CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The passengers screamed. One of them, a young Negro woman, leaned through a broken window, gasping for air.

She yelled, “Oh my God, they’re trying to burn us up!”

The fire blazed behind her, and smoke began to billow. More passengers stuck their heads through the windows, their eyes wide with fright. I realized that the people in the bus had a terrible choice: face the flames inside or the mob outside.

Hearing desperation in the passengers’ voices, the mob clustered around the door. One man smacked a lead pipe against his palm. Another broke a bottle and held it by the neck.

“Burn them alive!” cried one.

“Fry them!” called another.

Grant took pictures. The highway patrol officers just watched.

The smoke turned an inky black, the color of midnight. Suddenly there was an explosion. Flames leaped from under the back of the bus.

“The fuel tanks!” yelled one of the men. “They’re gonna blow!”

The mob backed away. Some ran. The bus door flew open, and people spilled out in a jumble of black and white. Most ended up on their hands and knees, coughing and retching from the smoke.

A young white man approached one of the passengers and asked, “Are you okay?” Then he took out a baseball bat and swung it, smashing the passenger on the side of the head.

The mob hesitated. Some who had run away moved back toward the bus, carrying tire irons and chains, falling on the passengers and beating them.

Everyone watched, including me. I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t move. Then I saw a small figure through the smoke. Janie Forsyth, who must have heard the commotion from inside the grocery, weaved in and out among the victims, carrying a bucket of water and a stack of Dixie cups. She dipped the cups in her bucket and fed sips of water to the passengers. Pausing under the S&H Green Stamps sign, she gave a handkerchief to one passenger, and he wiped blood from his face.

I wondered if she would get beaten too, but no one touched her. They knew her. She was the Forsyth girl. Maybe it was easier to beat up a stranger.

Another fuel tank exploded, sending flames to the sky and driving the last of the passengers from the bus. A moment later, it was a mass of red and black, burning like a bonfire. I could feel the heat all the way across the parking lot.

I heard the crack of a gunshot, then another. Fearing the worst, I whirled around. The highway patrol officers were standing nearby, pistols pointed to the sky.

“That’s enough,” one of them yelled.

Enough? What did the word mean? Grant had enough baseball cards. I had enough records. Was there enough blood? Enough pain?

The people in the crowd looked at each other. They eyed the passengers, who were scattered across the lot weeping, staring, stunned. Maybe they noticed Grant and realized he was taking photos. Whatever the reason, they moved off one by one, somehow no longer a mob. They went to their cars, got inside, and drove off. They left in an orderly way, as if they’d just finished up at the grocery store.

The officers watched the cars go. They didn’t write down names or license plate numbers. They didn’t arrest anyone. One of them pulled a microphone from inside his patrol car and ordered an ambulance.

That seemed to break the spell. The second crowd, those who had been watching, began to move. Some left. A few approached the bus passengers and, along with Janie, did what they could to comfort the passengers until the ambulance arrived.

Daddy watched them go, the way he had watched the beatings and the flames. Finally he walked over to me. I thought of how, in an earlier life, he and I had made breakfast, then taken it in to Mama and celebrated Mother’s Day.

I said in a low voice, “I guess now we know what your errand was.”

“Clyde told me about it at the barber shop on Saturday,” said Daddy. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“That was terrible,” I said.

“It was dangerous. You shouldn’t have come.”

“Why did they do it?” I asked.

This time, “they” didn’t mean Negroes. It meant the people of Anniston. It meant us.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” said Daddy. “It got out of hand.”

“But why? The Freedom Riders were on a bus, that’s all.”

Daddy explained in that soft, gentle voice of his, the one he used to reassure me. “Sweetheart, you know why. It was black and white together.”

“Mama said black and white should be separated.”

“She’s right. It’s better that way. Maybe this proves it.” It’s what I had been taught in a thousand little ways—separate entrances, separate drinking fountains, separate ways of talking to people and looking at them. It had been passed to me, and I had taken it. But today, seeing what had happened in my town, I thought of Lavender’s question: Would I pass it on?

At supper that night, Mama served roast beef. Afterward she brought out some apple pie. I took a bite, then pushed my plate away.

“I’m not hungry.”

Mama studied me with a pinched, worried expression. After Daddy and I had gotten home, I’d gone to my room and a few minutes later had heard the two of them arguing. I couldn’t hear the words, but I could tell Mama was angry. Happy Mother’s Day.

Mama glanced at Daddy, then back at me. “Your father told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?”

What was there to say? My town was different from the way I’d thought it was. Maybe my father was too.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

I could see her struggle to find words. “Bo Blanchard and those other people … what they did was wrong. It was vicious and mean. But the Negroes—”

“Freedom Riders,” I said. “They weren’t all Negroes.”

“Maybe they were a little bit wrong too.”

“They just wanted to ride the bus.”

“Sweetheart,” said Mama, “this is the way we are. We’ve lived like this for a hundred years. Things are changing, but they take time.”

“Let me ask you something,” Daddy said in a quiet voice. “If the Freedom Riders hadn’t come here, would anyone have gotten hurt?”

“Well, no,” I said.

“Then don’t you think they might share some of the blame?”

In the parking lot of Forsyth’s Grocery I had seen something awful. Was it here too, in my house, at our table? There were no angry mobs, no fires or threats, no clubs or chains—just apple pie, two cups of coffee, and a glass of milk. We weren’t burning buses or beating people up. We weren’t doing anything. Maybe that was the problem.