Three Days Before the Shooting ... (13 page)

It was this release, this feeling of relaxation which we sought in our gatherings, and if there was something working deep within each of us, some nagging unease, the direction of the conversation diverted our attention. Sam’s dark hands had just swept up the empty glasses of our first round of drinks and replaced them when Virgil Wiggins, the economics expert, introduced the incident which determined the drift of talk.

“What,” he said, “do you think of the new style of conspicuous consumption?”

And there it was, right out in the open, wearing a comic mask. We
laughed explosively, LeeWillie Minifees’ car sprang aflame in our imaginations, and I could see him vividly, orating on the startled Senator’s hillside.

“It was a doozy,” Thompson said, “a first-class doozy!”

“No,” I said, “not a Duesenberg, a Caddy, a Cadillac.”

“Of course,” Thompson said. “You mean the car, I’m referring to this act—
that was
a doozy!”

“Well, whatever the brand, he burned it with malice and forethought!”

“Where on earth did that fellow come from?” Wiggins said.

“Hell, from Chattanooga,” Stiles Larkin said. “He rose like a wave of heat from the Jeff Davis Highway. McIntyre was there and heard him admit it.”

“Actually he was from Harlem,” I said. “He’d been working in Chattanooga.”

“I would have given a week’s salary to have seen it,” Wiggins said. “When I heard about it I thought, ‘Thorstein Veblen, sir, today your theory has been demonstrated to the tenth power!’ ”

“And in horsepower….”

We laughed.

“How the hell did Veblen get into it?”

“Veblen? Why, he was in it all the time,” Wiggins said.

“You mean that colored fellow had been reading
Veblen?”

“Oh, no, man,” Wiggins said. “I mean that at bottom Veblen was an ironist, a humorist among the economists. The essence of his concept of ‘conspicuous consumption’ is comic.”

“That fellow played hell with classical economic theory. Maybe the publisher should have that black boy illustrate Veblen’s books.”

Larkin swirled his glass. “Did you ever hear of anything like it,” he said, “a man burning his own automobile before an audience?”

“No,” Thompson said, “but during the twenties and thirties there were those rich Oklahoma Indians who traveled around in hook-and-ladder fire trucks and in brand-new red custom-built hearses.”

“You’re right,” Wiggins said. “That is a near precedent but not quite. This fellow went far beyond the Indians. Because while one could say that the Indians did such things because they were outside our culture, or from a different culture, this colored fellow was born to our own values and knew exactly what he was doing. —Or else he was mad. He had to be.”

Wiggins shook his head. “Just leave it to Sunraider; if there’s something outrageous to be ignited in people, he’s the man to do it.”

“It took more than the Senator to set that fellow off,” Thompson said. “All Sunraider did was to tip his balance.”

“Well, it’ll be interesting to see what that car-burning will bring out of the insurance people,” Larkin said.

“They’ll be wild,” McGowan said, looking at us each in turn. “They’ll be ass-kicking wild!”

“They won’t be as wild as the Senator is.”

“He’s wild all right,” Wiggins said, “but can you blame him? That boy tried to tie a knot in his tail.”

I could see McGowan’s eyes light up. “Yeah, gentlemen, like we say down South, ole Senator Sunraider is as hot as Little Sister—and as you know, there ain’t a thing anybody can do about that!”

I shook my head, “No, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. The Senator’s a strange one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t sitting in his study right this minute laughing his head off. Do you forget what he did at the National Gallery that time? He’s such a professional at provoking people that nothing appears to get to his emotions.”

“True,” Wiggins said. “He’s something of an actor, but I suspect that this got to him. You said yourself that he was shaking his fist and raving while the car was burning.”

“That colored fellow really had the capper,” Thompson said. “He turned that joke by an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees.”

“He switched it all right,” Larkin said, “but in a hell of a masochistic way. Can you imagine the frame of mind a man has to be in to commit such an extreme act?”

“The act speaks for itself,” I said, “but what it says is as confusing as hell to me, and I was there when it happened. The car was burning, and that takes a bit of doing, and yet and still he
was
laughing and going on while he harangued us.”

