Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  And this because the women wore white uniforms and small ruffled caps while the men were dressed in hand-me-down suits and wide brimmed hats. Further, the women displayed a disciplined formality of manners and the men an easy camaraderie that was shared by a towering, brown-skinned old man who wore a blue, well-tailored suit and a panama hat.

  Hurrying from the plane with luggage in hand, the group entered the terminal. Where immediately their manner and dress were so at odds with that of the crowd that even skycaps, international pilots, and worldly commuters stopped and stared as though ghosts from the past had swooped down to haunt them. But of this the group appeared unaware as they moved through the crowd with an air of engrossment.

  Then upon reaching the center of the airport a tall, black-skinned woman with Indian features brought the group to a halt by suddenly pausing with a frown of displeasure.

  “Hold it y’all,” she said, “whilst I see if they have one of them up here like they had back in Atlanta …”

  “One of them what, Sister Bea,” a short woman asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that ole gray headed heathen who was sitting besides that big bale of cotton,” the tall woman said. “You remember, he was leaning on a cane and holding that big brass bell in his hand!”

  “So that’s who you mean,” the short woman said with a shrug. “But why bother with him, Sister Bea? After spending all that time in the air we have better things to worry about. So forget him!”

  “As a good Christian I might forgive him,” the tall woman said, “but I’ll never forget him. Just imagine, here in this day and age he’s got so little pride that he sits there giving white folks excuses for laughing and feeling superior!”

  “I declare, Sister Bea,” one of the men said as he spun on his toes in feigned surprise, “are you telling us that thing was a alive? Why, when I saw him sitting in a rocking chair behind that sign with “THE PRIDE OF THE SOUTH” printed on it I took him for some kind of statue!”

  “Statue my foot,” another man said with a chuckle, “that clown was probably humming Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me and signifying that the one he was sitting in didn’t grab him until after he’d bought him a cotton-picking machine and a new Cad’llac! So now he sits there sipping bourbon out of a Coca Cola can and signifying that he’s taking his ease while white folks from up north wonder how it could happen in Georgia.”

  “Yeah!” another man said, “and deep inside he’s probably cracking up over the white folks paying him good money for doing it!”

  “Laugh if you want to,” Sister Bea said, “but it ain’t funny. No, sir! It ain’t funny worth a damn—And may the good Lord forgive me for saying it. Because a prideless ole thing like that just adds to the burden the rest of us bear …”

  “That’s true,” the short woman said. And while others agreed with a chorus of “amens” the group hurried out of the terminal.

  Where, now, in the din of travelers arriving and departing the big man in the panama hat spoke to a white dispatcher who began summoning a small fleet of taxis. And with the drivers assisting the group in loading the dispatcher looked on with a bemused expression. Then after seeing that all were seated the big Negro made his way to a telephone booth where he engaged in a brief conversation and started back with an anxious expression.

  But seeing a woman in one of the taxis pointing out of its window with an outraged expression he stopped in his tracks. And looking to where she was pointing he saw a pair of black, white-dotted dice displayed on the dispatcher’s white jacket. And in noting that the cast of the dice amounted to seven he suppressed a smile that flickered and faded. Then signaling the woman to ignore it, he hurried to the first taxi in line and took the one vacant seat which was next to its driver.

  “Wow!” the dispatcher said as he approached with his clipboard and pencil in hand. “Some lucky hotel is going to be busy, but which will it be?”

  “It will if we find one that’ll take us,” the big Negro said, “but first we must keep an urgent appointment.”

  “And where will that be?”

  “It’s the office of Senator Sunraider …”

  “Sunraider,” the dispatcher said with a sudden step backward. “Well I’ll be damned!”

  “What’s wrong,” the big Negro said with an anxious stare, “has something happened to the Senator?”

  “Why no …”

  “… Thank God for that!”

  “… but do you mean all of you are going …?”

  “That’s right,” the big Negro said, “and sir, we’d appreciate your getting us there as quickly as possible….”

