Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “That’s right, they’ll do it every time,” Charleston said.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said.

  “The hell you don’t; ain’t it usually some white cat who moves in on a man like that?”

  “I don’t know, but does the gunman’s color make such a difference to you?”

  “You’re damn right it does!”

  “But why? I doubt if the Senator considers it important.”

  “Well I do!”

  “But you said that you wouldn’t have shot him….”

  “No, but that’s not it. What I’m talking about is how some white cats feel that they have the right to move in on anything you do. You take your time and you work out a riff from way deep inside yourself, and just as sure as you’re born, some white cat is bound to come up and grab it and distort it!”

  “Oh, but he’s telling it like it is,” Charleston sang out behind me.

  “That’s a fact, man,” Minifees said. “The cat’s going to grab it and then he’s going to distort the hell out of it. No matter what you come up with, if he sees that it works and stirs folks up a bit, he’s out to grab it and try to outdo you with it—even if he has to blow it all out of shape.”

  “You’re goddamn right,” Charleston said, wringing the mop noisily into the bucket. “Like they grabbed ‘Tuxedo Junction’ from Erskine Hawkins and ain’t even smelled the funk of Birmingham! Like they grabbed credit for Don Redman’s ‘Marie,’ and never even rubbed a chick at a breakfast dance!”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said, trying to get them back on the shooting, “but I’d like to ask you this …”

  “Yeah,” Minifees said, “it happens every damn time. You work ‘til your brain sweats and try to come up with something nice and beautiful and sincere, you think it up and shape it and polish it until it swings, and then you blow it in public and it works and then—bam!—some white cat has stole it from you faster than a catfish can grab a turd. And what’s worse, he tries to hide the fact that he’s stealing by playing it on a hundred goddamn fiddles and a sonofabitching pipe organ!”

  I was at a loss—where were the shooting and car-burning leading me?

  “Perhaps you should have a lawyer to handle your copyrights,” I said.

  “Hell, man, you can’t copyright a riff. Besides, the guys who do that kind of thing can hire better lawyers than I can because they can steal my stuff and make more money off of it than I can. But this is going too far! I thought I’d been served up all kinds of larceny, but now here comes a cat who’s done grabbed my Sunraider riff and blowed it through a goddamn shotgun!”

  “Not a shotgun, man,” Charleston said, “it was a pistol.”

  “Hell,” Minifees said wearily, “it’s all the same: A gun’s a gun, and besides, that bastard was trying to blast both me and the Senator. It’s enough to make a man take off and go live in Paris. I bet if I had shot the man with a BB gun that bastard would have raced up behind me and blasted him with a bazooka—just to pretend that shooting him was his idea. Yeah, and to prove that the white folks are still in the lead!”

  He struck the bed and was silent, and I could hear the music of Charleston’s mop dripping into his bucket.

  “Tell me, Mr. Minifees,” I said, “if you had been present in the Senate would you have tried to prevent the shooting?”

  “Prevent it? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell what a man will do on the spur of a moment. But I doubt if I’d have stepped in front of any bullets to save him….”

  “He’s asking you that because some goddamn jackleg Boot preacher was up there trying to grab the cat with the gun when he should’ve been trying to steady his aim.”

  “He did? Well, Charleston, a preacher is supposed to be against murder. They find out who he is?”

  “His name is Hickman,” I said. “Do you know him?”

  “Hickman? Hickman what?”

  “Doctor Alonzo Hickman….”

  “Alonzo Hickman … no, I don’t think so.”

  I was waiting for Charleston to reveal that Hickman was below, but instead he said, “Look, y’all, I have to get back downstairs. So get on with your talk, and break it up before the nurses start making their rounds. I’ll check you later.”

  And before I could protest, the door closed and I found myself alone with Minifees in the dark. I hadn’t expected this development and didn’t like it. Before now the questions of Minifees’ sanity and involvement in a plot had been abstract, now it might well be a matter of life or death. I turned, feeling for the door when he spoke behind me.

  “All right, Doctor,” he said calmly, “what do you want to ask me?”

  I hesitated and then, feeling assured by his calmness, I said, “Let’s start with your reason for burning your car.”

  “Okay, man; she was a beauty.”

  Through the dark his voice sounded with nostalgia, puzzling me.

  “But surely that isn’t why you burned it?”

  “Oh, no. I burned it because I had to. I had to answer that half-assed senator.”

  “But why did you decide that you had to answer him, and why in that fashion?”

  “Because he messed with me, man.”

  “But it seems such an extreme thing to do.”

  “Extreme, hell! Did you ever have a bastard signifying at you the way he did? Making fun of you?”

  “No, at least not anyone so high in the Government. But he wasn’t referring to you personally….”

  “Yeah, but I took it personally. Somebody had to, so I decided to hit the bastard, and I had to hit him in such a way that everybody would know that I’d hit him….”

  “And burning your Cadillac was the only way?”

  “That’s it. You got it. It was the best way.”

  “But why go to such expense?”

  “Man, you can’t worry about money when you’re in that kind of fight. Any way you proceed you know you’re going to have to make a sacrifice just to get in a position where you can draw some blood. I wanted people to know how I felt about that bastard, because somebody had to tell him off.”

