Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Another gang stole Mr. McHenry’s jackass and pushed him into the parlor of a leading whorehouse, where he spoiled the evening’s business by honking and pissing and kicking over chairs. Then a gang of Beaujack’s henchmen found an old discarded horse-drawn hearse and pushed it down the street all lit up with flares and with six drunk musicians sitting on top playing ‘Oh Didn’t He Ramble’ and ‘ The Bucket’s Got a Hole in It‘, all out of time and out of tune. While stretched out inside like a corpse is Mr. Choc Charley, the tailor who’s known as the section’s best, who’s sleeping off a drunk with a red railroad warning lantern glowing on his chest. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, things had turned primitive and really gone to swinging.

  “But now it’s dancing time, and the block where the dance hall stood is all lit up and as jammed with folks as the hall three stories up above. In fact, more costumed folks are dancing in the street than could’ve been packed in the dance hall with a battering ram. But most don’t care because they’re having such a fine time drinking and carousing that they’ve forgot all about the movie men while letting BooBoo Beaujack lead them deeper and deeper into what the judge who later fined them called ‘a state of extreme and rowdy drunkenness attended by a total and mind-busting disregard for civic peace and universal order.’

  “Now about this time Buster and me are up on the hill looking down on the lit-up business block, and from the way folks are dancing and flinging themselves about it’s like watching a combination of the chronic heebie-jeebies and the seven-year’s itch. Then, way back in the alley, we hear Pulliham’s old dog give out with an awful, hair-raising howl. He howls two times and then he takes a deep, deep breath and howls another howl that’s so long and eerie that it sounds like it’s either turned him inside out or outside in, including his lock, collar, chain, and fence post. This stops us cold, but when he doesn’t howl again and we don’t hear thunder we decide to wander on down to the action. And when we get there it’s easy to see that nobody else had heard him, and no wonder!

  “Up in the dance hall, three stories above the street, twelve natural-born musicians are having a ball as they beat out the rhythm with the windows up. While down on the floor the fat young singer and dancing master is urging them on as he cavorts before the crowd in his gleaming golden shoes. The floor had been polished with cornmeal to make it slick, and by now he’s led the dancers through every step from the quadrille to the tango, but now they’re doing the well-known mess-around, with everybody moving slow and easy to the tune of ‘See, See, Rider, Look What You Done Done’ which he’s singing through his three-foot megaphone. Not that he really needs it except to swing and dip like he’s dancing with a partner, because folks down in the street can hear his sweet, sweet tenor ringing like a bell. And above all the noise and rhythm and the muted trumpet’s cry he’s making those blues laugh, sigh, and signify like Madam Ma Rainey with her love come down and her good man’s gone ten thousand miles from Georgia. Talk about some sweet, sweet sadness—maaan! Oh, man!

  “So now some of you are asking, ‘What happened to the moving-picture crew?’ Well, the answer is that they were grinding in the street. And not only because there wasn’t room for them and that camera up in the hall, but when they tried to get in some men who were out with women other than their girlfriends or their wives wouldn’t let them. It didn’t matter that everyone was wearing masks, those guys weren’t taking any chances of getting caught with the wrong woman wearing the wrong mask, no matter when or wherever that movie hit the screen. So their spokesman told the movie men, ‘Listen here, y’all, and try to understand—we got nothing against what you’re doing, and we’d like to help you out, but you have to recognize that if you shoot what a fine time we’re having and these local white folks happen to see it they’ll get so jealous and raving mad that the next time we have a dance they’ll send the Sheriff out here to close us down.’ So, being men of the world and far outnumbered, the movie men take their camera and go back to shooting up the action in the street.

