It was hard for Stella to make her foot reach out the first time. She had tried to become a tree. It was as though she were stuck in the moment, and it was hard to step out of the definition of danger.
Her foot and leg must step forward, this second.
That was her part.
She had to move.
And the second step was easier. Then another, and she’d learned to walk again.
Darl steered them down the hill, toward the perimeter. He didn’t look back, but they walked quickly.
After a distance, Stella’s throat opened and she said, “I did see a man go up under the tree.”
“That’s who they wanted,” he said. “Some sort of vendetta.”
“Why didn’t you tell?”
“It wouldn’t be lucky,” he said. “You don’t betray somebody else in trouble to try to save yourself.”
Now she knew she did love him. Admiration and gratitude collided in her heart and scattered throughout her body. From the soles of her feet to the crown of her hair, her nerves tingled with the fallout. But what was luck? And how had it played in her life? She’d never believed in luck of any sort.
They moved through the cemetery, past the plentitude of oaks—the cedars, the holly trees—every tree and monument seemed outlined with a special vividness. Stella’s heartbeat echoed through the canals of her ears; all other sounds were faint and distant. “Everything looks so distinct,” she said, but she couldn’t hear herself well.
Her heart beat hard against all the edges she was seeing and made them pulse.
Darl said nothing, or was his voice muted by her heartbeats? Time between utterances was stretching. Finally she heard him say, as though his voice came through space from a great distance, “There’s the wall up ahead. Then we’ll be safe, when we reach the wall.”
Then it was, Stella knew their lives could have ended. Yet the gang—they weren’t fully men—hadn’t been hunting for them. They had been startled to find them on the grass, lying on the towel, beside the specimen magnolia. Vulnerable. And suppose they had decided to rape her?
Darl would have fought.
We’ll be safe, he’d said, but now she imagined the violence that hadn’t occurred: fighting—her running away, someone catching up, right behind her, reaching out for her arm, her own screams. Kicking. Forced down. Sobbing. Darl might have been killed. First. It hadn’t happened. Then her. Afterward. Events that disappeared into a slit of potential time. Disappeared forever.
Maybe she had manufactured the threat. Got a quarter?
Not the same as rape.
She your fiancée?
Again, she pictured the group of four staring at her. Wondering about her. She wanted to run—now!—past the ghostly white monuments, past the dogwood trees, the monuments like obelisks; instead, she made herself listen for delayed pursuit as hard as she could. She tried to hear if there was pursuit, if the men were coming after her.
“Don’t run,” Darl instructed.
She heard herself gasp, no words. Now that she had imagined it, every instinct was to run. No, the bush ahead was a crape myrtle, not a man.
“There’s the wall,” he said. “See, just ahead. Beyond the holly trees.”
Safety, safety. They closed the distance between themselves and the dark stone wall stretching far out on both sides, demarcating what was the forbidden world of the dead from the normality of living. Home free!
They pushed through the sharp leaves, sat on the wall, dank with humidity, and swung their legs over. Like that, they were outside, safe on the sidewalk. There was the Vespa. With a deft movement, Darl wadded up the towel and stuffed it into the metal side compartment. She mounted her place on the passenger cushion. The key was turning, the motor was beginning to respond with its soft series of putts. He switched on the headlight, lifted his feet, released the clutch, and they began to glide away. She clamped her hands against his sides, could feel the precious warmth of his body coming through his shirt.
Darl turned his face to speak to her. “So we’re engaged,” he said cheerfully.
She leaned an inch forward and kissed the back of his neck. Very chastely. Maybe he was joking. Maybe he meant it.
Fred Shuttlesworth
AT HOLY FAMILY HOSPITAL, AS THE REVEREND MR. SHUTTLESWORTH woke up to the midmorning sunshine, not just his ribs but his whole body screamed pain. He remembered the flash of brass knuckles, the swing of a big-link, rusty chain—no, that was in front of Phillips High School, 1957. Six years ago. He’d survived that, survived this. Water hose pounding like a hammer. Now was now. Phillips was the seed, Kelly Ingram Park was the blossom.
