“YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” THERE WAS HEAT IN LUTHER’S VOICE and it made Thelma stiffen.
Worse, it was the second time he had said it, and she had had enough. Standing there over the stove, she pointed toward him with the tines of the serving fork. “Luther Hayes, I’m gon’ need you to stop tellin’ me what I can and cannot do. We ain’t kids anymore. I am forty-four years old and that is damn sure old enough to decide a few things for myself.”
“Really? Well, if I can’t tell you, maybe your husband can.”
And here, he glared in expectation at George, who was sitting on the couch, watching television, where President Johnson was supposed to give a speech about voting rights at any minute. George looked up with the miserable expression of a man who had been hoping to be ignored.
“Honey,” he said, “maybe your brother has a point.” His voice reminded Thelma of someone venturing out onto lake ice in the first freeze of winter. She almost felt sorry for him, then didn’t feel sorry at all.
“My brother needs to mind his own damn business,” she said, turning back to prod the pork chops as they sizzled and browned in the skillet. “My brother has no children, so he cannot possibly understand.”
“Yeah, but I got a sister,” snapped Luther. “A hard-head, stubborn-ass sister want to go traipsing in some hillbilly county way up in the sticks just ’cause she got a hunch—a hunch—her son there.”
“I ain’t asked you to go, Luther,” said Thelma. “I’ll go by myself.”
“Hell you will,” said Luther.
“He’s right,” said George. “Even if you do go, you can’t do it by yourself, Thelma. Be reasonable.”
And there it was again, that word “can’t.”
“You too?” Thelma threw down the serving fork. “You tellin’ me what I can’t do, George Simon?”
Distantly, she knew they were only concerned for her—and with good cause. But reason had flown from her since that moment on the sidewalk when the realization of where Adam had gone hit her like a fist out of nowhere. Indeed, it had taken every bit of willpower she could muster not to leave right then and there, not to go straight from the bookstore to the Greyhound station and buy a ticket for Payton County.
But she knew that would be foolish. So, she had forced herself to return instead to Luther’s apartment to tell her husband and brother what she planned to do. They had been arguing ever since. As the afternoon shaded into evening, she had called Greyhound and learned that the last bus of the day stopping in Payton County had already left. The next one would not leave until seven the following morning. Thelma was determined to be on it. She had to be on it.
Yet now, here were her brother and even her husband, her beloved George, treating her like a child, using that word, “can’t.” Unbelievable.
George regarded her with gentle eyes. When he spoke, he made it a point to keep his voice even. She felt again like some bomb he was trying to defuse. “That’s not what I said,” he told her. “I said you can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous. If you go, I have to go with you.”
At this, Luther made a sputtering sound that was half derision, half disgust. He lifted his hands and walked away.
“Honey, you can’t go with me,” said Thelma, faking patience she did not feel. “You’re white. How do you think it would look, you and me, traveling together, telling those people we’re looking for our son? This is Alabama we’re talking about, George. Alabama. And what’s worse than that, it’s not even a big city. It’s some little coal town nobody ever heard of.”
George took this in and shook his head. “That always comes up, doesn’t it? The color thing.”
“Yes,” she said, and she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “It always will.”
“If anybody go with her,” said Luther, returning from the far side of the room, “it have to be me. And I ain’t doin’ it.”
“Ain’t nobody’s askin’ you to,” snapped Thelma.
George held up a hand to stop her. “Why?” he asked Luther. “He’s your nephew. That’s your sister. Why wouldn’t you go with her?”
Luther gave a bark of laughter. “’Cause she wrong, that’s why. He ain’t up there with them hillbillies. He got better sense than that. He in Selma. You heard it yourself. I heard it, too. ‘I’m going back to Selma.’ That’s what he said. Thelma ain’t got nothin’ but a hunch. You bet a pony on a hunch. You don’t drive three hundred miles.”
“I’m his mother,” said Thelma. She was forking the pork chops onto a serving dish. “It’s more than a hunch.”
“Just ’cause you his mother don’t give you no magic powers,” said Luther.
