Three Days Before the Shooting ... (49 page)

“So in dark days look steadily on the darker side, for there is where brightness sometimes hides itself.

“Therefore let us have faith, hope, and daring. And who can doubt our future when even the wildest black man behind the wheel of a Cadillac knows—Please, please!” the Senator pleaded, his face a mask before the rising ripple of laughter, the clatter of applause, “Hear me out—I say that even the wildest black man rampaging the streets of our cities in a Fleetwood knows that it is not our fate to be mere victims of history but to be courageous and insightful before its assaults and riddles. Let us keep an eye on the outrages committed by the citizens whom I’ve just described, for perhaps therein lies a secret brightness, a clue. Perhaps the essence of his untamed and assertive wilfulness, his crass and jazzy defiance of good taste and the harsh, immutable laws of economics, lies his faith in the flexible soundness of the nation.

“Yes,” the Senator smiled, nodding his head with mock Elizabethan swagger, “methinks there is much mystery here—But one mystery at a time, I say. In the meantime, let us seek brightness in darkness and hope in despair. Let us remind ourselves that we were not designated the supine role of passive slave to the past. Ours is the freedom and obligation to be ever the fearless creators of ourselves, the reconstructors of the world. We were created to be Adamic definers, namers and shapers of yet undiscovered secrets of the universe!

“Therefore, let the doubters doubt, let the faint of heart turn pale. We
move toward the fulfillment of our nation’s demand for citizen-individualists possessing the courage to forge a multiplicity of creative selves and styles. We shall supply its need for individuals, men and women who possess the highest quality of stamina, daring, and grace—Ho,

Build thee more stately mansions,
Oh, my soul—Yes!

“For we,” the Senator paused, his arms reaching out with palms turned upward in all-embracing gesture, “by the grace of Almighty God are A-MERI-CANS!”

And it was now, listening to his voice becoming lost in an explosion of applause, accented here and there by enthusiastic rebel yells, that the Senator became aware of the rising man.

Up in the front row center of the visitors’ gallery the man was pointing out across the guardrail as though about to hurl down a vehement denunciation.
For Christ’s sake
, the Senator thought,
Why don’t you sit down or simply leave? Only spare us futile theatrical gestures. I always lose a few—the old, the short-of attention-span; the mama’s boys answering mother nature’s call—but use your ears. Most I’m holding hard, so what can you hope to do?
But just as he lowered his eyes to the faces of his colleagues applauding on the floor below, the Senator became aware of the abrupt rise and fall of the man’s still pointing arm. Then a sound of ringing, erupting above, seemed to trigger a prismatic turbulence of the light—through which, now, fragments of crystal, fine and fleeting as the first cool-touching flakes of a fall of snow, had begun to shower down upon him, striking sleet-sharp upon the still upturned palms of his gesturing hands.

My God
, the Senator thought,
it’s the chandelier! Could it be I’ve shattered the chandelier? Where
up
on
something smashed into the lectern, driving it against him; and now, hearing a dry popping sounding above, he felt a vicious stinging in his right shoulder and as he stared through the chaotic refraction of the light toward the gallery he could see the sharp kick of the man’s gesturing arm and felt a second flare of pain, in his left thigh this time, and was thrown into a state of dream-like lucidity.

Realizing quite clearly that the man was firing toward the podium, he tried desperately to move out of range, asking himself as he attempted to keep the lectern before him,
Is it me? Am I his target? Then
something struck his hip with the force of a well-aimed club and he felt the lectern toppling forward and he was spun forcefully around to face the gallery. Coughing and staggering backwards now, he felt himself striking against a chair and lurching forward as he marked the sinister
pzap! pzap! pzap!
of the weapon.

I’m going…. I’m going …
he told himself, knowing lucidly that it was most
important to fall backwards if possible, out of the line of fire; but as he struggled to go down it was as though he were being held erect by an invisible cable attached somehow to the gallery from where the man, raising and lowering his arm in measured calm, continued to fire.

The effort to fall brought a burst of moisture streaming from his pores but even now his legs refused to obey, would not collapse. And yet, through the muffled sound of the weapon and the strange ringing of bells, his eyes were recording details of the wildly tossing scene with the impassive and precise inclusiveness of a motion-picture camera that was toppling slowly from its tripod and falling through an unfolding action with the lazy motion of a feather loosed from a bird in soaring flight; panning from the image of the remote gunman in the gallery down to those moving dream-like on the floor before him, then back to those shooting up behind the man above; all caught in attitudes of surprise, disbelief, horror; some turning slowly with puppet gestures, some still seated, some rising, some looking wildly at their neighbors, some losing control of their flailing arms, their erupting faces,

some falling floorward…. And up in the balcony now, an erupting of women’s frantic forms.

Things had accelerated but, oddly, even now no one was moving toward the gunman—who seemed as detached from the swiftly accelerating action as a marksman popping clay birds on a remote shooting range.

Then it was as though someone had dragged a poker at white heat straight down the center of his scalp and followed it with a hammering blow; and at last he felt himself going over backwards, crashing against a chair now and hearing it skitter away, as, thinking mechanically,
Down, down …
he felt the jolt of his head and elbows striking the floor. Something seared through the sole of his right foot then, and sharply aware of losing control he struggled to contain himself even as his throat gave cry to words which he knew, whatever the cost of containment, should not be uttered in this place.

“Lord, LAWD,” he heard, “WHY HAST THOU …” smelling the hot presence of blood as the question took off with the hysterical timbre of a Negro preacher who in his disciplined fervor sounded somehow like an accomplished actor shouting his lines. “
Forsaken” … forsaken … forsaken
, the words went forth, becoming lost in the shattering of glass, the ringing of bells.

