Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Deacon,” he whispered, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but it seems to have bounced these folks out of bed….”

  And failing to see McMillen among the tense staring faces before him he decided abruptly to leave—only to be stayed by the touch of Wilhite’s hand.

  “A.Z.,” Wilhite said, “do you smell what I smell?”

  And with a deep breath he accepted the fact that the odor which had teased him from the moment he entered the strange building was the once all-too-familiar bouquet of fine bourbon whiskey.

  And that, he thought as he recalled the man on the sidewalk and nodded agreement, is all the more reason for our getting out of here….

  But suddenly, at a shout from within the room to the right the crowd surged against him, and he saw with a feeling of fatality the figure of a white man who loomed in the glaring light of the doorway.

  Of slender build, the man wore a gray straw hat of the narrow, “stingy-brim” type favored by certain young men of his congregation, and seeing the metal badge on the man’s lapel catch the light he thought, a detective. And now, slamming the door shut behind him, the white man took an abrupt step forward, shouting, “Didn’t I tell you people to clear this hall! That was over fifteen minutes ago, and here I come back to find you still hanging around! So this time I mean it—MOVE! Get back to your rooms or you’re all under arrest….”

  “Under arrest for WHAT!” a shrill voice screamed from above, and whirling toward the stairs he saw a tiny brown-skinned woman in an untidy auburn wig whose body trembled violently as she glared at the detective out of large and extremely crossed eyes.

  “So go ahead,” the little woman added hysterically, “arrest us! Everybody knows you’re just burning to get brutal! So what are you waiting for? You have your blackjack and gun, so go ahead and start getting your kicks! But before you start whipping heads you’d better remember that we’re citizens! You hear me? What’s more, this is our home! We pay our rent and taxes from here! This is part of our community, and whether you like it or not we have the right to know what you people are doing to our neighbors in there!”

  “Look, lady,” the detective man said, “if you don’t want the law on your premises all you have to do is to keep them orderly! You people give us more than enough to do as it is. And as I told you before, there’s a criminal investigation in progress and I have my orders. So that’s it! I’m ordering all of you to get on back to your rooms and clear this hall!”

  So that’s it, he thought as he whispered to Wilhite, “Move out, Deacon, this is no place for us….”

  But too late. For as he started away he saw the white man turn in their direction.

  “Hold it, big fellow,” the detective said, “and that goes for that fellow behind you. Nobody leaves this building without the chief’s permission.”

  Sighing inwardly, he halted. And as Wilhite stepped beside him, he saw people staring in their direction with looks of surprise.

  “Hey!” a hostile voice boomed from the rear of the crowd. “Where the hell did those two come from?”

  And as he moved between two of the tenants near the entrance of the brightly lit room he saw the detective’s expression become one of surprise.

  “Saay,” the detective said, “where did you come from? I didn’t see you in here before….”

  “That’s right, officer,” Hickman said, “we only arrived here only a second ago….”

  “Arrived from where?”

  “From the Hotel Longview.”

  With a sudden jerk of his head, the white man stared.

  “The Longview, you say? What are you, one of the doormen?”

  “Doormen!” the little wigged woman screamed. “Doormen!—Did you people hear that? The instant this stupid white man lays eyes on a big, fine, professional-looking black man he low-rates him!”

  Now there’s a woman with absolutely no sense of proportion, he thought as he said, “No, sir, I’m not a doorman; I just happen to be stopping there as a guest….”

  “You, a guest at the Longview? When did they start accepting—Okay, forget it! Just tell me what you’re doing here at this time of night.”

  “We came here to deliver an important message to a man who’s supposed to live here.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Mister Aubrey McMillen,” he said, stressing the ‘Mister’ as he watched the white man’s reaction.

  “Ah-ha!” the detective said with a gleam of triumph in his eyes. “I knew damn well that McMillen would be the connection! So you’re just an innocent delivery boy who was told to give him a message and return with his answer in a big paper sack—is that it?”

