CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Dr. King came out of the office and put on his coat. Behind him were Abernathy and Farmer. Diane Nash came last. She noticed us and smiled, lighting up the room.

We followed them at a safe distance and slipped back into the sanctuary. The church meeting had been going on while we were in the basement. Some of the Freedom Riders were by the pulpit, and Gus was at the organ, rocking through another hymn.

I wished Grant was there to take pictures and sing along. I remembered how he had looked up at the bus as Jarmaine and I rode by. After what he had seen and photographed that day at Forsyth’s, he deserved to be with us. I could have stopped on the way to the bus station and picked him up. Sometimes I got mad at him for doing things and not including me, and now I had done the same to him. Grant was my friend. He might be more than that, but it would never happen unless I gave him a chance.

Dr. King went to the front, and Gus ended the music. The people settled down. Fans swished back and forth, and handkerchiefs wiped foreheads, but the crowd was quiet.

Dr. King leaned over the microphone and said, “The first thing to know is that we’re going to be calm, and we’re going to continue to stand up for what we know is right. We are not giving in. The Freedom Rides will go on.”

Someone shouted, “Amen!” Others joined in, and Dr. King held up his hand for silence.

“The second thing to know is that I just got off the phone with Robert Kennedy. He’s sending in federal marshals. They’re going to get us out of here.”

A cheer went up. I couldn’t help but notice there was grumbling too. Maybe some of the people didn’t want to be rescued. They would stand with Dr. King, flames or no flames.

There were more speeches and more hymns. I turned to Jarmaine. “I’d sure like to see those federal marshals.”

She gazed back thoughtfully. “We can, you know.”

Grabbing my hand, she led me out of the sanctuary, up the stairs, and into the church attic. We could hear distant voices below, but the attic was quiet. We made our way up the ladder, pushed open the door, and climbed through.

Did you ever wonder what heaven is like at night? I had always pictured it during the day, with bright blue skies and puffy, white clouds. But until I stepped into that tower again, I had never imagined it at night.

There’s darkness. There’s a breeze that ruffles your hair. There are windows all around. There’s a sky filled with stars. There are sturdy brick walls. In the center, there’s a bell.

It’s an ancient bell, and on it are the names of the saints. They have worked and planned and persevered. They have been cursed and beaten, driven from their homes and shipped to a cruel land. Their children have been taken away and their families torn apart. They have bent under blows, but they have gotten up again. They have worshiped. They have sung. And on special days, when the world seems about to burst, the bell rings, the sun rises, and the saints dance with joy.

The thoughts filled my mind, as if poured from a pitcher. I wondered who they came from—Dr. King, Jarmaine, the people crowded together downstairs. Maybe thoughts came from places. In my neighborhood, we thought about ourselves and the way we had always done things. Tradition, we called it. On Jarmaine’s block, there was fear. If you saw a white person, you wondered what was wrong. In this church, around this bell, there was love, mixed with hope and determination and fierce pride. It filled the place, and it filled me. It felt like heaven.

There’s something else about heaven. If you look down, you can see hell. We had gotten the street view from the basement, and now we saw it from above. Jarmaine and I stood at a window, watching.

The crowd had turned into a mob, surrounding the church and throwing itself against the doors. Angry faces reflected the light of a dozen fires. Pickup trucks were parked in rows, like coffins. Fists clutched pipes and chains.

Jarmaine said, “Did you see that?”

I nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

“Not down there,” she said, pointing. “Over there.”

On the horizon, lights winked. They started out tiny, like a swarm of lightning bugs, but soon sorted themselves into columns, two of them, stretching back toward downtown. They were federal marshals, and they had been sent by Robert Kennedy to save us. When the vehicles drew near, they came into view beneath the streetlights.

Jarmaine watched them. “Mail trucks?”

Stepping closer to the window, she gripped the wire mesh, then pounded the bricks angrily. “Mail trucks? Mail trucks!”

I wanted to speak but was afraid I might laugh or sob. I had expected the marshals to arrive in jeeps, maybe tanks, but not this. What were they going to do? Sort envelopes? Sell stamps?

The first group of mail trucks reached the park across Ripley Street, and the men got out. They didn’t have uniforms. They wore work pants, open shirts, jackets, and yellow armbands saying Marshal.

Jarmaine stared at them. “They’re good old boys.”

Good old boys. It was an expression I’d heard my whole life. Good old boys were men who smiled and said hi and seemed harmless. I’d seen them my whole life—hanging around town, visiting at the hardware store, shaking hands and slapping each other on the back. I knew them as well as I knew myself. They might as well be uncles. Some of them were. As far as I was concerned, “good” meant good. Jarmaine felt otherwise.

As the other mail trucks arrived, they pulled in behind the first group, blocking them in.

Jarmaine shook her head. “They don’t even know how to park.”

The marshals got out, stumbling toward us with no apparent plan. A few of them recognized friends in the mob and stopped to say hello. Then they headed to Ripley Street in front of the church. Once there, they formed a rough line, like something a kindergartner might draw with a crayon. They looked at each other and waited.

About that time their leader, a man in a coat and tie, came running and shouting orders to them. “Disperse the crowd! Disperse the crowd!”

The marshals looked at each other, and a few of them pulled out objects that looked like beer cans.

I gaped. “They’re going to drink?”

“That’s not beer,” said Jarmaine. “It’s tear gas.”

The marshals flipped something on the cans, then threw or rolled them into the crowd. It would have been a great idea, except for one thing—the wind.

Yellow-green gas billowed out of the cans, like smoke from a dragon. Instead of floating toward the crowd, it blew backward, carried by a breeze. The marshals coughed and sputtered, flapping their arms and trying desperately to wave away the gas.

“I can’t see!” one of them screamed.

Panic set in. They stumbled, bumped into each other, and tried to grope their way back toward the trucks.

The marshals had been ordered to disperse the crowd. Wrong crowd.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The clouds of gas kept moving—past Ripley Street, past the marshals, and toward the church.