Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “I know,” Hickman said, “it’s sad, but life is change, so get back to the boy and the movie men. What happened after Prophet preached?”

  “Here’s how it went: The next day he’s out early, shooting up the streets and talking more crap than the radio—Yao!—and stacking the deck like a riverboat gambler. And with folks even more excited by the news of his preaching they can’t wait to see samples of the shots he’d been shooting. So he takes some of the shots and joins them together then makes a deal with the Sunset’s manager to show them on the screen between the first show and the second. Then he spreads the word that for the price of the regular admission anyone can see firsthand how they’d look in the movie he’s planning.

  “Hickman, Prophet and his boys were working like beavers and the State Negroes were stumbling over one another to be with them. That afternoon I get to the Sunset shortly after the main movie had started but had a hell of a time finding a seat. So I’m sitting there reading the captions as I try to catch up with the action of a Western in which the hero and his sidekick shoot it out with about sixteen outlaws in a dispute over range land and water. Now it happened that the actor playing the hero was Jack Hoxie, and the one playing his sidekick was a fellow named Morman Jackson—which is important. Because Jackson was a State Negro out of Kansas who broke into the movies years before by passing for white. So unknown to white folks he’d been acting any part he could adapt to, which turned out to be everything from renegade Indians, Rebel generals, railroad detectives, outlaws, sheep herders, Tex-Mexicans, to cowboys, Chinese laundrymen, and Yankees.

  “Which made him a real-life hero for State Negroes who got a kick from seeing him turn the white folks’ game against them. Put Jackson in a movie and right away they had them a plot within a plot, a double feature which they could enjoy for the price of a single admission. And underneath whatever else was happening they had them their own kind of comedy!

  “Anyway, at this point when I’m watching the outlaw tiptoeing toward Hoxie and Jackson with his gun cocked and ready, all hell breaks loose in the balcony—Yao!—and years before it was invented a movie in the Sunset exploded….”

  “With sound?”

  “Yao, with sound! Because when a damn sign painter by the name of Tackett sees the Hoxie and Jackson characters in trouble he loses all control of his senses. Did you know Tackett?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Well, he was tall and skinny and black like me, and having a mouth full of gold he was always grinning—which ain’t like me, because my teeth are natural and I do little grinning. Anyway, when Tackett sees this outlaw slipping up on Jackson and Hoxie he’s fit to be tied. All at once he’s yelling, ‘Watch out, y’all, there’s one slipping behind you!’

  “Hickman, the fool has leaped square into the action with a gun in his hand. And next thing I know he’s leaning over the railing blasting the screen with a forty-five flashing. And in ten seconds flat nobody’s left in the place but him and the fellow back in the projection booth—and he’s there only because in trying to escape he twisted an ankle. Then with the crowd spilling out on the sidewalk the law leaps in and Tackett gives the Sheriff, his deputies, and six Irish policemen one hell of a struggle before they get him out of the Sunset and back to reality.

  “It was so awful that if Prophet hadn’t made his deal with the Sunset’s owners they would’ve locked the doors and called it a day. Then folks would have cleared out and ended up laughing. But after coming to see themselves in the sample Prophet had been taking for his movie, and with all the excitement he stirred up with his preaching, not even an earthquake would have caused them to leave. So they crowded in front of the Sunset and argued and threatened until the manager gave in and got on with the show.

  “And Hickman, the way those State Negroes reacted to seeing themselves blown up on that screen was like they’d been given a compound cathartic that worked on the mind—Yao! It was as though after waiting most of their lives it finally had happened. Maybe because after coming out here with high hopes of enjoying a new state of freedom they found mostly the old ways of the past. They’d made their way West but found their new state just as Southern as most of the white folks who rushed here to claim it. So after taking a step West it left them suffering big doubts as to where they were, what they were, and who they were.

  “I wouldn’t know, but when they sat in the dark watching themselves walking along crowded downtown streets and into fine stores, big banks, and places like the opera house, which were usually off-limits, they seemed to confuse those shadows on the screen with reality. It was as though seeing themselves ballooned on the screen finally convinced them they were really living in a new state, in a real town, and amongst other real people.

