Four Spirits (20 page)

TJ KNEW HOW TO HUNT THROUGH RUBBLE. HIS HANDS
found the bricks, checked their perimeters—what could be disturbed, what could cause a landslide if it were disturbed. He heard the sound of the explosion over and over: the cracking and falling, the destruction of walls, the spew of bricks, the shattering of plaster and glass, but he cocked his ear to the whimpering. There was life. Where there was whimpering, that small sound under the exploding screams, that was the sound of the trapped. He lifted a chunk of plaster, heavy, sharp edged. He couldn't see much. Already he was creating a pile in a bare spot, an accumulation of lifted objects. He could hear people digging frantically, perhaps covering up someone else as they tried to help. A cloud of dust scratched his eyes. Might as well close his eyes, dig by feel and sound. He believed the church had become a heap of rubble, but here was a broken table leg, a nice leg, turned and grooved, and the foot of it splintered off. Sometimes the dust would settle a moment, and he could see a great slide of debris, a child with blood on her face, yowling but attended by an adult biting his own lips.

He couldn't stand that—not a hurt child. His mind flew to Korea, the child like a crisp of toast down in the ditch. Not that—and his mind leapt back to now, to his wife, how he had embraced her the very split second after the blast, how he had taken her soft body, safe, yes,
safe,
pliant and soft, her large breasts, her soft abdomen, there were her swelling buttocks—Agnes, her body melded with him in that moment; closer to him then than in the most perfect synchrony of dancing or the merging of coupling.

Though the church burst, they found themselves yet alive! Only that. Standing, before the pew where they had been sitting. Together and alive, in the sanctuary, full of shrieks and smoke. Survivors! As after gunfire in Korea, he sensed the safety of the place where he stood. His soft wife, all loving in his arms. His wife, his precious dream of what life was.

And then, in the surety of her safety, TJ had felt his duty to release her. He must help. There would be no collapse of earth under her feet, and now it was for him, as a soldier, to give aid. Yes, he would scavenge for life in the broken wreckage. People had died; he could not doubt that. And people would have survived; from the perimeter he traveled through zones of disaster toward the wounded and the dead.

He saw the injured moving in a dust cloud, their faces frozen in the distort of howl. Inside his trouser pocket, his finger closed on his clean handkerchief, folded into quarters, ready to be a compress against the gashed forearm. He took the young person's hand and showed how to hold the press against the bleeding.

Through a gap in the roiling smoke he saw the out-of-doors. A wall had been blown away. This sliding debris under his moving feet was leading him downward.

Here was a deacon, his dark suit powdered white, thumping the back of a little girl doubled up in hysterical coughing. “Take her outside into the air,” TJ said.

(So, he realized, he must already have left Agnes, turned from her, already preoccupied with his next mission. How could he have left her? Only instinctively; it could not have been a decision. He would have released her and turned not decisively but instinctively, using his preinstructed body without further thought, as surely as he made a turn in dancing, or lifted a suitcase, his body having precalculated its probable weight, in the hotel lobby.)

TJ's fingers were removing the paisley tie of the man standing beside him. At TJ's feet lay a man with his head resting on three bricks still mortared together; his pant leg was torn away and the femoral blood surging out. TJ applied the paisley tie as a tourniquet. Beyond the torn leg, to the left of his focusing, there was a worse horror.

TJ's gorge rose; skin had been charred, a small charred body. A child's shoe. A shoe.

Now TJ screamed. Now his voice joined the chorus of grief, horror, grief, outrage.

Was this what they had caused when they had answered the call in August, marched on Washington? He had been a part of the multitude gathered around the reflecting pools, the rectangles reflecting the sky, King's voice reflecting their hearts: “I have a dream, I have a dream, I have a dream when my four little children…not for the color of their skin but for the content of their character….”

I live a nightmare, I live a nightmare
. Now he was bending, lifting with his back, not his legs, forgetting his training, bending, his hands becoming paws, digging like a dog.

But he had held Agnes. His softly yielding Agnes. Raised Catholic (“Hail Mary, full of grace,” that was what she said), and she had come to this Baptist place with him, after he went to Washington. Agnes had come to please him, because this church was a center for the struggle, because last May he had watched the children stream down the steps from this church speaking of nonviolence. Because he had to get into the heart of that idea before he killed somebody again. Killed somebody in his own country.

He knew what he could not face: the eyes of the parents of dead children. But he could dig. Dig with his bare hands. Dig for buried bone and blood-wet flesh.

WHEN CHRISTINE LOOKED AROUND THE FINE CHURCH, SHE
had felt out of place and awed by the beautiful pews and carpets, the radiant stained-glass pictures. At Gloria's suggestion, they'd come early to get settled. They would watch the people congregate. In comparison, Christine's Bethel Church seemed small and drab, but Christine told herself that the Holy Spirit didn't care where he dwelt. Then she thought of Reverend Shuttlesworth and how the spirit came into him at Bethel and through him to her. That was what counted.

Gloria showed her the bulletin and whispered quietly about the worship service.

