Birmingham

Birmingham

A Novel

by Tim Stafford

Franklin Park Press

What Others Say About Birmingham

A reporter’s eye for detail brings this fictional tale of the civil rights movement to life. The flawed but brave protagonists draw us in, and make us wonder how we would have fared in the struggle against the evils of segregation.

--Dean Anderson, author of Bill the Warthog mysteries

A gritty, gripping novel by a master storyteller.

--Robert Digitale, author of Horse Stalker

A masterful work of historical fiction that is ultimately a tribute to the real-life heroes of one of America's most significant social movements.

--Paul Gullixson, editorial director, The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

About the Author

Tim Stafford is an author and journalist with more than 25 books to his credit. His previous fiction includes a trilogy of American social justice movements: The Stamp of Glory; Sisters; and The Law of Love. Stafford lives in Santa Rosa, California.

• The characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialog in this novel are either the products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Birmingham

Copyright © 2012 Tim Stafford

All rights reserved.

Published at Smashwords.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Visit the author’s website at timstafford.wordpress.com.

Cover and Book Design:
Mario Zelaya, Zelaya Designs, Santa Rosa CA

Table of Contents

1 -- Bus Trip

2 -- How We Got Chris

3 -- The One and Only R.L. Wriggleshott

4 -- Operation C

5 -- Representing the Movement

6 -- The Country Club

7 -- Consider the Children

8 -- Strange Brew

9 -- Some Kind of Freedom

10 -- Good Friday

11 -- Drunk on Jerry

12 -- Two Worlds

13 -- Children of the Heavenly Father

14 -- You Have a Right to Make This Witness

15 -- The Lion's Mouth

16 -- Betrayal

17 -- The Men in My Life

18 -- Ashes

19 -- Recovery

20 -- Discovery

21 -- Can I Get a Witness

22 -- Meeting Charley

23 -- In the Hole

24 -- The Watch

25 -- The Labyrinth

26 -- The Greyhound

Acknowledgements

1

Bus Trip

Chris

I had never seen so many Negroes. They stood patiently behind fat chrome railings in the Memphis bus station, dangling string bags and crocheted satchels and worn paper sacks. I studied the faces, like an archaeologist who has found his Rosetta Stone. A middle-aged man with a pencil mustache and the look of an intelligent cat. A fleshy young woman with bulging eyes. They had skin so dark I couldn’t discern their features. They elated me and scared me. Here I reached my promised land. Unthinkable.

This was 1963, and the South was a foreign land to me. I felt my chest tighten and my breathing turn shallow as I climbed onto the bus and edged toward the back. Not all the way back, but maybe two-thirds of the way, keeping my eyes locked on the ridged, gray rubber floor mat while lightly touching each brown vinyl seat as I proceeded. How far could I go? Each seat felt like taking a dare: white man in the black back of the bus.

I was a while getting my things set: my Time (labor leader Jimmy Hoffa on the cover), my bananas and bread and Mrs. Fosters peanut butter, my transistor radio with the earpiece. My green album with the clippings, every story and picture I had ever found of civil rights, a trove of history in progress. I thought, I will add to it. I will meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham, Alabama.

Four days into my trip, the bus had become shelter and home. I knew the curve of the aluminum windows, the patches of grime just under the release button on their horizontal slide, the clear circle worn by uncounted thumbs.

I flipped open the album cover, just to study once again the first yellowed newsprint picture, cut from the front page of the Fresno Bee. It showed a bus on fire, a Greyhound just like this one with flames erupting from the windshield and the open front door. Fire also came from the rear door, on which I could read the incongruous S&H green stamps label in gigantic, looping script. Scrutinizing the blurry picture, as I had a hundred times, I saw the back half of a greyhound dog painted on the side of the bus, its head disappearing into the inferno. Blistering flames and an intense black thunderhead of smoke billowing into the sky made clear that nobody in that bus could survive.

When I first saw the photograph, I thought surely they all had died. I had printed the date on construction paper under the photo: May 14, 1961, less than two years ago. That day had led directly to this day, with me traveling toward Birmingham, just like those riders on that bus.

They hadn’t died in that inferno, but other riders—white riders—had been beaten with pipes when they arrived in Birmingham that same day. The thought of it filled my heart with froth, like filthy yellow foam beaten up by furious waves.

