“It made me feel faint. It upset my mind like a midnight telegram!
“I said to myself, ‘LeeWillie, what on earth is this man talking about? Here you been thinking you had it made. You been thinking you were as free as a bird—even though a black bird. That good-rolling Jersey Turnpike is up ahead to get you home. —And now here comes this Senator putting you in a cage! What in the world is going on?’
“I got so nervous that all at once my foot weighed ninety-nine pounds, and before I knew it I was doing seventy-five. I was breaking the law! I guess I was really trying to get away from that voice and what the man had said. But I was rolling and I was listening. I couldn’t help myself. What I was hearing was going against my whole heart and soul, but I was listening anyway. And what I heard was beginning to make me see things in a new light. Yes, and that new light was making my eyeballs ache. And all the time Senator Sunraider up in the Senate was calling my car a ‘coon cage.’
“So I looked around and I saw all that fine ivory leather there. I looked at the steel and at the chrome. I looked through the windshield and saw the road unfolding and the houses and the trees was flashing by. I looked up at the top and I touched the button and let it go back to see if that awful feeling would leave me. But it wouldn’t leave. The air was hitting my face and the sun was on my head and I was feeling that good old familiar feeling of flying—but ladies and gentlemen, it was no longer the same! Oh, no—because I could still hear that Senator playing the dozens with my Cadillac!
“And just then, ladies and gentlemen, I found myself rolling toward an old man who reminded me of my granddaddy by the way he was walking beside the highway behind a plow hitched to an old, white-muzzled Missouri mule. And when that old man looked up and saw me he waved. And I looked back through the mirror as I shot past him and I could see him open his mouth and say something like, ‘Go on, fool!’ Then him and that mule was gone even from the mirror and I was rolling on.
“And then, ladies and gentlemen, in a twinkling of an eye it struck me. A voice said to me, ‘LeeWillie, that old man is right: you are a fool. And that doggone Senator Sunraider is right, LeeWillie, you are a fool in a coon cage!’
“I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that old man and his mule both were talking to me. I said, ‘What do you mean about his being right?’ And they said, ‘LeeWillie, look who he is,’ and I said, ‘I know who he is,’ and they said, ‘Well, LeeWillie, if a man like that, in the position he’s in, can think the way he doin, then LeeWillie, you have GOT to be wrong!’
“So I said, ‘Thinking like that is why you’ve still got that mule in your lap,’ man. ‘I worked hard to get the money to buy this Caddy,’ and he said, ‘Money? LeeWillie, can’t you see that it ain’t no longer a matter of money? Can’t you see it’s done gone way past the question of money? Now it’s a question of whether you can afford it in terms other than money.’
“And I said, ‘Man, what are you talking about, “terms other than money.” ‘ and he said, ‘LeeWillie, even this damn mule knows that if a man like that feels the way he’s talking and can say it right out over the radio and the T.V., and from the place where he’s saying it—there’s got to be something drastically wrong with you for even wanting one. Son, the man’s done made it mean something different. All you wanted was to have a pretty automobile, but fool, he done changed the Rules on you!’
“So against myself, ladies and gentlemen, I was forced to agree with the old man and the mule. That Senator up there wasn’t simply degrading my Caddy. That wasn’t the point. It’s that he would low-rate a thing so truly fine as a Cadillac just in order to degrade me and my people. He was accusing me of lowering the value of the auto, when all I ever wanted was the very best!
“Oh, it hurt me to the quick, and right then and there I had me a rolling revelation. The scales dropped from my eyes. I had been BLIND, but the Senator up there on that hill was making me SEE. He was making me see some things I didn’t want to see! I’d thought I was dressed real FINE, but I was as naked as a jaybird sitting on a limb in the drifting snow. I THOUGHT I was rolling past Richmond, but I was really trapped in a COON CAGE, running on one of those little TREADMILLS like a SQUIRREL or a HAMSTER. So now my EYEBALLS were aching. My head was in such a whirl that I shot the car up to ninety, and all I could see up ahead was the road getting NARROW. It was getting as narrow as the eye of a NEEDLE, and that needle looked like the Washington MONUMENT lying down. Yes, and I was trying to thread that Caddy straight through that eye and I didn’t care if I made it or not. But while I managed to get that Caddy through I just couldn’t thread that COON CAGE because it was like a two-ton knot tied in a piece of fine silk thread. The sweat was pouring off me now, ladies and gentlemen, and my brain was on fire, so I pulled off the highway and asked myself some questions, and I got myself some answers. It went this way:
“‘LeeWillie, who put you in this cage?’