  Puzzled, Hickman studied the detective’s face.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, “what’s this about a paper sack?”

  “Oh, you get what I mean. Because you really came here on your own and expected to leave with McMillen’s reply concealed in a bottle!”

  A bottle, Hickman thought, and suddenly the heavy fumes of bourbon took on a vague but threatening significance. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” he said.

  “Oh, I think you do. And you might as well know that we’re on to McMillen’s little game. You’re probably one of his regular customers, so don’t waste my time pretending otherwise.”

  “Customers? Customers for what?”

  Studying his face with a look of contempt, the detective cursed under his breath.

  “Now look, man,” he said with a sudden change to an accent which was flat and insinuating, “don’t try to snow me, you dig? Because, like, I’ve been around—you dig?—so I’m hip to the jive you’re putting down….”

  “Jive,” he said, “What ‘jive’?”

  “The jive you black studs try to put down every time you get caught in the act! But with me it won’t work—you dig?”

  And suddenly realizing that a Northern white man was relieving himself of a tin-eared imitation of Negro speech it was as though he had been slapped back to the days of Stepin Fetchit, Jolson, and Cantor and rebounded to find the detective still crouched in the barefaced posture from which he had uttered charges that were intended to be personally intimidating and racially demeaning.

  And it was working. For as he fought to control his own reaction the hall was resounding with the grumbling of tenants who stared at the white man with undisguised expressions of disgust that were usually directed at their own kind who degraded themselves in public.

  A group of women on the stairs appeared physically sickened, and nearby the flared African nostrils of a glaring, light-skinned man were twitching as though he had been hit with the neglected contents of an ancient, four-seated outhouse.

  And now, returning the detective’s stare as through a wall of thick glass, he thought, This poor man thinks his being born white brings with it the power of turning black in an instant—just look at that swagger!—and he’s actually convinced that using a Southern accent he can disarm me of all the skills in lies and deception that folks like him have forced me to develop in just staying alive in this messed-up country! So forget it, Hickman, because if you take him on these folks who live here will suffer. He has that badge and it’s an old, old pattern, even though he’s so immature in dealing with human beings, black or white, that he thinks he can needle someone of your experience into playing his misguided game! Good Lord! And only a little while ago you thought your signifying riff on Stackalee and the Sheriff was nothing more than comic fantasy!

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Officer,” he said, masking his outrage with ironic politeness, “but while I’m doing my best to understand and cooperate, you seem to have something on your mind that I know nothing at all about. Nobody told us that Mr. McMillen was in business, so if you’d take a second and explain….”

  “Oh, man, come on!” the detective said with a wave of his hand, “I dig the deal, so quit stalling! What do you take me for? He’s into bootlegging and you damn well know it!”

&n
bsp; “Boot-legging,” the little woman screamed from the stairs, “BOOTLEGGING! Do you people see what we colored folks are up against? This is what happens when the white folks send one of these young whippersnapper cops into our community! Never even seen Mister McMillen before and already he’s done reinvented the poor man and set him up as a bootlegger! I’m telling you, this white man must be out of his mammy-grabbing mind! Here we are, living in a building that’s so respectable that some of its dicty tenants even object when a down-home person like me wants to cook herself some collard greens! That’s right, and you all know who I mean! And yet this ignorant white man is standing there signifying that folks like that would live in a bootleg joint!”

  “If you have any doubts,” the detective said in his natural voice, “just take a deep breath!”

  “But officer,” Hickman said, “my friend and I know nothing about McMillen’s affairs, and whatever they are they had nothing to do with our coming here. That’s the truth. We came here to deliver a deathbed message, and if it will help you understand, my name is Hickman, Reverend Hickman, and we came here …”

  “No, Mister!” the little woman called from the stairs. “Hold it while I get something urgent off my chest!”

