Three Days Before the Shooting ... (110 page)

But instead he was gazing at a drastic loss of pigment which had left the man’s face an incongruous battleground of conflicting colors. And as he blinked the taut face stared back with the fierce immutability of an African mask which bore grotesque scarification of mysterious design, and the white, red-ringed splotches of which appeared to dance above the blue-blackness of its surrounding flesh as though to challenge any quick assumptions as to its racial identity.

Good Lord, Hickman
, he thought,
you’ve been grabbed by a red-white-and-blue black man
and recoiled with a shudder. For as he wavered before the enigmatic force of his captor’s bloodshot gaze he was appalled that the wild exertions of a skin-sick stranger could have tricked him into violating a basic principle of his own racial pride.

But you laughed
, he thought as he hung in the air,
you laughed! So if getting your goat was his intention he’s done much better than he could have expected. And even though his coming at you so sudden threw you off guard, it’s still disgraceful and shameful. So now a total stranger has you up in the air and you’ll have to redeem what you’ve done by hanging around to find out why. And if your reaction shows on your face I hope he’ll forgive you—if not, may the Lord make him saner than he’s acting, or you’ll probably end up having to fight him…
.

And with eyes still probing the melancholy mystery of the stranger’s face he felt the shock of his feet striking the sidewalk. And in stumbling and regaining his balance he saw the stranger’s pink-splotched lips come apart with an explosion of breath, was sprayed with spittle, and had his ears blasted by an ecstatic shout of, “Good God, Chief, am I glad to see
you!”

“I’d like to believe you,” he said as he wiped his face with his handkerchief, “but after what you’ve just put me through I don’t know. Anyway, take it easy, man; take it easy, or you’ll drown me….”

“Man, oh,
Man
!” the stranger sang as with hands on hips he rocked back and gave him a gap-toothed grin, “I thought they’d
never
let you go; but here, years after I’d given up all hopes of ever seeing you again, I happen to look out the window back there and here you come, a man in the flesh!”

Puzzled, Hickman managed to smile while wondering if the man were someone he had known during the old days. Or had Ole Uncle Bud, the messenger, run around the corner and come back to test him under a different disguise?

“Is that right,” he said. “Well, it does happen that way sometimes. You come back to town after a long time away and before you walk a block someone you least expect looks up and recognizes you….”

“That’s right, Chief,” the stranger said, “and that’s what’s so
wonderful
about
our reunion! Man, I’ve been thinking about you, dreaming about you, and wanting to
talk
with you—which I thought I never would—and then I look out that barbershop window and here you are in the flesh!”

As he studied the stranger’s face, Hickman smiled.

“And I bet I can guess why you wanted to see me,” he said. “You’re one of the fellows I left town owing a gambling debt—is that it?”

“Gambling
debt?
What
gambling debt? Hell, Chief, you know that with me gambling was always easy-come, easy-go! Besides, you were never that kind of gambler. What I’m talking about is how I turned my
back
on you.
That’s
the point, and I was wrong as hell! But I did it! Yes, sir! So I’m guilty and I been dying to ask for your forgiveness….”

“Forgiveness,”
Hickman said. “Forgive you for what?”

“For
what,”
the stranger—Leroy—said. Then with an abrupt shifting of crippled legs his head shot forward. “Look, Chief,” he said, “I understand what you’re up to and I appreciate it, I really do. But if you make it easy on me I won’t be able to stand it! So don’t play me cheap, ‘cause, man, I
need your
forgiveness. I need it for letting them confuse me about you when I should have known better! But, naw, after they caught you and throwed you in jail and all—that’s when I began to give up on you. Me, a true dyed-in-the-wool
believer!
I can see you’re surprised, but that’s the truth! Instead of keeping the faith and sticking by you through thick and through thin, man, I gave
up
on you! So now you can see why I got to have your forgiveness!”

“All right,” Hickman said, still puzzled but with a sense of relief, “if that’s all you want, everything’s copacetic. I forgive you. But to tell you the truth, in those days I was in so many raids that I don’t even remember the trial you’re referring to.”

