Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  Those were some drums, Rev. Hickman …

  … Yes and they took those drums away…

  Away, Amen! Away! And they took away our heathen dances …

  … They left us drumless and they left us danceless …

  Ah yes, they burnt up our talking drums and our dancing drums …

  … Drums …

  … And they scattered the ashes …

  … Ah, Aaaaaah! Eyeless, tongueless, drumless, danceless, ashes …

  And a worst devastation was yet to come, Lord God!

  Tell us, Reveren Hickman. Blow on your righteous horn!

  Ah, but Rev. Bliss, in those days we didn’t have any horns …

  No horns? Hear him!

  And we had no songs …

  … No songs …

  … And we had no …

  … Count it on your fingers, see what cruel man has done …

  Amen, Rev. Bliss, lead them…

  We were eyeless, tongueless, drumless, danceless, hornless, songless!

  All true, Rev. Bliss. No eyes to see. No tongue to speak or taste. No drums to raise the spirits and wake up our memories. No dance to stir the rhythm that makes life move. No songs to give praise and prayers to God!

  We were truly in the dark, my young brothern and sisteren. Eyeless, earless, tongueless, drumless, danceless, songless, hornless, soundless …

  And worse to come!

  … And worse to come …

  Tell us, Rev. Hickman. But not too fast so that we of the younger generation can gather up our strength to face it. So that we may listen and not become discouraged!

  I said, Rev. Bliss, brothers and sisters, that they snatched us out of the loins of Africa. I said that they took us from our mammys and pappys and from our sisters and brothers. I said that they scattered us around this land …

  … And we, let’s count it again, brothers and sisters; let’s add it up. Eyeless, tongueless, drumless, danceless, songless, hornless, soundless, sightless, dayless, nightless, wrongless, rightless, motherless, fatherless—scattered.

  Yes, Rev. Bliss, they scattered us around like seed …

  … Like seed…

  … Like seed, that’s been flung broadcast on unplowed ground …

  Ho, chant it with me, my young brothers and sisters! Eyeless, tongueless, drumless, danceless, songless, hornless, soundless, sightless, wrongless, rightless, motherless, fatherless, brotherless, sisterless, powerless …

  Amen! But though they took us like a great black giant that had been chopped up into little pieces and the pieces buried; though they deprived us of our heritage among strange scenes in strange weather; divided and divided and divided us again like a gambler shuffling and cutting a deck of cards. Although we were ground down, smashed into little pieces; spat upon, stamped upon, cursed and buried, and our memory of Africa ground down into powder and blown on the winds of foggy forgetfulness …

  … Amen, Daddy Hickman! Abused and without shoes, pounded down and ground like grains of sand on the shores of the sea…

  … Amen! And God—Count it, Rev. Bliss …

  … Left eyeless, earless, noseless, throatless, teethless, tongueless, handless, feetless, armless, wrongless, rightless, harmless, drumless, danceless, songless, hornless, soundless, sightless, wrongless, rightless, motherless, fatherless, sisterless, brotherless, plowless, muleless, foodless, mindless—and Godless, Rev. Hickman, did you say Godless?

  … At first, Rev. Bliss, he said, his trombone entering his voice, broad, somber and noble. At first. Ah, but though divided and scattered, ground down and battered into the earth like a spike being pounded by a ten pound sledge, we were on the ground and in the earth and the earth was red and black like the earth of Africa. And as we moldered underground we were mixed with this land. We liked it. It fitted us fine. It was in us and we were in it. And then—praise God—deep in the ground, deep in the womb of this land, we began to stir!

  Praise God!

  At last, Lord, at last.

  Amen!

  Oh the truth, Lord, it tastes so sweet!

  What was it like then, Rev. Bliss? You read the scriptures, so tell us. Give us a word.

  WE WERE LIKE THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES!

  Amen. Like the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel’s dream. Hoooh! We lay scattered in the ground for a long dry season. And the winds blew and the sun blazed down and the rains came and went and we were dead. Lord, we were dead! Except … Except…

  … Except what, Rev. Hickman?