It wasn’t his body. It was his brain burning. He knew what was happening over at the Gaston Motel right now. Without him. He knew what was happening: King was negotiating without him.
King’s inner group would be gathered around the magic one, advising him. The disciples anxious, insistent. King calm in the middle, listening. Synthesizing. Yes, surely King was becoming anxious about his sojourn in Birmingham. Rock throwing would give nonviolence a bad name.
Although Shuttlesworth groaned in bed, he knew he needed to be in King’s group. He needed to help. He needed to explain: it wasn’t his nonviolence-trained people picking up bricks, throwing bottles. Fred Shuttlesworth knew that. Wasn’t hem. Wasn’t kids he or James Bevel had trained. It was bystanders. Folks who never went to church. Folks who had no concept of how to win. Folks who needed nonviolence explained to them.
Shuttlesworth tried to sit up in his hospital bed. He knew the way it was going over at the motel without him being there: King wouldn’t risk more violence, which might be perceived by the national press as emanating from demonstrators. Wouldn’t want his name besmirched in history. No, King would negotiate. And nothing accomplished.
Not for Birmingham.
“No need for rocks and sticks.” That’s what Shuttlesworth would preach next to the people. “ ‘Put on the full armor of God!’ ” His own body was living proof. He was alive. They tried to kill him on Christmas, 1956, bomb thrown under his own house, under the spot where his bed was, him in pajamas, and he walked out, a song of praise on his lips. Surely King remembered that. It was a part of history.
King was a great man but he had a bad habit. He ought to consult with people before he made his reconciliation statements. What had they got for Birmingham?
King might be General Eisenhower, removed at his high post, but Fred Shuttlesworth was an action man, like General Patton. Fred Shuttlesworth was the one among the troops.
He had to get out of this hospital. His ribs wasn’t broke. No more hypo sedatives for him. King over there at the Gaston Motel talking long-distance on the phone with the president of the United States or his brother. While him fuming in the hospital. Had he been yelling? There were the doctors, the nurses.
The doctor told his wife he might calm down better if he was closer to the action. Course King wanted to back out—Mr. Nonviolent Leader. Yes, that would be his name in history. Mustn’t besmirch himself with violence. Those folks on the sidelines, they didn’t know nonviolence nor King. “They know Fred Shuttlesworth,” he tried to explain.
Hadn’t any water hose been turned on King yesterday. Hadn’t any chains or brass-knuckles mob beat King in front of Phillips High School. Well, in the past King had been beaten. They had blowed up King’s home. But he, Fred Shuttlesworth, wouldn’t be beat. Not in the long run. Couldn’t nothing keep him down. Victory through love, he’d tell those violent types:Call on the Lord. Call on the right hand of God Almighty, and he will not desert you.
“Ruby! Ruby!” He held out his hand to his wife. “Roll the stone from the door. I’m coming out.”
Wanting Bach
FROM OAK HILL CEMETERY TO STELLA’S HOME ON THE EDGE of Norwood with her aging aunts, Darl thanked God. He thanked him for sparing them, for sparing him a fight with four men who doubtlessly carried knives.
As his grateful hands steered the Vespa, Stella’s h
ands pressed hard against his sides. Press harder, he wanted to say. We’re real. He wished he didn’t have to take her home. He wanted to hug her close, sweet Stella. Horrible thrills swept over him again and again, even as he prayed. Had the astonishing appearance of the four men been a warning from God?
He wanted to be married; that was the proper refuge from lust and danger: an apartment, just an apartment, with privacy and a welcoming bed. He knew what his parents had—the way his father touched his mother’s red hair, her answering glance. He wanted that gratification for himself. At his age, his parents had been married several years, right out of high school. At his age, his dad had already fathered a child: Darl himself had been born from their teenage passion. But his dad had advised him to go to college, to get his education. Well, he would graduate soon.
