The Riot

When I woke up on Monday morning, Miz Johnny was already at the house. I had just come out of the bathroom when I saw her coming up the steps. She reached the top of the steps and stood for a moment, framed by the window at the back of the house. She opened the window to the fresh morning air. A breeze wafted in and shafts of light poked through the forest of trees in the backyard. Birds clamored for attention.

Miz Johnny opened the door to Mattie’s room and went inside. I followed her. She gently shook Mattie. Mattie woke up easily and sat up in her bed.

"Miz Mattie, I can’t stay today,” she said.

“That’s all right, Miz Johnny,” she said. “You take care of your business. We’ll be fine. I feel good this morning.” 

“Okay. I made those English biscuits you like and tea and there’s plenty soup in the fridge,” Miz Johnny said. “I don’t want either of you going out today, hear?” 

“We hear you,” Mattie said.

Miz Johnny gave me one of her famous looks that said, you better do what I tell you if you know what’s good for you, and patted Mattie on the hand before she left the room. 

I caught up with her in the kitchen as she was gathering her purse. Miz Johnny was distracted. I knew she was worried about the demonstration. But in spite of all the bad things in the news, it was impossible for me to imagine our little town in danger. 

“Miz Johnny, what’s going to happen today?” I asked.

“People’re going downtown to try to find out what happened to that boy,” she said. “They’re mad as hornets.”

“Is it because of what happened to Charles?” I asked.

“That’s part of it. But not all. These young people today want to be treated better. They want to be treated like white people.” 

“But,” I said, confused. “Colored kids have been coming to white schools and theaters and restaurants now for a few years. Augusta is integrated, Miz Johnny. I don’t understand why they’re mad.” 

“You wouldn’t,” she said, turning to face me. “When my boys were growing up, they went to Miz Lucy Laney’s school. Haines Academy. They got a good education there. Not just book learning, she taught them to be young men. They learned about respect and dignity. Miz Laney cared about them children. And they are both successful men.” She shook her head angrily. “You can keep your integration if this is all the good it’s gonna do. It’s taken away our pride. Now we aren’t separate and we’re not equal either.” 

I wanted to say, “Miz Johnny, it’s not my fault.” But I couldn’t help feeling that somehow it was. And I guess I knew what she meant about the schools. I saw how the black kids in my classes sat to themselves and the teachers hardly ever called on them. And no one crossed those invisible lines that said who could live where in our town. Everyone knew their place and kept to it. Maybe folks were tired of keeping to their places. 

After Miz Johnny left, Mattie came downstairs and had breakfast with me. 

“I’m feeling much better today,” she said. 

Mattie settled down with a book in the sun room, which was just off the living room at the back of the house. I, on the other hand, felt restless. I wondered if I was the only kid who didn’t go to school that day. I wandered around the big quiet house. When I came by the sun room, I saw that Mattie had fallen asleep and her book was resting on her lap. 

Finally about noon the phone rang and I grabbed it quickly. 

“Eli, want to go see what’s happening?” Gretchen asked. 

“I can’t leave,” I said.

“You can. Just tell Mattie you’re coming over here to my house,” she said. “Wolfgang has got the keys to my mom’s car. We can go see what’s going on.” She had said the magic word: Wolfgang. I couldn’t say no.

***

Fifteen minutes later I was waiting on the corner of our deserted street when Wolfgang and Gretchen appeared in their mom’s Falcon. I dove into the back seat and Wolfgang headed toward Broad Street.

“Wolfie knows a guy who lives down there by Green’s.”

Green’s was the department store on Broad Street. It was where black people had staged a sit-in a few years back. That was when there were still restrooms and water fountains that were marked “colored only” but I could barely remember that time. As we drove down those ordinary streets, I noticed the white flowered dogwoods waving their spindly branches. We didn’t see much in the way of human activity until we got near the municipal building and we looked down a side street. Then we saw what looked like thousands of black folks converging on Greene Street. None of us said a word. 

Wolfgang parked the car, and the three of us got out and started cautiously walking toward the crowd. It was like a magnet pulling us. We were three white kids. Maybe they wouldn’t want us at their demonstration, but that didn’t stop us from wandering along the side street to where they had gathered. 

