Flying Home

by Ralph Ellison

  The old man was chuckling, rubbing his stubbled chin.

  “What did you say?”

  “Sho, I died and went to heaven … maybe by time I tell you about it they be done come after you.”

  “I hope so,” he said wearily.

  “You boys ever sit around and swap lies?”

  “Not often. Is this going to be one?”

  “Well, I ain’t so sho, on account of it took place when I was dead.”

  The old man paused. “That wasn’t no lie ’bout the buzzards though.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Sho you want to hear ’bout heaven?”

  “Please,” he answered, resting his head upon his arm.

  “Well, I went to heaven and right away started to sproutin’ me some wings. Six-foot ones, they was. Just like them the white angels had. I couldn’t hardly believe it. I was so glad that I went off on some clouds by myself and tried ’em out. You know, ’cause I didn’t want to make a fool outa myself the first thing …”

  It’s an old tale, Todd thought. Told me years ago. Had forgotten. But at least it will keep him from talking about buzzards.

  He closed his eyes, listening.

  “… First thing I done was to git up on a low cloud and jump off. And doggone, boy, if them wings didn’t work! First I tried the right; then I tried the left; then I tried ’em both together. Then, Lawd, I started to move on out among the folks. I let ’em see me …”

  He saw the old man gesturing flight with his arms, his face full of mock pride as he indicated an imaginary crowd, thinking, It’ll be in the newspapers, as he heard, “… so I went and found me some colored angels—somehow I didn’t believe I was an angel till I seen a real black one, ha, yes! Then I was sho—but they tole me I better come down ’cause us colored folks had to wear a special kin’a harness when we flew. That was how come they wasn’t flyin’. Oh yes, an’ you had to be extra strong for a black man even, to fly with one of them harnesses …”

  This is a new turn, Todd thought. What’s he driving at?

  “So I said to myself, I ain’t gonna be bothered with no harness! Oh naw! ’Cause if God let you sprout wings you oughta have sense enough not to let nobody make you wear something what gits in the way of flyin’. So I starts to flyin’. Hecks, son,” he chuckled, his eyes twinkling, “you know I had to let eve’body know that old Jefferson could fly good as anybody else. And I could too, fly smooth as a bird! I could even loop-the-loop—only I had to make sho to keep my long white robe down roun’ my ankles …”

  Todd felt uneasy. He wanted to laugh at the joke, but his body refused, as of an independent will. He felt as he had as a child when after he had chewed a sugar-coated pill which his mother had given him, she had laughed at his efforts to remove the terrible taste.

  “… Well,” he heard. “I was doing all right till I got to speeding. Found out I could fan up a right strong breeze, I could fly so fast. I could do all kin’sa stunts too. I started flying up to the stars and divin’ down and zooming roun’ the moon. Man, I like to scare the devil outa some ole white angels. I was raisin’ hell. Not that I meant any harm, son. But I was just feeling good. It was so good to know I was free at last. I accidentally knocked the tips offa some stars and they tell me I caused a storm and a coupla lynchings down here in Macon County—though I swear I believe them boys what said that was making up lies on me …”

  He’s mocking me, Todd thought angrily. He thinks it’s a joke. Grinning down at me … His throat was dry. He looked at his watch; why the hell didn’t they come? Since they had to, why? One day I was flying down one of them heavenly streets. You got yourself into it, Todd thought. Like Jonah in the whale.

  “Justa throwin’ feathers in eve’body’s face. An’ ole Saint Peter called me in. Said, ‘Jefferson, tell me two things, what you doin’ flying’ without a harness; an’ how come you flyin’ so fast?’ So I tole him I was flyin’ without a harness ’cause it got in my way, but I couldn’ta been flyin’ so fast, ’cause I wasn’t usin’ but one wing. Saint Peter said, ‘You wasn’t flyin’ with but one wing?’ ‘Yessuh,’ I says, scared-like. So he says, ‘Well, since you got sucha extra fine pair of wings you can leave off yo harness awhile. But from now on none of that there one-wing flyin’, ’cause you gittin’ up too damn much speed!’ ”

  And with one mouth full of bad teeth you’re making too damned much talk, thought Todd. Why don’t I send him after the boy? His body ached from the hard ground, and seeking to shift his position he twisted his ankle and hated himself for crying out.

