Crossing the Lines by Richard Doster

Author:Richard Doster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2012-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

After dinner I called home. My wife always shares the excitement of a good story, but the retelling of this one made her sad and frightened.

Her fear had nothing to do with any threat to my safety. It was, instead, for every mother, kid, and community that faced this change. Rose Marie—like so many of the women of Little Rock, like me, like any white person willing to be honest—could barely conceive so drastic a change. She’d seen the earlier experiments fail; she’d seen firsthand, and on more than one occasion, how the blending of black and white produced a compound that was too volatile to manage, and that almost always burst into flames. She’d watched the anger burn. She’d witnessed grief in the aftermath. She knew this was a bad idea for both races. And whenever the subject came up, there was the inevitable clash with her only son.

But tonight, the subject quickly turned and brightened. Chris had come home thrilled by a piece of great news: Next Thursday night he’d play his first junior varsity football game, and he’d be the starting defensive end.

“You need to talk to him,” Rose said. “He can’t wait to tell you.”

My son came on the line. “Hello,” he said, the tone as wooden as a block.

“Mom tells me you got some news.”

“Yeah,” he said. I sensed his excitement percolating beneath the stiffness.

“You gonna start next Thursday?” I asked.

“Yes sir,” he said, a chuckle just beginning to surface.

“Nice!” I exclaimed. “I’m going to make sure we cover that game. And who knows, if you play good enough you might get your name in the paper.”

Chris laughed. “Yeah, you never know.”

“So what’d the coach say when he told you?” I asked.

“He just said that I’d looked good in practice, that he liked my toughness.” Chris sniggered again, embarrassed.

I pictured him in his pads and helmet, thinking about much he’d grown, about how strong he’d gotten, how much faster he’d become in the last year. And now, I’d learned, he was “tough.”

“I’m proud of you,” I told my son. “And I’m going do everything I can to be at every game you ever play, you hear? And Chris …”

“Yes sir?”

“I bet you’re going to be the toughest kid who ever played in Fulton County, Georgia.”

There was a pause. I suspected he was mulling the possibility over. “Yeah,” he finally said, “maybe so.”

• • • •

Monday morning Dalton and I rushed to the Arkansas Gazette. Reporters from around the country had assembled, all of them there to chronicle Central High’s first day of school, but not a one of them expected a story worth his byline. These guys had drawn the short straw, and every one of them wished he were in Nashville.

I introduced myself to men from St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, and Detroit. There was an older guy there, frumpy looking, bald, wearing a wrinkled gray suit and a crooked bowtie. He looked more like a college professor than a reporter. He reached for my hand: “Benjamin Fine,” he said, “from the New York Times.

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