Three Days Before the Shooting ... (141 page)

However, and all joking aside, I couldn’t recall your having said that your young man possessed musical talent and thus concluded that he couldn’t have been the prayerful songwriter. But then, sometime later, when getting some gas at a filling station, I saw this chauffeur who was sitting behind the wheel of a big limousine dressed in a finely tailored gray uniform. At that time there were plenty like him around so that in itself wasn’t unusual. Conk-haired Negro chauffeurs were comporting themselves like brown-skinned Valentinos all over the place, gold slave(!) bracelets, guardsman’s overcoats, English riding boots, and all. But this was no “blood,” at least not an ordinary one, because he looked like a movie star and it was obvious that he had something going with the high-class lady in the backseat. Therefore I took a carefully guarded second look, and dam’ if it wasn’t that boy again!

This time, from what I could learn from the station attendant who was servicing my car, he was employed by an elderly but powerful politician, a really old one. And when I took a second look at the woman (a middle-aged strawberry blonde) and then at the limousine and your boy, I said to myself, “Now
there
sits a car that’s in for some hard, fancy driving, and a fool of a woman who’s had some fancy ‘tampering’; so somewhere in this town there has to be a husband who’s in plenty of trouble!”

Later I checked the address of the old man’s estate and drove out to look it over, and it was what you’d expect of a Southerner who’d started out on grits and greens and rose up to spend forty years in Congress. It had fine lawns, a swimming pool, and tennis courts that were suitable for the Olympic games, and a servants’ quarters which, given its own site, would have looked like a small mansion. But although the main house was staffed by a large staff of servants, including a French maid and a slew of us, the servants’ quarters were strictly the domain of your boy. One night when I drove through the alley there seemed to be a party in progress but although the phonograph was blaring “Some Sunny Day” I saw no one. And since he no longer visited his old haunts, probably because of his break with Sippy, I was unable to check his movements. Then the old man and his wife took off for Europe and I assumed that once again I had lost contact. Which except for one final, somewhat bizarre, incident which came about through my constant need for funds to stay in school, was true.

That summer I was waiting tables in Maryland with a fellow student who told me about a movie based on the Civil War that was being shot on a nearby historical site where one of the battles had actually been fought. At first I thought, “So there they go messing with history again,” but I became interested when he told me that the producers were having trouble hiring Negro extras to act as slaves. I asked him why
he
didn’t give it a try and he said, “Hell, man, I have enough acting to do in just holding down this job. And besides, who the hell needs a second go at slavery?”

I approved of his sentiments, but since I needed extra cash and he assured me that it would only be a two-day deal which required no special experience, I rushed to Antietam and was hired.

Hickman, you would have died laughing to see me, a college man and aspiring intellectual, marching down a dirt road wearing overalls and carrying all my earthly belongings bundled in a red bandanna; but, as the old folks say, hard times will make a black rat swallow his pride and eat raw red onions. There were over two hundred of us, young and old, men and women, struggling along a road full of mule-drawn wagons, cannon, caissons, and panicky Northern soldiers in retreat from Southern cavalry. It was one hell of a scene, with cannons roaring, rifles crackling, and cavalry charges in which horses were rearing and neighing and kicking up dust as though they were caught up in the real thing, whether we humans recognized it or not. For as far as those animals were concerned us human beings had gone stark raving crazy. And it didn’t matter who the hell they had in their saddles. Because they were being ridden by everybody from ex-cavalry men to cowboys, jockeys, and society equestrians—or anyone else who was willing and able to act the roles of that rip-roaring Johnny Reb cavalry. That movie crew reproduced the Battle of Bull Run in every detail they could come up with. From variations in the weather to the spectacular spilling of blood, sweat, and tears, to military equipment straining, banners flying, bugles blaring, wild-eyed, bit-chewing horses a-foam and lathering, sabers flashing, and men and mule turds falling—all timed to an array of real-life sound effects. They even shot a scene in which some Northern congressmen and their wives, dressed in the costumes of that period and carrying parasols and picnic baskets, came out to watch the action as though the battle was some kind of athletic contest. You should have seen them haul ass when those Southerners made a dash toward the Capital with those minié balls flying!

It was so realistic that in the thundering, ear-banging excitement I had to remind myself that for all the dash and slash those Southern horsemen were laying on the boys in blue, Time hadn’t
really
reversed itself and transformed me into what I might have been if instead of winning the battle (which in fact it did) the South had been beaten back, redeployed, and then gone on to win the war.

Then it occurred to me that under such circumstances “history” didn’t exist but was an afterthought imposed later as an explanation. History was a picture of events that were juxtaposed, recorded, and given meaning during the shooting of a given scene. It was not a product of destiny, but of the sound and fury of man-made, man-controlled action that was taking place in a fabricated context of events in which such mortal matters as birth and death, duration, change, and chance—those defining limits of human experience—were safely absent.

Because I was there, sweating and straining on a once bloody ground of political contention while taking part in the shooting of a movie that proposed to conjure up the past with optics, cogs, and film. But in fact neither the scene, the action, nor the “me”—the nonactor who was performing the part of a slave—were real. I “was,” but was not; the war “was,” but not truly, only “reely”! Because in fact my “role” was a nonwinnable “non-role;” something like that of a bone over which two dogs are fighting to see which one would eat it.