  “It gittin’ worse?”

  “I … I twisted it,” he groaned.

  “Try not to think about it, son. That’s what I do.”

  He bit his lip, fighting pain with counter-pain as the voice resumed its rhythmical droning. Jefferson seemed caught in his own creation.

  “ … After all that trouble I just floated roun’ heaven in slow motion. But I forgot like colored folks will do and got to flyin’ with one wing agin. This time I was restin’ my ole broken arm and got to flyin’ fast enough to shame the devil. I was comin’ so fast, Lawd, I got myself called befo ole Saint Peter agin. He said, ‘Jeff, didn’t I warn you ’bout that speedin’?’ ‘Yessuh,’ I says, ‘but it was an accident.’ He looked at me sad-like and shook his head and I knowed I was gone. He said, ‘Jeff, you and that speedin’ is a danger to the heavenly community. If I was to let you keep on flyin’, heaven wouldn’t be nothin’ but uproar. Jeff, you got to go!’ Son, I argued and pleaded with that old white man, but it didn’t do a bit of good. They rushed me straight to them pearly gates and gimme a parachute and a map of the state of Alabama …”

  Todd heard him laughing so that he could hardly speak, making a screen between them upon which his humiliation glowed like fire.

  “Maybe you’d better stop a while,” he said, his voice unreal.

  “Ain’t much more,” Jefferson laughed. “When they gimme the parachute ole Saint Peter ask me if I wanted to say a few words before I went. I felt so bad I couldn’t hardly look at him, specially with all them white angels standin’ around. Then somebody laughed and made me mad. So I tole him, ‘Well, you done took my wings. And you puttin’ me out. You got charge of things so’s I can’t do nothin’ about it. But you got to admit just this: While I was up here I was the flyin’est son-of-a-bitch what ever hit heaven!’ ”

  At the burst of laughter Todd felt such an intense humiliation that only great violence would wash it away. The laughter which shook the old man like a boiling purge set up vibrations of guilt within him which not even the intricate machinery of the plane would have been adequate to transform and he heard himself screaming, “Why do you laugh at me this way?”

  He hated himself at that moment, but he had lost control. He saw Jefferson’s mouth fall open. “What—?”

  “Answer me!”

  His blood pounded as though it would surely burst his temples, and he tried to reach the old man and fell, screaming, “Can I help it because they won’t let us actually fly? Maybe we are a bunch of buzzards feeding on a dead horse, but we can hope to be eagles, can’t we? Can’t we?”

  He fell back, exhausted, his ankle pounding. The saliva was like straw in his mouth. If he had the strength he would strangle this old man. This grinning gray-headed clown who made him feel as he felt when watched by the white officers at the field. And yet this old man had neither power, prestige, rank, nor technique. Nothing that could rid him of this terrible feeling. He watched him, seeing his face struggle to express a turmoil of feeling.

  “What you mean, son? What you talking ’bout …?”

  “Go away. Go tell your tales to the white folks.”

  “But I didn’t mean nothing like that … I … I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt your feelings …”

  “Please. Get the hell away from me!”

  “But I didn’t, son. I didn’t mean all them things a-tall.”

  Todd shook as with a chill, searching Jefferson’s face
for a trace of the mockery he had seen there. But now the face was somber and tired and old. He was confused. He could not be sure that there had ever been laughter there, that Jefferson had ever really laughed in his whole life. He saw Jefferson reach out to touch him and shrank away, wondering if anything except the pain, now causing his vision to waver, was real. Perhaps he had imagined it all.

  “Don’t let it get you down, son,” the voice said pensively.