  “I’m beginning to understand, but did you consider that the results might be different?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m referring to the possibility that you might have done more harm to yourself than to the Senator. Many people were so shocked that they failed to appreciate what you were attempting to do. They were terrified.”

  “Are you telling me? Hell, I knew it and I thought about it and I’m glad it upset them. Many of them didn’t want me to have a Caddy in the first place, and when I realized that that Senator thought that by owning one I was trying to imitate him, I decided to change the rules of the game. I don’t have to drive a Caddy, but he didn’t think about that because he has to drive one in order to feel he’s got it made. Me, I’m free.”

  Free, I thought. Perhaps he’s insane after all. How can he speak of freedom while locked up without access to lawyer or judge?

  “But let me ask you this,” I said. “Why didn’t you burn the Senator’s automobile instead?”

  “Because I hurt him more by burning my own, that’s why. If I had burned his I’d just be another outlaw, but this way he and everybody else has to know that I don’t have to take their crap. I realized that I didn’t have to hit him to hurt him; all I had to do was hit myself and he’d hurt more than I did. Him and a lot of others. I’m tired of people thinking that they can intimidate me just because I drove a Caddy.”

  “Do other people feel as the Senator does?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Hell, man, it’s impossible to miss it. Almost every time I pull up to a stoplight, I can see it in their eyes.”

  “See what, Mr. Minifees?”

  “I could see their eyes saying, ‘Hey, that Caddy’s too good for that Boot!’ And not only that, sometimes they put it into words. Take the other day when I’m in New York driving through Gr
eenwich Village on my way to work a gig. I’m coming to a corner with the traffic light on the green, and I see a little old lady and a little freckle-faced girl about to cross the street from the other side, and I put on the brakes and let them cross.

  “Now understand me, I’m not asking for any special credit for letting them pass; many a driver gives pedestrians the right of way and tries to be polite. Besides, my mama taught me manners. In fact, she beat them into me in order to save me from you people and in order to save you from me. So that’s not the point. The point I’m making is that when that little old lady and the little girl reached the curb, what do you think happens?”

  “Was this recently?”

  “Yeah, it was recent and it was still on my mind when Sunraider made his goddamn speech!”

  “I see,” I said, “and what happened?”

  “So when that little old lady gets the little girl over the curb, she looks around, and I could see a smile start to bloom on her face and then, man, she sees me behind the wheel—and after that, buddy, the weather took a sudden turn for the worst! The sun dropped down into a bottomless hole! Ice a foot thick frosted over the street! And all of a sudden that little old lady wrinkled up her face and something went SPLAT!”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” his voice dropped dolefully in the dark, “you got the message. Instead of thanking me, that … little … old … lady … spits … on … the … hood … of … my … nice … clean Cadillac!”

  “That’s outrageous.”

  “Yeah, and you can play that in brass. That hood of mine looked like sixteen seagulls suffering from the Georgia trots had got my range at the same time and the captain gull had yelled, ‘ATTACK!’ And after that, man, came the deluge! I was dumbfounded. I’d never witnessed such conduct in all my born days, man or boy, North or South. I just sat there with my mouth open, watching while she gives that little girl a jerk that lifts her clean off the walk and shoots her draw’s leg down around her little ankles and starts her to bawling like she’s got the blues long before her time. Man, in this country there’s truly no rest for the weary, no peace for the soul!”

  In the quiet I could hear him swallow, the sound of a glass striking a tabletop, then his voice resumed, swollen with emotion.

  “Mr. McIntyre, I just sat there and shook my head, too outdone to move. And then, when she’s a few steps away, the light turned red so that I couldn’t pull off, she turns and shakes her bony fist at me and screams so that all the people on the street could hear, ‘We’ll get you, Mister black Bogy-wah-zee! We’ll get you! Comes the revolution and we God-fearing, genuine Americans are going to put you back in your place. Just you wait and see! We’ll make the streets safe for democracy, and we’ll put you back in the cotton patch where you belong, and then we’ll raise the tariff to see that you stay there!’

  “Did you ever hear anything like that, Mr. McIntyre?”

  “No,” I said, “I haven’t.”

  “Then you’re lucky, because that’s how far this Cadillac confusion had gone before Sunraider shot off his mouth. That little old lady—and she was old—she’s going to start a bloody revolution! She’s going to kill up a lot of people and take away their hard-earned property just so she can get my Cadillac! Never seen me before in her life, and she’s going to do all that, and all I did was to try to protect her while she’s breaking the traffic laws and risking that little girl’s life!

  “Man, you should have seen her. She was holding on to that child’s arm with her eyes popping out and her face working, looking like she could’ve knocked out my teeth one by one with a ball-peen hammer! Hell, no wonder the kids are running wild. No wonder they’re smoking pot in the fourth grade and burning down houses! That old lady was broadcasting murder in front of that little child, and I haven’t even opened my mouth, much less raised my hand: All I did was to own a Cadillac. But now that little girl is well on the road to hating anybody who looks like me and drives an automobile….”