  “Maybe it was like when you see yourself in a photograph and can’t be certain it’s you. Maybe you don’t recognize the mood you were in at the time it was taken, or the look in your eyes is like that of a stranger. In other words, we don’t see ourselves; and since the self is a smoke-like thing of the spirit, most of what we know about who we are comes from the inside. So when we look at our images shiny and frozen something important is missing. But just as man and the animals are one with the earth, man’s body and spirit are united but separate. So there’s always a question as to which is in charge. Is it body or spirit? Still, as some insist and others deny, all men are brothers and must depend upon others to help them define who they are. This is true of all tribes and that leaves them uneasy. And for State folks who are black this is especially urgent, because they think one thing of themselves while their white brothers insist that they’re exactly the opposite.

  “Anyway, after they were gobbled and vomited by that one-eyed, three-legged contraption, folks in the Sunset could finally see themselves with a sense of objectivity. Laughing and clowning with other folks they recognized from the outside gave them a sense of security and a different perspective. So in a sense it was like they’d been wandering in darkness, and when the goggle eyes pointed that camera in their direction they reacted as though they’d heard the spirits shout a command of ‘Let there be light!’

  “That’s why what happened in the Sunset was so different. And maybe the main thing was movement. Folks could see their bodies ripping and romping and their mouths whooping and yelling, and could recognize themselves by who they were with. Even the absence of sound didn’t matter, because all they had to do was remember who they were with. And seeing themselves move let them know who they were even though they’d been reduced to overblown shadows. I tell you truly, it was big medicine and powerful!

  “After it was over, with folks excited and asking for more, Prophet was so pleased that he ran off some of the reels he and his crew hadn’t yet edited. And next thing I know I’m sitting there watching folks watching themselves floating down streets in dream-like slow motion, then streaking around houses and buildings like hounds with cans tied to their tails. Then they’re watching themselves inflated into images as wide as the Courthouse or Capitol, then walking forwards, running backwards, and dancing in circles. First in slow motion and again at the speed of a whirlwind. In fact, the goggle eyes showed them doing every damn thing they could get away with in public except making love, looking sad, and crying.

  “It was nothing short of medicine, big medicine. And sitting there listening to what State folks around me were saying it seemed that they liked what they saw. And liked it even though those of our color came out looking like ghosts. I understand it had something to do with the film, which was made with white-skin folks in mind and white folks only. So maybe being forced to swallow all that rainbow of State Negro colors gave the one-eyed bastard, the camera, an ache in his belly. Still, his magic kept working, because fellows as black as me didn’t seem to mind looking like ghosts.

  “You would have thought that this would have turned them against the goggle eyes and Prophet, and at first it was clear they were shocked. I could hear them reacting all over the Sunset, but I
guess the excitement of seeing themselves moving and strutting and parading and dancing overpowered the shock of their changes in colors. Maybe the way they moved was more important. Maybe they were going by the cut of their clothes and their styles and their rhythms.

  “Anyway, after seeing Prophet’s patchwork of a sample they were hooked. They took the bait and were raring to get on with raising the cash to pay for his movie. And with that the sly men from the East had it made.

  “Pretty soon folks were struggling to see who’d raise the most money. Friendships and families were broken, pawnshops emptied of dresses, military uniforms, swords, and badges—which they hoped to use as costumes. Maids and cooks, chauffeurs and butlers got fired for sneaking out the best evening clothes of the white State folks they worked for to wear in front of that camera.

  “A cocky young janitor out at the Statehouse, the Capitol, got himself in deep trouble by sneaking the goggle eyes and the camera into the Blue Room to shoot scenes for a make-believe ball. And along with make-believe guests wearing borrowed evening gowns and white ties and tails Prophet even managed to sneak in a six-piece orchestra. So while the musicians went through the motions of playing make-believe music the make-believe guests strutted and danced, sipped ginger ale and Coke, and pretended they were high on champagne and bourbon. And with couples flirting and whirling and musicians going through the motions of blowing up a storm, things seemed to be working. But then the scene reels out of hand.