  He heard Jefferson sigh wearily, as though he felt more than he could say. His anger ebbed, leaving only the pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “You just wore out with pain, was all …”

  He saw him through a blur, smiling. And for a second he felt the embarrassed silence of understanding flutter between them.

  “What was you doin’ flyin’ over this section, son? Wasn’t you scared they might shoot you for a crow?”

  Todd tensed. Was he being laughed at again? But before he could decide, the pain shook him and a part of him was lying calmly behind the screen of pain that had fallen between them, recalling the first time he had ever seen a plane. It was as though an endless series of hangars had been shaken ajar in the airbase of his memory and from each, like a young wasp emerging from its cell, arose the memory of a plane.

  The first time I ever saw a plane I was very small and planes were new in the world. I was four and a half and the only plane that I had ever seen was a model suspended from the ceiling of the automobile exhibit at the state fair. But I did not know that it was only a model. I did not know how large a real plane was, nor how expensive. To me it was a fascinating toy, complete in itself, which my mother said could only be owned by rich little white boys. I stood rigid with admiration, my head straining backward as I watched the gray little plane describing arcs above the gleaming tops of the automobiles. And I vowed that, rich or poor, some day I would own such a toy. My mother had to drag me out of the exhibit, and not even the merry-go-round, the Ferris wheel, or the racing horses could hold my attention for the rest of the fair. I was too busy imitating the tiny drone of the plane with my lips, and imitating with my hands the motion, swift and circling, that it made in flight.

  After that I no longer used the pieces of lumber that lay about our backyard to construct wagons and autos … now it was used for airplanes. I built biplanes, using pieces of board for wings, a small box for the fuselage, another piece of wood for the rudder. The trip to the fair had brought something new into my small world. I asked my mother repeatedly when the fair would come back again. I’d lie in the grass and watch the sky and each flighting bird became a soaring plane. I would have been good a year just to have seen a plane again. I became a nuisance to everyone with my questions about airplanes. But planes were new to the old folks, too, and there was little that they could tell me. Only my uncle knew some of the answers. And better still, he could carve propellers from pieces of wood that would whirl rapidly in the wind, wobbling noisily upon oiled nails.

  I wanted a plane more than I’d wanted anything; more than I wanted the red wagon with rubber tires, more than the train that ran on a track with its train of cars. I asked my mother over and over again:

  “Mama?”

  “What do you want, boy?” she’d say.

  “Mama, will you get mad if I ask you?” I’d say.

  “What do you want now, I ain’t got time to be answering a lot of fool questions. What you want?”

  “Mama, when you gonna get me one …?” I’d ask.

  “Get you one what?” she’d say.

  “You know, Mama; what I been asking you …”

  “Boy,” she’d say, “if you don’t want a spanking you better come on ’n tell me what you talking about so I can get on with my work.”

  “Aw, Mama, you know …”

  “What I just tell you?” she’d say.

  “I mean when you gonna buy me a airplane.”

  “AIRPLANE! Boy, is you crazy? How many times I have to tell you to stop that foolishness. I done told you them things cost too much. I bet I’m gon wham the living daylight out of you if you don’t quit worrying me ’bout them things!”

  But this did not stop me, and a few days later I’d try all over again.

