Three Days Before the Shooting ... (79 page)

So I waited, hoping I could get into it during the next show and she would be there and I waited yearning for one more sight word goodhugh even if seventy outraged deaconesses tore through the screen to tear down the house around us. But couldn’t go in and sat wet and lonely and ashamed and wet down my leg and outside all that racing life swirling before me but once more the scenes came and tore past, sweeping me deeper into anguish yet when I came out of all that intensified time into the sun the world had grown larger for my having entered that forbidden place and yet smaller for now I knew that I could enter in if I entered there alone…. I ran—Bliss ran
.

… Where are we? Open the damper, Daddy; it heats hard. So I told myself that I shall think sometime about time. It was all a matter of time; just a little time. I shall think too of the camera and the swath it cut through the country of my travels, and how after the agony I had merely stepped into a different dimension of time. Between the frames in blackness I left and in time discovered that it was no mere matter of place which made the difference, but time. And not chronology either, only time. Because I was no older and
although I discovered early that in different places I became a different me. What did it all mean? Was time only space? How did she who called Cud forth become shadow and then turn flesh? She broke the structure of ritual and the world erupted. A blast of time flooded in upon me, knocking me out of the coffin into a different time…. My grandpap said the colored don’t need rights, Donelson said; they only need rites. You get it? Just give niggers a baptism or a parade or a dance and they’re happy. And that, Karp said, is pappy crap…. And I was stunned
.

So now when I changed places I changed me, and when I entered a place that place changed imperceptibly. The mystery went with me, entered with me, realigning time and place and personality. When I entered all was changed, as by an odorless gas. So the mystery pursued me, shifting and changing faces. Understand?

And later whenever instead of taking in a scene the camera seemed to focus forth my own point of view I felt murderous, felt that justifiable murder was being committed and my images a blasting of the world. I felt sometimes that a duplicity was being commissioned, an ambuscado trained upon those who thought they knew themselves and me. And yet I felt that I was myself a dupe because there was always the question aroused by my ability to see into events and the awareness of the joke implicit in my being me. Who? So I said, What is the meaning of this arrangement of time place and circumstance that flames and dampens murder in my heart? And what is this desire to identify with others, this need to extend myself and test my most far-fetched possibilities with only the agency of shadows? Merely shadows. All shadowy they promised me my mother and denied me solid life. Oh, yes, mirrors do steal souls. So indeed Narcissus was weird…
.

“Rev. Bliss,” Hickman was saying, “in the dark of night, alone in the desert of my own loneliness I have thought long upon this. I have thought upon you and me and all the old scriptural stories of Isaac and Joseph and upon our slave forefathers who killed their babes rather than have them lost in bondage, and upon my life here and the trials and tribulations and the jokes and laughter and all the endless turns-about that mark man’s life in this world. And each time I return, each time my mind returns and makes its painful way back to the mystery of you and the mystery of birth and resurrection and hope which now seems endless in its complication. Yes, and I think upon the mystery of my involvement in it. Me, a black preacher’s wilful son, a gambler-musician who rejoiced in the sounds of our little hidden triumph in this world of deceitful triumphs. Me, given you and your gifts, your possibilities in this whirlwind of circumstance. How and why did it happen? Why was I, the weakest of vessels, chosen to give so much and to have to try to understand so much which hardly seems understandable? Why did He give me this mysterious burden and then seem to mock me and challenge me and let men revile and despise me and wipe my heart upon the floor of this world after I had suffered and offered it up in sacrifice because
in the coming together of hate and love and life and death, that marked the beginning, I looked upon those I love and upon them who caused their deaths and was unable to accept it except as I’d already accepted the blues, the clap, the loss of love, the fate of man…. I bared my breast, I lowered my head into the ashes where they had burned my own, my loved ones, and accepted Thy will. Why didst Thou choose me, single me out for further humiliation who had been designated for humiliation by men unworthy, by men most unworthy, Lord? Why? Why me? Me who had accepted my blackness as my fate, in the dark and shadowy complication of Thy will? And yet, down there in the craziness of the southland, in the madhouse of downhome, the old motherland where I in all my ignorance and desperation was taught to deal with the complications of Thy plan, yes, and at a time when I was learning to live and to glean some sense of how Thy voice could sing through the blues and even speak through the dirty dozens if only the players were rich-spirited and resourceful enough, comical enough, vital enough and enough aware of the disciplines of life. In the zest and richness Thou were there, yes! But still, still, still, my question, Lord! Though I say, Quiet, quiet, my tongue. So teach me, Lord, to move on and yet be still; to question and not cry out, Lord, Lord, WHY?… WHY?”