  And from his wallet the big Negro removed two five dollar bills and thrust them toward the dispatcher.

  “Oh, that wasn’t necessary, but thanks,” the Dispatcher said as he pocketed his tip. “I understand your concern over being delayed, because our weather is fine, since around about midnight a storm somewhere southeast of here has been fouling things up for the airlines. But don’t worry, we’ll get you to your appointment!” And bending toward the driver, a light-skinned Negro who’d been listening with a scowl of disdain, the dispatcher struck the roof of the taxi and roared, “You heard the man, so get this rig rolling!”

  “That’s precisely what I’ve been waiting to hear,” the driver replied in a crisp Northern accent, “and don’t go shouting the address, since I already know where they’re going.”

  “You damn well better get them there in a hurry,” the dispatcher said.

  And with fleet on its way he rushed to telephone a newspaper reporter with whom he had a standing agreement to supply any information regarding unusual arrivals or incidents that occurred at the airport. And in a report punctuated by bursts of uneasy laughter he told him of the group’s destination.

  EIGHT EXCERPTS PUBLISHED BY ELLISON

  Editors’ Note: The provenance of the eight excerpts from Ralph Ellison’s unfinished novel that appeared in print during his lifetime varies considerably. Two (“It Always Breaks Out” [1963] and “Cadillac Flambé” [1973]) are variants of Chapters 5 and 4 of Book I, found respectively, of Three Days Before the Shooting …

  Book II is the source of four excerpts. Although the first, longest, and most far-reaching, “And Hickman Arrives” (1960), begins with the “Prologue” from Book I (pages 5–9 in Three Days), Ellison carefully edited this extensive excerpt to include Senator Sunraider’s assassination followed by flashbacks to his boyhood association with Reverend Hickman as the filial young minister in Hickman’s black church. For the sake of sharp, centripetal focus, he deleted passages involving later episodes from the Senator’s life. “And Hickman Arrives” includes a specially written transitional scene (pages 1008–1013) not found in Ellison’s typescripts of Books I or II. The other three excerpts from Book II— “The Roof, the People and the Steeple” (1960), “Juneteenth” (1965), and “Night-Talk” (1969)—are found in the version of Book II published in this volume.

  Ellison’s Oklahoma material is represented by “A Song of Innocence” (1970), narrated to McIntyre by Cliofus. A substantially revised version composed two decades later, with Hickman replacing McIntyre as Clio-fus’s primary audience, is found in the “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” narrative of Three Days within the computer file “Words” (pages 871–889).

  Finally, there is “Backwacking” (1977), a freestanding offshoot of scenes in Senator Sunraider’s office (pages 1097–1101), and a fragment extant in the Ellison Papers.

  Singly and together, these excerpts illuminate the eclectic quality and range of Ellison’s material as well as his evolving compositional habits and novelistic purpose.

  AND HICKMAN ARRIVES

  NOBLE SAVAGE 1 (1960): 5–49

  Three days before the shooting a chartered planeload of Southern Negroes swooped down upon the District of Columbia and attempted to see the Senator. They were all quite elderly; old ladies dressed in little white caps and white uniforms made of surplus nylo
n parachute material, and men dressed in neat but old-fashioned black suits, wearing wide-brimmed, deep crowned panama hats which, in the Senator’s walnut paneled reception room now, they held with a grave ceremonial air. Solemn, uncommunicative, and quietly insistent, they were led by a huge, distinguished-looking old fellow who on the day of the chaotic event was to prove himself, his age notwithstanding, an extraordinarily powerful man. Tall and broad and of an easy dignity, this was the Reverend A. Z. Hickman—better known, as one of the old ladies proudly informed the Senator’s secretary, as “God’s Trombone.”

  This, however, was about all they were willing to explain. Forty-four in number, the women with their fans and satchels and picnic baskets, and the men carrying new blue airline take-on bags, they listened intently while Reverend Hickman did their talking.