“There’s a simple way to find out,” said George, once again holding up a hand to keep her from snapping back at her brother. “Instead of driving, why don’t you just call up there in the morning?”
“Who do I call?” asked Thelma. “And what do I say?”
When George didn’t reply, she said, “Exactly. Think about it: if you were him and just learned what he learned, what would you want?”
George reflected for a second. Then his head came up. “Revenge,” he said. “But on who? The man who attacked you is dead.”
“Don’t matter,” said Thelma. “Long as he has some kin, somebody who can take the blame. Adam is hurt and confused. Maybe he wants to go piss on the grave. Or maybe he wants to find some brother or cousin of … that man and punch him in the mouth.”
“That’s a lot to speculate from a hunch, Thelma.”
“Maybe it is,” she admitted. “But I’m not wrong. I know it as sure as I’m standing here.”
George snapped his finger in sudden recollection. “Luther, you still have the name of the lady where he was staying in Selma, don’t you? Why don’t you call up there and ask if anybody has seen him?”
“It’s going to be a toll call,” Thelma told her brother. “Just let me know how much it is when you get your bill and I’ll send you a check.” It was a petty thing to say, but she was in a mean mood.
“I’ll do that,” said Luther. Apparently, his mood was no better than hers.
As Thelma filled the serving dishes with canned peas and Rice-ARoni, Luther retrieved the telephone from his bedroom, brought it into the living room on its extra-long cord, then got the operator to place the call. Steam hissed angrily as Thelma put the skillet into a sink full of foaming dishwater, then she motioned to George to fix himself a plate.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, rising from the couch.
She shook her head. “Too keyed up,” she said. “I don’t have any appetite.” He looked hesitant. “Go ahead, George,” she said, motioning again toward the plates.
“Hello, Mrs. Baker?” Luther’s call had been answered. “Evenin’,” he said. “Sorry to bother you. This is Luther Hayes, Adam Simon’s uncle. We met last week?”
The person on the other end said something Thelma couldn’t hear and Luther gave a strained laugh in response, shooting her a sheepish glance as he did. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “the one that won the war all by hisself. Reason I’m callin’, we tryin’ to connect with Adam. He said he was headed back that way.”
Luther stopped to listen. “Uh huh,” he said. “Uh huh. Really? Okay, well, you call us after that, then. What’s that? Yes, ma’am, you can call collect.”
He hung up the phone. “She hasn’t seen him,” said Thelma.
Luther pursed his lips. “No,” he admitted. “But she said a bunch of ’em are in the church, gettin’ ready to watch Johnson give this speech. She was just headin’ over there. Says she’ll ask around and call back right after.”
“I told you,” said Thelma.
“Don’t mean he ain’t there,” said Luther. “It’s a big housing project they got ’em in. Plus, some of ’em been doin’ protests in Montgomery these last few days as well. He could be there.”
“He’s in Payton,” said Thelma. “And tomorrow, I’m going up there. You see if I don’t.”
“Let’s watch the speech,” said George. “Then, when she calls, we can figure out what we’re going to do next.”
Thelma regarded her brother. “Fine,” she said.
“Fine by me,” said Luther.
The two men fixed their plates and took seats on the couch. Thelma stood. She couldn’t make herself sit.
On the screen, the homely, sad-eyed man who had succeeded the dashing John F. Kennedy stood at the dais waiting out an ovation from Congress. His great, large head filled the little screen. When finally he spoke, his cadence was deliberate, his voice the slow-cooked drawl of his native Texas.
“I speak tonight,” he said, “for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country to join me in that cause. At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.”
George had been chewing. At the reference to James Reeb, Thelma saw his face go still. In her single-minded fear for her son, she realized, she had forgotten that poor George had seen a man killed. Could easily have been killed himself. She put a consoling hand on his shoulder. It was like laying hands on a rock.
“In our time,” said Johnson, “we have come to live with the moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or security, but rather, to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world—and lose his own soul?”