He steered the Vespa up the rock and clay driveway that separated Stella’s aunts’ home from the one next door, where Stella’s family had lived before the fatal wreck. From inside the aunts’ house, a dog began to bark in hoarse pulses. At the back gate—a tall wooden structure built by hand but unpainted—he stopped the scooter to let her off.
“Wait,” he said, “kiss me.”
She turned back and kissed him chastely on the lips. Her lovely blond hair swung forward, and he gently pushed it back, like lifting back a shining curtain.
“You would have fought,” she asked, “wouldn’t you?”
“There were too many,” he said. Really he didn’t want to be anybody’s hero.
“But you would have tried,” she insisted.
He laughed. “I’d rather talk than fight.”
“So would I,” she said, and he felt glad.
“So we’re engaged?” he said.
She kissed him again while he sat astride the scooter, its motor putting away, the dog barking intermittently from inside the house.
“Why not?” she said lightly and turned to take off the high rope loop that held the gate closed against the gatepost.
HE LET THE VESPA move down the driveway. Wait! Take me to hear you play: had she called that out to him? Too late, he was putting away, putting down the red clay trough of driveway between high banks. Quickly, he glanced back. The kitchen door was standing open, and in the spilled light, Stella bent to pet a white dog. In the wash of light, her blond hair hung over the dog’s white fur. She might be an orphan, he thought, but Stella had a good home; she’d only had to move across the driveway to a house the mirror image of her own when her parents and brothers died in the wreck.
Into one bank, on the left, someone had cut a tiny Pueblo settlement, with square houses smaller than his hand perched at different levels. He wondered if Stella had constructed the mud village in the bank. Had she called out for him to wait? Take me…. Take me. To hear you play. Again he glanced back, then intuitively registered his driving position and centered the scooter to avoid the bank of iris foliage on his right. Perhaps Stella’s mother had tended those irises, more than fifteen years ago.
Irises needed a slope for drainage. He sped the Vespa toward the street. When he got home, he’d say to his father, “Let’s build a hill for Mom’s irises.” Mom would stand between them, an appreciative hand on each of their shoulders, her red hair bubbling wildly.
But Darl could not drive home now. He was too tense; he would pace around, and his mother would ask him what was wrong.
He needed to practice. The demon to make music was upon him. He would go to the church—he always had a key in his pocket—to practice on the grand old organ. It was Bach he wanted. When his hands and his feet were both engaged in their multiple keyboards, the music swallowed him. It let him in. The earth convulsed—he thought of Persephone’s descent—and he seemed to fall through the deep pedal notes into a dark sensuality with all the contradictory glory of heaven.
Merely anticipating his time at the organ shook him.
He wished that Stella had not abandoned the cello. It would have been an anchor for her. She wanted to float free—he could tell that about her. On Vulcan, he could tell how the volumes of air tempted her, and he had put his arm around her. Not to restrain her but for warmth, he had pretended. It had made him nervous to stand on that height with her. There was something extravagant about Stella—all or nothing.
He drove along the narrow asphalt beside Norwood Boulevard where sometimes they strolled innocently in the dark. Once he had taken another girl walking on the boulevard to see if it had felt different. Was it Stella he wanted, or just somebody? A block wide, the grassy boulevard ran the crest of a hill, high above the streets on each side. Still, the median lacked the privacy for more than kissing.
His mother had told him, in a confidential manner, that chaste girls wanted a long courtship. In opposition to her words, his father’s body, when he was near his mother, advised bold possession. It embarrassed Darl that his parents—only nineteen years older than himself—tried to school him about his love life. They would be surprised he was engaged.
Once he had taken Stella to attend church with his parents. After church, they’d gone out to Britling’s cafeteria for Sunday dinner. All of them had driven her home and had an awkward introduction to the aunts. He saw right away that Stella’s bond was more to her crippled aunt, Aunt Pratt, than to Aunt Krit, who taught high school math. Afterward, his mother had said of Stella, “They’re awful skinny in that house,” and his father had said, “Aw, you can fatten her up. She’s sweet,” and his mother had added, “She eats like a bird.”
