Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  Which was already happening by the time I arrived in this town. First they pushed us out of certain types of jobs, then out of the parks and the movies. And then, after labeling us “animals”—lo and behold!—they denied us the freedom to visit the zoo!

  Janey still complains about how wild we musicians were back in the old days, but wildness went with the territory and was part of our freedom. Still, she’s right about that being my reason for hanging around towns like Kansas City so long. In those days they were places where a musician could develop his music and make it sound in ways that gave him fulfillment. Yes, and still make a living. And that was possible because everybody and everything was so wild and woolly that our hard-driving style gave a little more order to what even white folks were feeling. Gave form to all that freewheeling optimism and told folks who they were and what they could be…. But then up jumps Time, that ever-waiting joker, yelling, Get back to the beginning and take it from there! Yes, and now here it comes again, leaping at you now in the form of a bus….

  Once the bus was parked and taking on passengers, he paid his fare, gave the driver his luggage, and climbed soberly aboard. And brooding again over his coming encounter with Janey, he took a seat in the rear next to a window. Where, settling back, he waited impatiently for the bus to be under way. Its first stop would be a famous downtown hotel, and from there he would head for the East Side and find a room somewhere in his old stomping ground before making his way to Janey’s.

  And now with his hat tilted over his eyes he watched the entry of two young Negro men whose casual air was belied by the alertness with which their eyes flashed over the seated passengers before selecting seats in the left front row.

  Times might have changed, he thought, but as in the old days they’re checking opportunities against custom, and watched the two deliberately taking their time in getting seated while keeping a lively group of young white men and women waiting.

  Studying the young whites he thought, They’re probably college students. Unsophisticated and having a good time enjoying the freedom of doing what for them comes naturally. About the same age as the two blocking the aisle, having no need to check out the scene before taking a front seat on a bus or anywhere else….

  But now he was watching two white youngsters wearing cowboy outfits topped by ten-gallon hats who flopped with a stylized nonchalance into seats several rows ahead.

  There you go, Hickman, the blues voice said: Just when you decide those young brown-skinned bloods were putting on an act, here come two young white dudes about the same age dressed up like cowboys. Yeah! And from their looks they’ve probably never seen the smoke of a red-hot shoe being pressed to the hoof of a horse. And unless I’m wrong they’d probably consider the practice of getting a mule’s attention by busting his head with a whiffle tree a crime against nature!

  So with one bunch pretending to be sophisticated citizens of the world and the other pretending to be something out of a cowboy movie, which of the two is being forced to act, and which is giving free rein to their fantasy?

  But now his eyes were drawn to the bustling entrance of a young Indian woman wearing a bright blue dress and carrying a plump young baby, a nursery bag, and a fresh bouquet of red roses.

  Now that appears to be the real thing, he thought, and two generations of it, times and change notwithstanding. And as the young mother moved past, the baby turned and stared into his face out of black, sharp-focusing eyes that seemed to ask questions.

  Then seeing the door filled by a tall, narrow-eyed official-looking white man dressed in a Western hat and a corduroy jacket that bulged at his hip. And as the doors closed he watched the man survey the bus from front to rear before taking a seat on the right near the driver. Then the driver shifted gears, and as the bus moved into traffic he rested back with Janey’s letter again troubling his mind.

  But now, with the bus on the highway and picking up speed, there came a protesting cry, and looking to the rear he saw the Indian baby squalling on its mother’s shoulder.

  So, Reverend, the blues voice said as he turned and looked ahead, it seems that whoever said Indian babies never cry was telling a lie. Am I right?

  Could be, came the answer.

  Yeah? Well don’t leap to conclusions.

  Why not?

  Because it’s probably that little fellow’s way of protesting over having to ride in a bus loaded with all these blackfeet and palefaces….

  Now you listen….

  … But on the other hand, Rev, it could be that after staring at you he still can’t decide whether you’re King Kong the Baptist or Peter Wheatstraw. You remember Wheatstraw, the Devil’s son-in-law, who was always challenging you to gamble back in the old days? So if the papoose is right about his being on this bus, are you prepared to shoot him one?

