Three Days Before the Shooting ... (11 page)

I tried to anticipate what was coming next but simply couldn’t accept it. The Negro was twirling the ball on that long, black-tipped wooden needle—the kind used to knit heavy sweaters—holding it between his thumb and fingers in the manner of a fire-eater at a circus, and I couldn’t have been more surprised if he had thrown back his head and plunged the flame down his throat than by what came next. Through the glasses now I could see sweat beading out beneath his scalp line and on the flesh above the stiff hairs of his moustache as he grinned broadly and took up the fiddle bow, and before I could move he had shot his improvised, flame-tipped arrow into the cloth top of the convertible.

“That black son of the devil!” someone shouted, and I had the impression of a wall of heat springing up from the grass before me. Then the flames erupted with a stunning blue roar that sent the spectators scattering. People
were shouting now, and through the blue flames before me I could see the Senator and his guests running from the terrace to halt at the top of the lawn, looking down, while behind me there were screams, the grinding of brakes, the thunder of footfalls as the promenaders broke in a great spontaneous wave up the grassy slope, then, sensing the danger of exploding gasoline, receding hurriedly to a safer distance below, their screams and curses ringing above the roar of the flames.

How, oh, how I wished for a cinema camera to synchronize with my recorder!—which I brought automatically into play as heavy fumes of alcohol and gasoline, those defining spirits of our age, filled the air. There before me unfolding in
tableau vivant was
surely the most unexpected picture of the year: in the foreground at the bottom of the slope, a rough semicircle of outraged faces; in the midforeground, up the gentle rise of the lawn, the white convertible shooting into the springtime air a radiance of intense blue flame, like that of a welder’s torch or a huge fowl being flambéed in choice cognac; then on the rise above, distorted by heat and flame, the dark-skinned, white-suited driver: standing with his gleaming face expressive of high excitement as he watched the effect of his deed. Then, rising high in the background atop the grassy hill, the white-capped Senator surrounded by his notable guests—all caught in postures eloquent of surprise, shock, and indignation.

The air was filled with an overpowering smell of wood alcohol, which, as the leaping red and blue flames took firm hold, mingled with the odor of burning paint, and leather. I became aware of the fact that the screaming had suddenly faded now, and I could hear the swoosh-pop-crackle and hiss of the fire. And with the gaily dressed crowd having become silent, it was as though I were alone, isolated, observing a conflagration produced by a stroke of lightning flashed out of a clear springtime sky. We watched with that sense of awe similar to that which medieval crowds must have observed during the burning of a great cathedral. We were stunned by the sacrificial act, and indeed, it was as though we had become the unwilling participants in a primitive ceremony requiring the sacrifice of a beautiful object in appeasement of some terrifying and long-dormant spirit, which the black man in the white suit was summoning from a long, black sleep. And as we watched, our faces strained as though in anticipation of the spirit’s materialization from the fiery metamorphosis of the white machine, a spirit which I was afraid, whatever the form in which it appeared, would be powerfully good or powerfully evil and absolutely out of place here and now in Washington; it was uncanny. The whole afternoon seemed to float, and when I looked again to the top of the hill the people there appeared to move in slow motion through watery waves of heat. Then I saw the Senator, with chef cap awry, raising his asbestos gloves above his head and beginning to shout. And it was then that the driver, the firebrand, went into action.

‘Til now, looking like the chief celebrant of an outlandish rite, he had
held firmly to his middle ground; too dangerously near the flaming convertible for anyone not protected by asbestos suiting to risk laying hands upon him, yet far enough away to highlight his human vulnerability to fire. But now as I watched him move to the left of the flames to a point allowing him an uncluttered view of the crowd, his white suit reflecting the flames, he was briefly obscured by a sudden swirl of smoke, and it was during this brief interval that I heard the voice.

Strong and hoarse and typically Negro in quality, it seemed to issue with eerie clarity from the fire itself. Then I was struggling within myself for the reporter’s dedicated objectivity and holding my microphone forward as he raised both arms above his head, his long, limber fingers widespread as he waved toward us.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “please don’t be disturbed! I don’t mean you any harm, and if you’ll just stay quiet a minute I’ll tell you what this is all about ….”

