Authors: Ralph Ellison
A scream, “I’m going in!” spun me around. The old couple were on the steps now, the old man holding her arm, the white men leaning forward above, and the crowd pressing me closer to the steps.
“You can’t go in, lady,” the man said.
“I want to pray!” she said.
“I can’t help it, lady. You’ll have to do your praying out here.”
“I’m go’n in!”
“Not in here!”
“All we want to do is go in and pray,” she said, clutching her Bible. “It ain’t right to pray in the street like this.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Aw, let the woman go in to pray,” a voice called from the crowd. “You got all their stuff out here on the walk—what more do you want, blood?”
“Sure, let them old folks pray.”
“That’s what’s wrong with us now, all this damn praying,” another voice called.
“You don’t go back, see,” the white man said. “You were legally evicted.”
“But all we want to do is go in an’ kneel on the floor,” the old man said. “We been living right here for over twenty years. I don’t see why you can’t let us go just for a few minutes …”
“Look, I’ve told you,” the man said. “I’ve got my orders. You’re wasting my time.”
“We go’n in!” the woman said.
It happened so suddenly that I could barely keep up with it: I saw the old woman clutching her Bible and rushing up the steps, her husband behind her and the white man stepping in front of them and stretching out his arm. “I’ll jug you,” he yelled, “by God, I’ll jug you!”
“Take your hands off that woman!” someone called from the crowd.
Then at the top of the stairs they were pushing against the man and I saw the old woman fall backwards, and the crowd exploded.
“Get that paddie sonofabitch!”
“He struck her!” a West Indian woman screamed into my ear. “The filthy brute, he struck her!”
“Stand back or I’ll shoot,” the man called, his eyes wild as he drew a gun and backed into the doorway where the two trusties stood bewildered, their arms full of articles. “I swear I’ll shoot! You don’t know what you’re doing, but I’ll shoot!”
They hesitated. “Ain’t but six bullets in that thing,” a little fellow called. “Then what you going to do?”
“Yeah, you damn sho caint hide.”
“I advise you to stay out of this,” the marshal called.
“Think you can come up here and hit one of our women, you a fool.”
“To hell with all this talk, let’s rush that bastard!”
“You better think twice,” the white man called.
I saw them start up the steps and felt suddenly as though my head would split. I knew that they were about to attack the man and I was both afraid and angry, repelled and fascinated. I both wanted it and feared the consequences, was outraged and angered at what I saw and yet surged with fear; not for the man or of the consequences of an attack, but of what the sight of violence might release in me. And beneath it all there boiled up all the shock-absorbing phrases that I had learned all my life. I seemed to totter on the edge of a great dark hole.
“No, no,” I heard myself yelling. “Black men! Brothers! Black Brothers! That’s not the way. We’re law-abiding. We’re a law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger people.”
Forcing my way quickly through the crowd, I stood on the steps facing those in front, talking rapidly without thought but out of my clashing emotions. “We’re a law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger people …” They stopped, listening. Even the white man was startled.
“Yeah, but we mad now,” a voice called out.
“Yes, you’re right,” I called back. “We’re angry, but let us be wise. Let us, I mean let us not … Let us learn from that great leader whose wise action was reported in the newspaper the other day …”
“What mahn? Who?” a West Indian voice shouted.
“Come on! To hell with this guy, let’s get that paddie before they send him some help …”
“No, wait,” I yelled. “Let’s follow a leader, let’s organize.
Organize.
We need someone like that wise leader, you read about him, down in Alabama. He was strong enough to choose to do the wise thing in spite of what he felt himself …”
“Who, mahn? Who?”
This was it, I thought, they’re listening, eager to listen. Nobody laughed. If they laugh, I’ll die! I tensed my diaphragm.
“That wise man,” I said, “you read about him, who when that fugitive escaped from the mob and ran to his school for protection, that wise man who was strong enough to do the legal thing, the law-abiding thing, to turn him over to the forces of law and order …”
“Yeah,” a voice rang out, “yeah, so they could lynch his ass.”
Oh, God, this wasn’t it at all. Poor technique and not at all what I intended.
“He was a wise leader,” I yelled. “He was within the law. Now wasn’t that the wise thing to do?”
“Yeah, he was wise all right,” the man laughed angrily. “Now get out of the way so we can jump this paddie.”
