Flying Home and Other Stories

by Ralph Ellison

  “Yuh better watch that fool,” yelled Buster.

  “Who yuh tellin’? Come here to me, Ole Bill!”

  As he reached out, the big rooster charged, his neck feathers standing out like a ruff, his legs churning the air, spurring. Riley covered his face with his arm.

  “Grab holt to him, man!”

  He lunged, grabbing. The dust flew. Ole Bill struck the ground and danced away. Riley dived, seeing Ole Bill bounce away like a puffed-up feather duster.

  “What I tell yuh ’bout this fool?” he panted.

  “Yuh sho didn’t tell no lie. Watch ’im!”

  The charge took Riley unaware. He went over fast, landing hard. He couldn’t breathe. The rooster swarmed over him. He guarded his eyes. The rooster clawed his legs, pecked at his face. He felt a spur go into his shirt, the point against his ribs. Little evil yellow eyes, old like Aunt Kate’s, danced sinisterly over his face. As his hand connected with a horny leg, he heard his shirt rip and held on, the pungent odor of dusty feathers hot in his nostrils. Panting, he scrambled to his feet. Ole Bill jerked powerfully, the scaly legs rough to his hands, the sharp bill stabbing.

  “Hold ’im till I git down there!” yelled Buster.

  “Hecks, I almost got him now,” he panted. He held the rooster over his head, trying to keep his face clear of the whipping wings. Suddenly he pinned the wings to Ole Bill’s sides and gave a heave, his body arching backward, sending the rooster sailing across the yard. The air filled with dust as Ole Bill skidded. Riley whirled, sneezing and running for the gate, then stopped. The rooster was shaking the dust from his feathers. Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Riley walked slowly, deliberately, so that Buster would not think he was afraid. Before him the old hen was herding her brood out of his path. Obeying a sudden impulse, he swooped up two of the chicks and stepped swiftly outside the gate.

  “Fool, yuh better come on outa there,” warned Buster.

  “I ain’t scaired like yuh,” he taunted. But it was a relief to be outside.

  “Take these,” he called as he started to climb up to the roof.

  “Whut?”

  “Aw, take ’em, fraidy. These li’l ones won’t spur yuh.”

  Buster reached down and cradled the yellow chicks in his short brown fingers.

  Riley leaped up, catching the slanting roof. A line of brown ants hurried nervously down the gray sunheated boards. He hoisted himself carefully, placing his hands and knees so as not to crush the ants. Up on top, he took the peeping chicks and placed them carefully inside his torn shirt. They were soft, like bolls of cotton.

  “Yuh liable to smother ’em, man,” said Buster.

  “Naw, I won’t. See, they ain’t even cryin’ no more.”

  “They ain’t, but they maw sho is. Jus lissen to her.”

  “Don’t pay her no min’. She’s always squawkin’. Jus like Aunt Kate,” he said.

  “Lemme hol’ one of them li’l biddies, hear, Riley?”

  Riley hesitated, then handed Buster a chick.

  “If yuh wasn’t so scaired, yuh could go git yuh some,” he said.

  “Look at him, Riley. He’s scaired without his mama!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t be afraid, li’l feller,” cooed Riley. “We yo friends.”

  “Maybe it’s too hot up here. Maybe we better take ’em down,” said Buster.

  “Saaay! We can teach these li’l son-of-a-guns to fly!”

  “I never seen a li’l chicken fly,” said Buster skeptically.

  “Well, they ’bout the size of a chee-chee bird,” said Riley.

  “But they ain’t got no long wings like a chee-chee bird.”

  “Hecks, thass right,” he said disappointedly. If they wings wuz jus a li’l longer—like the li’l robin’s, he thought.

  “Hey! Look whut mine kin do,” yelled Buster.

  He saw Buster place the chick on the ridge of his leg and the little chick flex its wings as it hopped off to the roof.

  “He wuz tryin’ to fly,” he yelled. “These li’l guys wants to fly and they wings ain’t strong enough yit!”

  “Thass right,” agreed Buster. “He wuz really tryin’ to fly!”

  “I’m gon make ’em fly,” said Riley.

  “How, man?”

  “With a parachute!”

  “Shoots, ain’t no parachute that little.”