“It has eight parts,” Gloria explained, “including the musical prelude and postlude.” She put her finger on some boldface printing. “This is for the responsive reading.” Gloria had chosen a good spot for them, not too close to the pulpit, not so far back you couldn't feel like a part. “He usually says something to make everybody smile about here,” Gloria said, pointing her finger to the page. “And—”

Christine and Gloria reeled from the blast. They sprang to their feet, bodies shaking and trembling. The congregation erupted in screams. “Thank the Lord, thank the Lord!” Christine screamed not because she was alive but because her babies were safe. Little Honey, Diane, and Eddie; her children were at their own humble Sunday school, not this rich place. Terrified, she and Gloria grabbed each other and sobbed and shrieked. Others rushed from the pews.

Bombed! Bombed in church! For nothing. For worshiping God. Christine
howled for revenge. All the oppression of her life—her rage blew out the circuits of her mind. She seemed molten with hatred, but she clung to her friend and wept. Christine felt useless, immobile, devastated with hysteria.
Not safe in church
.

She sobbed with shame, boiled with hatred. No safe place. She wept with shame.
They
allowed no sanctity, no sacred place. And she? The force of hate left her mindless. Helpless. Bound to the shame of her own helplessness. Raped again, made helpless. She lost her mind with it. All she could do was cling to Gloria, hurting Gloria with the desperation of her clenching fingers. Christine could only clutch harder and harder until she felt the force of Gloria's own fingers squeezing back. But Gloria was not clinching out of terror.

As desperately as you need me
, Gloria's hands meant,
so will I return your grasp
. Gloria's replying grasp was full of calm.

 

I AM NOT AFRAID,
Gloria thought.
Here am I
.

Billows of dust came toward them, passed through them, passed on, and then Gloria saw, as she held Christine, that they yet stood in the place she had selected just before the explosion. Behind her, presiding high over the violated church, stood the full, stained-glass figure of Christ, faceless. Instead of Christ's face, a blank opened to the sky.

Christ's face, only his face, blown out. Gloria pressed Christine to her bosom, held her as tightly as she could. If they bombed again, she would save Christine, protect her with her own body.

No convulsion followed, except convulsions of screaming and fear.

Through the empty face of Christ, Gloria saw her world—a bit of treetop against blue.

What did it mean that God had let the face of his only begotten Son be destroyed? Where was the hand of God when it failed to protect his home and his worshipers from hate? Sunlight continued to pass, indifferently, through the stained glass still standing in the windows. Stained purple, the light caught the motes of dust that clogged the air, and purpled them.

“I'm going to be sick,” Christine said, and her vomit splashed onto the polished wooden back of the pew. She sat down weakly. “I hate them so much, it's killing me.” Christine put her arm on the back of the pew, leaned her face into the crook of her arm and sobbed.

Gloria let her be. Floured with plaster dust, Christine seemed shrouded. Over her navy blue suit, her skin, her hair, had been thrown a veil of powder. As Christine sobbed, dust rose from her shoulders. The wailing of the broader misery, police sirens, someone shouting orders washed over them, and every moment they breathed the dust and the odor of something broken open that should have been kept sealed.

AFTER SHE FOUND HER WAY OUT OF THE CHURCH, AGNES
stood on the street with hundreds of others. These were her neighbors, some of them. Many of them were strangers, but familiar in their Sunday-best dresses and heels, their suits and ties. Here were ambulances, police. A few white faces looking at what white had done.

Agnes saw her husband working in the debris. TJ was pointing out a spot to the white men. TJ was telling them what to do, working with them. He had forgotten his own black skin, their paleness.

When the woman next to her began to sob, Agnes reached out and drew the strange woman to her bosom.

A stretcher was carried into the rubble.

Agnes saw charred flesh. Unmoving flesh. Someone small. Poor naked body. Someone young.

Then Agnes saw a head. All alone. A child's head blasted from her body. And Agnes fainted.

She felt her knees hit the pavement, and she was gone.

“TAKE THE CHILDREN HOME,” LIONEL PARRISH TOLD
Jenny. “They're needing help over there. No need for the children to see.”

“Y'all come with me,” Jenny said. She took the hands of her daughters. “Andy, you and George hold their other hands.”

As though they'd forgotten something at home, Jenny turned the children around on the sidewalk. The boys had to step on the grass because the walk wasn't wide enough to hold them all. Jenny glanced at the trees, saw their leaves were still coated with tired dust. Whatever had happened back there at Sixteenth Street Baptist, this world was the same here, a block or two away. Everybody else was running toward the church. They shrieked and the ambulance sirens and police cars screamed down the street.

“I want to help,” George said.

“Your daddy say we all to go home. Can't no child help with this.”

“I'm going to,” George said, and he dropped Vicky's hand and ran.

“George!” Jenny shrieked, and her voice was like a bullet that stopped him dead in his tracks.

George turned and came back, but his cheeks were streaked with tears.

Jenny reached out her hand, and with the thumb of her white glove, she smeared away his tears.

“These just the first,” Jenny said. “Gonna be many a tear before this day forgot. Come on now, baby, like your daddy said.”

They walked on, Jenny thinking
I don't like turning my back on this
.

When they passed their parked car, George said, “Mama, ain't you gonna drive us?”

“You know I not ever learned to drive.”

“Why not?” Vicky asked.

“We leave the car here for your daddy,” Jenny said. “It be waiting when he ready to come home.”

It would be a long walk in Sunday pumps. Buses hardly ran on Sunday. Already her right foot was kicking the left foot.