Read Online There's a Man With a Gun Over There by R. M. Ryan - Free Book Online

echoed back to our off-key harmony, and then we were on our way, to save the Negroes in Alabama.

    Dr. Stone passed out copies of mimeographed materials with titles like “Tips for Dealing With Racists,” “What To Do If You Get Arrested,” and “Avoiding Injury and Death.”
    â€œAh, Dr. Stone,” Mary Rombauer said, “on the second page of ‘Avoiding Injury and Death,’ where the specific advice is supposed to be—well, it’s empty. I mean the page is blank.”
    â€œOh, my. I was in such a hurry, maybe I forgot.”
    He began rummaging through a battered leather briefcase.
    â€œLet’s see if I have a copy.”
    I was only halfway listening to this, because I wondered when Dr. Stone would realize that he didn’t have an OK from my parents. While he had, as it turned out, forgotten the sheets on avoiding injury and death, he pretty quickly did remember that I hadn’t turned in my permission slip.
    â€œTell you what, Ryan, with so few people on our good pilgrimage, why don’t you try calling your parents. A verbal go-ahead would be enough for me.”
    As Wade Leonard’s car drove south on 218, Dr. Stone said we should stop at the first phone booth we saw. It was beside a drive-in restaurant. I went into the phone booth and folded the door closed behind me. I laid out a stack of quarters on the little shelf in the booth, took a deep breath, and rehearsed what I was about to say. I figured my mother would answer.
    â€œMom,” I’d say, a little too brightly. “Mom, I’m going on this field trip.”
    The phone at the other end kept buzzing, and no one answered.
    â€œShe’s not home,” I said when I came out of the phone booth. “Look. We can keep calling as we go.” Maybe we’d get there before I reached her.
    â€œMom,” I’d say, “you’ll just never guess where I am.”
    Just before Mount Pleasant, in the middle of a discussion about how to roll yourself up into a ball if a policeman started whacking you with a billy club, Wade rear-ended a Cadillac. Truth be told, hearing these stories about the ferocity of Southern law enforcement officers had made us all nervous. The car crash seemed inevitable somehow.
    The driver of the car we hit got out, carefully arranged a kind of Frank Sinatra straw businessman’s hat on his head, walked to the rear of his car, looked at the damage. The car bumpers of the old Ford and the new Cadillac were hooked together like two male deer racks. One of the Ford’s headlights was shattered.
    The Cadillac driver leaned over the interlocked bumpers and opened his trunk. He pulled out a Speed Graphic camera and began photographing the damage. Done with that, he asked us to step out of the car and photographed all of us.
    â€œNever know just what photographs you might need,” the man said with a smile.
    Then he did a sketch of the accident on graph paper and told us that he was an insurance agent.
    â€œI always travel equipped for moments like this. It’s a life of accidents, you know.”
    Then we all sat on the bumper of the Ford and bounced it a few times. The two cars, as if done with their business together, pulled apart.

    We started south again. The old Ford keep steering to the right, as if the accident had frightened it and now it wanted off the road.
    At a gas station outside of Keokuk, just before we left Iowa, my uncle answered the phone at our house.
    â€œHi, Uncle Gene,” I said. “I’m calling about this school civil rights trip.”
    He heard me out and then said, “Your father’s just been diagnosed with lung cancer. You don’t have time for civil rights.”
    When I walked back to the old Ford, I suddenly saw the whole scene—Dr. Stone, Steve Unger, the old Ford, and all the rest—behind a cloudy scrim. I was on one side, and my old life was on the other. I tried to reach across, but