Page 35 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Hugo took a step back. "You had no business going to Alabama."

"And you had no business pretending to be a civil rights activist when all the time you were spying for the other side. Who was paying you, the Ku Klux Klan?"

Hugo lifted his chin defensively, and George wanted to punch it. "I volunteered to give information to the FBI," Hugo said.

"So you did it without pay! I don't know whether that makes it better or worse."

"But I won't be a volunteer much longer. I start work for the Bureau next week." He said it in the half-embarrassed, half-defiant tone of someone admitting that he belongs to a religious sect.

"You were such a good snitch that they gave you a job."

"I always wanted to work in law enforcement."

"That's not what you were doing in Anniston. You were on the side of the criminals there."

"You people are Communists. I've heard you talking about Karl Marx."

"And Hegel, and Voltaire, and Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. Come on, Hugo, even you aren't that stupid."

"I hate disorder."

And that was the problem, George reflected bitterly. People hated disorder. Press coverage had blamed the Riders for stirring up trouble, not the segregationists with their baseball bats and their bombs. It drove him mad with frustration: did no one in America think about what was right?

Across the grass he spotted Verena Marquand, waving at him. He abruptly lost interest in Joseph Hugo.

Verena was graduating from the English Department. However, there were so few people of color at Harvard that they all knew one another. And she was so gorgeous that he would have noticed her if she had been one of a thousand colored girls at Harvard. She had green eyes and skin the color of toffee ice cream. Under her robe she was wearing a green dress with a short skirt that showed off long smooth legs. The mortarboard was perched on her head at a cute angle. She was dynamite.

People said she and George were a good match, but they had never dated. Whenever he had been unattached, she had been in a relationship, and vice versa. Now it was too late.

Verena was an ardent civil rights campaigner, and was going to work for Martin Luther King in Atlanta after graduation. Now she said enthusiastically: "You really started something with that Freedom Ride!"

It was true. After the firebombing at Anniston, George had left Alabama by plane with his arm in plaster; but others had taken up the challenge. Ten students from Nashville had caught a bus to Birmingham, where they had been arrested. New Riders had replaced the first group. There had been more mob violence by white racists. Freedom Riding had become a mass movement.

"But I lost my job," George said.

"Come to Atlanta and work for King," Verena said immediately.

George was startled. "Did he tell you to ask me?"

"No, but he needs a lawyer, and no one half as bright as you has applied."

George was intrigued. He had almost fallen in love with Maria Summers, but he would do well to forget her: he would probably never see her again. He wondered whether Verena would go out with him if they were both working for King. "That's an idea," he said. But he wanted to think about it.

He changed the subject. "Are your folks here today?"

"Of course, come and meet them."

Verena's parents were celebrity supporters of Kennedy. George was hoping they would now come out and criticize the president for his feeble reaction to segregationist violence. Perhaps George and Verena together could persuade them to make a public statement. That would do a lot to ease the pain of his arm.

He walked across the lawn beside Verena.

"Mom, Dad, this is my friend George Jakes," said Verena.

Her parents were a tall, well-dressed black man and a white woman with an elaborate blond coiffure. George had seen their photographs many times: they were a famous interracial couple. Percy Marquand was "the Negro Bing Crosby," a movie star as well as a smooth crooner. Babe Lee was a theater actress specializing in gutsy female roles.

Percy spoke in a warm baritone familiar from a dozen hit records. "Mr. Jakes, down there in Alabama you took that broken arm for all of us. I'm honored to shake your hand."

"Thank you, sir, but please call me George."

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