“The point that interests me,” Wilson said, “is that a fellow like that was willing to pay for it. People like that don’t come by Cadillacs so easily. He probably decided to do anything he could think of to get back at the Senator, and this was the damndest way he could find to do it. Reminds me of the one last year who tried to hold up a bank with a zip gun. When they caught him his teeth were chattering, his eyes were rolling in his black face, and his knees were knocking, and all he could say was, ‘White folks, please don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!’ Bastard almost got away with fifty thousand dollars!”

“Hell,” Larkin said, “if I’d done all that with a zip gun, I would have been scared too—not for taking the money, you understand, but for having the nerve to attempt it with something like that.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Wilson said. “You’re right, too. It reminds me of the two out in California who robbed a bank which had signs all over it stating that it was protected by motion-picture cameras. They had cased the bank for days and carried off the robbery like clockwork and got away for three weeks. Then one of them happened to recognize his own picture in a magazine, and when he had a friend read it for him he got so disgusted that he turned himself in. Pleaded guilty and told the judge that he belonged in jail so he’d have time to learn how to read!”

“I read it, I read it,” Larkin said. “He said he was too ignorant to be robbing banks.”

“He wasn’t too ignorant to rob a bank,” Wilson said, “he was just too ignorant not to leave his calling card. But when I consider such exploits, I’d be a bit worried if
I
were the Senator.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“That someone else might call his joke in a more personal fashion. In fact, I’m surprised that he hasn’t provoked someone long before now.”

Then, as the barely formed thought took shape in my mind, Wilson looked up, frowning.

“Say,” he asked, “have we ever had a colored assassin?”

I looked at him, my mouth agape. It was as though the words had leaped from my mind to his, or his to mine. Across the room, past his shoulder, I could see Sam, our waiter, standing against the blue wall with folded arms. Several pitchers of iced water and a large white bowl piled high with iced squares of butter stood on the low serving table beside him as he looked down the long sweep of the room to where a girl, whose red hair flowed to the shoulders of her white suit in gorgeous waves, was moving through the door. Then I heard Thompson asking indignantly, “Do you mean in the
United States?”

“That’s right. Have we?”

“Now, why on earth would you think of
that?”

“It just struck me,” Wilson said, “after this car-burning thing, maybe it’s time we started thinking of such possibilities.”

“Gentlemen, what Wilson means,” McGowan said, “is that a nigra who’d burn a Cadillac would do just about anything. Ain’t that right, Wilson? A nigra like that’ll burn good United States money!”

We laughed. McGowan could be quite amusing on the Negroes and was constantly sounding off over affronts, real or imagined, which he felt that Negroes in the District committed against his idea of a well-ordered society. My problem with him was that I had difficulty in determining when he was serious and when simply joking. For him, colored people were either objects for amused contempt or the greatest danger to the nation. Now I could feel him working up to one of his endless tirades on the nature and foibles of the Negro, and I was relieved that Sam the waiter was far across the room.

“Now that was quite a nigra,” McGowan said, “but, gentlemen, y’all don’t have to go into any brainstorm in order to analyze what that nigra was doing, because I’m here to tell you. What that nigra was doing was simply running amok! His brain snapped! And far as he was concerned he was back up a tree throwing coconuts!”

Across the table Wilson was frowning, looking like a man remembering a bad dream. McGowan’s humor hadn’t fired me either, although the others were laughing.

“But I’m serious,” Wilson said. “Can anyone think of one?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Larkin said. “Let’s see, there was McKinley, Roosevelt—I mean Cermak—Huey Long … but none of the assassins were colored.”

McGowan thumped down his glass. “A nigra
assassin,”
he said, “are y’all getting drunk already?”

“There might have been a few local killings with a political motive,” Thompson said. “Here and there over the years some small-town politician might have been shot or knifed—like that fellow down in Louisiana who made the mistake of getting into a colored man’s bed and allowed himself to get caught in the act. But you wouldn’t call that
political;
that was sheer bad judgment. I’d have shot the bastard myself.”