“Holy shit,” Gretchen whispered when we got to the back of the crowd. A thin young woman with the heels of her shoes crumpled under her feet turned and looked at us suspiciously but most folks directed their attention toward the building where a tall man stood on the steps and talked to the crowd through a bullhorn. It was hard to understand what he was saying. 

“They better get out here and tell us something real,” a guy with a thick ‘fro said in a disgusted voice. 

I glanced above the crowd. Policemen stood at the windows of the building pointing guns down at the speaker and at people in the crowd. Why did they need guns? Couldn’t they just let the people talk? Then the state flag started to flop in the air. A group of people at the bottom of the flagpole were ripping it down. I couldn’t see what happened to it, but smoke trailed above the spot and I wondered if they were burning it. Wolfgang tapped me on the shoulder. His thick eyebrows were tight over his eyes. 

“We got to get outta here,” he said quietly. 

I followed him and Gretchen back down the side street. Behind us we heard people shouting, and something loud hit a wall. I turned around to see a garbage can rolling into the street, spilling its contents of papers, cans and chicken bones onto the black tar. 

The guy Wolfgang knew lived just a block away right on Broad Street in an upstairs apartment. We walked fast and scared. 

“Did you see those pigs with guns?” Gretchen asked as we stepped into the hallway behind Wolfgang. “They want to shoot those people.” 

“They’re just trying to scare them,” I said. “You can’t shoot unarmed people.” 

Gretchen looked at me like I was stupid, and I knew it was a stupid thing to say. Four college kids had just been killed. But still, it couldn’t happen again. Not here. This was Augusta, city of gentility, famous for Woodrow Wilson and golf courses. 

We climbed up the narrow steps to Wolfgang’s friend’s apartment. I had never been in one of the apartments over the businesses downtown. It belonged to a guy named Pete, who had already graduated from high school. The apartment smelled like fresh paint. The only furniture in the living room was a big unfinished spool table, a couple of bean bag chairs and an RCA color console television squatting on four legs in the corner of the room.

Pete had three beers in his refrigerator. I didn’t care for the taste of beer, but today seemed like a good day for beer if I were ever going to drink it, so Gretchen and I said we’d split one.

I had just taken a sip of the harsh yellow brew when we heard a loud crash and then yelling outside in the street. We crowded around the window. Down below people were throwing rocks at plate glass windows and at cars. Garbage cans flew like drunk pigeons and careened off the tops of cars. I couldn’t help feeling like I was watching one of Mattie’s operas on a very big stage. I expected someone to stop and sing an aria at any moment.

Wolfgang’s body next to mine was warm and smelled like cigarettes. Gretchen giggled nervously and turned to me with bug-eyes. 

“Do you believe this shit?” she asked. 

I shook my head and turned my gaze back to the throngs of people running in all directions, zigzagging along Broad Street. Some of them carried bricks. Others just picked up whatever happened to be available. I watched a boy in blue jeans and a black t-shirt. He looked to be about twelve or thirteen. His arms were wiry and he buzzed around crazily. He had a piece of charred red cloth draped over his chest like a Miss America banner. 

“The flag,” Wolfgang said. 

“What?” I asked. 

“He’s wearing a piece of the flag,” he said. 

“I thought they burned it,” Gretchen said. 

“Not all of it, I guess,” I chimed in. The Georgia flag didn’t mean a whole lot to me. Mattie and her friends said that our governor, Lester Maddox, was a bonafide bigot. 

The mayor got on the TV last week and said we didn’t have no race problems,” Pete said with a laugh. “I guess he’s eating some roast crow about now.” 

The boy with the piece of flag looked up, and for a second I glimpsed his face. His eyes were lit with an inward fire. There was something joyous in it. 

“Oh shit,” Pete said and pointed down the street. 

A swarm of people had surrounded a car and began to shake it. 

“Is someone inside?” Gretchen asked. We couldn’t tell. 

“Dang, man, they’re going to tump it over,” Pete said. 

And they did. They tumped that car on its top and it looked like a rolled over bug. I felt a nervous thrill. The excitement of the crowd gripped us. I took a swig of the nasty-tasting beer to try to steady my sizzling nerves. Gretchen pried the can from my hand and drank also. 

“Don’t get drunk,” Wolfgang warned us. 

“On one can?” Gretchen scoffed. 

