Edge of Eternity (46 page)

He took off his shoes and socks slowly. He had an erection, and he was hoping it would go down, but it did not. He could not help it. He stood up and took off his pants and undershorts, then he got into bed as quickly as she had.

They hugged. His erection pressed into her belly, but she showed no reaction. Her hair tickled his neck and her breasts were squashed against his chest. He was madly aroused, but instinct told him to be still, and he obeyed it.

Verena began to cry. At first she made small moaning noises, and George was not sure whether they indicated sexual feelings. Then he felt her warm tears on his chest, and she began to shake with sobbing. He patted her back in the primal gesture of comfort.

A part of his mind marveled at what he was doing. He was naked in bed with a beautiful woman and all he could do was pat her back. But on a deeper level it made sense. He had a vague but sure feeling that they were giving one another a kind of comfort stronger than sex. They were both in the grip of an intense emotion, albeit one for which George did not have a name.

Verena's sobs gradually eased. After a while her body relaxed, her
breathing became regular and shallow, and she drifted into the helplessness of sleep.

George's erection subsided. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the warmth of her body against his, and the light feminine aroma that rose from her skin and her hair. With such a girl in his arms he felt sure he would not sleep.

But he did.

When he woke up in the morning, she was gone.

•   •   •

On that Saturday morning Maria Summers went to work in a pessimistic mood.

While Martin Luther King had been in jail in Alabama, the Commission on Civil Rights had produced a horrifying report on abuse of Negroes in Mississippi. But the Kennedy administration had cleverly undermined the report. A Justice Department lawyer called Burke Marshall had written a memo quibbling with its findings; Maria's boss, Pierre Salinger, had portrayed its proposals as extremist; and the American press had been fooled.

And the man Maria loved was in charge. President Kennedy had a good heart, she believed, but his eye was always on the next election. He had done well in last year's midterms: his coolheaded handling of the Cuban missile crisis had won him popularity, and the expected Republican landslide had been averted. But now he was worrying about his reelection contest next year. He did not like Southern segregationists, but he was not willing to sacrifice himself in the battle against them.

So the civil rights campaign was fizzling out.

Maria's brother had four children of whom she was very fond. They, and any children Maria herself might have in the future, were going to grow up to be second-class Americans. If they traveled in the South they would have trouble finding a hotel willing to take them in. If they went to a white church they would be turned away, unless the pastor considered himself a liberal and directed them to a special roped-off seating area for Negroes. They would see a sign saying
WHITES ONLY
outside public toilets, and a sign directing
COLOREDS
to a bucket in the backyard. They would ask why there were no black people on television, and their parents would not know how to answer them.

Then she reached the office and saw the newspapers.

On the front page of
The
New York Times
was a photograph from Birmingham that made Maria gasp with horror. It showed a white policeman with a savage German shepherd dog. The dog was biting a harmless-looking Negro teenager while the cop held the boy by his cardigan sweater. The cop's teeth were bared in a grin of eager malice, as if he wanted to bite someone too.

Nelly Fordham heard Maria's gasp and looked up from
The
Washington Post
. “Ugly, ain't it,” she commented.

The same picture was on the front of many other American newspapers, and the airmail editions of foreign papers too.

Maria sat at her desk and began to read. The tone had altered, she noticed with a gleam of hope. It was no longer possible for the press to point the finger of blame at Martin Luther King and say that his campaign was ill timed and Negroes should be patient. The story had changed, with the unstoppable chemistry of media coverage, a mysterious process that Maria had learned to respect and fear.

Her excitement grew as she began to suspect that the white Southerners had gone too far. The press were now talking about violence against children on the streets of America. They still quoted men who said it was all the fault of King and his agitators, but the segregationists' customary tone of confident deprecation had gone, and now there was a note of desperate denial. Was it possible that one photograph could change everything?

Salinger came into the room. “Everybody,” he said. “The president looked at the papers this morning, saw the photographs from Birmingham, and felt sickened—and he would like the press to know it. This is not an official statement, but it is an off-the-record briefing. The key word is
sickened.
Put it out right away, please.”

Maria looked at Nelly and they both raised their eyebrows. This was a change.

Maria picked up the phone.

•   •   •

By Monday morning, George was moving like an old man, cautiously, trying to minimize the twinges of pain. The Birmingham Fire Department's water cannon produced a pressure of one hundred
pounds per square inch, according to the newspapers, and George could feel every pound on every inch of his back.

He was not the only one hurting on Monday morning. Hundreds of demonstrators were bruised. Some had been dog-bitten badly enough to need stitches. Thousands of schoolchildren were still in jail.

George prayed their sufferings would prove worthwhile.

There was hope now. The wealthy white businessmen of Birmingham wanted to end the conflict. No one was shopping: a black boycott of downtown stores had been made more effective by the fear of whites that they might get caught up in a riot. Even the hard-nosed owners of steel mills and factories felt that their businesses were being damaged by the city's reputation as the world capital of violent racism.

And the White House hated the continuing global headlines. Foreign newspapers, taking for granted the Negroes' right to justice and democracy, could not understand why the American president seemed unable to enforce his own laws.

Bobby Kennedy sent Burke Marshall to try to make a deal with Birmingham's leading citizens. Dennis Wilson was his aide. George did not trust either. Marshall had undermined the Commission on Civil Rights report with legal quibbles, and Dennis had always been jealous of George.

Birmingham's white elite would not negotiate directly with Martin Luther King, so Dennis and George had to act as go-betweens, with Verena representing King.

Burke Marshall wanted King to call off Monday's demonstration. “And take the pressure off, just when we're gaining the advantage?” said Verena incredulously to Dennis Wilson in the swanky lounge of the Gaston Motel. George nodded agreement.