And Hickman slept.

The air was stirring gently across his face now and the Senator could hear dimly the “Son, are you there?” of Hickman’s voice softly murmuring—but when he tried to respond Bliss had moved on…
.

… Stirring beneath the sterile grain of the sheet the Senator felt a binding pressure on heel and toe, and now alone in the hot world beyond the puckered seal of his lids he found himself wading through a sandy landscape bathed in an eerie twilight. In the low-hung sky before him, vaguely familiar images of threatening shapes appeared, flickering and fading as though to taunt him, and he found himself lunging desperately across the sandy terrain in a compulsive effort to grasp their meaning. But the closer he approached the more rapidly the images changed their shape, tearing apart in smokelike strands only to reappear in ever more ambiguous forms further, further ahead
.

The Senator struggled on, his right foot flaming, and now as he paused for breath the sudden rhythmical gusting of a slight breeze irritated the feverish surface of his skin and he could hear Hickman’s voice again; at first muted and low, then becoming a booming roar. Hickman was somewhere above him but suddenly as he strained toward the sound he was swept up and carried through the air with such force that his body slanted headfirst into the wind and he kept his balance only by rotating his arms in the manner of a skier soaring in exhilarating flight above the earth. Then came a burst of light followed by a shrilling of whistles and the clanging of bells and the Senator realized that he was standing atop a speeding freight train, his feet dancing unsteadily upon the narrow boards of a catwalk that ran the length of the car. It was a long freight and far up
the tracks he could see the engine, pouring a billowing plume of smoke against the sunny landscape as with a nervous, toy-like shuttling of driving-rods it curved the rails to the west…
.

Wondering at the sudden change of scene, the Senator fought desperately to keep his feet, holding on by flexing at ankle and knee in a bending, straightening, balancing, swaying, dance-like motion which moved his body with and against the erratic rhythms of the bounding car. In the blazing sun the train was hurtling downgrade now and the engineer seemed determined to send him flying into space, for he had the impression that every car in the train was being forced to knock the car just ahead into a capricious, offbeat, bucking increase of speed which nothing on top could withstand. For a while it caused him to bounce about like a manic tap dancer, rattling his teeth and fragmenting the landscape into a whirl of chattering images; then the grade was leveling off and with the going smoother the Senator looked about
.

Beyond the rows of cross ties and gleaming rails to his left wheat fields, turned tawny and dry by the sun, wheeled away at a slant accented by flashing telegraph poles, and below he could see his own thin shadow atop that of the car flickering swiftly along the grading. Flocks of blackbirds were whirling up from the strands of wire which fenced off the field and swinging in broad circles over the tilting land
.

Sweeping ahead the train screamed shrilly as it gathered highball speed, its whistle sending snatches of vapor into the blaze of sun. Then to his right, past a sparse windbreak of trees, three dark dogs raced over a harvested field, the agitated music of their trailing cry reaching him faintly through the roar. The dogs ran with nose to earth and far beyond, where the land rolled down to a sparkling stream, he could see the white, semaphore-flashing of a rabbit’s tail as it coursed in curving flight away from the hounds
.

Hurry, hurry, little friend, the Senator thought, hearing the engines whirling again, the sound distraught and lonely as he heard a woman’s voice speaking to him in an intimate, teasing drawl, “So, honey, I tell you like the rabbit tole the rabbit, ‘Darling, love ain’t nothing but a
habit
’
—
Hello, there, Mister Babbitt Rabbit—Now, now, honey, don’t go getting mad on me. All I mean is that you can come see me again sometimes; ‘cause short-winded and frantic as you is I still think you kinda cute. You kinda fly too, and I like that. So whenever you feel like coming down to earth, why, drop in on a poor soul and thank you kindly….”

