Free Night on Fire by Ronald Kidd

beyond.
    â€œHey, there’s my dad!” said Grant, pointing.
    I saw Mr. McCall’s car, third in line.
    â€œWhat’s he doing?” I asked.
    â€œWorking on a story. He went downtown after lunch. He didn’t say what it was, but I noticed he didn’t call his photographer. I guess it didn’t seem like a big enough story.”
    â€œI guess he was wrong,” I said.
    Grant glanced down at his camera. A look crossed his face—part happiness, part determination.
    The bus drew near, and I saw what had caused the thumping. The tires were slashed and had gone flat. I knew the bus couldn’t go much farther, and sure enough, right in front of the grocery, it pulled to the side of the road.
    The door popped open, and the driver came stumbling out, with another man right behind him. They hurried across the parking lot and into the grocery, maybe to ask for help. I saw that the cars were pulling over too, parking every which way alongside the road.
    Have you ever stumbled onto a wasps’ nest? I did once when I was little. It was an accident, but the wasps didn’t know that. They were mad.
    That’s what the people reminded me of. They swarmed out of their cars, carrying sticks and clubs and chains. One group gathered along the side of the bus and started rocking it back and forth, trying to turn it over.
    Frightened, I reached back for Grant, but no one was there. I looked around, worried, then spotted him in the crowd. He was taking pictures. I saw Mr. McCall nearby, observing the crowd and scribbling in a little notebook. Father and son were both trying to understand in the ways they knew best.
    I was trying to understand too. These were some of the same people I’d seen on the street and in the grocery store. I’d seen them in church that morning. I was part of them, and they were part of me. It was as if my right arm, without warning, had suddenly started punching.
    There was a crash as a young man broke a bus window with a metal crowbar. Next to him, a teenager gripped a baseball bat, maybe one he had used in a game on Saturday, and smashed another window.
    When the group realized they couldn’t turn over the bus, they started for the door, trying to get inside. A man stood in the opening. He was white and seemed to be a passenger. The group hesitated. The man ducked back in, pulling the door shut behind him. The crowd pounded on it, but apparently the man had locked it.
    â€œYou can’t keep us out!” shouted the young man with the crowbar.
    He broke out the rest of the window, then dropped his crowbar and tried to pull himself up through the jagged opening. Glass cut his hands, but he didn’t stop. Someone reached out through the window and pushed him back. He growled like an animal. His friends gathered behind him, yelling threats—ten, then twenty, then fifty of them.
    I had no doubt who they were threatening. On the other side of the window huddled the Freedom Riders, black and white people traveling together, people Jarmaine had said were trained not to strike back no matter what happened. I wondered if they had ever imagined anything like this.
    Certainly I never had—not in my neighborhood, in front of Forsyth’s Grocery, the store that carried Bunny Bread and baseball cards and all the latest records.
    My gaze swept over the scene and up the hill, where the crowd had parked their cars. I saw a car I hadn’t noticed before. It was a beat-up DeSoto, the one we had bought from our neighbors. Suddenly I got a terrible feeling in my stomach.
    I scanned the crowd and realized for the first time that there were two groups—one beating on the bus and one watching. The watchers milled around, some of them shouting encouragement. Besides men, there were women and children, several still wearing their Sunday best. There was old Mrs. Todd, who shopped at Forsyth’s Grocery. Beside her was Clyde of Clyde’s Hair Heaven. One woman had