Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  These changes would appear to signal his intention of placing Hickman’s visit to Oklahoma first in the narrative sequence to correspond to its temporal order. Yet his notes continually reaffirm his decision to begin the novel in Washington, D.C., with the prologue. This is perhaps the most significant of the textual decisions Ellison left unresolved. Thus, it appears likely that Ellison never composed the textual bridges that would connect D.C. with Georgia and Oklahoma, and both of these sections with the complete McIntyre computer text.

  HICKMAN IN GEORGIA & OKLAHOMA

  [GEORGIA]

  [SISTER]

  THE LETTER ARRIVED in the morning’s mail. Hickman was working at his desk facing the window when Sister Wilhite came in with it cradled in her arms.

  “Reveren’,” she said, “you busy?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am,” Hickman said, “I’m right in the middle of something.”

  Sister Wilhite sniffed. “Middle,” she said, “you’re always in the middle. That’s your middle name….”

  “No, ma’am, it’s Zuber, as you well know.”

  “Yes, but you know what I mean. You’re always in the middle and forever pecking and scratching away on those sermons which you write down one way and then stand up there and preach the way you really feel it. If you would write it the way you say it maybe folks would want to read it, but even if they didn’t you would surely save a heap of time….”

  Hickman dropped his chin to his chest and sighed.

  “Sister Corrine,” he said, “I’d be so thankful if you’d—”

  “All right, all right,” Sister Corrine said, “but I won’t drop dead. And what’s more, I can wait even though some others don’t seem to be able.”

  “Thank you,” Hickman said, “and just drop the mail on the table there and I promise you I’ll go through it as soon as I’m finished.”

  Without a word Sister Corrine placed the pile of mail on the table and swept out of the study with the offended dignity of a Bantam pullet.

  Hickman stared at the words on his interrupted page, thinking, Why can’t she understand that there’s more behind a thing that’s said than mere feeling? That it’s the conception behind what’s being said that gives it vibration? It’s a good thing she wasn’t around when God was making the world, otherwise she’d never have let him get finished. Come to think of it, maybe she was there…. I’ll have to ask her….

  He smiled, thinking, And I’ll have my chance because Sister Corrine has something in mind, and it probably has to do with the mail. And with a woman, just as it usually is….

  He had never married, and back during his early career, at a time when husband-hunting and shamelessly adventurous women were a threat to his relations with his congregation, he had thought to protect himself by asking Deacon Wilhite and his wife to share the parsonage. Wilhite was an old friend from his boyhood, and Sister Corrine turned out to be not only an excellent cook and housekeeper, but a mistress of the house who took over such entertainment as was expected of him as a minister. She had been a godsend in many ways, for years ago, before his foster son ran away, she had also provided the woman’s touch that was necessary in raising a child. Thus she had won a permanent place in Hickman’s affections, and this even though she had come, over the years, to bully him almost as much as she did her husband. Nevertheless, it was a satisfactory arrangement, and before the boy ran away it had given the parsonage much of the warmth of a true family unit. Sometimes, however, he regarded Sister Corrine’s bullying as a self-inflicted burden that was made bearable only because of his friendship with Wilhite and her contribution to the success of his early ministry.

  When he was assigned to the congregation, certain of its members who knew of his past as a jazz musician had objected. For not only did they consider him unsuitable, but they desired a leader who was married, and preferably one with children. And even though he had a foster son, his lack of a wife had been against him. Some of the most important members had considered it a most crucial issue, in maintaining tradition, certain ceremonial duties and leadership functions connected with the church were the responsibility of its minister’s wife.

  And even more important, at least to some, was the assumption that marriage automatically afforded a minister a keener insight into the many problems afflicting families. Especially the inevitable contentions that arose between husbands and wives and parents and children. Here at least his background as the son of a well-known minister had been in his favor, but there was a related objection that proved so thorny that it appeared that he would lose his assignment. For while he could feel its presence behind the questions put to him by the head of the board of trustees—a head waiter for the leading hotel—the man seemed to find the subject as delicate to deal with as the unzipped zipper of an important guest, or a bluebottle fly in a carefully prepared vichyssoise. Then it turned out that some of the trustees considered marriage as an indispensable safeguard against a minister’s becoming profanely involved with ladies of the congregation. And though most were experienced enough to realize that such a safeguard didn’t always work, they felt that it did place certain constraints in the way of temptation. Fortunately, what counted most was a minister’s ability to move them with the Word beyond the limitations of words, and he passed the test. They had liked his personality and style of delivery well enough to give him a chance, and with Sister Corrine taking over to fulfill the duties of a minister’s wife he had earned the respect of the congregation, men and women, married and unwed alike.

  [JANEY 3]

  WHEN HICKMAN READ THE name and return address on the thickest envelope he paused, weighing it in his hand as he thought, What on earth is going on with Janey? This thing looks like she’s taken off on some kind of writing jag. Just look at all the stamps! Then, shaking his head, he placed the envelope on his desktop and read rapidly through the rest of his mail.

