Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

  Yes, but what a time this has been. What an awful time this has turned out to be. And I thought we’d make it with something to spare. I still did, even after that young gal kept turning us away. I thought we’d contact him somewhere along the line and we’d talk a while somewhere in private and tell him what we felt and hoped and prayed, both for him and for us and for the country, and then go on back home and wait. Just that. Just that; that was all, even though there wasn’t a thing to justify the feeling that it might come to pass except our old habit of hoping. Maybe it just sneaked up on me, stole me while we were out there where I took them so they could see it for the first time and probably for most of us the last, and that got my hopes up and made me reckless. Maybe I let them down right there. Maybe the place and the image and the associations got to me. But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand. That’s the dangerous shape, the engraven image we were warned about, the one that makes it possible for him to hear his inner hopes sound and sing and see them soar up and take wing before his half-believing eyes. Faith in the Lord and Master is easy compared to having faith in the goodness of man. There are simply too many snares and delusions, too many masks, too many forked tongues. Too much grit in the spiritual greens. But then, there that something is. There sits his hopes made manifest and a man knows that it’s not simply the mixed-up hopes and yearnings within his own mind and most secret heart that grabs him and makes him stand tiptoe inside his skin and reach up through the dark for something better and finer and more durable than he knows himself to be capable of, but something felt by a lot of other folks and even achieved and died for by a precious few….

  So I walked them out there just so that we could ease off from the frustration and runaround that we were getting, and so that I could have time to figure out our next move. Then we had arrived and there it was … there.

  He slowly shook his head, staring across to the sleeping face and feeling it become almost anonymous beneath his inward-turning vision, the once familiar cast of features fading like the light. He closed his eyes, his fingers clasped across his middle as the mood of the afternoon moment returned in all its awe and mystery, and he found himself once more approaching the serene, high-columned space. Once more they were starting up the broad steps and moving in a loose mass still caught up in the holiday mood evoked by seeing the sights and scenes which most had only read about or seen in photographs or in an occasional newsreel. Then he was mounting the steps and feeling a sudden release from the frame of time, feeling the old familiar restricting part of himself falling away as when, long ago, he’d found himself improvising upon some old traditional riffs of the blues, or when, as in more recent times, he’d felt the Sacred Word surging rapturously within him, taking possession of his voice and tongue.

  And now his heartbeat pounded and his footsteps slowed and he was looking upward, hesitating with one foot fumbling for the step which would bring him flush into the full field of the emanating power, and he felt himself shaken by the sudden force of his emotion. Then once again he was moving, moving into the cool, shaded, and sonorous calm of the edifice, moving slowly and dream-like over the fluted shadows cast along the stony floor before him by the upward-reaching columns, and he advanced toward the great image slumped in the huge stone chair.

  From far away he could hear some sister’s softly tentative, “Reverend? Reverend?” and now their voices fading in a hush of awed recognition; creating but for her echoing Reverend? Reverend? a stillness as resonant as the profoundest note of some great distant bell; still staring, still hearing the sister’s soft voice, which sounded now through a deep and doom-toned silence reverberating through his mind with the slow, time-and-space-devouring motion of great wings silently flying….

  Then he, Hickman, was looking up through the calm and peaceful light toward the great brooding face; he, Hickman, standing motionless before the quiet, less-and-more-than-human eyes which seemed to gaze from beneath their shadowed lids as toward some vista of perpetual dawn which lay beyond infinity.

  And he thought, Now I understand: That look, that’s us! It’s not in the features but in what that look, those eyes, have to say about what it means to be a man who tries to live and struggle against all the troubles of the world with but the naked heart and mind, and who finds them more necessary than all the power of wealth and great armies. Yes, that look and what put it there made him one of us. It wasn’t in the dirty dozens about his family and his skin-tone that they tried to ease him into but in that look in his eyes and in his struggle against the things which put it there and saddened his features. It’s in that, in being the kind of man he made himself to be, that he’s one of us. Oh, he failed and he knew that he could only take one step along the road that would make us free, but in growing into that look he joined us in what we have been forced to learn about life and about being truly human in the face of life. Because one thing we have been forced to learn is that Man at his best, when he’s set in all the muck and confusion of life and continues to struggle for his ideals, is near sublime. So yes, he’s one of us, not only because he freed us to the extent that he could, but because he freed himself of that awful inherited pride they deny to us, and in doing so he became a man and he pointed the way for all of us who would be free—Yes!

  Staring upward into the great brooding eyes he felt a strong impulse to turn and seek to share their distant vision but was held, the eyes holding him quiet and still, and he stared upward, seeking their secret, their mysterious life, in the stone; aware of the stone and yet feeling their more-than-stoniness as he probed the secret of the emotion which held him with a gentle but all-compelling power. And the stone seemed to live and breathe then, its great chest appearing to heave as though, stirred by their approach, it had decided to sigh in silent recognition of who and what they were and had chosen to reveal its secret life for all who cared to see and share and remember its vision. And he was searching the stony visage, its brooding eyes, as though waiting to hear it resound with the old familiar eloquence which he knew only from the sound of the printed page—when a woman’s voice came to him as from a distance, crying, “Oh, my Lord! Look, y’all, it’s him! It’s HIM!,” her voice breaking in a quavering rush of tears.

