IN EARLY MAY 1963, THE BLAST FROM THE FIRE HOSE caught Christine Taylor on the left shoulder, spun her counterclockwise, hit her on the back of her right shoulder. For the third day, the white firemen had been ordered to blast the demonstrators with their fire hoses. The force of water from the fire hose could rip the bark off a tree. As her front turned toward the fire hose, Christine brought up her forearms quickly to shield her breasts, was spun to face first the white mob, then the knot of firemen in red slickers. When the water blast crossed her upper chest, despite her shielding forearms and clenched fists, the force of the water knocked her breath away. Her body spun round the scream of her mind. Her legs tangled while she twirled. She fell to the pavement, and the pounding blast stomped hard on her back—one, two, three, four seconds, she counted through clenched teeth—then the high-pressure water moved on to punish another black person.
After the attack passed over, Christine panted into the pavement, counted four breaths of air smelling of wet asphalt, and opened her eyes. The water blast was sweeping toward Charles Powers, one of her students in the night school. She exhorted Charles to fall, now, before the white men got him, and he did, but the water pounded him anyway. Stay on your belly! Don’t let it roll you over! she silently exhorted.
The water struck Charles’s rump, lifting him, Sweet Jesus! abusing him through his trousers. Christine could see Charles screaming into the surface of the street, trying to get a fingerhold in the large cracks in the pavement. His lips inched over the asphalt while a policeman ran toward him, his nightstick raised. Releasing the pavement, Charles crossed his arms around the back of his head; the stick thudded his knuckles, but he protected his head, his hands crossed like pigeon wings over the skinny back of his neck.
(“Got my trousers soaked with spray,” LeRoy Jones, the policeman, would later tell his buddies and his brother Ryder, “but I whacked that nigger till he yelled uncle.”)
Christine watched the blast moving away from Charles, chasing the running feet of children dressed in Sunday school clothes.
The fire-hose water hadn’t rolled him over;Charles was safe in front. Christine wondered, Would it have torn him up? Ripped his prick off? She wanted to press herself into the pavement she lay on.
Charles, soaked, slowly rose to his feet. He was tall and lanky, had the broad shoulders and sinewy arms of a man. He moved slowly and cautiously.
You’re not beat. You’re not beat, Christine thought as loudly as she could.
With her cheek lying against the street, she watched him brush the street dirt off his lower lip. Christine knew she should get up, too, but she felt safer lying on the street, its grayness fanning away from her eye. She tugged down the skirt of her navy suit, her best suit, drenched now. Close to her cheek, a sparrow landed on the asphalt. When Christine glanced at Charles again, she noticed a little blood on his fingertips, which were next to his mouth (Must have scraped his lip on the asphalt). He was standing still, slumped, watching. She ought to speak to him. Encourage him.
There was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth reciting loudly, “I will fear no evil.” Water rocketed against his ribs, spun him once, twice, and he was down, his hands pressed against his side.
Rising to her knees, Christine watched the running children and heard their high-pitched yelps. Like little dogs yelping. The torrential water splashed just at their heels, then traveled to their ankles and up the backs of their legs. The power of the fire hose pushed a little girl forward, drenched the back of her yellow organdy dress. The girl in sodden yellow lifted her hands and spread her fingers to push the children in front of her. All the children were soaked. The water cannon was moving the schoolchildren like kites in a wind against a brick wall; Christine fixed her gaze on a wet white shirt (Dressed up for nonviolence, poor boy) plastered against dark skin. When the blast moved on, the boy against the wall turned to face the firemen.
He raised an elbow to protect his face, if need be, but he didn’t avert his attentive eyes. It was Edmund, Charles’s little brother. Eyes wide with disbelief, Edmund wanted to see what was happening to them. Christine felt proud of him, glad that he wanted to see, to know. Edmund stepped forward from the wall and ran to kneel beside Reverend Shuttlesworth. The boy surely wasn’t more than seven.
If not my generation, yours, she thought.