I wasn’t worried about getting drunk. I felt as if I were in a shower of emotions, each one rushing after the other. I was scared, happy, appalled, worried and ashamed to name just a few. In the corner Pete’s television was on with no sound. I occasionally glanced over at it and the effect was surreal as I watched the images of a smiling woman holding a bottle of Ivory dishwashing soap, showing off her young-looking hands, and then turned to see the chaos in the street below. Cars blazed, people ran through the streets carrying clothes, toasters, food and whatever they could get out of the stores, and shards of glass gleamed on the sidewalks. 

“We could go get some records, Eli,” Gretchen said. “I want the Led Zeppelin album.” 

“Shut up,” Wolfgang said. 

“I was just kidding,” she answered, chagrined. 

In all the excitement I had forgotten about Mattie, but suddenly I felt a tightening in my chest as if my heart were a clenched fist. What if they got to our house? Would she be okay? 

“Can we go back home soon?” I asked. 

Wolfgang shook his head. “Not for a while.” 

And so we waited. By late afternoon the rioters had moved to other parts of town, but we were still afraid to leave. We sat at Pete’s spool table and watched the news when it came on. Augusta got a brief mention. The governor, they said, would be calling in the National Guardsmen—the same guys who killed those college kids. I didn’t know how you were supposed to handle riots and demonstrations, but shooting people didn’t seem to be the way to do it. Surely they would not do that again. 

I looked over at Gretchen. Her hands were trembling. Wolfgang reached over and placed his own hands on top of hers. He had small hands for a guy but they were beautiful. Mixed into this crazy day was my dumbfounded admiration for everything about him. 

“Well, frauleins, now you’ve seen a real riot,” he said. 

“I need to get home,” I said. “Mattie’s going to be worried. And I’m worried about her.” 

Wolfgang agreed. We stood up. Wolfgang thanked Pete for letting us hang out. 

“No problem, man. Anytime the niggers go crazy you can come up here and watch,” he said. That was a dangerous word, I thought, and Pete was too stupid to know it even after all we’d seen. 

We came out of the doorway onto the sidewalk. The smell of gasoline and smoke hung in the air. The windows of the department store were shattered. A mannequin tilted to her side like a petrified woman, still smiling though the clothes had been ripped off her. I could see a few shadowy figures slowly wandering through the debris inside. I suddenly had a terrified thought. The Opera House! It was only a block away.  

I started running down the street. The trees in the park looked steadfastly on. 

“Wait, Eli!” Gretchen shouted. 

“The Opera House,” I said over my shoulder. She and Wolfgang trotted after me. 

Panting I stopped short across the street from the old building. Beside it, the ladies’ clothing store was nothing but naked mannequins amid piles of clothes and shattered glass. But the Southern Opera Guild stood untouched. In a chair in front sat Curtis, the janitor, wearing his old hat and holding a shotgun across his lap. He lifted a pint bottle to his lips and drank. When he saw me, he raised the bottle as if to say, “Cheers.” 

“Come on, Eli,” Wolfgang said. “We must go.” 

We walked quickly over the glass, which crunched beneath our feet, to find the car. We all breathed with relief when we saw the old dented Falcon had not been torched. 

Wolfgang took a side street to Greene Street. We turned north, and headed back up to the Hill. As the light bled from the sky, we passed random groups of people roaming the street. Wolfgang didn’t stop for stop signs, but at one intersection there was a barricade of debris—old couches, pieces of wood and boxes piled up with some teenaged kids tossing gasoline on it and getting ready to light a bonfire. 

“I don’t like the look of this,” I said. 

“Me either,” Wolfgang agreed. 

“Turn around, Wolfie,” Gretchen said in a pleading voice. Just then the kids noticed us. They turned as one and grabbed sticks, bats, anything they could find and started running toward us. Wolfgang threw the car in reverse and then turned his head around to look out the back window. He drove backwards fast. A brick flew toward the car and busted out one of the headlights. Wolfgang didn’t stop. He backed onto the sidewalk and turned the car in the other direction and hauled ass. We heard something hit the trunk but we kept going. 

“Oh, God, Mom is going to kill us,” Gretchen said. 

“If the rioters don’t kill us first,” Wolfgang said. 

A car in front of us was on fire. Bright yellow like the sun as if Apollo’s chariot were an old Chevrolet, the flames swarmed underneath the car and wrapped orange arms around its sides, filling the interior. The smoke that billowed from the flames was thick and black like rubber and seemed too heavy to float into the sky. 