“The city government can't do anything right now anyway,” Dennis responded.

The city government was going through a separate but related crisis: Bull Connor had mounted a legal challenge to the election he had lost, so there were two men claiming to be mayor. Verena said: “So they're divided and weakened—good! If we wait for them to resolve their differences, they'll come back stronger and more determined. Don't you White House people know anything about politics?”

Dennis pretended that the civil rights campaigners were muddled
about what they wanted. That, too, infuriated Verena. “We have four simple demands,” she said. “One: immediate desegregation of lunch counters, restrooms, water fountains, all facilities in stores. Two: nondiscriminatory hiring and promotion of black employees in the stores. Three: all demonstrators to be released from jail, and charges dropped. Four: for the future, a biracial committee to negotiate desegregation of the police, schools, parks, movie theaters, and hotels.” She glared at Dennis. “Anything muddled there?”

King was asking for things that should have been taken for granted, but all the same it was too much for the whites. That evening, Dennis came back to the Gaston and told George and Verena the counterproposals. The store owners were willing to desegregate fitting rooms immediately, other facilities after a delay. Five or six black employees could be promoted to “tie jobs” as soon as the demonstrations ended. The businessmen could do nothing about the prisoners, because that was a matter for the courts. Segregation of schools and other city facilities had to be referred to the mayor and the city council.

Dennis was pleased. For the first time ever, the whites were negotiating!

But Verena was scornful. “This is nothing,” she said. “They never ask two women to share a fitting room, so they're hardly segregated in the first place. And there are more than five Negro men in Birmingham capable of putting on a tie. As for the rest—”

“They say they have no power to reverse the decisions of the courts or change the laws.”

“How naïve are you?” said Verena. “In this town, the courts and the city government do what the businessmen ask them to do.”

Bobby Kennedy asked George to put together a list of the most influential white businessmen in town, with their phone numbers. The president was going to call them personally and tell them they needed to compromise.

George noted other exciting signs. Mass meetings in Birmingham churches on Monday evening collected an amazing $40,000 in donations to the campaign: it took King's people most of the night to count it all, which they did in a motel room rented for the purpose. Even more money was pouring in by mail. The movement normally lived
from hand to mouth, but Bull Connor and his dogs had brought a massive windfall.

Verena and King's people settled in for a late-night session in the sitting room of King's suite, discussing how to keep the pressure on. George was not invited—he did not want to learn things he might feel obliged to report to Bobby—so he went to bed.

In the morning he put on his suit and went downstairs to King's ten o'clock press conference. He found the motel courtyard crammed with more than a hundred journalists from all over the world, sweating under the Alabama sun. King's Birmingham campaign was hot news—again thanks to Bull Connor. “The activities which have taken place in Birmingham over the last few days mark the nonviolent movement's coming of age,” King said. “This is the fulfillment of a dream.”

George could not see Verena anywhere, and the suspicion grew in him that the real action might be elsewhere. He left the motel and went around the corner to the church. He did not find Verena, but he did notice schoolchildren coming out of the church basement and getting into cars parked in a line along Fifth Avenue. He sensed an air of forced nonchalance about the adults supervising them.

He ran into Dennis Wilson, who had news. “The Senior Citizens Committee is having an emergency meeting at the chamber of commerce.”

George had heard of this unofficial group, nicknamed the Big Mules. They were the men who held the real power in the town. If they were panicking, something would have to change.

Dennis said: “What are King's people planning?”

George was glad he did not know. “I wasn't invited to the meeting,” he said. “But they've cooked up something.”

He parted from Dennis and walked downtown. Even strolling alone he knew he might be arrested for parading without a permit, but he had to take the risk: he would be of no use to Bobby if he hid in the Gaston.

In ten minutes he reached Birmingham's typical Southern-town business district: department stores, cinemas, civic buildings, and a railway line running through the middle.

George figured out what King's plan was only when he saw it going into operation.

Suddenly Negroes walking alone, or in twos and threes, began to congregate, brandishing placards that they had until now kept hidden. Some sat down, blocking the sidewalk, others knelt to pray on the steps of the massive art deco city hall. Conga lines of hymn-singing teenagers wove in and out of segregated stores. Traffic slowed to a halt.

The police were caught unawares: they were concentrated around Kelly Ingram Park, half a mile away, and the demonstrators had blindsided them. But George felt sure that this air of good-natured protest could last only as long as Bull Connor remained off balance.

As morning turned into afternoon he returned to the Gaston. He found Verena looking worried. “This is great, but it's out of control,” she said. “Our people are trained in nonviolent protest, but thousands of others are just joining in, and they have no discipline.”

“It's increasing the pressure on the Big Mules,” George said.

“But we don't want the governor to declare martial law.” The governor of Alabama was George Wallace, an unyielding segregationist.

“Martial law means federal control,” George pointed out. “Then the president would have to order at least partial integration.”

“If it's forced on the Big Mules from the outside they'll find ways to undermine it. Better that it's their decision.”

Verena was a subtle political thinker, George could tell. No doubt she had learned a lot from King. But he was not sure whether she was right on this point.

He ate a ham sandwich and went out again. The atmosphere around Kelly Ingram Park was now more tense. There were hundreds of police in the park, swinging their nightsticks and restraining their eager dogs. The fire brigade hosed anyone headed downtown. The Negroes, resenting the hoses, began to throw stones and Coke bottles at the police. Verena and others of King's team moved through the crowd, begging people to stay calm and refrain from violence, but they had little effect. A strange white vehicle that people called the Tank drove up and down Sixteenth Street, with Bull Connor bellowing through a loudspeaker: “Disperse! Get off the streets!” It was not a tank, George had been told, but an army surplus armored car Connor had bought.