  “She must have been cracked,” I said as his voice became silent. “There are bigots of all ages.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, and I could hear the bed give as he lay down. “But don’t go putting that woman down for a crackpot, that would be a mistake, because there are plenty like her, and when I heard that Sunraider playing up to them, I knew I had to do something.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand you now,” I said, “but why, precisely, were you so angered by his remarks? After all, what he said seems tame after what you’ve told me about the reactions of other people.”

  His feet scraped the floor. “Not tame, man; because being what he is made it much worse. I can take things like cops always coming up to me talking about, ‘Boy, what white man’s car is this you all being so reckless with?’ That’s right, and I’m parked at the goddamn curb. Or they see you on the highway and make you pull over to the side so they can examine your license, talking about, ‘Boy, you be more careful with that white man’s car, y’all hear?’ Sure, I’ve had to put up with a lot of that kind of bullshit, but I expect a senator to act like a senator, not like a clown. Something must be wrong with that cat, seriously wrong. Because he sounds frantic to me. No wonder somebody tried to kill him.”

  “What do you mean by ‘frantic,’ Mr. Minifees?”

  “I mean he sounds touched. Off his rocker, like what comes out isn’t what it started out to be. He reminds me of a barbershop quartet of nigger-hating crackers singing ‘Shortenin’ Bread’—which is one of the most frantic exhibitions a man could see. Those cats work themselves up into such a state singing about ‘Mammy’s li’l baby’ and the rest of that jive that by the time they reach the last chorus somebody has to run out on the stage with a bucket and mop to clean up the mess. That’s what I mean by frantic. Sunraider gets to talking and his mouth runs away with him, especially when he gets to talking about us. No wonder somebody shot him.”

  “Speaking of the shooting, Mr. Minifees, have you any idea of just who might have shot him?”

  “No, I don’t, but a cat like that is liable to have folks coming out of the woodwork to get him.”

  “Have you ever heard anyone discussing the possibility of shooting him?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever discussed doing so yourself?”

  “No, but I’ve thought about all the possible ways of kicking his butt.”

  “Was that recently? I mean, was it after his speech or before?”

  “Before. When I heard him coming through my radio talking that mess about Cadillacs, I didn’t take time to talk about it; I came after him.”

  “And you decided to burn your own property instead of attacking him personally?”

  “That’s right, because it was the logical thing to do. If I’d have shot him, or knocked a hole in his head, it would have been like getting mad when you’re playing the dozens. I would’ve lost the game.”

  “I don’t get the point.”

  “Well, in the dozens each player tries to say the worst things he can say about the other’s mother and father, their families, and the one who gets mad loses the game. So it was like Sunraider was playing the dozens with me, and I wasn’t going to lose by getting mad and blasting him. But while I had no trouble restraining myself from doing that, I also knew that he couldn’t afford to have folks like me giving up all the things Cadillacs have come to stand for. And, man, if enough of us give them up, it will hurt Sunraider a hell of a lot worse than a bullet. The point is to make him live with it, not to kill him. In fact, I’m sorry that the bastard got shot….”

  Listening to his voice fade in the dark, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to throw up my hands before the incongruity between his act and his intention, between the Senator’s reckless joke and the old woman’s bigotry and Minifees’ extreme reaction to them. That such as they could produce such a sense of outrage and revolt as the car-burning expressed was too much for me. It had appeared that Minifees had allowed h
imself to become so provoked that he’d destroyed something that had meant far more to him than a simple—though expensive—apparatus of locomotion, and his answer to my next question gave indication of this.

  “Mr. Minifees,” I said, “I get the impression that your automobile meant far more to you than cars do to most people.”

  “Yeah? Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” he said, “but since I’ve been here, I’ve been thinking about what mine really meant, and now that I’ve thought about it, the difference between what cars mean to most folks and what mine meant to me is the difference between knowing only the melody of a song and knowing the melody and the chords and the lyrics. Now I know what it meant to me from top to bottom.”

  “Would you explain that?”

  “Sure. I mean that now I dig the romance of owning something fine that costs a lot of cash. You know: A big car means a big man. Own a convertible and be hell with the women. Own a limousine and be a man of distinction. Hell, I know all of that bullshit which they put in the ads. And I also know about the engine and the suspension and all of the technical features—but after what I did, and since I’ve had time to think about it a bit, I realize that for me that Caddy wasn’t simply a car.”

  I felt myself take an involuntary step forward.

  “That’s what I’d like to understand,” I said. “Would you please spell it out? That’s precisely the kind of detail that my readers need to understand.”

  “Well, for one thing, she was my boon companion….”

  “Yes?”

  “She was like a guaranteed freedom to move—when I wanted to and where I wanted to—you dig?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “And she was my rolling hideaway and my thinking room.”

  “In other words,” I said, “it was a mode of escape and a place of contemplation, is that it?”

  “Right! All of that. And what’s more, she eased my nerves when the strain mounted up, and she gave me a lift when I was feeling low. Because that Cadillac got me further when I wanted to clear the territory, and she told me that good times were somewhere up the road. There’s many a cat who was saved from a busted jaw through my being able to climb into that Caddy and take off!”