Four Spirits Read online

  Bobby threw a sure, spiraling pass toward his father, who snagged the ball with one hand.

  TJ

  WHEN TJ LOOKED OVER KELLY INGRAM PARK, FULL AND pulsing with demonstrators—his people—he thought This is the heart of it and then he thought of a real heart, how it pulsed and surged. How many days can it go on?

  He wasn’t a part of it. But today he would take its pulse.

  When he was a boy, Kelly Ingram Park had no importance—a place where a few bums sat on the few benches under the big shade trees, a place more hopeless than a cemetery, a dull place for the exhausted. Now it was the beating heart of the protest movement in Birmingham, and Birmingham was the heated-up heart of Alabama, and Alabama was the Heart of Dixie.

  The streets that lead from Kelly Ingram Park into the city, only short blocks away, became blood vessels: black people, black children flowing down the streets till they met the blockage of police, of fire hoses. So far, it was just city firemen and police, but TJ wondered how long till Governor Wallace sent the state troopers, men who thought of themselves as soldiers, who wanted to fire on people with something more deadly than fire hoses—how long?

  A man who has a job at night, a man such as himself, he can use a spring day for his own. He can go down to Kelly Ingram Park, witness the scene in person instead of reading the paper, or watching the TV. He can stand on the high steps of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church right across from the park. He can get his own overview. So thought TJ, a steady man, night porter at the Bankhead Hotel.

  He’d gotten work at the hotel just after he came back from World War II, still hardly more than a boy. During the war, he’d seen Europe like a tourist and never fired a shot. He’d worked steady once back in Birmingham, and they held the job for him when he went to Korea. Still a stupid boy then who thought he wanted to see Asia.

  What TJ saw from the high church steps was a park full of children, faces shining, small, sharp voices twittering like a vast flock of starlings. And here came another covey, streaming down the steps of the church, boys and girls, all eagerness. Eager as water babbling down the steps. Been trained inside—he gathered that—been trained in the ways of nonviolence. In limpness, in silence. Just schoolchildren. His wife, Agnes, went to night school, a special school for people who’d dropped out, never finished high school.

  Your body speak for you, he heard one boy say to another, pulling on his friend’s arm. No cussing. The friend squawked out his own version of their instructions like a startled jay:Your body on the line. And they were gone—down the steps—crossing the street to the park. Remembering Korea, TJ wondered with dread about the new fighting in Vietnam. Yesterday another lone picture in the back of the newspaper. Yes, he’d noticed it, being a vet himself: another black boy killed ’cross the Pacific Ocean. All his family got left, a photo of a handsome boy, dead forever, in a uniform.

  Yes, there the blue uniforms, the Birmingham police, forming up. Warm enough already in May to be in their uniform shirtsleeves. Wearing ties. Hadn’t worn any ties in Korea.

  During the first attacks of the Chinese against his company, he remembered, a red flare soared high over the ridge to the west, and he said to his buddies, “That flare is telling us. Our bodies are on the line.” He could see the dark shadows of the Communist Chinese coming silently over the ridge. Bent over with packs on their backs, they moved close to the frozen grass. Many were cut down by his company’s fire, but others leapt forward and scrambled into the outlying foxholes. He heard screams and the occasional blast of a grenade. Later, after more than forty-eight hours of fighting, he had fallen down exhausted near the top of a low hill, near frozen in the bitter cold. With the members of his company scattered around him in clumps on the hill, he had looked up into the rolling clouds and felt a strange sense of peace.

  The Chinese Communists moved past his company in the dark, pushing south to cut off the route of escape. Chinks, he thought. We called them chinks. TJ wondered what their lives were like now. Looking down on Kelly Ingram Park, he thought, It looks tough in the park today. I’ve seen worse.

  Moving down the church steps, he began weaving himself into the riffraff bystanders, trained in nothing. He bargained with himself—well, okay, he’d stand in with the unemployed, for a moment. Dirty men, ragged. They had nothing better to do. The unemployed. Even as a boy, he’d shunned them. Curiosity, that was all they had left of their minds. Probably couldn’t half read even the newspaper. Idle curiosity. He had to admit, he was curious, too. Wanted to see for himself.

