“Why?” I asked. “What did he do?”
The officer ignored me. Flynn got out without a word and the officer said, “Hands up against the car.” Flynn, as if he had been through all this before, placed his hands against the roof of the car. The officer patted him down.
I was furious. I jumped out of the car. “What are you doing? He didn’t do anything!”
“You, girl,” said the officer at the back of the car, “you best shut your mouth.”
“But he didn’t do anything!” I continued to protest. I figured I should be able to speak my mind here in Los Angeles.
“Cassie,” said Flynn, “Cassie, be quiet.” His voice was calm, but I felt anything but calm.
“Turn around,” the officer next to Flynn ordered. “Step away from the car.” The other officer at the rear came forward and stood directly behind Flynn. The officer who had checked the license and registration now began to check inside the car. The first place he checked was under the driver’s seat.
A gun was beneath the seat.
“All right, cuff him,” he said to his partner as he took the gun from the car.
“I’ve got registration for that too,” said Flynn.
“We’ll check it at the station.”
“I’ve got it with me.”
“We’ll check it at the station,” the officer repeated. “We’ll check the car registration too. Foreign car, could be stolen. Meantime, the car stays here until we do.” The officer pulled the keys from the car as the other officer pulled out his handcuffs and ordered Flynn to put his arms behind him.
I stared in disbelief. This was not Mississippi. This was Los Angeles. Maybe I had been studying the law a little too much, but I pressed them with my frantic questions. “What’s he done? What are you charging him with? You need to let him go!”
The officer holding Flynn glanced over at me and said, “Gal, you know, we can take you in too.”
Flynn interceded. “Look, she’s done nothing! She has nothing to do with this!”
As the policeman clasped handcuffs on Flynn, my blood ran hot and I ran around the car toward Flynn. The officers saw me coming, and the one with Flynn’s gun grabbed me and shoved me hard back against the car. At that, Flynn, already handcuffed, wrenched away from the other officer and lurched toward the one holding me. “Get your hands off her!”
The officer holding me turned. “What you say?”
And the other officer countered, “Nigger, you resisting arrest?” Flynn was given no time to reply. The officer, holding my arm with one hand, lifted the other holding the gun and slammed the side of Flynn’s head with the butt of the gun. The other officer, with his hand on the back of Flynn’s neck, slammed Flynn’s face against the top of the car, jerked his head back, and slammed his head down again.
I stood frozen, horrified.
The one officer pulled Flynn away from the car. Blood was dripping from Flynn’s scalp and running down the side of his mouth. His eyes looked dazed as he stared at me. The policeman yanked Flynn toward the police car.
“Flynn!” I cried out, not knowing what to do.
Flynn managed to speak, his voice low, sounding gargled. “Drugstore few blocks down. Call Justine, come get you.”
The policeman holding me let me go. Then the two officers pushed Flynn into the back seat of their car. The door slammed and the police car sped away.
I was left alone on the streets of Los Angeles.
CASSIE’S LOVE STORY
CHAPTER III
(1949)
I did as Flynn had instructed. I walked as fast as I could toward the drugstore. I wanted to run, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself from passing motorists than I already was doing. After all, I was colored in a white neighborhood. I walked one block, then two. They were long blocks, and I saw no sign of a corner store up ahead. Well into the third block, a car filled with white teenage boys slowed on the other side of the street, then made a U-turn and pulled slowly alongside me. I did not turn to look at them.
“Hey, girlie!” one of them shouted. “Need a lift?”
“We’ll take you wherever you want to go,” yelled another.
I kept on walking. The car kept pace with me.
“Yeah, and, hey, we’ll give you whatever you need too!”
There was laughter from the car. “Say, maybe what we need to be asking is how much you want for the four of us?”
I wanted to run. I knew I shouldn’t run, show my fear. I thought of the white boys on the Mississippi road down home who had followed me years ago. I wanted to cry out, but was afraid to do that too. I wanted to turn and scream into their faces and tell them where they could go, but I knew I shouldn’t stop or acknowledge their insults. My face burned hot, but I kept on walking. They continued to follow, laughing and hurling their obscene remarks. I reached the end of the block and was fearful they might turn and cut me off as I crossed the street. They didn’t.
In the fourth block now, I searched for lights on the next corner, for any indication that there was a store. Still, I saw nothing, only houses with long rolling lawns set back some distance from the street. I thought about running up to one of them, but what good would that do? They were all houses occupied by white people.
The car stopped. I guessed the boys were tired of their game of cat and mouse and I feared they were now about to take a different action. As the front passenger door opened, I was about to break into a run when I saw an elderly man and woman emerging from a driveway, walking their dog. I hurried toward them, speaking before I even reached them. “Excuse me. Excuse me, please! Can you tell me where there’s a pay phone near here? I understand there’s supposed to be a drugstore nearby.”
The couple stared at me, I’m sure knowing as well as I that I was out of place here in this Westwood neighborhood. “Do you work near here?” the woman cautiously asked.
“No,” I answered, quickly glancing back toward the carload of boys. “My car had trouble and I had to leave it a few blocks down. I need to call someone to pick me up.”
The couple’s gaze followed my glance. “Well, we’re going down that way,” the man said, his eyes on the car. “About a block and a half. You can walk along with us.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”
The car with its load of boys took off.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
At the drugstore I called Justine, and within thirty minutes she and J.D. arrived to get me. The elderly couple stayed at the drugstore while I waited. They sat sipping sodas at the ice cream fountain, and even offered me one. I declined their offer but thanked them profusely for their help. Although I had not spoken of the car following me and they hadn’t mentioned it either, I knew that they stayed at the drugstore because of me. I didn’t know their names. They didn’t give them, and I didn’t give mine to them, but I knew on that night, when I was alone in a white world, they had been my guardian angels. I knew now that angels came in all colors.