  Then one day a strange thing happened. It was spring and for some reason I had been hot and irritable all morning. It was a beautiful spring. I could feel it as I played barefoot in the backyard. Blossoms hung from the thorny black locust trees like clusters of fragrant white grapes. Butterflies flickered in the sunlight above the short new dew-wet grass. I had gone in the house for bread and butter and coming out I heard a steady unfamiliar drone. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. I tried to place the sound. It was no use. It was a sensation like that I had when searching for my father’s watch, heard ticking unseen in a room. It made me feel as though I had forgotten to perform some task that my mother had ordered … then I located it, overhead. In the sky, flying quite low and about a hundred yards off, was a plane! It came so slowly that it seemed barely to move. My mouth hung wide; my bread and butter fell into the dirt. I wanted to jump up and down and cheer. And when the idea struck I trembled with excitement: Some little white boy’s plane’s done flew away and all I got to do is stretch out my hands and it’ll be mine! It was a little plane like that at the fair, flying no higher than the eaves of our roof. Seeing it come steadily forward I felt the world grow warm with promise. I opened the screen and climbed over it and clung there, waiting. I would catch the plane as it came over and swing down fast and run into the house before anyone could see me. Then no one could come to claim the plane. It droned nearer. Then when it hung like a silver cross in the blue directly above me I stretched out my hand and grabbed. It was like sticking my finger through a soap bubble. The plane flew on, as though I had simply blown my breath after it. I grabbed again, frantically, trying to catch the tail. My fingers clutched the air and disappointment surged tight and hard in my throat. Giving one last desperate grasp, I strained forward. My fingers ripped from the screen. I was falling. The ground burst hard against me. I drummed the earth with my heels and when my breath returned, I lay there bawling.

  My mother rushed through the door.

  “What’s the matter, chile! What on earth is wrong with you?”

  “It’s gone! It’s gone!”

  “What gone?”

  “The airplane …”

  “Airplane?”

  “Yessum, jus like the one at the fair … I … I tried to stop it an’ it kep right on going …”

  “When, boy?”

  “Just now,” I cried through my tears.

  “Where it go, boy, what way?”

  “Yonder, there …”

  She scanned the sky, her arms akimbo and her checkered apron flapping in the wind, as I pointed to the fading plane. Finally she looked down at me, slowly shaking her head.

  “It’s gone! It’s gone!” I cried.

  “Boy, is you a fool?” she said. “Don’t you see that there’s a real airplane ’stead of one of them toy ones?”

  “Real …?” I forgot to cry. “Real?”

  “Yass, real. Don’t you know that thing you reaching for is bigger’n a auto? You here trying to reach for it and I bet it’s flying ’bout two hundred miles higher’n this roof.” She was disgusted with me. “You come on in this house before somebody else sees what a fool you done turned out to be. You must think these here li’l ole arms of your’n is mighty long …”

  I was carried into the house and undressed for bed and the doctor was called. I cried bitterly; as much from the disappointment of finding the plane so far beyond my reach as from the pain.

  When the doctor came I heard my mother telling him about the plane and asking if anything was wrong with my mind. He explained that I had had a fever for several hours. But I was kept in bed for a week and I constantly saw the plane in my sleep, flying just beyond my fingertips, sailing so slowly that it seemed barely to move. And each time I’d reach out
to grab it I’d miss and through each dream I’d hear my grandma warning:

  “Young man, young man

  Yo arm’s too short

  To box with God.…”

  “Hey, son!”

  At first he did not know where he was and looked at the old man pointing, with blurred eyes.

  “Ain’t that one of you all’s airplanes coming after you?”

  As his vision cleared he saw a small black shape above a distant field, soaring through waves of heat. But he could not be sure and with the pain he feared that somehow a horrible recurring fantasy of being split in twain by the whirling blades of a propeller had come true.

  “You think he sees us?” he heard.

  “See? I hope so.”

  “He’s coming like a bat outa hell!”

  Straining, he heard the faint sound of a motor and hoped it would soon be over.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Like a nightmare,” he said.

  “Hey, he’s done curved back the other way!”

  “Maybe he saw us,” he said. “Maybe he’s gone to send out the ambulance and ground crew.” And, he thought with despair, maybe he didn’t even see us.

  “Where did you send the boy?”

  “Down to Mister Graves,” Jefferson said. “Man what owns this land.”

  “Do you think he phoned?”

  Jefferson looked at him quickly.

  “Aw sho. Dabney Graves is got a bad name on accounta them killings, but he’ll call though …”

  “What killings?”

  “Them five fellers … ain’t you heard?” he asked with surprise.

  “No.”

  “Eve’body knows ’bout Dabney Graves, especially the colored. He done killed enough of us.”