“I say,” McGowan said, “are y’all getting drunk?”

“Come to think of it, though,” Wiggins said, “how can you tell when those people are doing something politically significant? Until recently not enough of them voted in the South, and here in the North so few take roles in civic affairs or express themselves on matters beyond civil rights even within the major political parties, so how can you tell what they’re up to? We just don’t know enough about them. We don’t have enough social forms through which we can see them. I’ll have to do a think piece on this problem. We need to have a few more participating in our major institutions if for no other reason than to provide social perspectives through which we can keep in touch with what’s happening among them—”

“Forms!” McGowan said. “
What forms?
Hell, we don’t need any cotton-pickin’ forms! Don’t you Yankees recognize that everything the nigra
does
is political? Thompson, you amaze me, you really do; because you’re Southern-born. Down South even the little-bitty children know
that muc
h about the nigra. Because unlike you Yankees, there are three things we Southerners are brought up knowing all about, and that’s history, politics, and nigras. And especially do we know about the political significance of the nigra!”

“Oh, drop it, Mac,” Wiggins said. “I’m being serious.”

“No, suh, I beg to differ,” McGowan said. “I’m being serious; you’re being Yankee frivolous. Now I’m going to tell you one more time:
Almost everything the nigra does is political!”

“Literally everything?”

“I mean everything, starting with things you Yankees would pass off as insignificant. Will you give me a few minutes?”

“Give you?” Thompson said. “Hell, you can’t talk without making a filibuster. So go on, get it over with.”

McGowan rested his forearms on the table, gripping a dead cigar between his caged fingers, his head to one side.

“Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “if you catch a nigra in the wrong
section of town after dark, he’s being political, and that’s basic because he knows he’s out of his place. If he brushes against a white person on the street or on a stairway,
that’s
political. Because, you have to understand, every once in a while the nigras get together and organize these bumping campaigns. They’ll try to knock you off the sidewalk and break your ribs, and then they’ll beg your pardon, pretending it was an accident. But down South we know it’s nigra politics. So you want to watch the nigra’s face, because that way you can catch his mood and intention.

“If a nigra rolls his eyes and pokes out his mouth at you, that’s not only politics, but downright subversion. If he puts on airs, watch him! If he talks about moving up North, he’s being political again. Because we know for a fact that the nigras are moving up North in keeping with a long-range plan to seize control of the American Government. So watch his conduct. If he talks too loud on the street or talks about sending his kids north to college, or if he buys a tractor—all this is of political significance. Be especially wary of the nigra who tries to buy himself a bulldozer, because that is one of the most dangerous political acts of all. A nigra like that is out to knock down Southern tradition and bury it lock, stock, barrel, and gatepost! He’s worse than a whole herd of carpetbaggers or seven lean years of boll weevils—Waiter,” he called, “bring us another drink!” And then to us, “There’s absolutely nothing to dry a man out like trying to educate a bunch of Yankees.”

I watched Sam the waiter approach, with uneasiness, fearing that McGowan would offend him. After all, during the thirties I had learned to regard the sensibilities of his people and to avoid all anti-minority stereotypes and clichés. One simply didn’t laugh at victims of minority persecution. But if Sam was aware of our conversation, he revealed nothing in his face.

“H’ya Sam,” McGowan said.

“Fine, Mr. McGowan, sir,” Sam said. Then he silently filled our glasses, smiled remotely and, as silently, slipped away. Then McGowan went on.

“Let me tell y’all something else. If you catch a nigra buying his food and clothing from the wrong dealer—or worse, if he goes to another town to trade, that’s nigra politics
pretending
to be nigra economics. That’s something for you to think about, Wiggins. And if a nigra owns more than one shotgun, rifle, or pistol, it’s political. If he forgets to say ‘sir’ to a white man or tries to talk Yankee talk, if he drives too doggone fast or too doggone slow, or if he comes up with one of these little bug-eyed foreign cars—all these things are political, and don’t y’all forget it!”

McGowan paused, drank, and looked around the table.

“Come on, educate us some more,” Thompson said. “Then we can talk seriously.”