Night on Fire (6 page)

He loaded his books onto the metal carrier behind his bicycle seat. I did the same. Then we swung up onto our bikes and headed out of the parking lot, past the football field and the sign that said
Home of the Panthers
.

Wellborn High, made up of brick buildings on a hillside several miles west of town, was still pretty new. It had been built a few years earlier when the army depot had expanded, bringing hundreds of new families into the area. It seemed funny that we had decided to call ourselves the Panthers, because everyone knew that Cobb High, the Negro school, was known as the Mighty Panthers and had been for years.

Grant and I pedaled down Eulaton Road, past pin oaks and loblolly pines, until it flattened out and turned into Tenth Street. As it did, we got a good view of Anniston, where the tallest buildings were churches. Anniston was beautiful and it was my home, but I still found myself looking over the steeples and wondering what lay beyond.

We found Mr. McCall at his desk, hunched over a typewriter with boxes stacked on the floor all around him. It had been almost a year since the
Anniston Star
moved to its new headquarters, but he'd been too busy writing to unpack.

The new building, on Tenth Street at the edge of town, was made of bricks and glass, with a white rectangle jutting out over the entrance. It was just one story tall but covered most of a city block, with the reporters and sales offices up front and a big open area in back for the presses. Mr. McCall had walked Grant and me back there once to see the presses pounding away like pile drivers, churning out the news.

Mr. McCall looked up from his typewriter and smiled.

“Hey, kids. What brings you here?”

“I liked your article about Janie,” I told him.

For years, the only time I had read the newspaper was when Daddy and I checked the sports section. But when Grant and his family moved next door, I had started reading the articles by Mr. McCall. This one had appeared on the front page of the Sunday edition, the day after the spelling bee. It had described the contest, as well as what had happened afterward. In Mr. McCall's articles, even if you knew the subject, you always learned something. In the case of Janie, I found out she was excited about facing the Negro students next year.

I nodded toward Mr. McCall's typewriter. “What are you working on now?”

His face lit up. “It's about the first American in space, Alan Shepard. You know, the local angle. After all, Huntsville is just a couple of hours up the road.”

Thanks to Mr. McCall's stories, I knew about Huntsville. They called it the Rocket City. A rocket designed there had launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1. Just the year before, they had opened a big space center there, run by a scientist named Wernher von Braun.

“Where do you get all that information?” I asked.

He chuckled. “That's the best part of the job. I ask questions.”

“Miss Hobbs, our English teacher, says to write about what you know.”

“For me, it's just the opposite,” he said. “I write about what I don't know and want to find out. So I learn something every day.”

I thought about all the things I didn't know. Why do I hate homework? How do you throw a curve? What's it like to live in New York City? Why do people get mad when you try to be nice?

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I heard that Jarmaine Jones works here.”

“That's right. Sometimes she helps me out. Jarmaine's good.” He glanced around. “She was here a minute ago.”

I lowered my voice. “Can I ask you something? How come Cobb High has an internship program and Wellborn doesn't? I wouldn't mind working here myself. And I know Grant wants to. Right, Grant?”

I glanced over and saw that he was fooling with his camera. I poked him with my elbow. “Right, Grant?”

“Huh? Yeah, I guess.”

Mr. McCall shrugged. “That's no big secret. Mr. Ayers, the owner of the
Star
, believes in equal rights for Negroes. He thought the program would help the students at Cobb, and the paper too.”

“Some people call it the
Red Star,
” I said. “You know, like communist.”

I thought Mr. McCall might laugh. Instead, he leaned toward me, his expression full of feeling.

“Don't you believe it, Billie. Equal rights isn't communist. It's as American as you or me. Or Jarmaine.”

I glanced around, partly to avoid his glare and but mostly to look for Jarmaine. She wasn't there.

Just then, David Franklin walked by. He was a staff photographer and one of Grant's heroes.

“Hey, Mr. Franklin,” said Grant. “I got that new lens, like you suggested.”

The next thing I knew, he and Grant were lost in conversation. Figuring Grant would be busy for a while, I turned to Mr. McCall. “There's something I need to do. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

He straightened his shoulders. “Sorry about my little outburst. That stuff about the
Red Star
gets my goat.”

“It's okay. I'm glad you care so much about your job. I hope I care that much someday.”

Mr. McCall smiled, then turned back to his typewriter, ready to learn.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I went through the lobby and out the door. Next to the entrance was a bench, and on it sat Jarmaine.

She wore a simple peach-colored dress and was eating a snack from a brown paper bag. I recognized the snack. It was peanut-butter crackers, the kind Lavender made for me. I imagined Lavender getting up early to fix Jarmaine's lunch before she came to our house. I wondered what it would be like to run two households and juggle two lives.

I hesitated by the bench. “I just wanted to talk.”

Jarmaine eyed me warily. “About what?”

“You seemed mad when we talked at the spelling bee. You know, about the grocery.”

Jarmaine's eyes flashed. “You were there. You could have said something.”

“Like what?”

“This is wrong. It isn't fair.”

“Mr. Forsyth owns the grocery,” I said. “He wanted your friend to leave.”

“It's a store! You can't pick and choose your customers. You just open the doors and let people in.”

“He's actually a very nice man,” I said.

There was that word again:
nice
. Was Mr. Forsyth nice? Was I?

“He's a cracker,” said Jarmaine.

I'd heard the term at school, whispered in the hallways. A cracker was ignorant, like a redneck or poor white trash. I'd never heard a Negro say it before.

Jarmaine sighed and shook her head. “Mama doesn't like me calling people names. She says if we do it, they'll call us names too.”

I studied Jarmaine. She had her mother's eyes, but there was a difference. When Lavender was angry or scared, her face was like a mask. You couldn't tell what she was thinking. But something about Jarmaine's face let you see right through. It made me nervous, and when I'm nervous, I talk. I needed something to say and remembered what Grant had told me after the spelling bee.

