The Street Sweeper Read Online Free PDF

in New York, asleep beside his girlfriend, Diana, some fifty years later. ‘Don’t let her go, for Christ’s sake. Don’t let her go!’
    But neither Elizabeth nor her parents, Birdee and Oscar Eckford, heard Adam Zignelik nor, as they knelt down to pray together, did they feel the force of him thrashing in his bed, pleading with his father to intervene and stop Elizabeth from trying to go to Central High that day. Adam’s father, Jake Zignelik, ignored him too. She
had
to go. Far from stopping her, Jake Zignelik
wanted
her to go. That was the whole idea. Adam had to understand that.
    Elizabeth put on her black sunglasses. She said goodbye to her parents, kissed them and walked to the public bus stop where she waited quietly for the bus that would take her to her new school. But when she got off at the bus stop closest to Central High she didn’t see any of the other eight black children who were meant to be starting at the school with her that day.
    ‘For Christ’s sake, please don’t let her go!’
    She didn’t see any black people at all. She saw a sea of white people, thousands of them from all over the state and, judging from the out-of-state licence plates, from other states as well. She saw hundreds of soldiers in full battledress: boots, helmets. The soldiers were armed. She saw bayonets, too many to count.
    ‘She has to go, Adam. Don’t be a child.’
    She looked at the guards lined up along the road leading to the school building and she looked at the white crowd. The day before, she had been told to go to the school’s main entrance. It was a block away from where she was standing. It occurred to her that when walking the block to the front of the school she might be safer if she walked it from behind the guards so that for the length of the block there would be a line of guards between her and the crowd. It was at the corner of the block that she chose to try to pass through the line of guards in order to stand on the other side of them. She was wearing sunglasses and the black-and-white pleated dress she had made with her mother. It was her first day at a new school. She was fifteen and she chose a soldier at random. The soldier didn’t speak but pointed across the street in the direction of the crowd. She tried not to look frightened and walked as the random soldier had directed her. What might another soldier have done? Elizabeth had always achieved high grades, always been an excellent student.
    ‘Dad, she’s fifteen!’
    ‘Don’t bother me, Adam.’
    Elizabeth Eckford walked towards the crowd and, at least at first, that section of it closest to her moved back, away from her, almost as though afraid of her, as though afraid they might catch something from her. If you stood too near her perhaps you could
become
her. People would look at you. You would stand out simply by being in that part of the crowd nearest to her. You hadn’t gone there expecting to stand out. That wasn’t why you were there. But now you might stand out through no fault of your own. So you had better make sure that everybody around knows where you really stand. You hate her. You hate her as much as anyone else in the crowd hates her. You might even hate her more. By standing near you, she’s making you especially uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than she makes everybody else feel, and how
they
feel is only how you feltmoments ago before she chose you to make especially uncomfortable. Why did she have to choose you? She brings trouble with her wherever she goes. You can see it. You’ve been told this all your life, known it all your life, but now you can actually feel it. She’s making you sweat. She’s making your heart race. Everybody’s looking as she stands near you. Oh Christ, you hate her. Why did she have to make you feel like this? You hate her so much.
    ‘Dad!’
    Then the crowd began to move in towards her. Mouths opened wide to let the anger and the hate pour out. All the toxic putrefaction that lived in