Three Days Before the Shooting ... (15 page)

Likewise, the nigras who love those English and French cars. Also watch all nigras who pick Lincolns and brag about the nigra vote electing the President of the United States; these nigras are playing politics even though they might not be able to vote themselves. And watch the nigra who comes telling a white man about the nigras’ ‘gross yearly income’ or the nigras’ stake in the ‘gross national product,’ because there you have an arrogant, biggety nigra who is right up in your face talking open politics and thinks you don’t know it. —Unless, of course, you’re convinced that the nigra is really trying to tell you that he knows how you and him can make some money. In this case the nigra is just trying to make a little hustle for himself, so make a deal with him and don’t worry about him because that nigra doesn’t give a damn about anybody or anything except himself, while the other type is trying to intimidate you.

“Finally, but by no means the least important, there’s the nigra who reads the Constitution and the law books and
broods
over them. And like unto him is the nigra who instead of scratching his head from time to time (which is the traditional Southern nigra manner when talking to a white man),
he
reaches back and scratches his
behind;
or else he scratches both his head
and
his behind at the same time and lets you see him doing it. Watch this type especially close because, gentlemen, even where the nigra
scratches
is political!

“But, gentlemen, after this very brief and inadequate catalog of nigra political deviousness, I must say once more that, to my knowledge, no nigra has ever even thought about assassinating anybody, because we bred that possibility out of him years ago!”

Even as I laughed I watched the conflicting expressions moving back and forth across McGowan’s broad face. It looked as though he wanted desperately to grin, but his grin, like a postage stamp which had become too moist, kept sliding in and out of position. And I in turn became suddenly agitated. There was pain in my laughter, and it seemed to me that McGowan was obsessed by history to the point of nightmare. He had confined the dark man in a mental package which he carried with him as constantly as the old-fashioned watch which he wore on a chain, and I imagined him consulting the one for time and the other for social and historical orientation.
What time is it, ole watch? Hey, black man, what place, what year, what social milieu is this? Or
perhaps he even had the dark man confined in the watch itself….

But as I laughed I realized that I envied McGowan, and I admitted to myself, with a twinge of embarrassment, that many of the things he said were not only amusing but contained an element of truth: And perhaps that truth lay precisely in Negroes being the source of his exasperated humor. For McGowan said things openly about Negroes, and with absolute conviction, that I dared not even think lest I undo my delicate balance of tolerance, justice, and sense of fair play. And I wondered if it could be that he was actually
more honest than I, that his open expression of his feelings, his prejudices, made him freer than I. And could it be, I wondered, that his freedom to say what he felt about all that Sam the waiter symbolized actually made him more honest than I. I was unsure of the answer, but suddenly I loathed his ability to make me feel buried fears and undesirable possibilities, his power to define so much of the social reality in which I lived and about which for a long time now I had ceased to think. And I asked myself if it were possible that the main object of McGowan’s passion was really not such as Sam but really a notion of history; a notion concerning a nonexistent past rather than a living people.

“Yes, gentlemen,” McGowan was saying, “the only way to protect yourself from the nigra is to master politics, and that you Yankees have never done because y’all have never really
studied the
nigra.”

Across the room I had watched Sam, his hands behind his back, smiling as he chatted pleasantly with a white-haired old gentleman. Were there Negroes like McGowan? I wondered. And, if so, what would they say about the likes of me? How completely did I, a liberal, ex-radical Northerner, dominate Sam’s sense of life, his idea of politics? Absolutely, or not at all? Was he, Sam, prevented by some social piety or psychological intimidation from confronting me in a humorous manner, as my habit of mind, formed during the radical thirties, prevented me from confronting him? Or did he, as some of my friends suspected, regard all whites through the streaming eyes and aching muscles of one continuous, though imperceptible and inaudible, belly laugh?
What the hell
, I wondered,
is Sam’s last name?