“‘You put your own self in there,’ a voice inside me said.
“‘But I paid for it, it’s mine. I own it …’ I said.
“‘Oh, no, LeeWillie,’ the voice said, ‘what you mean is that it owns you, that’s why you’re in the cage. Admit it, daddy; you have been NAMED. Senator Sunraider has put the badmouth, the NASTY mouth on you and now your Cadillac ain’t no Caddy anymore! Let’s face it, LeeWillie, from now on everytime you sit behind this wheel you’re going to feel those RINGS shooting round and round your TAIL and one of those little black COON’S masks is going to settle down over your FACE, and folks standing on the streets and hanging out the windows will sing out, “HEY! THERE GOES MISTER COON AND HIS COON CAGE!” That’s right, LeeWillie! And all those little husky-voiced colored CHILDREN playing in the gutters will point at you and say, “THERE GOES MISTAH GOON AND HIS GOON GAGE”—and that will be right in Harlem!’
“And that did it, ladies and gentlemen; that was the capper, and THAT’S why I’m here!
“Right then and there, beside the highway, I made my decision. I rolled that Caddy, I made a U-turn and I stopped only long enough to get me some of that good white wood alcohol and good white gasoline, and then I headed straight here. So while some of you are upset, you can see that you don’t have to be afraid because LeeWillie means nobody any harm.
“I am here, ladies and gentlemen, to make the Senator a present. Yes, sir and yes, mam, and it’s Sunday and I’m told that confession is good for the soul. —So Mister Senator,” he said, turning toward the terrace above, “this is my public testimony to my coming over to your way of thinking. This is my surrender of the Coon Cage Eight! You have unconverted me from the convertible. In fact, I’m giving it to you, Senator Sunraider, and it is truly mine to give. I hope all my people will do likewise. Because after your speech they ought to run whenever they even look at one of these. They ought to make for the bomb shelters whenever one comes close to the curb. So I, me, LeeWillie Minifees, am setting an example and here it is. You can HAVE it, Mister Senator. I don’t WANT it. Thank you KINDLY and MUCH obliged …”
He paused, looking toward the terrace, and at this point I saw a great burst of flame which sent the crowd scurrying backward down the hill, and the white-suited firebrand went into an ecstatic chant, waving his violin bow, shaking his gleaming head and stamping his foot:
“Listen to me, Senator: I don’t want no JET! (stamp!) But thank you kindly.
“I don’t want no FORD! (stamp!)
“Neither do I want a RAMBLER! (stamp!)
“I don’t want no NINETY-EIGHT! (stamp!)
“Ditto the THUNDERBIRD! (stamp-stamp!)
“Yes, and keep those CHEVYS and CHRYSLERS away from me—do you (stamp!) hear me, Senator?
“YOU HAVE TAKEN THE BEST,” he boomed, “SO, DAMMIT, TAKE ALL THE REST! Take ALL the rest!
“In fact, now I don’t want anything you think is too good for me and my people. Because, just as that old man and the mule said, if a man in your position is against our having them, then there must be something WRONG in our wan
ting them. So to keep you happy, I, me, LeeWillie Minifees, am prepared to WALK. I’m ordering me some club-footed, pigeon-toed SPACE SHOES. I’d rather crawl or FLY. I’d rather save my money and wait until the A-RABS make a car. The Zulus even. Even the ESKIMOS! Oh, I’ll walk and wait. I’ll grab me a GREYHOUND or a FREIGHT! So you can have my coon cage, fare thee well!
“Take the TAIL FINS and the WHITEWALLS. Help yourself to the poor raped RADIO. ENJOY the automatic dimmer and the power brakes. ROLL, Mister Senator, with that fluid DRIVE. Breathe that air-conditioned AIR. There’s never been a Caddy like this one and I want you to HAVE IT. Take my scientific dreamboat and enjoy that good ole GRACIOUS LIVING! The key’s in the ignition and the REGISTRATION’S in the GLOVE compartment! And thank you KINDLY for freeing me from the Coon Cage. Because before I’d be in a CAGE, I’ll be buried in my GRAVE—Oh! Oh!”