  “Sho there is. We kin make one outa a rag and some string. Then these li’l guys kin go sailing down to their ma,” said Riley, making a falling leaf of his hand.

  “Suppose they gits hurt and Aunt Kate tells yo mama?”

  Riley looked toward the house. Aunt Kate was nowhere to be seen. He looked at the chicks.

  “Aw, yuh jus scaired,” he taunted Buster.

  “Naw I ain’t neither. I jus don’t want to see ’em hurt, thass all.”

  “It won’t hurt ’em, man. They’ll like it. All birds likes to fly, man, even chickens. Jus looka yonder!” he broke off, pointing.

  A flock of pigeons circled a distant red brick chimney, dazzling the sunlight with their wings.

  “Ain’t that something, man?”

  “But them’s pigeons, Riley …”

  “That ain’t nothin’,” said Riley, bouncing the chick gently in his palm. “We kin make ’em go sailing down and down and down and down!”

  “But we ain’t got no cloth,” protested Buster.

  Riley bent, taking the cloth where Ole Bill had torn his shirt, pulled it taut and ripped it away. He held the blue piece triumphantly before Buster’s face.

  “Here’s the cloth, right here!”

  Buster squirmed. “But we ain’t got no string.”

  “Oh, I got string,” said Riley. “I got string and ever’thin.”

  He fished a ball of twine out of his pocket and held it lovingly. Yesterday he had watched the twine snap with a kite sailing high above the rooftops, and the kite had gone jerking and swooping crazily out of sight, and he had felt that same strange tightness he knew watching the birds fly south in the fall.

  “Man, looka there …” said Buster, awe in his voice.

  A delicate curtain of flesh covered the chick’s eye, making it look dead. He paused, about to tie a knot. Then the beady black eyes were open again. Sighing, he held up the cloth, seeing the strings stream lazily in the wind.

  “Come on, man. We ready to make these li’l ole guys fly like chee-chee birds.”

  He paused, looking at the circling pigeons.

  “Buster, don’t yuh wish somebody would teach yuh an’ me how to fly?”

  “Well, maybe,” Buster said guardedly, “I guess I would. But we needs two parachutes for these here aviators. How yuh gonna make ’em both fly with jus one?”

  “Yuh jus hold ’em an’ watch ole papa fix it.” Riley grinned.

  As Buster held the chicks, Riley hitched them together with a harness of twine, then tied them to the parachute strings.

  “Now yuh jus watch,” he said. He grasped the cloth in its center and raised it gently, swinging the chicks clear of the roof. They peeped excitedly. Buster grinned.

  “Come on, man.”

  They crawled to the edge and looked down. A hen sang a lazy song. A distant rooster challenged the morning and Ole Bill screamed an answer.

  “Riley …” began Buster.

  “Now whut’s the matter?”

  “Suppose ole Aunt Kate sees us?”

  “Hecks, how come yuh have to start thinkin’ ’bout her? She’s inside talkin’ to her Jesus.”

  “Well—” Buster said.

  They sat on the edge now, their legs dangling. Riley trembled with anticipation.

  “Yuh want to go down an’ bring ’em back?”

  “That rooster’s still down there, man,” said Buster.

  Shaking his head in mock hopelessness, Riley clambered down and entered the yard.

  Ole Bill clucked a warning from a far corner.

  “Les do it like they do in them airplane movies,” yelled Buster.
“Switch on!”

  “Well, switch on then!” Buster yelled.

  “Contact!”

  “Contact! It’s a nonstop flight, man.”

  “Well, let ’em come down!” yelled Riley impatiently.

  Then he was seeing Buster tossing the chicks and parachute into the air, seeing the cloth billow out umbrella-like as the chicks peeped excitedly underneath; seeing it sail slowly down, slowly, like fluff from a cottonwood tree.

  “Git down from there, suh!!!”

  He whirled, his body tense. Aunt Kate was coming across the yard. He was poised, like a needle caught between two magnets.

  “Riley! Catch ’em!”

  He turned, seeing the parachute deflating like a bag of wind and the chicks diving the cloth earthward like a yellow piece of rock. He tried to run to catch the chicks and found himself standing still and hearing Buster and Aunt Kate yelling. Then he was stumbling to where the chicks lay hidden beneath the cloth. Please God, please, he breathed. But when he lifted the chicks, they made no sound and their heads wobbled lifelessly. He dropped slowly to his knees.

