grey business suit came into the bus and conferred with some of the other leaders of the demonstration. Someone made a joke, and for the first time since they'd left Norfolk there was a sound of honest laughter in the bus. The minister said they could all go out and stretch their legs, but not to go very far.

'Ain't you coming out?' Bessy asked Alice.

Alice shook her head. She could remember, too clearly, her father beckoning her to come off the bus. So long as she stayed inside she felt safe.

'Well, I got to find out what's going on. If you're staying in here, you just say a prayer that this bus goes on to Washington, hear?'

The air-conditioning in the bus was off again, and it became hotter and hotter. Outside everyone was arguing. The soldiers argued with the state police, the bus driver argued with the soldiers, and then he argued with the police. Alice eavesdropped on some of the conversations through the bus's open windows, but she could only grasp faint threads of the controversy. The man in the grey business suit was, it seemed, from the Attorney-General's office, and he was more or less on the side of the demonstrators, who wanted to make the bus go back to Norfolk. The police (and the bus driver, at first) wanted to take the demonstrators to the other side of the toll bridge, then leave them there in Maryland, standing beside the highway. As for the soldiers, they seemed to favour both alternatives alternately, and it was their vacillations that kept the bus from going either forwards or back. Dinner time came and went, but the only food Bessy could find for herself and Alice was peanuts and soda pop from a near-by filling station. The young couple in the seat ahead offered to let Alice and Bessy share the little water melon they'd brought with them in honour of the Fourth.

At seven o'clock everyone was gathered back into the bus. The state policeman was no longer riding with them; the man from the Attorney-General's office had taken his place. They were returning to Norfolk.

'Oh no !' Alice said, on the verge of tears. 'Oh, no!'

'I'm sorry, honey. I prayed we'd go on to Washington, but I had four preachers praying the other way. There wasn't no help for it.'

'Bessy, he knows we're on this bus. He saw me through the window, back at the bus station.'

'I know, child. When I went out of the bus I saw him too. Wasn't more than half an hour ago. He was just driving back and forth. He's got a new car, but it was him all right. I guess the time's come for me to tell them all just who you are.'

'No!' Alice said, for she knew that this would also mean Bessy's arrest. 'If you tell that to anyone I'll say you made it up. I'll say I'm just a little black girl and that you're crazy. I'll say that you're my mother.'

Bessy chuckled and rumped Alice's wiry curls. 'You're a sweetheart,' she said.

Alice burst into tears, and at the same moment everyone on the bus started to sing Bringing in the Sheaves in a merry, deafening chorus. This time Bessy joined in. Drying her eyes, Alice couldn't help but wonder: what in the world were sheaves anyhow?