  Not when I’m out here strictly to help Janey. If I were at home I’d be preparing a sermon. Besides, being challenged by the Devil goes with my job. So knock it off!

  Poor Janey, he thought, she’s upset over some stranger showing up in her neighborhood without her permission. What did she call him? Oh, yes—it was “Mister Noname from Nowhere.” Which simply means a mysterious stranger. So let’s hope it’s a case of his giving her nothing more to fear than what F.D.R. called “fear itself.”…

  Now that sounds like a promising text, so take it and git while I sit back and listen….

  … Oh, yes, my friends, but while F.D.R. was speaking of “one world” and raising our expectations, I must remind you that one of our worst problems comes from being forced to live in a world within a world. That’s right! And with ours small and familiar and the one in which it finds existence so much bigger that it seems overwhelming…. It has also been said that a house divided against itself cannot stand—but don’t you believe it! Because given enough space, strength, and worldly resources it can. Yes, but only with the injustice and violence with which we ourselves are all too familiar. Therefore we’re stretched between a world in which we know our way around fairly well and another in which we’re constantly at the mercy of those who would keep its ways and motives a mystery. Yes, my friends. And although I don’t actually know this, it appears that those who structured the world around our world have set up ways-and-means committees just for keeping folks like us in the dark!

  Oh, yes! As far as we’re concerned their policy has long been one of out of sight, out of mind—just listen to that little baby and ask yourselves who back East or in Washington ever thinks about the Indians these days other than as actors in cowboy movies. And yet out here there are many different tribes of Indians—yes, and some with soggy, uncomfortable diapers!

  Therefore the idea of putting the Indians on film and forgetting them hasn’t worked—oh, no, because those diapers keep filling! And what’s more, they keep messing up the claims of Christopher Columbus! And by the way, the Indians say that they had no need to be discovered by the likes of Columbus….

  So as I say, the powerful are forever trying to keep the connections between their world and ours under cover and in the dark. And so intently that when some person, or force, or sickness from the big world shows up in the smaller—or from the smaller into the larger—it plumb upsets the landscape of the mind and all its crannies and regions. And what’s worse, it charges everything with uncertainty.

  “What’s that smell? Where’s it coming from?” we ask ourselves. “Who’s responsible?”

  And pretty soon folks in the big world start wrinkling their noses and pointing at those in the smaller. And those in the smaller start shaking their heads, because after all this time they think they know not only who’s a friend, enemy, or neutral, but exactly who it is that’s so chronically upset in his bowels. Therefore they figure that they know the source of the smell all too well, so in order to keep their sanity they try not to think too much about the goings-on in the bigger world if only because they have only so much God-given time to stay alive. Therefore they try to get their cornmeal made and en
joy a little happiness.

  Yes, my friends, but the stink keeps spreading and fuming, so don’t relax too much and keep a Kleenex handy. Because when the big world rumbles the little world quakes. And when that happens things get thrown off balance and knocked out of scale. And then, Lord help us, if we don’t hold on tight to the values which our small-world experience has taught us. Otherwise it can leave us helpless. And when the lines between the two worlds blur, everything and anything can become threatening.

  Like shadows, or gifts, kind words, or simple politeness. Even acts that would seem to have nothing directly to do with us in the quarantined, pesthouse world of our semi-isolation. Because as you all well know, very often mistakes of identity or misinterpretation of events make for mistaken intentions and unexpected reactions. Maybe that’s what our sister Janey is up against—not something KNOWN, but something NOT known. And that’s what I’m up against, and of that I feel sure. So we ask ourselves, What’s to fear and what’s NOT to fear?

