Three Days Before the Shooting ... (133 page)

And now, giving McVey a stiff-arm thrust to his chest, she threw up her arms and fell backwards into the chair; from where, giving a flaunting flip of her banknote skirt, she exploded with laughter.

And now, slamming her face with the policeman’s jacket, McVey whirled and seized his arm. And gasping with laughter he was being rushed through the narrow aisle of the room, banging against objects that creaked and tilted as McVey propelled him into the door that led to the vestibule; where, now, he could see Wilhite looming closer with his mouth agape. Then they were there and McVey wheeling Wilhite around and snatching open the door to the vestibule—and as cross-eyed little Maud screamed from the stairs, “Wait, darling, wait,” they were both being rushed through the jam of wide-eyed tenants, past the grandfather’s clock, and onto the steps—where, relieving himself of an encyclopedic explosion of anti-Negro profanity, McVey released their arms and rushed back into the hall, which was now roaring with the shouting of angry Negroes.

“A.Z.,” Wilhite said as he gasped for breath and stared at the door, “what was
that
all about? What happened in there?”

“Later, Wilhite, because it will take a whole
book
to tell you—but I found her!”

“Found
who?”

“The
woman
! Those detectives had me playing what my young friend Millsap used to call the American game of
cherchez la femme
. I thought little Sister Maud was mistaken about a woman being in on this thing, but at the last minute I
found
her!”

“Wait, man; wait! What woman are you raving about?”

“The one those folks said McMillen and his boss were entertaining! The
white
woman!”

“What!”

“Yes! And now it seems that most of what they said about what’s been happening in this crazy place is true!”

“Are you telling me that there’s really a …”

“Wilhite, didn’t I just tell you that I
saw
her? Those detectives had her stashed in the shadows, but she’s there—I swear. And I mean sloppy drunk, half-naked, and so foul-mouthed and disorderly that she even amazed an old sinner like me!”

“Good Lord! And what about McMillen?”

“Half-drunk and being questioned, but physically unharmed—at least as far as I could see. Which appears to be true, because while those white detectives are treating him like a clown he’s easing them into the dozens and getting away with it.”

“Well, at least that rascal hasn’t changed—but what about his boss?”

“Wilhite, the poor man is done with this world….”

“… Dead?”

“Dead? Yes! But
murdered?
I doubt it. Because—now listen to this—he’s sitting up on a table looking like a king holding court in a worm-eaten
coffin!”

“A coffin? Come
on
!”

“Yes! And dressed in a morning coat and ascot tie! Man, let’s get ourselves back to the Longview before we
both
lose our minds!”

“I’m with you,” Wilhite said. “Let’s get out of here!”

And with a quick look at the glowing 369 on the fanlight he shook his head and hurried away.

EDITORS’ NOTE TO “HICKMAN IN GEORGIA & OKLAHOMA”

“H
ICKMAN IN
G
EORGIA
& Oklahoma” consists of two sets of files that Ellison gave their own distinct tables of contents. Ellison appears almost certainly to have intended the sections to follow one another. The evidence for this is both narrative and textual. The Georgia sequence ends with Hickman leaving for the airport, while the Oklahoma sequence begins with him landing in Oklahoma City. Further corroborating the connection, Ellison’s archive at the Library of Congress includes a printout with continuous pagination running from the last Georgia file to the first Oklahoma file. To respect their close connection, we have elected to treat them as a single sequence. Together they constitute the most sustained narrative from the last decade of Ellison’s life.

This sequence begins with Hickman at his home in Waycross, Georgia, going through a stack of mail. Among the letters is one from Janey Glover, an old friend from Oklahoma for whom he’d long harbored an infatuation and who, we later find, is connected both with Sunraider and Sunraider’s estranged son and would-be assassin, Severen—whom Janey had raised from infancy much as Hickman had Bliss. The sight of her name on the envelope sparks in Hickman a series of reveries, and inspires him to return to a thirty-year-old report from a man named Walker Millsap whom he had enlisted to find the young man Bliss. When he gets around to opening the letter, he discovers that Janey is in great emotional distress, the precise cause of which is unclear, but somehow related to the one she calls Hickman’s “little man”: Bliss/Sunraider.