He paused and the Senator’s voice could be heard angrily in the background.

“Never mind him up there on top of the hill,” the driver said. “You can listen to him when I get through. He’s had too much free speech anyway. Now it’s
my
turn.”

And at this a man at the other end of the crowd shouted angrily and tried to break up the hill. He was grabbed by two men, and a hysterical, dark-haired woman wearing a well-filled chemise-style dress slipped to the ground holding a leg, shouting, “No, Fleetwood, no! That crazy nigger will kill you!”

The arsonist watched with blank-faced calm as the man was dragged protesting back into the crowd. Then a shift in the breeze whipped smoke down upon us and gave rise to a flurry of coughing.

“Now believe me,” the arsonist continued, “I know that it’s very, very hard for you folks to look at what I’m doing and not be disturbed, because for you it’s a crime and a sin.”

He laughed, swinging his fiddle bow in a shining arch as the crowd watched him fixedly.

“That’s because you know that most folks can’t afford to own one of these Caddies. Not even good, hardworking folks, no matter what the pictures in the papers say. So deep down it makes you feel some larceny. You feel that it’s unfair that everybody who’s willing to work hard can’t have one for himself. That’s right! And you feel that in order to get one it’s okay for a man to lie and cheat and steal—yeah, even swindle his own mother
if
she’s got the cash. That’s the difference between what you
say
you believe and the way you
act
if you get the chance. Oh, yes, because words is words, but life is hard and earnest, and these here Caddies is way, way out of this world!”

Pausing, he loosened the knot in his blue-and-white tie so that it hung down the front of his jacket in a large loop, then wiped his brow with a blue silk handkerchief.

“I don’t mean to insult you,” he said, bending toward us now, the fiddle bow resting across his knee, “I’m just reminding you of the facts. Because I can see in your eyes that it’s going to cost me more to get
rid
of this Caddie the way I have to do it than it cost me to get it. I don’t rightly know what the price will be, but I know that when you people get scaird and shook up, you get violent. —No, wait a minute.” He shook his head. “That’s not how I meant to say it. I’m sorry. I apologize.

“Listen, here it is: This
morning,”
he shouted now, stabbing his bow toward the mansion with angry emphasis. “This morning that fellow Senator
Sun-raider
up there started it when he shot off his mouth over the
radio
. That’s what this is all about! I realized that things had gotten out of
control
. I realized all of a sudden that the man was
messing …
with … my
Cadillac
, and that’s serious as all
hell…
.

“Listen to me, y’all: A little while ago I was romping past
Richmond
, feeling fine. I had played myself three hundred and seventy-five dollars and thirty-three cents’ worth of gigs down in Chattanooga, and I was headed home to
Harlem
as straight as I could go. I wasn’t bothering
anybody
. I didn’t even mean to stop by here, because this town has a way of making a man feel like he’s living in a fool’s
paradise
. When I’m
here
, I never stop thinking about the difference between what it
is
and what it’s
supposed
to be. In fact, I have the feeling that somebody put the
Indian
sign on this town a long, long time ago, and I don’t want to be around when it takes effect. So, like I say, I wasn’t even thinking about this town. I was rolling past Richmond and those white-walls were slapping those concrete slabs and I was rolling and the wind was feeling fine on my face—and that’s when I made my sad mistake. Ladies and gentlemen, I turned on the radio. I had nothing against anybody. I was just hoping to hear some Dinah, or Duke, or Hawk so that I could study their phrasing and improve my style and enjoy myself. —But what do I get? I’ll tell you what I got—”

He dropped his shoulders with a sudden violent twist, and his index finger jabbed toward the terrace behind him, bellowing, “I GOT THAT NO GOOD, NOWHERE SENATOR SUNRAIDER! THAT’S WHAT I GOT! AND WHAT WAS HE DOING? HE WAS TRYING TO GET THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO MESS WITH MY CADILLAC! AND WHAT’S MORE, HE WAS CALLING MY CADDY A ‘COON CAGE’!