  “Ma’am,” Hickman said, his voice deep and resonant as he nodded toward the door of the Senator’s private office, “you just tell the Senator that Hickman has arrived. When he hears who’s out here he’ll know that it’s important and want to see us.”

  “But I’ve told you that the Senator isn’t available,” the secretary said. “Just what is your business? Who are you, anyway? Are you his constituents?”

  “Constituents?” Suddenly the old man smiled. “No, miss,” he said, “the Senator doesn’t even have anybody like us in his state. We’re from down where we’re among the counted but not among the heard.”

  “Then why are you coming here?” she said. “What is your business?”

  “He’ll tell you, ma’am,” Hickman said. “He’ll know who we are; all you have to do is tell him that we have arrived….”

  The secretary, a young Mississippian, sighed. Obviously these were Southern Negroes of a type she had known all her life—and old ones; yet, instead of being already in herdlike movement toward the door, they were calmly waiting, as though she hadn’t said a word. And now she had a suspicion that, for all their staring eyes, she actually didn’t exist for them. They just stood there, now looking oddly like a delegation of Asians who had lost their interpreter along the way, and who were trying to tell her something which she had no interest in hearing, through this old man who himself did not know the language. Suddenly they no longer seemed familiar and a feeling of dreamlike incongruity came over her. They were so many that she could no longer see the large abstract paintings which hung along the paneled wall. Nor the framed facsimiles of State Documents which hung above a bust of Vice-President Calhoun. Some of the old women were calmly plying their palm-leaf fans, as though in serene defiance of the droning air-conditioner. Yet she could see no trace of impertinence in their eyes, nor any of the anger which the Senator usually aroused in members of their group. Instead, they seemed resigned; like people embarked upon a difficult journey who were already far beyond the point of no return. Her uneasiness grew, then she blotted out the others by focusing her eyes narrowly upon their leader. And when she spoke again her voice took on a nervous edge.

  “I’ve told you that the Senator isn’t here,” she said, “and you must realize that he is a busy man who can only see people by appointment….”

  “We know, ma’am,” Hickman said, “but …”

  “You don’t just walk in here and expect to see him on a minute’s notice.”

  “We understand that, ma’am,” Hickman said, looking mildly into her eyes, his close-cut white head tilted to one side, “but this is something that developed of a sudden. Couldn’t you reach him by long distance? We’d pay the charges. And I don’t even have to talk, miss; you can do the talking. All you have to say is that we have arrived.”

  “I’m afraid this is impossible,” she said.

  The very evenness of the old man’s voice made her feel uncomfortably young, and now, deciding that she had exhausted all the tried-and-true techniques her region had worked out (short of violence) for getting quickly rid of Negroes, the secretary lost her patience and telephoned for a guard.

  They left as quietly as they had appeared, the old minister waiting behind until the last had stepped into the hall, then he turned, and she saw his full height, framed by the doorway, as the others arranged themselves beyond him in the hall. “You’re really making a mistake, miss,” he said. “The Senator knows us and …”

  “Knows you,” she said indignantly. “I’ve heard Senator Sunraider state that the only colored he knows is the boy who shines shoes at his golf club.”

  “Oh?” Hickman shook his head as the others exchanged knowing glances.

  “Very well, ma’am,” Hickman said. “We’re sorry to have caused you this trouble. It’s just that it’s very important that the Senator know that we’re on the scene. So I hope you won’t forget to tell him that we have arrived, because soon it might be too late.”

  There was no threat in it; indeed, his voice echoed the odd sadness which she thought she detected in the faces of the others just before the door blotted them from view.

  In the hall they exchanged no words, moving silently behind the guard, who accompanied them down to the lobby. They were about to move into the street, when the security-minded chief guard observed their number, stepped up, and ordered them searched.