  My friends, it’s like living in a blackout of a big city, where every shadow or movement or sound in the dark can mean danger. Or to bring it closer to home, it’s like being caught at night on the only piece of high ground when a springtime flood sends snake and possum, raccoon and deer up out of the bottoms to join you. That’s when you find yourself slap-dab in the middle of what’s been dreamed of as a “peaceful kingdom,” a situation in which man and beast forgive one another their differences and live in peaceful coexistence—yes, but the truth is that when man and beast come together they are both immobilized by fear. For when the UNEXPECTED becomes the expected, and the ideal threatens to become FACT, all KINDS of nightmares start romping wild in the daylight, and nobody dares drop his guard.

  I am reminded of a time years ago, when our jazz band was traveling by automobile through the flooded countryside of Kansas. Being young and brash we considered ourselves streetwise and worldly, but soon we would find our worldliness tested by reality. For as our slow caravan of cars made its way along a road flooded by a swollen river we saw in the distance a magnificent tree.

  Brothers and sisters, it was a MAGNIFICENT tree! Tall with widespread branches, and so bleached by the sun and so warped by the weather that it gleamed in the air like a candelabra of silver. Spring had sprung and the fields on hillsides were bright green with promise; but then, rolling closer, we entered a stench and saw that the river was filled with the carcasses of animals. Hogs and horses, cows and pigs, all floating belly-up in the swirl of the current. And then, hardly before we could react to this bloated evidence of natural disaster, we looked skyward and saw that the tall magnificent tree before us was covered trunk, branch, and tips of limbs with snakes! And POISONOUS snakes they were!

  Snakes were EVERYWHERE! Black snakes and copperheads, diamondbacks and moccasins! So many snakes were clinging to that towering tree that we stopped the cars and watched them coiling and wiggling and flicking their tongues as though they were testing God’s radiant sunlight for some unnameable danger. And suddenly before our awe-stricken eyes that familiar object of nature became a gnarled elderly white-haired woman, who wore snakes for a wig and more snakes for her shawl!

  It was and it wasn’t. It was both dead and alive. An optical illusion yet one that was alive with deadly potential. And so before our disoriented eyes the real, the natural, had become an illusion, and the illusion a thing of natural and unnatural terror!

  Thank God that we rolled on rubber! Thank the Lord that no sparkplug misfired nor car engine sputtered as we rolled away gazing backwards! …

  … Yes, Hickman, and thank the Lord that for once you were stone-cold sober, in your right mind, and able to drive that half-paid-for Dodge through all that muddy, floorboard-deep water! …

  … Beat it, Buster!—Oh, yes, my friends, we live in a bisected double-world, one part fairly small and the other so large and complicated that it can seem foggy-formless. And while we can control the smaller world to a limited extent, the other is in the hands of folks who try to act as though there’s no possible connection between us and them. Therefore, when something from their larger world enters the life of someone like our sister Janey, everything gets charged to the breaking point with uncertainty.

  And that, my friends, is because in a certain sense this country is an unsteady contraption of wheels within wheels, or gears within gears, and the problem arises because too few of its gears are truly meshing. Therefore instead of running smoothly, and under the attention of wise and perceptive attendants, great worlds of energy are wasted in denying the connections that do exist, and must exist, between them.

  And they DO exist, even here on this bus. So whenever something happens to make us aware that the gears are slipping, our world starts to banging away within the larger world like a locomotive stored deep in the hold of a seagoing ship that has broken loose from its moorings. And that’s when that larger world finds that it can’t zig for zagging. And then its gyroscope spins backwards and the entire country starts to wobble and shake on its axis. And while the big men up on the ship’s bridge might or might not know what’s happening, we down in the hold are filled with anxiety. That’s when we sense all kinds of dangerous possibilities and life becomes a matter of living in the dark, or perhaps it’s like being crazy—paranoid, I think is its fancy name. Then everything seems to become either all Black or all White, even though the real world remains as gray as it always was. And that’s exactly the time to remind ourselves that Ezekiel saw the WHEEL! And that while the big wheel ever has trouble turning according to Constitutional law, the little wheel turns—oh, yes—by the grace of God!

