Flying Home

by Ralph Ellison

  Then we saw the big guy. He was headed in our direction and was running like the anchor man on a relay team and when he passed through the circle of light he was naked and there was red on the front of his body, which rippled and shone in the light. Joe had opened the window and when the big fellow passed, taking long clean fast strides, we could see his lips moving like he was counting to himself. It was funny that he could run so smooth after all the drinks. In the snow, with his black skin shining, he looked even bigger than Paul Robeson.

  Ike and his boys had quit shooting, and started hollering to raise hell. I started up to say something to Joe, and he was crying and started cussing and wishing for a machine gun. He was shaking like a leaf he was so damn mad.

  Then the sirens started up, and Ike and the gang jumped in their cars and beat it. They took the corner on two wheels. Windows started opening, and doors were opening all up the street. Joe hollered for me to come on, and just before I started to leave the window, I looked and saw the big guy turning the corner where Tom’s place stood. He was running slow now, and when he got around the corner he fell plunging into the group of fellows standing in the doorway.

  I ran to catch up with Joe, because he was mad as hell and might try to clean out the joint single-handed. I stepped into the deep snow and into some slush near the curb where there was a hot pipe that carried steam into the building. God, I thought, the poor guy’s all hurt and shot with the liquor and so confused that he doesn’t know where he’s run to. I caught Joe before he got there, and when we started in, a squad car rolled up with its siren dying away. The cops rushed in and we followed behind.

  The big guy was laying up on some tables they’d pulled together in the rear of the room with his shorts on, and the little broad was rubbing him down with something out of a bottle. She was laughing.

  The little bitch, I thought. The goddamn lousy little bitch.

  Then I looked at Tom, and he was laughing with his belly shaking beneath his clean white apron, and the guys who had been in the door were laughing, and Sam, the waiter coming from the kitchen with a pot of something steaming in his hands, was laughing. Everybody in the place was laughing except Joe and the cops and me. We just stopped still; then I looked at Joe. Joe looked at me. A cop hollered, “What the hell’s going on here?” and Joe hollered, “Who shot that man?”

  Joe looked as though his eyes would pop out of his head, and little ridges and streams of sweat lined his face. The crowd laughed harder after the cop asked who shot the big guy, and then the cop made a grab for the guy and cooled him with a blackjack. The others fell back but were still laughing some. Then Tom tried to catch his breath and explain to the cops.

  “It’s all right, boys,” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s all right,” someone else said.

  Tom was trying hard to get his breath. The cops were not convinced it was all right.

  “What in the hell happened?” I said.

  The little broad was still pretty high and kept right on laughing.

  “Shut that broad’s mouth,” someone yelled.

  “It’s all a bet, boys,” Tom laughed.

  He knocked over a glass as he leaned back on the bar, still trying to catch his breath.

  “What kind of a goddamn bet?”

  “Just a bet, boy. Ha ha ha.”

  “Is he hurt bad?” someone who had just come in asked.

  “See that, Al, see that? This is your damn Chicago. Here they shoot a man on a bet,” Joe yelled.

  He was yelling at the top of his voice.

  “Ha ha, gawddamn, take it easy, boys. It’s just a bet,” laughed Tom.

  He finally had his breath and started to talk. In the back the big fellow was breathing easier, and the little broad, still laughing, was rubbing him with a towel.

  “That Ike’s a dog,” someone said.

  “Nawsuh,” someone else said. “Ike don’t give a damn ’bout nothing.”

  “Man, he sho don’t, and he likes his sport too.”

  “You see,” Tom said, “Charlie here used to know Mistah Ike when they wuz kids, and when Charlie sees him come in, he remembered him and offered to buy him a drink.”

  Someone started laughing again.

  “That’s it,” a fellow said.

  “Charlie,” Tom went on, “wanted Mistah Ike to have a Singapore Sling, but Mistah Ike said that was too sweet and was bad for folks to drink.”

  “Go on, Tom, let’s have it,” said a cop.

  “Well, Charlie there said Mistah Ike was wrong ’cause sugar is good to give you energy, and he knowed ’cause he’s a professional football player and eats candy ’fore every game.”

  “That sho was funny,” someone said.

  “Shut up,” a cop said.

  Tom went on.

  “Mistah Ike told Charlie he was lying and looked like he was drunk, and that he ought to cut out the bulling and hanging around with the women folks that early in the morning. So Charlie bet Mistah Ike that he could drink a Sling and run around the block buck-nude without getting cold. Mistah Ike took him on, and told him to get out of his clothes and get going.”

  “Yeah, yeah, so he runs out and got shot, I guess,” the cop said.

  “Naw, that war’nt no blood. Miss Flo there just threw some catsup on him when he started out, and them shots was Mistah Ike giving Charlie the signal to go.”

  “Ain’t this a damn shame,” someone who had come in late said. The crowd in the door started breaking up, and the cops went to find Big Ike.

  “Let’s get the hell outa here,” Joe said.

  When we went out, the lights were going off up along the street and a milk truck was cutting new ruts in the snow. As we walked, I looked at Joe and grinned.

