Three Days Before the Shooting ... by Ralph Ellison

Author:Ralph Ellison
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781588360892
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-01-26T10:00:00+00:00

[CHRIST]

WATCHING THE BARBER’S NECK-CLOTH disappear with a snap and a billow, Hickman turned, grasping the guardrail through a dream-like haze.

Hickman, he thought, what on earth did you do to deserve all of that? And with hundreds of big Negroes wandering around this town, why would he pick on you? Man, if I weren’t fully dressed and in my right I’d swear you’re dreaming!

Which was impossible, because the same brassy automobile horn was blaring as before Ivey snatched Leroy away, the street facing the building still filled with window-shopping people, and the odor of Leroy’s Mum and bay rum still clinging to his jacket. Yes, and his hands were clutching the brass rail from which Leroy had relieved himself of his wild confession. Yet something seemed missing, some teasing segment of reality lost in the wild encounter.

Then in a flashback he was dangling again in the air, but now through the translucence of Leroy’s tricolored skin he saw himself standing in the pulpit of a crowded church holding a Bible while conducting the funeral of a prominent minister. Then the scene fell apart, and as he stared down at the features of the corpse in the coffin the man’s face twitched with a sarcastic smile and became that of a child. Whereupon he felt himself being raised even higher and the scene was taken over by two women mourners who leaped from their seats in a whirling, veil-snatching, hair-pulling brawl. And as he stared at the blur of their air-flailing arms the coffin’s lid flew shut with a slow-motion fall….

Then through a crescendo of street sounds he was staring at the windowless wall of the building which towered beyond and above the guardrail. And with the disrupted funeral still vivid in his mind he recalled that the man dead had been a highly esteemed minister and the brawling women his girlfriend and wife. Then in a flash he realized that the man was not the minister. And struck by the incongruity of a dead man smiling and shrinking to a child in an adult’s coffin struck home he flooded with sweat, reached for his panama to wipe his brow, and felt it slip from his fingers. And before he could move the hat teetered on the guardrail like a bird taking flight and swooped down to the area below him.

Grasping the guardrail in perspiring hands, he looked down to where his hat lay white in the shadows; and with a sigh of disgust followed the guardrail around to the steep flight of stairs that led down from the street, and with a sigh began making his descent through an updraft of cool air.

Now, reaching the bottom, he stood in the empty loading area of a courtyard that lay two full stories below the street and surprisingly larger than it had appeared from above. Against a nearby wall garbage cans humming with flies stood in the angle of nearby walls that were part of a vast open space, and to his right

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