  “Thinking to make things look more realistic, Prophet has one of the male dancers go through the motions of slipping the drummer a sip from a silver hip flask so the one-eyed man could do a closeup shot of him drinking. But while the flask was filled with warm Coca-Cola, Prophet had no idea of the headache his strategy would cause him. Because it turned out that the drummer was the type who gets roaring drunk from just the idea of drinking hard liquor. So once the flask touches his lips he starts banging out a rhythm that’s so wild and compelling that the other musicians join in. They forget Prophet’s instruction, and before he knows what he’s done they’re blasting the roof off the Statehouse, Capitol.

  “Then with the smuggled-in guests either forgetting that what they were doing wasn’t real or deciding to make the most of a rare opportunity, they ended up making so damn much noise that the guards rushed in and started throwing them out, funky dresses, sweaty tailcoats, and dusty shoelaces!

  “But it didn’t stop Prophet. He simply had his goggle-eyed crew back off a piece with the camera, and while the guards went about rounding up the State Negroes and throwing them out they aimed it at the action and took pot shots at all the scrambling confusion. Then, when the Blue Room was cleared, Prophet convinced the guards and the janitors that if they forgot what happened he’d give them important parts in the picture, and they were so pleased that they let the whole crowd of them go.”

  “I’m beginning to get the picture,” Hickman said, “and I’m glad that since I was a musician back in those days I was somewhere safe in Georgia. But let’s get back to the boy’s mother. Was she one of the dancers?”

  “No, but about that time she’d got herself all worked up to be in the movie, and some of her young friends kept urging her to do it. And since she was pretty and popular they felt that if they dug in and sold enough tickets she had a good chance of being picked as one of the stars. Then when Janey told me about it I tried to discourage her, but the numbers were against me. Along with Editor Dunhawse and one or two preachers I was among the few who didn’t think too much of what was happening, but the gal wouldn’t listen. So she entered the contest and won it, and that led to one of the goggle eyes getting to her….”

  “I see. And did you tell the boy about this?”

  “Of course not! It’s not the kind of thing you tell a man about his mother. Besides, she was a young woman of stature and I admired her and wanted to help her. But she was innocent and untried by the ways of the State folks, so she got caught in the swindle, the madness.

  “Hickman, it was a madness which was building like a storm to bloodletting. I could feel it building, but she and the State folks were so excited over the chance for pretending that they were somebody else, of playing a part, that although I tried to stop her I was too slow.”

  “But what about your Eagle? Didn’t he make an appearance?”

  “Oh, no, he kept far away. Because, you see, it was not an affair of the People. So knowing it was State folks’ foolishness he kept to high places and far out of range. I myself had been watching this thing develop from the time the men from the East showed up and got going. Yao! And the State Negroes were ripe for the picking. Out here they were wild and not like they’d been back South and East, where most of them come from. And of a special wildness. They’d come out here expecting more freedom of movement because it was a wide-open country without too many of the old customs and laws to restrain them. But when they had their new freedom they didn’t understand the form in which it existed. Which was deceptive, so either they didn’t recognize it, or couldn’t grasp its nature and dangers. So they confused it with having things; in owning things that the others, the rich white ones, had back in the old towns and cities. I guess that was at the heart of the confusion the goggle eyes stirred up with that camera. And the lights they focused on the State Negroes distorted their eyes so they became like little animals caught in the headlights of fast-moving autos and trains. Looking into the eye of that three-legged contraption made them think they were looking up at the stars, when in fact they were really looking at a fire which was set to consume them—Yao! I tell you truly, they were confused! And before they got back to their normal confusion some of them were ruined, and the fellow who won the right to play the hero got himself unmanned …”

  “Unmanned?”

  “Unmanned, yes!”

  “How unmanned?”

  “By his woman, who got jealous of his playing the boyfriend of the boy’s mother. So she did him in with a razor….”