  They submitted patiently, amused that anyone should consider them capable of harm, and for the first time an emotion broke the immobility of their faces. They chuckled and winked and smiled, fully aware of the comic aspect of the situation. Here they were, quiet, old, and obviously religious black folk who because they had attempted to see the man who was considered the most vehement enemy of their people in either house of Congress, were being energetically searched by uniformed security police, and they knew what the absurd outcome would be. They were found to be armed with nothing more dangerous than pieces of fried chicken and ham sandwiches, chocolate cake and sweet-potato fried pies. Some obeyed the guards’ commands with exaggerated sprightliness, the old ladies giving their skirts a whirl as they turned in their flat-heeled shoes. When ordered to remove his wide-brimmed hat, one old man held it for the guard to look inside; then, flipping out the sweatband, he gave the crown a tap, causing something to fall to the floor, then waited with a callused palm extended as the guard bent to retrieve it. Straightening and unfolding the object, the guard saw a worn but neatly creased fifty-dollar bill which he dropped upon the outstretched palm as though it were hot. They watched silently as he looked at the old man and gave a dry, harsh laugh; then as he continued laughing the humor slowly receded behind their eyes. Not until they were allowed to file into the street did they give further voice to their amusement.

  “These here folks don’t understand nothing,” one of the old ladies said. “If we had been the kind to depend on the sword instead of on the Lord, we’d been in our graves long ago—ain’t that right Sis’ Arter?”

  “You said it,” Sister Arter said. “In the grave and done long finished mold’ing!”

  “Let them worry, our conscience is clear on that….”

  “Amen!”

  On the sidewalk now, they stood around Reverend Hickman holding a hushed conference, then in a few minutes they had disappeared in a string of taxis and the incident was thought closed.

  Shortly afterwards, however, they appeared mysteriously at a hotel where the Senator leased a private suite, and tried to see him. How they knew of this secret suite they would not explain.

  Next they appeared at the editorial offices of the newspaper which was most critical of the Senator’s methods, but here too they were turned away. They were taken for a protest group, just one more lot of disgruntled Negroes crying for justice as though theirs were the only grievances in the world. Indeed, they received less of a hearing here than elsewhere. They weren’t even questioned as to why they wished to see the Senator—which was poor newspaper work, to say the least; a failure of technical alertness, and, as events were soon to prove, a gross violation of press responsibility.

  So once more they moved away.

  Although the Senator returned to Washingt
on the following day, his secretary failed to report his strange visitors. There were important interviews scheduled and she had understandably classified the old people as just another annoyance. Once the reception room was cleared of their disquieting presence they seemed no more significant than the heavy mail received from white liberals and Negroes, liberal and reactionary alike, whenever the Senator made one of his taunting remarks. She forgot them. Then at about eleven a.m. Reverend Hickman reappeared without the others and started into the building. This time, however, he was not to reach the secretary. One of the guards, the same who had picked up the fifty-dollar bill, recognized him and pushed him bodily from the building.

  Indeed, the old man was handled quite roughly, his sheer weight and bulk and the slow rhythm of his normal movements infuriating the guard to that quick, heated fury which springs up in one when dealing with the unexpected recalcitrance of some inanimate object. Say, the huge stone that resists the bulldozer’s power or the chest of drawers that refuses to budge from its spot on the floor. Nor did the old man’s composure help matters. Nor did his passive resistance hide his distaste at having strange hands placed upon his person. As he was being pushed about, old Hickman looked at the guard with a kind of tolerance, an understanding which seemed to remove his personal emotions to some far, cool place where the guard’s strength could never reach them. He even managed to pick up his hat from the sidewalk, where it had been thrown after him, with no great show of breath or hurry, and arose to regard the guard with a serene dignity.

  “Son,” he said, flicking a spot of dirt from the soft old panama with a white handkerchief, “I’m sorry that this had to happen to you. Here you’ve worked up a sweat on this hot morning and not a thing has been changed—except that you’ve interfered with something that doesn’t concern you. After all, you’re only a guard, you’re not a mind-reader. Because if you were, you’d be trying to get me in there as fast as you could instead of trying to keep me out. You’re probably not even a good guard and I wonder what on earth you’d do if I came here prepared to make some trouble.”