Flying Home and Other Stories

by Ralph Ellison

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

  “What you looking at, Daddy?” he said.

  “I guess Daddy was just looking out on the world.”

  Then he asked if he could go out and play with his ball, and since I would soon have to go down myself to water the lawn, I told him it would be all right. But he couldn’t find the ball; I would have to find it for him.

  “All right now,” I told him. “You stay in the back out of everybody’s way, and you mustn’t ask anyone a lot of questions.”

  I always warned about the questions, even though it did little good. He ran down the stairs, and soon I could hear the bump bump bump of his ball bouncing against the garage doors underneath. But since it didn’t make a loud noise, I didn’t ask him to stop.

  I picked up the book to read again, and must have fallen asleep immediately, for when I came to it was almost time to go water the lawn. When I got downstairs the boy was not there. I called, but no answer. Then I went out into the alley in back of the garages to see if he was playing there. There were three older white boys sitting talking on a pile of old packing cases. They looked uneasy when I came up. I asked if they had seen a little Negro boy, but they said they hadn’t. Then I went farther down the alley behind the grocery store where the trucks drove up, and asked one of the fellows working there if he had seen my boy. He said he had been working on the platform all afternoon and that he was sure the boy had not been there. As I started away, the four o’clock whistle blew and I had to go water the lawn. I wondered where the boy could have gone. As I came back up the alley I was becoming alarmed. Then it occurred to me that he might have gone out in front in spite of my warning not to. Of course, that was where he would go, out in front to sit on the grass. I laughed at myself for becoming alarmed and decided not to punish him, even though Berry had given instructions that he was not to be seen out in the front without me. A boy that size will make you do that.

  As I came around the building past the tall new evergreens, I could hear the boy crying in just that note no other child has, and when I came completely around I found him standing looking up into a window with tears on his face.

  “What is it, son?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “My ball, my ball, Daddy. My ball,” he cried, looking up at the window.

  “Yes, son. But what about the ball?”

  “He threw it up in the window.”

  “Who did? Who threw it, son? Stop crying and tell Daddy about it.”

  He made an effort to stop, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand.

  “A big white boy asked me to throw him my ball an’, an’ he took it and threw it up in that window and ran,” he said, pointing.

  I looked up just as Berry appeared at the window. The ball had gone into his private office.

  “John, is that your boy?” he snapped.

  He was red in the face.

  “Yessir, but—”

  “Well, he’s taken his damned ball and ruined one of my plants.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You know he’s got no business around here in front, don’t you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, if I ever see him around here again, you’re going to find yourself behind the black ball. Now get him on round to the back and then come up here and clean up this mess he’s made.”

  I gave him one long hard look and then felt for the boy’s hand to take him back to the quarters. I had a hard time seeing as we walked back, and scratched myself by stumbling into the evergreens as we went around the building.

  The boy was not crying now, and when I looked down at him, the pain in my hand caused me to notice that it was bleeding. When we got upstairs, I sat the boy in a chair and went looking for iodine to doctor my hand.

  “If anyone should ask me, young man, I’d say your face needed a good washing.”

  He didn’t answer then, but when I came out of the bathroom, he seemed more inclined to talk.

  “Daddy, what did that man mean?”

  “Mean how, son?”

  “About a black ball. You know, Daddy.”

  “Oh—that.”

  “You know, Daddy. What’d he mean?”

  “He meant, son, that if your ball landed in his office again, Daddy would go after it behind the old black ball.”

  “Oh,” he said, very thoughtful again. Then, after a while he told me: “Daddy, that white man can’t see very good, can he, Daddy?”

  “Why do you say that, son?”

  “Daddy,” he said impatiently. “Anybody can see my ball is white.”

  For the second time that day I looked at him a long time.

  “Yes, son,” I said. “Your ball is white.” Mostly white, anyway, I thought.

  “Will I play with the black ball, Daddy?”

  “In time, son,” I said. “In time.”

  He had already played with the ball; that he would discover later. He was learning the rules of the game already, but he didn’t know it. Yes, he would play with the ball. Indeed, poor little rascal, he would play until he grew sick of playing. My, yes, the old ball game. But I’d begin telling him the rules later.

  My hand was still burning from the scratch as I dragged the hose out to water the lawn, and looking down at the iodine stain, I thought of the fellows fried hands, and felt in my pocket to make sure I still had the card he had given me. Maybe there was a color other than white on the old ball.

  King of the Bingo Game

  From Tomorrow, November 1944

  The woman in front of him was eating roasted peanuts that smelled so good that he could barely contain his hunger. He could not even sleep and wished they’d hurry and begin the bingo game. There, on his right, two fellows were drinking wine out of a bottle wrapped in a paper bag, and he could hear soft gurgling in the dark. His stomach gave a low, gnawing growl. If this was down South, he thought, all I’d have to do is lean over and say, “Lady, gimme a few of those peanuts, please, ma’m,” and she’d pass me the bag and never think nothing of it. Or he could ask the fellows for a drink in the same way. Folks down South stuck together that way; they didn’t even have to know you. But up here it was different. Ask somebody for something, and they’d think you were crazy. Well, I ain’t crazy. I’m just broke, ’cause I got no birth certificate to get a job, and Laura ’bout to die ’cause we got no money for a doctor. But I ain’t crazy. And yet a pinpoint of doubt was focused in his mind as he glanced toward the screen and saw the hero stealthily entering a dark room and sending the beam of a flashlight along a wall of bookcases. This is where he finds the trapdoor, he remembered. The man would pass abruptly through the wall and find the girl tied to a bed, her legs and arms spread wide, and her clothing torn to rags. He laughed softly to himself. He had seen the picture three times, and this was one of the best scenes.

