“Colored passengers off first!” instructed the driver of the 369 bus, which was bound for Oklahoma. Sitting at the back of the vehicle, Larry rose in his turn. The White folks took their time recovering their bags from the luggage compartment, before moving off to catch their next bus. The station was busy in the late afternoon, with buses heading down deeper into the South. Larry was on edge, and perspiring. His nerves were making him thirsty. Three hours on the road already, trying to keep his cool, in constant fear of being thrown off and left on the side of the road. No stops to get a drink or stretch his legs. Here, you didn’t just travel wherever you wanted. Here they were in the segregated South; the racist South, the supremacist South. Who in all of Oklahoma would pick up a nigger from the side of the road? Larry knew the songs they sang here. They were not songs of freedom or abolition, but hymns of racial hatred, of distrusting colored folks, of the repulsion and horror of sharing a bus with black people. For Larry, riding the 369 bus to Oklahoma meant keeping his mouth shut, even amidst the loud complaints and provocations of other passengers. He had not uttered a word in response when an old woman pinched her nose and said: “Good God, the smell! Why are there so many niggers on this bus?” The driver had apologized to her. Larry had stayed in his seat while a big, ham-faced man muttered insults at him.
“Say that again!” the big guy had yelled at him.
“But…I ain’t say nothing,” Larry stammered.
“Yeah you did. You called me a son of a bitch, I heard it!” the supremacist insisted, raising his fist.
Larry knew these colors. He took a second drink of water from the fountain at the end of the line in Oklahoma. He thirsted for peace. He wanted an end to the everyday hatred that was America’s poison. If he arrived safe and sound at Uncle Tom’s place, he’d be able to fall asleep to the song of the cicadas. Sometimes, Larry would sing a few lines of a freedom song to help himself sleep. He’d already had his fill of the Jim Crow laws that kept an entire people under heel. They had been created in the South in order to skirt constitutional law. Jim Crow laws established segregation in public places, under the principle of “separate but equal.” There were drinking fountains for Whites, and different ones for colored people. There were schools for Whites and schools for Blacks. Larry was still thirsty, and took another drink. He had one more bus to catch to get to his Uncle Tom’s place.
Uncle Tom opened the door of his big house, and Larry hugged him. Uncle Tom was his favorite relative, and Larry was eager to spend a few quiet days with him. Night had fallen, and the cicadas were in song. Uncle Tom had made Salisbury steak for their dinner, with a glass of bourbon on the side. It was time to eat. The two men sat across from one another, and Larry served the old man. Tom was over eighty years old – the oldest member of their family. His face was lined and his hair was white. His neck looked like an oak trunk whose bark was peeling. Uncle Tom was an old man now, but he was still sharp. “Happy to see you, nephew! Thanks for coming down south. What’s going on in Chicago these days?” he asked in his booming, slightly deaf voice. Larry’s hands waved as he talked. “In Chicago we don’t gotta worry about getting beat up, or accused of crimes or getting lynched. Still, I miss hearing the cicadas. Kinda steadies me, you know?”
Larry’s head was spinning. He was deep in thought as he lay stretched out on the bed. The day had been long, and tiring. The cicada song was keeping him awake. He wasn’t used to sleeping in the countryside anymore. He closed his eyes, unclenched his fists and relaxed. Finally, sleep took him.
Alan Alfredo Geday