Flying Home

by Ralph Ellison

  “Boy, he said in his deep voice, I oughta drown all a you bastards.”

  “An’ what’d the peckerwoods say?”

  “They said, Please, Please, Please, Mister Toussan …”

  “… We’ll be good,” broke in Riley.

  “Thass right, man,” said Buster excitedly. He clapped his hands and kicked his heels against the earth, his black face glowing in a burst of rhythmic joy.

  “Boy!”

  “And what’d ole Toussan say then?”

  “He said in his big deep voice: You all peckerwoods better be good, ’cause this is sweet Papa Toussan talking and my nigguhs is crazy ’bout white meat!”

  “Ho, ho, ho!” Riley bent double with laughter. The rhythm still throbbed within him and he wanted the story to go on and on …

  “Buster, you know didn’t no teacher tell you that lie,” he said.

  “Yes she did, man.”

  “She said there was really a guy like that what called hisself Sweet Papa Toussan?”

  Riley’s voice was unbelieving, and there was a wistful expression in his eyes that Buster could not understand. Finally he dropped his head and grinned.

  “Well,” he said, “I bet thass what ole Toussan said. You know how grown folks is, they caint tell a story right ’cepting real old folks like Granma.”

  “They sho caint,” said Riley. “They don’t know how to put the right stuff to it.”

  Riley stood, his legs spread wide, and stuck his thumbs in the top of his trousers, swaggering sinisterly.

  “Come on, watch me do it now, Buster. Now I bet ole Toussan looked down at them white folks standing just about like this and said in a soft easy voice: Ain’t I done begged you white folks to quit messin’ with me?…”

  “Thass right, quit messing with ’im,” chanted Buster.

  “But naw, you all had to come on anyway …”

  “… Just ’cause they was black …”

  “Thass right,” said Riley. “Then ole Toussan felt so damn bad and mad the tears came a-trickling down …”

  “… He was really mad.”

  “And then, man, he said in his big, bad voice: Goddamn you white folks, how come you all caint let us colored alone?”

  “… An’ he was crying …”

  “… An’ Toussan tole them peckerwoods: I been beggin’ you all to quit bothering us …”

  “… Beggin’ on his bended knees!…”

  “Then, man, Toussan got real mad and snatched off his hat and started stompin’ up and down on it and the tears was tricklin’ down and he said: You all come tellin’ me about Napoleon …”

  “They was tryin’ to scare ’im, man …”

  “Said: I don’t give a damn about Napoleon …”

  “… Wasn’t studyin’ ’bout him …”

  “… Toussan said: Napoleon ain’t nothing but a man! Then Toussan pulled back his shining sword like this, and twirled it at them peckerwoods’ throats so hard it z-z-z-zinged in the air!”

  “Now keep on, finish it, man,” said Buster. “What’d Toussan do then?”

  “Then you know what he did, he said: I oughta beat the hell outa you peckerwoods!”

  “Thass right, and he did it too,” said Buster. He jumped to his feet and fenced violently with five desperate imaginary soldiers, running each through with his imaginary sword. Buster watched him from the porch, grinning.

  “Toussan musta scared them white folks almost to death!”

  “Yeah, thass ’bout the way it was,” said Buster. The rhythm was dying now and he sat back upon the porch, breathing tiredly.

  “It sho is a good story,” said Riley.

  “Hecks, man, all the stories my teacher tells us is good. She’s a good ole teacher—but you know one thing?”

  “Naw, what?”

  “Ain’t none of them stories in the books. Wonder why?”

  “Hell, you know why, Ole Toussan was too hard on them white folks, thass why.”

  “Oh, he was a hard man!”

  “He was mean …”

  “But a good mean!”

  “Toussan was clean …”

  “… He was a good, clean mean,” said Riley.

  “Aw, man, he was sooo-preme,” said Buster.

  “Riiiley!!”

  The boys stopped short in their word play, their mouths wide.

  “Riley, I say!” It was Riley’s mother’s voice.

  “Ma’m?”