Applause crackled from the screen, some in the audience of graying and balding white men meeting Johnson’s challenge with an enthusiastic ovation, many others with stony faces and silence. George whispered a single word: “Preach.” Luther watched with unreadable eyes.
“There is no ‘Negro problem,’” said Johnson. “There is no ‘Southern problem.’ There is no ‘Northern problem.’ There is only an American problem”—he had to pause again for applause—“and we are met here tonight as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans. We are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”
He invoked the ideals of the nation’s founding and the great and defiant words in which those ideals were encased—ideals and words on which the country had defaulted so many times, thought Thelma, as to render them effectively meaningless. Yet Negroes kept hoping, didn’t they? This was the great, resilient miracle of America—or the great, resilient foolishness of colored people. Or both. “I have a dream,” Martin Luther King had roared only two years ago, standing at the temple of Lincoln. “I have a dream, deeply rooted in the American dream.”
I have a dream.
Spoken to people living in a nightmare.
All the Negroes had cheered, all the world had cheered, she had cheered. But now she wondered: Did King’s words encapsulate the miracle or the foolishness? Or was there, in the end, no difference between the two?
She regarded these two men on the couch who had nothing in common but her, these men with whom she had spent her entire life, these men she loved—and knew what each would say about miracles and foolishness. She could see it in their very posture.
George, his concentration complete, leaned forward toward the television, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, his dinner forgotten.
Luther sat back into the couch, arms crossed over his chest, barricading his heart.
On the screen, Johnson was explaining to his audience—and to the watching world beyond—what it was like to be a Negro trying to vote in the South. “Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right,” he said. “The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution. Or explain the most complex provisions of state law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is, that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin.”
She was surprised at the elation she felt in hearing those words. The president had said nothing she didn’t already know, of course. Nothing she had not lived. The fact was, the only way to pass a lot of barriers was to show a white skin. But to hear those words from the lips of the highest official in the country reminded twenty million Negroes, and vouched to the rest of the nation, that they were not crazy, that they had, indeed, endured what they had endured, been cheated of their citizenship, just as they had always said.
She had occasionally heard King lauded for what people called “speaking truth to power” and she agreed that it was a bracing thing. Tonight, however, the world was hearing truth from power, hearing power testify on the side of the vulnerable and the exploited, and that was simply exhilarating. When you have lived your life down in the shadows on the margins, she thought, it was a hell of a thing to be flooded by light, to be seen.
“Well, damn,” said Luther. He was impressed, too. George looked at him, not quite understanding. Then he turned back to the screen.
“Wednesday,” said the president, “I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote.”
“There it is,” said George. He smiled over his shoulder at Thelma. “He’s doing it.”
“Yes, he is,” she said.
Like other political observers around the country, they had been debating for weeks whether Johnson would take the plunge, introducing ambitious legislation to guarantee voting rights—especially since it had not even been a year since he signed the Civil Rights Act. George had thought he would. Thelma had disagreed. The smart money, after all, said Johnson would feel it was too much, too fast. Yet here he was, making fools out of the smart money, outlining the provisions of a bill that would strip states of the ability to deny colored people their right to vote.
“There is no Constitutional issue here,” Johnson was saying. “The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.”
The applause was coming at almost every pause now. Thelma felt oddly weightless. She looked down at her brother, he looked up at her, and she could tell he felt it, too, this sense of gravity losing its hold. He was fighting it—he wouldn’t be Luther if he didn’t—but he felt it, just the same.
Something was happening here.
On the screen, Johnson was recounting the long journey of the 1964 bill into law, how it took “eight long months of debate” to reach his desk and how, when it did, the provisions of the bill that protected Negro voting rights had been stripped away. “This time,” he said, “on this issue there must be no delay or no hesitation or no compromise with our purpose.”
It was nearly a minute before he could speak again. The chamber erupted in applause and shouts of approbation. The cheers seemed to crest and break like a wave, only to renew themselves, gather strength, and grow louder than before. The camera panned the room and found most of that audience of old white men on their feet lavishing Johnson’s defiant ultimatum with praise. It caught others sitting in their seats as if glued there.