  “Now on the floor beneath the dance hall ten physicians, all good men and true, are resting back in their swivel chairs with their feet propped up, patting their bellies in time with the music and dreaming sweet dreams about such matters as their shaky rent-houses and their Hippocratic oaths, their be-diamonded women, and their Cadillacs, Auburns, and Pierce-Arrow cars; about cutting and curing and buckets of blood, and about outdoing Doctor Daniel Williams, who dealt cruel Death a blow and earned eternal fame by patching up what could have been a fatal stab wound in a living human heart. So now they’re resting back easy in their big desk chairs, and surrounded to a man by grosses of catgut and cotton swabs, bandages and bullet probes, scalpels and hemostats—plus gallons of iodine, ether, and chloroform, gauze, catheters, and surgical needles—in other words, they’re waiting for such casualties as gunshot wounds, busted skulls, broken limbs, and switch-blade stabbings to come rolling in. They didn’t mind at all that the movie men had mixed up the calendar, because back in those rugged pioneer days folks around here swore by tradition and the tides of the moon that for a real good time to be had by all—by which they meant a real ripsnorting, compound-cathartic, knock-down-drag-out celebration—somebody famous had to shed some blood. And as far as anyone could remember it had never failed. They never knew when, and they never knew who, but it always happened. And so it did this time.

  “Because now, with the festivities really grooving, both in the dance hall and the street, the musicians wailing and the movie men grinding that camera and thinking the leading man is already safe in bed having his loving and his ease—here comes somebody screaming through the street in his B.V.D.’s! And he’s running so fast that he’s hard to identify, but when folks hear the note he’s screaming they know right away that he’s shedding blood. Then he comes a little closer, and when they see who it is some begin to scream, some begin to cry, some to moan, and some to stutter, and some react like they’d been hit by laughing gas. In a second it was like the world had up and looped-the-loop and started spinning upside down….

  “Yes, it was the hero of the movie they were hoping to be acting in, and when the word spread through the crowd it’s like time itself had doubled itself into a knot and they could hear the dreadful grinding of its gears.

  “For after all he was very good-looking, tall and strong, and until he’d dropped out of college to help his folks he’d been a first-string quarterback. He was respected as a man among men and a stud among the ladies, a fancy dresser, and a dancer in the class of Tulsa’s Tickletoes. He was also good with his dukes and belonged to the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., didn’t drink liquor, and, being an usher in his church, he was even respected by Miss Janey. So naturally when he got to be the star of the moving picture folks felt he had the world on a string and the key to fame and fortune in his fingers. What’s more, to local pride and racial taste nobody in Hollywood movies was any better looking. Then, wham, and after acting as a hero just a little while before, he’s running through the streets like a broke-back dog from Georgia!

  “And it’s not the fact that he’s jetting blood that gets folks so excited; anybody was liable to bleed on such an occasion. It’s his screaming, which is so out of character that it hits folks with the kind of chill they get when a heavyweight champion gets knocked on his butt in the first few seconds of an exhibition bout by an unknown fighter. It was enough to make folks rip their clothes and tear their hair—and a heap were doing it. It all happened so sudden, but it wasn’t that they hadn’t been warned, because not only did Pulliham’s old dog let out those horrible howls, many had seen Miss Brilliantine upset the camera crew and put the bad sign on the man. So now, seeing him running bleeding had folks yelling and screaming and foaming at the mouth.

  “Given the size of all that mob there’s no way in the world for everybody to see what’s taking place, but the news shoots through the streets like a dose of salts, and pretty soon it’s like the story of Chicken Little has come alive, w
ith little kids and sober citizens joining the drunks in yelling that the sky is falling down. Nobody really knows the facts behind the fact of his running, but with everybody busy trying to put what they imagine into words they have the poor man being chased by everything from lions and tigers to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera—which were both favorite movies of the time. So by the time the news leaps to the end of the business block and bounces back, little ole ladies are going stiff and passing out, big strong men are chattering like apes and wringing their hands, and tough guys with battle scars and skulls all dented from being hit on the head with brickbats, broken bottles, and big iron taps from the railroad tracks are raving in high falsetto through their Halloween masks.

  “I tell you truly, rumors were flying and folks were crying! And when the news hit the red-light district, it turned it upside down and wrongside out. It puts madams in bed, and has the pimps climbing walls over having to turn all those good-paying customers away from what (on the sly) they claimed to be the only fully integrated establishments in the whole damn town.