  A shadow fell across the earth and grew. Looking around, he saw two huge black bunion-shaped shoes. It was Aunt Kate, wheezing noisily.

  “Ah tole yuh, suh! Ah knowed yuh’d be into trouble ’fore the day was done! Whut kina devilment yuh up to now?”

  He swallowed, his mouth dry.

  “Yuh heah me talkin’ to yuh, boy!”

  “We wuz jus playin’.”

  “Playin’ whut? Whut yuh doin’ in there?”

  “We … we wuz playin flyin’ …”

  “Flyin’ the dickens!” she yelled suspiciously. “Lemme see under that there rag!”

  “It’s jus a piece a rag.”

  “Lemme see!”

  He lifted the cloth. The chicks were heavy as lead. He closed his eyes.

  “Ah knowed it! Yuh been killin’ off yo ma’s chickens!” she shouted. “An’ Ahm gon tell her, sho as mah name’s Kate.”

  He stared at her mutely.

  If only he hadn’t looked when she called, he might have caught the li’l chicks.

  Suddenly the words rushed out, scalding: “I hate yuh,” he screamed. “I wish yuh had died back in slavery times …”

  Her face shrank, turning a dirty gray. She was proud of being old. He felt a cold blast of fear.

  “The Lawd’s gonna punish yuh in hellfire for that,” she said brokenly. “Someday yuh remember them words an’ moan an’ cry.”

  There, she’d done put a curse on him. He felt pebbles cutting into his knees as he watched her turn and go. She padded painfully away, her head shaking indignantly, her white apron stiff over her wide, gingham-covered hips.

  “These li’l nineteen hundred young’uns is jus full of the devil, that whut they is,” she muttered. “Jus full of the devil.”

  For a long time he stared vacantly at the chicks lying upon the earth strewn with the chalk-green droppings of the fowls. The old hen circled cautiously before him, pleading noisily for her children. Fighting a sense of loathing, he lifted the chicks, removed the strings, and laid them down again …

  For a little while they were flying …

  Buster looked sorrowfully through the fence. “I’m sorry, Riley,” he said.

  Riley did not answer. Suddenly aware of the foul odor of chicken dung, he stood, feeling the waxy smear upon his exposed flesh as he absently wiped his fingers.

  If I jus hadn’t looked at her, he thought. His eyes swam. And so great was his anguish he did not hear the swift rush of feathers or see the brilliant flash of outspread wings as Ole Bill charged. The blow staggered him, and looking down, he saw with tear-filled eyes the bright red stream against the brown where the spur had torn his leg.

  “We almost had ’em flyin’,” said Riley. “We almost …”

  A Coupla Scalped Indians

  From New World Writing, 1956

  They had a small, loud-playing band and as we moved through the trees I could hear the notes of the horns bursting like bright metallic bubbles against the sky. It was a faraway and sparklike sound, shooting through the late afternoon quiet of the hill; very clear now and definitely music, band music. I was relieved. I had been hearing it for several minutes as we moved through the woods, but the pain down there had made all my senses so deceptively sharp that I had decided that the sound was simply a musical ringing in my ears. But now I was doubly sure, for Buster stopped and looked at me, squinching up his eyes with his head cocked to one side. He was wearing a blue cloth headband with a turkey feather stuck over his ear, and I could see it flutter in the breeze.

  “You hear what I hear, man?” he said.

  “I been hearing it,” I said.

  “Damn! We better haul it outa these woods so we can see something. Why didn’t you say something to a man?”

  We moved again, hurrying along until suddenly we were out of the woods, standing at a point of the hill where the path dropped down to the town, our eyes searching. It was close to sundown and below me I could see the red clay of the path cutting through the woods and moving past a white lightning-blasted tree to join the river road, and the narrow road shifting past Aunt Mackie’s old shack, and on, beyond the road and the shack, I could see the dull mysterious movement of the river. The horns were blasting brighter now, though still far away, sounding like somebody flipping bright handfuls of new small change against the sky. I listened and followed the river swiftly with my eyes as it wound through the trees and on past the buildings and houses of the town—until there, there at the farther edge of the town, past the tall smokestack and the great silver sphere of the gas storage tower, floated the tent, spread white and cloudlike with its bright ropes of fluttering flags.