  On his right the fellow whispered wide-eyed to his companion, “Man, look a-yonder!”

  “Damn!”

  “Wouldn’t I like to have her tied up like that … ”

  “Hey! That fool’s letting her loose!”

  “Aw, man, he loves her.”

  “Love or no love!”

  The man moved impatiently beside him, and he tried to involve himself in the scene. But Laura was on his mind. Tiring quickly of watching the picture, he looked back to where the white beam filtered from the projection room above the balcony. It started small and grew large, specks of dust dancing in its whiteness as it reached the screen. It was strange how the beam always landed right on the screen and didn’t mess up and fall somewhere else. But they had it all fixed. Everything was fixed. Now suppose when they showed that girl with her dress torn the girl started taking off the rest of her clothes, and when the guy came in he didn’t untie her but kept her there and went to taking off his own clothes? That would be something to see. If a picture got out of hand like that those guys up there would go nuts. Yeah, and there’d be so many folks in here you couldn’t find a seat
for nine months! A strange sensation played over his skin. He shuddered. Yesterday he’d seen a bedbug on a woman’s neck as they walked out into the bright street. But exploring his thigh through a hole in his pocket he found only goose pimples and old scars.

  The bottle gurgled again. He closed his eyes. Now a dreamy music was accompanying the film and train whistles were sounding in the distance, and he was a boy again walking along a railroad trestle down South, and seeing the train coming, and running back as fast as he could go, and hearing the whistle blowing, and getting off the trestle to solid ground just in time, with the earth trembling beneath his feet, and feeling relieved as he ran down the cinder-strewn embankment onto the highway, and looking back and seeing with terror that the train had left the track and was following him right down the middle of the street, and all the white people laughing as he ran screaming …

  “Wake up there, buddy! What the hell do you mean hollering like that? Can’t you see we trying to enjoy this here picture?”

  He stared at the man with gratitude.

  “I’m sorry, old man,” he said. “I musta been dreaming.”

  “Well, here, have a drink. And don’t be making no noise like that, damn!”

  His hands trembled as he tilted his head. It was not wine but whiskey. Cold rye whiskey. He took a deep swoller, decided it was better not to take another, and handed the bottle back to its owner.

  “Thanks, old man,” he said.

  Now he felt the cold whiskey breaking a warm path straight through the middle of him, growing hotter and sharper as it moved. He had not eaten all day, and it made him light-headed. The smell of the peanuts stabbed him like a knife, and he got up and found a seat in the middle aisle. But no sooner did he sit than he saw a row of intense-faced young girls, and got up again, thinking. You chicks musta been Lindy-hopping somewhere. He found a seat several rows ahead as the lights came on, and he saw the screen disappear behind a heavy red-and-gold curtain; then the curtain rising, and the man with the microphone and a uniformed attendant coming on the stage.

  He felt for his bingo cards, smiling. The guy at the door wouldn’t like it if he knew about his having five cards. Well, not everyone played the bingo game; and even with five cards he didn’t have much of a chance. For Laura, though, he had to have faith. He studied the cards, each with its different numerals, punching the free center hole in each and spreading them neatly across his lap; and when the lights faded, he sat slouched in his seat so that he could look from his cards to the bingo wheel with but a quick shifting of his eyes.

  Ahead, at the end of the darkness, the man with the microphone was pressing a button attached to a long cord and spinning the bingo wheel and calling out the number each time the wheel came to rest. And each time the voice rang out, his finger raced over the cards for the number. With five cards he had to move fast. He became nervous; there were too many cards, and the man went too fast with his grating voice. Perhaps he should just select one and throw the others away. But he was afraid. He became warm. Wonder how much Laura’s doctor would cost? Damn that, watch the cards! And with despair he heard the man call three in a row which he missed on all five cards. This way he’d never win …

  When he saw the row of holes punched across the third card, he sat paralyzed and heard the man call three more numbers before he stumbled forward, screaming, “Bingo! Bingo!”

  “Let that fool up there,” someone called.

  “Get up there, man!”

  He stumbled down the aisle and up the steps to the stage into a light so sharp and bright that for a moment it blinded him, and he felt that he had moved into the spell of some strange, mysterious power. Yet it was as familiar as the sun, and he knew it was the perfectly familiar bingo.

  The man with the microphone was saying something to the audience as he held out his card. A cold light flashed from the man’s finger as the card left his hand. His knees trembled. The man stepped closer, checking the card against the numbers chalked on the board. Suppose he had made a mistake? The pomade on the man’s hair made him feel faint, and he backed away. But the man was checking the card over the microphone now, and he had to stay. He stood tense, listening.

