Three Days Before the Shooting ... (100 page)

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Those who recall the 1,369 lightbulbs Invisible Man wires underground may be familiar with Ellison’s playful reference, reprised here, to the dream-book symbolism of the number representing excrement to policy gamblers.

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The Library of Congress has a sequential fragment that includes the last file of Georgia (“Decision”) and the first of Oklahoma (“Bustrip”) in a continuously paginated draft (134/5).

EDITORS’ NOTE TO “HICKMAN IN WASHINGTON, D.C.”

I
N THE SUMMER OF
1993, Ralph Ellison revised all sixteen computer files that comprise the untitled portion of the manuscript we’ve labeled “Hickman in Washington, D.C.” As with the sequences that follow, we present the latest identifiable series of Ellison’s computer files, including whenever available his own penciled revisions to printouts in the archives.

“Hickman in Washington, D.C.” is essentially a long elaboration of the seven-page Prologue from Book I, including new versions of several other key scenes from the typescripts—most notably, those episodes at the Lincoln Memorial and at Jessie Rockmore’s mansion. The balance of the scenes appear also to have been conceived at an earlier period in the novel’s composition, perhaps decades before these computer files were composed. In other words, Ellison seems to have dedicated most of his work on the computer to revising scenes first written as early as the 1950s. These early fragments and the later computer sequences share a clear tendency toward the picaresque—moving the narrative from the psychological realm familiar from Hickman and Bliss/Sunraider’s antiphonal exchanges in Book II to the physical realm of Hickman and his parishioners making their way through the capital in the days before the shooting. At times, this dissipates dramatic tension, leaving only Hickman’s long essayistic asides, occasionally punctuated by events that seem at best distantly related to the novel’s central conflict, the assassination. (It is revealing to compare the version of the scene at the Lincoln Memorial from the computer files [pages 574–578] with the sparer, more dramatically rendered version from Book II [pages 418–421].)

As in Book II, “Hickman in Washington, D.C.” closes with Hickman and Wilhite leaving Jessie Rockmore’s townhouse. In both cases, it is unclear how Ellison intended to proceed from this point in the narrative. Did he plan for this scene to close the novel, or did he plan to fashion a transition to the material set in Georgia and Oklahoma or some other portion of the manuscript?
At no time in the novel’s forty-year composition does Ellison appear to have written anything that moves the narrative beyond this point, even though a number of his notes refer to Bliss/Sunraider’s death as an event that would occur at or near the end of the novel.

“Hickman in Washington, D.C.” is at once integrally related to, yet distinct from, the two computer sequences that follow—“Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” and “McIntyre at Jessie Rockmore’s.” Following “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” in actual chronology, it appears certain that Ellison intended “Hickman in Washington, D.C.” to come first in narrative chronology. Ellison long imagined opening his novel with Hickman and his parishioners arriving at Washington’s National Airport. For its part, “Hickman in Georgia & Oklahoma” offers an extended clarification of motive, providing essential background on the novel’s main actors—the victim, Sunraider; the assassin, Severen; and the would-be savior, Hickman. “McIntyre at Jessie Rockmore’s” offers a rendition of the final episode from “Hickman in Washington, D.C.” from the first-person perspective of the white newspaper reporter who narrates Book I. Although Ellison’s notes suggest that he had long considered including both versions of the episode in his novel, it is unclear how he planned to connect them.

This section is notably the only place in the computer sequences that Sunraider makes an appearance. While he is the putative motivation for much of the action, he remains a subject of discussion rather than an actual character. Even his one appearance is at a remove; it happens when Aubrey McMillen, Jessie Rockmore’s assistant, recalls an unidentified white man arriving earlier in the evening and accusing Rockmore of stealing his coffin. Although McMillen cannot remember the man’s name, he recalls having seen him on television. It seems more than conjecture that the man in question is Sunraider. Bliss/Sunraider’s near disappearance in “Hickman in Washington, D.C.” is perhaps the most striking of the many differences from Book I and Book II. It suggests Ellison’s shifting conception of his fiction and evolving sense of aesthetic purpose.