  Except for one nerve left from our ear…

  Listen to him!

  And one nerve in the soles of our feet…

  … Just watch me point it out, brothers and sisters …

  Amen, Bliss, you point it out … and one nerve left from the throat…

  … From our throat—right here!

  … Teeth …

  … From our teeth, one from all thirty-two of them…

  … Tongue …

  … Tongueless …

  … And another nerve left from our heart…

  … Yes, from our heart…

  … And another left from our eyes and one from our hands and arms and legs and another from our stones …

  Amen, Hold it right there, Rev. Bliss …

  … All stirring in the ground …

  … Amen, stirring, and right there in the midst of all our death and buriedness, the voice of God spoke down the Word…

  … Crying Do! I said, Do! Crying Doooo—

  These dry bones live?

  He said, Son of Man … under the ground, Ha! Heatless beneath the roots of plants and trees … Son of man, do …

  I said, Do …

  … I said Do, Son of Man, Doooooo!—

  These dry bones live?

  Amen! And we heard and rose up. Because in all their blasting they could not blast away one solitary vibration of God’s true word … We heard it down among the roots and among the rocks. We heard it in the sand and in the clay. We heard it in the falling rain and in the rising sun. On the high ground and in the gullies. We heard it lying moldering and corrupted in the earth. We heard it sounding like a bugle call to wake up the dead. Crying, Doooooo! Ay, do these dry bones live!

  And did our dry bones live, Daddy Hickman?

  Ah, we sprang together and walked around. All clacking together and clicking into place. All moving in time! Do! I said, Dooooo—these dry bones live!

  And now strutting in my white tails, across the platform, filled with the power almost to dancing.

  Shouting, Amen, Daddy Hickman, is this the way we walked?

  Oh we walked through Jerusalem, just like John—That’s it, Rev. Bliss, walk! Show them how we walked!

  Was this the way?

  That’s the way. Now walk on back. Lift your knees! Swing your arms! Make your coat tails fly! Walk! And him strutting me three times around the pulpit across the platform and back. Ah, yes! And then his voice deep and exultant: And if they ask you in the city why we praise the Lord with bass drums and brass trombones tell them we were rebirthed dancing, we were rebirthed crying affirmation of the Word, quickening our transcended flesh.

  Amen!

  Oh, Rev. Bliss, we stamped our feet at the trumpet’s sound and we clapped our hands, ah, in joy! And we moved, yes, together in a dance, amen! Because we had received a new song in a new land and been resurrected by the Word and Will of God!

  Amen! …

  … —We were rebirthed from the earth of this land and revivified by the Word. So now we had a new language and a brand new song to put flesh on our bones…

  New teeth, new tongue, new word, new song!

  We had a new name and a new blood, and we had a new task …

  Tell us about it, Reveren Hickman …

  We had to take the Word for bread and meat. We had to take the Word for food and shelter. We had to use the Word as a rock to build up a whole new nation, cause to tell it true, we were born again in chains of steel. Yes, and chains of ignorance. And
all we knew was the spirit of the word. We had no schools. We owned no tools; no cabins, no churches, not even our own bodies.

  We were chained, young brothers, in steel. We were chained, young sisters, in ignorance. We were schoolless, toolless, cabinless—owned …

