Three Days Before the Shooting ... (134 page)

And now, putting the request aside to be answered along with the others, he stared at Janey’s thick envelope with his head cocked to the side; then, picking up an old ivory-handled switchblade knife from his desk, he snapped it open, examined its edge, and shook his head with a sense of irony. For although he now
used it as a letter opener there was a moment during a robbery attempt when his life and death had swayed and balanced on the point of its razor-sharp blade. Like two locomotives plunging head-on toward a single junction, things might have gone either way but for the Lord’s throwing the switch in his favor and allowing him to wrestle it out of the young man’s hand. In the struggle his own hand had been cut and in his anger and outrage over someone he’d known since childhood doing such a thing he’d had an impulse to repay him in kind. But in forcing the overgrown boy to explain his action and learning that it was out of a desperate effort to reach his dying father, he had let him go and kept the knife in exchange for railroad fare to Chicago.
Hickman
, he asked himself,
would you have used it? No, not really, but I might have broken his arm. But, thank the Lord, he gave me a way out and this “deadly weapon” was turned into a two-way ticket which took the boy to Chicago, and me safely home with a fine letter opener. Truly, the miraculous thing about miracles is their ability to escape our awareness. So blessed be the knife that binds instead of severing!

Slitting the envelope, he removed a sheaf of ruled school-tablet paper and gave it a rapid flip-through of his thumb. There were fifteen pages, all covered with Janey’s careful schoolgirl’s writing; and now, settling back in his desk chair, he began the slow process of reading.

“Dear Alonzo,” she began,

This leaves me well in body but troubled in mind. Because although I have been in pretty good health since we were last in touch there are things taking place out here which have me worried, and I think that they are things you ought to know about. Now it will probably take me a whole week to get them all down on paper, but since my handwriting is still almost as good as it was when I was a young woman I do not think it will take you that long to read my letter. I smile when I write this because anybody who can read those little fly specky music notes like you ought to be able to read
anything
. I surely hope so, as I am going to try and give you the
feel
of things, and since they are speeding up I hope you will give it your full attention. Besides, you will remember that you used to give me the devil because I did not write much in my letters, and said that for folks who knew how to put a pen to paper but did not was a sin. That’s right. And you also said that not writing was one of the real reasons that we as a people know so little about what is happening to us after we get scattered from the places where we were born.

Well, when I consider what has happened to some of us I do not know whether you were right or wrong, because it might be better that those we left behind did not know. Because otherwise they might get discouraged. But all right, you wanted me to write, so I am going to write you the longest letter of my life, and I want you to read it carefully and think about what I’m trying to say. I hope also that you will please forgive this purple ink, which is due to Cliofus. I sent him to the store for some blue and this is what he brought back, but since time is pressing I have to use it. Cliofus says it was all they had, but knowing him like I do I believe that he got it because he knew that I was writing to you. You will remember that he never forgets a thing, even if it is only something he has just heard about. So I think it is his way of signifying and teasing at me. Anyway, I had better get started with my long distant letter.

Remember how it was when you were living out here and folks had a way of running everything into the ground? The white folks did it and so did the Indians. Also the Natives like that old rascal who calls himself Love New, remember him? Anyway, our folks were probably the worst. Folks from other states used to call us wild, and Texas white folks insisted that it was because we did not know our place or anything else, including how to empty a rained-in boot (Smile). They said that giving the Territory statehood was a mistake because it gave us Negroes an inch and we were taking it and stretching it mile by mile. Maybe that is why so many of those thugs and musicians you used to hang around with rushed up here from San Antonio and Dallas. Like a lot of folks from all over the South they knew a good thing when they saw it, so they came up here to run wild. But it would seem that in those days no matter where you came from things out here were just too unorganized, and with all the new freedom to deal with folks had not yet learned how to keep themselves or anything else in reasonable order, therefore they just overdid everything.

And not only the people, because even the weather went to extremes. Sometimes the sun would be shining on one side of the street and the rain falling on the other, all at the same time. It was like there wasn’t enough sky and space and earth for any one kind of weather to have its own fair turn. Sometimes we had rain, snow, sleet, hail, and sunshine all coming down together. Therefore the weather itself must have encouraged people to act in the same disorganized fashion. So being that kind of country it attracted that kind of people.

Which you ought to know because, come to think about it, when it came to overdoing things you were Mister A-Number-One. And maybe if you had not been we would have got somewhere together. But oh, no! You
ate
too much, and you
drank
too much, and you
gambled
too much, and danced and played that horn too much. And what’s worse and which sorrows me to say, you chased the “chippies” too much. Yes, sir; you went after the young women like a buck-duck after a june bug—especially the draggle tails. And on top of all that, not only did you let them
chase
you, you let them
catch
you! And I mean so easy and so often that it is a wonder that you did not kill your fool self or cause somebody else—man, woman, or green-eyed boyfriend—to get mad enough to do it for you. So praise the good Lord that you finally turned around and got yourself saved!