  “Under the O, forty-four,” the man chanted. “Under the I, seven. Under the G, three. Under the B, ninety-six. Under the N, thirteen!”

  His breath came easier as the man smiled at the audience.

  “Yessir, ladies and gentlemen, he’s one of the chosen people!”

  The audience rippled with laughter and applause.

  “Step right up to the front of the stage.”

  He moved slowly forward, wishing that the light was not so bright.

  “To win tonight’s jackpot of $36.90 the wheel must stop between the double zero, understand?”

  He nodded, knowing the ritual from the many days and nights he had watched the winners march across the stage to press the button that controlled the spinning wheel and receive the prizes. And now he followed the instructions as though he’d crossed the slippery stage a million prize-winning times.

  The man was making some kind of a joke, and he nodded vacantly. So tense had he become that he felt a sudden desire to cry, and shook it away. He felt vaguely that his whole life was determined by the bingo wheel; not only that which would happen now that he was at last before it, but all that had gone before, since his birth and his mother’s birth and the birth of his father. It had always been there, even though he had not been aware of it, handing out the unlucky cards and numbers of his days. The feeling persisted, and he started quickly away. I better get down from here before I make a fool of myself, he thought.

  “Here, boy,” the man called. “You haven’t started yet.”

  Someone laughed as he went hesitantly back.

  “Are you all reet?”

  He grinned at the man’s jive talk, but no words would come, and he knew it was not a convincing grin. For suddenly he knew that he stood on the slippery brink of some terrible embarrassment.

  “Where are you from, boy?” the man asked.

  “Down South.”

  “He’s from down South, ladies and gentlemen,” the man said. “Where from? Speak right into the mike.”

  “Rocky Mont,” he said. “Rock’ Mont, North Car’lina.”

  “So you decided to come down off that mountain to the U.S.,” the man laughed. He felt that the man was making a fool of him, but then something cold was placed in his hand, and the lights were no longer behind him.

  Standing before the wheel he felt alone, but that was somehow right, and he remembered his plan. He would give the wheel a short quick twirl. Just a touch of the button. He had watched it many times, and always it came close to double zero when it was short and quick. He steeled himself; the fear had left, and he felt a profound sense of promise, as though he were about to be repaid for all the things he’d suffered all his life. Trembling, he pressed the button. There was a whirl of lights, and in a second he realized with finality that though he wanted to, he could not stop. It was as though he held a high-powered line in his naked hand. His nerves tightened. As the wheel increased its speed it seemed to draw him more and more into his power, as though it held his fate; and with it came a deep need to submit, to whirl, to lose himself in its swirl of color. He could not stop it now, he knew. So let it be.

  The button rested snugly in his palm where the man had placed it. And now he became aware of the man beside him, advising him through the microphone while, behind, the shadowy audience hummed with noisy voices. He shifted his feet. There was still that feeling of helplessness within him, making part of him desire to turn back, even now that the jackpot was right in his hand. He squeezed the button until his fist ached. Then, like the sudden shriek of a subway whistle, a doubt tore through his head. Suppose he did not spin the wheel long enough? What could he do, and how could he tell? And then he knew, even as he wondered, that as long as he pressed the button, he could control the jackpot. He and only he could determine whether or not it wa
s to be his. Not even the man with the microphone could do anything about it now. He felt drunk. Then, as though he had come down from a high hill into a valley of people, he heard the audience yelling.

  “Come down from there, you jerk!”

  “Let somebody else have a chance … ”

  “Ole Jack thinks he done found the end of the rainbow … ”

  The last voice was not unfriendly, and he turned and smiled dreamily into the yelling mouths. Then he turned his back squarely on them.

  “Don’t take too long, boy,” a voice said.

  He nodded. They were yelling behind him. Those folks did not understand what had happened to him. They had been playing the bingo game day in and night out for years, trying to win rent money or hamburger change. But not one of those wise guys had discovered this wonderful thing. He watched the wheel whirling past the numbers and experienced a burst of exaltation: This is God! This is the really truly God! He said it aloud: “This is God!”

  He said it with such absolute conviction that he feared he would fall fainting into the footlights. But the crowd yelled so loud that they could not hear. Those fools, he thought. I’m here trying to tell them the most wonderful secret in the world, and they’re yelling like they gone crazy. A hand fell upon his shoulder.

  “You’ll have to make a choice now, boy. You’ve taken too long.”

  He brushed the hand violently away.

  “Leave me alone, man. I know what I’m doing!”

  The man looked surprised and held on to the microphone for support. And because he did not wish to hurt the man’s feelings he smiled, realizing with a sudden pang that there was no way of explaining to the man just why he had to stand there pressing the button forever.

  “Come here,” he called tiredly.

  The man approached, rolling the heavy microphone across the stage.

  “Anybody can play this bingo game, right?” he said.

  “Sure, but … ”

  He smiled, feeling inclined to be patient with this slick-looking white man with his blue sport shirt and his sharp gabardine suit.