* * *

While I contemplated, more bus passengers made their way down the narrow aisle. Whites stopped to unload their bundles in the seats ahead. Negroes passed by me on their way to the rear. I made a point of looking each one in the face and saying hello. Several said hello back.

Something tapped my foot. I looked down to see an object shining from the floor, under the footrest. Squinching sideways, I felt blindly with my hand until I retrieved a silver money clip clamped over a wad of bills.

I stood and scanned the faces behind me. They were all Negroes, every one of them. Did somebody drop something? I asked. A money clip?

A few eyes glanced up at me but then dropped down, as though ashamed. Nobody showed signs of recognition. Perhaps nobody would claim the money.

Did somebody lose a money clip? I said it louder.

A man two rows back suddenly looked up. His head bobbed as his hands slashed down into his pockets. He had a small, seamed, very dark face, with a trim gray mustache.

Yessir, he said. I believe it’s mine. He dug down. Yessir, I lost some money. His voice carried a spark of panic.

Can you tell me what the money clip looks like? I asked.

Yessir, it’s silver. It’s got my initials on it. MRT.

I cupped the money in my hands and looked to see. Engraved letters etched a silvery trail over the shiny surface.

Okay. I smiled weakly.

Squeezing into the aisle I walked toward him, while he came to me quick as a squirrel. He bent low, taking the clip with both hands and lowering his head, saying, Thank you, Thank you sir. You’re mighty kind.

He hesitated before peeling off a twenty and handing it to me.

Oh, no, I said, embarrassed. I felt the gravitational pull of that money—I was, by that time, broke—but I was not going to take from a poor Negro.

Sir, I wish you would, he said. You’re a young man, you can use the money.

Oh, no, I said, I couldn’t. I’m glad I could help.

Please, he said, trying to fumble the bill into my hand. But the momentum had turned, and now we were going through the rituals of offering and refusal. I could feel his rising gladness, for the money was no doubt as precious to him as it would be to me.

It was quite honestly the first interaction I ever had with a Negro. We had a few Negro students at college but I never ran in their circle. One lone student from Ghana attended my seminary.

I settled back into my seat and tried to read my magazine, but my thoughts kept going back to the interaction, particularly to the peculiar way the man had bowed at me. It raised a puzzling combination of feelings: a low swell of pride, mixed with anxiety over his eagerness to please.

* * *

Raising my head to look around, I found to my surprise a white man directly across the aisle—a short man, thickset, with a blond crew cut and a face burned by the sun to a copper mask. His torso was slumped in the seat and he had his eyes tightly closed.

God, you stink, he said without opening an eye.

I thought he spoke to the Negroes. I waited, shocked, for someone to answer.

What met my nose had a strong chemical burn to it. Never draw attention to unpleasant odors, I had been raised to believe, and a smell associated with people suffering discrimination was all the more to be disregarded.

My neighbor opened one eye and stared at me: a penetrating, baleful look. A thought flitted past, that I had not washed for three days, that my clothes were stuck to me. When he took his eye off me I sneaked a sniff of my armpit. I reeked indeed.

Sorry, I said, burning with humiliation. I’ve been on the bus for four days.

He opened that eye again. It was yellow all around the apple. Where you coming from?

From San Francisco. Actually Berkeley. I added helpfully, Across the Bay.

You must have money to burn. Where you going?

Birmingham, I said, feeling the chill that went through the word.

You got family there?

No, I said. I’m just a visitor. I don’t know a soul.

He shut his eye, and I thought he was done with me. All across the desert and the plains people had asked where I was going but nobody had yet asked why, though I was ready and eager to answer.

He asked. What’s taking you to Birmingham?

Martin Luther King, I said, and felt a whizzing in my chest. I thought of James Zwerg and Jim Peck, the whites beaten with pipes for doing just what I was doing.

He grinned, which was not the response I expected. You come here to make trouble?

No, I said. I’m a pacifist. I want to make peace, not trouble.

You’re a what?

A pacifist. I don’t believe in violence as the way to solve problems.

Then why do you want to come down here? Violence is what we do.

What made it so difficult to answer was his grin. It wasn’t even a mean, cold grin. Just a goofy crooked smile like he saw something funny in me.

He sat up and swiveled around to look full at me. He had on a white T-shirt, with dirty black scuffs down the front and yellow stains in the armpits. It suddenly hit me that he was the one emitting body odor. Not a Negro. Him. And me.

Now let me ask you, do you know King?