The once quiet streets of my town were filled with sounds. Screams, laughter, shouts, glass breaking and then suddenly an explosion about a block away. A building, a gas station, lit up the black sky. I was terrified. All of us were. Even Wolfgang’s unflappable exterior was showing cracks. 

“What do we do?” Gretchen whimpered. We were stranded down in that part of town that belonged to Augusta’s black folks. It was filled with restaurants offering hamburgers for a quarter, fried chicken, sweet potato pie and other things to eat. There was a bank, a theater, a billiards parlor, some nightclubs and a shoe repair shop where Miz Johnny always took our shoes when they needed mending, and outside there was a little stand for shoe shines, where a teenage boy shamed men into getting their shoes shined. I had walked these streets carelessly my whole life, feeling a kinship with the people who worked in the businesses, the lady at the bakery who always gave me a sugar cookie for a cent, the man at the Penny Savings bank who smiled at me and asked if I wanted to open an account when I came in with Miz Johnny to do her errands. This part of town was originally settled by free blacks back in slave days, and Miz Johnny said it was the heart of the city. Now it looked and sounded like a war zone, as if the havoc we were creating in a small country on the other side of the planet had traveled the molten layers of the earth’s core and erupted here in the midst of our tranquility. 

We’d lost the marauding kids who had chased us with bats and pipes, but we had no idea how to get out of the area. Ahead of us was the burning car, and behind us the crowds ready to set their torches to us. The smell of smoke, of burning tires, lacquered my throat. 

Wolfgang looked down the side streets, confused, not knowing which way to go. Gretchen and I were squeezed next to him in the front seat. I chewed my lip, looking for help when suddenly I saw the twin towers of the Tabernacle Baptist church and I knew that we might be saved though not in the sense that the Baptists usually meant that word. 

“Turn down here,” I said just as Wolfgang had edged the car forward. He didn’t stop to ask me why, just cut the wheel sharply to the right. 

“That church,” I said. “Go park in the parking lot. Miz Johnny lives about two streets down. We can cut through the yards and get there. The car’ll be safe in the church lot.” 

Wolfgang obviously didn’t have a plan of his own, so he crept along the street to the big church. He pulled to the very back of the lot and shut off the car. 

“Maybe we should just stay here,” Gretchen said. 

“We can’t,” Wolfgang said. “Someone’s gonna see us if we stay here.” 

From the car we could see flames tearing down the walls of a building down the street. I couldn’t even remember what used to be there. 

“Okay, then we go,” Wolfgang said. “I hope you know where you’re going, Eli.” 

I hoped so, too. I couldn’t stop shaking from fear and, yes, from excitement, too. It was like an electric current running through the city and if you got close to it, it leapt inside your skin and jittered your bones. We dashed around the back of the church through the bushes and into a backyard. The house in front of us was dark. A dog in the yard next door started barking at us, but dogs everywhere were barking so we paid it no mind. 

“Which way?” Wolfgang whispered. 

I wasn’t really sure. I knew Miz Johnny’s house was either on this street or the next one. We slid along the side of the house and came to the front. We could see the main road from where we were. 

“Her house is across the street,” I whispered. A car filled with men hanging out of the windows, yelling and throwing bottles, passed along the main street. A siren shrieked. Gretchen and I jumped. Crossing the street seemed perilous. Then we heard them, the crowd running along Gwinnet Street. There were curses and yelling and things banging. We shrank back into the shadows of the house. 

“What do we do?” I asked. 

“Just wait,” Wolfgang muttered. 

In a few moments we could see a throng of maybe thirty or forty people running along the street. Some of them carried things they had taken from stores. A few people were just watching with wide eyes. Then there was a scream: “Police coming!” A moment later, we heard the police car squealing down the side street where we were hiding. It pulled to the stop sign and a man got out of the passenger side of the car. The crowd yelled at him from a distance. He lifted a shotgun to his shoulder. Most of the people turned and ran when they saw the gun. Then a flash erupted from the gun. The explosion echoed against the houses and the people ran helter skelter screaming. The sound was terrible. I closed my eyes and felt Gretchen’s fingernails digging into my arms and hot tears of fright swelling against my eyelids. When I opened my eyes again, the police car was speeding down the street. 

“Ach du sheisse,” Wolfgang whispered. 