  Amen, Reveren Bliss. We were owned and faced with the awe-inspiring labor of transforming God’s word into a lantern so that in the darkness we’d know where we were. Oh God hasn’t been easy with us because He always plans for the loooong haul. He’s looking far ahead and this time He wants a well-tested people to work his will. He wants some sharp-eyed, quick-minded, generous-hearted people to give names to the things of this world and to its values. He’s tired of untempered tools and half-blind masons! Therefore, He’s going to keep on testing us against the rocks and in the fires. He’s going to heat us till we almost melt and then He’s going to plunge us into the ice-cold water. And each time we come out we’ll be blue and as tough as cold-blue steel! Ah yes! He means for us to be a new kind of human. Maybe we won’t be that people but we’ll be a part of that people, we’ll be an element in them, Amen! He wants us limber as willow switches and he wants us tough as whit leather, so that when we have to bend, we can bend and snap back into place. He’s going to throw bolts of lightning to blast us so that we’ll have good foot work and lightning-fast minds. He’ll drive us hither and yon around this land and make us run the gauntlet of hard times and tribulations, misunderstanding and abuse. And some will pity you and some will despise you. And some will try to use you and change you. And some will deny you and try to deal you out of the game. And sometimes you’ll feel so bad that you’ll wish you could die. But it’s all the pressure of God. He’s giving you a will and He wants you to use it. He’s giving you brains and he wants you to train them lean and hard so that you can overcome all the obstacles. Educate your minds! Make do with what you have so as to get what you need! Learn to look at what you see and not what somebody tells you is true. Pay lip-service to Caesar if you have to, but put your trust in God. Because nobody has a patent on truth or a copyright on the best way to live and serve almighty God. Learn from what we’ve lived. Remember that when the labor’s back-breaking and the boss man’s mean our singing can lift us up. That it can strengthen us and make his meanness but the flyspeck irritation of an empty man. Roll with the blow like ole Jack Johnson. Dance on out of his way like Wlliams and Walker. Keep to the rhythm and you’ll keep to life. God’s time is long; and all short-haul horses shall be like horses on a merry-go-round. Keep, keep, keep to the rhythm and you won’t get weary. Keep to the rhythm and you won’t get lost. We’re handicapped, amen! Because the Lord wants us strong! We started out with nothing but the Word—just like the others but they’ve forgot it … We worked and stood up under hard times and tribulations. We learned patience and to understand Job. Of all the animals, man’s the only one not born knowing almost everything he’ll ever know. It takes him longer than an elephant to grow up because God didn’t mean him to leap to any conclusions, for God himself is in the very process of things. We learned that all blessings come mixed with sorrow and all hardships have a streak of laughter. Life is a streak-a-lean—a—streak-a-fat. Ha, yes! We learned to bounce back and to disregard the prizes of fools. And we must keep on learning. Let them have their fun. Even let them eat humming bird’s wings and tell you it’s too good for you.—Grits and greens don’t turn to ashes in anybody’s mouth—How about it, Rev. Eatmore? Amen? Amen! Let everybody say amen. Grits and greens are humble but they make you strong and when the right folks get together to share them they can taste like ambrosia. So draw, so let us draw on our own wells of strength.

  Ah yes, so we were reborn, Rev. Bliss. They still had us harnessed, we were still laboring in the fields, but we had a secret and we had a new rhythm …

  So tell us about this rhythm, Reveren Hickman.

  They had us bound but we had our kind of time, Rev. Bliss. They were on a merry-go-round that they couldn’t control but we learned to beat time from the seasons. We learned to make this land and this light and darkness and this weather and their labor fit us like a suit of new underwear. With our new rhythm, amen, but we weren’t free and they still kept dividing us. There’s many a thousand gone down the river. Mama sold from papa and chillun sold from both. Beaten and abused and without shoes. But we had the Word, now, Rev. Bliss, along with the rhythm. They couldn’t divide us now. Because anywhere they dragged us we throbbed in time together. If we got a chance to sing, we sang the same song. If we got a chance to dance, we beat back hard times and tribulations with a clap of our hands and the beat of our feet, and it was the same dance. Oh they come out here sometimes to laugh at our way of praising God. They can laugh but they can’t deny us. They can curse and kill us but they can’t destroy us all. This land is ours because we come out of it, we bled in it, our tears watered it, we fertilized it with our dead. So the more of us they destroy the more it becomes filled with the spirit of our redemption. They laugh but we know who we are and where we are, but they keep on coming in their millions and they don’t know and can’t get together.

  But tell us, how do we know who we are, Daddy Hickman?