  “WHAT!”

  “Yao! The bitch lopped him, she pruned him—hell, Hickman, she hacked off the head-end of his manhood, his root, the barrel of his precious begatter! But that would come later, after other State folks were already damaged….”

  “So he couldn’t have been the boy’s—”

  “… Not with his works in a sling and his rifle barrel busted! I tell you, the confusion leading up to the man was something for thinking long thoughts about. Fooling around with those fellows and that gadget seemed to make the State Negroes lose all sense of time. And soon the white part of town was in an uproar because the cooks and the maids and the porters and waiters weren’t showing up when they were supposed to. A damn white woman, an old maid who lived way over in the other part of town—she hears about what’s going on and damn if she doesn’t bring a bunch of young white people over here to act in the movie. That’s the truth! And when she gets nowhere she comes back with the Sheriff—who was her brother-in-law—and tried to force her way into it. And the only thing that keeps her out was the Sheriff’s being from down South and disliking even the idea of her being mixed up with that many Negroes, even in a mammy-made movie—ha!”

  “Forgive me for laughing, but maybe she thought they were making The Rebirth of the Nation—which reminds me, what was the movie about? What story did it tell?”

  “Hell, man, that was part of the mystery, the attraction, the come-on. Those goggle-eyed fellows were shooting up the town at random, inside and out, like drunks on a spree. And ordering folks around like cracker policemen. But instead of resenting it and insisting on being told what they were doing, folks were fighting and feuding and lying and stealing to be in it. But still nobody knew what kind of picture they were making. Some said it was one thing, and some said it was another. Everybody had a different idea because those fellows were pointing that contraption at just about everything in sight. They’d shoot a little of this and a little of that, and when folks kept asking them about it they said it was a secre
t which would be revealed after they finished shooting and put what they’d shot all together. So, being taken in by the glass-eyed magic, folks went along.

  “Maybe they didn’t care about the story because they were glad to be doing something they didn’t do every day. Some of them got so worked up that pretty soon the goggle-eyed fellows were making money hand over fist by selling little strips of the film they’d shown in the Sunset. Folks wanted to study how they looked and went around showing off those little bits of film to their friends. You could see them standing in the street holding the stuff up to the sun and saying to anyone who would take a look, ‘See, that’s me. I’m the one standing next to Choc Charlie.’ Or, ‘Look at the way I’m walking the dog with that high gloss polish on my best pair of shoes.’ It was as though they felt they were looking at themselves and yet not at themselves, so they needed somebody else to tell them, to make them feel sure of who they were.

  “The next day on the street it was even wilder. I watched them, Hickman. I gave them my closest attention. The sun was bright and the air was clear, and after those three fellows stirred them up the State Negroes started parading in front of that one-eyed contraption like it had reached out and grabbed them by the short hair. It was like it had them under a new unheard-of spell. I don’t know what else to call it, but like it says in the Bible, I tell you verily, its effect was something to see!

  “And naturally it started with the men. After they listened to whatever those three fellows told them to do for the camera they went into action. First they’d walk past the damn thing cool and slow, with each man carrying himself according to his own home-grown notion of dignified decorum. And then, after they got down the street a piece, they’d double back and try it again. But this time real fast and agitated, like they were urgent. Then some of the others who’d been looking on and didn’t want to be outdone—they took off in front of that thing and it was like somebody being chased by the Klan, the police, and a sheriff and his posse—or maybe the Devil hisself. Then the same fellows would circle around and come past it again. Some would be strutting and walking the dog, some walking tall and proud like soldiers, and others kinda dipping and swaying like they were marching in church and the music was solemn. Then a bunch staggers past with their arms around each other’s shoulders, pretending to be drunk and disorderly. And right behind them comes old ‘Fatty-Come-with-Fleas,’ a nickname which some joker came up with for Fait accompli, which was the French nickname some white politicians gave him after he stole the State Seal from the old Territorial Capitol at Guthrie and brought it down here in the plot which made this the state capital.