Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘You did the only thing you could do.’

‘I believe in nonviolence,’ Coggins said. ‘I really do. I believe in persuading people, in moving their consciences.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Well, sometimes maybe you just have time to stop them.’

There were no other cars on the avenue, and when Ben and Coggins got to theirs, they found Breedlove and Daniels lounging on the hood.

‘They were about to tow this old wreck,’ Daniels said, ‘but Breedlove told them it belonged to one of Birmingham’s ace detectives.’

Breedlove laughed. That’s right. Besides, I figured you’d be back before the action started.’ He looked at Coggins. ‘You too, Leroy. I didn’t figure you’d want to miss this.’

Ben opened the passenger door. ‘Get in,’ he said to Coggins.

‘Where you going, Ben?’ Breedlove asked as he slid off the hood. ‘Aren’t you supposed to help with the arrests?’

Ben closed the door then walked over to the driver’s side. ‘Nobody’s said a thing to me about that,’ he said, ‘so I’m just going to continue what I was doing.’

Daniels stepped up beside him. ‘Still working on that little girl?’

Ben nodded as he opened the door and pulled himself inside.

‘I hear her mama filed a Missing Person.’

‘Her aunt,’ Ben told him.

‘A nigger woman,’ Breedlove said. ‘That’s what Mc-Corkindale told me.’

Ben stared at him coolly. ‘That’s right. What about it?’

Daniels stepped back slightly and flashed Breedlove an icy smile. ‘Hey, Charlie, I think Ben’s getting a little testy in his old age.’

Breedlove leaned in from the other side. ‘King’s giving another speech tonight, Ben,’ he said teasingly. ‘I heard you missed the last one.’

Ben said nothing, and Breedlove was still studying his face with an odd, indecipherable intensity when he hit the ignition and pulled away.

The first wave of marchers crested the hill as Ben drove slowly up it. He guided the car over to the far right and stopped.

‘You taking me back to jail?’ Coggins asked.

‘You want me to?’

Coggins smiled tentatively. ‘It seems a little safer.’

‘I’m going to check out the rubber plant,’ Ben told him. ‘See if I can find this Bluto character, the one Gaylord was talking about.’ He glanced over at Coggins. ‘You want to come?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Coggins said. He pulled the pistol from his belt and handed it to Ben. ‘But this time you keep the gun.’

For a few minutes they sat together in silence while the long line of Negroes filed past the car. Down below, the first sirens had begun to wail, and Ben could hear the engine of the Chief’s tank as it started to grind loudly at the far end of the park.

Coggins watched the demonstrators for a while, nodding to a few as they passed. Then he turned to Ben. ‘It’s strange, what you did,’ he said, ‘the way you just pulled over and stopped when you saw the people coming over the hill. Why’d you do that?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s what country people do.’ He looked at Coggins. ‘You ever lived in the country?’

‘No.’

‘I haven’t either,’ Ben said. ‘But once, when I was visiting a cousin, we were heading down the road in his old truck when we met a funeral procession. My cousin pulled over and stopped and waited for it to pass on by.’

‘Why?’ Coggins asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘I guess out of respect.’

‘For the dead, you mean?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben told him. He watched as the last few stragglers moved haltingly forward at the end of the first wave. They were mostly older people, gray and unsteady. One of them was an old woman who pushed an aluminum walker before her. When she’d finally gotten by, Ben started the car and moved quickly to the far edge of the park, then made a hard right just as the second wave of marchers began to stride, clapping and singing down the avenue.

The Alabama Rubber Plant occupied a huge sheet-metal warehouse in the southern corner of the city. A guard was posted at the gate, and Ben waited quietly until he ambled over to the car.

‘How ya’ll,’ the man said with a grin as he leaned into the window.

Ben took out his badge. ‘I understand you’ve got a few storm drains around the plant.’

The man nodded. ‘They’s a big old one right down yonder,’ he said as he pointed to the northern corner of the lot. ‘But don’t nobody use it no more.’

‘Is that right?’ Ben asked.

The man’s face suddenly registered something. ‘I mean the plant, it don’t use it. But they’s a nigger fellow that lives in it sometimes, I think. Nice fellow.’ The guard lifted his hand to his head and twirled his index finger. ‘A little loose in the head, you understand, but nice.’

‘A big man,’ Ben said. ‘People call him Bluto.’

‘That’s right,’ the guard said. He looked at Ben pointedly. ‘Is he in trouble?’

‘I just need to talk to him about something,’ Ben said. ‘Have you seen him lately?’

The guard shook his head. ‘Naw, I ain’t seen him,’ he said. ‘Not for a couple days.’

‘When did you see him last?’

The guard shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Last weekend maybe. I don’t go poking around over there much. Sometimes Bluto’ll come by here and talk awhile. It ain’t no secret that he sleeps in that drain in the summertime.’

‘Well, I need to drive out there and see if he’s around,’ Ben said.

‘Go right ahead,’ the guard told him as he stepped away from the car.

A long tail of dust wagged behind the car as Ben drove through the back lot of the factory and out to the storm fence which bordered it. Near the far right corner he could see a small gully open up in the flat earth, and he pulled the car to the edge of it and stopped.

As he walked the crest of the gully, Ben could see the rounded cement border of the drain. It was packed in loose earth and gravel, and as he half-walked half-skidded down the side of the ravine, scores of small stones swept down in front of him and leaped into a chain of small puddles which still remained after the rain.

Coggins remained at the top of the gully, staring down apprehensively.

‘You don’t have to come,’ Ben told him.

‘No, no,’ Coggins said immediately. ‘I’ve gone this far.’ He skidded down the side of the ravine, his arms thrust out for balance, and joined Ben in the narrow gully.

Up ahead, the storm drain could be seen clearly. It was a circular cement pipe which protruded only a few inches from the embankment. A large white sheet, muddied at the bottom, covered the entrance like the flap of a tent. An assortment of tin cans and paper wrappers lay strewn about the floor of the gully, and just to the right, only a few feet from the drain’s rounded entrance, there was a dark mound of what looked to be human excrement.

‘Oh, God,’ Coggins breathed.

Ben moved forward slowly and Coggins, after a moment’s hesitation, came along beside him.

The sheet billowed out lazily as Ben and Coggins continued to move toward it, but it revealed nothing but a quick glimpse of piled clothing and a stack of rain-soaked magazines.

Once at the entrance, Ben swept back the sheet. A wave of foul odor burst from the drain. It was thick and sickly sweet, and Ben recognized it immediately. He fanned the air and a swarm of flies lifted from the pile of clothing, hung a moment in the sickening air, then swept down again, buzzing loudly.

Ben crawled inside the pipe and jerked at the clothing. First one article gave way, then another, until he finally found a hand, blackened, the skin split open and quivering with hundreds of maggots. A small, slender ribbon weaved in and out of the dark swollen fingers, white with tiny red hearts.