Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  Suddenly released and moving through the crowd, the Senator had started along the walk leading back to the clubhouse when suddenly something landed a sharp, stabbing blow to his right heel and he whirled to see a small, handsome child who looked up at him out of a pair of intense, black, long-lashed eyes.

  Why, I’ll be damned, the Senator thought, it’s a boy! A fine, grand rascal of a little boy!

  The little boy, whose hair was cut in a Buster Brown bob, was dressed incongruously in the red satin pantaloons and white satin blouse such as were worn by a child in a painting by Goya, a copy of which the Senator had seen long ago in a museum. Even his pom-pom-topped white satin slippers were from another time, and behind him, attached to a silken cord which the boy held in a chubby fist, there stood a stuffed goldfinch mounted on a small gilted platform equipped with wheels.

  He’s been gotten up for either a wedding or a masquerade, but in either case he’ll steal the show. Dressed to kill, that’s the word, the Senator thought, resisting an impulse to sweep the child into his arms as he smiled down, saying,

  “Why, hello there! Don’t I know you from somewhere? You look awfully familiar….”

  But instead of answering, the little boy darted around him, the goldfinch clattering on the walk as the Senator turned to see the child standing in the middle of the path and confronting him with an expression of hostility which distorted his tiny face.

  “My, but you’re fast,” the Senator said. “What’s your name? Mine’s Adam Sunraider …”

  Silently the little boy stuck out a small blue tongue, making an angry face, then with his fingers rigidly extended he thumbed his nose.

  The Senator laughed, thinking, My, but he’s aggressive. Probably a dissatisfied constituent…. And yet he had a nagging impression that he knew the child, had seen him before, even though he could think of no one with a child so young.

  “Look,” he said, leaning forward, “I don’t know what you’ve got against me but I’d like to be friend with such a fine young fellow as you. Shall we shake hands?”

  His head shaking violently, the boy’s hands flew behind his back as he stared up at the Senator out of hot, black eyes.

  “Very well,” the Senator said, “people who can’t talk probably can’t know very much. I’ll bet you can’t even say your father and mother’s name….”

  The boy grinned, his face transformed into that of a malicious adult as he retreated a step and spat at the Senator’s feet, and in a flash his tiny hands were at his head, fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird as he stuck out his tiny blue-coated tongue and thumbed his ears.

  Thinking, How on earth could he have become so ill-mannered so young, the Senator chuckled at the incongruity between the child’s size and his aggressiveness.

  “Young man,” the Senator began, “I have an idea you’re lost. Maybe you’d better try to take me to where you last saw your mother—” and broke off, taken aback as the child went suddenly into a frenzy of action.

  Turning his back and jackknifing forward, the boy was looking up from between his short legs and making a horrible face as he patted his backside and made nasty sounds with his vibrating lips. Then, straightening, he raised his leg like a dog and with a grave expression on his face he thumbed the seat of his red satin pants.

  “Hey!” the Senator cried, “that’s enough of that! Cut it out! What do you think you’re doing?”

  But instead of answering, the boy began to run in circles before him, moving like a demented toy and stopping every few feet to repeat his insulting gestures.

  Profoundly disturbed and depressed, the Senator looked beyond the child into the crowd, hoping to see a frantic mother emerging to find the boy. A bird was rising above the crowd and all backs were turned, watching the marksman and the flighting target.

  This is awful, the Senator thought, this one certainly needs attention. How did he ever get this way so soon? Probably doesn’t even know his alphabet, yet he’s already expert in the manual-of arms of vulgar put-down!

  His leg was paining again and now as he started around the boy he saw the child sneering malevolently as he leaned back and pushed out his little satin-clad stomach and began vigorously to thumb the fly of his red satin pantaloons.

  It was too much for the Senator but as he reached out the boy leaped backwards, running and making a turn which caused the stuffed bird to disintegrate in an explosion of flying head and whirling feathers as it struck the walk and lay vibrating there as the boy shot silently into the crowd.

