Page 166 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"For coming with me. For escaping. I can never tell you enough how grateful I am."

"Good."

The doorbell rang. They looked at one another in puzzlement: they expected no one. Bernd said: "Maybe Heinz left something behind."

Rebecca was mildly annoyed. Her euphoria had been shattered. She put on a robe and went to the door, feeling grumpy.

There stood Walli. He looked thin and smelled ripe. He wore jeans, American baseball shoes, and a grubby shirt--no coat. He was carrying a guitar and nothing else.

"Hello, Rebecca," he said.

Her grumpiness evaporated in a flash. She smiled broadly. "Walli!" she said. "What a wonderful surprise! I'm so happy to see you!"

She stood back and he stepped into the hallway.

"What are you doing here?" she said.

"I've come to live with you," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The most racist city in America was probably Birmingham, Alabama. George Jakes flew there in April 1963.

Last time he came to Alabama, he recalled vividly, they had tried to kill him.

Birmingham was a dirty industrial city, and from the plane it had a delicate rose-pink aura of pollution, like the chiffon scarf around the neck of an old prostitute.

George felt the hostility as he walked through the terminal. He was the only colored man in a suit. He remembered the attack on him and Maria and the Freedom Riders in Anniston, just sixty miles away: the bombs, the baseball bats, the whirling lengths of iron chain, and most of all the faces, twisted and deformed into masks of hatred and madness.

He walked out of the airport, located the taxi stand, and got into the first car in line.

"Get out of the car, boy," said the driver.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I don't drive for no goddamn nigras."

George sighed. He was reluctant to get out. He felt like sitting here in protest. He did not like to make things easy for racists. But he had a job to do in Birmingham, and he could not do it in jail. So he got out.

Standing by the open door, he looked down the line. The car behind had a white driver: he assumed he would get the same treatment again. Then, three cars back, a dark-brown arm came out of the window and waved at him.

He stepped away from the first cab.

"Close the door!" the driver yelled.

George hesitated, then said: "I don't close doors for no goddamn segregationists." It was not a very good line, but it gave him some small satisfaction, and he walked away leaving the door wide open.

He jumped into the cab with the black driver. "I know where you're going," the man said. "Sixteenth Street Baptist Church."

The church was the base of fiery preacher Fred Shuttlesworth. He had founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, after the state courts outlawed the moderate National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Clearly, George thought, any Negro arriving at the airport was assumed to be a civil rights campaigner.

But George was not going to the church. "Take me to the Gaston Motel, please," he said.

"I know the Gaston," said the driver. "I saw Little Stevie Wonder in the lounge there. It's just a block from the church."

It was a hot day and the cab had no air-conditioning. George wound down the window and let the slipstream cool his perspiring skin.

He had been sent by Bobby Kennedy with a message for Martin Luther King. The message was stop pushing, calm things down, end your protests, things are changing. George had a feeling that Dr. King was not going to like it.

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