  And he was addressing himself now, crying in upon his own spellbound ears, as her anguished, “Ain’t that him, Revern’? Ain’t that Father Abraham?” came to him as from far away.

  And too full to speak, he smiled; and in silent confirmation he was nodding his head, thinking, Yes, with all I know about him and his contradictions, yes. And with all I know about men and the world, yes. And with all I know about white men and politicians of all colors and guises, yes. And with all I know about the things you had to do to be you and stay yourself—yes! She’s right, she’s cut through the knot and said it plain; you are and you’re one of the few who ever earned the right to be called “Father.” George didn’t do it, though he had the chance, but you did. So yes, it’s all right with me; yes. Yes, and though I’m a man who despises all foolish pomp and circumstance and all the bending of the knee that some still try to force us to do before false values, Yes, and Yes again. And though I’m against all the unearned tribute which the weak and lowly are forced to yield up based on force and false differences and false values, yes, for you “Father” is all right with me. Yes…

  And he could feel the cloth of the sister’s dress as he gently touched her arm and gazed into the great face; thinking, There you sit after all this unhappy time, just looking down out of those sad old eyes, just looking way deep out of that beautiful old ugly wind-swept, storm-struck face. Yes, she’s right, it’s you all right; stretching out those long old weary legs like you’ve just been re
sting a while before pulling yourself together again to go and try to bind up all these wounds that have festered and run and stunk in this land ever since they turned you back into stone. Yes, that’s right, it’s you, just sitting and waiting and taking your well-earned ease, getting your second wind before getting up to do all over again what has been undone throughout all the betrayed years. Yes, it’s you all right, just sitting and resting while you think out the mystery of how all this could be. Just puzzling out how all this could happen to a man after he had done all one man could possibly do and then take the consequences for having done his all. Yes, it’s you—Sometimes, I guess…. Sometimes…

  And then he was saying it aloud, his eyes held by the air of peace and perception born of suffering which emanated from the great face, replying to the sister now in a voice so low and husky that it sounded hardly like his own:

  “Sometimes, yes … sometimes the good Lord … I say sometimes the good Lord accepts His own perfection and closes His eyes and goes ahead and takes His own good time and He makes Himself a man. Yes, and sometimes that man gets hold of the idea of what he’s supposed to do in this world and he gets an idea of what it is possible for him to do, and that man lets that idea guide him as he grows and struggles and stumbles and sorrows until finally he comes into his own God-given shape and achieves his own individual and lonely place in this world. It don’t happen often, oh, no; but when it does, then even the stones will cry out in witness to his vision and the hills and towers shall echo his words and deeds and his example will live in the hearts of men forever—

  “So there sits one right there. The Master doesn’t make many like that because that kind of man is dangerous to the sloppy way the world moves. That kind of man loves the truth even more than he loves his life, or his wife, or his children, because he’s been designated and set aside to do the hard tasks that have to be done. That kind of man will do what he sees as justice even if the earth yawns and swallows him down, and even then his deeds will persist in the land forever. So you look at him a while and be thankful that the Lord allowed such a man to touch our lives, even if it was only for a little while, then let us bow our heads and pray. Oh, no, not for him, because he did his part a long time ago. Let us pray for ourselves and for all those whose job it is to wear those great big shoes he left to fill …”

  And there in the sonorous shadows beneath his outspread arms they prayed.

  And to think, he thought, stirring suddenly in his chair, we had hoped to raise ourselves that kind of man….