Not personally. I know a lot about him, but I’ve never met him. I’m expecting I’ll meet him soon, though.

Somebody invite you all the way here?

A man, Sam Brown, came to our seminary…..

"Seminary! What the hell is that?"

It’s a school. He surely knew what a seminary was.

What kind of a school?

A theology school.

A what?

A theology school. Where they train ministers.

You a minister?

No, I said. Not yet. I want to be.

Y’all read the Bible there?

I had to think a second. Sure. And other things.

He sat up a little straighter, which drew my attention to how short he was. What does the Bible say about communists like King?

I tried to be patient. Dr. King is no communist. He believes in the brotherhood of man, which is really what the Bill of Rights is all about. I had heard that somewhere. And the Bible says to love our neighbor as ourself.

And you couldn’t find some neighbors in San Francisco. You couldn’t find somebody to give away money to right in your own neighborhood.

A general wakefulness stirred around us: other people in the bus stopping whatever they were doing to listen. I wished the driver would start us up and get on the road. The bus was just squatting there, soaking up the heat of the morning. I wanted something to excuse me from this rat-a-tat questioning.

"I’ll tell you what, last thing Birmingham needs is troublemakers like King. King is a known communist. I have a cousin in Atlanta, where King’s daddy is a preacher, a big Negro with a Cadillac. That’s all right, I don’t begrudge a nigger a nice car. King junior could take over for his daddy in Atlanta, he could get himself a Cadillac if he wanted to, but he went to college in Boston where he met communist persons and now he has decided to come to Birmingham where honest to God he don’t know a soul. I begrudge him that. He should stay in Atlanta. Go picket the Coke factory or something. I tell you what, not one person on this bus is King’s neighbor. They don’t know him. I thought maybe you knew him, but no. And now, from what you say, he has sent out some other niggers to ask white folks like you, who don’t know anything about it, to come and help them out in loving people who are not their neighbors. Well, welcome to Birmingham. It’s nice to be in Birmingham."

Not until later did I learn that was the city’s slogan. It was meant without irony.

My neighbor’s grin got so big it was splitting his face. Cigarette-stained teeth stuck out from his gums like Chiclets. Unable to speak, I stared at his tight, seamed mouth. That grin sucked all the words out of me, which is not an easy thing to do.

I strained to keep my voice low and civil. Mister, beg your pardon but I don’t believe I am as ignorant as you think. I have studied civil rights. I have read everything that one can read about it, and even more, I have committed my life to it. I’ve come to give up my life if that’s required.

I was high and swimming in euphoria but he just kept grinning at me. So you are a reading man, he said finally with that mean mouth full of teeth. You read all about Dixie. Now you going to experience it. He shook his head and then, to my surprise, shut his eyes. You going to experience it, he said again.

The bus coughed into life and a voice came crackling over the loudspeaker. Good morning. This bus is going to Birmingham, with stops in Tupelo, Decatur and Cullman. All aboard.

I had seen the mighty Mississippi when we crossed over the iron bridge in the early morning light. Now, as the bus slumped its way around the corner and eased into traffic I leaned toward the window hoping to see it again. But all that appeared were square brick buildings, fried chicken shacks, BBQ and pawnshops. No people in sight; cars with fins swam down the highway.

I would be on this bus for just eight more hours, and then Birmingham. The thought was almost hallucinatory. Yes, I would experience it.

* * *

I would have liked to sleep like my neighbor, but I was just too agitated. The South certainly looked unlike anything I had ever seen in California. Every inch of earth sprouted luxuriant vegetation, chaotic and unruly. The pastures lay like moth-eaten velvet, and the forests, unlike our dark straight armies, exploded with branches and vines. The country loped easily along, rising and falling. I don’t know what I expected. Not, anyway, this perfectly ordinary, soft, unregulated landscape—not beautiful or picturesque, not even very interesting, just completely ordinary.

Our vast, hopeful, unthinking country basked in ignorance. To mind your own business was so effortless.

Yet here I was, and I felt that my presence was a statement as big as a billboard. The tale of the Freedom Riders thrilled me; lunch counter sit-ins had made me itch to get there and join somehow; and I had even gone into the seminary library to search back in the archives of the New York Times and read about the Montgomery bus boycott, where Martin Luther King led the Negro people to walk for their freedom. This was where the blood of freedom flowed; this was where we took a stand for righteousness.