Luther’s laugh was bitter. “Look at them old honkies,” he said. “They can’t stand it.”
“Yeah, but look at the rest,” said George. “They’re on their feet cheering like crazy. You always see the glass as half-empty, brother-inlaw. To me, that looks half-full.”
“That’s ’cause you ain’t never been thirsty,” shot Luther.
He patted George’s back in a comradely way to take some of the sting out of it, but Thelma knew he wasn’t joking. And he also wasn’t wrong. It was easy to believe in possibility when possibility was all you’d ever known. But to grow up colored in Alabama, to live in a shotgun house on a dirt street, to be raised by your grandfather because your parents were burned alive at your front door, was to regard possibility like you regarded the man behind the three-card monte table: with profound and immovable skepticism, worn like armor for self-defense.
And yet, watching Johnson’s grave face as he waited through the ovation, she was almost sure she was right in what she felt. The feeling was elusive and ephemeral, to be sure. She couldn’t even put a name to it. But it was there, just the same.
Something was happening here.
When he was able to speak again, Johnson urged Congress to join him in “working long hours, nights, and weekends if necessary” to pass the bill. “The outraged conscience of a nation,” he said, demanded no less.
“But even if we pass this bill,” said Johnson, “the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it’s not just Negroes, but really, it’s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
“And we shall overcome.”
He narrowed his eyes, physically leaned into those words, speaking each of them separately and distinctly so that no one could mistake his meaning.
George was snatched to his feet, pumping his fist. “Yes!” he shouted, as if he were in the room and the president could hear him. “Yes!”
Luther’s arms came down. His jaw came open.
Thelma swept a tear from her cheek.
And she knew that what she had felt was real, if only for this instant, if only for this sliver of time. The president of the United States, standing before both houses of Congress and the world, had spoken the rallying cry of the civil rights struggle. Power was, indeed, aligning itself with the powerless. If that was truly happening, then nothing at all was impossible.
Gravity had given up the fight. It was a heady, disorienting realization. Hope filled her like oxygen.
Johnson spoke for almost fifteen minutes more. He reminded Americans that they were one nation, and that poverty and ignorance are afflictions that beset white Americans as well as colored. He singled out the America Negro as “the real hero” of the struggle to vindicate American ideals, stir reform, and “make good the promise of America.”
When the speech was done, as Johnson was making his way out of the chamber and the newspeople were explaining to viewers what they had just seen, George turned to Luther. “What do you think?”
“It was a good speech,” said Luther. “Better than I expected, I’ll give him that.”
“Good speech?” George was incredulous. “Did you hear him speak up for Negro rights? Did you hear him say, ‘We shall overcome’? When has a president ever spoken like that? Even Kennedy didn’t speak like that.”
“It was a good speech,” repeated Luther. “Proof be in the puddin’, though.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mean I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Luther.
George flopped back on the couch, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “You’re a hard man to impress, Luther.”
Luther shrugged. “I just know better than to get my hopes up,” he said. “Get your hopes up, this country knock ’em down, every single time.”
“This time is going to be different,” said George. “Just wait. You’ll see.”
“I hope you right,” said Luther. “But one thing I done learned: if you don’t get yourself up too high, you don’t have as far to fall.”
“What says you’re going to fall?” demanded George.
“Experience,” said Luther.
George turned to Thelma. “Help me here, honey. Am I wrong to think that was a great speech? It was everything we could have hoped, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Thelma. “Of course it was.”
“But …?”
Luther answered for her. “But every time white folks make colored folks a promise, they renege. Ask the Indians, you don’t believe me.”
“I think you’re too cynical,” said George.
“I might be,” conceded Luther, “but I’d rather be cynical than be fooled.”
“But—” began George. The sound of the ringing phone cut him off. Luther crossed the room to pick it up.
“Yes,” he said into the receiver. “Yeah, I will.” He listened. He said, “Really? You’re sure? Okay, thank you.”
Luther hung up the phone and turned to Thelma. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Okay,” he told her, “you win. Be ready to leave at seven. Look like I’m drivin’ you up to Payton County.”