  Opening his eyes in the semi-darkness now, he looked about him. While he had dozed the nurse and security man had gone, leaving him alone with the man sleeping before him and now, still possessed by the experience at the memorial, he looked upon the sleeping face before him and felt an anguished loss of empathy. He looked at the Senator’s face half in shadow, half illuminated by a dim bed lamp as from a great distance, mist-hung and beclouded, thinking, This is crazy; weird. All of it is. A crazy happening in a crazy place and I am the craziest of all. His being here is crazy, my being here is crazy, the reasons that brought us here are crazy as any coke fiend’s dream—and yet part of that craziness contains the hope that has sustained us for all these many years…. We just couldn’t get around the hard fact that for a hope or an idea to become real it has to be embodied in a man, and men change and have wills and wear masks. So there he lies, wounded and brought low but still he’s hiding from me, even in this condition he’s still running, still hiding just as he did long ago—Only now I’ll have to stay close and seek him out. For me it’s Ho-ho, this a-way, woe-woe, that-a-way, and the game is lost in the winning. Besides, they wouldn’t let me leave here even if I told them that I only wanted to go back down home and forget all the things I’ve been forced by hope and faith to remember for all these years. What’s worse, they won’t want to hear the truth even if somebody could tell it. They’re keeping me here for the wrong reasons and probably trying to keep him alive just because it seems the thing to do after they learned that someone faceless and out of nowhere could have the nerve and determination to do what that boy did in the place that he did it. So now they’re shaking in their boots and looking for someone to give them the answer they want to hear. Not the truth, but some lie that will protect them from the truth. They really don’t want to know the reason why or even the part of it I think I know because knowing will mean recognizing that they slipped up in places where they’d rather die than be caught slipping. A tint of skin—ha! They’d have to recognize that in this land there’s a wild truth that they didn’t blunt and couldn’t bring to heel. It’s like a tamed river that rises suddenly in the night and washes away factories, houses, cities, and all. Why can’t they face the simple fact that you simply can’t give one bunch of men the license to kill another bunch without punishment, without opening themselves up to being victims? The high as well as the low? Why can’t they realize that when they dull their senses to the killing of one group of men they dull themselves to the preciousness of all human life? Yes, and why can’t they realize that when they allow one group of men the freedom to kill us as evidence of their own superiority they’re only setting the stage so that these killers will have to widen the game, since if anyone can kill niggers the only way left to prove themselves superior is by killing some white man high in the public eye? Attack the head since the feet are too easy a target? We have suffered and trained ourselves against their provocations, have taken low and rejected their easy invitations to die, have kept to our own vision and for the most part put down the need for bloody retaliation as foolishness. But instead of being satisfied, they’ve sensed the life-preserving power of our humility and gone stark crazy to destroy even that! Hickman, how can you help despising these people? How can you resist praying for the day when they shall turn upon one another as they did once before and purge this land with blood? How can you resist praying for the day when the sacrificer will be sacrificed, when the many-headed beast will rend itself, tooth, nail, and fiery tail and die?

  How resist, Hickman? Why not pray for that?

  Why not? Don’t play me for a fool—Why not? Because this American cloth, the human cloth, is woven too fine for that, that’s why. Because you are one of the few who knows where the cry of pain and anguish is still echoing and sounding over all that bloodletting and killing that set you free to set yourself free, that’s why again. Because you know that we were born of sacrifice, and that we have had to live by a different truth and that that truth is good and the vision of manhood it stands for is more human, more desirable, more real. So you’re in it, Hickman, and have been in it and there’s no turning back. Besides, there’s no single living man calling the tune to this crazy dance. Talking about playing it by ear, this is one time when everybody is playing it by ear because everybody in the band and all those out on the dance floor is as blind as a mole in a hole.

  But why couldn’t he have seen us, if only for a minute? Why? If he had, then all of this might not have happened. Oh, but it’s the little things that find us out, the little things we refuse to do in order to avoid doing the big things that can save us. Well, there’s nothing to do but wait and see. He’s holding on even though Death is around somewhere close by—as Death always is. I’ll just have to try once more to outwait him, to outface him, even though I’ve seen enough even for an old preacher like me. Death has more shapes and faces than a snake has twists and turns, and I’ve seen more of them than the average man—but last night, now that was something. It was as though I was being warned that something was going to strike out of all the junk and disorder of overlooked and forgotten things; out of a joke and the childish foolishness of an old man who’s lost his way—and me blundering into it in the middle of the night….

  Leaving the memorial in one of the taxis that some of the men had assembled for the group, he had sat up front with the driver, a rough-faced man who drove as though his passengers were concealed within a soundproof box, while Wilhite and th
e other two men sat talking behind him. Watching the driver’s profile, he could hear Deacon Wilhite discussing President Lincoln’s divided attitude toward the slaves and what his father had always referred to as the Secesh. Wilhite, he had thought, is talking about him as a creature of politics—which he certainly was, and no doubt about it. But I was speaking of him as a creature of God’s will, as one who did the Lord’s work in rebellion and in wonder. Well, there’s a lot to be discussed and even with me there’s too much conflict between what I feel in my heart and what I think I know. History happens and men have a hand in it, but what the heart makes of it is sometimes more complex and contradictory than history by itself could ever be. Maybe it’s the confusion in the heart which makes history in the first place. Maybe Abraham Lincoln doubted that freedom would work even if there was no black and white problem to deal with, so he preferred not to think about it while he had a war to win. But he also knew that with white folks killing off one another in wholesale lots it could become such a habit that getting the black and the white to live together in peace after the war was won was almost too much to hope for. As he saw it, Union was his hope and his responsibility and how things went after the Union was secured was another proposition. Some say he didn’t see a place for us in it, but one thing cannot be denied: He signed the papers which set us free, whatever that freedom turned out to be. He did it. He wrote the words and signed them and that marked a new beginning. So let the fellows talk; you just remember that he was a politician and his moves had to be at least as complicated as any other politician’s. But something deep inside him that probably had nothing to do with politics made the difference. It could have even been something shameful, or something too glorious for him to even think about directly, but thank God for it. So I won’t get into this discussion, not now. Not with the problem of getting to see this boy weighing so heavy on my mind…. Lord, but it’s hard! I should’ve known it would be because in something like this all the rules and manners are against us. The folks he’s got around him can frustrate us in a crude way or in a polite way but they have the advantage and whichever way they choose they can keep us from seeing him….