Read Online Three Days Before the Shooting ... by Ralph Ellison - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ralph Ellison
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“I just got through a call to my editor, and it’s unbelievable!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you know what they’ve done with that nigra Hickman?”
“Hickman?”
“The big one who did the singing.”
“So that’s his name,” I said. “What happened, did someone kill him?”
“Hell, no. That nigra’s got more guards around him than Fort Knox.”
“Then what happened?”
“Man, instead of taking that nigra to the Justice Department with those other nigras, they have taken him to the hospital —along with the Senator !”
“ With him, my God,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean in the same ambulance,” McGowan said. “Did you ever hear of such a thing?”
“But why? Did the old man have a heart attack?”
McGowan shook his head. “Heart attack, hell! Dammit, ma-yan, what I’m trying to tell you is, they took that nigra along because the Senator demanded that they take him!”
Suddenly I felt cold. Only yesterday morning the Senator had been insulting Negroes before television cameras, and during the afternoon he’d castigated them from the floor of the Senate, and now this round-about-face. It was unbelievable.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You must be leaving something out. It just isn’t logical—”
“Like hell, I am,” McGowan said. “That’s the point, McIntyre. What I mean is, this thing has gone stark, raving crazy ! When they took him out of here the Senator was damn near dead—some say in a coma—but still he comes to long enough to demand that that old nigra be taken to the hospital along with him, and he ordered them to keep the bastard on hand while he’s undergoing surgery. What’s more, he ordered them to make a place for the nigra in his own private room! Now, I could understand it if this had taken place before the War and the Senator was a Southerner. Because then that nigra would’ve been a body servant or some kind of old family retainer. But not this, because that there nigra that the Senator’s got with him, he ain’t nobody’s servant. His attitude is wrong, I can tell from the way he made all that fuss up there in the visitors’ gallery. I’m telling you, it’s enough to make a man go homesteading in Bolivia!”
It was indeed, and as McGowan puffed off to spread the news, I forced a path to the wall, backing against it and fending off the crush as I tried to make sense of this latest development.
In spite of the shock, the emotional drain, the sickening incredibility of the assassination attempt, I was flabbergasted. Why would the Senator, of all people, demand to have a Negro with him in this crucial moment? The old man’s conduct had been confounding enough, but if McGowan’s news was correct, the Senator had outreached even this extreme of unreason. Suddenly things had ricocheted from the potentially tragic to the blatantly bizarre, and the image formed in my mind by the incongruous juxtaposition of the Senator and old Hickman in an ambulance—the one shot and bleeding, and the other weeping and praying, speeding along together through frozen lines of traffic with the screaming of sirens and the roaring of an out riding escort of policemen on motorcycles—shook me in ways I couldn’t analyze, resounded with overtones of possibility that I was reluctant to hear ….
How could I ever describe to someone like M. Vannec the element of free-floating threat introduced into the scene by this simple yet incongruous fact? He’d think me mad. And perhaps he’d be right, I told myself. Perhaps the shooting has unhinged you just as it has old Hickman. Then the distasteful idea which I mentioned earlier struck me full force, that it was not only a plot, like the hysterical man insisted, but a piece of conmanship, with Sun-raider performing as actor-dramatist, and old Hickman as supporting player in yet another Sunraider plot to confound the public.
But what of the gunman? His bullets were real, his leap no piece of
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you know what they’ve done with that nigra Hickman?”
“Hickman?”
“The big one who did the singing.”
“So that’s his name,” I said. “What happened, did someone kill him?”
“Hell, no. That nigra’s got more guards around him than Fort Knox.”
“Then what happened?”
“Man, instead of taking that nigra to the Justice Department with those other nigras, they have taken him to the hospital —along with the Senator !”
“ With him, my God,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean in the same ambulance,” McGowan said. “Did you ever hear of such a thing?”
“But why? Did the old man have a heart attack?”
McGowan shook his head. “Heart attack, hell! Dammit, ma-yan, what I’m trying to tell you is, they took that nigra along because the Senator demanded that they take him!”
Suddenly I felt cold. Only yesterday morning the Senator had been insulting Negroes before television cameras, and during the afternoon he’d castigated them from the floor of the Senate, and now this round-about-face. It was unbelievable.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You must be leaving something out. It just isn’t logical—”
“Like hell, I am,” McGowan said. “That’s the point, McIntyre. What I mean is, this thing has gone stark, raving crazy ! When they took him out of here the Senator was damn near dead—some say in a coma—but still he comes to long enough to demand that that old nigra be taken to the hospital along with him, and he ordered them to keep the bastard on hand while he’s undergoing surgery. What’s more, he ordered them to make a place for the nigra in his own private room! Now, I could understand it if this had taken place before the War and the Senator was a Southerner. Because then that nigra would’ve been a body servant or some kind of old family retainer. But not this, because that there nigra that the Senator’s got with him, he ain’t nobody’s servant. His attitude is wrong, I can tell from the way he made all that fuss up there in the visitors’ gallery. I’m telling you, it’s enough to make a man go homesteading in Bolivia!”
It was indeed, and as McGowan puffed off to spread the news, I forced a path to the wall, backing against it and fending off the crush as I tried to make sense of this latest development.
In spite of the shock, the emotional drain, the sickening incredibility of the assassination attempt, I was flabbergasted. Why would the Senator, of all people, demand to have a Negro with him in this crucial moment? The old man’s conduct had been confounding enough, but if McGowan’s news was correct, the Senator had outreached even this extreme of unreason. Suddenly things had ricocheted from the potentially tragic to the blatantly bizarre, and the image formed in my mind by the incongruous juxtaposition of the Senator and old Hickman in an ambulance—the one shot and bleeding, and the other weeping and praying, speeding along together through frozen lines of traffic with the screaming of sirens and the roaring of an out riding escort of policemen on motorcycles—shook me in ways I couldn’t analyze, resounded with overtones of possibility that I was reluctant to hear ….
How could I ever describe to someone like M. Vannec the element of free-floating threat introduced into the scene by this simple yet incongruous fact? He’d think me mad. And perhaps he’d be right, I told myself. Perhaps the shooting has unhinged you just as it has old Hickman. Then the distasteful idea which I mentioned earlier struck me full force, that it was not only a plot, like the hysterical man insisted, but a piece of conmanship, with Sun-raider performing as actor-dramatist, and old Hickman as supporting player in yet another Sunraider plot to confound the public.
But what of the gunman? His bullets were real, his leap no piece of
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