  Turning from the detective, Hickman paused with a sudden feeling of disorientation as now he found himself the object of the little woman’s cross-focusing eyes.

  “Very well, ma’am,” he said, “please go ahead.”

  “Thank you, darlin’,” the little woman said with a toss of her wildly wigged head, “it’s very considerate of you. And please understand that I don’t mean to be impolite, not when I can tell from just looking that you two are real gentlemen. But like I was saying, there’s something that I have got to get off my chest! And I mean right here and now—understand? This thing has been building and building….”

  “All right, ma’am, go on….”

  “Thank you, darlin’, but before I do let me give you some good advice: Don’t you go begging his pardon! Not his or any other white man’s, you hear? Don’t do it! Because he’s the one who’s trying to convince you strangers that Mister McMillen is a bootlegger! Which believe-you-me is a mush-mouth lie! Because as everybody knows Mister McMillen is a good, respectable, responsible, hardworking, God-fearing super! And I mean one who’s known throughout the neighborhood for going out of his way to be helpful! And especially to us ladies.”

  “And if the stone truth was ever told,” a man’s voice boomed from the back of the hall, “she’s telling it!”

  “Why of course I am,” the little woman said with an indignant frown, “but now, just because this rookie policeman has probably heard that the poor man takes him a drink every once in a while—which is true, darlin’, but only when he’s down in the dumps and his spirits need lifting—understand? So right away, and with no more evidence than a sniff from that crooked nose of his, this rookie cop has set Mister McMillen up in the bootlegging business!”

  “What she means, my friends,” the voice roared from the rear of the crowd, “is that through his maleficent act of gross hearsay and unfounded allegation this rookie detective has up and made the innocent man ill-legitimate!”

  “That’s correct,” the woman snapped with an angry toss of her head, “he’s up and made Mister McMillen a CRIMINAL! Why, it’s enough to turn a person’s stomach! Understand what I mean?”

  Fixed by the little woman’s cross-focusing gaze, Hickman nodded and braced himself for the detective’s angry reaction.

  With all the folks in this crowd, he thought, only a little Tack Annie of a woman like this would try getting away with defying a white policeman. But before the detective could respond the man’s voice boomed again from the crowd.

  “Now you’re catching on to him, Maud,” the voice called, “but instead of getting upset over something that ain’t worth doodly-squat let me give you some advice—Hey! Y’all watch out the way and let somebody up there who has something to say….”

  And through the stir of crowd Hickman caught sight of a fat black knot that had been tied in the frayed top of a woman’s stocking to form a greasy do-rag, and beneath which, moving at a ponderous pace, a short, heavy-set man emerged from the shadows. And now as the man advanced, he saw that he was dark brown of complexion and that his improvised stocking cap fitted his huge head so tightly that the flesh above his popped, frog-like eyes was puckered like the skin of a sunbaked raisin.

  “Now there, A.Z.,” Wilhite whispered, “is an old billiards drinker if ever I saw one.”

  Recalling the old joke about a country boy who had pretended to be sophisticated by swaggering up to the bar of a big city pool and billiards parlor and ordering a glass of billiards, Hickman visualized the foamy-headed drink which the bartender had improvised for the imposter and silently shook his head. And appalled by the idea of such a character reappearing in such an exasperating situation as that in which they were now trapped, he watched the brown artificial fur of the man’s bathrobe catch the light as he came aggressively forward, elbowing and bellying tenants out of his way. Then, reaching a spot directly behind the jam of tenants facing Wilhite and himself, the man paused, grasping a half-eaten drumstick in one fist and a can of beer in the other.

  “Naw, Maud,” the man called over his shoulder as he studied the startled white man’s face with the jaded expression of a world-weary judge weighing a plea of innocence from a notorious, habitual criminal, “it ain’t worth the sweat. Which you’ll see once I explain what’s behind this mess. Because then you’ll realize that all this little cop is doing is looking for him a little … easy …”

  Seeing the spokesman pause and thrust the fist-held drumstick high above his head, Hickman nudged Wilhite as the word “GRAFT!” resounded with an explosion of breath that left the spokesman’s barrel-like body bouncing up and down as though set in motion by the sheer weight of his pronouncement.

