Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll try to tell you all I know.”

  “That’s fine,” the sergeant said. “You can start by giving Officer Tillman here your name.”

  “Yes, sir. My name’s Aubrey McMillen.”

  “And his?” The sergeant nodded toward the man in the coffin.

  “That’s Mister Jessie….”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “That is his first name; his last name’s Rockmore, just like you called it outside the door. Mister Jessie Rockmore’s his full name.”

  “You get it, Tillman?” the sergeant said.

  “Yes, sir. Got it!”

  “All right, Aubrey,” the sergeant said, bending forward. “Now tell us what you do.”

  “I’m a super.”

  “For whom?”

  “For Mister Jessie. I work right here.”

  “Do you have other jobs?”

  “Not anymore. I been working for Mister Jessie for close to ten years. Before that I worked for—”

  “Hold it,” the sergeant said. “We’ll come back to that later. Now just tell us what happened here.”

  “Well, suh, it was thisaway,” McMillen began. “A few days ago Mister Jessie told me to bring the coffin up from the celler, so I got holt of Leroy—that’s the boy what helps me—and we brought it up, and at first we sat it on a couple of chairs like he told us.”

  “Why did he want the coffin up here?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t rightly know. Me and Mister Jessie have been friends since I can remember, and he liked to talk to me a lot. In fact, he talked to me more than he did to anyone else.”

  “Did he have any relatives?”

  “Yes, suh, he does. But he can’t stand them, so he lives here by hisself.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Did his family visit him?”

  “Sometimes, but not very often. Because, you see, he’s so strict and strait-laced that they can’t get along with him, so they just let him alone. And he liked it that way fine. Mister Jessie used to sit here day after day reading his Bible and The Washington Post and that Congressional Record, fussing about the things he read in them, and trying to get me interested so I could argue with him about them. Now I argue with him about the Bible, although I don’t have much religion, but that Congress paper, it just makes me mad. It made Mister Jessie mad too….”

  “Why?”

  “Because he didn’t agree with what it said. He was all the time arguing back with it and talking about the law and stuff which I don’t have the education to know much about—not that Mister Jessie had been to school either, but he taught hisself a lot of things.”

  “So he was self-educated,” the sergeant said. “Now tell us what happened.”

  “Well, like I started to tell you, when me and Leroy got the coffin up here and resting on some chairs, Mister Jessie looked at it a long time, and right away he seemed to forget about us. He started to mumble to hisself and walk around it, then he began to knock on it with his fist and making a hollow sound. Then all at once he tapped it like a man thumping a watermelon, and you could see a cloud of brown dust rising up out of there…. Mister Jessie bucked his eyes, then turned and looked at me, and he looked like he’d done see a ghost. He shook his head and went to mumbling something I didn’t get, then he balled up his fist and came down real hard and stood back and watched the dust rising up and settling down. Me and Leroy started to sneezing then, and I watched Mister Jessie bend down and unbolt the lid and run his hand inside. And when he straightened up he brought out some ole rotten suit cloth and a pair of those ole sharp-toed, button shoes with gray tops, like they used to wear years ago, and held them up, inspecting them. And all the time he’s looking at them he’s shaking his head and mumbling, and his face was working and that loose skin under his chin was shaking like a mad turkey gobbler’s. Then he got to sneezing and leaned way over and really started to pulling things out of there….”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the first thing was a plate and a bowl and a pitcher and some knives and forks. Then out came the statue of a horse, and one of those bottles with a ship in it, and a box of grits, the kind with the colored man on it—”

  “Grits? What the hell are you telling us?” the sergeant said.

  “That’s right, grits,” McMillen said. “You can see for yourself right over there on the table.”

  “What else did he take out of there?”

  “He took out a Bible and a little ole wrinkled up U.S. flag and an ole owl-head pistol. A forty-four on a thirty-eight frame—you can see it, it’s right over there—and some old life-insurance policies. Yes, suh, and some no-good oil shares. And then he reached in again and when he straightened up he’s got an old tin box in his hand….