I knew I might die for it. So did my wife, Linda, who had fought so bitterly to get me to stop thinking about it, and then after a big argument had gone to her mother’s house, because she couldn’t live with me the way I was acting.

I had originally made my plans with a group coming from Yale University. Sam Brown had connected us; we were to meet in Birmingham. Just four days before departure, they backed out. I never got a real explanation. I would guess they just got scared. At the last minute, I’d had to decide whether to go anyway, alone.

There had been no time for farewells. Only Linda knew I had come. My parents thought I was still at the seminary.

Linda wouldn’t be spreading the word. Just last June, she had liked my ideas. She said she admired that I cared so deeply. Now, we couldn’t say two sentences before a fight began and she started to cry.

* * *

My neighbor came back to life somewhere after Decatur.

People talk about Atlanta like it is something great, he said, speaking without a preface. Not to me. Atlanta got an airport, we got a nice airport. And who uses the airport anyway? Not your working man. They are headed for trouble in Atlanta. I went up there, and they had niggers picketing all over the downtown stores. You don’t see that in Birmingham. Old Bull wouldn’t stand for it. Good jobs for hard-working people, whether Negro or white or Jew. Or even Chinese. You keep your nose clean in Birmingham, nobody bothers you.

He paused for a moment. I do miss the baseball, I give you that. But that ain’t Bull’s fault. If the goddamned baseball owners weren’t under the influence of communists, they would respect our ways. We goddamn well can’t change our way of life because some rich man up in Cleveland or Detroit likes to see dark boys playing with white boys. He chuckled at that. It ain’t baseball they are interested in.

I wanted to be polite, but I hadn’t come to listen to that kind of talk. It’s the same game whoever is playing it, I said. Why do you care what color the shortstop is, so long as he can make the plays?

Hell, he said, I don’t care. I been watching nigger boys play baseball longer than you been alive. I loved to see the Black Barons. Saw Willie Mays, and enjoyed it. You know who Willie Mays is? But see, they don’t need to play together. If they play together, it will only cause trouble. We like peace here in Birmingham. We’ve had it for a hundred years, and now all of a sudden we got troublemakers like you who have come down to spoil it, and when you got us all mad at each other, you gonna go right back home. You gonna go home and tell everybody how you saved the South and freed the niggers, and isn’t it a shame that everybody down there is shooting each other, after 100 years of peace.

By the way, I said, it’s a free country, and every American should be able to go anywhere he wants and express what he believes. I don’t need a passport to come to Alabama.

That’s true, he said. But if people want to express what they believe down here, they better be ready for a dose of what we believe.

Is that a threat?

It’s just a statement of fact.

So you don’t think, I asked him, that you would have any troubles unless troublemakers like me came around.

Actually no, he said flatly. Not a trouble in the world. You look it up and see if Birmingham had troubles before these nigger communist troublemakers.

Somebody in Birmingham invited King to come. They must have thought there were some troubles that needed his help.

I don’t believe it. King is such a superior Negro, he don’t need invitations. There is nobody in Birmingham that wants King. Nobody. Only people like you, Yankees, or maybe some other colored preachers who think they will get in on the looting. Nobody in Birmingham wants King.

I thought I felt the whole bus holding its breath.

Negroes? I said. Are you including Negroes? They can’t be happy with segregation.

Well, that probably depends on the nigger, he said. "Which ones have you been talking to? The ones I know are pretty happy. They don’t like outside agitators stirring things up because they know they will be the ones get hurt. The rich folks who live over the mountain won’t be suffering. The Negroes won’t suffer either. The niggers will.

King isn’t a nigger, he’s a Nee-grow. And he don’t even speak for the Birmingham Negroes. You can trust me on this, he certainly don’t speak for the niggers. We understand each other in Birmingham and we don’t need a translator.

He jumped up in the aisle. Until then he had stayed stretched out, his eyes closed as much as open. Now he was standing, stocky and robust. He grabbed my wrist and with a strong grip pulled me up with him, then waved an arm toward the back of the bus. Ask them. Ask these folks. Do they love King? Do they want him?

When he grabbed me, my first reaction was fear. I stumbled and almost lost my balance. Then I realized he had no plan to harm me. I looked out at women in their floral dresses. Men with their eyes deep in the sockets. Thirty or forty eyes, looking at me without expression.