“Ladies and gentlemen, I couldn’t believe my
ears
. I don’t know that Senator, and I know he doesn’t know me from old
Bodiddily
. But just the same, there he is, talking straight to me, and there was no use of my trying to
dodge. Because I do live in Harlem and I lo-mo-sho drive a Cadillac. So I had to sit there and take it like a little man. There he was, a United States SENATOR, coming through my own radio telling me what I ought to be driving, and recommending to the United States Senate and the whole country that the name of my car be changed simply because
I
, me, LeeWillie Minifees, was driving it!

“It made me feel faint. It upset my mind like a midnight telegram!

“I said to myself, ‘LeeWillie, what on earth is this man
talking
about? Here you been thinking you had it
made
. You been thinking you were as free as a bird—even though a black bird. That good-rolling Jersey Turnpike is up ahead to get you home. —And now here comes this Senator putting you in a cage! What in the world is going on?

“I got so nervous that all at once my foot weighed ninety-nine pounds, and before I knew it I was doing
seventy-five
. I was breaking the law! I guess I was really trying to get away from that voice and what the man had said. But I was rolling and I was listening. I couldn’t
help
myself. What I was hearing was going against my whole heart and soul, but I was listening
anyway
. And what I heard was beginning to make me see things in a new light. Yes, and that new light was making my eyeballs ache. And all the time Senator Sun-raider up in the Senate was calling my car a ‘coon cage.’

“So I looked around and I saw all that fine red leather there. I looked at the steel and at the chrome. I looked through the windshield and saw the road unfolding and the houses and the trees was flashing by. I looked up at the top, and I touched the button and let it go back to see if that awful feeling would leave me. But it wouldn’t leave. The
air
was hitting my face and the
sun
was on my head and I was feeling that good old familiar feeling
of flying
—but ladies and gentlemen, it was no longer the same! Oh, no; because I could still hear that Senator playing the
dozens
with my Cadillac!

“And just then, ladies and gentlemen, I found myself rolling toward an old man who reminded me of my granddaddy by the way he was walking beside the highway behind a plow hitched to an old, white-muzzled Missouri mule. And when that old man looked up and saw me, he waved. And I looked back through the mirror as I shot past him, and I could see him open his mouth and say something like, ‘Go on, fool!’ Then him and that mule was gone even from the mirror, and I was rolling on.

“And then, ladies and gentlemen, in a twinkling of an eye it struck me. A voice said to me,
‘LeeWillie, that old man is right: You are a fool. And that doggone Senator Sunraider is right; LeeWillie, you are a fool in a coon cage!’

“I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that old man and his mule both were talking to me. I said,
‘What do you mean about his being right?’
And they said, ‘
LeeWillie, look who he is,’and
I said,
‘I
know
who he is,’and
they said,
‘Well, LeeWillie, if a man like that, in the position he’s in, can think the way he does, then LeeWillie, you have GOT to be wrong!
‘

“So I said,
‘Thinking like that is why you’ve still got that mule in your lap.’I
said,
‘I worked
hard
to get the money to buy this Caddie,’
and he said,
‘Money? LeeWillie, can’t you see that it ain’t no longer a matter of money? Can’t you see it’s done gone way past the question of money? Now it’s a question of whether you can afford it in terms other than money.’

“And I said,
‘Man, what are you talking about, “terms other than money”?’
and he said,
‘LeeWillie, even this damn mule knows that if a man like that feels the way he’s talking and can say it right out over the radio and the TV, and from the place where he’s saying it—there’s got to be something drastically wrong with you for even wanting one. Son, the man’s done made it mean something different. All you wanted was to have a pretty automobile, but, fool, he done changed the Rules on you!’

“So against myself, ladies and gentlemen, I was forced to
agree
with the old man and the mule. That Senator up there wasn’t simply degrading my Caddy. That wasn’t the
point
. It’s that he would low-rate a thing so truly fine as a
Cadillac
just in order to degrade
me
and my
people
. He was accusing
me
of lowering the value of the auto, when all I ever wanted was the very best!