  “She musta heard us cussin’,” whispered Buster.

  “Shut up, man … What you want, Ma?”

  “I says I want you all to go round the backyard and play. You keeping up too much fuss out there. White folks says we tear up a neighborhood when we move in it and you all out there jus provin’ them out true. Now git on round in the back.”

  “Aw, Ma, we was jus playing, Ma …”

  “Boy, I said for you all to go on.”

  “But, Ma …”

  “You hear me, boy!”

  “Yessum, we going,” said Riley. “Come on, Buster.”

  Buster followed slowly behind, feeling the dew upon his feet as he walked up on the shaded grass.

  “What else did he do, man?” Buster said.

  “Huh? Rogan?”

  “Hecks, naw! I’m talkin’ ’bout Toussan.”

  “Doggone if I know, man—but I’m gonna ask that teacher.”

  “He was a fightin’ son-of-a-gun, wasn’t he, man?”

  “He didn’t stand for no foolishness,” said Riley reservedly. He thought of other things now, and as he moved along, he slid his feet easily over the short-cut grass, dancing as he chanted:

  Iron is iron,

  And tin is tin,

  And that’s the way

  The story …

  “Aw come on, man,” interrupted Buster. “Let’s go play in the alley …”

  And that’s the way …

  “Maybe we can slip around and get some cherries,” Buster went on.

  … the story ends, chanted Riley.

  Afternoon

  From American Writing, 1940

  The two boys stood at the rear of a vacant lot looking up at a telephone pole. The wires strung from one pole to the next gleamed bright copper in the summer sun. Glints of green light shot from the pole’s glass insulators as the boys stared.

  “Funny ain’t no birds on them wires, huh?”

  “They got too much ’lectricity in ’em. You can even hear ’em hum they got so much.”

  Riley cocked his head, listening:

  “That what’s making that noise?” he said.

  “Sho, man. Jus like if you put your ear against a streetcar-line pole you can tell when the car’s coming. You don’t even have to see it,” Buster said.

  “Thass right, I knowed about that.”

  “Wonder why they have them glass things up there?”

  “To keep them guys what climbs up there from gitting shocked, I guess.”

  Riley caught the creosote smell of the black paint on the pole as his eyes traveled over its rough surface.

  “High as a bitch!” he said.

  “It ain’t so high I bet I caint hit that glass on the end there.”

  “Buster, you fulla brown. You caint hit that glass, it’s too high.”

  “Shucks!! Gimme a rock.”

  They looked slowly over the dry ground for a rock.

  “Here’s a good one,” Riley called. “An egg rock.”

  “Throw it here, and watch how ole Lou Gehrig snags ’em on first base.”

  Riley pitched. The rock came high and swift. Buster stretched his arm to catch it and kicked out his right leg behind him, touching base.

  “And he’s out on first!” he cried.

  “You got ’im all right,” Riley said.

  “You jus watch this.”

  Riley watched as Buster wound up his arm and pointed to the insulator with his left hand. His body gave a twist and the rock flew upward.

  Crack!

  Pieces
of green glass sprinkled down.

  They stood with hands on hips, looking about them. A bird twittered. A rooster crowed. No one shouted to them and they laughed nervously.

  “What’d I tell you?”

  “Damn! I never thought you could do it.”

  “We better get away from here in case somebody saw that.”

  Riley looked around: “Come on.”

  They walked out to the alley.

  Chickens crouched in the cool earth beneath a shade tree. The two boys hurried out of sight of a woman piling rubbish in the next yard. A row of fence stretched up the alley, past garages and outhouses. They walked carefully, avoiding burrs and pieces of glass, over ground hot to their bare feet. The alley smelled of dust and the dry pungence of burning leaves.

  Buster picked up a stick and stirred in the weeds behind an unpainted garage. It raised dust, causing him to sneeze.

  “Buster, what the hell you doing?”

  “Looking for liquor, man.”

  “Looking for liquor?”

  “Sho, man.” He stopped, pointing: “See that house down on the corner?”