“No, God, no,” a man wailed as he stood over a lump in the street. “They killed my brother! God, please, no.” 

My lungs felt as if they’d been singed and my legs were like noodles. We stood unable to move, unable to breathe, the shock of what had just happened like nails in our hearts. 

Then I realized we had to move. We had to forget the lump lying in the street, and we had to get to safety. 

“Come on,” I said. I ran across the street with Wolfgang and Gretchen following. Instinct took me to Miz Johnny’s dark porch. I flew up the porch steps and banged on the door. 

“Who’s that?” Miz Johnny asked from the other side of the door. 

“It’s me, Miz Johnny. It’s Eli. Let us in. Please let us in.” 

The door swung open, and Miz Johnny wrapped her fingers around my arm, pulling me inside. Wolfgang and Gretchen stumbled in after me. She slammed the door shut behind us and locked it with a deadbolt. 

“What in the name of Jesus are you all doing out in this mess?” she asked. She was close to screaming. I had never before heard her say Jesus’ name except after the word “praise.” “Eli Burnes, you have pulled some stunts in your time, but this is . . .” She was at a loss for words. She had her hands on her hips and her eyes looked like they were full of jet fuel. “I oughta slap you upside your head.” 

“I’m sorry, Miz Johnny,” I said. “I didn’t think we’d get caught in it.” 

“It’s my fault,” Wolfgang said. “We wanted to know what was going on.” 

“Who are you?” 

“This is Gretchen’s brother, Miz Johnny. We didn’t mean to do anything bad,” I said. 

“You’re lucky you ain’t dead,” she said. “Who’s looking after Miz Mattie?” 

I looked down at the rag rug on her pristine floor.  

“And she sick?” Miz Johnny waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, she turned around and went to the kitchen where she had a phone on the wall. She picked it up and started dialing. 

“Miz Mattie? You okay?” she asked. “Good. I’m glad you got someone there with you. Eli is over here. Yep. Don’t worry. She’s okay. I’ll take care of her tonight. Yes’m, I heard the governor has called in the National Guard.” 

After Miz Johnny hung up, she pointed at Wolfgang and said, “You’ll sleep on the couch. These two girls can sleep in my boys’ old room.” 

“Is Mattie okay?” I asked guiltily. 

“Carl’s over there with her. She’s all right.” 

Next Wolfgang called his father and offered some sort of explanation in German. Gretchen shrugged her shoulders. She might get grounded for a week but then it would blow over. I could tell she thought it was worth it. I didn’t regret coming out either. This was my city, and in some confused way, these were my people. At least they were now. I knew I could never be on the side of the ones who shot them down. 

Wolfgang took off his shoes and stretched out on the couch under an afghan. Gretchen and I got the twin beds where Miz Johnny’s sons used to sleep. It took a long time for us to fall asleep but eventually we did, our dreams punctuated by the sound of sirens.

***

When morning arrived, there were state troopers and National Guardsmen stationed at just about every corner. They stood posted by their cars, holding shotguns. The street where the man had been shot the night before was empty. But we stopped and looked at the road. A dark spot like a giant amoeba was all that was left. The air smelled sour with smoke and wet ruins. A firetruck was parked down the street, and we came upon some firemen standing on the broken walls of a still burning building. Their hoses sprayed over the black bricks in a rainbow arch. We drove home silently. A police car passed us, its single red light on top pulsing for no reason. A shotgun hung out the window. It made me feel sick. 

Our world was scarred, and we felt a stupefied grief. 

Wolfgang pulled in front of my house. My neighborhood didn’t look much different. Some trash scattered around the yards, but nothing like what Miz Johnny’s neighborhood looked like. 

I walked in the house. On the living room couch, I saw Carl sleeping underneath a quilt. Mattie was in the kitchen, fixing tea. 

“How are you feeling?” I asked. 

“Better. Are you all right? You know you shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “If I’d realized where you were I would have been worried to death. I thought you were at Gretchen’s.” 

“I’m sorry,” I said. I wanted to talk to her about the man who was killed, but it was so good to see her up and dressed that I didn’t want to say anything that might upset her. She seemed unaware of what I had seen and heard.

The news came later that day. Six black men had been killed by police in the riot. Six of them. And lots of people were injured. Two of the dead had been looting. Three were by-standers. No one knew why the sixth one was killed.