Three Days Before the Shooting ... (53 page)

Ah Bliss, Bliss, so you’ve come to this. And I believed…

Nay! Nay! They would sweep over us with their foreign ways. They would undermine us with their un-Christian doubt. They are a thorn in our flesh, a dagger in our back; a putrid offense in the nostrils of every true red-blooded American. And it is time that we defend ourselves. We have been asleep, Mr. Speaker, my fellow citizens; asleep in our dream of security! Asleep in our well-meaning, sportsmanlike way of wishing the other fellow well. Asleep in the false security of accepting all men of goodwill who would be free as men of honor. And, I’m sorry to say, we have not been vigilant enough in administering our heritage. Our stewardship has been indeed faulty, so the fault is our own. For while we’ve looked the other way these internal enemies have become in the words of that great Irish poet, kinsman no doubt to many of our colleagues here, in the words of Yeats—these enemies have become all too full of passionate intensity! Though fluent and often multilingual, they have not learned to speak in the true spirit of our glorious tongue—and yet, they strive to destroy it! They have not earned the right to harbor such malice, for this country has been kind to them. It has demanded little of them, and yet, they declare us decadent, deceptive, immoral, and arrogant. Nor has our social life given them justification for such cynical disillusionment; such loss of confidence. Indeed, the country has strengthened them. It has freed them of the past and its terror. Yes, we have given them the strength which they would use against us. They have not the right even when most sincere to criticize us in the name of other so-called democracies. For they believe in
no
democracy! For there are those among us who yearn for the tyrant’s foot upon their necks! They long for authority, brutal and unyielding. It is their nature to lick the boots of the strong and to spit in the faces of those weaker than themselves. This is their conception of the good life. This is their idea of security! This is their way, the way they would substitute for our principle of individual freedom, the way in which man faces nature, society, and the universe with confidence. Moving from triumph to triumph, ever increasing the well-being of all…. Each and every true American is the captain of his fate, the master of his own conscience.

Ah, yes! But somewhere we failed. We let down the gates and failed to draw the line, forgetting in our democratic pride that there were men in this world who
fear
our freedom; who, as they walk along our streets, cry out for the straitjacket of tyranny. They do not wish to think for themselves and they hate those of us who do. They do not desire to make—they tremble with dread at the very idea of making—their own decisions; who feel comfortable only with the whip poised ever above their heads. They hunger to be hated, persecuted, spat upon, and mocked so that they can justify their overwhelming and destructive pride and contempt for all who are different, for they are incapable of being American. They are false Americans, for being an American is truly to accept the hero’s task as a condition of our everyday living
and to bring it off with conscious ease! It is to take the risk of loneliness with open eyes; to face the forest with empty hands but with stout heart. To face the universal chaos in the name of human freedom and to win! To win even though we die but win and win again each day! To win and take the suffering that goes with winning along with the joy. To look any man in the face, unhindered by Europe’s deadweight of vicious traditions. It is to take a stand, a man alone…. Going West.

Ah, it holds hard. Camera! Lights! Lights! Never cut call—now action
.

Bliss, he said, there’s but one thing keeping you from being a great preacher—you just won’t learn to sing! A preacher just has
got to
sing, Bliss. But I guess from whoever it was gave you that straight hair and white skin took away your singing voice. Of course you’re still pretty young. I just don’t know, Bliss. I guess I have to do a lot of praying over you, ‘cause you’re definitely a preacher….

Preach, cried the King and forty thousand strained out the words.

Mr. Speaker…. How far the heights?

Yes, preach! But how could I sing the Lord’s song, a stranger man?

Mr. Speaker, I will be recognized…
.

I took her for a walk under the cottonwood trees. The sticky buds lay on the ground. Spring warned me but I was young and foolish and how could I not go on and then go on? How make progress with her along? I had nothing, I was a bird in flight. And it was as though I mounted her in midair, and we were like a falcon plummeting with its prey. Pray for me—now. No, I was gentle then. She melted me. She poised me in time tenderly. Pray, for it was so. A gentle bird, but I was high and flying faster, faster, faster. I traveled light, Donelson said, so I could roll up the moss. To make the most of circumstance, I flew. What was possible was possible in one way only, in a spiralling flight. Who could release more than vague hopes for heaven on a movie screen…. Lights!