Writhing on the floor as he struggled to move out of range, the Senator was taken by a profound sense of self-betrayal, as though he had stripped himself naked in the Senate. And now, with the full piercing force of a suddenly activated sprinkler, streams of moisture seemed to burst from his face
and somehow he was no longer in that place, but kneeling on the earth by a familiar clearing within a grove of pines, trying desperately to enfold a huge white circus tent into a packet. Here the light was wan and eerie, and as he struggled, trying to force the
cloth beneath chest and knee, a damp wind blew down from the tops of the trees, causing the canvas to toss and billow like a live thing beneath him. The wind blew strong and damp through the clearing, causing the tent to flap and billow, and now he felt himself being dragged on his belly steadily toward the edge of the clearing where the light filtered with an unnatural brilliance through the high-flung branches of the pines. And as he struggled to break the forward motion of the tent a cloud of birds took flight, spinning on the wind and into the trees, revealing the low shapes of a group of weed-grown burial mounds arranged beneath the pines. Clusters of tinted bottles had been hung from wooden stakes to mark the row of crude country graves, and as the tent dragged him steadily closer he could see the glint and sparkle of the glass as the bottles, tossing in the wind, began to ring like a series of crystal bells. He did not like this place and he knew, struggling to brake the tent’s forward motion by digging his toes into the earth, that somewhere beyond the graves and the wall of trees his voice was struggling to return to him
.

But now through the amber and deep-blue ringing of the glass it was another voice he feared, a voice which threatened to speak from beneath the tent and which it was most important to enfold, to muffle beneath the billowing canvas …

Then he was back on the floor again and the forbidden words, now hoarsely transformed, were floating calmly down to him from gallery and dome, then coming on with a rush.

“For Thou hast forsaken … me,”
they came—but they were no longer his own words, nor was it his own echoing voice. And now, hearing what sounded like a man’s voice hoarsely singing, he struggled to bring himself erect, thinking,
No! No! Hickman? But how here? Not here! No time, no place for HICKMAN!

Then the very idea that Hickman was there somewhere above him raised him up, and he was clutching onto a chair, pulling himself into a sitting position, trying to get his head up so as to see clearly above as now there came a final shot which he heard but did not feel….

He lay on his back, looking up through the turbulent space to where the bullet-smashed chandelier, swinging gently under the impact of its shattering, created a watery distortion of crystal light, a light which seemed to descend and settle him within a ring of liquid fire. Then beyond the pulsing blaze where a roiling darkness grew he was once more aware of a burst of action.

Now he could hear someone shouting far off. Then a voice was shouting quite close to his ear, but he was unable to bring his mind to it. There were many faces and he was trying to ask them
Why the hell’d he do it and who else was it?

I can’t understand, can’t understand. My rule was graciousness, was politeness in all private contacts, but hell, anything goes in public. What? What?

Harry said if it gets too hot hop out of the pot. I say, if the tit’s tough no one asks for milk when the steaks are high
.

Lord, Lord, but it’s hot. HOT! It hurts here and here and there and there, a hell of a clipping. How many rounds?

Lawd … Say Lord! Why? Ha! No time to go West but no time to stay East either, so blow the wind westerly, there’s grease for the East
.

I said, Donelson, crank it, man! Who broke the rhythm of the crowd? Old fat, nasty Poujaque! Don’t accuse me; if I could pay them I could teach them! If they could catch me I could raise them up. That’s their god-given historical, wood-pile role! Where was Moses, I mean to say?… No, let the deal go down. And if the cock crows three, I’m me, ME!—in the dark
.

Roll the mammy-scratching camera, Karp! On with the lights! Hump it, now! Get them over to the right side. It hurts, it was worth something in the right body for the right hand …

Then I said, Politics is an art of maneuvering, and to move them you must change home base. Now
you
tell ‘em because Ah stutter, Donelson said. But minds like that will

never learn…. Hell, I’ve out-galloped gallup—New Mexico, wasn’t it? What happened

to Body? Well, so long old buddy, I missed touch, lost right hand but didn’t forget. How the hell explain stony-going over stony ground?

Karp, you high-minded S.O.B., will you
please
get some light over here! And keep the action going! …

Yes, Yes, Yes! I’m all cud, bud; all chewed up like a dog! Like a dog. It was like shooting fish in a barbell. Fall! Fall! Take a dive! Green persimmons …

She said “mother” and screamed and I said “mother” and it shot out of my throat and something ran like hell up the tent and I doubled back and when I lifted the flap—dark again!

Roll the cameras!

What? What?

Perhaps you’re right, but who would have thought what I knew on the back of my neck and ignored was ripening? A bird balled! That was the way it was. Oh, I rose up and she said “mother,” and I doubled back and he looked down upon the babe and said, “Look, boy, you’re a son of God! Isn’t that enough for you?”

But still I said “mother” and something ran up the tent like a flash and then they came on, grim-faced and glassy-eyed, like the wrath of God in the shape of a leaping, many-headed cat … a stewardess’s cap …. What dreams … what dread …

Don’t ask me, please. Please don’t ask me. I simply can’t do it. There are lines and shadows we can’t stand to cross or recross. Like walking through the sharp edge of a mirror. All will be well, Daddy. Tell them what I said
.

ROLL THE CAMERA!

What? What?

Who was? Who did that against me? Who untuned Daddy’s fork when he could have preached his bone in all positions and places? I might have been left out of all that—Ask Tricky Sam Nanton, there’s a preacher hidden in all the old troms—Bam! Same tune in juke or church, only Daddy’s had a different brand of anguish
.

Lawd, Lawd, Why?