Although the computer sequences mark a decided shift away from the narrative style of the typescripts from the 1960s and 1970s, they are very much in keeping with the episodic nature of the miscellaneous undated drafts Ellison most likely composed decades earlier. The difference, an important one, is that Ellison’s labors in the 1990s resulted in long narrative sequences such as “Hickman in Washington, D.C.,” while no such substantial narratives are apparent among the antecedent typewritten drafts. One of the most puzzling questions about Ellison’s compositional practice in the last decades of his life is why he would step away from the Book I and II typescripts, much of which appears so close to completion, in favor of returning to the long-neglected and fragmentary episodes that he seems to have discarded decades earlier. The precise relations among the computer drafts, the typescripts, and these fragmentary episodes deserve careful consideration by scholars.

We have chosen to identify in brackets the sixteen files by the file name Ellison used when saving them to disk. We follow this practice in the other two computer-composed sequences as well. He seems not to have conceived chapter breaks, nor do we intend the computer file titles to function as such. Although some files contain discrete episodes, others follow directly upon the files that come before them, even picking up in mid-sentence. In “Hickman in Washington, D.C.,” as throughout Ellison’s computer disks, we have had to contend with occasional corruptions in the computer files themselves. Most often, the result was little more than lost formatting (quotation marks appearing where Ellison intended underscores, unintended paragraph breaks in the middle of sentences, and so forth). Whenever possible, we have silently restored these sections in keeping with Ellison’s preferred habits. We have, however, let a number of Ellison’s textual irregularities stand. Evidence of the preliminary nature of some parts of the computer drafts is apparent, from linguistic quirks like repeating words at the beginning of sentences (“And,” “But,” and “Yes” are among the most prevalent), to imperfect transitions between files, to unresolved details of plot (for example, the number of Hickman’s parishioners is given as both forty-four and fifty).

Clearly, Ellison had yet to attend to a number of the issues that either he or his editor would have caught and corrected had he lived to publish his novel. As editors of a posthumous edition, we have elected to show forbearance, knowing that, without Ellison, we could never hope to bring his novel up to his exacting standards. Instead, we have chosen to pay tribute to his legacy by making available to readers this insider’s look into Ellison’s compositional method. Even more than in the typescripts, which underwent far more extensive revision, Ellison’s computer sequences bear witness to the fact that his novel was still very much in progress.

HICKMAN IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

[ARRIVAL]

T
WO DAYS BEFORE THE
bewildering incident a chartered planeload of those who at that time were politely identified as Southern “Negroes” swooped down upon Washington’s National Airport and disembarked in a confusion of paper bags, suitcases, and picnic baskets. Most were quite elderly: old ladies wearing white uniforms and small white lace-trimmed caps tied beneath their chins, and old men who wore rumpled ready-made suits and wide-brimmed hats. The single exception being a towering dark-brown-skinned man dressed in a blue well-tailored suit with a vest, a pongee shirt, blue pastel tie, and soft planters-style panama. Quiet and exceptionally orderly, considering their number, they swept through the crowded terminal with such an unmistakable air of agitation that busy airport attendants and travelers alike paused to stare.

They themselves paused but briefly when one of the women came to a sudden stop and looked around the crowded terminal with an indignant frown.

“Hold it a second, y’all,” she said, looking high and low, “whilst I see if they have one of them up here like they have down in Atlanta….”

“One what, Sister Bea,” one of the other women said. “What you talking about?”

“I’m talking about that ole prideless rascal they had sitting in a rocking chair besides that big dirty bale of cotton, and him propped up on a walking cane and holding a dinner bell!”

“Oh, forget him, Sister Bea,” someone said, “we have other things to worry about.”

“I
might forgive him,”
the woman said, “but I won’t ever forget him. Just imagine somebody in this day and age helping to insult his own people!”

“You mean to tell me that thing was
alive,”
one of the men said. “I thought it was a dummy!”

“Dummy my foot,” another man said, “that old grayheaded clown was probably pretending that ole rocking chair got him just after he made enough money to buy him a cotton-picking machine and a Cad’llac! Yeah! And so now he’s just taking his ease and watching the world flow by.”