All right, y’all tell this inquiring Yankee. He is a minister from California. He’s come to help us out. He’s going to teach us how to get along and love each other, like the Garden of Eden. Now how many of you love King? Come on now, put up your hand if you are glad that King is coming to Birmingham.

No one moved. They stared at us with eyes that had seen the generations.

Now I know you’ve been listening to us, so don’t act like you don’t know. This fellow has come to help King lead you to the promised land. You wanna go? Tell him now, before he gets off this bus in Birmingham.

Never will I forget looking into those quiet faces that would give nothing away. I smiled, trying to communicate that I was a friend. It embarrassed me to stare. Why didn’t they speak? I couldn’t understand the mooning, the silent owl act.

Yeah, you see, my neighbor said. He pointed at the man whose money I had retrieved. My eyes had already passed over him, two rows back; he had not returned my gaze.

What’s your name? my neighbor demanded.

I wanted to intercede, but what could I say?

Can’t you hear me? Put a civil tongue in your head. What is your name?

The Negro man had on a brown knit cardigan and wore a tie. In two delicate hands he held a fawn-colored felt hat. He lifted his eyes. I’m Marcus, sir.

Marcus. Good. Now Marcus, stand up. Where do you think you grew up, talking to a white man sitting down?

Without a word, Marcus stood.

All right. This white man gave you your money back, the least you owe him is some respect. Where you from, Marcus?

Born and raised in Birmingham, sir, he replied softly.

Marcus, tell this man, what do you think of King?

I don’t rightly know the man, Marcus said.

Never even heard him preach?

Yes sir. Once, and he was a good preacher. On the radio.

Where you go to church, Marcus?

I go to Berean Baptist, sir, you know, just near Central.

I know it, Marcus. Is King a better preacher than your man?

Oh, I don’t know, sir. I like my preacher.

Did your church invite Reverend King to come to Birmingham?

No sir, I don’t believe they did.

You want him to come help us?

Like I said, I don’t rightly know the man.

My neighbor nodded at me triumphantly and flopped back into his seat. The bus was quiet, nobody whistling or chatting with his neighbor.

I couldn’t leave it alone. Despairingly, I stared into the back of the bus. I’m sorry, I said. I know you’ve been oppressed and I’m not the one to judge. But I just want to say, I believe the time has come. This segregation is poisoning us, it’s poisoning our country, it’s even poisoning him. I indicated my neighbor, who kept his eyes closed. Nobody can be free until we all are free.

Still nobody moved.

I believe Martin Luther King was sent by God. He’s like Moses, Let my people go. But we can’t leave it up to him. They’ll kill him. They might kill me, too. I’ve faced that. I’m willing for that. I’m here because of that.

Two young girls started tittering, way in the back. I could only see the tops of their heads. A woman reached across the aisle to shush them.

After I sat down, I couldn’t get those looks out of my mind: wary, hidden, leaden expressions that seemed as indifferent—or hostile?—toward me as to my neighbor. I thought of my wife, and I imagined her asking impatiently, What do you think you are doing there?

I expected my neighbor to talk again, to crow at me how little I understood the South or the Negroes I had come to help. Instead he went back to sleep, which was a relief to me.

* * *

Near Birmingham, we entered another country. First the sky became dark with smoke. The sun had passed into afternoon and now lay low in the sky, an orange spotlight stinging my eyes. I saw factories with smokestacks, dim in their own filthy air. In between the mills and factories, tracts of tatty brick houses were packed in tight. Everything lay mixed up together, pipes, open-faced industrial buildings, weeds, kids playing in a marshy field, heaps of steaming slag. The green seemed to be of a ranker color; the vegetation struggled for breath.

Birmingham looked to be a strong, raw place. Frankly, it made sense to me. This was no kind country. I stared out the window and listened to the bus engine as we slowed and ground our way into the center of the city. The motor had a miss. Probably a bad plug, or wire.

I saw the Greyhound sign for the depot, and spoke out loud before I thought. This is where the Freedom Riders came.

Nah, my neighbor said. Trailways. South of here.

I thought it was Greyhound.

Nope. We beat them up at the Trailways. He chortled. Beat the hell out of ‘em.

I had been feeling jaunty and excited, riding into town at last, but when we pulled up to the curb panic crept up my back. I didn’t know what came next.

My neighbor was already in the aisle, impatiently waiting while slow people got their parcels down from the luggage racks. Finally, we shuffled our way off.

I set my bag on the sidewalk, trying to get my