  My friends, my sisters and brothers, I’m reminding you of all this because discomfort and danger are abiding aspects of life. For indeed if we aren’t careful many familiar things, many familiar forces, can become filled to the brim with danger. Such as food and drink, entertainment and family relations, patent medicine and tobacco, even self-confidence, modesty, and well-deserved pride. Yes, and even the most sacred of joyful music. For given the wrong combination of circumstances any of these can lead to destruction!

  Therefore, my friends, we must get ourselves together and learn more of the larger world in which we are living! Because what we don’t know can do us in! Not that there aren’t plenty of things in BOTH worlds—and especially in the blurred and concealed connections between them—to justify ANYBODY’S being skittish.

  Indeed, our problem is one of knowing of what, exactly, to BE afraid. For recognize it or not, there are real dangers hidden in the shadows used to limit and control us. For always we see as through a glass darkly, and I don’t mean those fancy things those young folks up ahead are wearing.

  For even fashion can blind us, and one of the worst things to have happened to this country is that today people are being deliberately taught to fear harmless situations and people while being urged, badgered, and exhorted to grab fearlessly onto things that can destroy them. Oh, yes! Somewhere along the way that old earthly wisdom called “common sense” went plumb out of style! Yes, and with it the obvious fact that while fear can inhibit action it has the function of preserving life. For as we all know and forget at our peril, it takes COURAGE to be afraid of real danger and stay alive! Did somebody say “Amen”?

  So here, as in other ways, we have fallen below the level of the birds and the beasts, who never forget that just being alive is precarious and precious! And yet if we would use our eyes and minds and remember that up there above us all HIS eye is on us even as it is on the sparrow, the heron, and the whale. Therefore, in using our eyes and minds we are prepared to live neither in cocksure daring nor in sheer fear and trembling, but in faith. Otherwise we are so much at the mercy of the many, many things and circumstances that can kill us that we are unable to perform even the simplest acts that make us human.

  For memory can kill, and forgetfulness can kill, and the deliberate rejection of memory which is practiced in this country can be most deadly. Oh yes! As deadly as
arsenic, rabies, or internal war. For it can come at us on our blind sides and kill us in unexpected ways. It can erupt out of things as innocent as a handful of dust, drops of water, a shaft of sunlight, a splinter of glass, a misguided leap, stumble, or fall, a needle in the flesh, a sniff of powder, or explosion of noise on the eardrums.

  And shortsightedness can kill, as can staring at one point in a total scene as we look backwards while traveling ahead. Or staring at a single segment of a complex action while ignoring the expanse of the whole—this too can kill.

  And ignoring the possible connections BETWEEN actions and their results. Or between causes and effects. Or the tricky, distorting web that time itself spins between past wrongs, forgetfulness, and present-day resentments—these can kill.

  And reducing complex events to simplicities and calling it “history” can kill. And I mean long after such distortions have been lied about so often that they become meaningless. For then such so-called “history” can be far, far more deadly than war.

  And blind power and arrogance can kill—as can impatience before human complexity.

  And ignoring the fact that we can reap what we sow. Or that what goes up has to come down. Or that the higher a monkey climbs the more he shows his …

  … No, no, Hickman! Because while true it wouldn’t do! But keep riffing …

  … Or that the last shall be first and the weak be made strong, and that the meek who endure shall inherit whatever the hell is left of all the confusion created by the inevitable downfall of arrogant pride.

  Oh yes, my friends, my sisters and brothers, many things can kill. MANY things. But nothing is more deadly than forgetting that ALL men are brothers who possess the same instincts, emotions, and dreams. And if we ignore this it can kill us most cruelly. As cruelly as lynch ropes, gasoline, and torches.

  But why stop with such extremes? Why stop there, when pretty women can kill? And airplanes, bucking horses, careless physicians, and bad, uncommitted teachers—yes, and sinful, fore-day-creeping, rabble-rousing, money-grubbing publicity-seeking PREACHERS—yes, that’s right! They too can kill! As can prejudiced politicians and unjust judges! All these can kill—and do, and in wholesale lots; whether in bed, in the air, the schoolroom, pulpit, ballot box, or at high noon on an empty sidewalk!