  “Now me and Buster were moving through the crowd in our Halloween masks, watching and listening and keeping to the high ground whenever we could. That’s when we saw no less than a dozen big-breasted, big-legged, proud-butted ladies of the evening all weeping and wailing without a hint of shame as they called on Jesus in the hero’s name. I said one spanking dozen, and that’s exactly what I mean! And every single one of them beating on her bosom, tearing out her hair, and stirring up the air with her fancy underwear.

  “Then one of them who turns out not to even know the hero starts to screaming that she can’t go on living without her heart’s desire—meaning him—and next thing we know she’s climbing up a light pole like the street’s caught fire! The crowd couldn’t tell if she was clowning or going for broke, but when she gets close to those high-tension wires they start to leaping and grabbing, trying to get her down.

  “And naturally, that’s when BooBoo Beaujack gets into the act. The fool leaps so high that his head disappears, and when he drops back to the street the woman’s up there clinging to that pole wearing nothing but her red silk stockings and some pink lace teddies. Then you talk about somebody having an instant change of mind and a reversal of direction! When she sees her clothes dangling in BooBoo’s big cotton-picking hand and folks lamping her southern exposure so bare-face bold, she invents a brand-new technique for sliding down a pole. And when she hits the street she grabs her clothes and tries to hide—which by now was nothing but vanity, because everybody is already after the hero in hot pursuit, and the man is really moving.

  “Now the street is massed with upset people and Jack and his henchmen are busy trying to track the man by his screams. Then way up the block where the camera goes on grinding they can tell by the way folks are ducking and dodging from his path that the hero’s heading for the building where the dance hall’s at. Which they take as a sign that he has his wits about him.

  “Because in those days you could find a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, a tailor, have a prescription filled, get a shave and a haircut and a fine shoe shine, shoot some pool, play a game of tonk, blackjack, stud poker, or the numbers, mail a letter, pay life insurance premiums, buy ice-cream sodas, read library books, or get embalmed—all in the very same building. It was the center of all kinds of action, and the place where most of the leading physicians could be found. Everybody knew it, too, so by time the hero hits the entrance to the building the crowd is closing on his heels.

  “Oh, but when he shoots up the stairs with his frantic stride he sets off pandemonium in the ground-floor hall where three well-known bootleggers have been doing a thriving rent-free business with folks who wanted to get their gauges high before staggering up to the dancing. Before the hero busted in folks were blocking the entrance and crowding the stairs, ordering liquor by the drink and by the bottle. And with all those crazy-looking folks shaking fists full of money and demanding action those bootleggers were rocking and reeling as they passed out bottles and gathered in that cash. But then, a-clamity-blam-blam!—and the hall is like a joint that’s being raided.

  “False-faced folks are dashing for the backdoor of the hall spraining arms and ankles and ruining hired costumes as silver dollars, greenbacks, and pocket change go flying through the air. Pints, quarts, and jugs of homemade liquor are smashing against the walls and flooding the floor, and three disgusted bootleggers are standing in the middle, cussing their luck and counting the cost as they wonder what the hell has hit them. But the crowd behind the hero has no time for answering questions.

  “Now nobody knows for which of the physicians the hero is headed, but as he reaches the second floor and goes sweeping down the hall they give a hopeful sigh. Because there like a sign sent down from heaven above they see, standing in all the doorways cooing like doves, all ten physicians who’re rubbing their hands in rubber surgical gloves.

  “Oh, they’d responded to the ruckus and are ready to a man for whatever business the holiday has brought them. But hardly before they can go into action it becomes a case of many being called but few being chosen. Because right away their number begins to dwindle.

  “When the first doc in line sees what’s jetting up the hall he gets so upset he hits the floor and becomes a living doormat for his fellow physicians. And with them buck-dancing on his body, trying to get some traction, in less than a second he’s out of the action.