  Ripping the envelopes open with his fingers, he discovered among the bills and solicitations for funds three letters from former members who had moved to the North; the first asking his aid in securing a birth certificate from a small nearby town. I’ll try, he thought, but it’s probably impossible since at the time they weren’t issuing many to Negroes. But I’ll see.

  The next was from a former member who had just lost her husband in New Jersey, saying that she expected him to conduct the burial ceremony, and would he see to it that her old family plot was made ready by the time she reached home with her husband’s body.

  Of course I will, he thought, and the plot’s no problem, because just last week I was out there and noticed that somebody—probably a member of the family—had looked ahead and given it their attention…. Oh, but how time leaps ahead of memory’s markers—here I’ve been remembering her as such a cute little girl and now she’s a widow!

  Opening the next letter, he read a few lines and smiled. It was from a couple asking that he conduct the marriage ceremony of their daughter, who had just graduated from college, and informing him that for the occasion members of their widely scattered family would gather for a reunion during which they hoped he would make them welcome and do them the honor of baptizing two of its youngest members.

  Hickman smiled, thinking, Of course I will, and it’ll be a pleasure to see what’s happened to the old-timers…. Let’s see—already there’re four family reunions scheduled for late summer and this makes the fifth. So there’ll be well over eight hundred natives and their in-laws returning home to the briar patch. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Tempus certainly fugits, and that’s no lie. I used to play hooky with that fellow’s daddy, and now his engineer son will be bringing his grandkids home to show them where he started from. Couldn’t stay in the South, but thank God he still loves our part of it.

  And now, putting the request aside to be answered along with the others, he stared at Janey’s thick envelope with his head cocked to the side; then, picking up an old ivory-handled switchblade knife from his desk, he snapped it open, examined i
ts edge, and shook his head with a sense of irony. For although he now used it as a letter opener there was a moment during a robbery attempt when his life and death had swayed and balanced on the point of its razor-sharp blade. Like two locomotives plunging head-on toward a single junction, things might have gone either way but for the Lord’s throwing the switch in his favor and allowing him to wrestle it out of the young man’s hand. In the struggle his own hand had been cut and in his anger and outrage over someone he’d known since childhood doing such a thing he’d had an impulse to repay him in kind. But in forcing the overgrown boy to explain his action and learning that it was out of a desperate effort to reach his dying father, he had let him go and kept the knife in exchange for railroad fare to Chicago. Hickman, he asked himself, would you have used it? No, not really, but I might have broken his arm. But, thank the Lord, he gave me a way out and this “deadly weapon” was turned into a two-way ticket which took the boy to Chicago, and me safely home with a fine letter opener. Truly, the miraculous thing about miracles is their ability to escape our awareness. So blessed be the knife that binds instead of severing!

  Slitting the envelope, he removed a sheaf of ruled school-tablet paper and gave it a rapid flip-through of his thumb. There were fifteen pages, all covered with Janey’s careful schoolgirl’s writing; and now, settling back in his desk chair, he began the slow process of reading.

  “Dear Alonzo,” she began,

  This leaves me well in body but troubled in mind. Because although I have been in pretty good health since we were last in touch there are things taking place out here which have me worried, and I think that they are things you ought to know about. Now it will probably take me a whole week to get them all down on paper, but since my handwriting is still almost as good as it was when I was a young woman I do not think it will take you that long to read my letter. I smile when I write this because anybody who can read those little fly specky music notes like you ought to be able to read anything. I surely hope so, as I am going to try and give you the feel of things, and since they are speeding up I hope you will give it your full attention. Besides, you will remember that you used to give me the devil because I did not write much in my letters, and said that for folks who knew how to put a pen to paper but did not was a sin. That’s right. And you also said that not writing was one of the real reasons that we as a people know so little about what is happening to us after we get scattered from the places where we were born.

  Well, when I consider what has happened to some of us I do not know whether you were right or wrong, because it might be better that those we left behind did not know. Because otherwise they might get discouraged. But all right, you wanted me to write, so I am going to write you the longest letter of my life, and I want you to read it carefully and think about what I’m trying to say. I hope also that you will please forgive this purple ink, which is due to Cliofus. I sent him to the store for some blue and this is what he brought back, but since time is pressing I have to use it. Cliofus says it was all they had, but knowing him like I do I believe that he got it because he knew that I was writing to you. You will remember that he never forgets a thing, even if it is only something he has just heard about. So I think it is his way of signifying and teasing at me. Anyway, I had better get started with my long distant letter.

  Remember how it was when you were living out here and folks had a way of running everything into the ground? The white folks did it and so did the Indians. Also the Natives like that old rascal who calls himself Love New, remember him? Anyway, our folks were probably the worst. Folks from other states used to call us wild, and Texas white folks insisted that it was because we did not know our place or anything else, including how to empty a rained-in boot (Smile). They said that giving the Territory statehood was a mistake because it gave us Negroes an inch and we were taking it and stretching it mile by mile. Maybe that is why so many of those thugs and musicians you used to hang around with rushed up here from San Antonio and Dallas. Like a lot of folks from all over the South they knew a good thing when they saw it, so they came up here to run wild. But it would seem that in those days no matter where you came from things out here were just too unorganized, and with all the new freedom to deal with folks had not yet learned how to keep themselves or anything else in reasonable order, therefore they just overdid everything.