And in the cool shade of the back-alley porch he could see Choc Charlie pausing to drink from his frosty bottle of Chock beer then look out bemusedly across the yard ablaze with a center bed of red canna flowers, shaking his head. Beyond the yard, the rutted roadbed of the alley was covered with broken glass of many colors and beyond its sparkling surface he could see a black cat yawning pinkly in the shade of the high, whitewashed fence which enclosed the yard beyond. Then Choc Charlie belched and turned, winking at Donelson, and he could see tiny wrinkles forming at the corners of Choc Charlie’s eyes as his querulous voice resumed
.

“So now,” Choc Charlie said, “the damn hound was so hot on Brer Rabbit’s trail that
he had to do something real quick because that hound was chasing him come hell for breakfast. So ‘bout that time Brer Rabbit sees him a hole in some rocks—and, blip! he shoots into it like a streak of greased lightning…. And too bad for him!”

“Looks like he made a mistake of judgment,” Donelson said. “How come, how come?”

“How come? Man, do you know who was holed up in that hole?”

“Not yet,” Donelson said. “You didn’t say….”

“Well, it was ole Brer Bear!
That’s
how come. Man, Brer Rabbit liked to shit his britches then, because didn’t nobody in his right mind mess with Brer Bear—and Brer Bear had done already looked up and seen him!”

“Dramatic as hell, isn’t it,” Donelson said. “A turn in the plot; a ‘reversal.’ David and Goliath … Daniel in the goddamned lion’s den! Ole J. C. couldn’t do better.”

“Drink some beer, man,” Choc Charlie said, “I’m telling this lie and my initials ain’t J.C., they’re C.C. You see, Brer Bear had been sleeping and when he sits up and rubs his eyes he’s flabbergasted! He’s hornswoggled! He’s hyped! He’s shucked! But he don’t know who dropped it! He’s looking right at him too but he can’t believe his own God-given eyes! Here’s Brer Rabbit in his very own bedroom! Somebody go get the chief of police, ‘cause now Brer Bear is ‘bout to move!”

“Ulysses alone in Polly-what’s-his-name’s cave,” Donelson said. “And without companions….”

“Man, what are you talking about?” Choc Charlie said. “How the hell did she get in there?”

“She?”
Donelson said, “I didn’t say anything about ‘she,’ I said ‘he’—but forget it. What happened then?”

“Man,” Choc Charlie said, “you drinking too fast. And sit back out of that sun. Anyway, don’t nobody name of Polly mess with Brer Bear, male or female. Not when he’s trying to get his rest….”

“That’s his name,” Donelson said, “Polly-fee-mess.”

Choc Charlie took a drink and looked wearily at the Senator. “Make him quit messing with this lie, will you please? I appreciate your buying me this Choc and those ribs last night and all but it ain’t really that good—know what I mean? Anyway, Brer Rabbit was there and he thought real hard and came up with what he hoped would be a solution. Because with Brer Bear in front of him and with that hound right on his heels Brer Rabbit had to come up with something quicker than the day before yestiddy … and that’s no bull.”

“We’re with you, hanging on,” Donelson said. “He’s reached a moment of grave decision …”

“Now you’re talkin’,” Choc Charlie said, “grave is right. He better do something quick or he’s
in
his grave, and that’s when Brer Rabbit made his move. Gentlemen,” Choc Charlie said, “git this: He spins in front of Brer Bear like a wheel of fortune, he spits on the floor like a man among men, he spins back around and makes his white tail flash like the nickel-plated barrel of a .45 pistol, then he wheels around agin and jumps way back and slaps his hips like he’s wearing two low-slung, tied-down holsters and a
bushel of bullets, then he basses out at Brer Bear like he’s all of a sudden ten feet tall and weighing a ton. Said, ‘Let a motherfucker move and I’ll mow him down!’ ”