The crowd yelled and I laughed in response as though hypnotized.
“But wasn’t that the human thing to do? After all, he had to protect himself because—”
“He was a handkerchief-headed rat!” a woman screamed, her voice boiling with contempt.
“Yes, you’re right. He was wise and cowardly, but what about us? What are we to do?” I yelled, suddenly thrilled by the response. “Look at him,” I cried.
“Yes, just look at him!” an old fellow in a derby called out as though answering a preacher in church.
“And look at that old couple …”
“Yeah, what about Sister and Brother Provo?” he said. “It’s an ungodly shame!”
“And look at their possessions all strewn there on the sidewalk. Just look at their possessions in the snow. How old are you, sir?” I yelled.
“I’m eighty-seven,” the old man said, his voice low and bewildered.
“How’s that? Yell so our slow-to-anger brethren can hear you.”
“I’m eighty-seven years old!”
“Did you hear him? He’s eighty-seven. Eighty-seven and look at all he’s accumulated in eighty-seven years, strewn in the snow like chicken guts, and we’re a law-abiding, slow-to-anger bunch of folks turning the other cheek every day in the week. What are we going to do? What would you, what would I, what would he have done?
What is to be done?
I propose we do the wise thing, the law-abiding thing. Just look at this junk! Should two old folks live in such junk, cooped up in a filthy room? It’s a great danger, a fire hazard! Old cracked dishes and broken-down chairs. Yes, yes, yes! Look at that old woman, somebody’s mother, somebody’s grandmother, maybe. We call them ‘Big Mama’ and they spoil us and—
you
know,
you
remember … Look at her quilts and broken-down shoes. I know she’s somebody’s mother because I saw an old breast pump fall into the snow, and she’s somebody’s grandmother, because I saw a card that read ‘Dear Grandma’ … but we’re law-abiding … I looked into a basket and I saw some bones, not neck-bones, but rib bones, knocking bones … This old couple used to dance … I saw— What kind of work do you do, Father?” I called.
“I’m a day laborer …”
“… A day laborer, you heard him, but look at his stuff strewn like chitterlings in the snow … Where has all his labor gone? Is he lying?”
“Hell, no, he ain’t lying.”
“Naw, suh!”
“Then where did his labor go? Look at his old blues records and her pots of plants, they’re down-home folks, and everything tossed out like junk whirled eighty-seven years in a cyclone. Eighty-seven years, and
poof!
like a snort in a wind storm. Look at them, they look like my mama and my papa and my grandma and grandpa, and I look like you and you look like me. Look at them but remember that we’re a wise, law-abiding group of people. And remember it when you look up there in the doorway at that law standing there with his forty-five. Look at him, standing with his blue steel pistol and his blue serge suit, or one forty-five, you see ten for every one of us, ten guns and ten warm suits and ten fat bellies and ten million laws.
Laws
, that’s what we call them down South! Laws! And we’re wise, and law-abiding. And look at this old woman with her dog-eared Bible. What’s she trying to bring off here? She’s let her religion go to her head, but we all know that religion is for the heart, not for the head. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ it says. Nothing about the poor in head. What’s she trying to do? What about the clear of head? And the clear of eye, the ice-water-visioned who see too clear to miss a lie? Look out there at her cabinet with its gaping drawers. Eighty-seven years to fill them, and full of brick and brack, a brica-brac, and she wants to break the law … What’s happened to them? They’re our people, your people and mine, your parents and mine. What’s happened to ’em?”
“I’ll tell you!” a heavyweight yelled, pushing out of the crowd, his face angry. “Hell, they been dispossessed, you crazy sonofabitch, get out the way!”
“Dispossessed?” I cried, holding up my hand and allowing the word to whistle from my throat. “That’s a good word, ‘Dispossessed’! ‘Dispossessed,’ eighty-seven years and dispossessed of what? They ain’t
got
nothing, they caint
get
nothing, they never
had
nothing. So who was dispossessed?” I growled. “We’re law-abiding. So who’s being dispossessed? Can it be us? These old ones are out in the snow, but we’re here with them. Look at their stuff, not a pit to hiss in, nor a window to shout the news and us right with them. Look at them, not a shack to pray in or an alley to sing the blues! They’re facing a gun and we’re facing it with them. They don’t want the world, but only Jesus. They only want Jesus, just fifteen minutes of Jesus on the rug-bare floor … How about it, Mr. Law? Do we get our fifteen minutes worth of Jesus? You got the world, can we have our Jesus?”