  “Said, ‘It’s been so doggone long that I’d almost forgot about this.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘McMillen, give that there little nappy-bearded boy a dollar and let him go.’ So I give Leroy a dollar and he went on off.”

  “Why did you pay the boy?”

  “Well, you see, Mister Jessie used to borrow money from me all the time. Borrow it one day and give it back the next. He just like to see if I had it, or if I’d let him have it. Not that he needed it, ‘cause he has plenty money in the bank and hardly spent nothing at all except for something to eat and a few shirts now and then. Well, yes, and his newspapers and magazines. He didn’t even smoke or chew.”

  “But he drank a hell of a lot.”

  McMillen’s head snapped up. He looked indignant. “No, suh, he didn’t, and I tell you about the whiskey in a minute.”

  “Go on.”

  “No, suh, he didn’t drink and he didn’t chew, so he didn’t need much money. Besides, a man from that big New York museum was always down here trying to get him to sell those plates and things over there in those cases. Offered him all kinds of money for that stuff—way up in the thousands—but he wouldn’t sell…. And another man from a place here in D.C.

  wanted those pictures of Indians and other folks, but Mister Jessie wouldn’t hear him either. Told me one time he would give them to those folks over there at the university for nothing if they would have the sense to appreciate them, but he said they weren’t interested because they didn’t understand that they had something to do with them. They ought to raise some hell in the Indians’ name once in a while, he said. And he told me once that he tried to give them those Indian pictures—he’s got some really fine ones—but they didn’t want them, and Mister Jessie got mad as a bitch, as he told it. Said, ‘Those fools are supposed to be educated, and they don’t even realize that for better or worse they have taken the place of the Red Man, even to getting scalped and swindled every time they turn around.’ This was too complicated for me, but Mister Jessie used to say some pretty low-rating things about those folks over there. Course, as far as I’m concerned they seem to be doing a pretty fair job.”

  “Stick to the point,” the sergeant said.

  “Yes, suh,” McMillen said, taking a drink. “Anyway, so Leroy took his money and left and I went and locked the door after him, and when I got back in the room Mister Jessie was counting out that money that that lady over there is wearing, and spreading it out on the coffin lid.

  “He said, ‘McMillen, this stuff has been in there so long it’s against the law to even own it.’ And all at once he turned around and looked at me with a bunch of those big goldbacks fanned out in his hand, and right then he did something I never heard him do before in all the years I been knowing him—he cussed. He said, ‘Goddamn it, it had to slip up on me at a time when by rights I ought to be dead and gone. But now I’m glad, because at least I can say that for once in my life I broke the goddamn law!’

  “I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. Because Mister Jessie was as straight as a die and as hard as steel, and as clean-cut a man, black or white, as I’ve ever seen. He was what you call a good, upright C
hristian man….”

  “All right, all right, get on with your story,” the sergeant said.

  “Yes, suh,” McMillen said, and I watched him sip the whiskey, then lean forward shaking his head.

  “Well, suh, it looked like using that cussword caused something to snap in Mister Jessie’s head. At the time he was dressed in his bathrobe and with his scrawny neck coming up out of his shirt neckband with the button in but no collar. So he stood there mumbling and counting out the money, then he looked at it a minute and all at once he took his hand and swept it to the floor, disgusted-like.

  “I said, ‘What in the world are you doing there, Mister Jessie, treating that money thataway? That’s still good money. You ain’t no criminal or nothing like that,’ I said. ‘You can turn that money in and the bank will give you full value.’

  “Well, suh, why did I say that! Mister Jessie looked like he was going to pick up that coffin and throw it at me.

