Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook

coffin slid forward and bumped loudly against the cab of the truck. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Thompson said quickly. ‘Didn’t want to hit that dog, though.’
    The truck moved steadily down Fourth Avenue, then out beyond it, to where more and more vacant lots lined the increasingly bumpy and untended streets.
    ‘They ought to get a crew out here,’ Thompson said. He peered to the right. ‘There it is,’ he said.
    Gracehill Cemetery rested on a small, rounded hill near the far southwest corner of the city. Small unpaved roads snaked windingly among the small gray stones, slowly curling upward toward the crest of the hill. All along the gently sloping banks, tombstones jutted out of the ground in broken clusters, their bases covered by the unmown grass. The mounds of dirt which stretched out from them were decorated by clumps of plastic-flowers rooted in dirt-filled tin cans and quart jars. Here and there a plywood cross leaned unsteadily toward the earth, or a plain brown stone lifted from it, jagged, nameless, accompanied by a small one at the foot of the mound.
    ‘It’s supposed to be right around here,’ Thompson said matter-of-factly. He craned his neck out the window, his eyes searching through the ever-deepening brush.
    The grave had been dug in a slender trench between two others, and when Thompson finally spotted it, he wheeled the truck over, then backed it in, as if preparing to dump the coffin like a load of sand.
    ‘Okay,’ he said as he turned off the engine.
    Ben got out and walked to the back of the truck. The two youths had already lowered the tailgate and pushed the coffin to the edge of it. They now stood above it, their eyes lifted up over the hill, toward the distant twinkling lights of the city.
    ‘Okay, now,’ Thompson said. ‘We’ll just lower it down real slow. Don’t drop her.’
    Within a few minutes, the coffin was in the ground, and Thompson walked to the head of the grave and bowed his head. The two young men bowed theirs as well, while Ben slumped back on a large stone and sank his hands in his pockets.
    ‘Dearest and most gracious God,’ Thompson began, ‘we commend to your care the soul of your servant …’ He stopped and glanced up at Ben. ‘What’s this child’s name?’ he asked.
    ‘Martha Wellman,’ Ben told him.
    Thompson lowered his head again. ‘We commend to your care the soul of your servant, Martha Wellman.’ He folded his hands together gracefully. ‘We know that she was your child, that her soul was saved long before it was even clothed in flesh. For the grace of Jesus Christ is a gift which cannot be refused.’
    Ben’s eyes drifted over to the two black youths. They stood on either side of the grave, their heads bowed reverently, their lips pressed tightly together. Behind them, the nightbound city glittered silently. Ben’s eyes drifted down toward the grave, then back up again. The city lay utterly quiet in the darkness, a grid of streets lit by what seemed in the distance a thousand tiny fires. He wondered how many streets the girl had come to know, which ones she had liked, feared, the last one she’d walked down before she died.
    King had not yet begun to speak when Ben arrived once again at the Sixteenth Baptist Church, but the crowds were already singing and clapping as they filled the streets which fronted the church.
    Ben got out of his car and stood beside it, leaning on the hood, his pen and notebook already in his hand. From his position he could see a group of black leaders standing on the small porch at the side of the church. They were talking quietly and fanning themselves with paper fans from A. G. Gaston’s Funeral Home. Just beyond them, Breedlove and Daniels were squatting together in front of a bush, and even from several yards away, Ben could see that they had both taken out their own pens and notebooks.
    Just as the day before, the crowd suddenly grew quiet, and then King’s voice rang out.
    ‘Today was D-Day in Birmingham,’ he