WHILE HE ADJUSTED HIS MAROON BOW TIE, TJ LISTENED to the radio in the porters’ room. He kept the volume low; all night it was something to come back to when he finished a porter duty. He stood still to listen: twenty-five hundred protestors had stormed the downtown business section. They replayed a recording of Shuttlesworth, on a different day: “We’re making history in that we’ve literally filled the Birmingham jails. Bull Connor thought the jails were like hell to us, but you all have made a heaven out of the jail…. You are fighting for what your country is and what it will be.”
These were beautiful May days. All that colorful clothing on the children. Like confetti at a parade. Yes, TJ had marched down Twentieth Street after World War II. Hadn’t seen much action in that war. But he’d never felt prouder before or after than marching down the middle of the street, home from France, paper bits drifting down from the open windows of the high-up floors of the Tutwiler. He hadn’t looked up, but with his face steady and straight ahead, he’d glanced up, had seen the white hands tossing the paper out the open rectangles of the high windows. Before the parade, they had told the soldiers a five-star general would be on the reviewing balcony. TJ could feel the butt of his rifle cradled in his hand, the weight of the rifle, its stock and barrel leaning against his body. Blue and pink confetti drifting right in front of his nose and eyes.
Sitting in his porter’s chair, TJ stooped down to polish the toes of his shoes with an old gray piece of terry cloth.
He’d fought hard in Korea. Cried there. More than once. Cried for a white boy bleeding to death in his arms. Cried for himself, so cold and worn out. Not even after Korea, and he’d fought hard there, had he been so proud as when he came home from Europe, from World War II, marched Twentieth Street—a soldier-boy—no prouder day than that.
The all-night radio said Shuttlesworth had been injured in the demonstration today. Possibly his ribs were broken. Visitors to the hospital had been forbidden.