All this, imagine, while laughing with the others, but now I was growing more and more disturbed as such ideas flickered through my mind. I realized that McGowan was playing an important social and political role for me, and I didn’t like it. Out of his own needs he simultaneously described the Negro as a threat and then disarmed him with comedy; projected him as boogey-man-clown and presented him as an ever-present danger, in the presentation clothed him in a straitjacket of humor which made it possible for me to approach him more closely than I had done in more years than I was willing to think about.

Deep down, I suspected that I despised McGowan. I despised his freedom to make me feel buried motives and memories. I despised his taking over the power to define so much of the reality in which I lived. And most of all I despised him for making me realize that he in his very injustice was quite possibly more
just
than I, and that hurt because I regarded my sense of justice with a tender feeling of pride. Across from me Wilson was looking at McGowan with a tight face.

“Well,” he said, “Sunraider had better make allowance for unexpected mutations. Otherwise, he might be surprised by more serious, more
political
political incidents than today’s. Some black boy without a car to burn might go after him more directly.”

I was excited by the idea. “Wilson might have something there,” I said. “And I’ll even bet that we can come pretty close to describing the type most likely to do it….”

“Do what?”

“Assassinate the Senator.”

“Hell, you’re nuts,” Larkin said. “Negroes don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing.”

“You agree with McGowan, then?”

“No, when I listen to Mac I don’t know whether to laugh or to be afraid of Negroes, but they just don’t …”

“Go ahead, McIntyre,” Wiggins said. “Let’s see what you come up with; project the bastard!”

And I tried desperately to rise to the occasion, to keep up with McGowan, though on a different level.

“He’ll probably be,” I said, “a disgruntled, half-crazed ex-serviceman who will have won some decoration for bravery and who returned home full of great expectations. He’ll have expected the world to have changed simply because he faced death for the nation….”

“You mean a sorehead,” Larkin said.

“If you will,” I said. “Perhaps he’ll have saved the life of his commanding officer, who, let us say, was a Southerner….”

“
Our
nigras are loyal,” McGowan said. “You Yankees have never been able to change that.”

“Go on,” Wilson said.

“Maybe he’ll have been an athlete,” Thompson said, “a basketball player, or a football scatback….”

“Why not?” I said. “It’s a good possibility.”

“Like hell it is,” McGowan said. “Nigras like that have it made. They make a lot of money—more than the average white man—and they get special treatment. Too
much
special treatment. You think one of them is going to mess up, you don’t know nigras.”

“But I specified that he’d be crazed, psychotic even. He’d have to be of the psychological type which turns its hostilities inward and represses them.”

“He’s still too much of an abstraction for me,” Wiggins said. “Spell him out a bit.”

“Well, he won’t be a woman chaser,” I said, “nor a drunk. Neither will he be the type who ordinarily expresses himself through violence—which would be an effective way of blowing off steam. Instead, he’ll be the introspective type whose repressed emotions would slowly transform him into a walking bomb.”

“Now you’re talking about these Northern nigras,” McGowan said, “the kind who’ve been too close to white folks in a social way. Nigras like that get awful restless.”

“You mean too close to white women, don’t you, Mac?” Thompson said.

“You can kid all you like,” McGowan said, “but down South we know the political implications of such things, and we simply don’t let it happen without the most drastic consequences.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but that would be a problem for the man I’m describing, because he’d be too bitter and introspective.”

“You mean too damn sullen and sulky,” McGowan said. “Only your dream nigra has nothing to do with real live nigras because they never get introspective like you’re saying. By the way, what kind of nigra are you trying to describe?”

“A rebel against authority out of frustration,” I said. “Violence will be eating at his nerves and at his muscles. And given his experience with danger and death, his need to do violence to someone of importance will be a
physical
as well as psychological need.”

“That kind of negra never existed,” McGowan said. “Why not attack a cop?”

“That would be meaningless to him,” I said. “It would have to be someone of national stature. This fellow will be on edge to destroy some figure of stature, someone whose importance is commensurate with his own capacity for anger. He’ll select someone to attack through whom he can express his profound sense of humiliation….”