Now the Senator could hear a voice quietly calling,
Bliss? You hear me, Bliss?
but was too weary to respond. His lips refused to answer, his throat throbbed with unstated things, the words starting up from deep within his mind and lodging there. He could not make them sound, and he thought, The circuit is out; I’m working with cables like those of Donelson’s lights, scenes go dark and there’s only a sputtering along the wire.

Yet his mind flowed dreamily and deep behind the purple shadows, welling from depths of time he had forgot, one short-lived self mysteriously surviving all the years and turns of face. Once I broke the string I whirled, I scudded the high places, bruised against treetops and building spires, snagged here and there for a time but always sailing. But once spring turned
me turtle, I tried to sing—that’s a part he doesn’t know. The old bliss still clung to me, childlike beneath my restlessness, stubborn. Liked the flight of birds then; cardinals streaking red across the fields, red wings on blackbirds and whistling quail at eveningtide. And metal-blue dragonflies and ladybirds in the dust, and catleaps in the sun. Black cat poised on hind feet like a boxer, paws poised, waiting to receive a squirt of milk from a cow’s teat, the milk white on the whiskers and the flash of small pink tongue.

Inwardly he smiled. Where—Kansas? Bonner Springs, Kansas City, buildings black from the riots. No one would believe it me, not even for that flash of time and pleasure which I have denied on platform and in Senate a million times by word, gesture, and legislation. Now it’s like a remembered dream or screen sequence that—listen to the mockingbird up in his apple tree—that time-slain moment breathed in and cried out and felt ago. This Bliss that passeth understanding you never know, you Reverend H, but still a turn in the dance…. Where am I?

Bliss? I say, can you hear me, Bliss? You want the nurse? Just move your fingers if you do and I’ll get the girl
.

Girl? There was a girl in it, yes. What else? There and then. Out there where they thought the new state a second chance for Eden…. Tell it to the Cherokees!

What are you trying to say, Bliss? Take it slow, boy. I’m still with you. I’ll never leave now, so…

…
We were under the trees, away from the town, away from Donelson, Karp, and the camera. There, how glorious to have been there. Below the park-space showed; shade here, sun there, in a dreamy, dappled mid-afternoon haze. We were there. High up the trees flurried with birdsong, and one clear note sang above the rest, a lucid, soaring strand of sound; while in the grass cicadas dreamed. For a moment we stood there looking down the gentle rising-falling of the land, while far away a cowbell tinkled, small across some hidden field beyond the woods. Milkweed ran across the ground. Imagine to remember—was it ever? Still. Thistle purple-blue, flowers blue, wisteria loud against an old rock wall—was this the season or another time? Certainly there were the early violets among the fallen pine needles—ago too, but that was Alabama and lonesome. Here she was close beside me and as we moved down the grassy slope the touch of her cool sweat-dampened arm came soft against me and went and came coolly again and then again as we went down the hill into the sun. Oh keep coming coming—Then through the sun into the dappled shade. How long ago, this comes comes a fall? Aches here, aches in spring like a lost limb refusing to recognize its dismemberment, no need to deny. Then too, but sweet. Coming just above my shoulder her glossy head her hair in two heavy braids, and I seeing the small gold ring sunk snug in the pink brown berry of her ear. A smile dreaming on her serenely
profiled face. And I remembered the Bliss years. He, Bliss, returned. (Laly was like ‘lasses candy, with charm of little red socks in little girls’ black patent-leather shoes on slim brown legs, her gingham panties playing peekaboo beneath a skirt flip as a bird’s tail, and her hair done up in tight little braids.
Bliss loves Laly
, I wrote in the sand where the ladybirds lived but the me preacher wiped it out. Then I wrote,
Bliss loves you know who
, and the preacher me wiped that away. So only
‘Bliss’
and
loves’
remained in the sand.) But she coming now was no Laly and I no preacher for a long time now and Bliss no more, though blissful beside her moving there. Saying inside my head, Touch me, touch me, touch me, you … And remembered the one phrase, “teasing brown,” and used it, feeling her cool bare flesh so thinly veiled with fragrant sweat against my short-sleeved arm and said aloud,

Are you one?