So it came to me that what is called “history” is to the actual as a reel of film to the scenes and action that we see unfold when we sit back in a darkened theater and watch lifelike shadows make their moves on a wall-sized screen. All of it, actors, scene, and action, lack life’s depth and endless concatenation of detail and changeability and thus are without the consequences of mortality. It’s something like the difference between disemboweling oneself in the Japanese ritual of
hari-kari
and pretending that you’re Harry Carey chasing bad men and stray cattle in a Wild Western movie. And this despite a movie’s ability to arouse and structure emotion. History is a tale told about the joys and anguish of survivors, winners or losers, by those who weren’t there or even born when the actual events occurred…. But oh, how taking part in a historical movie can make you reel! And without your being aware of how and where you’re tilting!

But such conjectures didn’t stop me from going the full course. Besides, taking part in it turned out to have been far more instructive than reading the history book I consulted later to learn what the battle was all about. However, the point of all this speculation—which is a matter of notes I made at the time and not necessarily a matter of my present thinking—is to modulate to the incident which grew out of my venture into acting.

Two days later, after the shooting was over and I was standing in line waiting to be paid, I received a most unexpected bonus. It wasn’t anything like the forty acres and a mule the real slaves were promised and then refused, but I happened to look up to see the famous star of the movie and a bunch of his supporting actors passing by and got a shock—yes, you’re right on target! There he was again, this time swaggering along beside “Jeb Stuart,” dressed in Confederate gray, carrying a saber, and wearing a foot-long feather in his hat!

Hickman, I swear, I was so disoriented that for a second I didn’t know where I was, whether in “now” or “then,” in the present of Antietam or lost in movie-confused “history.” And as I stood there wavering between making myself known or following my old routine of fading into the background where all such matters become blurred, a strange thing happened. For even though I was in blackface, filthy as could be, and still wearing the overalls and bandanna which they’d given me for a costume, I didn’t have a chance. Because at that very moment he turned in my direction, stopped in mid-stride, and looked me over. That’s right, he
recognized me!
And for the very first time in all the years that I’d been on his trail he indicated that he knew who I was. I say this because during the second our eyes met I could see a little smile playing around his mouth. Then he winked and gave me such a sweeping salute with his Confederate hat that its feather trailed in the dust, and I stood there looking down at the lacy marks it left like a chicken does when hypnotized by having its beak pressed into the dirt. And then to make sure that I would know who he was, he swaggered off after the Jeb Stuart character by doing a cute little hustler’s limp!

It was as though he were telling me, “So all right, sport, we have finally met on neutral ground and therefore it’s checkmate. But when you get in touch with Hickman don’t forget to tell him that
I
let it happen. And if you should bump into Sippy you can give him my regards.”

Hickman, all I could do was to stand there sweating more real sweat than I had during all the ruckus and strain that the movie director had put us through. And not so much because he had recognized me as from the shock of finding him slap-dab in the middle of a made-up world. It was upsetting because up to then I’d always found him acting in a world which I accepted as “real,” but here he was acting in the middle of a made-up time and place; otherwise he would have been a Rebel officer and I would have been a slave. Therefore I had to ask myself where illusion ended and reality began, and what would happen if he ever stopped acting and decided to limit himself to a single role? I guess I’m trying to say that for the first time I had a sense of the frightening possibilities of the worlds, real or illusionary, in which he chose to operate and its possible consequences. What would happen if he operated in an actual job as he’d been doing in his endless con games? You’ll understand when you consider how a movie actor can start his career playing bandits and horse thieves and end up playing sheriffs and judges, begin as villains and end as heroes…. But here I go trying to think again and I’m no more prepared for it now than I was back when I was playing your young man’s shadow. However, I can say that my face-to-face encounter with him raised questions which cooled my enthusiasm. I think it was because I was already too uncertain about my own life and living too close to the edge of my own form of hell to keep prying into such mysteries….

That’s my report, and I’m sorry I have nothing more to add, because without threatening me outright he managed to convey a warning that I should keep off his trail. And since I’d come to believe him capable of damn near anything I decided that it was best to leave him alone. That explains my silence and I’m sure that you must have grasped what had happened. I lost the game, but I had done my unskilled best against one hell of a player—or so I consoled myself whenever I felt guilty.

Other than that I’m doing fairly well and still fighting my habit by making do, for the most part, with what you used to call “dark-complexed coffee.” And for all the frustration it’s brought me I’m still studying and supporting myself by teaching a few courses in night school. I’ve also gone back to music. Nothing big-time, understand, but when I’m on a gig with a group of old-timers the excitement returns and it makes me wonder why anyone as good as you were could have given it up for preaching. For as I see it, you probably influenced far more souls for the better with that trombone than you’ll ever do as a preacher. But don’t get me wrong, I respect your decision, and while I’m thankful for the entertainment and instruction I received from trying to keep up with that character of yours—and was well paid for doing so—I hope and pray that one day you’ll relent and tell me just why in hell, and where in hell you became interested in his activities.

In the meantime I must confess that back in those days when we were performing together I was so ignorant as to think that someone like you wouldn’t understand the ideas which were rattling my booze-confused brain. But now I feel free to write you to the limits of my capacity because I’ve entered the age where I’m forced to recognize that experience is experience long before words can impose the unstable meanings for which they’re employed. Therefore I realize that wisdom is wisdom, no matter how it’s gained, and no matter the words through which it finds expression. So now, having done the best I can, I’m sure that you’ll read right through my words and supply your own meaning. But words are no substitute for the pressing of the flesh, so if you’re ever up this way please look me up. For not only would I be glad to see you, but there are still a few old-timers who refer to you fondly as “King Kong the Baptist” or as “Big Lon the Signifying Revealator” who’d like nothing better than to see you.