“I got my orders, Mac,” the man called, waving the pistol with a sneer. “You’re doing all right, tell ’em to keep out of this. This is legal and I’ll shoot if I have to …”
“But what about the prayer?”
“They don’t go back!”
“Are you positive?”
“You could bet your life,” he said.
“Look at him,” I called to the angry crowd. “With his blue steel pistol and his blue serge suit. You heard him, he’s the law. He says he’ll shoot us down because we’re a law-abiding people. So we’ve been dispossessed, and what’s more, he thinks he’s God. Look up there backed against the post with a criminal on either side of him. Can’t you feel the cold wind, can’t you hear it asking, ‘What did you do with your heavy labor? What did you do?’ When you look at all you haven’t got in eighty-seven years you feel ashamed—”
“Tell ’em about it, brother,” an old man interrupted. “It makes you feel you ain’t a man.”
“Yes, these old folks had a dream book, but the pages went blank and it failed to give them the number. It was called the Seeing Eye, The Great Constitutional Dream Book, The Secrets of Africa, The Wisdom of Egypt—but the eye was blind, it lost its luster. It’s all cataracted like a cross-eyed carpenter and it doesn’t saw straight. All we have is the Bible and this Law here rules that out. So where do we go? Where do we go from here, without a pot—”
“We going after that paddie,” the heavyweight called, rushing up the steps.
Someone pushed me. “No, wait,” I called.
“Get out the way now.”
There was a rush against me and I fell, hearing a single explosion, backward into a whirl of milling legs, overshoes, the trampled snow cold on my hands. Another shot sounded above like a bursting bag. Managing to stand, I saw atop the steps the fist with the gun being forced into the air above the crowd’s bobbing heads and the next instant they were dragging him down into the snow; punching him left and right, uttering a low tense swelling sound of desperate effort; a grunt that exploded into a thousand softly spat, hate-sizzling curses. I saw a woman striking with the pointed heel of her shoe, her face a blank mask with hollow black eyes as she aimed and struck, aimed and struck, bringing spurts of blood, running along beside the man who was dragged to his feet now as they punched him gauntlet-wise between them. Suddenly I saw a pair of handcuffs arc gleaming into the air and sail across the street. A boy broke out of the crowd, the marshal’s snappy hat on his head. The marshal was spun this way and that, then a swift tattoo of blows started him down the street. I was beside myself with excitement. The crowd surged after him, milling like a huge man trying to turn in a cubbyhole—some of them laughing, some cursing, some intently silent.
“The brute stuck that gentle woman, poor thing!” the West Indian woman chanted. “Black men, did you ever see such a brute? Is he a gentleman, I ask you? The brute? Give it back to him, black men. Repay the brute a thousandfold! Give it back to him unto the third and fourth generations. Strike him, our fine black men. Protect your black women! Repay the arrogant creature to the third and fourth generations!”
“We’re dispossessed,” I sang at the top of my voice, “dispossessed and we want to pray. Let’s go in and pray. Let’s have a big prayer meeting. But we’ll need some chairs to sit in … rest upon as we kneel. We’ll need some chairs!”
“Here’s some chairs down here,” a woman called from the walk. “How ’bout taking in some chairs?”
“Sure,” I called, “take everything. Take it all, hide that junk! Put it back where it came from. It’s blocking the street and the sidewalk, and that’s against the law. We’re law-abiding, so clear the street of the debris. Put it out of sight! Hide it, hide their shame! Hide
our
shame!”
“Come on, men,” I yelled, dashing down the steps and seizing a chair and starting back, no longer struggling against or thinking about the nature of my action. The others followed, picking up pieces of furniture and lugging it back into the building.
“We ought to done this long ago,” a man said.
“We damn sho should.”
“I feel so good,” a woman said. “I feel so
good!”
“Black men, I’m proud of you,” the West Indian woman shrilled. “Proud!”
We rushed into the dark little apartment that smelled of stale cabbage and put the pieces down and returned for more. Men, women and children seized articles and dashed inside shouting, laughing. I looked for the two trusties, but they seemed to have disappeared. Then, coming down into the street, I thought I saw one. He was carrying a chair back inside.