  Why had children flowed into the jails, filling them up, when the adults were too afraid to demonstrate? TJ had heard that children filled not only the Birmingham jail, but the Jefferson County jail, some held in the Bessemer jail, some kept penned up in dormitories at the fairgrounds—904 juveniles. Children! He’d seen a little Korean girl lying in a ditch, turned into a crisp of flesh by a flamethrower. He remembered the weight of the bazooka on his shoulder as he aimed at other almost brown faces.

  He saw the Birmingham police lower their clear visors over their white faces.

  He thought he recognized some of the policemen and firemen in the park. More than a thousand men and women from Birmingham had fought in the Korean War. Returning home, many white men chose to be policemen or firemen. Blacks were excluded. TJ looked at a middle-aged policeman lowering the visor over his thin face. Doug Carter, Fox Company, 9th Infantry. They had ridden out of Birmingham together on the same bus at the start of the Korean War. TJ remembered how his company fought to protect the flank of Fox company in the desperate firefight at Ch’ongch’on River. Looking at Doug now, TJ felt anger rising in his arms and shoulders. We were men enough to cover their asses in the war, but we’re not men enough now to drink from the same water fountain.

  If his side won, would he want to become a black policeman? Maybe they’d want him. His war experience—he knew weapons, discipline. Had his Honorable. Could show his medal. That had been one of Shuttlesworth’s demands of the early demonstrations: we want, we need, we demand some black police.

  King said Birmingham was the most segregated city in the South. Only city over 50,000 with no black men on the police force. Shuttlesworth had petitioned years ago. Not gonna arrest white folks. Just let us have black officers in our own neighborhood. We need police who won’t wink at crime in our communities. But TJ knew he’d arrest a white man quick as a black man, quick as he’d shot yellow men. He wasn’t a racist.

  He shouldered his way through the riffraff surrounding the demonstrators. The fringe. Maybe Agnes would work in ladies’ shoes at Loveman’s, maybe Pizitz. He could see her, dressed so neat, soft but not fat—no babies for them—kneeling with her eyes down, helping some well-dressed white lady try on a shoe. He’d always liked that gadget for measuring feet, that metal plate with a slide to measure length, and especially the slide for taking the width snugged up against the big toe joint inside a clean sock.

  TJ didn’t like these riffraff men brushing up against him. He could smell beer breath, saw a fellow tilt up his bottle wrapped in a greasy sack, the paper all twisted up around the long neck of the bottle. Vagrant! But TJ appreciated the colors of the schoolchildren’s clothes. All colors, bright red and blue and yellow, pretty as a painting, a giant, dangerous picnic. TV couldn’t catch all this pretty color. He noticed the nice white shirts on some of the boys, some patent leather shoes on girls’ feet with white socks and a ring of lace on the sock cuff. Upgrade employment for blacks in the stores—that was a demand. Agnes, his own wife, was as neat and clean and more pleasant than any white woman.

  Never mind Loveman’s. Fielding’s Department Store—that was where a black woman might hope to work. Not just be the bathroom maid, run the elevator. The Fielding brothers were Methodists, supported the Salvation Army. They had an annual Christmas party, and last year, Agnes phoned the Fielding’s switchboard and asked if black people could come, and she said the telephone operator girl just sang it out: “Everybody welcome, bla
ck and white”—she had a white voice for sure—“come on down. We got cheese and crackers and cider and Santa Claus.”

  When she hung up the receiver, Agnes just sang it out again, in an imitation white voice right at the decorated tree: “We got cheese and crackers and cider and Santa Claus,” but she was happy, not making fun. “That what the girl said.”

  And something else about Fielding’s. No COLORED and WHITE signs on the drinking fountains. Just one fountain, and a plastic tube of paper cups beside it. You could pull down a cup, step on the foot treadle, and when the water arced up, catch your drink in the little white cup. Pretty little cup, sides all folded into pleats and a rolled rim around the top. Kind you could put mints in, or nuts, for a child’s birthday party. Agnes could work in Accessories, not be back in Shoes in the corner. Accessories right there in the front of the store soon as you walked in.

