Three Days Before the Shooting ... (204 page)

Indeed, the old man was handled quite roughly, his sheer weight and bulk and the slow rhythm of his normal movements infuriating the guard to that quick, heated fury which springs up in one when dealing with the unexpected recalcitrance of some inanimate object. Say, the huge stone that resists the bulldozer’s power or the chest of drawers that refuses to budge from its spot on the floor. Nor did the old man’s composure help matters. Nor did his passive resistance hide his distaste at having strange hands placed upon his person. As he was being pushed about, old Hickman looked at the guard with a kind of tolerance, an understanding which seemed to remove his personal emotions to some far, cool place where the guard’s strength could never reach them. He even managed to pick up his hat from the sidewalk, where it had been thrown after him, with no great show of breath or hurry, and arose to regard the guard with a serene dignity.

“Son,” he said, flicking a spot of dirt from the soft old panama with a white handkerchief, “I’m sorry that this had to happen to you. Here you’ve worked up a sweat on this hot morning and not a thing has been changed—except that you’ve interfered with something that doesn’t concern you. After all, you’re only a guard, you’re not a mind-reader. Because if you were, you’d be trying to get me
in
there as fast as you could instead of trying to keep me out. You’re probably not even a good guard and I wonder what on earth you’d do if I came here prepared to make some trouble.”

Fortunately, there were too many spectators present for the guard to risk giving the old fellow a demonstration and he was compelled to stand silent, his thumbs hooked over his cartridge belt, while old Hickman strolled—or more accurately,
floated
up the walk and disappeared around the corner.

Except for two attempts by telephone, once to the Senator’s office and later to his home, the group made no further effort until that afternoon, when Hickman sent a telegram asking Senator Sunraider to phone him at a T Street hotel. A message, which, thanks again to the secretary, the Senator did not see. Following this attempt there was silence.

During the late afternoon the group of closed-mouthed old folk were seen praying quietly within the Lincoln Memorial. An amateur photographer, a high-school boy from the Bronx, was there at the time and it was his chance photograph of the group, standing with bowed heads beneath old Hickman’s outspread arms, while facing the great sculpture, that was flashed over the wires following the shooting. Asked why he had photographed that particular group, the boy replied that he had seen them as a “good composition…. I thought their faces would make a good scale of grays between the whiteness of the marble and the blackness of the shadows.” And for the rest of the day the group appears to have faded into those same peaceful shadows, to remain there until the next morning—when they materialized shortly before chaos erupted.

Forty-four in all, they were sitting in the Senate’s visitors’ gallery when Senator Sunraider arose to address the body. They sat in compact rows, their faces marked by that impassive expression which American Negroes often share with Orientals, watching the Senator with a remote concentration of their eyes. Although the debate was not one in which they would normally have been interested (being a question not of civil rights, but of foreign aid) they barely moved while the Senator developed his argument, sitting like a row of dark statuary—until, during an aside, the Senator gave way to his obsession and made a quite gratuitous and mocking reference to their people.

It was then that a tall, elderly woman wearing steel-rimmed glasses arose from her chair and stood shaking with emotion, her eyes flashing. Twice she opened her mouth as though to hurl down some retort upon the head of the man holding forth below; but now the old preacher glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye, and, without turning from the scene below, gravely shook his head. For a second she ignored him, then feeling her still standing, he turned, giving her the full force of his gaze, and she reluctantly took her seat, the muscles ridged out about her dark prognathous jaws as she bent forward, resting her elbows upon her knees, her hands tightly clasped, listening. But although a few whites departed, some angrily shaking their heads over the Senator’s remarks, others extending them embarrassed smiles, the rest made no sign. They seemed bound by some secret discipline, their faces remaining composed, their eyes remote as though through some mistake they were listening to a funeral oration for a stranger.