  “And that’s all,” the spokesman said with a lip-protruding grimace of absolute conviction, “the hell … it is!”

  And here, Hickman thought, after convincing myself that such characters disappeared with the player piano, I find one alive and bassing in Washington! As now, relieving himself of a resonant belch, the spokesman took a quick sip of beer and glared at the detective.

  “So now, ladies and gentlemen, here way early … in the mawning,” the spokesman continued, “… he’s got the un-miti-gated gall to try to hit a bunch of sophisticated, Dee-Cee folks like us with some ignunt peckerwood mystification—yeah! And doing it in the name of his undemocratic notion … of law and order!”

  Hearing the hallway pop and sputter with an angry firecracker-flurry of agreement, Hickman stepped aside as the detective reddened and stabbed a finger at his accuser.

  “Now you listen to me, Jack,” he shouted, “there’ll be no more of that! You hear?”

  “You damn right, Jack,” the pop-eyed man boomed with a scornful wave of his drumstick, “I hear you, but I also know my rights under the Constitution! Therefore before this court of my peers and these two brothers from down home I’m holding that Miss Maud up there has got no business letting herself get all worked up just because you want to put down your simple-minded hype!”

  “… What? What was that,” the little woman called with a hand cupped to her wig-covered ear. “What?”

  “… Because all we have here,” the fat man went on, “is a little small-time hustling!”

  “Lonnie!” the woman called from the stairs, “LONNIE!”

  “That’s right, my clerical friend,” the pop-eyed man said with a patronizing nod to Wilhite, “to you home-boys it might look complicated, but when you sift this crap down to the nitty-gritty all you get is a simple case—as the hipsters on the block would say—of the ‘Man’ trying to twist him a ‘Boot’ for some loot!”

  “… All right, Jack,” the detective interrupted, “you’re asking for it, what’s your name?”

  “… And I’m one man who’s willing and able to lay
it out for you: The first thing he does in putting down this type of hype is to find him a tight situation. By which I mean some kind of double bind which he can go about naming anything he damn pleases—like larceny, loitering, spitting on the public sidewalk, littering, playing a radio with the volume high, or scratching his head and his behind at one and the same damn time—any damn thing you damn please.

  “Next: He finds himself a ‘Boot’ who’s in some kind of uptight predicament—which, as we all know, is liable to be true of any Boot at any time. Because after the way the white establishment have rigged the system it’s more normal for a Boot to be in trouble than not. And being booted before he’s out of diapers the Boot also knows that they rigged it that way so he’ll always be up to his butt in some kind of trouble. Therefore, all the Man—of which you have a prime example caught in the act—has to do is find him a tight situation and a Boot to fit it. Then he goes about terrorizing his chump until he’s willing to own up to any crime, no matter how trumped up and unreasonable, that he wants him to admit committing! And it don’t matter if it’s something as humanly impossible as peeping through a bedroom window when he’s standing ten … flat-footed stories … below it on a stinking sidewalk! Then the next thing he does is to throw the Boot smack-dab in the middle of that kind of phony situation and force him to confess to being guilty—which, unfortunately—and most unfortunately, I must add—any unhipped Boot is more liable to do than not!

  “And that, my friend,” he said with a nod to Hickman, “is because when you get right down to it, your average Boot figures he’s got to be guilty of something. Because otherwise he has no explanation—neither philosophical, political, legal—Yeah! That’s right—or theological as to why his life in a country as prosperous as this could be as messed up as it usually is! Therefore, it makes it easy for the Man to find himself an iffy situation and force some innocent Boot to match up with it. And then, ladies and gentlemen, watch out! Because the Man has got it made!”