He broke off, listening; and I became aware of the shrilling of approaching sirens. Then he was addressing the crowd again.
“I knew,” he called down with a grin, “that THOSE would be coming soon. Because they ALWAYS come when you don’t NEED them. Therefore, I only hope that the Senator will beat it on down here and accept his gift before they arrive. And in the meantime, I want ALL you ladies and gentlemen to join LeeWillie in singing ‘God Bless America’ so that all this won’t be in vain.
“I want you to understand that that was a damned GOOD Caddy and I loved her DEARLY. That’s why you don’t have to worry about me. I’m doing fine. Everything is copacetic. Because, remember, nothing makes a man feel better than giving AWAY something, than SACRIFICING something, that he dearly LOVES!”
And then, most outrageous of all, he threw back his head and actually sang a few bars before the noise of the short-circuited horn set the flaming car to wailing like some great prehistoric animal heard in the throes of its dying.
Behind him now, high on the terrace, the Senator and his guests were shouting, but on the arsonist sang, and the effect on the crowd was maddening. Perhaps because from the pleasurable anticipation of watching the beginning of a clever advertising stunt, they had been thrown into a panic by the deliberate burning, the bizarre immolation of the automobile. And now with a dawning of awareness they perceived that they had been forced to witness (and who could turn away?) a crude and most portentous political gesture.
So suddenly they broke past me, dashing up the hill in moblike fury, and it was most fortunate for Minifees that his duet with the expiring Cadillac was interrupted by members of the police and fire departments, who, arriving at this moment, threw a flying wedge between the flaming machine and the mob. Through the noisy action I could see him there, looming prominently in his white suit, a mocking smile flickering on his sweaty face, as the action whirled toward where he imperturbably stood his ground, still singing against the doleful wailing of the car.
He was still singing, his wrists coolly extended now in anticipation of handcuffs—when struck by a veritable football squad of asbestos-garbed policemen and swept, tumbling, in a wild tangle of arms and legs, down the slope to where I stood. It was then I noted that he wore expensive black alligator shoes.
And now, while the crowd roared its approval, I watched as LeeWillie Minifees was pinned down, lashed into a straitjacket and led toward a police car. Up the hill two policemen were running laboredly toward where the Senator stood, silently observing. About me there was much shouting and shoving as some of the crowd attempted to follow the trussed-up and still grinning arsonist but were beaten back by the police.
It was unbelievably wild. Some continued to shout threats in their outrage and frustration, while others, both men and women, filled the air with a strangely brokenhearted and forlorn sound of weeping, and the officers found it difficult to disperse them. In fact, they continued to mill angrily about even as firemen in asbestos suits broke through, dragging hoses from a roaring pumper truck and sprayed the flaming car with a foamy chemical, which left it looking like the offspring of some strange animal brought so traumatically and precipitantly to life that it wailed and sputtered in protest, both against the circumstance of its debut into the world and the foaming presence of its still-clinging afterbirth …
And what had triggered it? How had the Senator sparked this weird conflagration? Why, with a joke! The day before, while demanding larger appropriations for certain scientific research projects that would be of great benefit to our electronics and communications industries, and of great importance to the nation as a whole, the Senator had aroused the opposition of a liberal Senator from New York who had complained, in passing, of what he termed the extreme vapidness of our recent automobile designs, their lack of adequate safety devices, and of the slackness of our quality-control standards and procedures. Well, it was in defending the automobile industry that the Senator passed the remark that triggered LeeWillie Minifees’s bizarre reply.