Now please, Alonzo, don’t go swelling up and taking me seriously. I’m joking in order to say that just like back in your time out here things are still ripping and tearing along like they do not know where or when to stop. And my reason for this letter is that recently they have taken what I consider to be a very strange turn. Now it could be that it is only me and the results of my reaching the time of sad good-byes. I say this because hardly a week goes by but there is another old friend passing from the scene. Naturally I hate to see it happening, but I know it is a part of life and has to be. Like they say, we all have to go when the wagon comes, and some day soon it will come for me. So that in itself does not worry me, for I know that we all have a time to die. But what does have me bothered is some of the things that have been showing up in the train of some of these passings. It’s not the deaths—which so far have all been due to natural causes—so much as certain signs of unseen things to come which have appeared with them. And before I go any farther, please do not go acting the preacher and start putting me down as superstitious or anything like that. Just remember that if
I
can believe in the water turning into wine and in the raising of the dead—which I surely do, and probably even stronger than you do
—you
can go along with me and consider that sometimes things have strange connections with things to come which are revealed in the form of warnings.

Like recently, when I had this dream of fire—which for me is always a warning dream. In it I saw a big house that was swirling with sparks and filled with smoke, and I mean black smoke and white smoke. And the fire inside was so hot that the glass in the windows was crackling and popping like popcorn, and through the windows I could see the smoke fairly boiling. It was a very big house, a white one, and such as I have never seen in all my waking life. So it must have been the house of a very rich person, and there were a heap of folks in there yelling and screaming and calling on the Lord. And yet with all that yelling and praying I could not see a single fire wagon in the entire dream. Neither were there any policemen or doctors or men in white coats running around trying to get them out. In fact there was nobody else looking on but me. I was by myself and alone, just standing there in a big wide street and feeling that I was being called upon to do something for them, but unable to move. Alonzo, you are a naturally smart man and gifted with vision, so I hope you will think about this dream. Oh, yes; I almost forgot to tell you that back beyond the house and off to one side a little piece I could see a river winding down a hill, and the water was sparkling in the sunshine and rippling along but it was too far away to be of help in the fire. Not even if someone had been there to use it. And on the other side of the river there was some kind of park with statues and some lovely trees. But the main thing I remember is the burning house and the smoke and all those pitiful screams.

Now, even though I finally woke up and realized that it was only a dream, a situation like that is bad enough to worry anybody. So if you want to dismiss it and say that I am just getting old or maybe just jumping at shadows, I can go along with you. But then I must ask, what do you make of what happened soon afterwards?

Only last week come Tuesday I went to see one of my old friends laid to rest, and on the way to the graveyard, which you will remember because except for having so many more folks buried in it is the same we used when you were living out here. Anyway, we were on our way out there when something terrible happened, and I tell you truly that I have never seen anything like it in all my born days.

There were fourteen or fifteen big limousines in the procession and considering how the undertakers try to rush folks into the ground these days they were moving not too fast and not too slow, even though we were already past the city limits and still had the graveside ceremony to go through with. Therefore everybody was still feeling sad about our old friend’s passing and thinking on final things. Not a soul was talking, at least not in the car where I was riding, and I could hear the engine and the tires working their way to the graveyard the same as they had so many times before. Yes, and like I have done before. So I was sitting there on one of the little folding seats behind and to the left of the driver, and as we rolled along I was looking into the side mirror and thinking of times that had been and at the same time I was watching a little white child bouncing a big blue ball in a yard along the way and the ball bouncing less and less and the child getting smaller and smaller while the fields and trees kept flowing past like they were part of a different and safer world.

But then, just as the procession started to take a wide curve in the highway, I could see the hearse in which the driver was sitting up straight behind the wheel with his cap tilted on the side of his head, looking a little sporty but in his way almost as dignified as the undertaker sitting there beside him wearing a shiny stovepipe hat. I mention this because off the job this particular driver is known as something of a liquor-head, but get him behind that wheel and he’s sober as a judge and on his best dignified behavior. So watching him made me think on how mixed life and folks can be, and how the very blackness of the hearse with its gleam and scrolls and church-style windows together with all those fine limousines strung out behind it can make for a sight that is both fine and grave and yet so awfully sad. And I swear, Alonzo, it was at that very moment that I
saw flames
flare up in the back of that hearse!

For a second or so I think I’m dreaming, but before I can get my thoughts together the rear section of the hearse with the flag-draped coffin and wreaths and flowers is filling up with smoke and flames, and right away I know that it is not a dream. No, sir! Because now the driver is yelling to the undertaker and wrestling the hearse to the side of the road, and the two of them are leaping out and waving like mad for the rest of the cars to stop.

I tell you, the sight of it was a pity and a terror and an ice-cold chill to the heart. There I was, still holding on from bucking back and forth from our driver’s slamming on the brakes and hearing the other limousines skidding and banging and bumping to a stop. And then everybody is tumbling out and rushing to the hearse to try to help out. But before we can get close enough to do anything the fire gives out with a roar that freezes eveybody dead in his tracks. And me among them, because I will not lie. That fire goes leaping up so fast and so fierce that all we can do, whether man or woman, young folks or old, is to just stand there on that lonely highway and watch our old friend go up in smoke. Folks are weeping and wailing and wringing their hands, but in the face of that fire all of us are as helpless as newborn babes.

And it isn’t that the undertaker and his drivers aren’t doing all in their power to get the poor soul’s body out of there, no, sir! They’re dashing around and spraying stuff out of those red fire extinguishers and hitting at where it was shooting out with their caps and coats, but it had about as much effect as spitting into a cyclone. Those flames caught on so swift and got so hot that they wouldn’t let the poor men get close enough to even open the rear door. And when one of them manages to break one of the big side windows with his fire extinguisher the flames leap out and catch him so that the others have to tackle him and roll him on the ground to save his life. And too, since it’s a kind of windy day, his breaking the glass makes the fire burn even faster.