“Fire! Fire!” screamed a man. “Wake up! Get out!” Stumbling outside in his slippers, blazes seemingly everywhere, his world was going up in ashes right in front of him. Indeed, the world at large was on fire with freedom.
Birmingham, Alabama, December 6, 1865, the day the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified into the U.S. Constitution. One particularly large plantation was essentially burnt to the ground that night with only part of the Planter’s home remaining; all the fields of cotton turned to ash, slaves’ quarters scorched, and by morning the slaves nowhere to be found.
The slaves had done all of this. They were free. Free to rid themselves and the world of the remnants and memories of enslavement, entrapment. Free from the work, abuse, and the daily, hopeless drudgery of a slave. With freedom in their veins they wanted revenge, justice, if even for a moment. They broke into the Planter's home, wrote profanity on the walls, scratched out the faces of the Planter in family photos, and broke all of the fine china. Then they set ablaze the home and the fields. They broke the Planter’s life by breaking what was important to him, as he had broken their very souls for years.
Birmingham, Alabama, 150 years later, Peter Churchill and his family awoke to a new life. Peter, his mother, and father had been happily residing in Tacoma, Washington. Then, as a senior in high school Peter got the jolting news that they were moving, and, to make it even worse, in the middle of fall semester.
His parents were ecstatic!
“Dad got a new job opportunity!”
“We have family in Alabama!”
“This is so exciting!”
“We’re going to have a better life!”
“We’ll be able to afford any college of your dreams!”
Yadda, yadda to Peter. It meant leaving friends and the only life he’d known. It meant moving across the country to live in his parents’ lives but not in his own. He was less than thrilled.
“Have a good first day, Honey!” said his mother as he left for school.
Peter responded solemnly with a barely audible, “Bye,” as he slammed the door shut.
He moved like a prisoner; not consciously thinking but just going about the business of getting one foot in front of the other. Somehow he found himself on a bus. Every kid stopped whatever conversation they were having and just stared as the new kid sat down in the first row. The entire bus ride he sat by himself listening to music off his phone until the last stop.
“Hi,” said a girl as she sat down next to him, “I’ve never seen you before, what’s your name?”
Snapping out of his slump, he took out his earbuds, “Peter, what’s yours?”
“Alice! Well, it is very nice to meet you Peter.” The rest of the bus ride they just talked and talked; why he moved, where he moved from, how he liked it here, and all the get-to-know-you questions. Yet even from this simple beginning, Peter realized that he and Alice were going to be good friends.
They got to the school and walked to the front door. “Welcome to Birmingham High School,” Alice announced enthusiastically.
“Ha! But, thanks,” Peter mumbled.
“Where do you go first?” she asked.
“Uhh,” pulling out a wad of paper that was his schedule, “Chemistry with Mr. Yeager.”
“Ew. Good luck with that! I have him 3rd period, and he can be a handful sometimes. Give me your number, and text me about what you do in class, because I didn’t do the homework but sometimes he doesn’t collect it,” she rambled.
“Uh, ok, sure!”
Somehow Peter survived the morning by going through the motions. He sat alone at lunch but didn’t really mind. He kind of liked having some peace to let down his guard and not have to expend energy trying to fit in.
Finally the day ended, and Peter couldn’t wait to get on the bus and talk more with Alice. Getting onto the bus, he patiently waited in the first row. As he saw her get on he flashed a nice warm grin to her. She plopped down next to him! They chatted and laughed all about their day until she got up at her stop.
“See you tomorrow!” And she gave him a friendly wave as she moved to the door.
“See ya!”
He got off the bus glowing. Walking to the front door his mother came running out and gave him a big hug. But before she could even get a word out Peter groaned in teenaged fashion, “It was fine, Mom.”
“Oh, great! I thought about you all day. Now go get dressed, we’re going to your dad’s dinner.”
Crash. His perfect bus ride just screeched to a halt and the glow drained instantly from his face. “What? Why do I have to go? I have all this make-up work I have to get done by tomorrow.”
“Peter, you have to go.”
“I don’t want to, and I’m not going!”
“It’s important to your dad, now go, get ready. Don’t make a fuss about this.”
Peter was angry and at this point sick of hearing about “Dad’s new job.” The whole reason they moved in the first place was because of this new job. “This is dad’s meeting, not mine. Why do I have to go? I never wanted to move in the first place, Mom. I have a ton of work to do now. I don’t want to get behind after my first day, and actually I’m already behind.”
His mother just grinned and went back into the house. Following her, Peter begged, “C’mon, Mom, it’s important to not get buried with school work from the get-go. Now you’re making me go to this meeting and I’ll get even further behind.”
No reply from his mother.
“Thanks a lot,” he grumbled sarcastically looking down and scuffing his foot along the rug.
As he slowly looked up he caught his mother’s eye just for a second and then saw his mother turn her back completely to him, walking towards the hallway. He suddenly got much angrier and raised his voice in her direction, “All you care about is making your stupid appearance in front of dad’s new co-workers. You don’t care about my feelings. You don’t care about me and what I need.”
