Time Travelers Never Die (15 page)

An older black man in clerical garb shook their hands. “Welcome, brothers,” he said. And a young woman smiled at them. She was watching two boys, about eight or nine, tossing a ball back and forth.

Shel leaned close to Dave. “Who’d bring kids to something like this?”

A white guy, standing a few feet away beside a post, looked in their direction. He might have been about twenty years old. “Maybe because it means so much,” he said. “Everything’s on the table here.”

“Worth a kid’s life?”

“As things are, these kids don’t have lives.” He moved their way. He was about Shel’s size, compact, with an inner energy that suggested you could trust him. “Anyhow, we’re glad to see you. We need all the help we can get.”

Shel nodded. “My name’s Shelborne. This is Dave Dryden.”

“Josh Myers,” said the stranger. “Good luck. Keep your head down out there.”

“Josh Myers?” Shel examined his features. Hard to tell. “You from Tucson, by any chance?”

The guy’s eyes went wide. “Yes. How’d you know?”

Shel tried to think of an explanation. “Somebody back there”—he gestured toward the chapel—“mentioned you were from there.” He changed the subject: “They’re not serious about marching all the way to Montgomery, are they? It’s sixty miles.”

“No. I think they expect to get arrested before they get very far out of town. If these nitwits don’t shoot us first.” He looked over at a guy across the street who was pointing a rifle in their direction, taking pretend target practice.

Shel tried to look unmoved. “I guess it’s especially dangerous for white people,” he said.

Myers shook his head. “Not really. When it’s over, if we’re still standing, we get to go home. Everybody else has to go on living with it.”

After they’d moved on, Shel asked Dave if he’d recognized Myers. “Sure,” he said. He was the guy who, almost a half century later, would write the definitive history of the second Iraq war,
They Never Threw the Roses
.

 

 

SHEL
had been glad to see whites among the demonstrators. They included a handful of nuns. A couple of ambulances pulled onto the church parking lot. There were already two in front of the building. Medics climbed out. “Where are they from?” Shel asked a man standing next to him.

“They’re volunteers,” he said. “They came in from New York yesterday. They’re setting up inside the parsonage. Just in case.”

“My name’s Shelborne.” Shel put out his hand. “You’re with the marchers?”

“Yes.”

“Good luck.” And, after an awkward moment: “This is Dave.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Shelborne.” He shook the hand. Shook Dave’s. “I’m Harry. Thanks for standing with us.”

Shel felt a charge at that.
“Thanks for standing with us.”
Well, in a way they were. They represented history’s judgment.

“Like hell,” said Dave. “We’re just hanging out. Pretending to be part of this.”

“Hey, why are you getting annoyed with
me
?”

“I’m not a hero; I just play one on TV.”

“C’mon, Dave, relax. At least we’re here.” They introduced themselves to Ralph Abernathy, and when he asked where they were from, Shel wanted to say, “The next millennium. When things will be better.”

And
there
was Rosa Parks, talking to a group of young girls, barely teens.

And Andrew Young. Surrounded by reporters, white and black.

“They all seem upbeat,” said Shel.

“It’s because they don’t know what’s waiting for them.”

“You think it would change anything if they did?”

“Don’t know. I can tell you it would stop me.”

“Me, too,” said Shel.

They wandered among the crowd for the better part of an hour, shaking hands and wishing everyone luck. The demonstrators responded in kind, and Shel felt good. Warm. Respected.

“We’re fakes,” Dave insisted.

“Come on, champ. Loosen up.”

“Look,” Dave said, “there’s Amelia Boynton.”

“Who’s Amelia Boynton?” Shel had never heard the name.

“In a lot of ways, Shel, she was the heart and soul of the movement. She was the lady who wouldn’t let go. Who kept pushing.”

When Shel went over to talk with her, Dave stayed where he was. Amelia smiled. Thanked him for being there. “I know it’s not easy,” she said.

Shel nodded. Wished her luck. Dave’s face was unreadable. Shel was getting a bad feeling.

