Page 19 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"That's nice. I'm George Jakes."

"Cora Jones. Mrs. Jones. My daughter's baby is due in a week."

"Her first?"

"Third."

"Well, you seem too young to be a grandmother, if you don't mind my saying so."

She purred a little. "I'm forty-nine years old."

"I would never have guessed that!"

A Greyhound coming in the opposite direction flashed its lights, and the Riders' bus slowed to a halt. A white man came to the driver's window and George heard him say: "There's a crowd gathered at the bus station in Anniston." The driver said something in reply that George could not hear. "Just be careful," said the man at the window.

The bus pulled away.

"What does that mean, a crowd?" said Maria anxiously. "It could be twenty people or a thousand. They could be a welcoming committee or an angry mob. Why didn't he tell us more?"

George guessed her irritation masked fear.

He recalled his mother's words: "I'm just so afraid they'll kill you." Some people in the movement said they were ready to die in the cause of freedom. George was not sure he was willing to be a martyr. There were too many other things he wanted to do; like maybe sleep with Maria.

A minute later they entered Anniston, a small town like any other in the South: low buildings, streets in a grid, dusty and hot. The roadside was lined with people as if for a parade. Many were dressed up, the women in hats, the children scrubbed, no doubt having been to church. "What are they expecting to see, people with horns?" George said. "Here we are, folks, real Northern Negroes, wearing shoes and all." He spoke as if addressing them, although only Maria could hear. "We've come to take away your guns and teach you Communism. Where do the white girls go swimming?"

Maria giggled. "If they could hear you, they wouldn't know you were joking."

He wasn't really joking, it was more like whistling past the graveyard. He was trying to ignore the spasm of fear in his guts.

The bus turned into the station, which was strangely deserted. The buildings looked shut up and locked. To George it felt creepy.

The driver opened the door of the bus.

George did not see where the mob came from. Suddenly they were all around the bus. They were white men, some in work clothes, others in Sunday suits. They carried baseball bats, metal pipes, and lengths of iron chain. And they were screaming. Most of it was inchoate, but George heard some words of hate, including Sieg heil!

George stood up, his first impulse to close the bus door; but the two men Maria had identified as state troopers were faster, and they slammed it shut. Perhaps they are here to defend us, George thought; or maybe they're just defending themselves.

He looked through the windows all around him. There were no police outside. How could the local police not know that an armed mob had gathered at the bus station? They had to be in collusion with the Klan. No surprise there.

A second later the men attacked the bus with their weapons. There was a frightening cacophony as chains and crowbars dented the bodywork. Glass shattered, and Mrs. Jones screamed. The driver started the bus, but one of the mob lay down in front of it. George thought the driver might just roll over the man, but he stopped.

A rock came through the window, smashing it, and George felt a sharp pain in his cheek like a bee sting. He had been hit by a flying shard. Maria was sitting by a window: she was in danger. George grabbed her arm, pulling her toward him. "Kneel down in the aisle!" he shouted.

A grinning man wearing knuckle-dusters put his fist through the window next to Mrs. Jones. "Get down here with me!" Maria shouted, and she pulled Mrs. Jones down next to her and wrapped her arms protectively around the older woman.

The yelling got louder. "Communists!" they screamed. "Cowards!"

Maria said: "Duck, George!"

George could not bring himself to cower before these hooligans.

Suddenly the noise diminished. The banging on the bus sides stopped and there was no more breaking glass. George spotted a police officer.

About time, he thought.

The cop was swinging a nightstick but talking amiably to the grinning man with the knuckle-dusters.

Then George saw three more cops. They had calmed the crowd but, to George's indignation, they were doing no more. They acted as if no crime had been committed. They chatted casually to the rioters, who seemed to be their friends.

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