“Just listen to the man,” McGowan said. “He’s heading straight for cloud ninety-nine. McIntyre, this is nonsense. Let me tell you something about nigras. There’s no such nigra as you’re trying to describe. When a nigra gets all filled up, he grabs himself a woman, or he gets drunk and sleeps it off, or he goes after another nigra with a razor, a rusty pistol, or a half a brick. Nigras are outrageous brick fighters, by the way, and not bad with an iron top on the end of a broomstick. But checks and balances, man. You have to remember the good old American system of balances because they work on the nigra too. And when they don’t, you have to step in and check him and balance him yourself.”

“But what about the fellow who burned his Cadillac?” Wilson said. “He was going after Sunraider in a strange way, but he was going after him just the same.”

McGowan laughed and shook his head. “I guess you got me there. That was a
new
kind of political nigra. That kind of nigra would steal a Barnum and Bailey elephant and ride it down through Mississippi just to prove he’s voting Republican back up North.”

“Quit kidding, and let’s keep to McIntyre’s idea for a moment,” Wilson said. “Weren’t those fellows who took a shot at Harry Truman Negroes?”

“No, sir, they were not,” McGowan said. “Those nigras weren’t real nigras.

Those were Puerto Ricans—by which I mean nigras who don’t know they’re nigras.”

“I recall that their leader was deranged, remember?” Larkin said.

“Look,” I said, “I’m willing to bet. I’m not enough of a psychologist to describe him, but I’ll lay a bet that he’ll materialize.”

“Are you serious?”

“To the extent of fifty dollars: Is that serious enough?”

“I’ll take that,” McGowan said. “Anybody else want to give away some money?”

“What on earth is happening?” Wiggins said. “We started out talking about that crazy fellow who burned his car and the next thing I know we’re discussing an attempt made on the life of one of our most colorful Senators. That boy has spooked everybody. —Sam”—he beckoned—“bring us another round of drinks. Make them doubles; this is becoming a bloody congress of bloody sociologists!”

“Never mind knocking sociology,” I said. “Make a bet and you can reduce it to mathematics, simple mathematics.”

“Wiggins is right,” McGowan said. “The nigras have taken hold of sociology and politicalized the hell out of it, and you Yankees are out to ruin the best country in the world.”

“You mean you prefer your own brand of sociology to McIntyre’s,” Larkin said.

“Hell,” McGowan said, “I ain’t no sociologist, I just know nigras.”

“McIntyre’s not going to start something like this and get away with it so easily,” Wilson said. “I’m betting fifty dollars. Sunraider needs shooting, but I’m betting no one will do it. Especially not a Negro. He’ll be around as long as Uncle Joe Cannon….”

Suddenly, back in the jam of the crowded hall, I felt the pressure around me ease. The men near the entrance had begun to move, and word was passed swiftly along that we were at last being allowed to leave. There was a rush forward, and as I passed the entrance to the chamber I could see the gunman’s body still lying where he had crushed out his life, covered by a sheet now, but the guards would neither allow me to enter nor give any information as to his identity, and I joined a group of reporters who were rushing to the hospital, seeking news of the Senator and to verify McGowan’s news of old Hickman. I intended to interview Hickman, but at the hospital, despite the antiseptic change of scene, things continued to unfold outrageously.

CHAPTER 6

S
ENATOR
S
UNRAIDER WAS STILL
in surgery, but we found old Hickman on the seventh floor. He sat in a dimly lit section of the corridor, grasping the arms of a white metal chair that had been placed to the left of the door leading to the room assigned to the Senator, his huge body showing in silhouetted profile against the brightness flooding from the turn in the corridor some fifty yards beyond. Two security men were facing him, bending slightly forward with folded arms, their bemused faces illuminated by a fixture located on the wall behind his head. They were listening to Hickman as we hurried along the corridor.

“… No, like I tell you, they had nothing to do with it,” Hickman said. “They were just there looking on like the rest of the visitors, and they should be allowed to go free and unharmed.”