  That’s when we started running. It was a dogtrotting Indian run, because we were both wearing packs and were tired from the tests we had been taking in the woods and in Indian Lake. But now the bright blare of the horns made us forget our tiredness and pain and we bounded down the path like young goats in the twilight; our army-surplus mess kits and canteens rattling against us.

  “We late, man,” Buster said. “I told you we was gon fool around and be late. But naw, you had to cook that damn sage hen with mud on him just like it says in the book. We coulda barbecued a damn elephant while we was waiting for a tough sucker like that to get done.…”

  His voice grumbled on like a trombone with a big, fat pot-shaped mute stuck in it and I ran on without answering. We had tried to take the cooking test by using a sage hen instead of a chicken because Buster said Indians didn’t eat chicken. So we’d taken time to flush a sage hen and kill him with a slingshot. Besides, he was the one who insisted that we try the running endurance test, the swimming test, and the cooking test all in one day. Sure it had taken time. I knew it would take time, especially with our having no scoutmaster. We didn’t even have a troop, only the Boy Scout’s Handbook that Buster had found, and—as we’d figured—our hardest problem had been working out the tests for ourselves. He had no right to argue anyway, since he’d beaten me in all the tests—although I’d passed them too. And he was the one who insisted that we start taking them today, even though we were both still sore and wearing our bandages, and I was still carrying some of the catgut stitches around in me. I had wanted to wait a few days until I was healed, but Mister Know-it-all Buster challenged me by saying that a real stud Indian could take the tests even right after the doctor had just finished sewing on him. So, since we were more interested in being Indian scouts than simply Boy Scouts, here I was running toward the spring carnival instead of being already there. I wondered how Buster knew so much about what an Indian would do, anyway. We certainly hadn’t read anything about what the doctor had done to us. He’d probably made it up, and I had let him urge me into going to the woods even though I had to slip out of the house. The doctor had told Miss Janey (she’s the lady who takes care of me) to keep me quiet for a few days and she dead-aimed to do it. You would’ve thought from th
e way she carried on that she was the one who had the operation—only that’s one kind of operation no woman ever gets to brag about.

  Anyway, Buster and me had been in the woods and now we were plunging down the hill through the fast-falling dark to the carnival. I had begun to throb and the bandage was chafing, but as we rounded a curve I could see the tent and the flares and the gathering crowd. There was a breeze coming up the hill against us now and I could almost smell that cotton candy, the hamburgers, and the kerosene smell of the flares. We stopped to rest and Buster stood very straight and pointed down below, making a big sweep with his arm like an Indian chief in the movies when he’s up on a hill telling his braves and the Great Spirit that he’s getting ready to attack a wagon train.

  “Heap big … teepee … down yonder,” he said in Indian talk. “Smoke signal say … Blackfeet … make … heap much … stink, buck-dancing in tennis shoes!”

  “Ugh,” I said, bowing my suddenly war-bonneted head. “Ugh!”

  Buster swept his arm from east to west, his face impassive. “Smoke medicine say … heap … big stink! Hot toe jam!” He struck his palm with his fist, and I looked at his puffed-out cheeks and giggled.

  “Smoke medicine say you tell heap big lie,” I said. “Let’s get on down there.”

  We ran past some trees, Buster’s canteen jangling. Around us it was quiet except for the roosting birds.

  “Man,” I said, “you making as much noise as a team of mules in full harness. Don’t no Indian scout make all that racket when he runs.”

  “No scout-um now,” he said. “Me go make heap much pow-wow at stinky-dog carnival!”

  “Yeah, but you’ll get yourself scalped, making all that noise in the woods,” I said. “Those other Indians don’t give a damn ’bout no carnival—what does a carnival mean to them? They’ll scalp the hell outa you!”

  “Scalp?” he said, talking colored now. “Hell, man—that damn doctor scalped me last week. Damn near took my whole head off!”

  I almost fell with laughing. “Have mercy, Lord,” I laughed. “We’re just a couple poor scalped Indians!”