  Riley saw the back of a small green house with a row of zinc tubs on the rail of its porch.

  “Yeah, I see it,” he said.

  “Bootleggers live down there. They hid it all along here in these weeds. Boy, one night the cops raided and they was carrying it outa there in slop jars and everything.”

  “In slop jars?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “Gee, the cops catch ’em?”

  “Hell naw, they poured it all down the toilet. Man, I bet all the fish in the Canadian River was drunk.”

  They laughed noisily.

  Buster dug in the weeds again, then stopped:

  “Guess ain’t nothing in here.”

  He looked at Riley. Riley was grinning to himself.

  “Boy, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Buster, I’m still thinking about ’em throwing that liquor down the toilet. You know one thing? When I was little and they would set me on the seat, I useta think the devil was down there gitting him some cigars. I was scaired to sit down. Man, one time my ole lady like to beat the hell outa me ’cause I wouldn’t sit down.”

  “You crazy, man,” Buster said. “Didn’t I tell you, you was crazy?”

  “Honest,” Riley said. “I useta believe that.”

  They laughed. Buster dragged his stick through the weed tops. A hen cackled in the yard beyond the fence they were moving past. The sound of someone practicing scales on a piano drifted to them. They walked slowly.

  The narrow road through the alley was cut with dried ruts of wagon wheels, the center embedded with pieces of broken glass. “Where we going?” Buster asked. Riley began to chant:

  “Well I met Mister Rabbit

  down by the pea vine …”

  Buster joined in:

  “An’ I asked him where’s he gwine

  Well, he said, Just kiss my behind

  And he skipped on down the pea vine.”

  Buster suddenly stopped and grabbed his nose.

  “Look at that ole dead cat!”

  “Ain’t on my mama’s table.”

  “Mine neither!”

  “You better spit on it, else you’ll have it for supper,” Buster said.

  They spat upon the maggot-ridden body, and moved on.

  “Always lots a dead cats in the alley. Wonder why?”

  “Dogs get ’em, I guess.”

  “My dog ate so many dead cats once, he went crazy and died,” said Riley.

  “I don’t like cats. They too sly.”

  “Sho stinks!”

  “I’m holding my breath.”

  “Me too!”

  Soon they passed the smell. Buster stopped, pointing.

  “Look at the apples on that tree.”

  “Gittin’ big as hell!”

  “Sho is, let’s git some.”

  “Naw, they’ll give you the flux. They too green.”

  “I’m taking a chance,” Buster said.

  “Think anybody’s home?”

  “Hell, we don’t have to go inside the fence. See, some of ’em’s hanging over the alley.”

  They walked over to the fence and looked into the yard. The earth beneath the trees was bare and moist. Up near the house the grass was short and neat. Flagstones leading out of the garage made a pattern in the grass.

  “White folks live here?”

  “Naw, colored. White folks moved out when we moved in the block,” Buster said.

  They looked up into the tree: the sun broke through the leaves and apples hung bright green from dull black branches. A snake-doctor hummed by in long, curving flight. It was quiet and they could hear the thump, thump, thump of oil wells pumping away to the south. Buster stepped back from the fence, and held his stick ready.

  “Look out now,” Buster said. “They might fall in the weeds.”

  The stick ripped the leaves. An apple rattled through the branches, thumping to the ground inside the fence.

  “Damn!”

  He picked up the stick and threw again. The leaves rustled; Riley caught an apple. Another fell near Buster’s toes. He looked at Riley’s apple.

  “I git the biggest! You scaired to eat ’em anyway.”

  Riley watched him an instant, rolling the apple between his palms. There was a spot of red on the green of the apple.

  “I don’t care,” he said finally. “You can have it.”

  He pitched the apple to Buster. Buster caught it and touched first base with his toe.

  “He’s out on first!”

  “Let’s go,” Riley said.

  They walked close to the fence, the weeds whipping their thin legs. A woodpecker drummed on a telephone pole.

  “I’m gonna remember that tree. Won’t be long before them apples is ripe.”

