Bill Morris - Motor City Burning

It sounded like a canned defense, but she didn’t press him. “I’m sorry, Frank. I shouldn’t pry. . ”

“You don’t got to apologize. I should apologize for getting drunk and running my mouth. What a lightweight. I appreciate your interest, Cecelia, I really do. It’s just that I can’t talk about cases I’m working on.”

“I understand.”

“Believe me, I’d love nothing better than to be able to talk to you about some of the things I see every day.” Saying the words made him realize how much he valued his late-night talks with his father. He couldn’t imagine life without them.

She rested her head on his shoulder and they went back to watching the traffic. When the sun came to rest on the roof of the library, she said, “I promise I won’t ask you about work anymore. But if you ever need to talk about it, you just go ahead and talk.” Then she took his chin between her thumb and forefinger and kissed him, her tongue skating along his lips. The world went away for both of them then, and by the time it came back the sun had disappeared behind the library and the museum was closed and they were all alone on the cooling white marble steps.

They made love in her bed, beginning in the soft, washed-out light of dusk and continuing as the moon came up out of the river and filled the room with hard white light and wine-colored shadows. His tongue was on fire. It traveled over every inch of her, along the creases behind her ears, over the bumps of her vertebrae, across the hot patches behind her knees, up between her legs. Sweat and frenzy followed by cooling and calm, then building right back up, again and again.

She awoke at dawn with her jaw welded to the crook of her elbow. It was like emerging from the deepest sea. There was a note on the other pillow: Had to go to work. Thanks for THE most wonderful day — and night. I’ll call later.

She felt goose bumps race across her skin, then she was diving back into that deep, deep sea.

WILLIE WAS BRIEFLY BLINDED WHEN HE STEPPED FROM THE SUNSHINE into the chilled gloom of the Seven Seas. He put a hand on Louis’s shoulder and followed him through the smoke and noise to the bar.

She was sitting on a barstool in a blue dress that looked like it was spray-painted on her. Clyde had an arm around her bare shoulders, and every man in the place was checking her out. The women were too, but in a different kind of way.

“Alabama!” Clyde cried. “Come on over here and say hello to Octavia Jackson.” He turned to the woman. “Shug, you know Du. And this here’s Willie Bledsoe from Alabama, cat I been telling you bout, the big civil rights hero. He warrior stock.” Clyde turned toward Willie. “Octavia works for Mr. Berry Gordy.”

Willie was flustered, as much by Clyde’s introduction as by the woman. She had enormous almond eyes that looked vaguely Asian and skin the color of coffee with a lot of cream. Her hair was shiny and straight, what he called blow hair because the wind could blow right through it. It brushed her shoulders, and the curtain of bangs was chopped at her eyebrows. He couldn’t say for sure if she was black or Hispanic or Asian or some exotic hybrid. She was drinking orange juice through a straw. Her lips were thin and bright red.

“Pleasure to meet you, Octavia,” Willie said, shaking her hand, her warm and soft hand. His face was burning. He could see that she was laughing softly at his discomfort, with no malice, just a gentle laugh from a woman who was at home in her body, at home in this noisy room, at home in the presence of all these admiring men and envious women.

“Pleasure’s mine,” she said, “meeting a man who do what you do.”

“What I do?” He looked for help to Clyde, who was beaming like a proud daddy seeing his son off to the senior prom with the prettiest girl in the class. Willie said, “What’s this noise about warrior stock, Clyde?”

“Don’t gotta be modest, Alabama. I know all about the shit you done. That bus you was on got fire-bombed. That day you got your mouth busted open at the Montgomery bus station by that cracker hit you with a Co-Cola box.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“Read about it in the Michigan Chronicle while I was doing research for a case I’m preparing. They had a picture of you in Montgomery, bloodier’n a stuck pig, next to that white boy got his teeth knocked out.”

“You just gettin off work, Willie?” Octavia said. All eyes swung back to her. She was slightly buck-toothed, and Willie found this imperfection even more attractive than her obvious assets.

“Work? No, we were at the ball—”

“But them clothes. Looks like you been fixin cars. Or choppin cotton.”

“Oh!” He looked down at his overalls and brogans. “This is — these are — what we use to wear in Mississippi. . ”

She patted the empty barstool next to hers. “Sit down and tell me all bout Mississippi. I ain’t never been to Mississippi.”

Louis and Clyde took this as their cue and drifted to the back of the place to shoot a rack of pool. After ordering a beer for himself and a fresh orange juice for Octavia, Willie said, “So what do you do at Motown? You a singer?”

“Lord no!” She laughed, like the idea was ridiculous. “I’m just a lowly receptionist. Don’t try to change the subject. Tell me bout them clothes.”

He explained the evolution of the Snick uniform. She had never heard of Snick, she confessed, but she had a way of asking questions that set him at ease, made him open up. He found himself telling her about the Freedom Rides, all those bus stations in Rock Hill, Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, Jackson. What it was like to be trapped inside a burning bus. What it was like to live in a cage at Parchman Farm.

A bunch of brothers at the far end of the bar started singing along with the new James Brown song on the jukebox: “Say it loud— I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD !”

Willie didn’t know what to say next. He had never told these stories to anyone but his mother and Aunt Nezzie. Other than Blythe Murphy, whose motives proved to be shamelessly transparent, Octavia was the first person in Detroit who’d shown the slightest interest in what he’d been through down South. Everyone up here was too busy making it to care what had happened in Jim Crow country. Everyone except this woman with the unblinking almond eyes.

Willie’s eagerness to talk made him wonder if he’d been waiting to find a stranger, the right stranger, to tell his stories to, someone who would simply listen without pegging him for a hero or a fool. Maybe, without even realizing he was looking, he had found his perfect stranger. Or maybe it was simpler than that. Since he didn’t have a snowball’s chance with such a fine woman, maybe he was thinking he might as well lay it all on her.

She said, “Y’all were some bus-ridin fools, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, we were. We really were.”

“So why’d you leave home and come all the way up here?”

“Work, like everybody else,” he began, but instantly felt dissatisfied with the tired lie. “But there’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?” she said, sipping orange juice through the straw.

He couldn’t afford to tell her about the guns or the riot — not yet — but he could tell her a lesser truth. “My mother keeps pushing me to write down the things I went through. She’s a history teacher, see, and she believes every generation has to pass on the lessons it learns. She says future generations gonna need to know what it was like to fight Jim Crow, and the people with first-hand experience, people like me, are the ones who need to do the telling. That’s why I still wear these clothes sometimes. They help me remember things.”