Nevertheless, Reverend Hickman was following the speech with close attention, his gaze playing over the orderly scene below as he tried to identify the men with their importance to the government. So this is where he came to rest, he thought. After all his rambling, this was the goal. Who would have imagined? At first, although he was familiar with his features from the newspapers, he had not recognized the Senator. The remarks, however, were unmistakable. These days, much to the embarrassment of his party and the citizens of his New England
state, only Senator Sunraider (certain Southern senators were taken for granted) made such remarks, and Hickman watched him with deep fascination. He’s driven to it, Hickman thought, it’s so much with him that he probably couldn’t stop if he wanted to. He rejected his dedication and his set-asideness, but it’s still on him, it’s with him night and day.

“Reveren’ …” Sister Neal had touched his arm and he leaned toward her, still watching the scene.

“Reveren’,” she said, “is that him?”

“Yes, that’s him all right,” he said.

“Well, he sho don’t look much like his pictures.”

“It’s the distance. Up close though you’d recognize him.”

“I guess you right,” she said. “All those white folks down there don’t make him any more familiar either. It’s been so long I don’t recognize nothing about him now.”

“You will,” Hickman whispered. “You just watch—see there …”

“What?”

“The way he’s using his right hand. See how he gets his wrist into it?”

“Yeah, yeah!” she said. “And he would have his little white Bible in his other hand. Sure, I remember.”

“That’s right. See, I told you. Now watch this….”

“Watch what?”

“There, there it goes. I could just see it coming—see the way he’s got his head back and tilted to the side?”

“Yeah—why, Reveren’, that’s
you!
He’s still doing you! Oh, my Lord,” he heard her moan, “still doing you after all these years and yet he can say all those mean things he says….”

Hearing a catch in her voice, Hickman turned; she was softly crying.

“Don’t, Sister Neal,” he said. “This is just life; it’s not to be cried over, just understood….”

“Yes, I know. But
seeing
him, Reveren’. I forgave him many times for everything, but seeing him
doing you
in front of all these people and humiliating us at the same time—I don’t know, it’s just too much.”

“He probably doesn’t know he’s doing it,” Hickman said. “Anyway, it’s just a gesture, something he picked up almost without knowing it. Like the way you can see somebody wearing his hat in a certain way and start to wearing yours the same way.”

“Well, he sure knows when he says something about us,” she said.

“Yes, I guess he does. But he’s not happy in it, he’s driven.”

“I’d like to drive him the other way a bit,” she said. “I could teach him a few things.”

Hickman became silent, listening to the Senator develop his argument, thinking, she’s partly right, they take what they need and then git. Then they
start doing all right for themselves and pride tells them to deny that they ever knew us. That’s the way it’s been for a long time. Sure, but not Bliss. There’s something else, I don’t know what it was but it was something different….

“Reveren’.” It was Sister Neal again. “What’s he talking about? I mean what’s back of it all?”

“This is how the laws are made, Sister.”

“Why does he want to give away all that money he’s talking about?”

“It’s politics. He wants to keep those Asian people and the Africans on our side….”

“Then why is he signifying at those other men and going on?”

“That’s because he plans to use those Asian folks to divide the men down there who don’t like some of the things he’s trying to do over here. He’s playing divide and rule, Sister Neal. This way he can even put those Asian leaders in his hip pocket. They need the money he’s trying to get for foreign aid so bad that naturally they will have to shut up and stop criticizing the way things go over here. Like the way we’re treated, for instance….”

“But will they get the money?”

“Oh, yes, they’ll get it.”

“Does that mean he’s really doing some good?”

“It means that he’s doing
some
good in order to do
some
bad.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he said, “and some bad in order to do some good. What I mean is, he’s complicated. Part of the time he probably doesn’t know what he means to do himself. He just does something.”

“So what do you think?”

“Well, I think that although it’s mixed, all that which he does about scientific research and things like that is on the good side. But that reactionary stuff he’s mixed up in, that’s bad.”

“You mean his playing around with those awful men from down home?”

“That’s right, that’s part of it.”

“Reveren’,” she said, “why would he do things like that?”

