Streets of Fire

The Chief marched out in front of them, lifted his megaphone, then stopped and slowly lowered it. He turned back toward the troopers and grinned. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘They don’t know English, anyway.’

The second wave hit only a few minutes later, and the troopers pulled and shoved them across the park and down the side streets. The sounds of near and distant sirens mingled with the shouts of the troopers, the singing of the marchers, the heavy wheeze of the engines as they started up again, pulled away, then returned again and again for yet another load.

For a time Ben simply stood, frozen in place, and watched the swirling tumult around him. Sirens now wailed continually, and beneath them, like the murmur of a drum, the steady beat of the troopers’ boots as one line after another rushed forward into the unending stream of children.

Then, suddenly, Luther was in his face, screaming wildly. ‘What the hell are you doing!’ His flabby jaws shook with rage and frustration. ‘Get going, goddammit!’ Then he raced away, almost falling over a small boy before he stopped himself, took the boy’s shoulder in his large beefy hand and pushed him into the park.

Ben moved toward the thinning ranks of troopers, his eyes desperately scanning the line of marchers. He saw a tall, slender boy of about nine years old, walked over to him, dug his fingers into the soft flesh of his shoulder and tugged him toward the park.

The boy moved forward without protest, clapping his hands and singing as he walked, his eyes straight ahead. At the school bus he turned, glanced at Ben, as if to record his face, then walked up the short steps and headed toward the rear of the bus.

Ben returned immediately to the line of march, took another child, this time a teenage girl, and began walking her toward the bus. All around them, the troopers were driving other demonstrators forward at a breakneck pace, pushing and shoving, until they often fell together, demonstrators and exhausted troopers lying in a tangled mass in the swirling dust of the park. The noise of the melee built steadily as the arrests continued, so that the orders of the commanders could barely be heard above the sirens, the engines, the cries of the demonstrators and troopers.

A third wave followed the second by only a few minutes, and the troopers formed ranks again, sweat now streaming down their faces, their uniforms wet beneath their arms and down their backs. The cries of the children rocked through the air, high and wailing, as the troopers stumbled forward, falling upon the demonstrators with a steadily building fury.

Ben seized a teenage boy in one hand and a teenage girl in the other and led them briskly through the park. He could feel his shirt wet against his back and chest, and the dust which now tumbled in thick, suffocating clouds burned his eyes and choked his throat. He could feel his fingers growing numb at their tips, and his legs now seemed to drag behind him like heavy weights rather than propel him forward. But still he trudged back and forth from the line of inarch to the buses, back and forth from the street to the paddy wagons, and after a time he seemed to be moving will-lessly, as if his body were no longer a part of him, but something different, distant and estranged, so that it required nothing to perform the incessantly repeated actions which it had learned during the long pull of the afternoon, learned as the sun mounted toward noon then fell toward evening. And hour followed hour as he took them, large and small, hostile or compliant, took them with whatever force their resistance required, tugged them along or pushed them forcefully, stood in the sweltering air until he knew they were securely in the buses or paddy wagons, and then returned, again and again, until at last there were no more, and he walked out into the torn and battle-weary park, into the still blue air of the evening, and pressed his back against a tree and let his legs give way beneath him, so that he slumped down onto the ground and let his face drop slowly into his open hands.

NINE

‘You look like hell,’ Patterson said grimly as Ben walked into the Coroner’s Office. He eyed him closely. ‘I heard it was real bad today.’

Ben nodded. ‘Bad enough.’

Patterson shook his head despairingly. ‘You were in it?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said weakly. Just beyond the entrance to the freezer room, he could see the old man sweeping a jagged line of grit and sawdust toward a large metal garbage can.

‘We’re in a world of trouble these days, Ben,’ Patterson said, ‘and nobody knows how to get out of it.’

The old man bent forward, placed a rusty dustpan in front of the sweepings, then whisked them in.

‘The Chief knows exactly where he is in all this,’ Patterson added, his eyes watching Ben intently. ‘But others, they have some problems.’

The old man winced with pain as he slowly straightened himself. He rubbed his back with a flat open hand. His eyes moved over to Ben, then darted away.