When Hickman arrives in Oklahoma City, he makes a series of visits, including ones to Janey and to a half-Indian, half-black shaman by the name of Love New. The section ends with Hickman visiting a bar called the Cave of the Winds, where he listens to a wild improvised story told by Cliofus, a kind of savant who was raised by Janey alongside Severen.

Oklahoma, the place of Ellison’s birth, remained a source of enduring fascination for him throughout the decades of the novel’s composition. He imagined Oklahoma as the site of the novel’s governing mystery and motivation. In notes likely dating from the early 1950s, when the novel was little more than a notion, he mapped out a three-part structure that would commence with Oklahoma. “The first book is that of the frontier. // The middle book that of the city. // The third book that of the nation.” Fragmentary typewritten drafts dating from the 1950s and later place an emphasis upon Oklahoma as the scene of action in ways not found in the Books I and II typescripts. Some of these drafts show McIntyre visiting Oklahoma in the aftermath of Sunraider’s assassination seeking clues to unlock the mystery of the violent act. In the computer sequence that follows, Ellison has substituted Hickman for McIntyre and moved events back
before
the Senator’s shooting.

These changes would appear to signal his intention of placing Hickman’s visit to Oklahoma first in the narrative sequence to correspond to its temporal order. Yet his notes continually reaffirm his decision to begin the novel in Washington, D.C., with the prologue. This is perhaps the most significant of the textual decisions Ellison left unresolved. Thus, it appears likely that Ellison never composed the textual bridges that would connect D.C. with Georgia and Oklahoma, and both of these sections with the complete McIntyre computer text.

HICKMAN IN GEORGIA & OKLAHOMA

[GEORGIA]
[SISTER]

T
HE LETTER ARRIVED
in the morning’s mail. Hickman was working at his desk facing the window when Sister Wilhite came in with it cradled in her arms.

“Reveren’,” she said, “you busy?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” Hickman said, “I’m right in the middle of something.”

Sister Wilhite sniffed. “Middle,” she said, “you’re always in the middle. That’s your middle name….”

“No, ma’am, it’s
Zuber
, as you well know.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean. You’re always in the middle and forever pecking and scratching away on those sermons which you write down one way and then stand up there and preach the way you really feel it. If you would write it the way you
say
it maybe folks would want to read it, but even if they didn’t you would surely save a heap of time….”

Hickman dropped his chin to his chest and sighed.

“Sister Corrine,” he said, “I’d be so thankful if you’d—”

“All right, all right,” Sister Corrine said, “but I won’t drop dead. And what’s more, I can wait even though some others don’t seem to be able.”

“Thank you,” Hickman said, “and just drop the mail on the table there and I promise you I’ll go through it as soon as I’m finished.”

Without a word Sister Corrine placed the pile of mail on the table and swept out of the study with the offended dignity of a Bantam pullet.

Hickman stared at the words on his interrupted page, thinking,
Why can’t she understand that there’s more behind a thing that’s said than mere feeling? That it’s the conception
behind
what’s being said that gives it vibration? It’s a good thing she wasn’t around when God was making the world, otherwise she’d never have let him get finished. Come to think of it, maybe she was there…. I’ll have to ask her…
.

He smiled, thinking,
And I’ll have my chance because Sister Corrine has something in mind, and it probably has to do with the mail. And with a woman, just as it usually is…
.