“That’s right!” another brother said. “And getting paid for jiving the white folks!”

“You can laugh if you want to,” the big woman said, “but it ain’t funny. No, sir! It ain’t funny worth a damn—and may the Lord forgive me for saying so, because a thing like that is a terrible burden for the rest of us to bear….”

Luggage in arm and hand, the group lurched ahead in short-stepping haste to one of the many taxi stands, where with the aid of the dispatcher a small fleet of taxis was assembled. Then, with the dispatcher stepping aside and looking on in bemusement, the towering dark-brown-skinned Negro man saw to it that the group arranged themselves beside the machines with a minimum of talk and milling about. This done, the big Negro made his way to a public telephone, dialed a number, and carried on a brief conversation. Completing his call, he started back and stopped short when he noted that the dispatcher’s blue wind-breaker had a pair of dice stenciled on its back. Then, shaking his head, he returned and began assigning the group their seats while pausing anxiously from time to time to consult an old-fashioned gold watch attached to a thick gold chain suspended between the widely spaced pockets of his vast expanse of vest. Communicating mostly by slight nods and gestures, his voice seldom arose above a hoarse whisper—until, just as he climbed in beside the driver of the lead taxi, the dispatcher inquired, in a manner that betrayed something more than a professional interest, their destination.

Whereupon, clearing his throat, the big man’s mellow baritone sounded through the din of the terminal’s traffic: “We’d like,” he said, “to be driven to the offices of Senator Sunraider.”

The effect was electric. Suddenly, with eyes widening and forehead lifting the shiny visor of his cap skyward, the dispatcher’s hands flew from the pockets of his blue windbreaker to the roof of the taxi.

“What,”
he said, bending forward. “Did you say
Sunraider?”

“That’s right,” the big man said. “Is there something wrong?”

“Why no,” the dispatcher said, “but do you mean
all
of you?”

“That’s right,” the big Negro said, “to Senator Sunraider’s office. And, sir, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell the drivers that it’s important that they get us there as fast as possible. After circling around up there in the air for over forty-five minutes we’re fast running out of time….”

Pausing, the big man snatched out a worn wallet, removed five one-dollar bills, and thrust them out of the window. “We’d appreciate it very much,” he said.

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” the dispatcher said as he pocketed the money. “Your problem is a storm from somewhere out southwest. It’s been fouling things
up all morning. But don’t worry, now that you’re down to earth we’ll get you there, and fast. The building you want is only a hop and a skip away.”

Then, looking across into the face of the driver, a small, wiry, light-skinned man who had been listening and looking his passengers over with an expression compounded of big-city condescension, disassociation, and incredulity, the dispatcher struck the taxi’s door with his palm.

“Well,” he roared, “what’re you waiting for? You heard the man, so get them out of here!”

“Yeah,” the driver said, his voice deliberately flat and hollow as he shifted his machine into gear. “Right on….”

Shaking his head, the dispatcher watched until the last of the line of taxis had pulled away, then hurried to his station and dialed the number of a leading newspaper, asking for a reporter with whom he had an agreement to supply information regarding any unusual incidents that might occur at the airport, and carried on a conversation that was punctuated by wheezing intervals of laughter.

“I don’t know who they are,” he said into the mouthpiece, “but I’m telling you that there’s quite a bunch of them.”

“…”

“Why? Now that
you’ll have to tell
me
. You’re the reporter….”

“…”

“When? Hell, just now! That why I
called
you, McIntyre, they just took off….”

“Now, how would I know what for? Maybe they’re taking him some Southern-fried chicken and candied yams. Anyway, they’re headed for Sunraider’s offices!”

“…”

“Yes! That’s right,
Sunraider!
The big fellow who seems to be the HNIC just told me….”

“…”

“Oh, excuse me, I forgot that you’re a Northern boy—it means the ‘Head Negro in charge’; in other words, their leader.”

“…”

“That’s all I know, so if you’re interested you’d better get over there!” And now, shaking with laughter, the dispatcher hung up.