“Look, I know you're upset,” I said. “After all, your father was in the war; then he came home and nothing had changed. Separate but equal. Colored only.”

“My father left when I was a baby,” Jarmaine said. “I never met him.”

I looked around for something to crawl under. Maybe the bench. Maybe I could just lift up the lawn and pull it over me.

I said, “Am I blushing? I do that sometimes. Do Negroes blush? How can you tell?”

I wanted to shut up but couldn't. “Do you get sunburned? If you can't see it, is it really a burn? What about zits? Can you stop me, please? Can you just grab my foot and pull it out of my mouth?”

She stared at me for the longest time. Then she laughed. Not giggles or chuckles, but big laughs. Finally, after a long time, she stopped.

“Yes. Yes. And yes,” she said.

“Pardon me?”

“We blush. We sunburn. And, I can personally tell you, we have zits.”

“I'm a jerk,” I said.

“My mother told me you have a good heart,” said Jarmaine. She offered me a cracker. I ate it in one big gulp, the way I always did.

“Those are my favorites,” I said. “She makes them for me too.”

“I don't like sharing her,” said Jarmaine.

I don't know why that surprised me. In a way it made sense. I didn't like sharing my things or my friends. But sharing Lavender was different, like sharing the sun.

I said, “So, you're an intern.”

She nodded. “They pick two of us at school each year. I was lucky.”

“Mr. McCall says you're good.”

“He's a good reporter,” she said. “I like helping him.”

“He lives next door to me.”

“I know,” said Jarmaine. “I know all about you.”

That made me feel funny, like there was some kind of shadow world next to mine, where Jarmaine lived and watched.

“There are some things you don't know,” I said.

“Like what?”

“All kinds of things. My dreams.”

Jarmaine gazed off into the distance. “Let's see. You dream of a house. A husband. Kids playing in the yard.”

I smiled. “Nope. I dream about going to Montgomery or maybe New York or Washington, DC. I'd meet new people, try new things. I'd do whatever I wanted to.”

“Such as?”

“Things. Big things. Be a writer.”

The idea just popped out. I hadn't really thought about it, but it sounded good. I could work and learn at the same time, the way Mr. McCall did. I could write stories like Miss Harper Lee. I could dream, then try to catch the dreams on paper.

“My dream is a place,” said Jarmaine. “Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.”

“A college?”

“I want to do something with my life. Be a journalist or a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall.”

“Who's he?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I'd stepped off a flying saucer. “
Brown versus the Board of Education?
The Supreme Court decision? ‘Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.' Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer. What do they teach you at your school?”

“Not that,” I said.

“Things are happening at Fisk. There's a group called the Nashville Student Movement. They integrated the lunch counters last year. They met with the mayor, and he backed down. I'm going to join them.”

“The mayor backed down? To some students?”

Jarmaine nodded. “Their leader is a woman, Diane Nash. She's a Fisk student. She led a demonstration at the capitol.”

“You couldn't do that here,” I said.

“The demonstration?”

“Any of it. Not in Alabama.”

Jarmaine picked up a section from last week's paper that was folded next to her on the bench and pointed to a small article.

Negro Group Sets Bus Mixing Tour

WASHINGTON (UPI) – More than a dozen Negroes and whites planned to board buses today and head south to break the color barrier on Dixie's highways.

The travelers, picked and trained by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), will ride the commercial buses through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

So Lavender had been right. It really was happening.

“I heard about that,” I said. “Your mother told me. She said they're called Freedom Riders.”

Jarmaine nodded. “They've been trained in nonviolence, like Mahatma Gandhi. No matter what people do to them, they won't strike back. They started their trip last Thursday in Washington, DC, and plan to finish in New Orleans. They're coming through Anniston this Sunday. They're making history, and I'll be at the Greyhound station to see them.”

“Does Lavender know you're going?” I asked.

“No,” said Jarmaine, “and you're not telling her.”

I shook my head quickly. “Don't worry. I won't.”

Her eyes bored into me. She was strong, I could tell. But she was nervous. She was proud but not used to showing it.

I know because she blushed.

CHAPTER NINE

Afterward, Jarmaine and I walked inside, where she went back to work. I found Grant leaning against his father's desk, fooling with his camera. We said good-bye to his dad and headed for our bikes. As we did, I noticed Gurnee Avenue just a block away. I reached for Grant's hand, squeezed hard, and dragged him up the street.

“Hey!” he croaked.

Halfway up Gurnee was a yellow-brick building with an awning and a sign:
Greyhound
. It was the Anniston bus station, where buses stopped before heading down the Birmingham Highway, and where Jarmaine planned to come on Sunday to see history being made.

Next to the building was an alley, and in the alley was a bus. Stopping in my tracks, I gazed at the bus.

Where was it going? Who would be on board? What did they dream of?

Beside me, Grant wrenched his hand free.

“Geez,” he muttered. “The grip of death.”

“Poor baby,” I said.

I approached the bus and saw that it was empty. Glancing around, I reached for the door. It was locked. Apparently the bus was between trips. I ran my fingers along the silver stripes under the windshield. For years I'd been watching buses drive past my house. It wasn't often that I got to see one up close. I wanted to remember what it looked like and how I felt standing beside it.

As I touched the bus, I saw a road, maybe the Birmingham Highway or one of the new interstates they were building. It curved out of sight, and I wondered what was at the other end—hope, happiness, questions, pain? Someday maybe I'd climb on the bus and find out.

Behind me, Grant asked, “What are you doing?”

I turned around to face him. “Take my picture.”

“Here? Now?”

“Yes!”

He stifled a grin. “All I've got is color film. I hate to waste it.”

I slugged him.