  “Yeah, but this here’n sho ain’t ripe,” Riley said. Buster laughed as he saw Riley’s face twist into a wry frown.

  “We need some salt,” he said.

  “Man, damn! Hot springs water won’t help this apple none.”

  Buster laughed and batted a tin can against a fence with his stick. A dog growled and sniffed on the other side. Buster growled back and the dog went barking along the fence as they moved past.

  “Sic ’im, Rin Tin Tin, sic ’im,” Riley called.

  Buster barked. They went past the fence, the dog still barking behind them.

  Buster dropped his stick and fitted his apple carefully into his fingers. Riley watched him.

  “See, here’s the way you hold it to pitch a curve,” Buster said.

  “How?”

  “Like this: these two fingers this here way; you put your thumb this here way, and you let it roll off your fingers this a way.”

  Riley gripped his apple as Buster showed him; then wound up and threw. The apple flew up the alley in a straight line and suddenly broke sharply to the right.

  “See there! You see it break? That’s the way you do it, man. You put that one right up around the batter’s neck.”

  Riley was surprised. A grin broke over his face and his eyes fell upon Buster with admiration. Buster ran and picked up the apple.

  “See, here’s the way you do it.”

  He wound up and pitched, the apple humming as it whipped through the air. Riley saw it coming at him and curving suddenly, sharply away. It fell behind him. He shook his head, smiling:

  “Buster?”

  “What?”

  “Boy, you ’bout the throwin’est nigguh I ever seen. Less see you hit that post yonder, that one over there by the fence.”

  “Hell, man! You must think I’m Schoolboy Rowe or somebody.”

  “Go on, Buster, you can hit it.”

  Buster took a bite out of the apple and chewed as he wound up his arm. Then suddenly he bent double and snapped erect, his left foot leaving the ground and his right arm whipping forward.

  Clunk!

  The apple smashed
against the post and burst into flying pieces.

  “What’d I tell you? Damn, that ole apple come apart like when you hit a quail solid with a shotgun.”

  “Thass what you call control,” Buster said.

  “I don’t know what you call it, but I’d sho hate to have you throwin’ bricks at me,” said Riley.

  “Shucks, you ain’t seen nothin’. You want to see some throwin’ you jus wait till we pass through the fairgrounds to go swimming in Goggleye Lake. Man, the nigguhs out there can throw Coca-Cola bottles so hard that they bust in the air!”

  Riley doubled himself up, laughing.

  “Buster, you better quit lying so much!”

  “I ain’t lying, man. You can ask anybody.”

  “Boy, boy!” Riley laughed. The saliva bubbled at the corners of his mouth.

  “Come on over to my house and sit in the cool,” Buster said.

  They turned a corner and walked into a short stretch of grassy yard before a gray cottage. A breeze blew across the porch; it smelled clean and fresh to Riley. The wooden boards of the porch had been washed white. Buster remembered seeing his mother scrubbing the porch with the suds after she had finished the clothes. He tried to forget those clothes.

  A fly buzzed at the door screen. Riley dropped down on the porch, his bare feet dangling.

  “Wait a minute while I see what’s here to eat,” Buster said.

  Riley lay back and covered his eyes with his arm. “All right,” he said.

  Buster went inside, fanning flies away from the door. He could hear his mother busy in the kitchen as he walked through the little house. She was standing before the window, ironing. When he stepped down into the kitchen she turned her head.

  “Buster, where you been, you lazy rascal! You knowed I wanted you here to help me with them tubs!”

  “I was over to Riley’s, Ma. I didn’t know you wanted me.”

  “You didn’t know! Lawd, I don’t know why I had to have a chile like you. I work my fingers to the bone to keep you looking decent and that’s the way you ’preciates it. You didn’t know!”

  Buster was silent. It was always this way. He had meant to help; he always meant to do the right thing, but something always got in the way.

  “Well what you standing there looking like a dying calf for? I’m through now. Go on out and play.”

  “Yessum.”