His mother stopped and turned to face him. But Peter was now in full mode; he swung his arms up and then forcefully down to his sides with his hands balled into fists, “Errrrr,” he wailed as he finished the tantrum by stomping his foot. With his face turning red he continued his verbal tantrum, “I’m trapped in this awful place living your life, doing what you need to make your life soooo perfect. What about my life?”
They stared at each other in awkward silence for a second or two. And then it hit him. He hated having to move. He hated it here. He liked Alice but everything else was awful, and he had a sudden claustrophobic feeling of the walls trapping him inside his parents’ world. And at that instant he impulsively dropped his backpack and ran out the door.
He had no plan, no idea where he was going. He just had to get out. His mother sighed, and watched him go.
Peter aimlessly meandered down the road, head down, slumped shoulders with hands in his jean pockets, without notice of anything around him. Time passed. The sun was setting but Peter had no idea of time.
A few cold rain drops slapped him in the face and snapped him out of his daze. Startled back to reality, he looked around and quickly realized that he didn’t know where he was at. The rain hardened and began pouring. Seeing an abandoned appearing run-down house, he ran for some shelter just as the storm let loose.
On the porch and now fully aware of his predicament, he reached for his cell phone. It was not in his pocket. Patting himself while looking around, he didn’t find it. “Oh, man!” he thought. “Did it fall out somewhere along the way?”
He turned to head off the porch, when, “Bam!” Lightning struck a tree in the yard. Then, “Bam!” another struck behind the house. As he turned towards the sound, a window slammed shut. “What the…?” He was about to bolt, but as he began to turn away from the house to make his escape a sparkle caught his eye. Approaching the window he saw his cell phone, glowing, inside the house. “Inside?!!”
“I’m feeling freaked. I don’t know where I am. I have to get my phone,” the thoughts ran through his head faster than he could actually process them. Shakily, he knocked on the door. No reply. Knocked again. No reply. Knocked harder, and the door creaked all the way open. Empty. Cold. No one seemed to be in there.
Seeing his phone, he rushed in with the plan to get out just as soon as he grabbed it. Just as he reached for the phone the door slammed shut.
Frantic, he grabbed his phone and raced back to the door. Didn’t budge. He pulled with all his might. Didn’t budge. He stopped. Breathed deeply. He looked for a lock, but there was no lock on the door. He tried a window. Wouldn’t budge. Another window. Again, didn’t budge. “There must be a back door.” He ran through a hallway, and found the kitchen; back door wouldn’t budge. He collapsed down onto the floor, slapped his hands to cover his face, shook his head, and tried to make sense of this.
“I am not in some psycho movie,” he whispered to himself.
He punched the speed dial for home. It rang. “Peter!” exclaimed someone, but it was not his parents. He freaked out and hung up.
He called his mom’s cell phone. It rang. “Peter!” Same voice. He hung up immediately.
“What now?”  He was starting to breath fast and was feeling anxious.
“Alice!” he exhaled.
He hit her number. “Peter!” Same voice. This time he did not hang up. “Peter! It’s us. Don’t be afraid. We brought you here. We know how you feel. Go into the living room, we have something for you that will clear everything up.” Click.
“No way, I’m not going to the living room.” Peter retried all the doors and windows. “No way am I going upstairs,” he thought as he looked around the house for an option.
Then while standing in the hallway considering what to do, a glitter caught his eye coming from the same place he had seen his phone. Approaching cautiously, he saw a photo and a piece of scrap paper.
The photo was old, black and white, a little bit more brown actually. It looked a hundred years old. A young black couple. Peter could not stop looking at it. They were standing in a house. “Was it this one?” They looked tired and dirty. They were not touching one another, just standing together with eyes of ...“What was it,”…desperation, pleading for something. Their eyes held Peter’s gaze. Then he knew it; they felt trapped, they needed to get out. But where were they and...
Lightning cracked through the sky literally jolting Peter off his feet and out of his daze. The paper! The paper, ripped around the edges, had hand-writing, rough print, more like scribble. It was almost illegible. As he began to read it, the sentences were not making sense. But there were phrases. It was addressed to him. “...we trapped…slaves...we now free...you free...you no trapped...enjoy you freedom…you be happy... Love, Maebel Churchill.”
Churchill? Peter fell to the floor. Physically unable to move, shaking, and barely breathing, the door flew open. Sunshine poured in and seemingly raised Peter to his feet. Staggering outside, there was no rain, no wind. Birds were chirping, nothing was wet. His cell phone dinged, text notification.
“You o.k.?” texted Alice.
“Get home now! Where are you?” texted his mother.
Without thought Peter broke into a slow jog and entered a field high with grass. Without thought he knew where to go. Without thought, he felt a new freedom, a weightlessness. He was free; free to fail or succeed, free to move across states or countries, free to start over, free to choose. He was not trapped. He was free to choose freedom. Freedom in spirit and in life.
The meeting could not have been more boring and the people could not have been more boring. Boring topics, boring chit-chat. Peter couldn’t have cared less though. He was filled with optimism knowing that he was no longer trapped in his own anger. He knew what he had. At hand he had fields of choices. And he had fields of freedom ahead of him.