  TJ watched the back door opening on a police wagon and a German shepherd dog stepped out—Lord, God!—on a chain, then the dark blue leg and the whole of a policeman. And another pair—dog and man, linked by a leash. And another dog and man. Dogs always panting, muscles straining against the harness. The sun glinted from the metal snap that connected harness to leash. Several more pairs of dogs and handlers coming out of the truck, leaping down to the ground.

  Over on the south side of Kelly Ingram Park the fire trucks began to pull up, and the kids drifted that way, wanted to see the trucks the way kids always love a red truck. He’d seen kids in the neighborhood, so excited to see a fire engine. Suddenly, like a flock of pretty birds, the children all veered away from the fire truck—a jumble of bright clothing—and started for the street to downtown. Somebody had given a signal.

  It was early, TJ checked his watch, only around one o’clock, and the papers said the demonstrations usually started at three. Already on the city schedule—demonstrations at three. Acted like black folks was weather. Something mindless in nature they could observe. Predict like nature. (But he was surprised; he’d thought the demonstrations wouldn’t start till three.) Police weren’t ready at one o’clock. Now the bystanders were laughing at the police and ridiculing them. Five girls in a line played “Strut Miss Lizzie” in front of them, shaking their shoulders, noses in the air. Then a policeman shoved the big girl, last in the line. Big girl, might be fourteen, playing like a child, but shaking her new tits like a woman. She scowled at the police like any woman might scowl at a man who pushed her, then put her hand over her mouth and giggled like a child. The first gush of water scattered a patch of adults.

  TJ marveled at how the flat fire hose went plump, how water leapt powerfully from the hose. Took two firemen to hold the brass nozzle between them. In a flash of sunlit water, a little girl in her Sunday best—pale blue—was drenched and smacked onto the pavement. TJ saw the riffraff man next to him change his grip on the neck of his bottle: now he had a short club.

  Over there an explosion of rocks rained down on the helmets of the police, and the police raised nightsticks above their heads. Pulling their handlers behind them, the dogs lunged barking toward a human wall of retreating demonstrators. Black folks were commencing to run, and TJ found himself running toward what was becoming a riot. He saw a Negro man exhorting the children to nonviolence, and they waited or moved at the commands of the adults, their hands empty, their faces stunned, as though they were dreaming.

  The children were wary but not afraid. Some excited. Some closed their eyes, held hands, and sang the freedom songs with all their might. At the end of a blasting fire hose, a woman went skittering down the street, swept over the pavement by the water, her face bleeding. The dogs leapt at a boy, trapped against a wall, surrounded by popping flashbulbs, a TV camera, and TJ found himself picking up a rock. Five policemen held a fat woman down in the gutter. Every pound of her was piety and innocence.

  “God! God!”

  Was that her shrieking? Some other voice gone high as a woman’s?

  Like an avenging angel, TJ hurled his rock toward a police face.

  TJ was a trained soldier. No dogs on children! He’d show riffraff how to charge. He stooped for a broken brick as he ran. Heard the curses and scuffling feet of his platoon behind him. Way too many fighting folks to arrest ’em all. Not gonna blast no chile! No sweet fat woman in the gutter. Get ’em! Get ’em! No snarling dogs leaping for a boy, just a boy.

  TJ wanted to sink his own teeth in their necks.

  At the Athens

  AS CHRISTINE STIRRED HER MARTINI THAT EVENING, SHE thought angular momentum—a term from her physics class, and she had thought it while the fire hose spun her body. Who was she? Physics student by day; teacher by night. Miles College—same place, both roles, different station.

  In the bar, her bar, the Athens Cafe and Bar, Christine felt pampered as a queen. Grateful for the puffs of air-conditioning soothing her body, she stirred the liquid—slightly viscous, she noted—her own drink, specially made for her, Christine Taylor. Maybe she hadn’t thought angular momentum when they blasted her round and round like a top; she just thought it now, watching the magic liquid twirl in her glass.

  Better than in her own basement apartment, here in her bar, she could claim safety and peace. This was only a beer joint, with a pink neon STERLING sign in the window, but Christine loved the sign. The jukebox belted out Ray Charles, and a large jar of pickled pigs’ feet sat on the counter.