  For a moment the Senator stood looking blankly at the shattered goldfinch in his path, thinking, He’ll be furious, absolutely furious, and his mother will probably blame me and her with a boy running wild while she devotes herself to shooting matches…. It’s a crime…. And the Senator moved away.

  There was a faint odor of smoke around him now and as the Senator came out upon the steps leading from the building his senses were assaulted by the hushed humid heaviness of the late afternoon air. And then, as at a signal, a silence seemed to move before him and grow like a rolling crescendo of suddenly inverted sound. Sometime earlier a shower had left the atmosphere unbearably hot, and although the sky had begun to clear he could see drops of moisture still clinging to the leaves of the trees, and the walks glistened with the rain.

  Surprisingly, the traffic had disappeared, and as far as his eyes could see the traffic signals were blobs of red, shimmering against the moist mistiness of the fading light. Then a movement down at the intersection of the street and the avenue caught his attention and he saw a bent little black-skinned woman moving toward him.

  Wearing a blue bandanna headrag and a faded yellow apron over a red housedress, she made her way along in a pair of black high-topped old lady’s shoes which seemed, suddenly, to expand about her ankles and begin creeping up her legs: expanding and contracting violently as they climbed. It was as though they were intent upon engorging her within the bunion-distorted maws of their interiors. Yet she continued painfully forward and as she moved closer the Senator could hear the rhythmical beating of a clanking sound. But then she was no longer there but transported across the avenue where, standing before a building which showed dark against the eerie light of the fading sun, she called out in a senile quaver, “Hey! Heah Ah is, over heah!” and threatened him with an old-fashioned washing stick that she shook with awkward vigor.

  “Oh, Ah knows you,” she called, “You old jacklegged, knock-kneed, bowlegged, box-ankled, pigeon-toed, slack-asted piece of peckerwood trash gone to doo-doo! Ah knows you, yas Ah do! Yo’ mammy was yo’ sister and yo’ grandmaw too! Yo’ uncle was yo’ daddy and yo’ brother’s cousin! You a coward and a thief and a snake in the grass! You do the dirty bo-bo and you eats bad meat! Oh, Ah knows you, yas Ah does, and I means to git you! I means to tell everybody who you is and put yo’ nasty business in these white folks’ street….”

  What on earth is this, the Senator thought; who is this senile old mammy-aunty and what’s she doing up here on the Hill? Where did she come from?

  “Ah’ll tell you what you is,” the old woman called. “You ain’t nothing, that’s what you is! You is simply nothing done gone to waste, and if somebody was to plant you in a hill with a rotten piece of fish you wouldn’t even raise a measly bush of beans! You think you so high and mighty but you ain’t doodly-squat! You ain’t no eagle, fox, or bear! You ain’t a rabbit or a skunk or a wheel-in-a-wheel! You ain’t nothing—neither a moaning dove or a lily of the field! You ain’t a bolt or a nut or a crupper scrap. Ah even knows pimps and creepers who’re better’n you….”

  Very well, the Senator thought, but you’ll have to admit that if I’m not all that you say I’m at least a walking personification of the negative….

  “Shet up! Shet up! You nothing!” the old woman screamed, “SHET UP! Or Ah’ll tell you who you really is!”

  Shaking his head, the Senator turned away, amused but filled with a strange foreboding. Never mind, he thought, I know who I a
m, and for the time being at least, I am a senator.