  “‘Full value!’ he said. ‘Full value, my foot! There ain’t enough gold in Fort Knox to give me the value of what that money cost me. Back there in the nineties, denying myself and my family, pulling dollars and pennies out of my black hide, helping that white man take heirlooms—all that Spode and Chelsea and Sandwich and Sterling—from ignorant folks. McMillen, wars and thievery in high places and bad monetary policies have put more lead in our silver and more brass in our gold than was in all the bullets shot up during the Civil War. And now time has cut the value of whatever’s left. McMillen,’ he said, ‘let me tell you one goddamn thing: When a man gets as old as I am, money is nothing but the cold excrement of all his life’s labor. Even sweat has more value, because in this hell of a Washington, sweat will at least cool him once in a while. I wore out fifteen of those little ole straight-life, nickel-today-nickel-when-you-git-it insurance policies before I learned I was being drained of my just interest and started saving my money in the banks. Then the Depression started eating on me, and twice, once before they set up the Federal Reserve Board, and again in ‘29, I was the victim of embezzlers. And all this time the value of the money going down and down like that elevator in the Washington Monument. Don’t talk to me about getting my value out of that stuff!’

  “And then he really went to preaching. Said, ‘I tried to live by a devalued standard. I’ve denied myself whiskey, women, and warfare, and I’ve seen my labor go to hell and my life turn into a P. T. Barnum sideshow, and all the time I’ve been patient and law-abiding. I’ve prayed and believed and kept the faith. When I was young I never went to a dance or visited a whore. I never knowingly cheated or lied, even when I had to suffer because I didn’t. And I always believed even when times was at their very worse that things would get better. McMillen,’ he said, ‘this was my philosophy. I believed in two things: I believed in the perfectibility of man—including Negroes like you and me—and in the progressive improvement of the American form of government and the American way of life. These two beliefs have been the rock upon which I based my life and my faith. God has seen fit to free me from slavery when I was still a young boy, and I determined to live according to His rules and according to His time and win as much human perfectibility as I could. Mr. Lincoln tried to make a way for us in this society and had the Constitution amended to help us over the rough places and then got the back of his head blown off for his pains, but still I was determined not to be impatient and to learn citizenship and practice manliness so that at least his spirit would never be embarrassed by me.’ ”

  McMillen said, “Mister Jessie looked at me then, gentlemen, and all at once he got to laughing. He laughed until he cried, and he got me to laughing at his laughing, then he stopped for a second and leaned back against that coffin, and you could hear something give way inside it, and he started to laughing some more.

  “‘McMillen,’ he said, ‘for years you have respected me as an intelligent man, but I want to confess right now that you’ve been wrong, ‘cause I’m nothing but a ninety-five-year-old goddamn fool!’

  “I told him, ‘Take it easy, Mister Jessie; you oughtn’t to play yourself cheap like that.’ And he said, ‘No, you listen to me. I had everything all figured out logically. I had been a slave, you see, so it would take me quite a while to catch up with the liberty that Jesus Christ and Mr. Lincoln provided for me; and since the nation had men at the bottom, where I started both in terms of place and in terms of time, and men at the top like Mr. Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson’ (he always talked about those two), ‘and Jay Gould,’ and somebody he called the Right Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, ‘there was order in the nation and in the world,’ he said. ‘And since the Bible teaches me that there is a heaven above and a hell below, with Satan the master of hell and God the Father and Christ Jesus sharing the throne of heaven above, then everything was in universal metaphysical order and in orderly process. A man was born and he had his chance to help himself by the manner in which he lived his life, and when he died he was buried and in time he was judged and he went either to heaven or to hell. Everything fitted the scheme, and if God could send His son down here as a man, that was a good enough guarantee that I could at least be a full citizen.