  Weeks before, Christine had marched into the Athens Cafe and Bar and had taken out her Martini and Rossi from an innocuous paper sack. When she presented the booze as being just for her own personal use, Mr. Constantine had accepted the bottle and put it under the counter. Here white waited on colored. Mr. Constantine kept a skinny jar of green olives for her, too.

  Angular—she liked the word; her own face could be described as angular. She liked it that she had strong facial bones, that her whole body was strong and wiry. Leaning against the back of the booth, Christine’s sore body made her feel again the hard street when she had fallen and rolled. She was bruised all across her back from the water pressure.

  By dint of nothing but her angry, imperial manner, Christine felt she had brought class to the Athens Cafe. Christine stirred her martini. Like a goddess, she ruled the transparent liquid world inside the glass, made it swirl and sway to the music. She dominated here, relaxing with the drink and a new friend sitting across the table.

  “Whose ribs?” Gloria Callahan, her classmate at Miles, asked Christine.

  Gloria was so shy, she could scarcely look at any listener while she uttered a whole sentence, even one two words long. Shy Bird, Christine thought of her that way. Gloria was a shy bird but she had classy, high-toned habits. She brought in all her papers typed on thick paper and without any ink corrections. Gloria couldn’t even look her professors in the eye, let alone a white, but Christine had taken Gloria under her wing. Already, Christine had convinced her to teach in the night school to help the dropouts, but when it came time to demonstrate, Gloria said she had to practice her cello.

  “Yeah, Gloria,” Christine said slowly. “Reverend Shuttlesworth got broke ribs today. He in the hospital. I witnessed when the hose water struck him down. Me laying on the street.”

  “Sure am sorry to hear that.” Through her whole utterance, Gloria stared down at Christine’s swirling of her drink.

  “You ever heard Reverend Shuttlesworth preach?” Christine asked sharply.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you ma’am me. I not but five, six years older than you.” Christine’s speech had shifted into the vernacular. They all had seesaw speech; sometimes they talked home talk, sometimes school talk. Up and down, first one then the other.

  “All right,” Gloria said.

  Christine knew Gloria was forcing her eyes to glance into Christine’s irritation. “I saw the hose get you,” Gloria said to Christine, but she whispered the statement toward the floor. “On TV.”

  “Yeah? What you think when you see that, you safe at home watch
ing TV?”

  Christine knew Gloria wanted to join the protests.

  “Pryne, pryne in a gyre!”

  “Girl! What you talking about?”

  “It’s from William Butler Yeats. ‘Sailing to Byzantium.’ And he wrote that all will be ‘changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ ” Gloria said all this with her rare green eyes fastened on the dirty concrete floor. “That’s from ‘Easter 1916.’ ” She was tracing the cracks, running like tributaries toward some river.

  Sometimes Christine thought Gloria’s complexion had a reddish cast to it like maybe she had Indian blood. Gloria sat still as a sculpture, as though she had no right to move. She sat like a brooding dove, full-breasted, soft, with a short body.

  “Where is Byzantium?” Christine demanded. “Girl, look at me when you answer!”

  “It not but half real.” Gloria studied the floor again, whispered, “Mythological. Constantinople.”

  “Mr. Constantine,” Christine called out boldly to the Greek bar owner, “you ever been to Constantinople?”

  The man just shook his head while he dried the inside of a glass with a cloth towel.

  Mr. Constantine tried to keep conversation to a minimum with his customers. After nearly thirty years, his English was still uncertain.

  Constantinople! Uncle Theo had taken him across the water to Constantinople when he was a young boy, led him through the confusing city to Saint Sophia glittering and glowing with gold mosaic. “Now you’ve seen heaven,” Uncle had said to him, in Greek. While they visited the sights of the marvelous city, Uncle Theo had been identified, mistakenly, for a spy. After the pleasure trip, Turks had followed him home, tracked him to his hilly slopes. They had murdered him while he peacefully herded his goats back in Greece.

  “Ever been to Byzantium?” Christine insisted.