  “Then doc Number Two calls for order, yelling, ‘This case is an eight-day wonder and a surgeon’s dream, but it demands that we act like a proper surgical team!’

  “‘He’s twelling it like it twiz,’ another doc says with a tongue-tied lisp, ‘Tho if we going thu get operwaiting we better start cooperwaiting. So let’s get coord-winating, like tra-la, la-la, la-la!’

  “So, heading for the biggest office, they rush the hero down the hall. Some have him by the arms, some by his feet and legs, and some are snatching and grabbing at anything at all. Then just as they go to make a sharp turn in a very narrow passage, a young doc named Jude damn near makes a wreck of their medical procession.

  “‘This case,’ he declares with firm conviction, ‘looks so outrageous and downright tragic, that maybe instead of our kind of science it calls for magic!’

  “Which puts his colleagues in such a state of shock that even the drunks could hear Jude’s message making echoes in their heads. But then with an unbelievable and unspoken surge of coordination, they start kicking the hell out of Jude as they charge him with speaking rude and being a most unscientific nowhere dude.

  “So then eight physicians, all willing and able, squeeze the hero through the doorway and toss him on the table. And naturally there’s an awful lot of floundering and skidding about, but old Doc Pugh knows exactly what to do to calm them down. Barking like a sergeant he starts calling for face masks, morphine, and hemostats, and with them ducking and diving like a bunch of white-winged bats it looks like they’re finally making progress.

  “Oh, but then, out in the hall there’s a tremendous pushing and shoving, and sweating and puking—plus a mighty swilling of whiskey, gin, and other brews—not to mention extracts of lemon, vanilla, and Jamaican ginger—which was either guzzled neat, or given a dynamite kick with Sterno canned heat that was strained through a handkerchief and had the poison burned off with matches. And while the crowd is thrashing about waiting to hear the hero’s fate they’re screaming and scrambling and a-helling and a-damning with a great stepping on of heels and a smashing of tender corns.

  “Then this drunk who’s got up like a Chinaman, black pajamas, pigtail, and opium pipe, starts to threatening the docs with a rusty three-barreled derringer. And with that the rest of the crowd starts advising him exactly where to stick it before he pulls the trigger. This hurts his drunken feelings and makes him want to cry but he runs into trouble with his narrow false-face eyes. And while the others keep ragging him it’s a way of keeping their sagging spirits up as
they plunge deeper into despair.

  “Because all they can glimpse in the operating room is a rich, thick confusion of an M.D. nature, and nothing that’s being done seems to be getting anywhere. They can see seven high-powered physicians bumping heads as they bend over the hero waving needles, gobs of cotton, and reams of catgut thread, but with seven pairs of hands fumbling in his pubic hair the hero’s still groaning and writhing in agony. So now the crowd turns downright hostile.

  “Then a high-voiced drunk wearing hard-conked hair and a sequin-covered mask and who’s big enough to sing ‘Ol’ Man River’ against both George Dewey Washington and Paul Bustill Robeson, expresses his opinion. ‘Look, y’all,’ he says to the medical men, ‘if you don’t do something quick for that darlin’ man, and I mean fas’, I’m gonna start whuppin’ some of y’all’s ass!’ And with that the rest join in in spades.

  “And as they go spelling out their bills of particulars and battle plans the docs are so busy fumbling with the hero that only one takes time to listen. And that’s only because he’s short and fat, with arms too short for his heated competition. Being very unhappy over being jockeyed out of what he thinks is his rightful position he announces that for all his good intentions and his doing his level best to serve humanity like the rest, he’s been elbowed, stepped on, and crushed in his pride; bled on, cussed at, and shoved aside. So naturally he feels neglected, rejected, and scandalized, and the victim of professional discrimination only because of his compact size. Come to think of it, Buster really felt sorry for that little doctor.

  “So now, to have his revenge, or maybe out of spite, he takes dead aim at a fellow black man-in-white, and rushing at him like a mean little fice in a bulldog fight he goes into action.