“Sure,” Leroy said, “and that’s because you tried to teach us to always remember the past but look and live for the future. Besides, with me coming at you so sudden it’s no wonder you don’t dig me. But hell, Chief, seeing you so unexpected has me all stirred
up
! Look, it’s hot as hell out on this sidewalk, especially with me wearing this neck-cloth. How about stepping around the corner where we can talk in the shade? You don’t mind, do you, Chief?”

“No,” Hickman said, “because as you’ve probably heard listening to problems has become a kind of duty—I mean a
responsibility
of mine….”

“Then come on, man,” Leroy said, “come
on
!”

And now, following Leroy’s rocking gait around the corner and into the shade cast by the building, his mind reeled with the names of cripples, both white and black, whom he’d known in the old days.
Hickman
, he thought,
you’ve known gambling cripples, pimping cripples, even con-man cripples as well as cripples who were hardworking men with families. And some who were musicians and dancers—like Peg Leg Bates, Chick Webb, and Big-time Crip. Then there were all those assorted neighborhood cripples. Characters like No-toes, Crip Wilson … yes, and Tippy-Lee Morton, who transformed
walking with his mismatched legs into an act of graceful elegance. And there was Sugar-foot, and Crippled Charleston, Stilts Benford, String-halted Harry, Dog-trot Johnson, and Jake-leg Mac, who had to wear leg braces after drinking poisoned Jamaica Ginger. Oh, yes, and don’t forget Funky-fingers Hagerson, that thin claw-handed pickpocket who worked small fairs, circuses, and tent-meetings; Hagerson, who robbed school cafeterias, stole books from libraries and silver sacramental vessels from churches, and swore that he couldn’t be caught because he paid some voodoo woman to piss seven times in those high-topped, bulldog-toed shoes which he stole for luck from a tough New Orleans Cajun policeman—talk about hedging voodoo mystery with civil authority! Seven times? Yes, seven times is what he insisted…. I’ll never forget Hagerson, whose conked hair was
always
in a state of rebellion, and a bully who took bribes from pimps, whores, and small-time gamblers and got away with it by insisting that he was both a root doctor and an undercover man for J. Edgar Hoover; Hagerson, whose hand was maimed when that gal Sloppy Sal splashed him with lye from a Charleston pistol after she violated her code by giving him a freebie and discovered that the clown couldn’t deliver—I’ve known enough such characters to make up a circus, but not a one who was named Leroy. And none of them had this fellow’s sick skin, mechanical movements, or manners so violent…
.

“Now this is better,” Leroy said as he threw the neck-cloth over his shoulder like a cape and reached into the pocket of his black sports jacket to remove a blue silk handkerchief.

“Much better,” he said, leaning back and propping himself against the guardrail that surrounded a wide empty area of triangular space which dropped two floors to the building’s basement. “Now we can talk.”

“I’m with you,” Hickman said with a look at his watch, “but you’ll have to make it short, because I’m already late for an important appointment.”

“Oh, sure,” Leroy said. “So like I was saying, I been stirred up about you for over a
year
. That’s the truth, a whole year! Ain’t been able to sleep for thinking about you. Because like I say, after that trial—man, I lost heart and put you
down!
But then, about a month ago, things started
changing
!”

“What do you mean?”

“It was this way, Chief: First I had this warning that came in the middle of the night on the dark of the moon. I was beat to my socks and sleeping real sound when I heard this noise which woke me up. That’s when I realized that something strange was in the room. But while I could
feel
it I couldn’t
see it
. So then I raised up, trying to see what it was but still couldn’t see nothing. Then, after a while, my eyes adjusted to the blackness, and over in the darkest part of the room I see something curled up in my old leather chair. At first I think it’s a dog or something, but the longer I look the better I could see, and that’s when I realized that it was a little ole man—that’s right! And I say to myself, Leroy, we’re getting the hell
out of
here!

“So I reach over real quiet and get holt of my britches and start to easing them on—and you know what happens? Right away this little man raises up and
reaches for
his
britches, and he’s matching me move for move! So at that I freeze with one foot in the air, and he does the same thing and stops like he’s waiting to see my next move. And Chief, I tell you, I don’t waste any time. But when I stick my foot in my pants leg and start pulling them on I know right away that I’m really in trouble!