  We know where we are by the way we walk. We know where we are by the way we talk. We know where we are by the way we sing. We know where we are by the way we dance. We know where we are by the way we praise the Lord on high. We know where we are because we hear a different tune in our minds and in our hearts. We know who we are because when we make the beat of our rhythm to shape our day the whole land says, Amen! It smiles, Rev. Bliss, and it moves to our time! Don’t be ashamed, my brothern! Don’t be cowed. Don’t throw what you have away! Continue! Remember! Believe! Trust the inner beat that tells us who we are. Trust God and trust life and trust this land that is you! Never mind the laughers, the scoffers, they come around because they can’t help themselves.

  They can deny you but not your sense of life. They hate you because whenever they look into a mirror they fill up with bitter gall. So forget them and most of all don’t deny yourselves. They’re tied by the short hair to a run-away merry-go-round. They make life a business of struggle and fret, fret and struggle. See who you can hate; see what you can get. But you just keep on inching along like an old inchworm. If you put one and one and one together soon they’ll make a million too. There’s been a heap of Juneteenths before this one and I tell you there’ll be a heap more before we’re truly free! Yes! But keep to the rhythm, just keep to the rhythm and keep to the way. Man’s plans are but a joke to God. Let those who will despise you, but remember deep down inside yourself that the life we have to lead is but a preparation for other things, it’s a discipline, Reveren Bliss, Sisters and Brothers; a discipline through which we may see that which the others are too self-blinded to see. Time will come round when we’ll have to be their eyes; time will swing and turn back around. I tell you, time shall swing and spiral back around …

  NIGHT-TALK

  QUARTERLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE 16 (1969): 317–29

  This excerpt from a novel-in-progress (very long in progress) is set in a hospital room located in Washington, D.C., circa 1955, the year the novel was conceived. In it the Senator is passing through alternate periods of lucidity and delirium attending wounds resulting from a gunman’s attempt on his life. Hickman, in turn, is weary from the long hours of sleeplessness and emotional strain which have accumulated while he has sought to see the Senator through his ordeal. The men have been separated for many years, and time, conflicts of value, the desire of one to remember nothing and the tendency of the other to remember too much, have rendered communication between them difficult.

  Sometimes they actually converse, sometimes the dialogue is illusory and occurs in the isolation of their individual minds, but through it all it is antiphonal in form and an anguished attempt to arrive at the true shape and substance of a sundered past and its meaning.

  R.E.

  “… Oh, yes,” Hickman said, fanning the Senator’
s perspiring face, “you were giving us a natural fit! All of a sudden you were playing hooky from the services and hiding from everybody—including me. Why, one time you took off and we had about three hundred folks out looking for you. We searched the streets and the alleys and the playgrounds, the candy stores and the parks and we questioned all the children in the neighborhood—but no Bliss. We even searched the steeple of the church where the revival was being held but that only upset the pigeons and caused even more confusion when somebody knocked against the bell and set it ringing as though there had been a fire or the river was flooding.

  “So then we spread out and really started hunting. I had begun to think about going to the police—which we hated to do, considering that they’d probably have made things worse—because, you see, I thought that she—that is, I thought that you might have been kidnapped. In fact, we were already headed along a downtown street when, lo and behold, we look up and see you coming out of a picture house where it was against the law for us to go! Yes, sir, there you were, coming out of there with all those people, blinking your eyes and with your face all screwed up with crying. But thank God you were all right. I was so relieved that I couldn’t say a word, and while we stood at the curb watching to see what you would do, Deacon Wilhite turned to me and said, ‘Well, ‘Lonzo—A.Z.—it looks like Rev. Bliss has gone and made himself an outlaw, but at least we can be thankful that he wasn’t stolen into Egypt.’ … And that’s when you looked up and saw us and tried to run again. I tell you, Bliss, you were giving us quite a time. Quite a time….”

  Suddenly Hickman’s head fell forward, his voice breaking off; and as he slumped in his chair the Senator stirred behind his eyelids, saying, “What? What?” But except for the soft burr of Hickman’s breathing it was as though a line had gone dead in the course of an important call.

  “What? What?” the Senator said, his face straining toward the huge, shadowy form in the bedside chair. Then came a sudden gasp and Hickman’s voice was back again, soft but moving as though there had been no interruption.