In his rebuttal—the committee session was televised and aired over radio networks—the Senator insisted that not only were our cars the best in the world, the most beautiful and efficiently designed, but that, in fact, his opponent’s remarks were a gratuitous slander. Because, he asserted, the only ground which he could see for complaint lay in the circumstance that a certain make of luxury automobile had become so outrageously popular in the nation’s Harlems—the archetype of which is included in his opponent’s district—that he found it embarrassing to own one. And then with a face most serious in its composure he went on to state:
“We have reached a sad state of affairs, gentlemen, wherein this fine product of American skill and initiative has become so common in Harlem that much of its initial value has been sorely compromised. Indeed, I am led to suggest, and quite seriously, that legislation be drawn up to rename it the ‘Coon Cage Eight.’ And not at all because of its eight, super-efficient cylinders, nor because of the lean, springing strength and beauty of its general outlines. Not at all, but because it has now become such a common sight to see eight or more of our darker brethren crowded together enjoying its power, its beauty, its neo-pagan comfort, while weaving recklessly through the streets of our great cities and along our super-highways. In fact, gentlemen, I was run off the road, forced into a ditch by such a power-drunk group just the other day. It is enough to make a citizen feel alienated from his own times, from the abiding values and recent developments within his own beloved nation.
“And yet, we continue to hear complaints to the effect that these constituents of our worthy colleague are ill-housed, ill-clothed, ill-equipped and under-treaded! But, gentlemen, I say to you in all sincerity: Look into the streets! Look at the statistics for automobile sales! And I don’t mean the economy cars, but our most expensive luxury machines. Look and see who is purchasing them! Give your attention to who it is that is creating the scarcity and removing these superb machines from the reach of those for whom they were intended! With so many of these good things, what, pray, do those people desire—is it a jet plane on every Harlem rooftop?”
Now for Senator Sunraider this had been mild and far short of his usual maliciousness. And while it aroused some slight amusement and brought replies of false indignation from some of his opponents, it was edited out, as is frequently the case, when the speech appeared in the Congressional Record and in the press. But who could have predicted that Senator Sunraider would have brought on LeeWillie Minifees’s wild gesture? Perhaps he had been putting on an act, creating a happening, as they say, though I doubted it. There was something more personal behind it. Without question, the Senator’s remarks were in extremely bad taste, but to cap the joke by burning an expensive car seemed so extreme a reply as to be almost metaphysical.
And yet, I reminded myself, it might simply be a case of overreacting expressed in true Negro abandon, an extreme gesture springing from the frustration of having no adequate means of replying, or making himself heard above the majestic roar of a Senator. There was, of course, the recent incident involving a black man suffering from an impacted wisdom tooth who had
been so maddened by the blaring of a moisture-shorted automobile horn which had blasted his sleep about three o’clock of an icy morning, that he ran out into the street clothed only in an old-fashioned nightshirt and blasted the hood of the offending automobile with both barrels of a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun.
But while toothaches often lead to such extreme acts—and once in a while to suicide—LeeWillie Minifees had apparently been in no pain—or at least not in physical pain. And on the surface at least his speech had been projected clearly enough (allowing for the necessity to shout) and he had been smiling when they led him away. What would be his fate? I wondered; and where had they taken him? I would have to find him and question him, for his action had begun to sound in my mind with disturbing overtones which had hardly been meaningful. Rather they had been like the brief interruption one sometimes hears while listening to an F.M. broadcast of the musical Oklahoma!, say, with original cast, when the signal fades and a program of quite different mood from a different wavelength breaks through. It had happened but then a blast of laughter had restored us automatically to our chosen frequency.
BACKWACKING, A PLEA TO THE SENATOR
MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW 18 (AUTUMN 1977): 411–16
Braxas, Alabama
April 4th, 1953
To the Right Honorable
Senator Sunraider
Washington, D.C.
Dear Senator Sunraider:
This evening I take my pen in hand to write you our deep appreciation for all the good things you have been doing for this pore beat down country of ours. That Cadillac speech you gave us was straight forward and to the point and much needed saying. So I thank you and my wife Marthy wants to thank you. In fact we both thank you for looking out for folks like us who firmly believe that all this WELFARE the Guv. is shoveling out to the lazy nogood-ers and freeloaders is something that stinks in the nostril of Heaven worse than a batch of rotten catfish that some unGodly thief has stole and scattered all over Courthouse Square at high noon on the 4th day of July. We are with you Senator because you are a good man. You have done great things for the God-fearing folks of this country and we respect you for it. And as you are one of the very few men in Guv. who we can depend on when the going gets real TOUGH I now take the liberty of calling something to your kind attention that is taking place down here in these parts.
Three Days Before the Shooting . . . Page 167