“Because when he starts to putting on
his
britches instead of doing it one leg at a time like an ordinary man
he
holds his out in front of him a bit and then goes into a deep kind of trance or something. And just when I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on, all of a sudden he gives a little hop into the air, and zip!—he has
both
his legs in ‘em! That’s right! And before I can bat my eye he’s already buckling up his belt! And I mean faster than a fireman when the whistle blows for a six-alarm fire! That’s when I panic and try to get my foot into the other leg of my britches and start scrambling around for my shoes to get the hell out of there. But when I do he looks down at some big ole gaiters with zippers on the sides which I see sitting on the floor in front of him. And before I know what’s happening he’s into those suckers with both feet and has zipped them! And
then
he’s looking straight at me like we were playing checkers and he’s daring me by saying ‘Move, sah! Move-move! Move!’ And Chief, what’s worse was the fact that when he zipped up those gaiters they were way too big for him, but then he started to
grow!
It was like he was being filled with an
air hose
, and the bigger he gets the more familiar he gets. And what more he’s still watching every move I’m making.

“So with that I yells, ‘Hey, man, what’s going
on
in here!’ But all he does is frown, and the way he does it makes me know that I’m
really
in trouble. And that’s when it comes over me that from the way he put on his britches and gaiters and then rises up so big and starts looking at me so accusing he has
got to
be nobody but
you
!”

“Me?” Hickman laughed. “Oh, come on! Do you mean that you dreamed that I was a ghost?”

“Oh, no, Chief, not a ghost, but the special kind of man you’ve always been. And by the fact that anybody who could do what
he
was doing simply
had
to be
you
. Oh, yes, I knew it! You had made yourself small to get my attention, and now that you were big again I wanted to make sure. So I asked you, ‘Brother, who the hell
are
you?’

“But remember, Chief, instead of identifying yourself you spoke up real stern and said, ‘That’s mistake number one. Don’t question what you see, use your senses!’

“And that’s when I see you whip out a little black notebook and write something in it.

“So then I start to ask you what you meant, but before I can open my mouth you say, ‘That’s mistake number two, so don’t repeat it—use your eyes!’

“‘But be reasonable,’ I said. ‘It’s dark as hell in here!’

“‘Mistake number three,’ you said. ‘Haven’t I taught you that dark men shall see through dark days?’

“‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But…’

“‘… And that those who seek the truth in darkness shall find it?’

“‘Right again,’ I said, ‘you did, but that was a long time ago….’

“‘… And didn’t I teach you that there’s a brightness in blackness and whiteness in darkness?’

“So I said, ‘Sure, you did, but in a situation like this I’d have to strike a match to see it….’

“And that’s when you bowed your head and said, ‘Now you’re learning: Enlightenment requires unceasing effort and strong determination!’ And I could see you writing in that notebook again.

“So then I said, ‘Learning
what
‘—and right away I knew I was wrong again.

“‘Mistake number four,’ you said, and you sounded mean as hell.

“‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m kinda ignorant, and besides it’s been a long time, so why don’t you give a man some
instruction?
Or is this some kind of examination?’

“And you said, ‘Now you’re riffing, are you prepared to listen?’

“‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘I’m tuned in sharp and have the volume turned up as high as it can go….’

“So then you said, ‘Listen carefully and follow these rules: Think, reflect, and remember! Then advance by retracing your footsteps and casting down your bucket where you were. For then ye shall see that all things converge in thee as in me—
all
things! Yea! Go thee then to Constitution Avenue and peer into the many cracks that abound there, and watch out for the mirrors hidden within! Yea, and for the many images reflected therein. These will be many and of various shapes and sizes, but study them
all
, and with strict attention! For while some are true, many are false, as are those whom ye shall see revealed within them. Ye shall see strange shapes that are familiar and familiar shapes which are passing strange, therefore be not distracted by distractions—fish, fowl, or funky woman crying out lies against thee. And remember that when such as ye steps into a scene the action changes, for it has been structured to exclude thee. Therefore it cannot sustain thy black reality without drastic modification. This, then, is thy opportunity, for ye shall enter the cracks as a corrective. Thus be ye not sorrowful that ye lack a Cadillac—shanks’ mare will get thee there!’