CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The woman stepped forward. The people leaned in. We were surrounded by faces and shoulders and fists. Someone grabbed my arm.

Then there was another face. It was dark, ringed below the chin by a thin, white collar. Beneath the collar was a neatly pressed black suit covering a barrel chest and a body the size of a refrigerator. I remembered seeing him in the corner, sitting across a couple of chairs in the colored section.

“What’s going on here?” he asked in a deep, smooth voice.

Startled, the station manager stepped back.

“Stay out of this, preacher,” he said.

“I can’t,” said the preacher.

The security guard said, “We got rules.”

“I know about rules,” said the preacher. “Love God. Love your neighbor.”

The guard started to laugh, but it caught in his throat.

The preacher stepped over beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. He faced the crowd and said, “The riders won’t stop, you know.”

The guard measured us with his gaze. “Yes, they will. We’ll make them.”

The preacher shook his head. “They’ll keep coming. Like these girls, like the others—not just from Nashville but from Chicago and Dallas and Los Angeles. They will come in waves. They will stand strong, and they will not move. You can beat them and curse them and even kill them, and they will keep coming—like the ocean, like the tide, rising to your knees, to your chest, to your chin. America will change. It has to.”

He turned to us. “Where are you going?”

“To Montgomery,” said Jarmaine. “First Baptist Church, to see the Freedom Riders.”

The preacher smiled. “So are we.”

I looked over his shoulder and saw that the people from the colored section were standing behind him. They were dressed in Sunday clothes with flowers in their hair and on their lapels. They moved past the white people and filed in wordlessly, taking seats all around us. The crowd hesitated and stepped back.

The station manager started for his desk. “I’m calling the police.”

“Sir, it’s Sunday morning,” said the preacher. “We’re going to church.”

As the manager picked up the phone, a bus rounded the corner. We heard it pull in behind the station. It was our ride to Montgomery.

We got to our feet, all of us, and moved toward the door. Watching us file out, the station manager put the phone down.

Jarmaine and I showed our tickets to the driver and climbed onto the bus. Without saying a word, we sat in front. Our new friends did too. The preacher patted my shoulder and took the seat behind us.

The white passengers stared and muttered. The bus driver got back on, saw us, and started to say something. He studied my face. I gazed back at him, asking a favor with my eyes. He thought for a minute, then closed the door, got behind the wheel, and guided the bus from the station.

All of them had baskets. It was a way of traveling I’d never noticed or thought about—proud, self-contained, able to take care of yourself. Just add wheels. Oh, and a seat, preferably up front. The view is better. The door is closer. The bumps aren’t as bad.

Jarmaine shared her food, and our friends shared theirs—cornbread, greens, sweet potato pie. Soon I was so full that if we had gotten a flat tire, I could have taken its place and rolled to Montgomery.

Outside, the scenery had changed. There were low hills and a blue ridge against the horizon. The trees were smaller, and they were evergreens. Every few miles we’d go through a little town—Pelham, Calera, Clanton. We saw lots of churches, some filled with white people, some with black, none with both. For the first time, I thought it was strange.

South of Clanton, the preacher checked the white passengers and leaned forward.

“Those people don’t look too happy,” he said.

“They’ll get used to it,” said Jarmaine. “You can get used to almost anything.”

The preacher smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Noah. You know, like the ark.”

My hand disappeared into his. “I’m Billie. This is Jarmaine. Thanks for helping us.”

“I gotta tell you, I was worried,” he said. “That security guard scared me. Young fella, trying to make his mark.”

“Not on me,” said Jarmaine.

Noah chuckled. “No, indeed.”

I asked him, “Where did you come from?”

“God. And Huntsville.”

“You’re going to Montgomery?” Jarmaine asked. “That’s a long trip to church.”

He nodded. “Almost two hundred miles.”

I said, “We’re from Anniston.”

“Your town is famous,” he said, “for all the wrong reasons.”

Jarmaine told him what she had seen at the Anniston bus station, and I described the events in my neighborhood.

“I was in the crowd,” I said. “I watched and didn’t do anything.”

I hated telling him, but in a way it felt good, like a confession.

He eyed me thoughtfully. “Were there grown-ups in the crowd?”

“Yes,” I said, “but the only person who helped was a little girl. Her name is Janie.”

“Then God bless her,” said Noah. “And God bless you.”

“For what?”

“Getting on the bus. And standing up to the station manager in Birmingham.”

I said, “He wasn’t as bad as the others.”

“He seemed like a good man,” said Noah, “but he was caught in a vise—heart on one side, rules on the other.”

It reminded me of my father. He was being squeezed too.

Jarmaine asked Noah, “What have you heard about the meeting tonight?”

“At First Baptist? Dr. King will be there. James Farmer, head of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. Fred Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, who works with Dr. King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Ralph Abernathy—it’s his church. And of course, the Freedom Riders. Oh, that’s right,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “you’re with them.”

Jarmaine blushed, and I jumped in. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—”

“It’s fine,” said Noah. “If you ask me, we’re all Freedom Riders.”