Finding Bluefield Read Online Free PDF Page B

deep breath, climbed out of her car, and up the steps into the chapel. When they saw her enter, the choir stopped singing. The reverend looked over his shoulder and then turned back to his choir. He started them on a hymn and walked toward Nicky. He ushered her outside and shut the doors behind him.
    “They sound beautiful, Reverend,” Nicky said. “I used to sing in the choir.”
    “Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?” the reverend said.
    “I hope so.” Nicky pulled the flyer out of her pocket and showed it to the reverend as if it were proof of some sort. “I’m looking for bus tickets for the march on Washington. But if this is a bad time…”
    “This is fine,” he said, “I have tickets.”
    “Are these the only buses leaving from Bluefield?” Nicky asked.
    “These buses are integrated, if that’s what you’re asking. You won’t be the only white folk on the bus.”
    Nicky bought four tickets, took two, and asked the reverend to give the other two away.

    *

    Back home, over dinner, Nicky showed Barbara the tickets while she told her about driving through the North End and about the details of packing food and clothes for the trip. Barbara listened quietly and said nice things about Dr. King and the other organizers, but she wasn’t going to join Nicky for this one.
    “It’s about civil rights,” Nicky said. “How do you not support civil rights?”
    “Who said I didn’t?”
    “I know you do. So why won’t you come with me?”
    “Look, I’m glad Dr. King is shaking things up and taking his message to Washington, but he’s a reverend, and at the end of the day, preachers just don’t march for dykes or with dykes. black, white, Christian, Jewish, rich, or poor.”
    “But this is not a queer thing,” Nicky said, lighting a cigarette.
    “No. Not now. But the moment someone finds out you’re queer, then it quickly becomes a queer thing.”
    “No one has to know. I don’t have to tell everyone I meet who I sleep with.”
    “Because you can’t,” Barbara said.
    “Because I don’t have to. Blacks can’t hide that they’re black. Does the hospital have a black doctor?”
    “They wouldn’t have hired me as a queer doctor.”
    “But you know how many black doctors you work with. You don’t know how many queer doctors.”
    Barbara put down her fork and started to clear the table. “Anyway, I’m not saying don’t go. I’m not even saying I’m right. I’m just saying I can’t go with you.”
    “And I’m just saying that I would like us to go together.” Nicky stood and put her arms around Barbara’s neck. “I think it will be fun.”

    *

    A few days later, early on a Wednesday morning, Nicky slipped out of bed without waking Barbara. She grabbed her clothes and made her way downstairs to shower. Dried and dressed, she pushed open the screen door and stepped outside under cover of a moonlit sky. Three in the morning and the heat had barely let up. Nicky tossed her bag onto the backseat of her Bel Air, slipped behind the wheel, and headed to meet her bus to DC.
    The parking lot at the First Baptist Church was filling up like Easter as Nicky guided her yellow Chevy into a parking spot and shut the engine. The Bel Air’s top was down, and Nicky lifted herself up and sat on the driver’s seat headrest. Her cigarette glowed in the darkness like one of the many stars lighting the sky that night. Someone who didn’t know better, Nicky thought, someone who didn’t know that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was going to be speaking in Washington, DC, later that day, would have been surprised by all the activity in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Bluefield, Virginia’s, first free Negro congregation. If they didn’t know about the march, then they might have supposed that people were gathering for some moonlight revival. Except, they would have had to wonder what so many white folks were doing peacefully in the North End. At night. But, Nicky