  “Aw you ass,” he said.

  We were both relieved. I was very damn much relieved.

  The Black Ball

  I had rushed through the early part of the day mopping the lobby, placing fresh sand in the tall green jars, sweeping and dusting the halls, and emptying the trash to be burned later on in the day into the incinerator. And I had stopped only once to chase out after a can of milk for Mrs. Johnson, who had a new baby and who was always nice to my boy. I had started at six o’clock, and around eight I ran out to the quarters where we lived over the garage to dress the boy and give him his fruit and cereal. He was very thoughtful sitting there in his high chair and paused several times with his spoon midway to his mouth to watch me as I chewed my toast.

  “What’s the matter, son?”

  “Daddy, am I black?”

  “Of course not, you’re brown. You know you’re not black.”

  “Well yesterday Jackie said I was so black.”

  “He was just kidding. You musn’t let them kid you, son.”

  [He was four, a little brown boy in blue rompers, and when he talked and laughed with imaginary playmates, his voice was soft and round in its accents like those of most Negro Americans.]

  “Brown’s much nicer than white, isn’t it, Daddy?”

  “Some people think so. But American is better than both, son.”

  “Is it, Daddy?”

  “Sure it is. Now forget this talk about you being black, and Daddy will be back as soon as he finishes his work.”

  I left him to play with his toys and a book of pictures until I returned. He was a pretty nice fellow, as he used to say after particularly quiet afternoons while I tried to study, and for which quietness he expected a treat of candy or a “picture movie,” and I often let him alone while I attended to my duties in the apartments.

  I had gone back and started doing the brass on the front doors when a fellow came up and stood watching from the street. He was lean and red in the face with that redness that comes from a long diet of certain foods. You see much of it in the deep South, and here in the Southwest it is not uncommon. He stood there watching, and I could feel his eyes in my back as I polished the brass.

  I gave special attention to that brass because for Berry, the man
ager, the luster of these brass panels and door handles was the measure of all my industry. It was near time for him to arrive.

  “Good morning, John,” he would say, looking not at me but at the brass.

  “Good morning, sir,” I would say, looking not at him but at the brass. Usually his face was reflected there. For him, I was there. Besides that brass, his money, and the half-dozen or so plants in his office, I don’t believe he had any other real interests in life.

  There must be no flaws this morning. Two fellows who worked at the building across the street had already been dismissed because whites had demanded their jobs, and with the boy at that age needing special foods and me planning to enter school again next term, I couldn’t afford to allow something like that out on the sidewalk to spoil my chances. Especially since Berry had told one of my friends in the building that he didn’t like that “damned educated nigger.”

  I was so concerned with the brass that when the fellow spoke, I jumped with surprise.

  “Howdy,” he said. The expected drawl was there. But something was missing, something usually behind that kind of drawl.

  “Good morning.”

  “Looks like you working purty hard over that brass.”

  “It gets pretty dirty overnight.”

  That part wasn’t missing. When they did have something to say to us, they always became familiar.

  “You been working here long?” he asked, leaning against the column with his elbow.

  “Two months.”

  I turned my back to him as I worked.

  “Any other colored folks working here?”

  “I’m the only one,” I lied. There were two others. It was none of his business anyway.

  “Have much to do?”

  “I have enough,” I said. Why, I thought, doesn’t he go on in and ask for the job? Why bother me? Why tempt me to choke him? Doesn’t he know we aren’t afraid to fight his kind out this way?

  As I turned, picking up the bottle to pour more polish into my rag, he pulled a tobacco sack from the pocket of his old blue coat. I noticed his hands were scarred as though they had been burned.

  “Ever smoke Durham?” he asked.

  “No thank you,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “Not used to anything like that, are you?”

  “Not used to what?”

  A little more from this guy and I would see red.

  “Fellow like me offering a fellow like you something besides a rope.”

  I stopped to look at him. He stood there smiling with the sack in his outstretched hand. There were many wrinkles around his eyes, and I had to smile in return. In spite of myself I had to smile.

  “Sure you won’t smoke some Durham?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  He was fooled by the smile. A smile couldn’t change things between my kind and his.

  “I’ll admit it ain’t much,” he said. “But it’s a helluva lot different.”

  I stopped the polishing again to see what it was he was trying to get after.

  “But,” he said, “I’ve got something really worth a lot; that is, if you’re interested.”

  “Lets hear it,” I said.

  Here, I thought, is where he tries to put one over on old “George.”

  “You see, I come out from the union and we intend to organize all the building-service help in this district. Maybe you been reading ’bout it in the papers?”

  “I saw something about it, but what’s it to do with me?”

  “Well, first place we’ll make ’em take some of this work off you. It’ll mean shorter hours and higher wages, and better conditions in general.”

  “What you really mean is that you’ll get in here and bounce me out. Unions don’t want Negro members.”

  “You mean some unions don’t. It used to be that way, but things have changed.”

  “Listen, fellow. You’re wasting your time and mine. Your damn unions are like everything else in the country—for whites only. What ever caused you to give a damn about a Negro anyway? Why should you try to organize Negroes?”

  His face had become a little white.