A guy with a microphone announced they were ready to start. People began forming a line, two abreast. John Lewis issued a brief statement to the reporters. Then they knelt, and Andrew Young led them in prayer.

Two of the nuns passed close. Smiled at Shel. “God bless you,” one of them said.

Somebody else shook Dave’s hand. “Appreciate your being here.” The line began to move. Dave looked at them, looked at Shel. “I don’t like standing aside.”

“I know. Maybe it was a mistake, coming here. Maybe you were right, and we ought to just stay away from this kind of stuff.”

Lewis was up front. In a light trench coat. Hosea Williams walked beside him.

 

 

THE
ambulances, four of them, pulled in behind the marchers, keeping pace. They walked quietly. A few people, watching as they passed, cheered, and some sang.
“People get ready; there’s a train a-comin’.”
But they were joined by only a few isolated voices among the marchers.

They moved along Water Street, out of the black area. Now there were whites waving Confederate flags. And sometimes wielding guns. The few voices went silent.

They turned right at Alabama Street and marched along the river. Shel and Dave followed. Shel wanted to warn them what was coming.

Dave hesitated. Closed his eyes.

“What?” said Shel.

“I can’t deal with this.”

“Okay. Let’s go back.”

Dave showed no indication he’d heard. “I can’t stand here and not do something.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“Yeah, there is.”

“Dave—”

He lurched out into the street. Toward the moving line.

Shel hurried after him, grabbed hold of his arm, tried to talk sense to him. But Dave shook him off.

Several marchers looked in their direction.

“I can’t walk away from this.”

In the line, two elderly women watched them approach. “Dave, don’t be a nitwit. You can’t change anything.”

“Maybe that’s the point.” He crossed the last few feet and got in behind the two women.

Shel backed off and watched him go. Somewhere, a voice said,
“You don’t need no baggage; you just get on board.”

Dave was one of the tallest people in the crowd. He’d make an easy target.

At Broad Street, they turned left onto US 80 and started toward the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

 

 

SHEL
pushed ahead, trying to angle himself so he could keep an eye on Dave. But it was hard to get through the crowd lining the street. Then he became aware of movement behind him. Two men were following him. One was the guy who’d been pretending to pick off people with his rifle. The weapon now was nowhere to be seen. But the other wore a large floppy hat and carried a shotgun.

When their eyes met, the one with the shotgun grinned. “You left your momma back there, didn’t you?”

Shel kept walking.

“Hey,” said his partner, “we asked you a question.”

Shel fingered the converter.

“You
did
ask him a question, didn’t you, Alvin?”

“I don’t think the son of a bitch is friendly, Will.”

“Why don’t we ask him?”

It was enough for Shel. He disconnected the converter from his belt. Hoped they wouldn’t think he was pulling a gun. Set it for the same location, ten minutes earlier.

“You know, you son of a bitch, you come here and make trouble for—”

Shel pressed the button.

 

 

WITH
the extra ten minutes in hand, he had no trouble beating the marchers onto US 80. He was watching when they came out of Alabama Street in a long file and turned toward the bridge. The crowd waved the Stars and Bars and screamed, but the police kept them at a distance.

Dave was about a third of the way back. He kept his eyes straight forward. They all did.

It was a beautiful day, maybe a bit chilly. The sky was clear, and the Alabama River sparkled in the sunlight.

When you walked onto the Pettis Bridge, from either end, you went uphill until you hit the center. So the marchers couldn’t see what lay at the far end of the bridge until they topped the rise in the middle.

Shel told himself Dave was in no real danger. All he had to do was use the converter when things got rough. He could get out of there anytime he wanted. Just as Shel had.

Lewis was still in the lead. And Hosea Williams.

He watched them move onto the bridge. It was a long line of maybe five hundred people in all. They moved in absolute silence, two or three abreast.

Shel tried to follow them, but police stopped him.