  But now for some reason he recalled a church service of a summer’s evening long past, during which in rapid succession a gust of wind had torn a part of the roof away and a stroke of lightning had plunged the church into darkness. The choir had faltered in its singing and women had begun screaming—when in the noisy confusion and whirling about Hickman had stamped three times upon the pulpit’s hollow floor, shouting, “Sing! Sing!,” startling them and triggering some of the singers into an outburst of ragged, incoherent sound. Frightened by the storm, he himself had been crying, but as the old church creaked and groaned beneath the lashing of wind and rain and the screaming continued, the foot-pounded rhythm had come again, this time accompanied by Hickman’s lining-out of a snatch of a spiritual in hoarse, authoritative recitative. And suddenly the singers were calmed and the screamers were silenced and a disciplined quietness had spread beneath the howling of the storm. Then through a flash of lightning he had seen the singers straining toward Hickman who, with voice raised in melody was stomping out the rhythm on the floor. And as the singers followed his lead and were joined by the nervous choiring of the congregation, he had heard the blended voices rise up in firm array against the thunder. Up, up, the voices had climbed until, surrendering themselves to the old familiar words, they were giving forth so vigorously that before his astonished eyes the pitch-black interior of the church had seemed to brighten and come aglow with a joyful and unearthly radiance generated by the mighty outpouring of passionate song.

  He ‘rose…

  Heroes!

  He ‘rose…

  Heroes!

  He ‘rose…

  Up from the dead!

  He ‘rose…

  Oh, yes!

  He ‘rose…

  Oh, yes!

  Heroes…

  Up from the dead!

  A comfort, the Senator thought.

  And moving down the steps and into the familiar scene of the street he felt the images of this long-forgotten incident imposing themselves upon the scene, distorting his vision with teasing fragments of memory long rejected. And now he stumbled along the stone walk with inward-searching eyes, expecting the abrupt tolling of bells, a clash of lightning, a choir of girlish voices lifted in vesperal song….

  Across the way the old woman continued to rail, but now he was listening for the baritone timbre and voice-like phrasing of a muted trombone which would proclaim with broadly reverent mockery the lyrics of some ancient hymn; and looking back to the building entrance, he expected to see a crowd rush forth to shout down denunciations upon him, to shower him with stones…. But like the street, the entrance was empty and the door now mysteriously closed upon the brooding quiet….

  Soon, the Senator thought, it will come. They’re beginning to stir so as the old trainer said, watch their hands. And as old fighters, he warned, watch hands, feet, and head. Yes, they’re moving out into the open and things are beginning to heave and the backwash is beginning. But Hickman here? Unlikely—though who knows who it was who came? Nine owls have squawked out the rules and the hawks will talk, so soon they’ll come marching out of the woodpile and the woodwork—sore-head, sore-foot, right up close, one-butt-shuffling into history but demanding praise and kind treatment for deeds undone, for lessons unlearned. But studying war once more….

  Reaching the curb now, the Senator prepared to cross the boulevard when, sensing a rush of movement from his left, he spun instinctively and saw the car.

  Long, black and under-slung, it seemed to straighten the curving course of the street with the force of its momentum, bearing down upon him so relentlessly that his nerves screamed with tension as his entire body prepared itself for a supreme effort. An effort which, even as his muscles responded to the danger, was already anticipating itself in his reeling mind; projecting a long, curving, backwards-leaping motion through which his eyes were now recording in vivid detail of stone-steel-asphalt-chrome, damp leaves and whirling architectural stone as he saw himself sailing backwards and yet he was watching, still on his feet, the car approaching with such deliberate speed that now its fenders appeared to rise and fall with the heavy labored motion of some great bird flying, and the heaving of its black metallic sides like that of the barrel of a great bull charging. And now two gleaming, long-belled heralds’ trumpets which lay along the engine hood ripped the air with a blast of defiant sound and he saw a pair of red-tipped bullhorns appear atop the radiator, knifing toward him—while an American flag, which snapped and rippled like a regimental pinion brought to aggressive life by a headlong cavalry charge, streamed fiercely above….

  Only now did his body catch up with his mind, beginning its backwards-sailing fling as the car, almost upon him now, veered suddenly and stopped with a night-piercing screaming of brakes. He was on his back then, feeling the pain of the impact exploding in his elbows and spine and in the endless, heart-pounding, head-jolting instant the car seemed to leave the roadway and hover above the curb, hanging there like a giant insect; and inside its wide front seat were three men.