  “‘So you see, McMillen,’ Mister Jessie said, ‘I lived the best way I knew how, and I was determined to take care of all those earthly things I could control. I refused the notion of rebellion. I didn’t drink whiskey, chase women, or sing the blues. I would play the game. Therefore, I bought that damned casket there while in the full strength of my manhood. I bought it so that when my time came I could be put away in the proper fashion and with no debts outstanding to man or government. I figured that time is but so long, and flesh is surely frail and unpredictable. So I lived in fear of God and in respect of law. I kept the faith in the orderly processes of justice and in the checks and balances of good government. But now just look at me and look around me! Things have gone to hell right here in Washington. Here I’ve had to live these ninety-five years until I’m so old that I’m no good to myself or to anybody else. I’ve got as many gadgets on me as a five-and-dime store. My teeth are false, I have to hold my gut in with a truss, I can’t see worth a damn without my glasses, I have to hook up my ears to a doggone radio in order to hear, and I walk with a cane. I’m no good to myself or to anybody else. My children don’t want me and I’m even in my own way. And still I don’t see any prospect of passing on to my reward.

  “‘McMillen, I was in this town when they killed Mr. Lincoln, and I watched with these eyes when they took FDR to his last resting place. And I’ve seen all kinds of crooks and thieves come up to Washington and do their nastiness in the name of country, liberty, freedom, and economy, and pass on. Different names but the same nastiness. With but a few exceptions, it’s been a matter of highbinders, clipsters, phonies, and confidence men in high places since I can remember. And they don’t get any better, they get worse.’ ”

  McMillen interrupted himself now. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I want y’all to understand that this was Mister Jessie talking, not me. I don’t know nothing about politics.”

  “We’re listening,” the sergeant said.

  “Then he got going again. Said, ‘I fought in the Spanish-American War and left some of my blood down there on San Juan Hill, with Teddy Roosevelt getting so much credit that you’d have thought he fought the Spanish single-handed, while our people got none of the recognition and the crooks in the War Department even found a way to swindle me out of my pension. I’ve been a fool, McMillen, I’ve been a goddamn fool! Here I’ve been worrying all these years about dying well and not being a burden to anyone, and I’ve neglected to live well. In fact, I haven’t been living, I’ve been dying. Forty years ago I took my savings and bought me a decent suit of clothes and a pair of fine Johnston & Murphy shoes of the kind I’d denied myself the pleasure of wearing here on earth—and I bought me some decent linen. And now look at it, all worn out with waiting. The suit’s crumbling into dust, the shoe leather is hard and dry as Adam’s first fig leaf, an
d worst of all, the damned coffin is full of bugs and worms raising hell and stamping their feet even before I have a chance to get in there and serve them up their long-expected meal. Even they knew I was dead. This is the last straw, McMillen. I got nothing to live for or to look forward to. No now and no hereafter. No justice from my government and no hope for heaven or escape from hell. It’s shit hawks flying and shit hooks grabbing. Because both God and government have just been taking me for granted. Talking about God and the Devil making a pawn out of Job! Hell, I’ve been ignored and held in such contempt that even my coffin has fallen to dust, and that took away the only guarantee I have left in this world, so it’s time I started living for me!’ ”

  Suddenly McMillen paused and looked at each of us. “And to the best of my recollection, gentlemens,” he said, lowering his eyes to his empty glass, “that’s how it happened….”

  “That’s how what happened?” the sergeant said. “Listen, McMillen, are you trying to snow us? You haven’t said a word about what he’s doing propped up in that coffin—or about what that … that … woman over there—what’s she doing in here? What else was going on in here besides a lot of drinking and a lot of subversive ranting? Did you two rob him and put him in that coffin?”

  McMillen became visibly upset at this particular question. I had noticed him avoiding looking in the direction of the woman, who sprawled in her chair, and now he shook his head in violent denial.

  “No, suh, it wasn’t nothing like that. No, suh!”

  “Then get on with your story. What the hell went on in here?”

  “Yes, suh,” McMillen said. “But first, can I ask you gentlemen a question?”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to ask you all if you all are Northern gentlemen or Southern gentlemen?”

  “Quit stalling,” the sergeant said. “What’s that got to do with it?”