The bridge carried four lanes of vehicular traffic and a pair of walkways. Lewis and his people stayed on the north side, on the walkway. Shel knew, though he could not see them, that police cars and state troopers and a mob of deputized citizens were gathered, along with a host of TV cameras, at the eastern end of the bridge. He watched the marchers walking steadily up the incline. Eventually, the head of the line reached the top, where they could see what awaited them. But they never paused.

The line continued forward. Shel focused on Dave and the two women, as they climbed the slope, reached the top, and started down. After a minute or two, they were out of sight.

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

—U. S. GRANT

 

 

 

 

DAVE
had never thought of himself as particularly courageous. He didn’t much like heights, always played it safe, and avoided confrontations whenever possible. Now he was walking with the heroes of Bloody Sunday.

A kid, about eighteen, bounced along beside him. Probably false bravado, but he seemed unfazed by the threats and guns. “Don’t worry about it, man,” he said. “They’ll just throw us in jail for a day or so. It’s what they always do.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Lennie.”

“Lennie, you’ve done this before?”

“Marched? Sure. And hey, they’ll put
you
in the white jail. You’ll have a lot more room tonight than I will.”

Dave was thinking he’d maybe been a bit hasty. He wondered what his chances would be of slipping back into the crowd. But how could he do that in front of Lennie? How could he do that and face Shel, who was still watching him from the safety of the sidelines?

More important, how could he justify it to himself? Well, maybe there was an easy answer to that one: This wasn’t
his
fight.

Screams of rage and obscene gestures followed them through the streets. It didn’t seem to matter that there were children among both the marchers and the bystanders.

They’d watched George Wallace, the Alabama governor, in the video record. He’d made his feelings clear enough about the demonstration. It was a public-safety issue, he’d claimed, and he would not allow it. The impetus for the event had probably been the murder of twenty-seven-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson during a civil rights demonstration in Marion three weeks earlier. But the anger and frustration on both sides had been building for a long time.

The people lining Broad Street strained against the police lines.

 

 

THE
Alabama River was beautiful in the late-morning sunlight. Dave was thinking how he’d like to drop in on Wallace and show him how history would record his name.

They stayed on the pavement as the walkway angled up. Ahead, the front of the line had ascended to the midpoint of the bridge and started down. Dave knew that Lewis and Williams were now able to see the waiting troopers.

Despite what Lennie assumed, there’d be no jail for these people. Broken bones lay ahead. Concussions and tear gas and a lot of blood. Some of the marchers would carry the marks of this day for the rest of their lives.

“I thought they’d stop us before we got out of town,” Lennie said. “I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

They reached the top of the incline, and the troopers became visible. There were three lines of them, maybe a hundred altogether, backed up by local cops on horses. And people behind the cops who were not in uniform. They were Sheriff Jim Clark’s deputies. Drafted thugs.

The troopers carried billy clubs; the deputies had clubs and whips. A state police commander, his bars glittering in the sunlight, stepped forward and held up a hand. His name was John Cloud.

Television crews on the far side pointed their cameras. A couple of reporters were talking into microphones.

 

 

“HOLD
it,” Cloud said. His voice was thin.

Lewis raised a hand, and the people immediately behind him slowed and stopped. Gradually, the entire line came to a halt. “We don’t want any trouble here,” said Cloud. “You have two minutes to break this up and go back.”

Lewis replied. Dave was too far away to make out his words, but he knew what he was saying: “We’d like a moment to pray.”

The commander stared at Lewis. And waited.

Seconds ticked by. Then, apparently forgetting the two-m inute grace period he’d promised, Cloud gave a hand signal and moved back. The troopers and the deputies strode into the marchers, swinging clubs and whips. Tear-gas canisters exploded like gunshots.

Screams erupted, and the onlookers cheered and laughed. The demonstrators scrambled for safety. But there was nowhere to go. More police and deputies moved in from the flank and rear to cut them off. Blows rained down, and people fell into the roadway, their hands over their heads. Some were dragged to their feet and clubbed again.