  “See them hands?”

  He stretched out his hands.

  “Yes,” I said, looking not at his hands but at the color draining from his face.

  “Well, I got them scars in Macon County, Alabama, for saying a colored friend of mine was somewhere else on a day he was supposed to have raped a woman. He was, too, ’cause I was with him. Me and him was trying to borrow some seed fifty miles away when it happened—if it did happen. They made them scars with a gasoline torch and run me out the county ’cause they said I tried to help a nigger make a white woman out a lie. That same night they lynched him and burned down his house. They did that to him and this to me, and both of us was fifty miles away.”

  He was looking down at his outstretched hands as he talked.

  “God,” was all I could say. I felt terrible when I looked closely at his hands for the first time. It must have been hell. The skin was drawn and puckered and looked as though it had been fried. Fried hands.

  “Since that time I learned a lot,” he said. “I been at this kinda thing. First it was the croppers, and when they got to know me and made it too hot, I quit the country and came to town. First it was in Arkansas and now it’s here. And the more I move around, the more I see, and the more I see, the more I work.”

  He was looking into my face now, his eyes blue in his red skin. He was looking very earnestly. I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say to that. Perhaps he was telling the truth; I didn’t know. He was smiling again.

  “Listen,” he said. “Now, don’t you go trying to figger it all out right now. There’s going to be a series of meetings at this number starting tonight, and I’d like mighty much to see you there. Bring any friends along you want to.”

  He handed me a card with a number and 8 P.M. sharp written on it. He smiled as I took the card and made as if to shake my hand but turned and walked down the steps to the street. I noticed that he limped as he moved away.

  “Good morning, John,” Mr. Berry said. I turned, and there he stood; derby, long black coat, stick, nose glasses, and all. He stood gazing into the brass like the wicked queen into her looking glass in the story which the boy liked so well.

  “Good morning, sir,” I said.

  I should have finished long before.

  “Did the man I saw leaving wish to see me, John?”

  “Oh no, sir. He only wished to buy old clothes.”

  Satisfied with my work for the day, he passed inside, and I walked around to the quarters to look after the boy. It was near twelve o’clock.

  I found the boy pushing a toy back and forth beneath a chair in the little room which I used for a study.

  “Hi, Daddy,” he called.

  “Hi, son,” I called. “What are you doing today?”

  “Oh, I’m trucking.”

  “I thought you had to stand up to truck.”

  “Not that kind, Daddy, this kind.”

  He held up the toy.

  “Ooh,” I said. “That kind.”

  “Aw, Daddy, you’re kidding. You always kid, don’t you, Daddy?”

  “No. When you’re bad I don’t kid, do I?”

  “I guess not.”

  In fact, he wasn’t—only enough to make it unnecessary for me to worry because he wasn’t.

  The business of trucking soon absorbed him, and I went back to the kitchen to fix his lunch and to warm up the coffee for myself.

  The boy had a good appetite, so I didn’t have to make him eat. I gave him his food and settled into a chair to study, but my mind wandered away, so I got up and filled a pipe hoping that would help, but it didn’t, so I threw the book aside and picked up Malraux’s Man’s Fate, which Mrs. Johnson had given me, and tried to read it as I drank a cup of coffee. I had to give that up also. Those hands were on my brain, and I couldn’t forget that fellow.

  “Daddy,” the b
oy called softly; it’s always softly when I’m busy.

  “Yes, son.”

  “When I grow up I think I’ll drive a truck.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, and then I can wear a lot of buttons on my cap like the men that bring the meat to the grocery. I saw a colored man with some today, Daddy. I looked out the window, and a colored man drove the truck today, and, Daddy, he had two buttons on his cap. I could see ’em plain.”

  He had stopped his play and was still on his knees, beside the chair in his blue overalls. I closed the book and looked at the boy a long time. I must have looked queer.

  “What’s the matter, Daddy?” he asked. I explained that I was thinking, and got up and walked over to stand looking out the front window. He was quiet for a while; then he started rolling his truck again.

  The only nice feature about the quarters was that they were high up and offered a view in all directions. It was afternoon and the sun was brilliant. Off to the side, a boy and girl were playing tennis in a driveway. Across the street a group of little fellows in bright sunsuits were playing on a long stretch of lawn before a white stone building. Their nurse, dressed completely in white except for her dark glasses, which I saw when she raised her head, sat still as a picture, bent over a book on her knees. As the children played, the wind blew their cries over to where I stood, and as I watched, a flock of pigeons swooped down into the driveway near the stretch of green, only to take flight again wheeling in a mass as another child came skipping up the drive pulling some sort of toy. The children saw him and were running toward him in a group when the nurse looked up and called them back. She called something to the child and pointed back in the direction of the garages where he had just come from. I could see him turn slowly around and drag his toy, some kind of bird that flapped its wings like an eagle, slowly after him. He stopped and pulled a flower from one of the bushes that lined the drive, turning to look hurriedly at the nurse, and then ran back down the drive. The child had been Jackie, the little son of the white gardener who worked across the street.

  As I turned away I noticed that my boy had come to stand beside me.