“I guess he’s in the go-long, Sister Neal. He has to play the game so that he can stay and play the game….”

I guess that’s the way it is, he thought. Power is as power does—for power. If I knew anything for sure, would I be sitting here?

Silently he listened to the flight of the Senator’s voice and searched for echoes of the past. He had never seen the Senate in session before and was mildly surprised that he could follow most of the course of the debate. It’s mainly knowing how to manipulate and use words, he thought. And reading the papers. Yes, and knowing the basic issues, because they seldom change. He sure knows how to use the words; he never forgot that. Imagine, going up there to New England and using all that kind of old Southern stuff, our own stuff, which
we never get a chance to use on a broad platform—and making it pay off. It’s probably the only thing he took with him that he’s still proud of, or simply couldn’t do without. Sister Neal’s right, some of that he’s doing is me all right. I could see it and hear it the moment she spotted it. So I guess I have helped to spread some corruption I didn’t know about. Just listen to him down there; he’s making somebody mighty uncomfortable because he’s got them caught between what they profess to believe and what they feel they can’t do without. Yes, and he’s having himself a fine time doing it. He’s almost laughing a devilish laugh in every word. Master, is that from me too? Did he ever hear me doing that?

He leaned toward Sister Neal again.

“Sister, do you follow what’s happening?”

“Some, but not quite,” she said.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “He is going to get this bill passed and pretty soon the money will start to flowing over there and those Indians, those Hindus, and such won’t be able to say a thing about their high morals and his low ones. They have a heap of hungry folks to feed and he’s making it possible. Let them talk that way then and they’ll sound like a man making a speech on the correct way to dress while he’s standing on the corner in a suit of dirty drawers….”

“He’s got no principles but he’s as smart as ever, ain’t he?” she said.

Hickman nodded, thinking, yes, he’s smart all right. Born with mother wit. He climbed up that high from nowhere, and now look, he’s one of the most powerful men on the floor. Lord, what a country this is. Even his name’s not his own name. Made himself from the ground up, you might say. But why this mixed-up way and all this sneering at us who never did more than wish him well? Why this craziness which makes it look sometimes like he does everything else, good and bad, clean-cut and crooked, just so he can have more opportunity to scandalize our name? Ah, but the glory of that baby boy. I could never forget it and that’s why we had to hurry here. He has to be seen and I’m the one to see him. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but soon’s this is over we have to find a way to get to him. I hope Janey was wrong, but any time she goes to the trouble of writing a letter herself, she just about knows what she’s talking about. So far though we’re ahead, but Lord only knows for how long. If only that young woman had told him we were trying to reach him….

He leaned forward, one elbow resting upon a knee, watching the Senator who was now in the full-throated roar of his rhetoric, head thrown back, his arms outspread—when someone crossed his path of vision.

Two rows below a neatly dressed young man had stood up to leave, and, moving slowly toward the aisle as though still engrossed in the speech, had stopped directly in front of him; apparently to remove a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. Why doesn’t he move on out of the way, Hickman thought, he can blow his nose when he gets outside—when, leaning around so as to see the Senator, he saw that it was not a handkerchief in the young man’s hand, but a pistol.

His body seemed to melt. Lord, can this be it? Can this be the one?, he thought, even as he saw the young man coolly bracing himself, his body slightly bent, and heard the dry, muffled popping begin. Unable to move he sat, still bent forward and to one side, seeing glass like stars from a Fourth of July rocket bursting from a huge chandelier which hung directly in the trajectory of the bullets. Lord, no, he thought, no Master, not this, staring at the dreamlike world of rushing confusion below him. Men were throwing themselves to the floor, hiding behind their high-backed chairs, dashing wildly for the exits; while he could see Bliss still standing as when the shooting began, his arms lower now, but still outspread, with a stain blooming on the front of his jacket. Then, as the full meaning of the scene came home to him, he heard Bliss give surprising voice to the old idiomatic cry,

Lord, LAWD, WHY HAST THOU …?