From the backseat of the car, Darl had explained to his mother that the expression wasn’t apt. In proportion to their own sizes, birds actually ate a great deal. He thought his mother was afraid of Stella because she was a serious student and would soon be a college graduate.
His mother replied, “Reach up and massage my neck, Darling. I’ve got a crick in it.” To Darl’s relief, his father had taken his hand off the steering wheel to rub her neck. Darl felt like a child riding in the backseat, with no woman of his own.
The Vespa motor clucked as he rode through the city streets. Downtown was mostly deserted, but well patrolled by police cars. They paid no attention to him on the scooter; he was white.
A soft light was glowing through the stained glass of the church. Very faintly, he heard organ music, but it was so soft and spotty that he couldn’t tell who the composer was. Buxtehude? Pachelbel? Something pre-Bach, with echoes of the medieval.
Several of Mrs. Carr’s trusted students had keys to her church, but few came late at night.
Mrs. Carr. Beloved and elderly. Sometimes he felt like her spiritual son, or grandson. Years ago, she had gotten married and her new husband had drowned on their honeymoon. She had never remarried. How straight and tall she stood, whenever she was introduced. “Yes,” she would say, “I’m Mrs. Carr.”
Darl felt sure he would not drown on his honeymoon. He imagined Stella’s head on a white pillowcase, looking up at him trustingly.
The mellow light inside the church beckoned him. He loved the mystery of this large stone church and its gorgeous stained glass. He would have become a member, but that would have hurt his parents, who were loyal to their own plain church of another denomination.
Since he was a small boy, Darl had believed the safest place in the world was standing between his parents, the hymnal held low, one of their hands on each side spreading the pages. After his mother noticed his confident soprano, even as a child, he had been sent to sing in the adult choir. All his music was rooted in his love for his parents and in the sacred. When he stood with the choir, he sang straight to his parents, imagined himself still standing between them. He resigned from the choir when he graduated from high school and became the youth director.
On their church date, Darl and Stella had shared a hymnal; she stood between him and his father. Darl knew his mother had resented being on the end of their configuration instead of between her men.
Several times, when he came late at night to practice, Darl had heard someone e
lse at the organ. When he went inside, the lights would be burning dimly, but the musician had always fled. Though no girl should be in the sanctuary alone at night, he always assumed the elusive visitor was a young woman, someone as ethereal as Stella. He thought of her as even thinner, with a transparency about her. He sometimes fantasized it was the spirit of the girl he would marry.
But now he was engaged to Stella. He parked the scooter in the vacant parking lot. How did the other organist come and go? Maybe the invisible musician was his genie, his anima.
To his surprise, the basement door was unlocked. When Darl stepped quietly inside, he heard the progress of someone practicing footwork. A Bach toccata and fugue. The low pedal notes sounded fuzzy and muted. His own feet longed to engage the big pedals, to step down hard and then make the music swell like an enormous earthly mushroom under his shoe sole. She must have heard him enter; the pedal work ceased. He fancied he heard footfalls retreating down the aisle, barely audible in the plushy, wine-colored carpet. Someone shod in velvet.
King
WHEN FRED SHUTTLESWORTH ARRIVED, KING AND ABERNATHY weren’t at the Gaston Motel, and Shuttlesworth had to admit to himself how exhausted he was. His sedated body could barely walk. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but he had to climb into the Gaston Motel bed for a moment, rest a bit. He hardly had the strength to draw up his legs onto the bed, and as soon as he lay down, Andy Young was saying they wanted him to go over to John Drew’s house.
They ought to come to him.
But King was the magnet, pulling him off the bed.
TRAVELING IN THE CAR wore him out more. When Shuttlesworth arrived, he had to lean on his wife to get into the room. They looked at him as though he was a ghost rose from the dead.
(Why hadn’t they come to the hospital to visit him? Jesus had said, “I was sick and ye visited me.” Even Jesus knew how humans longed for human comfort. Not to be all alone.)