  And not only the people, because even the weather went to extremes. Sometimes the sun would be shining on one side of the street and the rain falling on the other, all at the same time. It was like there wasn’t enough sky and space and earth for any one kind of weather to have its own fair turn. Sometimes we had rain, snow, sleet, hail, and sunshine all coming down together. Therefore the weather itself must have encouraged people to act in the same disorganized fashion. So being that kind of country it attracted that kind of people.

  Which you ought to know because, come to think about it, when it came to overdoing things you were Mister A-Number-One. And maybe if you had not been we would have got somewhere together. But oh, no! You ate too much, and you drank too much, and you gambled too much, and danced and played that horn too much. And what’s worse and which sorrows me to say, you chased the “chippies” too much. Yes, sir; you went after the young women like a buck-duck after a june bug—especially the draggle tails. And on top of all that, not only did you let them chase you, you let them catch you! And I mean so easy and so often that it is a wonder that you did not kill your fool self or cause somebody else—man, woman, or green-eyed boyfriend—to get mad enough to do it for you. So praise the good Lord that you finally turned around and got yourself saved!

  Now please, Alonzo, don’t go swelling up and taking me seriously. I’m joking in order to say that just like back in your time out here things are still ripping and tearing along like they do not know where or when to stop. And my reason for this letter is that recently they have taken what I consider to be a very strange turn. Now it could be that it is only me and the results of my reaching the time of sad good-byes. I say this because hardly a week goes by but there is another old friend passing from the scene. Naturally I hate to see it happening, but I know it is a part of life and has to be. Like they say, we all have to go when the wagon comes, and some day soon it will come for me. So that in itself does not worry me, for I know that we all have a time to die. But what does have me bothered is some of the things that have been showing up in the train of some of these passings. It’s not the deaths—which so far have all been due to natural causes—so much as certain signs of unseen things to come which have appeared with them. And before I go any farther, please do not go acting the preacher and start putting me down as superstitious or anything like that. Just remember that if I can believe in the water turning into wine and in the raising of the dead—which I surely do, and probably even stronger than you do—you can go along with me and consider that sometimes things have strange connections with things to come which are revealed in the form of warnings.

  Like recently, when I had this dream of fire—which for me is always a warning dream. In it I saw a big house that was swirling with sparks and filled with smoke, and I mean black smoke and white smoke. And the fire inside was so hot that the glass in the windows was crackling and popping like popcorn, and through the windows I could see the smoke fairly boiling. It was a very big house, a white one, and such as I have never seen in all my waking life. So it must have been the house of a very rich person, and there were a heap of folks in there yelling and screaming and calling on the Lord. And yet with all that yelling and praying I could not see a single fire wagon in the entire dream. Neither were there any policemen or doctors or men in white coats running around trying to get them out. In fact there was nobody else looking on but me. I was by myself and alone, just standing there in a big wide street and feeling that I was being called upon to do something for them, but unable to move. Alonzo, you are a naturally smart man and gifted with vision, so I hope you will think about this dream. Oh, yes; I almost forgot to t
ell you that back beyond the house and off to one side a little piece I could see a river winding down a hill, and the water was sparkling in the sunshine and rippling along but it was too far away to be of help in the fire. Not even if someone had been there to use it. And on the other side of the river there was some kind of park with statues and some lovely trees. But the main thing I remember is the burning house and the smoke and all those pitiful screams.

  Now, even though I finally woke up and realized that it was only a dream, a situation like that is bad enough to worry anybody. So if you want to dismiss it and say that I am just getting old or maybe just jumping at shadows, I can go along with you. But then I must ask, what do you make of what happened soon afterwards?

  Only last week come Tuesday I went to see one of my old friends laid to rest, and on the way to the graveyard, which you will remember because except for having so many more folks buried in it is the same we used when you were living out here. Anyway, we were on our way out there when something terrible happened, and I tell you truly that I have never seen anything like it in all my born days.

  There were fourteen or fifteen big limousines in the procession and considering how the undertakers try to rush folks into the ground these days they were moving not too fast and not too slow, even though we were already past the city limits and still had the graveside ceremony to go through with. Therefore everybody was still feeling sad about our old friend’s passing and thinking on final things. Not a soul was talking, at least not in the car where I was riding, and I could hear the engine and the tires working their way to the graveyard the same as they had so many times before. Yes, and like I have done before. So I was sitting there on one of the little folding seats behind and to the left of the driver, and as we rolled along I was looking into the side mirror and thinking of times that had been and at the same time I was watching a little white child bouncing a big blue ball in a yard along the way and the ball bouncing less and less and the child getting smaller and smaller while the fields and trees kept flowing past like they were part of a different and safer world.