  Dark-skinned and broad of face behind the murky window they peered down at him through dark glasses topped by the narrow brims of high-crowned, shaggy-knapped white hats, watching him with intense concentration as their mouths stretched wide in expressions of fierce, derisible gaiety. Whereupon the driver reached for a microphone and looking around his companions addressed him through the herald trumpets which lay along either side of the rakish hood.

  “Next time you better swing your booty faster, boy,” the voice said, “or by God we go’ lo-mo kick your nasty ass!”

  Watching them, the Senator was speechless.

  “Don’t be laying there looking at us,” the voice said. “You heard me correctly; we’ll blast you and do everybody some service!”

  The Senator started up, trying to answer, but now there came a jet-like blast, and seeing the machine leaping into furious motion he rolled, turning completely over as he tried to escape its path. But instead of crushing him, the machine was braking and surging backwards with a blast of red and white light erupting from its rear. And then thundering with a rapid shifting and re-shifting of gears it left the street once more and hovered above him like a hovercraft, the black passengers looking down upon him with grim satisfaction, awaiting his next move….

  “Hey, Mister Motharider,” the voice called down to him. “How’s this for a goonguage?”

  “Hey, Shep,” the man in the middle said, “don’t ask he not’ing! Let’s show Charlie how de car can curb. I don’t tink he believes you cawn drive dis bloody ting.”

  “No, I don’t believe he does,” the driver said. “Okay, Charlie boy, watch me snatch the butter from the duck!”

  Staring into the grinning faces, the Senator scrambled to his knees, thinking, Who are they? as the machine shot away and shattered the quiet of the street with the flatulent blasts from its dual exhaust. He watched it lunging up the boulevard at a forward slant, seeming to flatten out and become the more unreal the farther it receded into the distance. Techniques of intimidation, that’s what they’re using, the Senator thought. They were waiting for me; they were watching the building for the moment I started across the street so they could intimidate me. So they’ll be back and I’d better leave…. And even as he watched the car floating away he was aware that somehow it was beginning to flow backwards upon its own movement, dividing itself and becoming simultaneously both there in the distance and here before him, where now it throbbed and puttered, a mirage-like image of black metal agleam with chrome, and there up the boulevard, where it was resonating street and buildings with the thunder of its power. And it came to the Senator that he was watching no ordinary automobile. This was no Cadillac, no Lincoln, Oldsmobile, nor Buick—nor any other known make of machine; it was an arbitrary assemblage of chassis, wheels, engine, hood, horns, none of which had ever been part of a single car! It was a junkyard sculpture mechanized! An improvisation, a bastard crea
tion of black bastards—and yet, it was no ordinary hot rod. It was an improvisation of vast arrogance and subversive and malicious defiance which they had designed to outrage and destroy everything in its path, a rolling time bomb launched in the streets….

  And now the image of the machine gleamed and quivered and throbbed before him, glowing with flames of luminous red that had been painted along the sides of the threatening, shark-finned fenders which guarded its licenseless rear. Two slender antennae affixed to either side of the trunk lazily whipped the air, one flying an enormous and luxuriantly rippling coon’s tail and the other displaying in miniature the stars and bars of the Confederacy while across the broad expanse of its trunk he saw the enormous image of an open switchblade knife bearing the words:

  we have seceded from the mother!

  hooray for us!

  to hell with charley!

  They have constructed it themselves, the Senator’s mind went on, brought the parts together and gathered in conspiratorial secret like a group of guerrillas assembling the smuggled parts of a machine gun! And they’ve made the damn thing run! No single major part goes normally with the rest, yet even in their violation of the rigidities of mechanical tolerances and in their defiance of the laws of physics, property rights, patents—everything—they’ve forced part after part to mesh and made it run! It’s a mammy-made, junkyard construction, and yet those clowns have made it work, it runs!