He had never married, and back during his early career, at a time when husband-hunting and shamelessly adventurous women were a threat to his relations with his congregation, he had thought to protect himself by asking Deacon Wilhite and his wife to share the parsonage. Wilhite was an old friend from his boyhood, and Sister Corrine turned out to be not only an excellent cook and housekeeper, but a mistress of the house who took over such entertainment as was expected of him as a minister. She had been a godsend in many ways, for years ago, before his foster son ran away, she had also provided the woman’s touch that was necessary in raising a child. Thus she had won a permanent place in Hickman’s affections, and this even though she had come, over the years, to bully him almost as much as she did her husband. Nevertheless, it was a satisfactory arrangement, and before the boy ran away it had given the parsonage much of the warmth of a true family unit. Sometimes, however, he regarded Sister Corrine’s bullying as a self-inflicted burden that was made bearable only because of his friendship with Wilhite and her contribution to the success of his early ministry.

When he was assigned to the congregation, certain of its members who knew of his past as a jazz musician had objected. For not only did they consider him unsuitable, but they desired a leader who was married, and preferably one with children. And even though he had a foster son, his lack of a wife had been against him. Some of the most important members had considered it a most crucial issue, in maintaining tradition, certain ceremonial duties and leadership functions connected with the church were the responsibility of its minister’s wife.

And even more important, at least to some, was the assumption that marriage automatically afforded a minister a keener insight into the many problems afflicting families. Especially the inevitable contentions that arose between husbands and wives and parents and children. Here at least his background as the son of a well-known minister had been in his favor, but there was a related objection that proved so thorny that it appeared that he would lose his assignment. For while he could feel its presence behind the questions put to him by the head of the board of trustees—a head waiter for the leading hotel—the man seemed to find the subject as delicate to deal with as the unzipped zipper of an important guest, or a bluebottle fly in a carefully prepared vichyssoise. Then it turned out that some of the trustees considered marriage as an indispensable safeguard against a minister’s becoming profanely involved with ladies of the congregation. And though most were experienced enough to realize that such a safeguard didn’t always work, they felt that it
did
place certain constraints in the way of temptation. Fortunately, what counted most was a minister’s ability to move them with the Word beyond the limitations of words, and he passed the test. They had liked his personality and style of delivery well enough to give him a
chance, and with Sister Corrine taking over to fulfill the duties of a minister’s wife he had earned the respect of the congregation, men and women, married and unwed alike.

[JANEY 3]

W
HEN
H
ICKMAN READ THE
name and return address on the thickest envelope he paused, weighing it in his hand as he thought,
What on earth is going on with Janey? This thing looks like she’s taken off on some kind of
writing
jag. Just look at all the stamps!
Then, shaking his head, he placed the envelope on his desktop and read rapidly through the rest of his mail.

Ripping the envelopes open with his fingers, he discovered among the bills and solicitations for funds three letters from former members who had moved to the North; the first asking his aid in securing a birth certificate from a small nearby town.
I’ll try
, he thought,
but it’s probably impossible since at the time they weren’t issuing many to Negroes. But I’ll see
.

The next was from a former member who had just lost her husband in New Jersey, saying that she expected him to conduct the burial ceremony, and would he see to it that her old family plot was made ready by the time she reached home with her husband’s body.

Of course I will, he
thought,
and the plot’s no problem, because just last week I was out there and noticed that somebody—probably a member of the family—had looked ahead and given it their attention…. Oh, but how time leaps ahead of memory’s markers—here I’ve been remembering her as such a cute little girl and now she’s a widow!

Opening the next letter, he read a few lines and smiled. It was from a couple asking that he conduct the marriage ceremony of their daughter, who had just graduated from college, and informing him that for the occasion members of their widely scattered family would gather for a reunion during which they hoped he would make them welcome and do them the honor of baptizing two of its youngest members.

Hickman smiled, thinking,
Of course I will, and it’ll be a pleasure to see what’s happened to the old-timers…. Let’s see—already there’re four family reunions scheduled for late summer and this makes the fifth. So there’ll be well over eight hundred natives and their in-laws returning home to the briar patch. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Tempus certainly fugits, and that’s no lie. I used to play hooky with that fellow’s daddy, and now his engineer son will be bringing his grandkids home to show them where he started from. Couldn’t stay in the South, but thank God he still loves our part of it
.