One what? she answered me, turning her face with her eyes dreaming a smile. What’re you talking about, Mister Man?

You, I said. Are you a teasing brown?

She laughed and I could feel her coming to me in waves, heavy around me, soft like hands pressing gently along the small of my back, sounding the column of my spine. I breathed her in, all the ripeness, all the sweetness, all the musky mysterious charm and the green afternoon approving. She smiled, her eyes turned up to mine, her irises soft as scuppernongs in their gentle, bluewhite orbs.

It must have been some ole blues singer you learned that from, she said.

Maybe so, you’re probably right, but are you?

I’m brown, and that’s a plain fact for anybody to see, she said. And the full black eyes were on me, now, softly laughing. But I’m not teasing anybody. I’m the country one, Mister Big-city Man. Mister Moving-picture Man. You teasing me. Don’t you like brown-skinned folks?

Now just what do you think, I said.

I think a lot of things, she said, but—

She smiled again and the whole afternoon seemed to swing around her glossy head. I breathed deeply the blossoms and sunlight and there was a sigh in it. I thought, Here is the place to stay, grow up with the state, take root…. Yes, here. Come, come. She pointed:

You want to go down yonder under those trees? It looks to me like a fine place to lay the spread.

Yes, I said, swinging the basket in my hand. Yes, I want to go anywhere you say, Miss Teasing Brown, yes I do. He was trying to break out of my chest. Bliss, fighting me hard. But you’re looking at
me
, she said. Look down yonder where I mean, she pointed. See, under that tree with the blossoms.

A fine peach fuzz of hair showed on her leveled arm, almost golden in the sunlight.

It’s fine, I said. Just the place for a time like this.

A bee danced by as on a thread. I felt a suspension of time. Standing still, my eyes in the tree of blossoms, I let it move through me. Eden, I thought, Eden is a lie that never was. And Adam, his name was “snake” And Eve’s? An aphrodisiac best served with new fresh oysters on the half shell with a good white wine. The spirit’s there…. She arose she rose she rose up from the waves.

Mister Man, she said, you sure have a lot of sleep in your voice.

And her laughter was gay in the afternoon stillness. There, of itself shaping and making the quiet alive. And suddenly I wanted to say, Hey, I’m Bliss! I’m Bliss again, but there’s hell in me. There was no alienation ringing in that laugh, so I joined her, startling the quiet. We laughed and laughed. I picked up a smooth stone and sent it sailing, a blossom bursting as it was kissed by a bee. Dreamer, I said, I’m full of dream—

And we came through the park-like space, into shade and out again, her cool skin touching mine. Touching and leaving and coming again unselfconsciously, skin-teasing skin in gentle friction. Damn Bliss! And she was a fragrance mixed with the spicy odors of the park-like space broken by light and shadow. My purpose too. And I thought, Turn back now. Now is the time, leave her and go West. You’ve lingered long enough, so leave before complications. So I thought. But Bliss said
Come. Come
. And I turned turtle and tried to sing. Suddenly she said,

Look!

And there beneath a bush I saw a white rabbit, its pink nose testing the air before its alerted, pink-veined ears. It watched us moving by, frozen beneath a flowering shrub.

That’s somebody’s Easter bunny lost out here in the woods, she said. I hope nothing gets him ‘cause he don’t look like he knows how to take care of himself. There’s foxes and hawks out here. Even evil ole wildcats. Poor little ole thing.

And I was disturbed with memory. Sister Wilhite had nicknamed Bliss “Bunting,” a bird. But some of the kids had changed it to “Bunny,” a rabbit, and this had led to fights. I had been lost too, in Atlanta—but later. I thought, He’ll be all right, innocence is its own protection—or would be in the snows. Hey, Rev Hickman, gospel truth or pious lie?