Love can mean Goodbye

A crowded dirty bus terminal was the last place Holly wanted to be. But she couldn’t stay away.
She might never see the boy she loved again, and he couldn’t acknowledge her, certainly not kiss or hold her. Being in the same room was better then not seeing him at all for perhaps the last time. Love was so painful no wonder Shakespeare's writing torched the heart and soul.

James was going to New York, a universe away from Montgomery, Alabama. Holly saw him and pushed through the crowd. Their eyes exchanged silent words of love as they filled with tears.
He reached out to clasp her hand but people were staring now. She managed to slip a letter into his hands. Maybe someone would read it to him.

She and James had played as children. The games were typical like hide and seek and playacting. She tried to teach him to read and write. At thirteen, new feelings for each other began to come through. Then at fifteen, desire overcame them and they stepped over the line becoming lovers.

Sadly, they were caught. A neighbor who was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan took these “filthy situations” as their personal obligation to correct. The result was a cross burned in James parents’ front yard. Then a dark figure jumped James the next night beating and bruising him. He was given a warning,
“Get your sorry black ass out of town or we’ll pay a painful call on your Ma and Pa!”

There were many invisible but definitive lines you didn’t cross in the Deep South in the 1950's.
A black man could easily be lynched, by the court of public opinion, for dating a white woman.

Holly watched him board the bus. She wanted to run after him. She bit her lip to remain quiet.
Maybe they would find each other again in a kinder, more tolerant world.